Woman without a Country

Ludmilla walked calmly down the long passageway, into the Council chamber. The seats were all empty. She shook her head. Only one person she knew would be so devoted to the old ways that she would build herself a replica of the Jedi Temple, and would surround herself with beautiful women that she had no intention of touching.
The door at the other end of the chamber opened, and a tall, beautiful woman walked out. She had white hair and blue eyes, like the Echani warmaidens, but her face was that of a True Human. Her common ancestry with the Echani was in the distant past, but she obviously treasured it nonetheless. Resplendent in the traditional robes of a Jedi Archivist, Master Atris entered the room.
"And so you return. I did not expect to see you again, after the sentencing."
Ludmilla made no answer.
"I understood that you had taken the exile's path, wandering the edge of the galaxy and wallowing in self-pity and filth. But now you have returned. Why?"
"What have you done with my friends, Atris?" asked Ludmilla. She realized that the woman hadn't changed, and she never would. She was irritated to realize that she had hoped for something different.
"Your concern is touching," said Atris sharply. "Your friends have not been harmed. They are being held for their safety. I am not sure how to feel, knowing that you travel with others. I understood that you had forsaken companionship and attachments. Or perhaps, that is why you have come?"
Ludmilla looked at her in disbelief. "I'm here because someone stole my ship. Perhaps you know something about that? It's clear you still don't understand me. I did not come here looking for you, Atris, or any other Jedi."
"And yet, you are here. Perhaps you do not understand yourself as well as you think. Did you come seeking the judgment of the Council, as you did all those years ago? Are you ready now to admit that we were right to cast you out?"
Ludmilla gritted her teeth. The woman's fanaticism was her most consistent and irritating trait. "You wanted us to stand by and allow innocents to die – not one or two, not thousands – but entire worlds! Worlds died while you sat and thought about what to do!"
"And what came of your actions?" said Atris bitterly. "More war followed, Jedi falling to the Dark Side, turning on each other, and now this." She waved to the empty seats of her Council chamber. "You claimed you were doing what was right. Lies! You sought adventure, you hungered for battle then as you do now. You and Revan, tainted by your exposure to Mandalorian culture, became more Mandalorian than they had ever been, and you dragged half the Republic in your wake. You were no Jedi. You defied the Order, you ignored the Code, you fought and lived as the same monsters that you claimed to hate. And at the end, you returned a Jedi no longer. And so you were exiled."
Ludmilla snarled an answer, knowing that Atris would not understand her words.
"Can you not even speak a civilized tongue?"
"The reason that you can't understand it is because I fought to save you from having that language beaten into you, and everyone you loved. If you ever loved anyone or anything aside from the sound of your own voice."
Atris drew back as if stung. "What would you know of love? You cheapened yourself by lying with anyone who caught your fancy. You made a mockery of Jedi morals and teachings. Your open defiance of the Council – the way you drove your lightsaber into the center stone – you were a menace to all that the Council stood for, and it seems that you still are."
Atris drew her lightsaber – only it wasn't her lightsaber. It was a carefully crafted lightsaber, with a unique silver blade, the color of the quicksilver in the Temple's Room of a Thousand Fountains.
"That's my lightsaber!" said Ludmilla in shock. "How dare you!"
"I kept it," said Atris sternly, "so that I would never forget your arrogance, and your fall."
"I never fell," hissed Ludmilla. "I stand where I have always stood, between the defenseless and those who would harm them, no matter what armor - or robes - they wear."
"You dare! Your loathing for the Order permeates your every decision. I hold this blade, that you were so unworthy of, as a reminder of what befalls when a Jedi betrays the trust placed in them, when a Jedi allows their passions to dictate their actions."
Ludmilla sneered. "You know, if you wanted a custom color so badly, you could have just asked Revan to make you one."
"You wanted to be remembered, the Jedi with the silver blade. One of the heroes of song and story. One of the great Jedi who won unbeatable battles."
"I wanted there to be people left in the universe. People who didn't spend every day fighting for scraps of food while their faceless masters stride from world to world, seeking new kills for the sake of killing."
"You met aggression with more aggression! That is not the Jedi way!"
"And the Council ran from aggression and hid. And I wondered why people hate Jedi," said Ludmilla bitterly.
"You never understood," said Atris fiercely. "You never considered what effects your actions would have! Every action that we make, every choice, everything that we do sends a ripple through the Force, an echo. By standing against the Mandalorians, you gave them a target for their hate, a subject for their battle lust. All those echoes run through you, and because of that, you fell from the path. You and all the Jedi who followed you to the fields of battle."
"And you?" asked Ludmilla quietly. "What echoes did you cause, by sitting still and thinking while entire systems screamed for help? Do those echoes run through you as well? Do the screams of orphaned children ring in your ears? The voices of broken women, taking an oath rather than being handed over to the soldiers again? The battle songs of the clans claiming victory over a world that fought until it was a scorched and broken plain? What echoes do you hear, Atris?"
"Action without reflection is not the Jedi way. There was no guarantee that marching to war would have saved the Outer Rim - "
"Tell that to the Cathar. Go, tell them you were waiting for a guarantee that you would succeed before you raised a finger to save them from genocide."
Atris flushed. "Your actions caused the Jedi Civil War! You left the Republic broken and eroded the foundations of the Jedi Order!"
"I won the war against the Mandalorians. The only mistake I made was believing that the Council would be willing to do anything. If I had known your plan was to sit around thinking while the Order turned on itself, I would have made a different choice."
"Choice? What choice? You chose to leave the Order, to follow Revan, to walk in the darkness. And you chose to lead all those people with you."
"Step outside your archives for a minute, Atris. I don't know if you noticed this, but people no longer care about the difference between Jedi and Sith. Whatever you were hoping to prove from your sterile ivory towers is gone. The Council is gone. Blame me, and Revan, and Malak, all you want. But that doesn't change the fact that you failed."
"How dare you! We did not fail! Why did you ever come back here? The Mandalorian wars should have finished you! Malachor V is where you should have died!"
Ludmilla didn't stop to think about her next words. "I died long before Malachor V. I died when I walked out of the Temple to go fight - alone."
Atris turned white with rage, and shame. "Why are you here? What do you want?"
"I want my ship."
"Your ship? The one that destroyed Peragus?"
"No, my ship is the Ebon Hawk. The Harbinger destroyed Peragus."
"More lies? This is beneath you. You doomed Telos with your actions, and with it, the entire reconstruction effort."
"The Harbinger destroyed Peragus," she repeated. "It was under the control of a Sith Lord at the time."
"Sith?" Atris was genuinely shocked. "What do you mean?"
"A Sith Lord. Rotten, dead, but still moving. He was," Ludmilla laughed darkly, "hunting the Last of the Jedi. As have others, and they all think that it's me."
"They mistake you for a Jedi? Are the Sith really so blind?" Atris laughed. "What matters it? Let them face a true Jedi, and they will fall."
"And how, exactly, would they face a 'true Jedi?' You're hiding here beneath the snow, and you've wasted more time mocking me and beating a dead bantha than anything else."
"No doubt they let you go to see where you would lead them."
"And I'm sure your six pretty little girls will be a great help for you against a Sith army. Meanwhile, fuel or not, everyone in Citadel station will die because you're too proud and too stupid to ask for help."
"Ask for help? From whom? You?" Atris sneered. "If you want to help, go find the other Masters. Convince them of the Sith threat, and we will gather on Dantooine again."
"Find them? Where?"
"The path will be clear to the seeker."
"So," Ludmilla could barely hold back her rage, "instead of uniting what remained of the Jedi, all the Masters went and hid. You build this school in the safest place in the Outer Rim, and you leave it empty except for your little Echani lollipops."
"Get out, I've had enough of you. Go find the other Masters. Tell them your story, win their trust. Then, maybe, I will believe what you say."
Ludmilla turned and stormed out of the hollow mockery of a Council chamber. She had forgotten how badly Atris had hurt her, and how deep the scars ran.
The warmaiden who had led her to meet with Atris walked beside her again. "I have never seen anyone affect the Mistress so strongly. Did you mean something to each other, once?"
"No," Ludmilla answered. "Jedi – her idea of Jedi – do not form such attachments."
"Is that not the rule of your Order?"
"It was not the rule until she made it so. When I first began training as a Jedi, it was discouraged but not forbidden except in very specific cases."
"I am surprised to hear you speak so knowledgeably of the Order and its rules. Mistress Atris says that you are faithless to the Jedi, that you were blinded by your lust for war and battle."
Ludmilla looked down at the warmaiden. She was slight, like most Echani, a fragile wisp compared to Ludmilla, with slightly rounded eyes and full, generous lips – unusual traits for an Echani. "Is there anything else that your Mistress has told you about me?"
"She says that you are a slave to your baser lusts. That even in your exile, you made your way to brothels and houses of ill repute."
Ludmilla smiled. "Your Mistress is a shallow pool, and can only reflect the surface of others. She does not see the depths, and does not want to."
"Do you say that Mistress Atris lied about you?"
Ludmilla stopped, and crossed her arms as she regarded the little warmaiden. "I did work in brothels. But not the way your Mistress is thinking. All along the farthest edge of the Outer Rim, I worked, protecting girls and women who had fled from masters and had no other skills. I made sure their contracts were enforced, that they weren't abused, and did what I could to keep their exploitation to a minimum. In short, even in my exile, I couldn't stop acting like a damned Jedi – protecting the weak and upholding the law."
The warmaiden gazed at her admiringly. "I would have enjoyed fighting beside you," she said simply.
Ludmilla raised an eyebrow. "I thought Echani Handmaidens were supposed to be unflinchingly loyal to their Masters."
The warmaiden blushed. "I am the least of the Handmaidens that serve Mistress Atris. I am … easily distracted from my training."
"You don't look exactly like the others. Aren't all Echani siblings supposed to be identical?"
The warmaiden's eyes fell. "I bear the face of my mother," she confessed.
"Oh, you don't all have the same mother," Ludmilla mused. "Oh! I think I know who you are. If you're the daughter of General Yusanis, then I knew your father."
"Indeed?" said the little warmaiden, suddenly nervous.
"He was in charge of the Third Fleet, a masterful strategist. He still owes me a fight."
The little warmaiden smiled slowly. Ludmilla imagined that her life hadn't been easy. "He cannot repay you, I'm afraid. He died in battle while you were gone."
"A warrior's death, I hope."
"He was killed in a duel with the Sith Lord Revan."
Ludmilla flushed, then suddenly grinned. "That must have been a good fight."
The little warmaiden looked at her in surprise.
"What? I can't change the past. But I do know that two great blade warriors like Yusanis and Revan fighting would have been a sight to see."
The little warmaiden didn't answer, and they continued towards the holding cells. "May I ask you a question?" she asked nervously.
"Certainly."
"You have touched the Force, have you not? What does it feel like?"
Ludmilla looked at her again, and realized that she was going to make a terrible warmaiden. But she would make an excellent Jedi, if someone other than Atris trained her. "Have you ever kissed someone you love?"
The warmaiden blushed furiously.
"Then you already know." Ludmilla walked down the next hall, and saw a sparring room where the other five Handmaidens were practicing. One of them threw a scornful glance at their younger half-sister. Ludmilla mentally flipped a coin, then entered the room. "You are all Atris has to protect her? The six of you?"
"We serve her, Mandalorian. We are more than enough." She was cold and proud, the perfect Echani and the perfect complement for Atris.
"Did she tell you to call me that?"
"She told us many things about you."
"Have you ever even seen a Mandalorian? Have you ever fought one?"
"We know how to fight. What we fight isn't important."
"You're an idiot, and a child. Fine, you want to know what it's like to fight a Mandalorian?" Ludmilla pulled off her armor and tossed it aside. "Let's go, little lollipop. On the mat."
The warmaiden seemed surprised by her challenge, but was too proud to even consider refusing. "You know Echani ways."
"Mandalorians always know their enemies. They take what makes them stronger, they discard what makes them weak." Ludmilla waited until the warmaiden was ready. "What rules do you want, child?"
"No weapons, no Force powers. Let this be a true test."
Ludmilla was perfectly capable of fighting with grace and speed. She could have struck the warmaiden's critical points, crippling her for the bout. But they needed to learn what it felt like to be beaten by a Mandalorian. "Chaste and clean, Echani queen." She delivered a brutal blow to the warmaiden's stomach. "Arm in a sling, Echani king." The warmaiden scrambled back to her feet, fast and light. She threw a barehand blow that would have dislocated Ludmilla's shoulder, if it had landed. Instead, Ludmilla grabbed her arm, and threw her over her head to the floor. "Blood on the floor, Echani whore." The warmaiden got to her feet again, but wasn't able to block the savage punch that Ludmilla threw at her face, and she fell to the mat, stunned and still. Ludmilla shook out her hand, stretched. "A good warm-up. Who's next?"
Two of the warmaidens pulled the fallen one from the mat, and the next warmaiden stepped up to the mat. Ludmilla stretched and flexed, casually waiting for the warmaiden to start fighting.
"Are you ready?" asked the warmaiden in confusion.
"I'm on the mat, aren't I?" The warmaiden sprang forward, hoping to catch her off-guard. Ludmilla blocked her blow as if it had been thrown by a kitten. She crossed her arms and waited for the warmaiden to try again. Fast as she was, Ludmilla stepped out of the way with humiliating ease. The warmaiden retreated a few steps, trying to figure out what to do next. Ludmilla sighed. "Attack. You're not out here to play. You're out here to learn a lesson."
The warmaiden bounced forward, and threw a lightning fast punch. Ludmilla didn't bother to dodge this one. The blow would have landed solidly, but she turned her head to roll with the blow. "Time to learn why the Echani fighting style depends on speed." She grabbed the warmaiden's shoulders before she could retreat out of range, and pulled the Echani's body down to meet her rising knee. The warmaiden made the characteristic sound of someone having all the wind knocked out of them, and Ludmilla delivered two more punishing blows, one to the body and one to her head. The warmaiden fell to the mat. "Because you lack strength."
They pulled the second warmaiden from the mat, and Ludmilla looked around the room. "Where is your little sister?"
"She should be training. Her presence weakens us."
Ludmilla shrugged. "Your grasp of tactics is amazingly poor." She beckoned to the remaining three. "All of you at once," she commanded. "Wow, that sounds like something Atris would say."
The warmaiden frowned. "You will not speak disrespectfully of our Mistress."
"Come and stop me, child of an Oathbreaker." They hadn't been taught the most valuable skill of the Mandalorians. Echani fight duels, respectful and lawful. Mandalorians choose their battles, and know how to goad an enemy into attacking without thinking. Mandalorians fight to win. The three warmaidens charged her, working together flawlessly. They were expecting her to continue her fierce, brutal style. They knew nothing of Mandalorians. "Echani maids, Echani braves," she sang as she dodged with the speed that had shocked Yusanis the first time they had sparred. Ludmilla broke out of their circle, and engaged the one who had answered her, the apex of their triangle. "Echani sluts, Echani slaves." She blocked her, then dropped her quickly with a stunning kick to the midsection. She was down, but not out. While their leader was out, she went after the youngest and weakest warmaiden. Echani tradition teaches that children should learn according to their age, and they will deliberately hold back a prodigy rather than shame an elder. "Golden blades and silver hair, shattered shields and sundered pair." A sweeping kick dropped the youngest warmaiden, and she followed her to the mat with a blow to the throat that left her out cold. "'Faith and blood,' Echani swear, rags and sores Echani wear!" The first one had gotten up again, and the two remaining warmaidens were attacking her together. Ludmilla blocked their attacks, watching and waiting for her chance while she sang. "Woe to those who falter in Mandalore's sight! Woe to those conquered by Mandalore's might!" They had moved close together, and she pounced, lifting them both in her arms, and she slammed their heads together before setting them down again. It was enough, and the warmaidens staggered, then sank together to the mat.
She pulled her armor back on, and walked over to the eldest, shook her awake. "You want to protect your Mistress? Learn to win battles." She dropped the half-stunned warmaiden back to the bench where she had been trying to recover. "And remember that your weakness can also be your strength when used properly." She walked past the youngest warmaiden without acknowledging her and went to go find her companions.
She saw the holding cells and rushed forward. "Atton!" She turned off the force cages, and cradled him in her arms.
"He is unharmed," Kreia said calmly. "But it is true, he would be better tended in a medical bay than the floor of a force cage. He is still suffering the ill effects of our last crash."
Atton stirred slightly, but made no move to get up when he realized that he was in Ludmilla's arms. "Mmm… I'd know those breasts anywhere."
"Did you find what you were looking for, child?"
Ludmilla looked down at the man in her arms. "Yes."
"Then we should leave this place before your clothes fall off again." Kreia looked around. "This place disturbs me. A Jedi Temple with no Jedi. An academy with no students. It is like walking the halls of the dead."
Ludmilla looked up. "There is a Jedi here. Atris, one of the Council."
"Yes, I sense a Jedi here. But no students, and this Atris surrounds herself with those who are blind to the Force."
Ludmilla helped Atton to his feet. "How did you know that her Handmaidens are Force-blind?" She looked curiously at Kreia, while Atton recovered their weapons from a nearby locker. "Were you reading their minds?"
"Invade the mind of another?" said Kreia. "Such a thing should not be done carelessly, or when there is nothing to be gained. Such disciplines as this woman teaches her Handmaidens would blind even a Force-sensitive person. It is dangerous to practice, and adds little security. One Jedi would take down all of her little white dolls like so many kittens."
Ludmilla shook her head. She should have known better than to ask Kreia a direct question. "Let's get Bao-Dur and get out of here."