Lightsabers

3

Daybreak found Tenel Ka atop the Great Temple limbering up in preparation for her new exercise routine. After tying back her wavy red-gold hair with a few simple braids, she stretched each muscle slowly, deliberately, efficiently. Her lizard-skin bodysuit was even more abbreviated than her usual reptilian armor, so as not to restrict her movement. The sparkling blue scales rippled with every flexing of her muscles.

Standing barefoot on the ancient weathered stone of the temple, Tenel Ka reached toward the sky, stretching first with one arm, then the other. She felt her body begin to loosen up, as the jungle around her blossomed with the scents and sounds of the dawning day. A light breeze stirred the leaves, and Tenel Ka took in deep breaths, letting her mind, focus on what she needed to do. She would make her new routine as rigorous as the calisthenics’ Master Skywalker himself performed each morning.

She had been surprised by her reaction to the Jedi teacher’s instruction for them to build their own lightsabers. Despite her fierce pride at knowing she would soon begin earnest training for real battles, Tenel Ka had resented the implication that she would somehow be judged on the basis of the weapon with which she would fight.

Earlier, she had scaled the Great Temple using nothing more than her grappling hook, her fibercord, and her own muscles. Wasn’t the warrior who wielded the weapon much more important than the weapon itself? she asked herself. Even holding a simple stick instead of a dazzling lightsaber, Tenel Ka was capable of defeating an enemy.

When she felt truly limbered up, Tenel Ka hefted the meter-long wooden staff she had carried to the top of the temple. For half an hour she practiced throwing the stick into the air and catching it, alternating between her left hand and her right, first with eyes open, then closed. Next, she practiced twirling the wooden rod over her head and jumping over it as she swung it beneath her feet.

Perspiration glistened on Tenel Ka’s neck and forehead, and was trickling down her spine by the time she moved on to the next challenge. Finally, once Tenel Ka was satisfied that her reflexes were as Finely tuned as she could wish, she grasped one end of the staff with both hands as if it were a lightsaber and began sword drills.

After an hour of that, Tenel Ka was ready for more exacting physical activity. Taking a deep breath, she sprinted down the steep outer stairs of the pyramid to ground level and began her ten-kilometer run for the day.

The breeze felt cool against her face as she ran. Glancing down at herself, she assessed her lean muscular arms and long sturdy legs, reveling in the unrestricted motion and complete control. She sped up, pleased to note that her muscles were more than equal to the demands she made on them.

Yes, she decided, the warrior was what mattered, not the weapon.

After her fifth day of intensive drilling to hone her skills as sharp as any weapon, Tenel Ka felt ready to begin fashioning the handle of her personal lightsaber. Still glowing with perspiration from her morning workout, she decided to swim in the warm jungle river while she considered her next task.

She thought of the many materials available for her lightsaber handle, as she stripped off her exercise suit and dove with easy confidence into the swift current. Tenel Ka was a strong swimmer, trained on both Hapes and Dathomir, at the insistence of both grandmothers. It was one of the few times she could remember that her parents’ mothers had ever agreed on anything.

Augwynne Djo, mother of Teneniel Djo, Tenel Ka’s mother, had taught her to swim, saying that the strongest hunters and warriors were those who could not be stopped by a mere lake or river. Ta’a Chume, on the other hand, matriarch of the Royal House of Hapes and mother of Tenel Ka’s father, Prince Isolder, had taught swimming as a defense against assassins or kidnappers. In fact, her grandmother had once escaped an attempt on her life by jumping from a wavespeeder into a lake and swimming for shore underwater, so that the would-be assassins assumed she had drowned.

Tenel Ka surfaced from the river, drew a deep lungful of air, and struck out upstream against the current. It was difficult swimming, but she used the added strength she had gained in her recent lightsaber training … which brought her back to the task at hand.

She supposed she could fashion her lightsaber handle from a piece of metal pipe, or even carve one from hardwood, since a lightsaber gave off little heat. But somehow those did not seem right for her.

Tenel Ka propelled herself forward with long smooth strokes, keeping a steady rhythm. Left. Right. Left. Right.

Stone would be too difficult to shape, and too heavy for her purposes. Tenel Ka needed something that would suit the image of a warrior from Dathomir. She pictured Augwynne Djo’s proud form clad in reptile skin, a ceremonial helm on her head, riding a domesticated rancor. The taming of these ferocious beasts was an appropriate symbol of the courage of her rugged people, since the huge beasts were powerful and their sharp claws deadly.

Tenel Ka allowed herself to sink below the surface of the river and changed to a new stroke, recalling that she had kept two teeth from her grandmother’s favorite rancor when it had died a few years ago. They were not the rancor’s largest teeth by far, but each was the perfect size and shape to be a lightsaber handle….

A week later, Tenel Ka studied her handiwork with justifiable pride and etched another deep groove into the pattern she had carved on her rancor tooth.

Lowie, sitting ahead of her in the tiny cockpit of the T-23 skyhopper, turned and roared a question at her. She waited for a moment for Em Teedee’s translation. “Master Lowbacca wishes to inquire whether you have any preference as to the volcano in which you hope to search for crystals.”

Tenel Ka glanced out at the rich green jungle canopy rushing beneath them. “You may choose,” she said.

Lowbacca gave a short bark. “It makes little difference to Master Lowbacca,” Em Teedee told her. “He has already assembled the components he intends to use for his lightsaber. The primary construction on his instrument is complete, and he has only to tune it now.”

Tenel Ka blinked in surprise, not only at the length of Em Teedee’s translation after Lowbacca’s short reply, but also at the thought that Lowbacca—and perhaps Jacen or Jaina—was so far ahead of her. Well then, she would have to make her search quickly and assemble her lightsaber without delay.

“The closest volcano,” she said, reaching forward and pointing. “There.” Then, gruffly, because she felt foolish for having asked Lowbacca to take her out on this errand, she said, “I apologize. I would not have troubled you with my request had I known your lightsaber was almost complete.”

The Wookiee growled and dismissed this with a motion of one ginger-furred hand. “Master Lowbacca wishes to assure you that you have not inconvenienced him in the slightest,” Em Teedee supplied. “It has been many days since he enjoyed solitude and meditation out in the jungle, and he delights in the opportunity to assist you in this manner.”

The Wookiee snorted and gave the little translator droid a flick with one finger. “Oh—that is to say,” Em Teedee amended, “it was Master Lowbacca’s intention to take a break anyway, and he’s pleased he could help.”

The young Wookiee sniffed loudly, but accepted this translation. He brought the T-23 skyhopper down on a patch of hard-packed volcanic sand between the jungle’s edge and the base of a small volcano. After Lowbacca woofed a few words, Em Teedee said, “When you have completed your search, successful or not, simply return here to the T-23. Master Lowbacca and I will watch for you from the treetops.”

Tenel Ka nodded curtly. “Understood. Thank you.” Without further ado, she turned and hurried up the slope toward the volcano.

Though none of the volcanoes near the Jedi academy had erupted in quite some time, tendrils of white steam still curled from this one’s peak. Skirting the sharp black rocks on the perimeter, Tenel Ka soon found a gaping lava tube leading in toward the core of the volcano, as she had hoped.

A pungent sulfurous odor filled the warm tunnel. Tenel Ka pulled the finger-sized glowrod from a pouch at her belt and ignited it to light her way. Black crystalline sand crunched under her feet and glittered like thousands of fiery sparks, throwing back the light of her glowrod. As she trudged farther in, the sandy floor became hard rock, glassy like obsidian. Ahead of her the rocky corridor radiated an eerie red light, and the heat grew stifling.

Occasionally she heard a rumbling, rushing roar, as if the volcano itself were breathing deeply in its sleep. The stony walls around her took on a cracked, broken look. Some of the larger fissures ran from floor to ceiling and leaked puffs of acrid white steam. But she saw no embedded crystals.

The lava tube wound on and on. Losing patience, Tenel Ka had just about decided to turn back when she rounded one last corner and encountered a wave of searing heat. She had found what she was looking for.

“Ah,” she said. “Aha.”

She wouldn’t be able to bear the heat for long, but she had to risk it. On the floor of the tunnel lay a huge slab of glossy black rock that had broken free from a crack on the tunnel wall. Ripples of scorching air danced before her in the dimness. Rivulets of perspiration ran down her forehead and into her eyes, blurring her vision. Even so, she could not mistake the chunks of spiky crystals that grew on the broken slab, glittering and hazy.

The rock surrounding her was too hot to touch, so Tenel Ka worked quickly. Holding her glowrod in her teeth, she pulled a small scrap of lizard hide from a pouch at her belt, wrapped it around a clump of the crystals, used her grappling hook to chip away at a few of the crystals, then pried them loose.

Tenel Ka tucked the crystals, still wrapped in their protective lizard hide, into her belt pouch, then headed back up the tunnel at a trot. Holding the glowrod high above her head, she raised her voice in a loud ululating cry of triumph that echoed down the length of the lava tube.

Back in her quarters, Tenel Ka sat at a low wooden table with the components of her future lightsaber spread in front of her. Everything she needed for assembling her weapon was here: switches, crystals, the covering plate, a power source, a focusing lens, and the rancor-tooth hilt.

She ran a light fingertip over the intricate battle etchings she had carved on the ivory lightsaber handle. The markings had turned out even better than she had hoped.

After returning from her crystal hunt, she had applied to the rancor tooth a paste made of dampened black sand from the floor of the lava tube. When she polished the tooth to a soft luster, pigment from the dark sand had stained every crevice of her carving to bring each etched line into sharp relief. The decorated rancor tooth was a beautiful piece, worthy of a warrior.

A yawn of contented weariness escaped her lips as Tenel Ka began to piece the components together according to Master Skywalker’s directions. She frowned when she realized that the hollow inside the rancor’s tooth was not quite large enough to contain the arrangement of crystals she had hoped for. She frowned again when she noticed on close inspection that each of her hazy crystals contained a tiny flaw. She suppressed another yawn and shook her head in resignation. Well, she didn’t have much choice. There hadn’t been time to examine the crystals more carefully in the searing lava tube, and now it was too late to search for more.

Tenel Ka thought back over the past two weeks, the drills and exercises she had put herself through. Her reflexes were lightning-fast, her skills and senses sharp as a laser. She shrugged, trying to loosen the knot of weary tension that had crept into her shoulders. She would have to make do. After all, in the long run it was the warrior and not the weapon that determined victory.

She nodded to herself as she picked up the lightsaber handle and began placing the components inside.