Star Wars: Slave Of Darkness

The chamber was silent and still for a brief moment, during which my mind raced to figure out a solution.

It wasn't unknown for a droid to flip over to "Dark Councilor mode." I'd seen it happen about four times since coming to the academy and experienced it once. And had it just been one, two, or even three droids, I could have evaded and escaped the room as acolytes usually do when it happened.

But all of them simultaneously? It was blindingly obvious that this was no accident, but I didn't have the time to investigate anything now. Now, I needed to survive.

I dismissed the lightning that I had hastily summoned. It would be useless at this point. While I wasn't sure which kind of shield the droids had, I'd be willing to bet that they were energy shields and fully capable of enduring any amount of Force Lightning I could unleash.

By the time I burned through the shield of one, the rest would have gunned me down.

Before I could come up with something else, the droids lost their patience and moved. A dozen and a half rifles rose and fired in a blink. Two dozen pairs of metal feet pounded against the floor as their owners charged forward.

I quickly waved my free hand, erecting a barrier of telekinetic force. The noise was ungodly as hundreds of rounds pinged off the opaque surface and dozens of blades scraped against it, threatening to disrupt my concentration.

Sweat started to trickle down my body from the effort of maintaining the shield.

I had never held up a shield against this kind of firepower, but if I didn't, I would die. With a growl, I pumped more power into the barrier, reinforcing the hastily-created shield, which even now was flagging.

It wasn't a permanent solution, nor one I could keep up for long. I just needed time to plan. To figure out how to survive.

Most of my abilities and weapons would be useless. I didn't have the raw talent or experience in swordsmanship to match even one of them, not to mention my sword would barely put a dent in their durasteel shells. My lightning would just be absorbed by their shields.

My Alchemy and what little Magic I knew were useless if I didn't have time to prepare beforehand.

I could crush them with the Force, but I'd only be able to get a few at a time. I'd be cut down before I could get them all.

My arm started to shake. The barrier was beginning to fail. I had maybe a few more seconds at most.

I only had one chance. One power I could use. It was a gamble and I would need to work fast, but it was either that or sit here behind my barrier and wait for it to fail. Even now, I could see the edges of it fading away.

Gamble it was.

Drawing on more power, I shoved the barrier outwards in a wave, the pulse of telekinetic force washing over the droids. They hunched down and braced themselves, their metal feet screeching on the floor as they magnetized, ensuring they did not move far.

It was a feature to discourage acolytes from using the Force on them during normal training and focus on their bladework.

But despite not moving them, I had staggered them, forced them to hunker down to avoid damage to their servos. In that instance, that feature was my sole advantage. During that pause, I acted.

My empty hand latched onto the head of the nearest stooping droid, the glowing blue shield around it doing nothing to stop my physical limb. As my fingers dug into the gun-metal gray plating, I reached for the Force, though I didn't have the reach far.

It was always there, sitting at attention like a loyal hound, with fangs bared.

The tingle of power raced down my arm. At the microscopic gap between flesh and metal, light flashed around my palm as it crossed the divide. Digging effortlessly through tough durasteel, the Force leaped into the circuitry beneath, traveling up and into its behavior core.

In the months since Qiv's departure, I had put countless hours into learning from the scattered notes he had left behind about that fascinating ability of his.

While he had known even less about the technical details of his power than I did, he was able to describe how the power was supposed to feel. From that, I was able to work my way slowly through it by practicing on his droids.

Though I had yet to replicate his ability to effortlessly construct and understand machinery despite my best efforts, I discovered that I excelled in a different discipline of Mechu Deru.

Under my direction, my power burned away the droid's hostile programming, tearing through lines of coding and re-writing them to serve my needs. I was no master programmer nor was I a biologist or a chemist, but the Force could compensate for a lack of knowledge with power.

Release physical safeties. Defend your Master to the best of your ability.

The droid froze for only a split-second before I knew the new orders had been acknowledged. Upon releasing it, I discovered a blackened outline of my hand had been burned into the plating on its head by my power.

Due to their mechanical nature, droids and prosthetics were capable of exerting superhuman levels of force, but they had limiters installed to keep them at roughly human levels of physical performance.

A fact that it demonstrated by immediately turning on its nearest fellow and bisecting it from hip to shoulder with its vibroblade but breaking the weapon in the process. It immediately dropped the broken sword and grabbed the weapon of the fallen droid.

The other droids paused at this new variable.

Sure, they were advanced sparring droids with an expansive library of combat protocols installed, but they were still only equipped with basic processors. Because of that, they didn't adapt to sudden changes very well. They did what they were programmed to do and little else.

And they were not programmed to recognize each other as enemies and glitched in response.

However, they were capable of some adaptation. Their hesitation wouldn't last for longer than a moment before they adjusted their IFF protocols to include my suborned droid. So I took the opportunity to override another. Like the first, it soon had a black hand-print burned into its plating.

In the split-second it took to reprogram the second, the first had torn through another droid and broke another weapon. With two super-charged "Dark Councilor" mode droids tearing through their fellows, I had a bit of breathing room to consider a less power-intensive solution.

Fortunately, once reprogrammed I didn't have to actively keep power streaming to them, freeing me up to do other things.

Drawing a bubble of force around myself just as the other droids had recovered and opened fire, I sat down to meditate. As I delved into the Force, the pings of the bullets bouncing off my shield sounded distant.

When I had used my power on the first droid, a rough blueprint had been crudely carved into my mind. It was far from complex and I would never be able to build a functioning droid from it even if I was capable of that application of Mechu Deru. I poured over it, searching for…

Ah, there it was. That would make things much simpler.

Maintaining my bubble of power, I reached out with the Force, my left hand slowly clenching into a fist. A nearby droid sparked and jerked as groans and whines emerged from its chassis.

I snapped my hand closed. The light left the sparring droid's single eye and it crumpled into a heap of inanimate metal and electronics, its power core and secondary power core crushed into slag. The other droids didn't even notice.

A thrill of pleasure ran through me and the hints of a smile tugged at my lips.

My suborned droids were tearing…well, not bloody swathes, but they were carving their way through their fellows. When the opposing droids tried to block, their weapons were broken by the sheer power behind each swing.

Suddenly disarmed, they were swiftly torn to pieces by metal hands. When they tried to shoot, their bullets bounced off their tough durasteel shells.

In the time it had taken me to analyze the blueprint and destroy the power cores of a single droid, they had forcefully deactivated seven. That left nearly thirty still active and trying to kill me.

As more bullets chipped away at my shield, I realized that I needed to finish this soon, before I got too exhausted to maintain it. The droids helped, but the barrier was really the only reason I hadn't been turned into swiss cheese yet.

I could feel my bodily processes start to slow as I pulled more energy from my body to fuel my Force powers. My muscles slacked as another droid dropped to the ground. Digestion ground to a halt as the light left a photoreceptor. My breathing slowed as I crushed the artificial life from two more droids.

All the while, I wasn't afraid.

I would survive. This was fact. If it wasn't, I would make it a fact.

There is no passion. There is solely obsession.

I wasn't afraid. I was obsessed.

That surety empowered me. It comforted me. I would survive.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Not fast enough.

I would survive.

I reached, dropping my shield. The Force was a loyal beast. Like a hunting hound, it bared its fangs and let loose a baying cry at my command.

They all crumpled to the ground with an almighty crunch. Silence descended on the training hall.

An ache speared through my face as my cybernetics stretched my tattered skin, but that didn't stop my smile from widening.

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The first book has been completed on Patreon, you can look it up in the collection alongside the second book. You can visit Patreon if you want to read in Advance.

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