A Young Girl’s War Between the Stars

  30

  Coruscant, 40 BBY/960 GSC.

  The High Council chamber waited until the girl was on the elevator and on her way down before it seemed like it would erupt into noise. That is, until Dooku stood. For a moment, Yoda’s student looked utterly furious. Mundi flinched where he sat, his hand drifting back towards his lightsaber. The human took a breath, one fist clenching at his side.

  “You drew your lightsaber on my student with the intent to kill her.” The words were spoken quietly. Calmly. But they carried over the entire High Council chamber clearly—as clear as the threat behind them.

  Mundi shifted in his seat, his veneer of calm back in place. “The girl shields her mind. I had no idea what her intent was when she drew a lightsaber and approached Master Yoda.”

  There was a quiet scoff from the direction of Master Windu. “In a room full of Jedi Masters, with no warning in the Force, and you want to claim you were worried for Grandmaster Yoda’s safety?” Frowning, the man crossed his arms where he sat. “Aside from her age, I don’t see any issue with her actions. If it were any other Jedi, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion. It is possible that, if the Force nexus beneath the Temple is truly dark as she says, that it could have influenced our thoughts, feelings, and behavior over time in ways we wouldn’t even notice,” he turned his gaze on Mundi at that last part, and the Cerean man turned an affronted look back on Master Windu.

  “You’re implying my judgment is clouded? What about his?” he gestured at Dooku. “Dooku shields her because he is too emotionally invested and doesn’t want to lose another student. How you don’t see it is beyond me. The girl has gone dark. She is a monster. If not a Sith, then a Dark Jedi.”

  Dooku glowered. “I won’t stand here and let you slander the name of my student over a petty grudge—”

  “She’s not your student,” Mundi pointed out.

  “That is where you are mistaken,” Dooku shook his head, before looking over the council. “It has become clear to me that Master Mundi intends to poison this council’s opinion towards my student, just as it was towards Rael Averross and Qui-Gon Jinn.”

  Mundi shrugged. “I merely point out that the fruit does not fall far from the tree.”

  “Shut up,” Dooku growled.

  “I beg your pardon?!” Mundi demanded, jumping to his feet.

  “I said, shut up. As in close your mouth and stop talking.” Dooku waited a moment as Mundi stood there, his mouth working but no sound coming out. Turning to Yoda, he continued. “I am tendering my resignation from this Council, effective immediately. At the same time, I will be taking on Tanya Mereel as my Padawan. We will be leaving for Serenno within the week. There is much to do to rebuild and I feel her time will be better spent away from the temple, without Master Mundi needlessly scrutinizing and calling her every action into question. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Master. I must prepare for our departure. Good day.”

  Dooku left quickly. He was barely out of the room before Mundi spoke up. “I call a vote. All in favor of censure—”

  “Denied, the vote is,” Yoda cut him off.

  “But Master Yoda—”

  “Sit,” Yoda ordered, sending Mundi a stern look. “Act rashly, this Council will not.”

  “Master Yoda, we can’t just let this go! What if Master Mundi is right? She could—”

  “This is an outrage! Mundi tried to draw his saber on a child!”

  The Council quickly devolved into an uproar as everyone tried to speak at once, some shouting over the others to be heard. Yoda sighed and looked to Mace, who shook his head, then stood.

  “I believe I’ve said what I need to say. I’m going to see if I can track down our wayward Padawan and speak to her for myself,” he excused himself and left.

  Unfortunately for Yoda, escape was not so easy. …Or was it?

  Humming quietly, he took in the others arguing before pushing himself out of his seat. Skirting the edge of the room, he moved calmly towards the elevator. A moment later, he found himself joined by Master Jocasta Nu as the door closed. Chuckling quietly, the old human woman murmured, “I don’t think I’ve seen Dooku that angry in a very long time. Mundi is lucky we don’t allow formal duels anymore.”

  Yoda sighed, leaning on his cane. “Wasteful, it is. Divided, we are, when our attention should be turned outward. Towards those who orchestrated the fall of Serenno.”

  “I agree, but it seems Mundi has made up his mind. You know how he gets. He has to be the smartest one in the room. Prideful.”

  “Blinded by pride, he is,” Yoda agreed. “But not wrong that something is amiss, I think.”

  “With the girl? What?”

  “Mm… Not sure, I am. Dooku knows. Qui-Gon as well. And trust her they do.”

  Master Nu nodded as the elevator came to a stop. “Then it sounds like it’s a question of who do you trust more. Your student and his students? Or Master Mundi?”

  Yoda’s cane clicked on the floor as he left the elevator, Master Nu following. “A question it is not. The answer, I already know.” Glancing upwards, he instructed, “What records we have on the nexus below the Temple, please forward them to me.” Considering for a moment, he added, “The Bogan archive as well, you should search. If the secret is to be found, I believe that is where.”

  “I’ll get my students to start digging through the public archive while I search the other. I’ll send you the results,” the woman nodded, turning off at the next intersection to make her way towards the library, leaving Yoda to make his way outside to find a nice place to meditate.

  Stupid, short-sighted, blind, deluded, middle management paper pusher! He’s never seen a day of war in his life and he thinks he can question my motives?!

  I wanted to throw something. Punch someone. I hadn’t been this angry since Lt. Col. von Degurechaff’s superior officers had made the mistake of calling me off at the eleventh hour, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and destroying any chance we had of ending the war.

  Master Mundi was truly a living example of the old adage that intelligence did not assure wisdom. The man was utterly incompetent and didn’t understand the realities of war.

  And why would he?

  I’d done my research on all of the High Council members in my downtime, in between study and training, once I’d gotten access to the Temple library’s files. After all, it always paid to know who you were working with. And while their service record might not give one all the details, it was a good start. Combined with the assessments of other Masters in written notes and audio log minutes from various council meetings, performance reviews, and the like—along with digging up everything I could find on them on the public network—I believed I had a working idea of what to expect from most of the Masters holding position within the Order.

  Master Ki-Adi-Mundi was a Cerean… nationalist? Speciest? I wasn’t exactly sure what to call someone who was a proponent of both his species and his world.

  Either way, he had a vested interest in his own home world and people and was a Cerean isolationist, who wanted to keep his own planet from integrating into the Republic, or adopting foreign technology and cultures. And while I was perfectly fine with that—after all, as a former Japanese person I knew that while hotpot was delicious, you didn’t get to enjoy the individual subtle flavors of rice, fish, miso, pickles, plums, and other things if you threw everything into a pot and cooked it all together—it was his hypocritical stance on it that bothered me.

  He wanted isolationism for his own people, going on about how their people, culture, heritage, technology, and so on must be preserved while at the same time saying the exact opposite for literally everyone else. That in order to guarantee the peace, security, and stability of the Republic, every planet in the wider galaxy needed to join and integrate into the greater Republic culture, and have their own individual identities subsumed by it—or at least, those worth anything. He didn’t seem to care much about worlds like Dathomir, which didn’t actually produce anything of value to the Core and didn’t have a fleet that posed any sort of threat.

  Early records indicated that after he was elevated to the position of Knight, he returned to Cerea to liberate his home village from raiders—mirroring Master Dooku’s own involvement with Serenno. In his personal life, he had five wives and seven children, and was somehow an exception to the ‘no attachments’ rule.

  In short, the man was an enjoyer of the privilege of exceptions and loopholes within the Order’s own rules and what looked from the outside very much like nepotism. He had seen combat, but not war. He was a hypocrite who chastised others for the very things he himself got away with. He was a career politician whose track record of support showed he put the needs and wants of his own planet and people first, the Republic as a whole second, and the Jedi Order a very distant third. And perhaps worst of all, the man was a blatant hypocrite, with his rules for thee but not for me stance.

  He was an example of everything wrong with the Order. Corrupt, inept, and trying his best to drag down everyone around him to elevate himself.

  I rounded a corner and froze as I nearly ran into someone—a Jedi in brown robes, with their cloak pulled up. I had been so wrapped up in my thoughts that I’d neglected my senses. I fell into force of habit. “Excuse me,” I murmured, bowing my head the required amount when apologizing to a stranger on the subway, and moving around them.

  “Something troubles you?” a girl’s voice asked.

  I turned back and studied the taller girl, and frowned slightly upon noticing her face was covered with a wrap or scarf that left only her gold eyes, eyebrows, and the skin around them visible—giving me just enough to know she was probably human, female, of a light tan complexion, with blue-green hair and eyes with a vaguely Asiatic slanted shape. Her voice sounded young—Obi’s age, roughly.

  “Politics,” I answered, allowing some of my frustration to slip through.

  She chuckled at that and nodded. “Yes, the High Council can drive even the most even-keeled Jedi to distraction some days. Or at least, certain elements within it,” she mused. “If you have a few moments, I’d like to speak with you.”

  “Me?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

  She nodded and walked back down the hallway the way I had been going. Curious, I followed for a while, until she entered a side room. I followed after, finding what looked like a storage room with spare supplies—tables, chairs, boxes of blank flexi sheets, and other office supplies. She took a folding chair from the stack of them and handed it to me, before unfolding a table between us, then taking a chair for herself and sitting.

  I watched as she sat a personal holocom on top of the table and touched a button. Between us, a hologram recorded from the High Council chamber played, showing a few moments of my report to the Council.

  I hummed, studying the girl as she stopped the playback. Whoever this was clearly had access to systems she probably shouldn’t, if she could spy on and record High Council meetings. The question was, what did she want with me? I didn’t sense any ill intent, negative emotions, or danger in the Force—just amusement.

  “Could you answer a few questions for me?” she asked, and I nodded. “Excellent. Firstly, how did you know you were being observed by the Death Watch?”

  “Emotional sense and the Force. I didn’t sense danger because they weren’t there to do anything but observe, but I could feel their dislike directed at me. Later, I went back and sliced the security for the area and checked the cameras, then confirmed who it was.”

  She raised an eyebrow—one of the only parts of her face visible. “I see. You did the same on Dathomir?” she asked, and I nodded. “Why did you choose to fight the Abyssins using the tactics you did, instead of a more traditional approach?”

  “Asymmetrical warfare tactics are the best choice for dealing with a larger force. Whittle their forces down. Deprive them of resources. Make them feel unsafe. Break their morale. Eventually, the enemy will stop putting in effort. If you’re lucky, they may even withdraw entirely.” Frowning, I added, “Of course, attacks on morale only work against enemies who have morale, but the other aspects of asymmetrical warfare work just fine. If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is superior in strength, evade him. If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him.”

  Humming, the older girl nodded. “How did you infiltrate the enemy base and capture their commander?”

  “Through the air vents.” Gesturing at myself, I smiled. “I’m very small at the moment, and those vents were large enough to fit me. I crawled through the vents and exited in a storage room very much like this one. Once inside, I used available materials to create impromptu camouflage and made my way to his office.”

  “What did you use?”

  I couldn’t fight down the grin as I answered, “An empty box. Can you believe someone actually picked me up and carried me to a mail room closer to his office themselves?”

  The girl laughed quietly. “And you didn’t use the Force at all?”

  “Only to determine where I was and where I was going.”

  Nodding, she studied me for a moment before asking her next question. “Do you enjoy travel?”

  “I do. Long stretches in hyperspace are good for meditation and study, and I enjoy visiting new places. I don’t dislike staying in one place for a long time, but occasionally, I enjoy going on a little adventure.”

  “And you’re comfortable with combat, even against superior numbers?”

  I bobbed my head back and forth. “Yes, but if combat can be avoided to secure an objective, then I will.”

  “You have experience slicing into hardened systems, breaking into secure facilities, and stealing objects without being detected. Do you enjoy that?”

  “Yes. It’s nice to see one’s hard work and study pay off, and to get one over on someone. The thrill of doing something dangerous, of coming and going with no one the wiser is also fun.” I’ll admit it, I had deeply enjoyed playing ninja on Serenno. It was the not so secret wish of every Japanese man to do so at least once in their lives! No. It was a wish shared by nearly every man on Earth, who was aware of Japanese culture and the concept of ninjas.

  “What do you think about assassination?”

  Humming, I sent her a curious look before shrugging. “I suppose it would depend on who and why, and the intended goal. The reality is that some must die for others to live, sometimes. If you could prevent a war that would take billions of lives with the preemptive death of one, then yes, it’s absolutely justified. But it doesn’t always work like that. In fact, if you ever get to the point where you’ve reached a ‘death of one’ scenario, the odds are that killing that one person won’t solve the issue, because all of the people that supported them are still in power. The machine will continue on without their leader and will simply replace him with someone else. The entire enemy power structure won’t just collapse because they’ve lost their leader. Sentiments that might cause a group to band together and decide to start a war won’t go away because you remove the person most likely to become the leader.”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The best example I knew of that was the old armchair historian argument of, ‘what if you used a time machine to go back in time and kill baby Hitler.’

  Simpletons believed that it would avert World War Two. Those who actually knew their history, knew what factors were at play that led up to it, and had a grasp on understanding the relationship between cause and effect would argue that while not guaranteed, World War Two could still happen. All of the conditions not specific to Hitler would still be there for it.

  Of course, there was some merit to the Great Man theory and that without a man possessing the qualities of greatness to rally behind, those sentiments may never accrete and become something more. Regardless of having a Great Man to rally around or not, all of the other factors would still be there in the absence of said Great Man—and instead of World War Two, we may instead have seen the complete economic, political, and moral collapse of Germany and the territory and people being picked apart by their neighbors. Or Germany being subsumed by the Soviet Union. Or any one of a number of other worst-case scenarios.

  My point being…

  “So the truth is, assassination is only really good for very specific use cases, and only in furthering some other goal, not as the end goal unless the person you’re removing is doing something utterly heinous and no one would pick up where he left off. While taking out a Sith would remove that specific problem, eliminating the leader of a planet or faction wouldn’t remove the faction. Most of the time, other means would be more effective. This is even more true for Jedi, as we have the Force and a multitude of tools and resources at our disposal that we could try, that others simply don’t have.”

  “Good. We like it when our operatives can think for themselves and don’t fall into the traps of either believing killing is entirely unnecessary, or that it’s the only way to handle a situation,” the girl murmured.

  “Operatives?” I asked, shifting forward a bit in my seat. “Just who are you?”

  The girl shook her head. “Me? I’m no one. Just a shadow.” I sent her a flat look and she laughed. “Our identities and assignments are secret, even from each other—except between immediate superior and subordinate. Unless we’re tasked with a job that requires two or more of us, or sent to recruit promising new talent, then most of us aren’t aware of the others. We are few in number, but we serve an important role within the Order, as part of the Council of First Knowledge.”

  “And that role has something to do with stealth, infiltration, theft, and occasionally assassination?” I asked, and she nodded.

  “A Shadow’s primary mission is to secure dangerous knowledge, secrets, and artifacts—or destroy them, and kill those that hold them or who have learned things they should not, if we cannot. Our secondary mission is to remove elements that would threaten the Order or the Republic, through whatever means necessary. We also act to gather intelligence, or as counter-intelligence agents.”

  Narrowing my eyes at the girl, I asked, “This isn’t some secretive part of the Order who goes around cleaning up messes and hiding inconvenient truths, is it?”

  She sighed, but nodded. “We do a little of that, yes. Things that would harm the Order or destabilize the Republic as a whole, for instance. If someone were to develop some new super weapon and the Order learned of it, we would be the first in, to try to destroy all knowledge of it. If someone found some manuscripts detailing how to train a Force sensitive youth, we would go collect them to keep someone from raising their own private army of Force users. If a Jedi were to turn against the order…”

  “I see,” I murmured. “So, what is this? A recruitment pitch?”

  “Yes,” the girl laughed.

  “What are the benefits?” I asked, wanting to at least hear the offer out.

  She perked up and began ticking off points on her fingers. “Travel to far off, exotic destinations.”

  “So you’ll send me out to the boonies,” I translated, and she giggled.

  “Sometimes,” the girl agreed. “Access to training and resources that aren’t available to others.” She paused, waiting to see if I had anything to say, before moving on. “Actual pay and some allowances for things that would normally be frowned upon. Your own small ship, if you don’t already have one. Much more latitude in the way you handle things.”

  She sent me a knowing look and added, “Master Mundi would become a non-issue, for the most part. He may bluster and complain, but he would have no power to censure or otherwise discipline you.”

  “I see. And the responsibilities?”

  “You’ll occasionally receive missions to go handle things in whatever corner of the galaxy you happen to be in, or you may be redirected somewhere else, or sent to aid someone. You can put those missions off unless they’re time sensitive, but it’s best to do them as soon as possible. If you’re sent to physically retrieve something, generally you’ll escort it back to the Temple or one of our secret storage facilities yourself, but if you can’t make it you can arrange to have another Shadow pick it up. There are no reports to write, because we don’t keep records of our missions. You’ll only report to your handler to report success or failure, nothing more—that’s me, by the way. Otherwise, you’ll continue on as normal, doing whatever you were assigned. It seems that Master Dooku has officially made you his Padawan and declared his intent to return to Serenno to rebuild. This is good, since it removes you from the scrutiny of those in the Temple and should give you plenty of time to take on missions. So, what do you say?”

  The fact that Master Dooku was officially making me his Padawan and apparently returning to Serenno was news to me. That did bring up a question, however. “If I accept, what will you tell Master Dooku?”

  “The truth. That you’ve been recruited for the Shadows and occasionally might need to go out for a mission,” she shrugged. “He’ll understand.”

  “And if I decide to quit?” I asked, wanting to make sure that I wouldn’t be stuck doing this forever if I did take the job.

  “Then you quit. Go back to being a normal Jedi.”

  There was very little in the way of direct benefit to joining, that I could see. I had money, a ship, and with the holocrons hidden away in the Rusted Silver I had access to knowledge and techniques that most Jedi didn’t already.

  However, it did provide something less tangible that was really, very appealing… adventure.

  I wouldn’t say I was bored as a normal Jedi. Far from it! So far, things had been fairly exciting and fun.

  But this galaxy was huge and full of things I’d never seen before. Mysteries, wonders, and yes, likely horrors. It would give me an excuse to go out and see those things. Go places I wouldn’t have otherwise gone. Do things I probably wouldn’t have otherwise done.

  “Alright,” I agreed with a nod.

  “Good. Give me your holo number and I’ll contact you when I have something,” she instructed and we quickly exchanged contact information. Finally, she reached up and pulled her hood back, then removed the scarf she’d tied over her lower face.

  My guess had been right. She was roughly Obi’s age and, aside from the anime character colored hair and gold eyes, looked like what I would have expected from a typical Japanese girl her age. She smiled and held out her hand. “Taria Damsin.”

  “Tanya Mereel,” I nodded, shaking the offered hand.

  “I look forward to working with you, Tanya. I’m sure I’ll have something for you soon.”

  With that, we put the room back how it had been and left, Taria going the way I’d come from while I decided to leave the Temple and start preparations for leaving Coruscant. If Taria was right and Master Dooku intended to return to Serenno, I would be buying anything I could get here that I couldn’t there while I was still on Coruscant.

  “There you are.”

  I was pulled from my musing by the somewhat familiar voice of Master Windu from behind me. I stopped and turned around, sending him a curious look. “Master Windu,” I nodded.

  “Come with me,” he instructed, and turned on his heel.

  Frowning, I followed. As we walked, he began to speak. “What you need to understand about the modern Jedi order, what they don’t teach students until they become Padawans, is that we’re not what we once were. You’ve probably heard the stories, but if you haven’t, most people have. In the past, the Jedi were an order of warrior monks, seeking enlightenment through the Force and training themselves to fight should the need arise. At some point, we spread, grew in power, and changed—that was the era of Jedi Lords. Lords who oversaw planets and the Knights, Consulars, and Sentinels under them. We went to war against the Sith, the Mandalorians, pirates—anyone who was a threat to the greater universe or the balance of the Force. Then came the Ruusan Reformation, and things changed.”

  “Yes, I keep hearing about that and started digging into it to learn what exactly happened,” I murmured.

  The man turned an interested look on me and asked, “What are your thoughts on what you’ve seen so far?”

  I considered how to answer for a moment, before deciding that the Master walking with me seemed to be a very professional, all business, no bullshit type of person. So, I didn’t sugar-coat it. “I think, in the aftermath, the Jedi crippled and fully suborned themselves to the New Republic. We did away with the Jedi Lords and left those worlds in the mid- and outer rim to fend for themselves to withdraw to Coruscant. We disarmed ourselves of our fleets, because we didn’t want to be seen as a threat. Then we became little more than another enforcement arm of the Republic, acting as little better than a galactic policing force. I think it was short sighted and foolish, and it would have been better to isolate ourselves somewhere on the outer rim, away from the mess of politics that is Coruscant.”

  Master Windu nodded as we turned a corner, heading towards the training rooms. “That’s pretty accurate. We’ve allowed most of our Order to become politicians and paper pushers. And while the physical exercise and training requirements are still there, many shirk their duties to keep themselves ready for battle in favor of what they see as more important. Worse, those who have taken on more political roles have… picked up some bad habits. They treat the Order like they do the Senate, where they feel they have to argue, scheme, peddle influence, and trade favors in order to get anything done—and there are enough of them that their mentality has started to infect the rest of the Temple. After all, if you’re passed up for promotion, but you see that another Padawan who was friendly with and did a few favors for a certain Master wasn’t, or if you see that others who are friendly and do favors for those Masters always seem to get the best assignments, extra or special training, or some other benefit then it’s only natural that you’ll learn that if you want those things for yourself then the easiest thing to do is play along.”

  “It’s corruption.” I didn’t need the Force to know we were both thinking of Master Mundi as one of those career politicians, and potentially one of the corrupt Jedi he was speaking of.

  “Absolutely.” He glanced at me from the corner of his eye and continued, “When you first arrived, and over your first few months settling in, I thought you had either picked up that game too quickly, or Dooku had found a natural. The way you speak and comport yourself doesn’t dispel that notion.”

  I nodded. That was a fair assessment. A long history of office work in Japan and then later, a career in the military had taught me to act in certain ways and that was an ingrained habit at this point. “Understandable.”

  “There you go proving my point,” he chuckled. “But actions speak louder than words. I began to have my suspicions about your true character after Dathomir. This Mandalore/Serenno fiasco confirms it.”

  “Oh?” I asked, as he turned and entered a training room, the door sliding closed behind us. “What have you learned?”

  Master Windu moved to the center of the room and turned around, drawing his lightsaber. He gestured and I moved to stand across from him, drawing my own and settling into the opening stance for Form II as Master Windu slid into the opening stance for Form IV. His saber ignited, burning purple light thrumming as he held the blade ready.

  My Force sense screamed danger and I realized he wasn’t using any kind of training or low-power mode—that thing would maim or kill if it hit. And yet, the only emotions I sensed from him were determination and curiosity.

  My heart pounded in my chest and I flicked my saber on, the white-silver blade leveled and ready—though mine was in training mode. A smile pulled at my lips.

  “You had a fight with my old Padawan when I sent her to teach what I thought was an unruly student a lesson. I want to see what all the fuss was about.”

  I nodded, my feet sliding across the floor as I slowly began to circle, Master Windu matching my movements. This was a Master—a rare opportunity to spar someone at the same level as Master Dooku, who specialized in another style. Moreover, having fought his former Padawan, I knew the style to be very aggressive. The man had height, reach, and mass on me physically, and decades of experience. My only advantages were those I’d had in the War—my smaller stature making me a smaller target, potentially an advantage in speed, and a prodigious degree of control and power for my apparent age—and a few tricks up my sleeve that he might not have seen before.

  Deciding to make the first move, I resolved to go for a full blitzkrieg. Drawing things out would only be in Master Windu’s favor and, as much as I wanted to learn from a Master… I really wanted to win, even if the chances of doing so were slim.

  I moved, rushing forward, at the same time I projected my emotions similarly to how I had on Mandalore. I hadn’t just been practicing my lightsaber forms in public. No, I’d been using the crowd around me to learn how to manipulate emotions more subtly than trying to hammer someone down with fear. In this case, I projected my own excitement, hoping to give the sense that youth and enthusiasm had overcome common sense.

  To my surprise, it worked, as I felt a brief flash of disappointment from Master Windu—as though he expected better than a mad charge straight at the enemy. His blade came in to parry mine, slapping it off course, and I spun with the motion, diving low and aiming for his knees. He leapt over the blade and I pushed off the floor, sending myself out of the reach of his reprisal strike.

  I came at him hard and fast as the Master fought back harder, every time his saber connected with mine rattling my bones and forcing me back, only to come rushing back in—keeping the fight too close to truly take advantage of his longer reach. I couldn’t keep this up for long at this rate—eventually, I’d miss a dodge or a parry, or his advantages would win out in a battle of attrition. That was okay though—I only needed to establish a rhythm to lure him into thinking he had me figured out, then break it.

  My moment came only a few exchanges later, when I slid off his blade and hit the floor in a roll. Launching myself at him again as I had every time we’d done this, I waited until the last second… then engaged my flight formula, abruptly accelerating at the same time a hexagonal shield intercepted his attempted parry. I swung out in a decapitation strike, intending to swing and catch his neck and fly past like I had with his student.

  For just a second, Master Windu radiated surprise, then nothing as apparently reflex took over and he responded without thinking.

  There was a brief flash of danger in the Force and a sudden burst of Force from Master Windu… then my shield shattered and I found myself thrown across the room. I recovered mid-flight and flipped around, landing standing on the wall, where I stuck for just a moment as we observed each other. Letting go of the flight formula, I dropped to the floor.

  “Thank you for the lesson, Master Windu,” I bowed, shutting off my lightsaber as he did likewise. “Was that Shatterpoint?”

  The spar seemed to be over. It had ended in his favor, as I thought it would, but I couldn’t help feeling a little proud that I’d surprised him into using his trump card. That was a victory in its own way.

  “It was,” he nodded, clipping his lightsaber to his belt as I did the same. “So, that EVA mission. You didn’t use a thruster pack.”

  I shook my head, stretching and working out the soreness in my arms and legs from the abrupt workout. “I did not.”

  “You can fly.”

  I grinned. “Not for long yet, but eventually.”

  “Flight, that shield, and you’ve got some kind of Force blade technique.”

  Nodding, I held out a finger and pointed at the ground, before drawing a line in the floor with a mage blade—parting the padding beneath my feet and the durasteel beneath that like butter. “I have a few others as well,” I admitted, holding out a hand and creating an illusion briefly, before casting my optical camouflage formula, then dropping it.

  Frowning, he asked, “So what are you? An ancient Force user who reincarnated?”

  I considered for a moment, before shrugging. “Something like that,” I agreed. I couldn’t exactly explain that a being claiming to be big-G God had thrown my dying soul out of his universe in a fit of childish pique after I died, because he lost a bet. “Masters Dooku, Qui-Gon, and Dyas said it happened from time to time.”

  “It does,” Master Windu nodded. “You were a soldier, weren’t you?”

  “I was a normal, peace-loving individual from a nation who hadn’t seen war in nearly a century before dying the first time. The second time, I was a child soldier in a war fought with magic. I wasn’t much older than I am now when I enlisted, with the idea of rising through the ranks quickly to a position in the rear. That didn’t happen. As it turns out, the incompetent tend to get promoted off the field and away from where they can do the most direct harm, while the most competent get thrown back into the meat grinder time and time again. By the time of my death, I was an ace of aces multiple times over and at the very top of the list of people the enemy wanted dead. Until they eventually got fed up and dropped a nuclear weapon on my city, while I was in it.”

  Frowning, I crossed my arms over my chest as my thoughts turned back to that day. “I lost everyone. Comrades I had fought side by side with for years. Friends. The person I cared for most.” Looking up, I met his eyes and continued, “And when I woke up as a baby again, I was understandably upset. Unfortunately, I wasn’t a simple human this time, but part of a race who sense emotions naturally. So when my mother brought her child home and that child woke up feeling the loss of her friends, the frustration, anger, and humiliation of being on the losing end of a war and the pointlessness of it all… she panicked and gave me up. And before you ask, no, I don’t blame her. I tracked her down and spoke with her a few years ago. She apologized and seemed happy that I was doing well, but there’s no connection there.”

  “I should tell the Council,” Master Windu said as he considered me.

  “Would that make them more or less likely to view me as some sort of threat?” I asked, knowing that we both knew the answer.

  “You know Mundi was one move away from trying to kill you.”

  “I’m aware,” I nodded. “In a chamber full of Jedi Masters, I took a calculated risk turning my back to him. If he had struck, I had a shield formula ready to intercept whatever attack he threw at me. Hopefully one of the other Masters would intervene in the brief second or two that would have bought.”

  “And if they didn’t?” he asked.

  I smiled. For some reason, his hand briefly twitched towards his lightsaber before he stilled it. “Then I imagine we would be having a very different conversation.”

  He was silent for a few moments before nodding. “I’ll speak with Master Yoda about it, but this should probably be kept from the wider Council. It would only push Mundi to do something rash. There’s one thing I don’t understand, though.”

  “Hm?”

  “You’re meticulous. Even in that brief spar, you went in with a plan, trying to lure me into a false sense of security right from the beginning in order to spring a trap.”

  “Yes,” I confirmed with a nod.

  “By comparison, your fight with the Death Watch was more erratic. What changed?”

  I sighed, closing my eyes and reaching up to pinch the bridge of my nose. “Yes. I know a few medical techniques I’ve managed to get working. One of those is a painkiller, the other is a combat stimulant—though I tend to use them in conjunction.” The man sent me a look that questioned my sanity, incredulity rolling off of him briefly, followed by something somewhere between disappointment and anger. Still, I continued. “It was tested and approved as safe for use by aerial mages such as myself. However, after reviewing my own performance and actions while under its influence, I have determined that might not be the case and will be refraining from using it in the future unless the situation is absolutely dire—with a preference to retreat before it comes to that.”

  At least, that was the most plausible story I had to come up with why I wouldn’t be using it going forward. After all, I couldn’t just come out and admit that the Sith holocron I’d stolen from the vault had warned me against it.

  “Do you have any idea what mind-altering substances can do to a Force user, or those around them?” Master Windu asked, his tone low and angry as he glowered.

  “I do now. I’ve done some research since coming back from Serenno to see if anything like it had happened in the past. The results are almost universally bad.” Everything from unintentional usage of the Force, to going into a fugue and killing everyone around them, to projecting their souls outside of their bodies only to either get lost and die or get snapped up and eaten by who knew what kind of weirdness lurked in hyperspace. I wasn’t sure that actually applied to the formula I was using since it didn’t alter my mental state that much, but… it was an unnecessary risk. One I would be weighing heavily against the need to use the formula if it arose in the future. “As I said, now that I know, I won’t be repeating the mistake.”

  He studied me for several silent moments before eventually nodding. “See that you don’t.” When I nodded, he continued, “Dooku will be leaving with you for Serenno soon. I’d advise staying away from the Temple for a while, and if you have to return, avoid Mundi.”

  “I will,” I agreed, and the man uncrossed his arms and left the room with only a nod. I left a moment later, leaving the Temple for the spaceport and my ship.