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Getting Out of Tight Situations- Period 5- Class #5

When the students got to class today, they'd find themselves in the middle of a hilly forest area. At least it wasn't too humid or too cold this week?

"Hey, guys," Jaina greeted them. "Today you're going hiking. You can pick up a few essentials to take with you, the trail is marked, and you even get a companion on your hike." As she spoke, a nondescript teenage boy appeared next to her, waving at the students. "This is Bob. Something's going to happen on your hike, and I'm not going to tell you what. But once it happens, you're going to have to figure out what tools you have available to you and what you're going to do about it. Good luck, and I hope you all wore study shoes."

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"What was it like?" Ender prompted. He still had bad dreams from the days when the Formics had been trying to get into his head, and that was only a shadow of something that Jaina actually described as 'being absorbed'.

"Well... The way it worked was that we belonged to certain Nests, the ones that welcomed us in," she explained, carefully watching her pronounces to make sure no 'we's slipped out when they shouldn't. The Killiks themselves didn't have individual names, and would be addressed by the name of their Nest, Taat or Wuluw or wherever they belonged, because speaking to one was like speaking to all of them, in a way. For those of us who became Joiners, it was different. We stayed ourselves, with our own wants and needs, but in addition to being an individual, we were part of the collective. You belong to the Nest and the Nest belongs to the Colony, and it's like being a very small part of a large group of a trillion beings.

"When I first realized I was a Joiner, it was because I wanted to go against the will of the Colony, to do the right thing outside of just their needs. And they wouldn't let me. I'd go to stand up, and I'd have the will of the rest of the Nest, thousands of other consciousnesses telling me that I'd want to sit down, and so I'd sit down. It wasn't like I was being forced, but it was really like peer pressure to an extreme degree; after a while I'd want to do what Taat wanted me to. I couldn't really read their thoughts, but I instinctively knew what they wanted and the reasoning behind it, and I didn't even have to speak to communicate if I didn't want to, because the rest of the Nest knew my intentions. It was completely invasive and welcome at the same time."

And yet she still didn't entirely think it was weird. It'd take a while for that.

The fact that she didn't think it was weird, yet, made this all the more valuable. It meant Ender was still getting a little glimpse of the Killik mind, instead of the Jedi interpretation of it, judgements and all.

He was thankful for it.

"Was it a true hive mind?" he asked, "Or were their queens, or leaders? Who did you look to for purpose while you were a Joiner?"

"That's where it gets a little tricky," Jaina admitted, making a face. "The Unu nest had found a Jedi friend of ours. He became a Joiner, and then eventually he became king, UnuThul, though we're back to calling him Raynar these days. He led the Colony, and when we went to war, he was the one giving us orders." Though he was definitely not a military commander and therefore his orders were often bad and that still bothered her. "At least, that was what we thought. In truth, there was a Dark Jedi who'd secreted away her presence and was actually leading things, but Raynar was unaware of it, and therefore the rest of the Colony was, too."

"So they were highly susceptible to stronger... what, will? Force presence?" he guessed.

"I don't think it was that easy. Everyone thought Lomi was dead to begin with, and she had the ability to make you forget you'd ever seen her, which was something we'd never seen before. She was able to use that to hide the presence of the entire Gorog nest. Remember what I said about how big a nest could be, and how strong the influence was when they wanted you to do or believe something," she said. "If they could control Raynar that way, especially when he'd suffered a lot of physical and emotional trauma and wasn't exactly all there, they controlled the Colony the whole way down."

She'd still willingly go a little dark side for a chance at five minutes in a room alone with Lomi Plo, just for the opportunity to Force slam her into walls until she stopped moving. But Jaina was often told she had anger issues.

Ender had whatever the opposite of anger issues were, and he had a kill count to his name that vastly dwarfed Jaina's; it was likely he'd have more nuanced opinions on the matter, if it ever came up.

Regardless of the way his narrative liked to pick at his psyche, Ender nodded thoughtfully. "But would you say it was instinctive for the Killiks to make themselves subservient to one sentient in that way?" he asked. "They must have had leadership before the Jedi came along."

"That's one of those things where my knowledge is iffy," she said apologetically. "The entire time I was a Joiner, Raynar was in charge, and Killiks don't have thoughts like 'The guy before him was so much better,' or anything, so I'm not sure on how things normally worked. I know most insect colonies have the same sort of caste system, usually with a queen at the head of everything, so I assume it still worked that way with the Killiks, but that's about all I have on that."

He nodded. A little disappointed, but not entirely surprised. "Thanks anyway," Ender said. "What did you guys eat while you were in the nest, anyway?"

He was thinking about the Formic orchards they'd found recently.

Jaina smiled a little. "Somehow I didn't expect that question. By the time I was there, there were quite a few Joiners, so normal food was fairly common. It was kind of weird at first, actually; you'd get a craving for something and the Killiks would just know what you wanted and have the food brought in from offplanet, even."

"So they were pretty well connected," Ender said; it was half-serious and half-joke. "I'm asking because the whole reason the subject of Killiks came up is when I got news that some of our xenobiologists had found a Formic orchard. We... didn't really see that one coming."

"An orchard?" she repeated, raising her eyebrows. "That's... new. I'm guessing you haven't found out why it's there yet."

"Presumably, for gathering fruit," Ender said, lightly. "What they needed the fruit for is still a mystery. As is a lot about them. We weren't exactly prepared enough to get into the mind of an insectoid race when we met them."

"It's a little difficult even when you're prepared. How have things been with them so far?" she wondered.

"We've been colonising their worlds since the last war," Ender said, "But obviously, most of the colonists are soldiers, not biologists. It's early days."

"And the Formics are okay with this?" That had been one issue with the Killiks, so she felt she had to check.

Ah. So his use of tenses hadn't rung any bells.

"At the end of the last war, the Formics pulled all their Queens back to their home world," Ender said, after a short pause. It was mostly to keep his own emotions under wraps, because he knew those tended to ping with Jedi. "We blew it up."

Jaina sort of wished she hadn't asked now, seeing as how she had a few issues with that sort of thing, due to personal experience. "Why?"

Because I thought it was the only way to get out of a game, he thought, Because people were scared, so they aimed and primed me and got what they were afraid to do themselves. Because I'm a killer.

"A hundred years ago, they came to our solar system hoping to colonise," Ender said, figuring the start was a good place to begin. "They knew as little of individualist mammals like us as we did of them. They figured that killing a few of us just meant letting our leaders know about their intention, like poking us in an arm or a leg. We obviously didn't take it that way. We barely managed to fight them off, but they came back again a few years later, and nearly conquered us."

He took a breath. This was a hard topic for him, too, and he didn't want to show any fatigue.

"We were afraid that they'd come back to finish the job, so we sent a sleeper ship to invade them back, and end it before they could."

Jaina had been expecting something different as an answer, which she knew was her own pro-Killik views poking out. But while it'd be easy to go off on how wrong it was to do that... She could understand the reasoning. She probably wouldn't have passed up the chance to take out the Vong that way if it'd been there.

And kind of disturbingly, she finally understood the Chiss point of view on things.

"I'm kind of surprised they didn't conquer you entirely," she admitted. "I don't know that I can say preemptive self-defense was a bad move."

"After the second invasion, they figured out we thought like individuals," Ender said, sounding a little distant. "That every human death was on par with the death of a Queen. They weren't planning to come back. We just didn't know that."

Edited 2011-02-01 20:27 (UTC)

"Sometimes when you have a shot, you have to take it. And then it sucks when you have to pick up the pieces afterward," Jaina said calmly. She'd had that sort of thing happen more than once, though not on that scale.

"Maybe," Ender said, "But as a member of my race, you can understand I'm feeling obligated to figure out as much about them as I can. It's the least we can do."

Mostly because he felt-- because he was personally accountable, but that wasn't an issue he was about to raise.

"Completely," she nodded. "What else do you want to know?"

"How did you wind up Joined?" Ender asked, after a moment to get his own cool back. "And where was Ben in all this?"

Getting Out of Tight Situations- Period 5- Class #5

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