adarkergray | Kenoma

Kenoma

Previously:
Escape From Starkiller Base
At the Monuments of Madness
A Living Weapon

To Jacob's surprise, they made it to Ahch-To's system without incident - but then, it was clear now that the Force was on their side. As per his calculations, they'd dropped out of hyperspace a few hundred thousand kilometers away, just beyond its outermost moon's orbit, and as they headed toward the planet at sublight speeds, he tried to ignore the way his protective instincts were going into overdrive.

However, the closer they got to the planet, the more he couldn't help being aware that everyone there, everyone they were going to see, was someone who'd hurt Kylo terribly, and Force, how could Jacob even begin to justify taking him down there? To put him in that level of danger, in the kind of condition he was in--

He made himself take a deep breath, though the fingers of his free hand were clamped tightly around the hilt of one of his lightsabers. The urge was incredibly strong to tell Kylo that he couldn't in good conscience do this, that there had to be another, better way to defeat Snoke, and they would find it - but, deep down, he knew that if there was, the Force would have shown it to Kylo instead. He had to have faith in his master, and in the Force.

Instead, right now, he had more sympathy than ever for why Snoke wanted to destroy the Force's will - not that he had any sympathy for Snoke himself. That thought was enough to settle his nerves slightly by reminding what they were here for, why it was important, why they could all work together just this once.

Snoke had to die. That was the one thing they all could agree on.

Finally, he calmed his mind enough to push his senses outward through the Force, to see whose presence he could detect. Even this close in, he still couldn't pick up Skywalker, but he could sort out Rey and General Organa from the background energy of the planet. He turned to Kylo. "...Your mom's still here. Do you want me to ask her to leave?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

At least it got a little smile out of Jacob when Kylo mentioned he'd spent more than enough time in the water. "Understood, sir." And, truth be told, Jacob felt exactly the same way about it at this point. After yesterday, he wasn't sure when he'd feel like getting back in the tank, either, and he'd designed the damn thing. Even the normal modes didn't sound appealing right now.

It took a few moments for Jacob to get himself to actually eat instead of just pushing food around his plate. "The Force is with us, and when Snoke's dead, you'll finally have everything you want. Everything you deserve." They had to keep that foremost in mind, along with the fact that, alive, Snoke had nothing to offer them; it was the only way to be sure that he wouldn't ensnare them with his lies again, even if only for a crucial few seconds.

It was distressingly obvious how troubled Jacob was when he had eaten less than the man with hardly any appetite these days. Kylo sighed softly, reaching out across the galley table to rest a hand over his apprentice's.

"And you must believe that. Keep it in your mind... never let it waver." he insisted. His voice was soft, but passionate. "You're stronger than Snoke. And there are very important people depending on both of us to be stronger than Snoke. Jacob... You don't want what he wants. You never did. If you let doubt in... You let Snoke in..."

"...I'm just tired, that's all." Tired of hurting, tired of feeling like he wasn't in control, and tired of having to work around problems instead of resolving them once and for all. Most of that would be at an end, soon, but in the meantime... the fact that his family needed him was the only reason he was keeping it together. Despite how deep his connection to the dark side ran, there were some kinds of pain even he found it impossible to draw strength from.

"Don't worry. I'm not going to forget that Snoke has nothing we want or need." It wasn't that no part of him wanted the same things Snoke did, however; rather, it was that he finally knew Snoke's limitations. Snoke would never understand the Force well enough to achieve his aims - he just wasn't made that way - and his wisdom was all a sham, the same carefully crafted artifice as the wisdom of all Jedi. The reality was that he was foolish and faithless and would only ever succeed in leading others to ruin. It was impossible for Snoke to have power over either of them as long as he kept that in mind.

“...so am I.” He admitted softly, stroking the back of Jacob's hand with his thumb. With the way his body was betraying him, it was nothing short of the truth. “Meditate with me for a moment... Close your eyes. Just breathe.”

He closed his eyes, focusing on the energy around them as well as the Force wound inside of him. It hummed with power, and he felt an ache deep within his chest. Any mental barriers between master and apprentice dropped.

“Draw on my pain. Draw on my power as though it were your own. Take it. Use it...” Kylo whispered methodically. He could feel the Force guiding his thoughts and his voice. “Soon, it will be time to open the floodgates. Soon, Ahch-to itself will sustain us and the Force will flow through us both and you must wield it. So take some now... Take it with you. Let it fuel you...”

Jacob sighed softly. "Honestly, sometimes I don't know what I'd do without you." He closed his eyes and forced his mind to quiet, opening himself up fully to Kylo, and to the Force.

For a moment, the vibrancy he could feel to the Force here, the sheer number of layers to it he could perceive through his master's senses, was almost overwhelming; only gradually did he begin to understand that each of those layers was familiar to him, but that he hadn't been able to sense their full context before now. And while he could also sense the pain and decay that belonged to Kylo alone underpinning all of them, it wasn't all-consuming; it didn't interfere with the fact that he was seeing the Force now in a way that Snoke never would.

He welcomed Kylo's pain into himself, taking as much of it as he could from his master without distracting or impairing either of them, and let it restore his concentration, his connection to the dark side, his sense of mastery over his own human weaknesses. The confidence it brought with it was somewhat brittle, but it'd see Jacob through what he needed to accomplish today, at least. "...Thank you," he breathed. Finally, his mismatched eyes snapped open again, and this time, what lay ahead of him seemed manageable enough.

When Jacob opened his eyes, Kylo pulled back just slightly. He could sense his apprentice's renewed focus as well as his own. When the battle did come, Kylo knew his strength in the Force would need to sustain them. This kind of meditation was merely a variation of that. It was an exercise that benefited them both.

"I am not the sort of master who will fail their apprentice."

An obvious jab at Skywalker would not go unnoticed.

"Nor are you the sort of apprentice who will fail in their duties... We will reconvene when you are finished. Until then... it will be all right."

The rest of their breakfast was spent in relative quiet. Once Jacob left, Kylo meditated for a little while longer, gathering his strength for a bit of exercise before he inevitably felt too tired to manage it.

((I survived the week, and spending 12 hours doing inventory yesterday! x_x))

No, Kylo most certainly would not fail him - nor would Jacob let Kylo down, because they were more than just master and apprentice: they were a team, one whose strengths complemented each other's, and who could accomplish far more together than they ever could apart. Jacob still wasn't used to allowing himself moments of vulnerability, despite everything they had been through - real ones, as opposed to the almost tactical way he'd revealed his true emotions in front of Rey - but at least, when he was with his master, vulnerability did not have to equal weakness. Even now, that was a realization he was still coming to terms with.

"I'll be back the moment I sense that you need me, so try not to push yourself too hard." He gave Kylo's hand a gentle squeeze. "Don't forget that I love you." Once he could stand to let go of Kylo's hand, he cleared their dishes and stuck them in the cleaner, before heading to the ship's boarding ramp to bundle up against the rain.

The Millennium Falcon was still parked down on the beach, and Chewbacca was with it - but Leia, Luke, and Rey were all inside Organa's ship, which was a little over a hundred horizontal meters and roughly three dozen vertical ones above Jacob's. That was where he was headed now; he wasn't going to be distracted today from following up with Leia about the ancient Jedi texts she had taken to study.

[congrats. My busy season at work is winding down as well. What a relief!]

Kylo did his best to reassure Jacob that he would be all right. The less he needed to be involved in direct confrontations with his family, even for discussing relatively neutral subjects, the better.

Instead, his morning was spent with simple workouts. He worked on some resistance exercises to strengthen his atrophied muscles - first with his lightsaber as a weight, and then with actual measured weight. It was difficult work and he couldn't do many repetitions without resting in between, but it was progress.

When he was finished, he slowly climbed the stairs back to the cabin. His legs shook a little from fatigue, but he made it back to the cabin without too much struggle. The rest of the morning was spent in meditation, although he nodded off a couple of times.

((This week was horrible x_x but at least next week is a half week, so I can rest and recover and get my tagging mojo back.))

Despite the hydrophobic coating on his boots and cloak, Jacob was still fairly soaked by the time he made it to Leia's ship. At least she had left the boarding ramp open for him, and he stripped out of as many layers as he could without looking too informal before making his way inside. As he came around the corner of the passageway, he found himself facing a small common area, in which Rey was seated in a corner, studying one of the ancient texts and trying not to let his presence distract her too much, and Luke and Leia were seated at a small table. At the sound of Jacob's approach, Luke glanced up briefly, but his gaze scurried away quickly from the Knight. Leia, on the other hand, met his eyes evenly. "Good morning, Icarus."

"Good morning, General. Good morning, Rey." Rey looked up just long enough to give him a little wave, before turning her attention back to the text. The message was clear: she'd found something she thought was important, and was busy trying to get her head around it. "...Luke." Skywalker made some kind of sound of acknowledgement, and Jacob turned his attention back to Leia. "Does this ship have an observation platform, or somewhere we might talk without being too disruptive?"

"This way." The upper level of the ship did indeed have a sizeable observation deck, though it wasn't possible to observe much through the rain streaming over the transparisteel canopy. Still, Jacob stared out at the rain for a moment, gathering his thoughts, while Leia observed him.

He sighed softly, turning back toward her. "...Kylo and I still don't have a method we feel confident about for cutting off Snoke's access to the Force. Not without unacceptable odds of collateral damage. Originally, we were hopeful that Luke could help with that, but..." But Luke was too broken and still too afraid to be of any use to them directly. The best thing he could do, since it didn't seem like he was in any hurry to pull himself together, would be to stay out of their way. "By any chance, have you come across anything that we could use?"

"It's not quite what you're looking for, but I have found a technique for pushing back the Force, and creating a Force-neutral bubble - the text calls it the ysalamir technique. It might be something you find useful as a last resort."

"...That might be useful defensively, in a pinch, since it would neutralize Snoke's attacks in the Force - but it would also prevent us from attacking him." At least it was a way they could defend the children, if Snoke decided to try to use them as leverage.

"I wasn't thinking of using it on Snoke."

Jacob caught her meaning immediately. "No. I'm not using it on the kids. I've felt what it's like to be separated from the Force, and it was a relief for me, but it would be traumatic as hell for them. I'm not going to do something like that to them, especially not after all the horrible things Snoke has probably told them about us. I don't want to make it any harder to earn their trust... so I would never use a technique like that to cut him off from them. Not... not unless it's the only way to save their lives."

She waited for a moment after he'd finished talking his way around it. "...I wish I could tell you it gets easier, but it doesn't. Even being a lousy excuse for a parent was still difficult as hell."

"I don't want to hear it from you." Jacob sighed heavily. "...Anyway, when will you have mastered this technique well enough to teach it to me?"

"If not by tomorrow, then the day after. In the meantime..." As if on cue, the ship's comms began chiming. "...You have a slicer to assist."

At least there were much tidier solutions to that part of the plan than there were to what they were trying to accomplish through the Force. The rain had at least slackened a bit as Jacob made his way over to the slicer's ship, and he wasn't completely soaked this time - which was a small mercy. As he stepped inside, he suddenly felt very underdressed, and very, very out of place.

Immediately, his first instinct was to speak to Kylo and Rey: Guys, this ship is kriffing amazing. I didn't know they even made personal yachts this swanky. If you come over and check it out, I will totally make an excuse for you to sit around and eat this guy's caviar and drink his champagne.

Jacob will have to forgive Kylo’s reaction. He was in that asleep-yet-not-fully-asleep state where such an unusual line of thoughts was completely mistaken for an impending dream. It simply wasn’t in line with reality.

Rey on the other hand, heard him loud and clear.

“I don’t know if this is entirely the time to..” she answered the voice as though Jacob were standing right behind her. Stunned for a moment when she realized he wasn’t, she found herself looking at Luke Skywalker instead. Rey recovered quickly, though. “The time to... get some fresh air. It’s still raining, isn’t it? I could probably use some anyway.”

She didn’t know what caviar and champagne were, but she was curious enough to put a ribbon in the tome and find out. (You can take a starving scavenger off Jakku...)

Skywalker waited until Rey had left the ship completely before he went to inspect the passage she was reading. He mulled it over curiously in his mind. Force healing.

((happy Thanksgiving :D))

Jacob's reaction likely would have been the same, had it been Kylo telling him how damn fancy their new co-conspirator's ship was - but then, now that he thought about it, Kylo probably wouldn't have even noticed. After all, he'd spent much of his youth on the upper levels of Coruscant, the planet that defined "fancy" for the rest of the galaxy; Jacob had grown up in the Outer Rim, and while he'd never had it anywhere near as tough as Rey, he'd still definitely been poor as hell by a lot of the galaxy's standards. He and his mother had always had to scrape for the living they'd made, and Jacob had left home when he was just fifteen standard years old, to make things easier on her. When Kylo had acquired him, he'd been working mostly as a ground mechanic, and occasionally as a shipboard one, in the Western Reaches - and although he was a certified technician for some of the shipwrights with higher-end spacecraft lines, no one ever brought anything nice that far out there. Not without an ulterior motive, anyway, and those kinds of people didn't stop for maintenance at public spaceports.

Still, it wasn't like he'd never caught a glimpse of true luxury - he'd seen his share of holos, after all, and pulled off assassinations for the First Order in places that should have been able to afford security good enough to give even him pause. However, he'd never encountered it on this compact a scale. Every line of the craft's interior was elegant, every fitting and finishing and every material utilized positively reeked of understated opulence, and there was an entirely unreasonable amount of transparisteel beneath what he realized now was retractable armor plating whose lines hadn't even been visible from the outside of the craft. Even the protocol droid that escorted him in was a model he'd never seen before, one that was all sleek, raygun-gothic lines.

At least his host wasn't long in joining him, and Jacob began to feel more at ease for having the chance to talk to him. Were it anyone else, Jacob might have been a little unsettled for how much he already knew about the operating systems and software used by the First Order's fleet; however, Jacob knew his type. Everything he knew about the First Order's systems fell into the realm of pure academia for him, and only a truly remarkable confluence of circumstances would drive him into actually putting it to use. This certainly qualified - though Jacob had to wonder exactly what he'd been told to get him onboard with this.

When Rey joined them, her reaction was even more entertaining than Jacob's had been; she seemed more or less unable to even process her surroundings. At least her jaw wasn't hanging open, and she did manage to focus when Jacob introduced her to the slicer. "This Rey, is the closest we have right now to a specialist in the hardware and firmware used in the Resurgent-class ISD lineage. There are a number of things I'll want to get her take on as we go along." He turned back to her. "Rey, this is the master codebreaker that Maz Kanata referred to us."

Their new compatriot was a human male, middle-aged, with a pencil moustache, and impeccably dressed - and evidently, bred of true gentility, as he didn't even spare a glance to Rey's shabby clothing before he extended his hand to her. "Charmed, I'm sure."

[Right back at you. :) ]

Rey pulled herself together quickly enough. After only a brief moment of hesitation, she shook his hand. “Any friend of Maz is a friend of mine. How can I help?”

Truth be told, she felt pretty intimidated by all this. It was odd, she found herself thinking, as the hidden temple they practiced in the day before was far grander, albeit in a different sense of the word.

((I need to figure out a better way to deal with commuting almost an hour and a half each way and then being at the office for 9 hours because I've written exactly 1 tag this week))

"Just in case General Organa hasn't told you," Jacob began, to Rey, "I only have so much faith in how well hidden we are here. It wouldn't even take the Finalizer to wipe us out, though Snoke might send it anyway once its reconfiguration is complete, just to be thorough. All it'd take is a turbolaser bombardment from a Star Destroyer in orbit to scour this island from the face of the planet, and those weapons batteries can be operated manually even if the ship's main computer is down. So... not only do we need to force a reset of the main computer, to blind and cripple the ship long enough for us to board it - in case there's something we need to retrieve--" because he sure as hell wasn't mentioning the children directly in front of an outsider, when he'd taken an effort to make sure even Luke didn't know-- "or something we need to destroy, but we also have to find a way to deny use of the turbolasers for at least long enough to evacuate the island. Ideally we'd want to render them unusable until we take control of the ship, because the crews might have orders to destroy the island anyway to keep us from plumbing the full depths of its secrets."

The slicer put in, "The first part will be fairly simple. Icarus Ren has confirmed that the Star Destroyers' main computer still has the same type of hard-coded backdoor that existed in the days of the Empire, created so it would be impossible for the Emperor or his closest servants to be locked out of any of their own ships. It's only a matter of writing a burst transmission that will exploit that backdoor to trigger a reset."

Jacob continued, "While that kind of work is a little outside my skillset, it's simple for him. However, dealing with the turbolasers is going to be more difficult, because of the tactical element to it - there are a few different ways to go about it, each of which has its own drawbacks and difficulties, and each of which buys us a different amount of time. I was thinking you could help us work through a few different options." He handed over a datacard to the slicer, who inserted it into the drive for a hidden holodisplay, and brought up a set of schematics for the Resurgent-class of Star Destroyers.

Meanwhile, as they talked, another droid brought refreshments - and though it wasn't quite caviar, it was still far beyond the quality of anything Rey had seen before.

As Jacob explained his concerns to the master codebreaker, Rey was suddenly hit with the implications of their practice the day before. Their unexpected attack may have crippled the worst of their weapons arrays (worst in more ways than just one, Rey shuddered at the thought of using children as literal weapons). However, it didn't disable their ship entirely. That kind of setback only infuriates the enemy and to someone as powerful as Snoke, they'd easily divulged their location. And that was assuming he hadn't already tracked them to Ahch-To.

Such thoughts might have consumed her mind completely had the serving droid not bumped her leg.

"Oh! Thank you..." she took a piece of the unknown delicacy it was offering. Even though she missed part of the conversation, the schematics were useful in catching herself back up to speed.

"Is this something you can set off at any time?" she asked between bites. "Not just if they enter the sector, but when we make our move? It wouldn't hurt to have a distraction to keep the rest of the First Order occupied while dealing with Snoke."

Of course, they could only be so lucky that Snoke would actually be on a ship at that exact moment, right?

The master codebreaker answered, "Unfortunately, this is something which will only work on a ship in-system. Long-range communications are subject to stricter filtering which would block this type of attack, and it also relies on a vulnerability in the main computer that is fairly straightforward to patch once it's identified. In other words, we're likely to only get one shot with this type of attack, and it will need to be up close and personal."

"Besides, nothing about it will fool Snoke, or even one of the other Knights, and they're the only ones who will be able to interfere with us from anywhere outside this system, once we move against Snoke," Jacob added. "This is only going to be useful for buying time against an immediate physical threat."

One that he hoped would never materialize, because there was only so much time slicing the ship could buy them - and if they had to break off their attack against Snoke to deal with a Star Destroyer, then it was all over. Their chance at a clean, surgical strike to remove the metaphorical cancer in the Force was gone, and rooting him out would become a war of attrition, with Kylo and Jacob's and possibly even Rey's children caught in the middle.

Focusing on what was outside of his control was counterproductive, however, and ultimately the discussion found its way back to the failover systems used in the turbolaser array controls; rerouting control of the weapons to different parts of the ship was handled by a system outside the main computer, but it was one that was much older and easier to exploit if one could find a way into it. That would be the big challenge; once they were in, though, the master codebreaker was confident he could stall them just long enough with a program that would dump control of the array to a different, random terminal every few seconds - just fast enough to keep them from figuring out in a timely manner how to terminate the loop - before transferring it to an obsolete system location where it wouldn't be easily retrieved, once they figured out how to end the program.

Rey visibly sighed. "I understand its purpose. I was just... hoping that it could be more offensively and less of a last resort."

Unfortunately, they didn't have a team of rebels willing to infiltrate a base and blow up each and everyone. And even if they did, it was unlikely any of them would take kindly to rescuing the supposed offspring of Kylo Ren. Her own friends would probably call her a traitor right now if they had any idea who she was actually training with on Ahch-To.

The droid beeped in artificial empathy, offering more snacks. Rey, never to turn down food, accepted.

"How long will it disable them?"

"A full reset of the main computer takes forty-five minutes, and once it's back online, it will be able to kill the redirect loop for the turbolasers pretty quickly, so maybe another five to ten minutes beyond that before the ship has weapons back. If we can board it in that time frame, though, Lord Kylo Ren and I can take control of the minds of key crewmembers to put a stop to any planned attacks." Jacob's expression was grim as he continued, "The psychological conditioning First Order soldiers receive has a back door, too."

It was nothing close to the level of control that came from the array of preset commands on the compliance chips the old Republic had inserted into its clone troopers, and to which the First Order had no equivalent - though, Jacob suspected, his own experiments and research would be incorporated into attempts to rectify that. However, just as the backdoor to the Star Destroyers' main computers kept the Supreme Leader and his chosen few from being locked out of their own warships, the conditioning that all of the First Order's troops received likewise kept the Supreme Leader and the Knights from being locked out of the hearts and minds of their own army. Jacob figured such a thing wouldn't come as a surprise to Rey; after all, from what he had come to understand of Starkiller Base's final hours, she had managed to escape by inadvertently tapping into it.

"If everything goes wrong on our end, and we're still in the middle of trying to kill Snoke when a Star Destroyer arrives, then it's going to be on Luke and Leia and Chewbacca to take out the long-range turbolaser emplacements while the regular laser and ion cannon arrays are shooting at them - though, without anything but the most basic targeting systems, so maybe it will be a fair contest." Jacob sighed softly. "I just hope Snoke is still arrogant enough to send only one Star Destroyer, if that's how it works out."

Rey nodded. She thought briefly about her confinement on Starkiller Base, but her mind quickly drifted to the x-wing she saw submerged in the bay shortly after she arrived. It was Luke’s ship, she knew without a doubt. Whether it was operational after all this time, or whether he would even fly it if it were, were difficult questions.

“Leia and Chewie would fight.” She reasoned. While she hoped that there would be at least something here Skywalker would find worth saving, his attitudes toward them and toward the Jedi order at large didn’t leave her feeling hopeful.

“But if we are battling Snoke, that doesn’t leave us - or them-” because if that were the case, Leia and Chewie would be the boarding party, “much time to get in and get out with your...”

Her voice faded. The master codebreaker rose an eyebrow, but Rey didn’t give him the beneift of an answer. It wasn’t her place to say it, nor did she trust the man enough not to double-cross them given appropriate leverage.

“With what’s important to you.” She finished.

Would it be enough? They had to hope it would be. They also had to hope Snoke was truly as arrogant a man as Jacob described him to be and nowhere near as wise as Kylo once did.

“When we are finished here, I have something I’d like to show you as well. Some passsges in the ancient texts that you might be able to use better than I can.”

Jacob hadn't even been thinking about the X-Wing; he'd seen it too, and noticed that Luke had left the canopy open to make sure that seawater destroyed it completely. The X-Wing was gone, so he'd figured Luke would be the Falcon's gunner. The idea had briefly crossed his mind about letting one of them take his ship, since Force knew they could do with the firepower, but he had dismissed it quickly; it'd leave him and Kylo and Rey waiting square in the Star Destroyer's target zone for a pickup, and just as importantly, his ship contained irreplaceable data and experiments, and he couldn't trust them to anyone else.

Maybe it'd be possible to psychologically cripple the Star Destroyer's crew from the ground; from the temple, maybe Jacob could at least manage that much of a projection on his own, without tapping into his master's power again at a moment when Kylo would be fighting for his life. After all, Jacob was an expert at using the Force to accomplish the most damage possible with the least expenditure of power - and perhaps the passages Rey meant to share with him would play to that strength. "I'd appreciate anything you think would help."

"The operating system on a Star Destroyer is simple enough to be relatively resistant to corruption," the master codebreaker put in, "but there are ways to do it. And forcing them to roll it back will buy you an extra fifteen to twenty minutes - not much time, but perhaps enough to make a difference."

Jacob sighed softly. "And keep in mind, we're talking about how this will play out in the absolute worst-case scenario. If Snoke attacks us here before we're ready to go after him, or if the attacking force arrives after he's already dead, the situation becomes much simpler, even if he sends the rest of the Knights of Ren along with it. There are only so many Star Destroyers he can commit to the attack, due to the status of the war, and once we seize control of one, we can use it to disable or destroy any others. And even if the other Knights are there, I can take control of the crew's minds away from them - some of them might be more powerful than I am, but none can match me for subtlety. That's why I'm Lord Kylo Ren's right hand, and they aren't." And perhaps, once the other Knights found out what the score really was, at least one or two of them would come back over to Kylo's side.

Edited 2018-12-17 04:11 (UTC)

For now, this contingency plan was in the master codebreaker’s hands. They’d done their best to prepare for the inevitable retaliation for the previous day’s engagement.

Were Kylo here instead of Rey, he wouldn’t have been as optimistic about engaging his fellow knights. Fierce and ruthless competition between them was encouraged by the Supreme Leader. For him, it was still very much a toss up whether his current condition would be seen as horrific evidence of Snoke’s treachery or a chance to win the continued favor of their leader. Some, he knew, already had their doubts. They had already been made an example of.

Rey was cautious, but for her own reasons. Jacob, she trusted. Kylo Ren, even if she never thought it possible, she trusted as well. But more of their bretheren, in greater numbers and stronger abilities? It was a fight she didn’t know if she was ready to win.

“Is there anything else we need to consider while we’re all together?” She asked after a thoughtful pause. For as much as Jacob prided hmself in his subtlety, other Knights of Ren could also be tasked with a more discreet assassination. Cast a net to ensnare a Star Destroyer and a tiny one-man craft sneaks through. And heaven forbid there be something even more menacing than a Star Destroyer out there.

After everything Jacob had faced already, and everything he was about to go up against, maybe he was a little less afraid of his fellow Knights than he ought to be - especially of the idea of them hopped up on midichlorian respiration serum, which they no doubt would be, if they'd been sent by Snoke as opposed to reading the situation and taking the initiative on their own - or maybe he was just a little too used to the idea of having his master's power to draw on. Regardless, though, his perspective had always been that a mind was just a mind: no matter how much power was behind it, if he could get into it, he could break it, as he and Kylo had proven against Thuban. He had faith in their ability to do the same thing against the other Knights; he had to, because there might be no other option. And while it'd be nice to win them over, if at all possible, Jacob wouldn't hesitate even the slightest to destroy anyone who was a danger to his children and his master.

He glanced back over at the master codebreaker. "Do you want me to stay and help if I can with writing the program, or will you work better without me hovering?"

The master codebreaker waved dismissively. "Either is absolutely fine with me. But it sounded like you had something important you needed to attend to in the meantime?"

"A few things, actually, but I'll check back in with you afterward." Once they all got to their feet, Jacob shook their host's hand again. "I can't tell you how much I appreciate your willingness to help us with this."

"I think I've got some idea of how important this is."

After the master codebreaker had shown them out, Jacob checked the time, and informed Rey, "I've got about an hour before I need to check back in on Kylo, to make sure he gets lunch and that he's not pushing himself too hard. What was it you wanted to show me?"

Rey was an odd mix of excited and reserved when she whispered, "I found passages in the ancient texts about Force healing. You can actually heal with the Force - mend wounds, detoxify poisons, even cure disease!"

To Rey, this was completely new information. And given that Kylo Ren was in the state he was in, she assumed this had to be completely new information to the Knights of Ren as well. Or else, Jacob would have done such techniques already.

"There was an entire page on healing trances... A few more on drawing on the energy of others, willingly given of course, to heal a fellow Je'daii that suffered near-fatal wounds. He survived. He was good as new in a matter of hours."

Rey's mind drifted to the Force wound. During their practices, Kylo insisted more than once that they use his Force energy to sustain one technique or another. Surely, this would be no different.

"We need to try... Well, find something to practice on first, of course..." she continued as she led him back to the hut where she'd been reading. "Imagine what we could do if we were facing Snoke at our full strength!"

Little did Rey know that things were not going to be that easy.

Nor would she find the ancient tome where she left it.

"I was hoping there would be information on those kinds of techniques here." For once, when Jacob smiled, the expression managed to reach his eyes. "So many methods were lost or watered down over the millennia, and the Jedi Order in its final days only had Force healing techniques that were effective against acute injuries and poisons, not against diseases, and definitely not on anything like what my master has. Not to mention that the techniques they had retained were ones requiring an especially strong and pure connection to the light side, something that Kylo and I aren't capable of on our own right now."

For the last few thousand years before their destruction, after all, the Jedi had been all about an agenda, and it was one that disallowed any space in their practices to acknowledge the dark side as anything other than a kind of lurking bogeyman, ready to snatch away even the strongest among their number, should they become incautious. And the way they had stigmatized and resisted the dark side, rather than treating it as something common, ordinary, an obstacle to be worked around at worst, had only fed its power and its lure.

"The dark side has its own healing techniques, too, but they're much more demanding, and... also don't work in a way that's effective against what Kylo has." Hopefully, though, what Rey had found would be different from either, maybe even something bridging the gap between them, and the three of them could pull it off together.

However, the moment Rey pushed open the door of the hut, Jacob felt an instinctive sense of something wrong here.

[ooc: wow, I’ve been so busy, I didn’t even notice I made a continuity mistake. Rey wasn’t in the hut, she was on Leia’s ship! So... uh, sorry! Pretend we were going back to the ship the whole time.]

From what Rey had read thus far, there wasn’t supposed to be a strict demarcation between a light side of the Force and a dark side of the Force. This entire island was about balance of the whole, of one living Force, and nothing brought a body out of balance more than injury or disease. If anything, she thought to herself as Jacob spoke, healing should require both sides. It only made sense that way.

“I was only halfway through the chapter, but I haven’t come across anything that favored one side over another...” she added eagerly as she opened the door to the common area. “Have a look for... your...”

Rey blinked.

“Where’s the text?” She looked on the table where she left it, and then immediately underneath and around the far corners of the room. “It was right here.”

Of course, the room was unocucpied now, but earlier this morning it had been quite crowded. Leia and Luke were both there. But Leia had left to introduce Jacob to the slicer, so that meant... no. Surely, he wouldn’t have...

“Luke!”

((Oh, no worries! I just figured the book she was referring to wasn't the one she left on Leia's ship. Kylo and Jacob had to leave the rest of the books in their hut the previous night, so she could've borrowed them back. That stuff's easy to handwave. Also, on an unrelated note, thanks to my office Secret Santa I now have a tiny Kylo plushie for my keychain!))

Jacob felt a cold chill run down his spine when Rey's suspicions immediately went to Skywalker. Luke had been compromised by Snoke at least once before, and though he acknowledged that what he had done to his nephew was deeply, unforgivably wrong, and seemed to regret it, he still couldn't control his fear of him. Jacob forced himself to calm down enough to extend his senses in the Force, so he could find Luke by his pulse and breathing - because he'd figured that if Luke had done something, he'd no longer be aboard the ship, and those suspicions were borne out.

"He's not here - he's down by the cliffs." As he let Rey lead the way down, he hoped that it'd turn out Leia had just borrowed it to read, and they'd turn out to be the assholes this time - but, just like Rey, he doubted it. He couldn't even begin to fathom what might be going through Luke's head, and his stomach dropped when he realized that no matter how much Skywalker might think he was doing the right thing, he didn't know all the pieces that were in play here. He didn't realize that sabotaging Kylo's recovery would only cause the galaxy's problems to multiply. "Shit," Jacob muttered.

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