Chapter Twenty-Three (Patreon)

Sora Bulq reminded himself that he was a Jedi Master. That he should oppose deception. That materialism led to ill things. Yet he couldn’t help but be impressed. Nor could he deny that without the absurd amounts of money his padawan threw around their mission would likely have failed, ending in a decades-long war between the Kaleesh on the surface and the Huk in orbit.

“You wrote this?” he asked, looking up from the words covering the datapad.

“Yes.” He frowned at that. His padawan was not usually so quiet, nor cut off.

“I am not going to repudiate you,” he said, and felt a pressure ease on her side of the bond. “I am merely trying to figure out how my padawan--my twelve-year-old padawan--has enough money to hire a Mandalorian army and build an orbital shipyard over an unheard-of planet in Wildspace.”

“It’s not unheard of,” Ali’ya protested. Sora rolled his eyes, pushing his exasperation away in the Force. Were he a younger knight he might have fallen for the distraction.

“When did you write this?”

“When I was five,” Ali’ya answered. “Before I came to the Temple. My family--things were getting bad. We needed medicine and we could barely afford food. So, I started selling it to people in pubs. Just a credit, it wasn’t too hard to convince them to buy. I snuck up a few levels and sold some copies to bounty hunters. Most of them are nice around kids, if only so the Mandalorians don’t beat them up.”

“Yes,” Sora Bulq mused. “They do tend to be protective around the young.” It was something that had caused no little frustration on his part, given how often the Mandalorians sought to be around the ad’ika mandokarla, as they insisted on calling his padawan. Brave child, more or less, a description he couldn’t dispute though he dearly wished he could have kept her further from the war. At least the one of the older Mandalorians--Rav Ordo, great-uncle of the Duke--was willing to commiserate with him on the matter.

“I was saving up to buy a holonet domain,” Ali’ya explained. “It was expensive, but I had to save because even that many credits would only get medicine for one. Then dad started making more money.” Her voice trembled. “I didn’t know how, though now I guess he must have been selling some of Ebor’s secrets. Ebor’s a Hutt, a Djiselic I think. He controls every piece of consumer technology produced on Coruscant. Dad worked in his factory. Ebor’s men are the ones that killed him.”

Sora put down the datapad, pulling his padawan into his arms.

“It was--they didn’t even--they just threw the bombs into the house,” Ali’ya sobbed into his robes. “We were playing with a droid, he used to fix them up, and he locked me in the hidden room, behind the bookshelf. The explosives . . . It was so loud, and I could feel them, mama, uncle, my cousins, great-grandma. I tried to stop it, I did but I wasn’t strong enough. Rubble was falling and I tried to stop it but it didn’t work, just for me it--”

Sora hugged her tighter. After a moment she spoke again. “Master Sinube found me there. In the rubble. I woke up in his arms, when we were already at the speeder. You know the rest.”

“I know some of the rest,” Sora corrected her. “But that can wait. It’s time for bed, little one. We’ll meditate together, then you’ll get some sleep. Real sleep,” he stressed. “Not whatever you’ve been doing in Khedive.”

“Yes, Master.”

*

After the space battle, things calmed down for Ali’ya. The Mandalorians, the Kaleesh, and her own master all insisted there was no need for her to join them for the end of the campaign. They said she was unwell, though they all used different words. The Mandalorians called it battle-worn, and mentioned that it was standard custom in most Clans for even adult soldiers to have one month off every half-year.Her master called it Force-weariness, a result of being around so much death and spreading herself thin in her attempts to help. The Kaleesh called it soul-worn, and viewed it as a sign from the gods that she had done all she was meant to. Part of her (the childish part, a factor entirely coming from her body rather than her mind, Ali’ya insisted to herself though she knew it wasn’t completely true) wanted to protest. But she knew they were right. Even with her brain chemicals better aligned there was only so much she could handle. It helped that the Force sung with joy when she agreed to stay, and that a number of Mandalorian healers and rebuilders remained behind as well.

Ali’ya spent most days helping with clearing the rubble. The worst injuries were being treated at the battlefield--which had now shifted to the Huk system--and the remaining Kaleesh and Mandalorian healers were more than up to the task of treating amputees and preventing disease from spreading. Though she could have used telekinesis, Ali’ya found the physical movement relaxing in a way. Cathartic. After so much time spreading herself thin in the Force it was nice to do something simple and physical instead.

“So, you’re from Coruscant?” the Mandalorian next to her asked. They had yet to take off their helmet, though they had given their name (Alli Vorm of Clan Wren). “Not many Togorians there.”

“No,” Ali’ya agreed, not certain where the conversation was headed. “There aren’t. Even fewer among the Jedi.”

“Togorians have their own traditions,” Alli explained. “Much as we Mando’ade do. I hope you don’t mind my asking, but when did your family move to Coruscant?”

“I’m not sure,” Ali’ya replied, unable to shrug around the boulder she hefted. “Generations ago. Great-grandmother’s great-great-grandparents were born there. We owned the apartment too, something that was passed down from my father’s side of the family. It was my uncle’s, he kept the deed on him whenever he could.”

“Did the deed have a name on it?” Alli asked, her voice filled with strange enthusiasm.

“I don’t know,” Ali’ya said. “Never got a look at it.”

“Did they give you to the Jedi?”

“They died when the house exploded,” Ali’ya said, struggling to release her emotions into the Force. She thought the Force healing had helped, and perhaps it had but it seemed the weight of death that even weeks later filled Khedive was pulling at old memories. “Ebor’s henchmen. A Jedi found me in the rubble.”

“Oh.”

“Yes,” Ali’ya huffed. “Now is there anything else--” Ali’ya paused mid-sentence, staring at the black letters at the corner of her vision.

Quest: Noble Lineage

Find your noble ancestry

Subquest: First on Planet

Find the deed to your old apartment

Reward: 500 experience points, a clue into your noble ancestors

“Damnit.”

“What?”

Ali’ya shook herself, dismissing the notification and forcing a smile. “Nothing. Just stubbed my foot.”

*

Meditation that night was uncomfortable. Ali’ya had a lot of self-searching to do. With Qymaen now off-world, hunting down the last of the Huk ships, she was able to see her own complaisance in his actions. They were wrong. Undoubtedly, completely wrong. She had protested his actions, but she could have done more. She could have insisted, could have threatened not to join them in battle meditation or to refuse to heal.

But what good would that have done, Ali’ya thought. Left millions of civilians defenseless? No, ignoring his actions was the lesser of two evils. But that does not make it less evil. Ali’ya wasn’t sure what do with that knowledge. She knew it was a choice that Jedi had to make all too often. Killing, after all, was wrong in its own right. Yet Ali’ya could not regret killing the Huk who threatened to enslave the Kaleesh and eat their young. Nor did she regret harnessing the pain and anguish she felt in the Force against them, even knowing what her fellow Jedi would label it.

Ali’ya sighed, and let the meditative trance take her over. Her questions and qualms would not be resolved in a single session. Her earlier meditation with her Master had helped greatly to separate her own feelings from those she absorbed as part of repeated Battle Meditation. Now all she needed to do was figure out what her own feelings meant, and how to deal with them.

That’s tomorrow’s problem, Ali’ya thought as the Force carried her on gentle tides. And the day after, and the day after that, and the day after that. Rome was not built in a day, nor a year. There is time.