Chapter 14
714 (24 BBY)
Month 5
Coruscant, Green Singularity
Tanya Kryze
A modern dance club, something I thought I would never be in in any of my lives. I had no reason to dislike them per se, besides the uncomfortable loud music that I'm sure was taking years off my hearing. It just was not something I had to deal with in my first or second life. In my first life I had been too busy trying to prepare for my life as a higher ranking salaryman with a respectable career. And once that was secure I could worry about entertainment, relationships and the stuff that's supposedly made life more fulfilling. I think the closest I ever got to such a situation was getting dragged along to a high school party where I had to dance the robot because it was the only thing I knew.
My second life was a bit spottier on exactly what I had been up to since it had been much longer. Had been too busy dancing through the air in order to avoid hot death to dance on the ground. Even after I had survived the war, I believe my life had been too busy to indulge in such behaviors as I was now forced to indulge in.
This life at least I had some formal dance training but that was not very helpful with the particular brand of dancing going on around me. Frankly most it looked like people were just spazzing out on the dance floor but that was apparently the style so I just went with it though not as spazzy as some people. Thankfully my dance partner, Engiz, seemed to be just as terrible as I was so at least, I appeared normal and uneducated on how to dance and not weird. Being uneducated meant you could learn to dance, appearing weird meant that you were weird and should be avoided.
While I had to entertain the whole dancing phenomenon for a while, I was getting slightly tired and so had excused myself to find an area to sit down for a bit. I negotiated my way through the crowds and made my way towards a set of booths near the bar section of the club. Ordo was with me, no doubt just trying to make sure I stayed safe and as for Vai and her date, I've lost track of them. I was starting to get a deep suspicion that this was a bit of rebellion against her family. They were from a more traditionalist background and though I was not very familiar with all of the traditionalist's thoughts on modern society, I got the distinct feeling that hanging out in a club was a taboo. When I get a chance, I should really investigate the traditionalist point of view on moral ethics. As much as I had been more concerned with their stance on military matters, which at the time I believed was important since military matters was what was enraging them the most, I also needed to investigate what their other political point of views were so I didn't step too heavy on their toes. Hopefully Vai's rebelliousness didn't cause me too much problems with them.
The booths in question proved to be a bit more crowded then I would have liked but I needed to sit down for a bit so I asked a green skin alien with horns coming out of his head if I could have a couple spots at their table.
The green alien looked at me and nodded before saying, "Sure little miss, you and your boyfriend can I have those seats, though aren't you a little young to be in such an establishment?
I simply avoided that first question being it was useful to put up misinformation, considering I didn't want my time here tracked back to my representational career, and focused on the one that really mattered as I took a spot. "16 is the bare minimum to be let in but my friend really wanted to do something different so here we are."
The green headed alien nodded, "Oh yeah, as long as you avoid the actual bar you're allowed in here to party with your friends."
Well I couldn't actually go to the bar if I wanted to say quite clearly above it that they would check your ID and being that I was below the drinking age and I didn't want my ID checked by the machinery they had there, would leave a trail. They technically checked our IDs before we had entered the premises but that information was not recorded as it was done solely by the bouncer looking over the paperwork and saying yeah or nah. And there was a disturbing amount of yeah's when it came showing senatorial ID. I had a feeling that as long as you came in with a senatorial ID you would be let in.
The green alien held up his drink and said, "Well, welcome to the party Miss?" Fishing for my name.
"Tanya Degurechaff, representative of one of the Outer Rim worlds." I said matter of factly my face was slightly obscured by the sunglasses I was wearing so I hope enough of my identity would be kept secure. Everything else I said was the truth from a certain point of view. "This is Engiz Rerugen, my chaperone for the evening to make sure I don't get into too much trouble."
I got a chuckle from the green alien and his human date was also chuckling as well as she sat next to him. I hadn't taken much in about her besides the scandalous outfit that would never have played well in 1950s America, hell I don't think it would have played well in Japan 2010s. But the thing that really drew my notice was the pair of Mandalorian style bracers on her wrist. That raised my eyebrows, I wasn't exactly sure how they had gotten here so quickly. I'm still laying the groundwork of showing them it is a trendy and useful tool yet here they were already starting to be part of the trend.
The green alien, though, interrupted my thoughts and said "I'm Urmero Dirathis, representative of the Yminis sector and this is my coworker Racisi Grocan of the Abrion sector." I nodded, noting that both sectors were on the Outer Rim.
Curious about where she'd pick that up I raised my arm to show off my own and said, "Oh you have a Mandalorian bracer as well."
The woman looked at mine and smiled before showing off hers more properly. "Yeah, I just picked one up yesterday. There's this new company Mando Logistics, I think? They're bringing in what they term as civilian grade products from Mandalore and selling them here. Seems like a very useful tool and with how dangerous the Galaxy seems to be getting these days I thought I better pick one up while I still could before the inevitable blockade startup."
My eyebrow raised for two reasons. One, someone had already set up a company to bring in Mandalorian products. That was interesting and I would have to investigate more to find out exactly who was running this company and if they were paying their taxes to the sector. And two what blockades?
"Blockades?" I ask, curious as to what was going on that I may have missed.
The two shared a glance at each other before shrugging. Urmero leaned forward a bit conspiratorially and said, "You're aware of just how corrupt this system is right? The Republic is becoming more of a failed system every year. It's outlived its usefulness as a democracy and is frankly unable to do anything to improve the lives of the Outer Rim people. Slavery is an illegal practice in the Republic but if you told that to the people in the Other Reaches you'll be laughed at because about every other planet has issues with slavers from the Hut Empire wandering in or some other small faction taking advantage of just how out of the way our systems are from the Core."
Externally I was nodding my understanding, internally I was not in a good mood. You could even say I was screaming. But to keep up appearances I simply said "I'm aware that it has problems sure though I would assume through negotiations and reconciliations the problems could be worked out."
Urmero sighed and shrugged, "Over the years there's been attempts and there'll be more attempts in the future but a lot of people are coming to the conclusion that there needs to be a peaceful divorce between the Outer Rim and the Republic. If enough planets leave the Republic, they have no Army, no Navy, they can't really do anything about it, and we can get to work cleaning up the mess the Republic has left undealt with for the last thousand years."
This was not good, theoretically what they were saying was true, theoretically what they wanted was good. Having two nations in the Galaxy would be better for the economy as a whole as they would have reasons to compete against each other and if they're competing to show that each side is better that's privately fine. But the chances that each Nation needs a military rises quite a bit. The Galaxy was a tapestry of stories related to a conflict between two factions over the course of millennia. And I doubt that was going to change just because both of them were claiming democracy as the core tenant. So yes they might be right in that the Republic had no army and navy could do nothing about it now. But give it a couple years though and that situation would change drastically I'm sure.
The reason there was no army for the Republic is that there was no possible threat to the Republic. What they were wanting to create was a possible threat which put Mandalore in a terrible position. If it was between the Outer Rim and the Republic, Mandalore sat on one of the crossroads and could easily become a battlefield for any conflict between the two.
If a conflict were to arise, the middle could declare neutrality on the conflict but that only worked if you could defend that neutrality. Switzerland had pulled that off during World War II quite well with its armed neutrality stance though it also demonstrated the downfalls of such tactics as during the war United States had lost a few bombers to Switzerland's armed neutrality and then all of a sudden Switzerland gets bombed accidentally. That was a likely story for that and it was a likely story now in order to pull off armed neutrality you need to be on defense 24/7 and be worried about one side of a conflict deciding it didn't respect your armed neutrality enough and bombing the hell out of you nonetheless.
Frankly, Mandalore's stance on pacifism would have been the doom of the sector if such a conflict were to arise between the Outer Rim and the Core. We needed an army and self-defense force quickly, and a professional one at that, with enough backing to be able to hold an area. If only we weren't banned from building battle droids. Damn that governor Vrox whose short-sightedness screwed Mandalore over again, as by treaty the sector was prohibited from creating any kind of fighting droids.
But those are concerns for the future, right now I need to appear completely at ease and not freaking out in front of potential political opponents in the coming years.
"That does make some sense." I offered, trying to appease their thinking though I asked. "But what's to stop the Hutt Empire from taking the initiative and expanding into your new theoretical Outer Rim Republic.
Racisi spoke up, "The Count of Serenno has already been in negotiations with the Hutts, from what I know there's negotiations going on with several corporations about creating a self-defense army for the Outer Rim with droids."
'Congratulations you've just turned yourself into a threat, I mentally swore. 700 years ago Mandalore had been bombed for trying something like it, and then 20 years ago Mandalore had been bombed for building war droids and now they're doing both. You had to admire the audacity or stupidity on display. All out war was a certainty now, oh I can see the ploy they would probably use, the Outer Rim would simply say it would be their version of the Judicial Force meant to try and clean up the scum and villainy that had taken root. But again, 700 years ago the same thing happened. I swear none of these people that got elected to represent their governments had ever read a book on Galactic History. If I somehow made it to any position of power in Mandalore where I had the opportunity to determine who the next representative would be, the top requirement on the list was studying the damn history of the Galaxy.
Nodding my head as if I was not internally screaming I asked "Count of Serenno? isn't he a former Jedi Master ? " The pair nodded their heads in agreement, which was interesting. A thousand years ago most Chancellors of the Republic were Force sensitive or members of the Jedi, it would seem that one of them wanted to return to that style of government which made some sense. Perhaps he was a student of history and thought that system worked better than the current one. I doubt it, at least on the working better part, without actually having met the man I wouldn't know how he thought.
"So we are looking towards a return of a theocratic Republic?", I said, getting the pair to look at me confused. "This Outer Rim Republic would be guided by a Jedi leadership at least in some form which means it's not a republic but a theocratic Republic, as there's no doubt the leadership will listen to the Will of the Force presumably."
Urmero shook his head, "No, no it's only going to be a Republic, Count Dooku is a former Jedi, not a current Jedi. He is simply a leader amongst the systems that have seen the problems of the Republic because he is vocal about it and has experience in negotiations.."
I sat back in the seat and rubbed my chin. It was strange that a Jedi master would leave the Order, let alone take up a political cause like that. Unless, unless … the Jedi were students of history themselves, presumably, perhaps they've seen the writing on the wall long before anyone else about the possibility of rebellion and were already making moves to assure their Order's existence no matter what happened in the conflict. If there was a Jedi Order on both sides of the conflict it would not be as catastrophic since both sides would be trying to minimize losses. And since the Jedi Order was centralized in the Core region, they couldn't exactly be that effective in the Outer Rim. Perhaps this was some sort of method to create an Outer Rim Order to handle the situation directly with a general idea that someday in the future those Orders would merge into one again when it would not be a big issue. If that's what the Order was up to, that was some 3D chess on a level I could not understand as they were risking quite a lot in the possibility of war.
Shaking that thought off as a bit of a conspiracy theory, something I had found over the years I'd been too prone to when trying to figure out what was going on. I asked, "Doesn't this seem like a terrible subject to talk about, I mean you are in essence creating another nation inside the Republic in secret."
"Not that secret," Urmero said, "the first official documents are supposed to come out within the next 3 months. From what I hear it'll probably take 4 years for the divorce to be finalized but some hope that just putting up the threat that we might do it will be enough to get the Republic to take the situation in the Outer Rim more seriously and get them to actually do their job. I doubt it, the Republic is stagnant and doesn't want to do anything. More likely their Jedi Enforcers will threaten the planet that officially put in the paperwork."
I blinked and asked "Threaten? aren't they just simple peacekeepers and monks with laser swords? I would assume after a thousand years they're not the warriors of legend who kept the Old Republic together?"
Racisi chuckled before saying, "You have that right, they're not the warriors of legend anymore. I don't think they have their honor anymore, now they're just dogs of the Supreme Chancellor, sent to any planet that disobeys the Republic to engage in aggressive negotiations. Which half the time, ends in a percentage of the population needing new limbs. "
Urmero nod with his head before adding, "I'm sure the Jedi don't intend to be the Chancellor's dogs, but they've become too disconnected with the people in my mind, people call for them to deal with slavery and other Outer Rim sector issues, and maybe a Jedi will show up usually only if there was a report of a possible Force sensitive in the area. But if a politician tries to do anything to deal with the issue themselves, Oh the Jedi will show up then. And usually not to help but because they're worried you're going to start a war and they want you to stop."
A strange thing that I mentally noted, they seem to be heavily biased against the Jedi Order but they had no such issue with this, Count Dooku, who was a former Jedi. Was this just a 'He's one of ours so it's okay' sort of situation or was there something else to it.
"Sounds like to me the real issue is that the Jedi are too close to the rings of power then." I proposed sitting back in my seat. "They probably need to spend more time out in the Outer Rim doing good there and less time here in the Core working with politicians."
Urmero nodded, "That's about the truth of it when you really think about it. But who's going to tell them that to their face? They sit in their Temple living it up in the sunlight on top of the greatest city in the Galaxy and have everything taken care of for them by droids and staff. I'm sure they do more than just that, but they live in a different social economic environment than most of the Galaxy and it's easier to be detached from having to deal with terrible issues in my opinion."
"Probably lots of people," I said matter of fact, "there's probably no end of people who would be willing to say it. It's just if the Jedi are willing to believe it."
I would have said more but Vai came up to where we were sitting hanging off of Tabi obviously. Either tired or buzzed, either was possible since I believe the minimum for drinking was 18 on Coruscant. "Hey Tanya, time to get going, I think?" she said, sounding sober enough.
I nodded and turned to the two who would let us sit there and said, "Thank you for this wonderful conversation. I'll keep the things we've spoken of in mind." Before turning to Engiz and saying, "Let's get on our way then."
He nodded, seemed to be in some sort of daze, I'm not really sure why, maybe he had snuck a drink when I wasn't looking, but he got up right after I got out of the booth and we began our path back to the front entrance.
The information that I'd received was at the very minimum concerning and something I would have to think about deeply. Maybe in 4 years the Republic was going to wake up to the fact that a portion of their government just up and left and to form a new government which meant Mandalore could end up on the front lines of a conflict. I would have to push in some way for the armament and creation of a Self-Defense Force soon. Otherwise we would just end up overrun between two armies fighting each other.
Question was, could I do anything in 4 years? maybe five or six depending on how long it took for the Republic to respond.
Coruscant, Upper District Streets
Tabi Kregg
"We should have gotten a parking place that was much closer." Vai muttered onmy shoulder as she leaned heavily against me. She had drunk perhaps a bit too much of the low alcohol content drinks they served at that bar in the club. An unfortunate situation really as I believed things had gone a little bit more my way we would be spending the night together. However I was not a
di'kut and engaging in such behaviors with the mentally impaired best friend of your boss was a good way to learn how to fly without a jetpack.
Well that and I was just not so crude as to engage in such behaviors. I was many things, a lover of the finer things such as arts and fashion, a charmer of women, able to bench press 3 and 1/2 times my own weight, and a fool for love and fights. However I was not a villain. Supporting the Mandalorian native with my shorter frame I simply said, "No worries dear, we'll be back at the speeder soon."
I had considered possibly calling Commander Ordack to come pick us up, but I figured we would be fine. Four Mandalorians, three of which are in good fighting shape, could take on any threat that the city could throw at us. And it was only a short walk a block or two down the street then a block downwards to get to the parking area. Granted this was a lot closer to the edges of the districts my charge was allowed to enter but I'm sure there would be no issue, the police should be more than adequate in this area. I would assume of course that was not a corrupt dystopia. On second thought I probably should have brought a blaster set to stun at least.
Tanya and Engiz were walking in front of us having a chat, about history by the sounds of it. The pair were absolute nerds, not that I held anything against that but history was not one of the things I was interested in. As was the past, it was dead, something to be forgotten. The future was more important followed closely by traditions and culture. It was probably for the best, I had abandoned my initial plan when I first joined up with the Royal Guard to charm the princess. If I really committed to it I was sure I could pull it off. It's just not something to do when there was not only competition, the one who had already started putting ground work in place. Going after someone's childhood friend, who they've had a crush on since then, usually ends with a lot of pain for the person going after said childhood friend. Usually the physical kind and sometimes leading to death as fights tend to be a lot more brutal when a girl was involved, at least back in his homeworld they did.
But that's besides the point, he simply was not going to risk his professional relationship with Engiz especially when Vai was more fun. He hadn't planned to start charming her, he'd simply been volunteering to be the driver whenever the princess had a meeting at the Jedi Temple and since Vai ended alone for a bit, looking at the art, he decided to go in one day, to keep her company. And it turned out they had a few things in common, mainly overbearing parental issues. He didn't know all the issues that Vai had with her mother, he wasn't one to push too hard on those sorts of things but he was willing to listen and listening is half the battle in charming a person.
Through it he learned she was a quote, unquote "Traditionalist Mandalorian", or at least her parents were and she was more free-spirited. Also known as she wanted to rebel against her parents, but she was not sure how she was going to be able to do that when she was supposed to stay by the princess all the time and stay in the Senatorial District.
An easy problem for a man of his caliber, he suggested since they were such good friends maybe, she could get Tanya to be more rebellious as well. And he mentioned he knew about this particular little club on the edges of the Senatorial District. Something he found out about in the first 3 months, when he got 8 hours free everyday he was going to do a little bit of exploring during that time. He had to make sure it would work but he portrayed enough confidence that she had been confident enough to attempt it. Most likely Tanya was a bit rebellious as well because it had been almost too easy to get an okay from her. All that really mattered then was to arrange things so we could pull it off. Engiz was invaluable, there was his obvious crush on the princess which not only made him a good date for the club but made him useful for the trip to the mall. Since two guards had to be near Tanya basically all times of the day, all I had to do was make sure that he was assigned to the same mall trip as me, then tada club night was a go.
And from what he'd seen, it had been a magical success. So much so he probably has to figure out how to pull it off again. Oh well, that was for the future, right now he just needs to get the girls and the nerd back to the safety of the Tower, he can worry about their next rebellious party night later.
Tanya and Engiz rounded the corner of a building in front of us which would lead to the stairs to the floors below so we could get our speeder when things went sideways.
Engiz stumbled back, appearing to have been hit. Where Tanya was, I didn't know but that was not a good sign. Had he done something to piss Tanya off? Had the nerd gotten too big for his britches and done something unsavory? Well the shouting and fighting sounds coming from the hallway he had just been knocked out of would say otherwise as both me and Vai sprung into action. Crossing the 5-ft distance that had separated us from the Ordo.
Turning to look down the hallway leading to our car I immediately saw the problem and knew things had gone pear-shaped, quite horribly. The hallway was currently being fought over by two groups both in nice suits and appeared to be upper class in nature. No matter their upper class status, it would seem they had some sort of ongoing feud as they were quite thoroughly beating the shit out of each other and what I could only assume was some sort of corporate gang warfare between the black suits versus the tan suits I know that there was some other reason behind it but that seemed to be the way the conflict lines were drawn. The majority appear to be human or humanoid though I thought I saw a few more brutish looking aliens near the back as the group fought each other on the stairs. It looked like there were 40 of them in total. But my guess was Tanya and the nerd had turned the corner just as the fighting had started and had been swamped into the conflict.
As for Tanya's condition and location, which was the most important part of this situation, she was doing fine from what I could tell. At her feet were three of the suited gangers two from the side wearing black suits and one wearing a tan suit. She was facing off against one in a tan suit who kept trying to punch her in the face but she appeared to have a miniature shield built into her vambrace and was blocking his attempts. Which was probably for the best since he was apparently one of those modded folks, every time he threw a fist, it would launch itself out a good 6 inches at a speed more inline with a speeding missile. The impact is having driven on her back against the wall as the corporate thug attempted to batter down her defenses.
No, that was something I could not let happen, any damage the princess took would no doubt reflect badly on me and the nerd, so we need to get her out of this situation quickly.
Without saying a word I moved to join the fight heading directly for the man who was trying to smash Tanya skull in with his automated jackhammer of a fist.
One of the black suits got in my way saying, "Get lost girly, that girls already gotten herself in this fight you don't need to join-" I didn't let him finish simply put all the muscle I had into a good right hook and sent him flying two feet into the air it came crashing down into the side of the jackhammer idiot, and both of them took a tumble down the stairs. Before I could move to get Tanya, to grab her hand and pull her out of this situation one of the tan suits came at me with a blade. I just managed to block the attack with my own vambrace and got a wonderful show of Vai performing an excellent flying kick sending that gangster rolling down the stairs and knocking down a few others like bowling balls. She landed on the step next to me and tilted around, obviously not exactly as balanced as she should be. So I grabbed her by the waist to steady her.
Ordo apparently pulled himself back up and was already back in the fight, brawling his way through two more of the black suits that had got in our way between us and Tanya.
As for Tanya herself, the pile of bodies at her feet had grown from three to six in the moment I looked away to deal with the knife attack. The gangsters had seemed to realize that their own petty fight was now a sideshow to our desperate assault to break through their fight to Tanya. And some of the suits had started to run away, the black suits heading back down the stairs towards the parking lot where unfortunately our car was and the tan suits trying to get past us to get to the street above presumably to wherever their vehicles are parked. And we were stuck in the middle as those who weren't running away were now trying to surround us.
And these gangsters were pulling out real weaponry, one of them even pulled out a blaster and aimed it at Tanya. The princess was much quicker than I would have assumed as she was able to put her shield in between herself and the bolt, charged right at the shooter to get her hand around the man's wrist, and pushed his hand up so the blaster was pointed at the ceiling. With a dull thud, Tanya slammed her knee into the suited man's groin stunning him enough for Tanya to yank the blaster from his hand. The gangster was then treated to Tanya knocking out his knees and sending him tumbling down the stairs to join the already growing group of bodies at the bottom of the stairs.
Before any of us could make a move to join up with the princess and consolidate our defensive line The telltale sound of electricity sparking off staves went off at the top of the stairs causing everyone to look in that direction. And causing a pit of 'Oh crap' to form in my stomach.
Charging in from the top of the stairs were Mandalorian Royal guards, their staves pointing in our general direction as they made their way down whilst zapping anyone who attempted to get in their way. One of them swung his staff into a ganger's gut before proceeding to roll over his back before delivering a brutal blow to his head with a two handed swing of his staff. Another delivered a brutal combo of fast strikes with both ends of the staff before ending with a thrust to the face and heavy swing at his head.
Someone drew their blaster and open fired at a Royal Guards only to have the blasts deflected into the wall by their staff. The shots that weren't deflected simply fizzled off when it connected to their beskar armor. The realization that they couldn't harm the guards bearing down on them seemed to snap the gangsters into realizing that they had screwed up and they began running down the stairs to get away from us.
Once the gangsters had been cleared out, the Royal Guards formed a perimeter around the princess. Commander Ordack pushed up the visor of his helmet and looked directly at me while saying, "You four, go up those stairs and get into the van, now." His tone made it quite clear there would be no talking our way out of this and it wasn't even worth trying to explain that we were not responsible so I simply nodded as did most of the rest of the group as we filed our way up. I did hear him muttering something about having to explain this to the proper authorities which looking up I realized we had been on camera the whole time. Hopefully that wouldn't come back to harm the princess in any way. Gave a damn good fight though, but now I understand why the nerd was interested in her.
Coruscant, Mandalorian Tower, Guard Barracks
Struc Ordack
Thank Manda for lazy Judicial officers. It hadn't taken very much talking to get the cops to not look too deeply into the whole situation, simply pointing out that she was a Political Representative had been enough for them. Oh sure, Tanya now had a quote unquote record with the police which was probably not what anyone in the government would like to hear, but it was as an incident of being attacked, and as long as no one went looking the whole situation should blow over in a couple years it's not like she was going to get into more fights. Manda, I hope she does not get into more fights, she'd at least severely hurt three of the people who came at her, which they deserved but it was not a good look for a politician ambassador type to assault people and get off pretty much scot-free.
And she would get off scot free, unfortunately I told her that she was under house arrest for the next 3 weeks but this was a Royal Guard issued house arrest, the Senatorial Guards were more than willing to just look the other way. I would guess that this was not an infrequent incident as some of the galaxy would hope, just something they attempted to cover up.
But for now Tanya was under house arrest and besides her diplomatic duties and maybe visits to the Jedi Temple she was not allowed to pull anything like this again.
As for the two
di'kuts, who thought it was a great idea to pull this stunt. They were standing at attention in front of me, with the hope that by staying motionless they would become invisible. On one hand they should never have gone through with this whole operation to begin with, on the other hand the princess is unharmed but that was mainly due to her own training rather than these two's competence, thus a punishment is required to even the score and discourage scenarios like this from happening again.
"I have half a mind to do my job and report this incident to Duchess Satine and have her transfer the both of you back to Mandalore and replace you." the two winced, as that would be the end of their careers as well as bringing dishonor to their families. "The only reason I am not in a holocall with the Duchess right now is the fact that Ms. Kryze is unhurt and the incident ended relatively quickly in a way that could be swept under the rug as a case of self-defense."
The two release a sigh of relief as they aren't given a ticket straight to Mandalore. "This whole incident could have been avoided if you made a request to me. We could have worked something out, made a cover, and minimized the risk to prevent stuff like this from endangering our charge. When Duchess Satine assigned us to be her guards we became part of Ms. Kryze's retinue to whom we swore oaths to protect and serve to the best of our abilities. Her wishes are only second to her safety, your wishes are not even on the list for consideration. If she doesn't want to go to a club, you will obey. Ms. Kryze is old enough to be considered a Mando, that means she is mature enough to make her own decisions and be responsible for those decisions and you will respect them like it came from the Duchess herself. This will never happen again, are we clear?"
The two nodded their heads but I needed to drive the point home. "I said. Are. We. Clear?"
"Sir, yes sir!"
I gave the two time to stew for a bit before moving on to inform them of what will happen next. "While Ms. Kryze and Ms. Vizla are under house arrest, you two will have something more physically demanding. After seeing your performance on the security cameras, I deemed your unarmed combat ability to be wholly inadequate, barely enough to protect the princess while in civilian disguise. And so, for the next three weeks you're to go through additional unarmed combat training, where I'll personally train you to be able to defend Ms. Kryze effectively, even with only your civilian gear."
The two looked at each other in trepidation, sensing something is not right. "We'll get started immediately, follow me." I smiled at them before exiting the room toward the Tower's gym. Their steps followed mine as all three of us entered the gym. Inside the gym is a wide open area designated as the dueling circle, various workout equipment at the sides of the room, and a couple of doors leading to showers and a storage room for practice weapons.
I walked over toward the sparring circle before turning to face my subordinates. "As a warm up, you have 10 minutes to take me down. This will give me a general idea of what I have to work with."
They would not accomplish that 10 minute goal. They didn't have the decades of experience I had which I could tell by them flinching a second too long, blinking reflexively when I aimed for their faces, and both of them limiting themselves to the basic style the Royal Guard taught to recruits which did not make full use the humanoid body like the elbows and knees. I thought it would give me a good idea of what section was lacking, that they'd let a bunch of cyborgs in suits allow them to get separated from the princess. But it looks like I have my work cut out for me. I would have to start from scratch and build them up brick by brick. Starting with basic footwork and a stable foundation.
Coruscant, Mandalorian Tower
Tanya Kryze
'Well last night could have gone much better.' I thought as I sat in my chair looking out at the skyline of Coruscant. I had not planned for the whole disastrous fight to happen. I had not planned on a lot of things last night but I certainly did not plan on ending up on house arrest for the next little while. Although it didn't affect me too greatly since I was still allowed to do my work. If anything this would prevent Vai from dragging me on another one of those escapades. Or at least give me time to make sure that if it ever happened again the situation would be much better planned out so we didn't end up accidentally walking into a gang war between corporations. Why does this planet have to be a cyberpunk dystopia? Well of course I knew why, it was the core of an intergalactic civilization and an economic hub. Of course it would become like this, frankly it was a bit curious why the line between human and droid being gray as it were with those mechanically modded folks walking around hadn't started debate on the issue of droid rights.
I wasn't going to be pushing that myself that was a bit too much of a boat rocker in my opinion, though I did see issue with the whole enslavement of sentient beings. Even though it was recommended to wipe X4's memories every couple of months, I was just going to ignore that and rely on the economy to do the job. I paid him a good wage in my mind, I gave him 20% of my income for investment and then the last 10% that I gave him was filed as investment as well was actually the wage I was paying him. I figure that he would find out sooner or later that he could do whatever he wanted with that money.
I also suspected the moment he figured it out would be the moment he would be completely sentient so I was interested in when he would do that. Oh, I know there were fears of droid revolts and such going back millennia in this galaxy, but I simply thought it was the same issue with slavery or wage slavery. If you don't pay someone what they're worth, they're going to become angry with you eventually. And that's usually led to rebellion and communism which would fail which is probably why the droid revolts kept failing.
However that was off topic, as I was still just recovering from the night of excess we had involved ourselves in. Vai hadn't come out of her room so I assume she had drunk a bit too much last night. And I would probably see her in a couple hours when she came out to start sobering up.
For myself I was simply going to enjoy the afternoon and read over the latest debates on the Silver Codex. See what was going on with that little work to try and shift the aggression of the mandoline culture from fighting for conquest to fighting for defense.
Most of the articles I saw were just positing ways of looking at the theory I provide in the codex. I didn't quite enjoy the one person who called me out for the obvious historical revisionism of the early years of the Mandalorians but was ultimately agreeing with the general ideas I had provided. It was a good thing I decided to not put my name on this piece of work. Not only did it maintain the neutrality of the work but it allowed people to attempt to try and understand and fill the gaps in the areas instead of depending on me to show up and fill them for them.
I had considered creating a Silver Codex volume 2, to increase the things I should talk about now that I have a better understanding of some cultural elements of the Mandalorian people and the Galaxy as a whole. I might get around to doing that eventually but for now it was enjoyable just to read what the other people are coming up with to give me ideas that I might use in the future.
I had a smile on my face as I flipped from the 5th document looking at the economical components of the theory and the proposed things that could create more economic growth for the Mandalore sector, when I saw the title of the document I was looking at in front of me and felt my smile die on my face.
The Silver Codex Volume 2
"The Hell is this!?" I said out loud sitting up in my chair, now either time travel existed and somehow I'd sent back a document from the future or someone was attempting to grow the Codex, my Codex, without my consent. That was thoroughly concerning because I didn't know what they were trying to say, I guess I could read it to find out.
Opening the document, I quickly started to look through it and noted that most of it was just a rehash of what I had originally proposed in different words but then I found a section that was thoroughly new.
- A Mandalorian does not stand alone. A single mandalorian defender stands upon the shoulders of thousands, from artisans, technicians, miners, slicers, bureaucrats, farmers, chemists, armorers, logistics workers and countless more. Every aspect of society is responsible in some way to the deployment of our honored fighters.
Well, they weren't wrong though and I would say it would be the free market that the Mandalorians need to rely on. The way this was worded reminded me of something, a collectivist expression of Mandalorian culture. It hits the right cultural beats to strike a Mandalorian's pride but what exactly is this meant to prelude? It gave me a bad feeling.
- Indeed, it does not matter if you are working in a public body or in a private organization you are contributing to the glory of Mandalore. But for too long we have allowed perverse ideals of separation between our common government and our privately owned expressions of infrastructure and value from a corrupt republic to weaken us.
Oh oh no, this right here was a worrying sign calling for a fusion of the private and public sector. I personally cannot think of a more terrifying thing than a government and a private organization being in lockstep agreement. They are meant to hold different interests and be regulated by the separation of power and responsibility they both hold. And outright claiming the problems in the sector are because of the Republic. Which is kind of true but not to the extent that this was implying. This was a trying to create a crisis narrative that the situation was desperate and needed to be dealt with immediately. This couldn't get any worse could it…
- Our government officials promote Republic style regulations that cripple loyal Mandalorian corporate entities giving advantage to unscrupulous and dishonorable trade unions who sap wealth from the common Mandalorian to enrich the parasites in the core worlds. In turn private Mandalorian entities have fled from the heavy regulation of Mandalore to establish themselves elsewhere, developing and enriching people who do not follow our creed.
Oh… to be fair the regulations in Mandalore were heavier than they were in the Republic so yes this was technically true. It has, however, been improving in the last few years in my opinion. This could imply that this person was not someone from the Core sector of Mandalore, perhaps one of the periphery planets. They were talking about being loyal to the planet of Mandalore so perhaps someone who used to live on Mandalore before the Clan Wars or had ties to the ghost of the past coming to haunt the future.
- This is a disgraceful state of affairs that can only be rectified by a re-examination of what is private and what is public.
Oh hell there it is again, questioning what should be outside the state and what should be inside the state and a separation of Mandalore from anyone who is outside the state.
- A public-private partnership in true Mandalorian style is a contract between the Mandalorian Government and Mandalorian Private organizations to act only in the interests of the Mandalorian people. Drawing wealth into our deprived systems and away from the dishonorable and parasitic. A Mandalorian Public-Private Partnership (MPPP) brings together both sectors expertise and resources with the sole intention of providing infrastructure, wealth creation, goods and services to the Mandalorian people.
Someone is trying to turn my Codex into a fascist document. Space Corporate fascism… this wouldn't take off right? There's no way this would take off. The Republic was too strong even in its influences outside of Mandalore Sector for something like this to take off and inside Mandalore Sector therewas a quite a bit of what could be basically called ancient Libertarianism, 'Get off my property and stay off my property or I'll use the guns that I own as my property to make you off my property or feed my property crops'.
You would need to find a literal hell hole inside the Mandalore Sector for this to even work to any extent. Right? Then again I'm sure a large majority of Mandalorian worlds have been orbitaly bombed at some point, there could be up to half of them still in a state where a document like this could fester, there's still more to read hopefully this didn't get any worse.
Even if it was some form of Corporate fascism, this is obviously some corporation pushing for fascism, just by reading the seven layers of corporate kung fu painted across this paragraph told me that. Not to mention this was obviously attempting to appeal to the egotistical Mandalorians mind, playing some cultural supremacy was in the future if they sided with them…
- This would typically express itself as private agencies owning and operating facilities or equipment to deliver necessary public services while making use of a sympathetic public organization to remove restrictions and regulations that only serve to prevent prosperity and growth.
Congratulations, corporate monopolies running everything. Not only would this allow stagnant monopolies to take much of the government's money, it would increase the amount of waste as regulations meant to prevent kickbacks would be gone. Oh we have enough fighters, guess we need to continue to subsidize the fighters. wink keep getting people voting for me and you keep that subsidy going, this had to be a nightmare right there was no way this was real.
- Indeed the MPPP is only truly possible when created by Mandalorians as we have the unique benefit of our shared codes and common interest that will help to establish trust that such a partnership would never be abused.
That was a false statement, quite a lie, in fact if I had had to guess. A corporation was trying to use the Silver Codex to set up a political party to get itself more freedom to create monopolies. This was outrageous, this was ticking me off a little. I don't think I'd been ticked off in this life. Oh well at least I made my way through the document there's nothing worse… there all the way at the bottom it was signed.
I saw red, one moment I was in my chair holding the pad in my hands, the next moment the pad was across the room, broken in half and I was out of my chair grinding my teeth. I felt like a fire was running through my system, pure utter rage as I realized that this corporate asshole who was trying to create a corporate fascist state was trying to steal my identity or at least the identity I had created to prevent a possible conflict in this life.
My attempt to create a self-defense variant of the Mandalorian culture in order to prevent conflict was being hijacked to create space corpo fascism.
And there wasn't much I could do about it, oh sure I could go out there and publish the second volume of the Silver Codex all I want, all it would do is cause a bit of confusion and people would just choose whichever one they liked better, assuming that both were fake instead of one was more real than the other. In fact because one had been put out first and would be claiming to be the real one if I put out a second volume and claimed I was a real one people would just chuckle and ignore it.
I needed to learn who was behind the identity of this False Silver and expose them before this became a thing.
Taking a few deep breaths I calmed myself and tried to let my brain work. There were already key points of evidence given to me by the damn document itself. I just need to get another copy of the document to read over it again to make sure I wasn't mistaken in my assumptions. A corporation on the edges of Mandalorian space could be anything, perhaps military based most likely if you're going to stroke the egos of the supremacists you're going to want the supremacists to be thinking about war so it's most likely a military based company, couldn't be that many of them.
Turning to X4 who had been standing there dutifully I said, "I need documents on every military based corporation within the Mandalore sector as well as any information on a Silver Codex volume 2 that can be found."
"Yes, mistress," X4 said, bowing a bit before asking, "is there anything else you need?"
Chuckling, I said, "An identity theft lawyer, but you can get me a company that will deliver a letter to the Mandalore sector with no questions asked. That would be useful and I have two or three people I need to talk to about some things that need to be handled."
"Of course, mistress." X4 said, bowing again before stepping away.
Turning back to the window I let out a sigh, I need to just wrap this up quickly before Aunt Satine found out, if something like this came to her attention as a political issue she would have to come down hard on all the Silver Codex work I've been doing over the years just to maintain control of the sector which could be just as dangerous as letting this False Silver gain followers.
Which means I needed someone on the ground to be my eyes and ears, hopefully Bo-Katan could help me with that. I knew she had contacts with a lot of Mandalorian Traditionalists so hopefully her contacts had some idea who this False Silver was and could point me in the right direction.
Writers RANT! And that my good boys and girls, is how you include F-ING CYBERPUNK ELEMENTS IN STAR WARS. the more I think about those robo kids on tatooine the more pissed off I get because i remember neat little factoids like did you know magnetic sand is a thing, and that it can take drones and model airplanes out the sky because the grains will build up in the engine… now imagine something like that happening to someone who cut off an arm to look trendy..
Besides the rant what we got here, gang fight, learning about the going on in the outer rim, and oh hey, identity theft. I'm sure that won't unleash hell.
Edited by: Warmach1ne32, Markus, Lord Feunoyr
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