[Short Stories] - Journal Of The ...

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STAR WARSThe LiberatorsBy Brendon J.WahlbergAs the Civil War rages across the galaxy, the last known surviving Whill hides from the Empire in the secret Rebel refuge of the Journal of the Whills.Now the Empire has located the long lost homeworld of the Whills and enslaved the entire race.While the Rebels plan a daring rescue, the sinister dark adept Blackhole uses the Whills as pawns in his quest for the secrets of an ancient Jedi spirit known as The Skywalker�Prologue One: 24,000 years before the present�The old Whill scholar sighed, settled more comfortably on the stone floor of the quiet cave, and spread out the blank scroll, pen in hand. There was no point in putting off the task any longer. It had to be done; the others were expecting it to be finished so they could roll their past up in the scroll, store it away, and begin to get on with their new lives. Onith had gotten the job by having a fair talent with prose, but that skill did not make this particular work any easier. How did one explain to the next generation why they had rejected their people and left their entire world behind? How did one justify that kind of extreme measure, that great a step into the unknown? How could Onith answer the troubled questions of children yet to come, who would wonder why they were born on alien soil, never to see their native home? At least Onith was calm enough to write. The emotions of the past several months had faded with exhaustion, and the initial excitement had been dampened by sadness and the strangeness of the new environment.Onith gripped the pen firmly and pressed it to the scroll. "I address myself to the next generation of Whills," the scholar wrote, "the first to be born on our new homeworld of Ashlan Four. It is my duty to make a record of the events surrounding our journey to this world, so that you will understand where you came from, and why we have decided that there is no going back, not ever. We have broken completely with the past, to become one with our new purpose. The story of our leaving begins with the Skywalker, a human and a great leader who lived one thousand years ago. This human was the first to understand and use the mystical power of the Ashla, and it gave him the ability to see into the future."Onith paused at the use of the male gender. It still seemed strange that most of the races of the Republic, including humans, had two different sexes. It was just one more way in which the new and larger world of the Whills was profoundly alien."The Skywalker and his children served the Ashla and called themselves the Jedi Bendu. The Skywalker foresaw that one day, the Jedi Bendu would need scribes and scholars to record their ongoing history. He spoke a prophecy which named our people as the ones destined for that task.Your descendants will go out among the stars and find a race of great wisdom called the Whills. They will accept their destiny and follow the Jedi Bendu to this system, and dwell in the light of the Ashlan Nebula. On the fourth planet, they will record our story. The Whills shall tell the story of the Jedi Bendu and the Republic, which shall last for over a thousand generations."The Skywalker�s children wrote that prophecy down, and told it to the next generation. The prophecy was passed down through two more generations, but no one knew when or how it might be fulfilled. No one had yet found any race called Whills in all the centuries of the Republic�s existence. Finally, one thousand years after the death of the Skywalker, his great-great-grandchild, now an old man himself, had a vision while travelling through the Ashlan Nebula. The vision revealed how to find the homeworld of the Whills. Our world had remained undiscovered by the Republic for a very good reason. It lies far from established hyperspace pathways, in an area of the galaxy which is exceedingly difficult to navigate. But the Jedi Bendu bravely set off in their ships and trusted the vision. And so the first alien visitors came to our world. It was not to be a happy occasion."Onith paused again. This was the hardest part to write, the most shameful part of the brief account. The Whill looked to the cave wall for reassurance and guidance. There on the stone was carved the symbol of the pact between the Whills and the Jedi Bendu. When the Whills and the humans first discovered this network of caves under the mountain, the Whills decided it would make a good home. The caves were similar to their dwelling places on their original world. They had been isolated there, living apart from their race, and the new mountain environment felt familiar, at least. Considering the sheer strangeness of everything else, that was important.Standing together in the cave, the Whills and the Jedi had made a pledge to each other. The Whills agreed to serve by keeping a record of the Jedi history, and the Jedi agreed to protect the Whills in their new home forever. One of the humans had used an energy blade to cut the Skywalker family sigil deep into the rock to seal the pact. Looking at the carving now, Onith was reminded of the fascinating future of discovery that lay ahead. The sacrifice had been worth it.The Whill returned to the scroll and continued with determination. The challenge was to be succinct, and not get bogged down in the details of who committed what offense. They had chosen to use one short scroll in order to keep the narrative brief. None of them wanted any more of a record than was necessary to answer the most basic questions of their children."Our civilization," Onith wrote, "had long been in a decline before the humans arrived. Most of us had set aside learning in favor of self-gratification, and the ignorant and the decadent ruled over us. Only a few of us kept the pursuit of science and philosophy alive, and for our strange ways, we were outcasts, living like hermits, in contact only with others of our scholars� society. In all the world, we numbered only six hundred. We endeavored to learn more about our world, and we preserved our wisdom in a journal which was only of interest to our group. The arrival of the aliens was a stunning revelation to us. The event opened up the universe to us and gave us new hope. Our entire group gathered to welcome the visitors and to learn what they had to teach. The rest of the Whills, however, reacted quite differently."The humans came to us peacefully. Communication was not a problem, for through the power of the Ashla, the Jedi were able to learn our language. At their first opportunity, they told our leaders why they had come. Our people, they said, were to leave their world behind, relocate to another world, and become historians in the service of the aliens. At first, the population reacted with disbelief, and then with scorn. The very idea was ludicrous to them, and they immediately suspected the aliens of having a hidden agenda. In response, the humans demonstrated the power of the Ashla, in order to convince them of the truth. Then our people began to greatly fear the outsiders. They believed that they would be overcome by these terrible powers and forced to leave as slaves of the humans. When these fears became strong enough, the most radical Whills attacked the aliens and tried to kill them or drive them off. Although the attacks could not harm the Jedi, they caused them to turn away from our world in sorrow and prepare to leave."Please understand that we could not bear to part with the visitors and what they represented to us--the new knowledge, the philosophical mystery of the Ashla, and the scientific discoveries. But they would not stay, and so our small society of six hundred had to leave with them. We were afraid the humans would reject us for the crimes of the other Whills, but they accepted us, calling it the fulfillment of their prophecy. We did not leave peacefully. The radicals believed that the aliens were leaving only to gather a force large enough to take over our world. Seeing our group accepted by the humans caused our people to brand us traitors conspiring against our own world. The Jedi ships lifted off with our group aboard them, while the radicals made one last futile attack. We were now truly outcast. We were accustomed to being isolated from our people already, so it should have been easy for us to leave, yet we were full of sorrow for the others. We resented their ignorance, and we were angry about how they treated the outsiders, but we also knew we were taking something from them which they would not be able to replace--ourselves. Losing us, they lost the best minds among them, and I do not say so out of simple pride. I was there, and I saw what our world was coming to. I believe something terrible is going to happen to it, and perhaps those of us who left with the humans could have made a difference if we had stayed. This is not a matter of my own foreboding. The great-great-grandson of the Skywalker confided this to me on the long journey to Ashlan Four: it was not only the prophecy of the future service of the Whills which brought the Jedi Bendu to us. Another prophecy of the Skywalker seemed to suggest that by leaving their world, the Whills would somehow be saving themselves. Our leaders scoffed at that idea, but I wonder, and I worry for those we left behind."But that is a burden for our conscience, not yours. You are the new generation, the first to be born into the Great Purpose. Read this scroll to satisfy your curiosity, but do not dream of going back to where we came from. We will not tell you the location, nor even the name of that world. Ashlan Four is your world, and the Republic, the Jedi Bendu, and the recording of their history are your lives. Give this scroll to your own children, so that they may understand th... [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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