LIV: Desires
"This was a total and complete show of incompetence and failure on my part," Thrawn said, after a long, long silence. The silence followed a long, long hour of action, including several different mutiny attempts. He hadn't said anything to presage this, anything to warn Palleon at the cast of thought his mind had taken him down. He spoke only to reveal, because he doubted Palleon could assuage his ennui.
"Sir, it was my fault. I was the one who suggested that, despite your reservations, you needed the Xzalli."
"No," Thrawn shook his head. "Imagine if I left them behind for Master Luminara Unduli to recruit? They would have arrived in force. This would have been better than the sudden betrayal, but the real failing was my unwillingness to learn. I created a plan in which a half-dozen different actors that I knew nothing about had to play along with. I am new to this part of the galaxy, and… I don't know their art, I struggle at times with Basic, let alone the many languages of this part of the galaxy. I knew the material conditions, but you know that I value the facts of the various species and the way my enemies think."
"Yes, sir, that's… true," Palleon said, frowning. "So what… what went wrong, besides that?"
"My plan involved doing three impossible things at once. I can do one: the impossible is often an absurd idea. But all three? The plan to forge pirates into an effective harassing force was solid. In fact, it was in some ways deeply traditional. Such a plan could have involved negotiating trade routes with Jabba the Hutt, and striking from multiple directions in close coordination with plans along the front to create weak-spots." Thrawn sighed. "I can think of a dozen plans. As well, the Rishi Maze could have been unified, given time, and used as a tool to open up a new front or achieve important objectives. Finally, fomenting rebellion among the Kaminoans could have been done more successfully given time and Coalition I could have even done all three, within perhaps a year or two. Raiding with the pirates, but using them as a base to unify the Maze, and continuing to foment dissent on Kamino."
A long, long, long bitter pause. "Instead I tried to do all of that in two months. I do not know if, after this failure, whether I will be alive within the month. Palpatine is not a forgiving man."
"Sir, your plan for the front was brilliant, and even this plan was simply… hasty. I know you're not used to the Republic, but I doubt that Palpatine would ignore that. He… he can't be happy, this is a failure." Palleon shook his head, and reached his hand out, hesitantly. "But… I know you have the ability to learn and grow from your mistakes, sir."
Thrawn nodded, slowly. Perhaps he'd spoken to be comforted by Palleon, but the truth remained: despite a few promising signs, and a few minor coups, the attack was a complete failure.
*******
The so-called liberator of Kamino marched up to the cell door, and almost hesitated. Jordyan Bell was tired and weary: it had been a very long few days. And this was going to be a long, long conversation. The clone at the door opened it.
"She's waiting in there, sir."
"Thanks, Hyber," Bell said, after an embarrassing moment trying to remember his name. He'd tried to memorize the names of all the guards in this area, but it had slipped him. He didn't have his Padawan's natural faculty with socialization. He'd learned how to remember hundreds, even thousands of names by rote, and by decades of practice at navigating the complicated shores of the galaxy's hundred thousand cultures.
"Are you sure you don't need an honor guard? It would intimidate her, sir."
"No thank you. I want to encourage her to talk, not lie to save herself," Bell said. He suspected this wasn't true: if Kala Su had anything in the way of survival instincts, then he was reading the currents of the Force completely wrong. He'd meditated on it, and listened with as much fervor as a hardened traditionalist, some of whom didn't pick their noses without at least one hour of meditation as to the will of the living Force in such a matter.
Bell, who had always had a careful, sure grasp of the Force, had listened to the Force in action, had let it flow through him, and gone from there. Of course, by the standards of most of the rest of the galaxy, he still mediated ridiculously often.
The door opened, and there was Kala Su, in grey prison garb. She was hunched over, her long frame looking like a comma. Jordyan Bell was there to pronounce the sentence down to its period.
"You should turn off the holocams, please. This would best be not recorded," Kala Su said, her voice almost a whisper as Bell stepped forward. The room was all white, the table in front of Kala Su black, standing out against it. Compared to it, the worn Jedi Master was a splash of color, even if it was all greys, browns, blacks, whites, and the silver-grey of his lightsaber.
"Why should I?"
"It is not me I'm sparing by doing so," Kala Su said. "There are things I must say."
Bell hesitated, and gestured. "You can turn it off. She's no threat to me."
After a long moment of staring at where the invisible camera--in the wall, of course--was, he turned back. "You set them up. This whole 'revolution' was your doing."
"No, there really was a movement towards revolution. I merely encouraged it. If they were all loyal citizens, content to contest you in elections or by disobedience. I must unfortunately inform you that Arso To wasn't even remotely involved. He suspected a coup, and spent considerable time and resources trying to dissuade people."
Bell didn't allow any disappointment to show, but Arso To had been an annoyance since their first meeting. But he wasn't going to persecute those innocent of… well, not of a crime, since the whole government of Kamino was a crime against most of its people, but innocent of treason.
"Ah. So, is this your attempt to claim that the list that was provided is accurate?"
"Yes. It was, in every particular. I know a lot about you, Jordyan Bell. Even though you're only a revolutionary as a second hobby after freeing slaves, though perhaps that's started to change--"
In a sense it had. He didn't need to merely free the slaves being exported from some powerful slaver state outside of the Republic, or work on changing a government within the Republic, when the opportunity arose…
In theory, he had the power to change everything. In practice, he felt like he was bumping up against so many limits. "Even though," Bell continued, "I've taken different stands?"
"Revolutionaries the galaxy over have a good opinion of you. There's an entire underground that speaks by word of mouth, and disagrees on more than they agree, and yet they agree that you're a good ally. You support revolutions even when it's not simple, and Kamino isn't simple. There's no aristocracy, there's no monarch to depose, there's no powerful entirely hereditary 'oligarchy' and Kaminoan society doesn't even truly have money--"
"Though the whole society is set up to achieve profits from outside," Bell pointed out.
"Even so," Kala Su said. Bell heard the shrug in her voice. "I was surprised and disheartened when I heard that you'd sworn to do nothing at all to challenge Kaminoan caste-government. It was then that I knew I couldn't merely foil or thwart the rebellion as it happened, but needed it to begin, so that you'd have a reason to act."
Bell was furious, and truth be told, a little heartbroken. "I was lying, Kala Su! Master Tamarik was examining the condition of the workers! Of course I'd lie to Arso To. When at any point had he done anything to earn honesty? Jedi aren't peace officers in a bad holovid: we aren't required to tell the truth. And for this, sentients died! You understand that, right? The factories of Kamino were devastated, the civilian casualties, while not substantial, were… certainly too high, and Thrawn got away with several prominent geneticists."
"I suspect he only escaped with agricultural geneticists, however," Kala Su said, drily. "A definite advantage over the years in warfare if properly used… but Palpatine is a tyrant in the old school, is he not?"
Jordyan Bell wasn't fooled. He felt the cracks. "So, Scout was a necessary risk?"
"She was safe, my troops were given the understanding not to harm any Jedi, Scout included, and she was in her room the whole time," Kala Su insisted. At last, she was revealing the crashing waves of her emotions.
Bell, though. Bell was the rock. "She escaped, as you should have guessed she would. She escaped and led troops to fight the enemy."
"Is… she alive?" Kala Su asked, regaining her poise, at least outwardly.
"It truly isn't a crime to care for others," Bell said, softly, stepping closer to the table.
"And yet you Jedi… have you told Nima that you love her as one does a daughter? Has she told you that she loves you as I must imagine one would love a father in a healthy family?" Kala Su tilted her head. "Of course, I speak from secondhand experience. Love was forbidden among my people in a way that makes Jedi prohibitions on attachment seem moderate."
"It… is for the best if we're not father and daughter. I care about Nima Tyruti," Bell confessed, suddenly glad that the holocams were off. "But I am not her father, and it's better that way."
He remembered staring down at the grub, reading the note, frowning and thinking that he'd been too quiet for years, that he'd tried to be almost-respectable, to work within the Jedi Order's systems and rules. Perhaps it was time to stop, perhaps he could save her.
He had not spoken to Minnui Dean in two years.
"Perhaps. I can't speak to this, right now. What I can speak to is the incompleteness of what you did. There are still plenty of powerful grey-eyed leaders present. And they have the room to bribe the yellow-eyed technicians to hold the line." Bell said it slowly, trying to get it across to Kala Su that millions would suffer for years, if not decades, despite all her efforts.
He was constrained as well as to what he could do, in a way he wouldn't have been if she'd let him in on the plan. "The only minor advantage is that the disruption to the factory machinery, as bad as it is, gives the mechanics and true experts some leverage. But whatever happens will be a massive compromise. Hundreds died, my Padawan was risked, and… what you did will help, but it will
not end the problem."
Kala Su swallowed and said, "Based on what I knew, I wouldn't have done anything differently. This makes the regret I feel meaningless without punishment. At the very least, there will be a line a thousand deep for the execution chambers, and I shall be first."
"If we execute, rather than imprison off-planet," Bell said. "We're not going to give up the fight, but… we need the expertise and experience if we're going to use the geneticists to help the clones. The reputation of the Jedi… or at least myself, with the clones of Kamino is cemented, but we have to fight for them too."
"You're right," Kala Su said. "I'd… hoped it would do more than that. It's still a change, and I'd still do it again, more or less." Kala Su looked almost desperate now. Bell knew he had to do more than this, that what she'd done was…
"You're free to believe that. I'm free to hate you for it," Bell said. "Still, we have most of the Kamionan geneticists, and with the Xzalli and Clones both working in close cooperation with Kaminoan expertise…"
"We might learn some common decency by accident?" Kala Su asked, straightening up a little, voice empty of emotion but eyes filled with bitter uncertainty.
"Perhaps. We've saved the clones, we've built a foundation." Bell shook his head. "You could have done worse. You could have done far better. A lot of innocents have died, and I cannot save you."
Kala Su didn't respond, but he knew her answer.
"I do have one more question," Bell said.
"I have one myself: please, can you not tell anyone?" Kala Su said. "I don't want Scout to know."
"That has to do with my question. Why didn't you simply turn on them, throw yourself on our mercy? Why did you go down as a villain?"
"It was most logical. If I switched sides, it might be publicly blamed on my grudges against the innocent," Kala Su stated, slowly.
"So it wasn't out of a desire to punish yourself?" Bell asked, at last.
Kala Su didn't wince. But he felt the truth. "Jordyan Bell, why would you care?"
"It's my job. I didn't come here to ask questions, though some of the answers helped. I came here because I'm a Jedi, and it's my job to help those in need."
"I'm not a victim. You have a long, long list of them."
"I think that Kamino eats its own," Bell said, slowly. "And twists those who survive."
"Can I disagree?" Kala Su asked.
"You should be able to, on any free planet. So
can you? I don't know yet."
"We dance around our words."
"You do, I've been pretty straightforward." Bell shook his head, and turned. "You think that mercy will destroy you, in the wrong way. That you won't suffer if you are redeemed: I think just the opposite, that wishing for destruction is a form of surrender."
"Bell, I'm tired," Kala Su said, very, very slowly. "You can question me for the rest of my life. But if the conditions are not there for you to achieve your objective…"
Jordyan Bell, revolutionary, knew just what she meant. He shook his head. "Kala Su, consider it. The trials will take months. Perhaps years. We will be thorough."
"I have thought too long, and acted too briefly," Kala Su said.
One of them had said too much, had replaced feelings with rhetoric; one of them had felt too much, had let passions overwhelm a careful understanding of the situation.
Bell was not
entirely sure which of them had done which. "Perhaps." Jordyan turned back to the door. "Have a good day."
Out the door, out the building, and soon enough out of the planet.
"You may turn on the holocam again," Bell said, when he left.
******
The party was not all that large, but it was in a hall designed for such gatherings, against which the clone figures, the relatively few loyal Kaminoan administrators who were currently bearing the burden of running all of Kamino while elections were set up. They were also busy spreading bribes to the yellow-eyed Kaminoans, the technicians, so that both of them could combine to weaken any drive to give the average Kaminoan rights. In some places they'd succeed, in others they'd fail. Nima didn't have to be able to see the future to be able to guess that much.
Besides an attempt by the Jedi to understand the new political landscape, and meet with the dozen-eyed, grey Xzalli who remained behind while most of their fleet left to defend their borders, it was also a going away party. There were tables here and there, with plates of food set on each, carefully, for anyone to reach and pick up. Each table had a different half-meal, in the Ehutavaz style, in which someone was expected to carefully pick out a meal. The leftovers would be used as well, following Xzalli custom that food was never to be wasted.
If it could not be eaten then, then later; if not later, then used as fertilizer.
She stayed by her Master's side. He'd been quiet, this past day. Thoughtful. But now he smiled and laughed and talked with the Xzalli ambassadors as he arrived. Nima glanced over at the food, but she knew that for the moment she wanted to stick close to her Master.
He'd almost died, and so had Nima. She needed to keep as close to him as she could. When he broke off with them he said, "I know you're hungry, Nima, but I need to make my apologies, first. I've assumed things I shouldn't about someone here, and I've been waiting for my chance." He glanced over at Master Luminara Unduli.
He strode over to her as she balanced a small plate of what looked to be some form of hash, with a berry sauce of some kind carefully applied over it. "Master Unduli, you are hard to get a hold of."
"Sorry, there's been a lot I've had to deal with," she said, glancing over at the Xzalli, but clearly thinking of all the other factions she'd had to wrangle. Some of them were still above Kamino, but most had returned. Rishi Maze was an entire dwarf galaxy, with its own concerns.
"It's made apologizing difficult. Over the last month I'd almost convinced myself, against any sense, that you had not had a vision at all in the Force," Jordyan Bell said, wincing at his own words. "Only to find that not only has the Force guided you here, but that without your efforts, this battle would have gone far worse."
Bell, who looked away for an embarrassed moment, didn't see the shame that briefly flashed across Luminara's face. It wasn't tangible in the Force, she was hiding it there, but Nima saw it anyways.
"Please, you don't need to apologize. I did little to assuage your worries," Luminara said, with a wave of her hand. "I… knew I had to do what I did, but the guidance of the Force is hardly a roadmap, all the time."
Bell nodded. "I understand. I'm accused sometimes of meditating too little, and acting too much. It was a pleasure to work with you, Master Unduli."
"And you, as well." Luminara was finally smiling, for all that it was a tremulous, uncertain smile to Nima's eyes. Either Bell wasn't paying attention, or Nima was more in tune with what Luminara Unduli was really feeling.
As Bell turned away, Nima saw that there were others already approaching, including several clones and Master Oppo Rancisis. The Thispiasian Jedi slithered along, mind focused.
"Bell, I need to apologize to you."
Bell blinked. "Well, if this isn't the day for apologies. What do you have to apologize for?"
"I doubted you, and your plan. More than that, I feel as if I've doubted your dedication to the Jedi path. What you did with the Xzalli was to fight as a Jedi, and not just a General, and that's something that many… incorrect sources told me. I had not entirely believed them. I hope our collaboration for the strategic plans was helpful."
"It was," Bell finally said.
"But I clearly was wrong. It was misfortune that we hadn't gotten to work together earlier," Rancisis said.
The clones were watching this exchange themselves, and Nima wondered if they understood the depth of division that existed within the Jedi High Council. If Nima had learned anything from her presence by Master Bell's side, it was that the divisions were real.
"It was. I will meditate on this," Bell said, perhaps a little cheekily.
Rancisis nodded, apparently having decided to take Jordyan Bell at his word. "Very well. Now, I truly must discuss some other matters."
He slithered away, and Bell shared a glance with Unduli.
"I wonder," he said under his breath, once Rancisis was out of the way, "How hard of a realization that was to come to."
Nima choked back a very inappropriate laugh. This was a Jedi Master they were talking about, and a very wise one indeed. Nima could feel a few people frowning, and certainly it was not magnanimous of Bell by any stretch of the imagination. Luminara herself shook her head, and Nima could imagine the thought:
accept your victories graciously, Bell.
(Nima understood Bell's annoyance, and triumph, but for all she found it amusing, she honestly probably agreed more with Luminara on this matter… if she'd read the Jedi Master's reaction right.)
"Oh, and Nima. I release you," Bell said, his smile fading as he shifted gears. "You can go and talk to everyone else. You're a growing young adult."
Nima flushed at the words, but made her way towards the tables anyways.
The first of them was a sort of stew with seaweed, the bowl garnished with what looked to be some sort of spiced substance around the rim. It smelled delicious, though, and she picked it up, along with a spoon. She was supposed to only take two, but she'd worked out before she came here, trying to let off nervous energy that seemed to have built up over a long time. She knew that at least a little bit of it was the renewed training. At her belt, for the first time in months comfortably, were her lightsabers and her Shuhudaku dagger.
Then she felt Zig Nal's presence. He was walking towards the table, where on the other side, there was a different dishes. The two dishes on each table didn't have to be paired, and she read before the party that it was often thought of as un-adventuresome to eat both sides of a table. On the other side were what looked like some sort of fishcake, glazed with something, and with three or four dollops of different colored sauces along the side.
Zig Nal picked up the plate, and a fork, and looked over at Nima. The Nautolan's tendrils were bound, rather more fashionably than she thought Zig Nal would have ever thought of on his own. Even she mostly just knew fashion third-hand, as a diplomatic function. "Oh Nima. I've already said thank you, but… thank you."
Nima smiled. "No worries." She decided to change the subject as fast as possible, pointing to the food. "What sort of dish is that? It looks…"
"Sweet? Yes, it is. Sweet-fish cakes, and then the sauces, you see?" Zig Nal indicated, cutting off some with a fork and then dipping it into a blueish-white sauce. "A very milky sort of sauce. Not sure what it is. But then this? This looks like berries." He takes another piece of the fish, and takes a bite. "Hm, no. I'm not sure what this is."
"Hmm, I'd guess some sort of wine sauce?" Scout said, making Zig Nal jump. Nima, who had felt her coming, just turned.
"Wine sauce? Am I allowed to have it?" Zig Nal asked, almost tossing the plate down in a panic.
"It should be mostly cooked off, just a bit of the flavor? I snuck into the kitchens, a little while ago, to see what they were all making."
"Oh… right. Of course. I knew that," Zig Nal said, trying against all reason to adopt his 'taciturn mystic' pose. "And of course, it does not matter, for all things of the flesh are nothing against--"
Scout poked him in the shoulder. "You don't need to be so dramatic." Then she paused, frowned and said. "I was thirteen once, too."
Zig Nal gave a whine of outrage that was, thankfully, not very strongly felt.
"Are you one to talk, though?" Nima asked. "Your entire entry in the battle was pretty flashy."
He tried the sauce, looking as if he was about to spit it out, before nodding. "It's okay."
"No, maybe I'm not, but what about you, Nima? Flying around on the winds of a storm, dressed in an outfit reminiscent of an ancient Force tradition… I hate to say it, Nima, but you're even more thirteen than Zig Nal."
A few months ago, she would have protested that she was never going to be thirteen again. But now she just chuckled. "Maybe, maybe, but what about our little pact. We watched a holovid show and swore, you, me, and Ahsoka, to save the galaxy, to win the war and win the peace. Well, the war hasn't even ended, and another war started."
Scout shook her head. "You heard, right? The Coalition is apparently gonna stay out of the whole Confederate Civil War, except to guard against incursions."
"I'm not going to stop trying," Nima insisted. "And you were really brave during the fight. I think you'll be a great Jedi Knight."
"When I get there. I'm going to be going back with the wounded to the Temple, with my… supposedly ex Master? Which makes three." She shrugged, clearly trying to pretend she wasn't bothered, her emotions kept carefully regulated, her tone studiedly light.
"Right, right. What about the wall painting?" Nima asked, remembering it.
"IThere were apparently procedures in place to tear out the wall and move the whole thing, and also create a digital copy," Scout said, frowning.
"Who'd do that? Isn't that expensive?" Zig Nal asked. "Also, what wall painting?"
"Kala Su did," Scout said. "And she's apparently behind the order not to kill any Jedi, and the attempt to get me to stay in my room." Scout frowned, thoughts darkening. "I don't get why she'd do all that, but then be part of an anti-Jedi revolt? Anti-change?"
"People can be many things at once," Nima said, though she herself was equally hurt, stung by the decision. "We also don't know everything. Master Bell had a meeting with her, and he won't tell me what was said."
She thought of Anakin, she thought of Barriss, and wondered which Kala Su was more like. Anakin had been kind to her, but nothing could make her forgive his crimes. She'd killed fewer innocents than Anakin had even before he fell, most likely. But she'd also fought against people trying to make it better.
"Are you going to stare mournfully out into space, or are you gonna try your soup?" Scout asked, grinning a little manically. "They can be, I've learned that very well. I don't know what to think about her, and that's fine. But what do you think about the soup?"
Nima spooned a small bit of the green-red soup into her mouth, and made a face. The first thing she tasted was seaweed, which wasn't so bad, but then came the fish meat, which felt sour and strange, and the base itself was the wrong sort of bitter. Bitter could be good, when it was combined with an earthiness, as in some mushrooms. But on its own, it bit into her taste buds like a snapping turtle, and didn't let go, even as the spices--rich and sweet and hot and strange--flooded her mouth, the last flavor to hit her taste buds before the sip was through.
"Oh, that bad?"
"It's an acquired taste," Nima guessed, her nose wrinkled up as she finally finished tasting it. "Not mine. It could also have to do with species, of course." A lot of one's sense of taste had to do with socialization, sure, but species also determined what tasted good or not, too. "So obviously, you should try it, Scout!" Nima offered the bowl, gesturing to one of the other spoons, since using the same spoon would be gross. But it was soup, so it wasn't as if she'd ruined the rest of it.
"This is a trick," Scout said. "But maybe I'm easily tricked. Let me try." Nima was happy to hand the bowl over.
"It really could be a matter of taste. There's a lot of places in this galaxy, with a lot of foodways… and norms," Nima said.
Scout took a small sip and coughed. "Or maybe some things, wherever they're from, are just bad. By the Force!" She kept on coughing. "That's… even worse than you said."
"Are you sure? I've seen kinds of soups like that, and--" Zig Nal grabbed another spoon and took his own taste. "Oh, that's it. They did the flavors wrong. There's none of the sweet fishiness to make it work." He shook his head. "Uh, not that I care about food, because--"
"It's fine, it's fine," Nima said. "Bell made sure this wasn't spending too much just on a party."
"Maybe he stinted too much, if the dish doesn't work." Scout rolled her eyes.
"There are other dishes, and the fish cakes aren't bad, are they?" Nima asked. "It's a big buffet, and there are plenty of dishes in the sea."
"I feel as if this conversation is not about its topic, or is in some way deep," a blue-eyed Kaminoan said. "But I do wish to reach this table."
"Oh, sorry!" Scout said, and they moved out of the way.
The Kaminoan worker, who had to be some sort of organizer if they were at such a party, reached towards the soup.
"I would advise against it," Zig Nal said. "It's not quite done right."
"Oh, I just saw, a lot of the other Kaminoans were taking it. Especially the grey-eyed ones." The Kaminoan narrowed their eyes, frowning. "I've been told they have a different taste than most, and it has been fashionable to sup upon a 'purer' soup. So is this lacking the sweetness, or--"
"Yes, exactly," Zig Nal said, nodding eagerly.
"Then I suppose I won't partake, but I think most of the others have tried it. Oh, while I know who you are all, I haven't introduced myself. Ral To, he/him, a member of a now-legal union."
"What others?" Nima asked.
"Most of the workers Bell invited. Everyone wants to be like the administrators, eat like them, drink like them," Ral To said, and something like doubt visibly crossed his face, when most Kaminoans kept it hidden (but obvious to a Jedi.) "But there's no accounting for the taste of such 'rarified' beings. Thank you for the advice, and the lesson."
Nima was mostly just confused, as they stepped away. Then she realized something. "Wait, Scout, what about your training?"
"I've been deemed to pass. I'll have to make up the rest later," Scout admitted.
"So, when you go back to the Temple, what are you going to do after that?"
"I'll figure it out," Scout said. "You don't have to worry about me Nima."
"I do anyway, because that's what friends do. But friends also trust," Nima confessed. "So, what do you say we see what else these tables have to offer."
"Sure, that sounds good, Nima."
The three of them, Zig Nal splitting off every so often, and eventually joined by others as time passed, enjoyed the party as best they could. They'd survived, all of them, and more than that, they'd won.
Raise a glass to the three of them! Soon enough they'd be out in the galaxy, trying to do it again.
******
The trip back to Ryloth was quiet, all the way until the last leg. Bell called her to his room, with a grim smile, and she came expecting that it'd be a conversation that they'd been holding off. He'd been kind, but hurt, keeping near her but letting her control the flow of the conversation. He felt guilty, Nima understood, for not keeping her safe. She'd been intended to stack behind, out of the way of trouble, barring the entire section collapsing. Except, of course, then the revolt had come.
He didn't feel guilty, or doubtful, when she stepped into the small, mostly barren room. No, he felt full of energy and passion in a way that told Nima that she was going to probably hear a speech, on top of conversation.
"So, I've been thinking, and I did get in contact with a few Jedi. You've expressed an interest in hands-on diplomatic work, before."
"I have," Nima admitted. "Are you temporarily giving me away?" It wasn't that uncommon for a Padawan to go with another Master for a mission or two, of events tore them apart, or there was something a Jedi Master couldn't teach on their own.
"Something like that. It'll be months, though," Bell said. "I have missions and business I need to attend to that can't be done with a Padawan. Zygeria, for one, will take a lot of work to unravel their slave trade for good. Every time we've come in and stopped it, it's started up again within a generation, because there's only so much the Republic can do." He shook his head. "But I expect the means that are employed will lead to terrorism, bombing, assassinations in the night. But it must be done. It'd honestly be safer to send you into battle at the head of an army than let you go with me there."
Nima shuddered. She'd be a target, wherever she went, for those seeking to harm Jordyan Bell. Some of them would care about trying to use her to change his decisions, but others just wouldn't care. It'd always be true, but in the middle of… well, what he described, it'd be far, far worse. "I understand."
"But that's not the only thing I have to do. How much do you know about the overall situation of the revolution? I know you've kept up with the holonews, but they're often unclear." Bell shook his head.
"I think we… won? That's what it sounds like?" She remembered, at least, reading about two famous victories, including one by a 'Clone General' named Afer.
"We were driven back, but not nearly as far as we might have been. If Kamino had collapsed, it would have ended even worse, but Commodore Ackbar won an important victory on the 'north' part of the line of naval and planetary attacks, and after Knight Hars Soela died on Wali, the second-in-command took over and, as you might have read, won an impressive victory. Without Wali, unimportant except in astrogeography, and without Ackbar's victory, we would have had to abandon a dozen planets out of fear that we'd be cut off and besieged." Bell waved a hand. "It was a successful blow that was meant to hit far harder. But there's a larger war than that, and I forgot that when trying to be a Jedi and a General, rather than a Jedi and a Revolutionary. On Kamino, some clones in favor of civilian life have agreed to be civilian contractors: on Kamino something new is forming, however imperfectly. But Kamino is not the galaxy, and it cannot be. The shape of the revolution depends on our actions now." He narrowed his eyes, his voice still low and polite, but pitched as if he was about to give a speech. "Do we have an Alderaanian revolution, polite and supportive most of all of constitutional monarchies?"
"It'd be better than some of the dictatorships you've spoken of, sending Senators all the same as they slaughter tens of thousands, so long as they're planetary citizens," Nima said. She'd heard part of this before.
"Yes, but we have a choice before us. You do too, in a way, since it's your world you'll be building, if we win this war. We could have a Rylothean, or Saleucami, or even Trade Federation Revolution, or we could have an Alderaanean or Naboo Revolution, but better than that, we could have a Cato Neimoidian Revolution, a Zeltese Revolution, a Clone Revolution, a Xzalli Revolution, or even a Terr'Skiar Revolution! In truth, we are having
all of them at once, Nima."
Nima understood: the Coalition was just that, a Coalition, a bunch of different forces working together because of a common enemy and a few common principles. "So… you want to make sure that what happens fits more what you think would be best?"
"Yes. But the strength and unity of this revolution are important. I will be fighting for it wherever I can, no matter the risks, and I will advise the same. It's not enough to speak in the legislature on occasion and fight a battle on occasion. I am a skilled General, yes, but there are other things I am as well. And you aren't a General at all, Nima, or even a commander, and you shouldn't try to be. Learn to be a diplomat, and I'll remember how to be a revolutionary, and when we meet again, for more missions, we can teach each other. There are times you'll have to fight, and I could be more… diplomatic in how I respond to doubters."
Nima nodded, since this was in fact an understatement. He'd spent decades on the outside. "I think you're more persuasive than you think, Master."
"It's kind of you to say it."
"It's also the truth," Nima insisted, stepping forward and hugging him. "I know we're not parting now, but I really will miss you, Master Bell." Her eyes felt inexplicably wet.
"I'll send messages when I can, I'll be around," Bell insisted, but he hugged her back, tightly and fiercely, anyways.
It was a lot to take in, a lot to deal with.
******
When they arrived in Ryloth's solar system, Nima was in the middle of reading up on the diplomatic handbook that the Coalition had thrown together. She was instantly jolted out of it by a feeling, a sensation tugging at her heart.
Mom. And her little sister too!
What were they doing there? Nima got up, suddenly unable to sit still. She paced, up and down, down and up, wishing that it could all be done faster. Ryloth was mostly demilitarized, now. Other than a few of their picket ships, there was only a single Star Destroyer over Ryloth.
Thrawn was unlikely to try the attack again, and other than the forces that Bell (without asking anyone, mind) had sent to help the Xzalli maintain their borders in exchange for trade deals and friendship, the rest were rapidly shifting positions. The army would likely go on rest, relieving some garrison forces and defenses that would then go to the front.
It was, therefore, a peaceful world at the moment, whatever that meant.
She told Bell the news, and he smiled and said, "I expected it. She hadn't sent the message, but do you think she wouldn't come if she found out?"
Nima nodded, glad that so much of the battle wasn't public knowledge. As far as she knew, the news didn't know how close Nima had come to dying. She wasn't used to lying to her Mom at all, but if she just didn't mention it…
"I did think she would come," Nima said, hating the sinking feeling in her stomach. She looked forward to seeing her mother, and yet she was worried anyways, worried that something was wrong, or that her mother would worry even more than she probably already was.
"I haven't told her about Kamino," Bell said. "I don't know whether she should know. I never told you every time I almost died on missions, did I?"
He'd never made them sound like fun adventures, the way that Ahsoka and… and her former Master had. But he'd made them sound like simple necessities: then he dodged the laser bolts, then he scaled the sheer cliff, then he fought a dozen guards. He hadn't allowed effort or danger to enter it: less a fun adventure and more a necessary task, like gathering herbs from the garden for dinner, or taking a shift helping the cooking to learn humility. He'd only shown difficulty when he wanted it to be a lesson on what to do or not to do: three months into a war, she could now understand that he could have died thousands of times in the past few decades.
She wondered: when you've almost died a thousand times, does it stop being scary? Then she almost wrinkled her nose at her own silly thought. Of course it did: of course it didn't. The sentient body had its reaction, the mind had its reaction, and both were linked. Sentients were not just crude flesh, and
were luminous beings, but thoughts happened in the brain, unless they didn't.
Force Ghosts, a number of particularly odd species didn't quite fit, and of course Mind-Healing did something different and odd. All of which was besides the point, wasn't it?
Nima was intellectualizing, focusing on tiny details rather than what she could feel. Her mother was reasonably intact, a smooth, weathered stone skipped into the oceans of time quite carefully. She had an impact on others simply by her existence, by her presence and refusal to be anyone other than herself. Jordyan Bell was more boots splashing in water, direct and unlimited.
Rela was like bread: unshaped, unformed. She was already starting to become her own person, with tiny little traits, but she was still capable of becoming anything. Her presence in the Force reached out to Nima, confused and uncertain. Nima reached back.
******
They landed their shuttle in a little used hangar bay, a private one with a lovely view of mountains and forests and little else. Nima didn't even have time to make it down the stairs before she was swept up in a hug. Her mother looked about the same as usual, though it seemed as if she had begun to lose the weight she'd gained during her pregnancy, and there were dark shadows under her eyes.
Her smile, though, banished all doubts as to her mood. "Nima, it's good to see you. I've been here for a little while, and I've already met your 'students' though one of them says that you wouldn't like them being called that."
"Right," Nima said, a little dumbfounded. She hadn't imagined them meeting the way she'd imagined her mother meeting Hannah, or Katarina. It had felt as if they were part of separate worlds. "Are they doing well?"
"I think so. I have an idea of how to help them, since it's clear that they matter a lot to you," Mala said. "I've taken possession of the land and credits." There was a gleam in her eyes that Nima guessed was acquisitive. "I can already think of all sorts of ways I can use it, but one of them might be to give them somewhere to train. You take up a lot of space when you're training, don't you? And unlike you, the rest of them aren't Jedi. If they run around on everyone's buildings, they won't exactly be excused."
Nima frowned, having vaguely thought of that in the time she'd been on Ryloth, but without any other solution besides working on what she could in the spaces she had. "Mom, you don't have to do that--"
"Secret, kiddo? I don't have to, I want to," Mala Tyruti said.
Bell was stepping down the shuttle ramp, slowly, giving them time.
"Oh."
"Yes, oh. Come on, Nima. Everyone's waiting for us."
*******
Scout stood before the most powerful Jedi she'd ever know.
He was a squat, insightful little green troll, of a species unknown, and he looked at her with a thoughtful frown.
"Glad I am, that returned you have," Yoda croaked. "Worried, I was. Stories, there have been, of Ibas' failures." He paused for a long moment then said, "Accusations, even, of cruelty."
"I…" Scout hesitated. She didn't want to speak ill of someone who'd fought to save others, and who by any account was a good Jedi. She'd been glad when she'd finally proven herself. "He was harsh sometimes, yes."
"Ended, this provisional Padawanship is. Begun, a new chapter has been. Learn, you shall, at the Temple for the moment. Find for you, we will, a Jedi Master."
"Will you?" Scout found herself saying, sardonically, almost covering her mouth when she realized what she'd said, and to who.
"Speak your mind, you should," Yoda said.
"You say I will find someone, but I have had three Jedi Masters, counting Master Ibas, in a matter of years."
"Come along, someone will."
"Why?" She wasn't raising her voice, but suddenly she felt even more alone in the Council meeting room, facing him, only vaguely able to feel him in the Force, as if she was dipping her toes in a river, and felt something huge and dark brush against it but then flit away before she could see what it was.
"Learning wisdom, you are. Clever, you are. Smart, you are. A Master, you will find." Yoda spoke it slowly and thoughtfully, tapping his cane on the ground.
Scout thought about all she'd been through, about Geonosis, and Whie, and a new Master who died, and everything that had led up to Ibas.
"If you're so sure I'm such a good student, then why don't you be my Jedi Master?"
She blurted the words out, not letting herself think it through. She didn't mean them, but she said them anyways. He could praise her all he wanted, plenty had said she was 'determined' and then had talked about her potential and left her behind. It was exhausting, to have to fight again and again to prove what she'd done before. She wouldn't stop, but she wondered why she had to just listen.
Yoda frowned, and stood up, shifting from his egg-like chair, in this circular, stone room, and stepping forward. His gaze seemed knowing, and intense, his voice startlingly serious in a way that made it clear this was no joke. "Very well, my Padawan you will be."
What.
Scout stared. "What?"
"You asked, and accepted I did," Yoda said. "Bah, listen, then, Padawan. A survey of history, your first task will be."
"Yes?" she asked, still almost quivering with a bizarre combination of happiness and dismay.
"Look up the cost of war, you shall, and the methods to evacuate civilians, you must. Losses, the Coalition will take."
She had at first been about to protest, and then he finished his sentences. He wasn't asking her to look up how bad war was to teach her a lesson, but instead asking her to consider civilians and their plight. "I… can do that, Master Yoda."
"You can, or you will?" Yoda asked, looking at her with narrowed eyes.
"Both," Scout said, breathless and shocked.
"Then fly, my young Padawan," Yoda said. "Much is there to be done."
Scout left with a skip in her step, still unable quite to process it. Yoda… her Jedi Master?
What?
It was only once she was back in her room that it hit her all at once, in a wave of feelings without name, a bizarre sort of grief, a strange kind of joy, happiness and anxiety all flooding her in patterns she thought even Nima might struggle to understand.
It was an opportunity, she told herself, and one she had to take.
******
"Boba, I think things are looking up for us," Jabba said, his voice booming in the cramped room of the shuttle, durasteel walls on all side allowing Jabba's voice, and everything else, fullest expression.
Boba Fett was glad for his helmet, not that he'd ever say this. Hutts tended to smell disgusting, but his helmet had a filter designed to analyze scents and tune them out. It meant he would be able to smell anything he needed to, not that he used his nose all that much. But a Hutt's scent never went away, and locked in a relatively small room of a shuttle, it would have been almost overpowering.
Boba Fett nodded, "Yes, sir."
"We shall soon have embassies not only on the Coalition, but upon the capital of the Neutral Systems itself. You shall get training, and help serve as a liason," Jabba said, expansively. "A liason to the Hutt Allied Systems League!"
He spread his arms broadly. Boba had, apathetically, followed the plans. Jabba was inspired to get his puppet government on Tatooine to write up the declaration of the HASL, with a deal already made with the Coalition for limited trade, recognition, and embassies. It was a single planet, but from Boba's understanding, Jabba was seeking to make this a new official vehicle for Hutt power, something more concrete than the loose association of corrupted and directly controlled governments that existed now.
"Yes, sir," Boba said. He wanted to be back on Mandalore. That Twi'lek Jedi girl and the clone had been right: there were things he didn't know about being a Mandalorian. But he'd hunt them down, figure them out, and when the time came… he'd live up to his father's reputation. When that day came, he'd see whether it made sense to go after the Jedi. Mandalorians cared about honor, but if his father was any indication, they were also very, very practical people.
He was too.
"Chin up, Boba. Try to look like you're smiling under that mask," Jabba said, with an oily sort of indulgence. "Imagine what they would say if I, the great Jabba, mistreated the son of the great hero, and the Mandalore himself." Jabba, Boba suspected, did not care at all about the Mandalorian history, or even what being the Mandalore meant. Boba knew there were, by this point, a half-dozen pretenders to the title.
He wasn't one of them: the Mandalore title was not hereditary by nature.
The transport shuttle exited hyperspace over Mandalore, and Boba's future.
******
When Kala Su was six, she befriended the child of a worker. They played logic puzzles and created stories together, of logical things happening in a sequence… and quite shamefully, some of those were fantastical. This was barely tolerated by her parents, but it was important to have a connection with those you would manage, in order to better quell their false sentiments and delusion of emotions.
One day, the friend told a story about being a genetic researcher and her parents being raised in status as well.
Kala Su, after a long night of hesitation, tattled on her for the mental deficiency of not realizing that genetic reality was something that could not be obliviated by hard work.
They were no longer friends after that.
The guards didn't spit on her, but they glared, at least. At least they were willing to reveal they felt something.
Kala Su was impassive, her face blank. She wished they'd spat.
They had no reason to be polite to her, and every reason to at last show their emotions, ugly or otherwise: what use was the pretty, cold lack of emotions when it hid such bile.
"This way."
It was not going right; but it was going better than she had any reason to expect.
She walked down the empty, blank halls, until at last she was before a small, barren room, with a small cot, a refresher, and nothing else.
"In here, ma'am. You will be monitored," the guard said.
"Of course I will be," Kala Su said. She knew the position of the holocam.
She stepped in, and when the door closed, turned away from it, and wasn't sure whether to smile or frown. Had she won? Had anyone?
Perhaps she'd have to keep trying.
******
Something had changed, T'ra Saa decided, meditating in a Kaminoan room for the last night before she moved on. T'ra Saa had lived a long time, even if not as long as Yoda had. Unless she was killed by war or violence, she would live for thousands of more years. She had long had a way of thinking about the Jedi Order perhaps out of step with it, in the calm privacy of her own mind.
If the Force was the loamy earth, then the Jedi Order and its orthodoxy were hundreds or even thousands of tall trees that had grown to dominate the landscape. They grew, they decayed, and sometimes they were even felled by either bad luck or changes in doctrine. The Jedi Order sometimes portrayed itself as unchanging, but in many matters it had at least shifted, if only over generations.
Men like Jordyan Bell had come and gone, and left at most a single axe-mark in some particular ideological tree in the Jedi Order.
Perhaps something had changed.
Jordyan Bell was proud, arrogant, even egotistical, a constant meddler and busybody, difficult to work with, exhausting to argue against, a sore winner who never left well enough alone, at times lacking all of the calm a Jedi needed to do their job properly, and given to flighty projects and grand rhetoric.
Jordyan Bell was a compassionate, caring man who deeply believed in the Jedi's mission to help the galaxy, and the Force's will to maintain the true balance that only peace and sentients' rights could achieve, persuasive, invigorating, willing to fight injustice everywhere he went, with an odd sort of patience that meant he always had reserves of strength when the galaxy needed it.
Oppo Rancisis was a proud, stubborn, even occasionally smugly self-assured sentient, who despite rejecting his planet's monarchy, bore all the marks of his aristocratic and royal heritage, a traditionalist who had never found a new idea except to find it wanting, given to obscure mystical references which at times seemed merely cover for an unwillingness to recognize the ways that the galaxy had changed.
Oppo Rancisis was a patient, brilliant sentient who dealt fairly and evenhandedly with those beneath him, those working with him, and those few above him in the Jedi Order, a person who believed in the Jedi's mission to maintain order, and with it the balance that only peace could bring, someone whose merits would serve him in any age, so long as the Jedi valued virtue.
Neither had, in any real way, changed. Yet they'd come to something like a detente, despite Bell being a sore winner, despite Rancisis being so traditionalist. She could not see the Council meetings, but she suspected something had changed. Not merely a slight change, but the kind of change that could overtake the entire forest.
Forest fires had a purpose, they helped renew a forest that grew too old, and too stagnant. Despite all the deaths, the Clone Wars hadn't felt like such a fire, and even the start of this Coalition war had not.
Now, though?
T'ra Saa thought she might be viewing a one-in-a-thousand years change to the Jedi Order.
Such was not, exactly, a comforting thought, but it was an inevitable one. The forest changed, but the solid, loamy earth of the Force existed eternal.
******
Darap burst into the room with a laugh. "We're saved!" The Twi'lek cook, his green skin mottled with burn scars from a past that seemed not to touch the rotund, laughing man, looked down at Katarina with a look of fondness. In one hand was a glass of some sort of alcohol, Katarina assumed. In the other was a thermos of some sort. "Did you hear?"
"Yes, I heard," Katarina said, fetching up a smile. She'd not had reason to smile for a while. She knew she smelled, and she'd been in the trenches for a week. No place for a warrior or a philosopher.
(Even Jedi warriors were unsuited for the rage of war.)
"The siege is lifted! We're saved."
Kvador was not a very important planet, but it was one of the planets that had joined the Coalition in the last month, and so saving it had been a priority, to show that they wouldn't abandon those who had taken a risk on them, especially in light with the vast shifts of politics that had led to this.
It had led to Katarina and her Master, Cho'na Bene and an expedition force trapped for days.
Then Commodore Ackbar had won his already-famous victory, and the siege was all but done. They'd be relieved, and wouldn't be forced to hunker down here for weeks, or months.
"We are," Katarina said, with a faint smile.
"You should celebrate! I'm passing around my famous mushroom soup! Made for your human palates!" He bellowed everything.
Katarina didn't really like mushrooms that much, but just the thought of it reminded her of Nima. What she wouldn't give for Nima here--here, when there was not danger, not here at the worst of it--to hug tight, or perhaps sleep with, cuddled together in bed, comfort for the comfortless. She took the soup and smiled, "Thanks."
"It'll perk you up."
Katarina sipped, and thought of Nima. She missed Nima more than she could vocalize.
******
This was much harder than she thought it would be. Her husband was endlessly supportive, and said she was ready to 'kick butt' at this, to use his words. But right now she was feeling sweaty and gross and exhausted, and she was falling behind. The entire gym was rigged with a basic sort of obstacle course, bars to go under, holes to crawl through… not quite what a Rider would do, but useful for building up the dexterity, stamina, and strength needed for later exercises.
Besides, nobody besides Nima'tyruti had Riders' boots. Until sentients started making them in numbers, they'd have to do without.
She looked over, and saw that Pampy'gelin was laughing and doing flips on a beam. The heiress seemed to have entirely let loose, her dark-green skin shining with sweat, sixteen and more free than the twenty-four year old woman could be.
Yeha'zunas was working with Ajum, the two orphans close as could be, currently practicing jumping from one pillar to the next without pausing, using their momentum to carry them forward. If they fell, there was a net beneath them, of course.
Nima'tyruti, and her mother--who was perhaps the most beautiful Twi'lek Eyana'varnun had ever seen outside of actual holovid stars, and perhaps not even then--were generous and careful sentients. Eyana'varnun felt oddly ashamed whenever she was in Mala'tyruti's presence, intimidated by her, or something like it.
Ole'nata, oddest of all, was just running laps, apparently trying to focus or think. The girl was apparently a Rider but also part of some other, stranger, sect. Eyana'varnun didn't pretend to completely understand even what being a Rider meant.
"Hey, are you okay?" Nima asked. "If you need to take a break--"
She hadn't even noticed the girl's approach. Nima'tyruti was a sweet child, who Nima suspected would look more and more like her mother every year, but likely wouldn't face the same kinds of challenges as Mala had. Of course, she'd face Jedi challenges, instead, which were no less onerous. Appearance aside, she had a presence to her, something a little uncertain but very endearing. If Mala Tyruti could be in holovids, Nima could be the cute precocious teen in some high-rating comedy holodrama.
And then one noticed her dagger, her lightsabers, her boots, the ghosts that sometimes floated at her shoulder, her padded vest, and more.
"No, I think I can manage. Though, perhaps I'll listen to Dumu'malik after this, while I rest."
Nima nodded. "I'll have to leave tomorrow, but… hopefully you're ready?"
"Ready as I'll ever be. We can take it from here: we're supposed to be Riders, right?"
"Right," Nima said with a sunny smile, still a kid despite all the wisdom and skill she clearly had.
They'd have to stand on their own, as friends and partners to Nima, and as Riders. It was the only way to stride forward, she decided.
******
Han Solo brooded in his room. It wasn't fair, that Nima was out there risking herself, and so were all the other people that'd saved him, while all he could do is sit in this stupid temple under this stupid desert planet and brood and run simulations of starfighter missions. He wasn't a kid, or if he was, not any more than Nima was! Sure, he was a few years younger, but he was a good pilot, really he was!
His room was so empty, and his… the person who might as well be his mother was so busy nowadays. He brooded and listened to jumpy music, and so almost didn't hear the knock on his door. He didn't respond, either, still pouting.
So Chewbacca opened the door. "Hey, Han," the Wookiee growled, in Shyriiwook.
"Hey, Chewbacca. Please leave," Han said, aware he was being weird.
"I have something for you," the big Wookiee said. "Dewlanna said you were feeling bad."
"I'm fine. Just… I'm fine," Han Solo concluded, after a long moment of trying to find the right thing to say.
Chewbacca roared, and pulled out of a bag he was carrying what looked like a model starfighter, holding it out to Han. "I got you this."
Han blinked, startled. Was that an Eta-2? The Jedi Starfighter? It looked fully articulated and realized, with a button to open the cockpit and everything. He crossed his arms, "I'm not a kid, I don't need toys!"
Chewbacca roared an amused--amused, at him?!--answer, "Then I guess I'll take it back, Han."
He turned to leave.
"Wait! You might as well leave it here. Maybe I'll glance at it once or twice before giving it to a real kid."
Chewbacca managed, somehow, not to laugh at this, and instead set the toy on the bed next to Han.
Han, though, could tell that Chewbacca was laughing on the inside. "Laugh it up, fuzzball," Han muttered, but only once he was gone.
Ten minutes later, he started playing with the
stupid toy.
******
"That could have gone better," Baqqanid finally said, in another room from the sleeping Nima.
"It could have gone worse," Seluku replied, and they both knew they weren't talking about Nima's meeting with her mother.
Seluku thought that they looked a little like a comedy routine, though perhaps the joke had been lost in tens of thousands of years.
One of them was slim, with lean muscle and very little in the way of height, while the other was tall, broad-shouldered, and with hands that were a mass of scars. They couldn't be more different, and it had been so, so long together. Seluku, some days, couldn't remember all the details of the one… or two… times they'd had sex before they'd been caught in a fight to the death that had ended in a starving, trapped truce.
Then they'd been together since.
But it hadn't been a choice. If they'd decided they hated each other, what would they have done? Fucked off to other sides of the tomb forever?
They'd run out of things to say, of course, after a thousand years. Then, somehow, they'd discovered new things after a decade of frustratingly repeating the same old things. Then eventually, they'd been able to peek out at the world as the crack grew, but only in brief bursts that left them more confused than anything.
They'd found new topics and revisited old ones, and then one day… one day they were free.
"It could have gone worse, because if Nima had died, you'd be stuck down in a dark nowhere with me forever, again," Seluku pointed out. "You probably had all of that you'd ever want with me."
"Your presence is the only thing that would make it bearable," Baqqanid said, with an earnestness so powerful that Seluku almost stepped back.
If he had lungs, his breath would have caught. "I…"
"If I didn't love you, I'd have long since tried to figure out how to affect the physical realm to destroy my anchor," Baqqanid said. "I might have even managed to do so."
"I… thank you."
"Are you really tearing up?" Baqqanid asked. "You do not even have tear ducts."
"N-no I don't," Seluku admitted, but some part of his subconscious had told him he was crying, so he was. "Though… it's good that Nima didn't die. We need to do more to help her."
"Yeah, she's a good Rider in potential, but unformed," Baqqanid said.
"So much still to learn. And she needs to learn it. It was… impressive that she was able to do that, but it was also luck. A thousand factors coming together. I love luck, it's great," Seluku said. "But when everything rests on her, and when she's someone we both clearly care about…"
Seluku had left so much to luck, because ah well. But this?
This was worth too much to half-ass it.
******
Thrawn sat, and read. Captain Palleon at his shoulder, clearly wishing to speak. "Yes, Palleon?"
"Sir, I wonder if you'll consider the fact that I was right: Palpatine has not killed you."
Yet, Thrawn didn't say. His wrath had been considerable, including a moment of using that dratted Force on Thrawn's throat, as a demonstration.
Palpatine, like most lone dictators, had a bad understanding of how the world worked. Thrawn was too given to these flaws too, too willing to rely only on himself.
He knew that this couldn't work: he had to trust others, but to trust them he had to actually understand them, and not manipulate them in ways that would backfire.
Hence the studying.
Palpatine thought he was broken, perhaps sensed it with this vaunted 'Force' of his. But no, it was simple. Palpatine would die, scared and alone and betrayed, and then all the Jedi and all the Sith would follow, given time.
If the compliance measures needed to bring peace to this galaxy meant making a desert, then he would do it. The galaxy was a large place: a plan that killed trillions was inefficient, but billions were nothing more than a statistic, a blip on the galactic radar if he could save it from Palpatine.
The more he saw the tyrant, the more he realized: if he won, he would proceed to try to conquer his people, the Chiss. Then everyone. He would not stop until he had the whole galaxy, and then he'd send vast armies to try to conquer aliens from beyond the galaxy if they existed. And when at last his ego led to the complete collapse of everything, he would laugh.
Thrawn felt it, like a vision, the absolute and perfect knowledge that any cost, any crime, would be justified against such a threat. For a moment, he'd even considered working with this 'Coalition.' They were evil, but not as bad as Palpatine. But no, he could do better than that.
He'd wanted to conquer Kamino, but it'd been good that he had not. Or else he wouldn't have known what he needed to do.
"He hasn't, has he?" Thrawn asked. "Palleon, could I perhaps prevail on you to help me make friends? I wish to find allies if I'm going to find the right plans to finally defeat the Coalition. I need to be able to rely on and trust others… besides you."
"I understand," Palleon said, looking touched. "I'll see what I can do."
******
"Oh, she didn't cark it? Now that's really a shame," Nylirah was said to have replied. "But oh well, like they say…"
******
"So then he said, that's what my mother said, too!" Swoops said, grinning at his punchline. There were a few uproarious laughs, and then admittedly quite a few that weren't sure what to do with the jokes.
But hey, that's life. Most people didn't know what to do with him, but here he was, amongst a bunch of clones in the middle of what was supposed to be a serious conference discussing what to do about the War And Clone Society. As if he knew. Kamino was a boring place now that they were trying to have a revolution and not change anything at the same time.
"You're weird, you know that, right?" Iszy asked, his frown deepening. "Did you really say that?"
"Of course, I never lie!" Swoops let that sink in. "Okay, so that was a lie, actually. Did you believe me?"
"No," Bunks said. "But I believed the story."
"Good, cause it's true. And I have more where that comes from."
"Are you going to settle down someday?" Iszy asked.
"Fuck if I know? And what's wrong with that," Swoops said. "We're people, do you know how many people even my physical age who know what they're doing with their lives? There's your answer, no. At the moment I just fight a war and fuck non-humans. Oh, and get fucked by them." He shrugged.
"That seems so unsatisfying," Bunks said, tapping the table. "I'd want to have kids. Do better than the Kaminoans did for us."
"Well, maybe that works for you. But this works for me," Swoops insisted, looking around at the crowd. "But hey, have a kid and I'll coo over the pictures and call them cute. That work?"
"...yes, yes it does."
******
"Well, this is your stop," Bell said, as they hung over Saleucami. "The Temple can keep the shuttle, we have more than enough." He was smiling faintly, but there were dark shadows under his eyes. Nima suspected he'd had an even worse night than she had. She'd been plagued by nightmares of hearing about Bell's death secondhand, of somehow becoming so distant from him she couldn't even feel her own Jedi Master's death.
But her worry was a good sign, a sign she'd guard against distance as she had against all sorts of emotional problems. It was her job to figure it out, and she thought that, considering her age and all she'd been through… she was doing alright.
Saleucami wasn't home, not the way the Jedi Temple on Coruscant had been. But it was getting closer. She'd been back to her 'homeland.' She'd found it fascinating, but not a place she'd ever want to live. She'd met people, there. The Rider trainees, yes, but not just them. She'd told Gaavo the Hutt to tell her if their employer's daughter, Pampy'gelin, had some sort of problem she wouldn't admit to Nima directly.
Even on Kamino, she'd left people behind. Maybe it was another thing a Jedi could be: someone attached not to the galaxy in the abstract, but to all of it in particular. They said that ties and connections bound you to a place, bound you to loyalties that could be abused, but that seemed short-sighted.
"Yes, it is. Master Bell? Keep as safe as you can manage," she asked, having thought about what it was reasonable to ask.
"I will, Nima. I'm not done, if I can manage it." Jordyan Bell grinned almost boyishly. "I've been waiting a long time. War is war, so we'll see, but I'm not trying to die, and I'm sure we'll meet again, before too long."
"Then… see you later, Master Bell," Nima said, hugging him as tight as she could, even with his beard scratching against her head.
He hugged her back, just as fiercely, and said, "Everything should be arranged, but please, contact me while you can if there are any problems. Within a few weeks I might be completely out of contact, so don't be a stranger before then."
"I never would, Master," Nima said. "I should be going."
She turned, smiling at Bell, and walked up towards the shuttle, boots clanking. Bell watched her leave, and smiled faintly to himself, waving one last time.
Then he turned, and strode towards his own future.
******
A/N: Much, though not all, of this was written before recent events, and is not a direct commentary on, like, stuff that's happened. Since I last updated the thread. I dunno if it's going to bleed through or not.
I did actually try to find a better song, or at least a less cliched one, when I conceived of an 'ending montage' but, well.
So, this is kinda the end of this 'part' of it, though it won't be a part officially. However, there will be a sort of hiatus. I have a Month 3 Interlude I need to work on, and a document on the Coalition's political structure, and maybe one on military stuff?
I'm also taking requests for questions or etc about things that are going on beyond Nima's sphere.
And then we'll begin this extended Diplomatics arc!
