A Young Girl’s War Between the Stars

  13

  Coruscant, 42 BBY.

  “There you are!”

  I blinked, looking up from my perusal of the library catalog system as master Dyas approached with a smile. “Master Dyas,” I nodded, and he grinned wider.

  “Tanya. Have you got a moment?” he asked, and I nodded, turning away from the computer.

  “Certainly,” I agreed, raising an eyebrow as he pulled over a seat and sat down beside me and pulled out a tablet, before handing it over.

  “Have a look.”

  Taking the tablet, I looked over the data and whistled quietly. “That is quite the sum.”

  Master Dyas nodded. “I just followed along with what you did with the amount I’ve had you playing with, using the temple’s funds, after a bit of, ah, fundraising,” he gave a cheeky grin.

  I nodded along, not questioning it at all. If he had visited some wealthy patrons and encouraged them to donate to the temple out of the goodness of their hearts, who was I to look deeper into the methods used? I was certain that, as a Jedi master and a member of the Council himself, they were all above board. After all, if no one else on the Council, the Jedi governing body, questioned or complained about the potential use of Force techniques to manipulate the outcome of such a ‘fundraising drive,’ then that was tacit approval in and of itself.

  “So, why come to me?” I asked, curious what he needed my help for.

  Master Dyas looked embarrassed. “Ah, well, you see… If certain parties and individuals realize how much we’ve managed to collect, they’ll use that as an excuse to cut our funding next year. How would you suggest avoiding that?”

  “Spend it,” I answered instantly. I didn’t even have to think on it.

  This was just common practice among departments in both my first and second world. Any budgetary savings saw your budget reduced by that amount the next year, whereas if you went over budget, your budget obviously needed to be increased for the next year. It was a truly insane mindset that discouraged saving and fiscal responsibility in favor of irresponsible spending and poor budgeting! I went on to explain that to master Dyas, almost word for word.

  “I see,” he murmured. “But what if we wanted to keep most of it? Sure, we should absolutely buy a few more ships and pay for the maintenance, repairs, and upgrades on what we have, what with the war coming. Maybe look into buying a bunch of components and supplies we might need and sticking them away somewhere safe for when they’re needed. But what if we needed a very large sum of money sitting around to make a big purchase?”

  “Mm,” I nodded, leaning back in my chair. “You remembered the ways I said it would be difficult for any investigator to track down a sum of money if someone wanted to disappear it?” I asked, and he nodded.

  “The process is very similar. When a company does this semi-legally, they do it using what we call shell companies, or subsidiaries. Company A creates Company B, which is a legal fiction. It technically has no employees, no physical location, etc.. Except it does also technically have employees as contractors—some of Company A’s, in fact. Those employees are actually employed by both, at least on paper—if you want to cover all your bases. They may never actually do work for Company B, or if they do, it’s just in the same role as they have in Company A, and you only pay them once because they’re just doing the job you’ve already paid them for as employees of Company A. You then use Company B to sell Company A a service. Information security, internal auditing, tax filing, financial advice, legal counsel, and so on—all services instead of goods. Non-physical things, the value of which can then be set and agreed upon between Company A and Company B.

  “Then! You have to pay Company B’s employees. Except, they’ve already been paid once by Company A and they never did more work than they would have under their normal contract. So all of that money can go straight into your pocket. That way, you get paid twice—you just make sure to take Company B’s pay out of the payroll for Company A. Minus taxes, of course. Taxes are how they always get you. Ironically, the tax collection departments of most governments don’t care if you’re doing crime, only that they get their cut. Many of them have systems built in for reporting profits from illicit gains, just not actually named as such. If you deal in stolen goods, for instance, they have a check box for ‘funds collected for the sale of goods procured through scavenging’ or something like that—the legal equivalent of ‘if you say it fell of the back of a truck, then it fell off the back of a truck, and as long as we get our share we’re going to keep quiet about it.’

  “Then, once you’ve paid your taxes, you stick all of that money in a bank account tied to Company B, completely separate from Company A’s funds and only ever report the funds from Company A when doing financial reviews for investors—or in this case, those providing charitable donations. Some of them will surely recognize what’s going on, but as it’s a tax deductible write-off on their part, they may be willing to give you even more money, so long as some of that money comes back to them through some other channel, such as by selling the temple, I mean Company A services. That ends up in an agreement that looks something like: ‘I will give you X credits, you get to keep a percentage less than the tax rate, then you buy services from my own shell company or you buy all of your goods from me with physical credits tax free and neither of us reports the sale.’”

  Master Dyas hummed, stroking his chin in thought. “I see. And when it’s time to make that large purchase, I suppose I’d want to use physical credits.”

  “Precisely,” I confirmed. “There is are inherent risks in transporting and using large sums of physical credits, however. They can always be stolen. The person you’re buying from can claim to have never received the funds and you can’t have your bank reverse the charge. Pirates, if you try to take them into space. Sometimes, the bank itself or someone working for the bank may decide they want to collect those credits and may hire mercenaries to take them back. Police using civil asset forfeiture laws because carrying physical money looks suspicious…”

  The man chuckled, reaching out and patting my shoulder. “You worry too much. I’m sure it’ll be fine. But I might take some guards with me, just in case, if it comes to that. In the meantime, keep working on the account you have access to. I want to see what you can do with it. Now!” he clapped his hands and gestured towards the data terminal I was using to look through the catalog. “What were you looking for? Maybe I can help.”

  I nodded as a frown pulled at my lips. “I’m doing a research project out of personal curiosity, looking into the history of the Jedi Order, the origins of its tenets and core rules, the rise and fall of the Sith, and other things.”

  “Quite the heavy reading list,” master Dyas murmured, nodding. Sighing, he shook his head. “Unfortunately, most of the knowledge you seek has either been lost to us or… sanitized. Have you looked into the various divisions that make up the Order?”

  “Only a cursory look,” I shook my head. “Why do you ask?”

  “Did you know there are actually four Jedi councils?” he asked, and at my raised eyebrow, laughed. “I know. Some days, that seems like four too many, believe me! The one you’ve already dealt with is the Jedi High Council. We’re the ones in charge of everything. Below us are the Council of Reassignment, the Council of Reconciliation, and the Council of First Knowledge. That’s the one responsible for managing what we, as an order, know—and what we allow the wider universe to know. They technically outrank even the High Council when it comes to certain forbidden knowledge.” He eyed me curiously for a moment before asking, “I missed your interview with the other High Council members. That little encounter on Dathomir, against the Nightsisters. I heard you used stealth tactics to take them down?”

  “I did,” I confirmed.

  Master Dyas hummed, nodding once. “Then you might be a fit for the Shadow program, actually. They’re a group within the Order who focus on stealth techniques and infiltration, and mostly work for the Council of First Knowledge. They’re the ones going out and gathering, or destroying, anything deemed forbidden by that council.”

  “I was given an offer to join the Medical Corps yesterday,” I shrugged. “I’m undecided on where I would go.”

  “Well, that’s a few years off, so no need to worry too much about it now. Anyway, the Council of First Knowledge. They have their own private archive. A Bogan Collection containing all sorts of relics, holocrons, and unedited information, hidden within the Archives section. It’s not actually all that difficult to find. Just behind Kaneer’s window, in fact. The security on it is really bad—only a magnetic lock. It mostly relies on people not knowing it’s there. I ah,” he chuckled, scratching at the back of his head, “I might have broken in a time or two to do a little browsing myself.”

  “Master Dyas, a rule breaker? Surely not,” I smiled, earning a laugh from the man.

  “Well, I’m no Qui-Gon,” he leaned in and winked, lowering his voice. “But that’s because you don’t get a reputation if you don’t get caught! We just got unlucky that time.”

  “Of course.”

  “You should ask master Dooku about it sometime.”

  “Oh?” I asked, curious.

  “How do you think we got caught?” he chuckled. “He had a vision and accidentally destroyed half the room. Some of the things in there apparently don’t react well to poking.”

  Pushing himself to his feet, master Dyas grinned. “Of course, I trust you wouldn’t abuse that knowledge to go sneaking in. After all, there’s no way you wouldn’t get caught, especially if you wandered off with one of their books. All of them are digitized on their own private server, cut off from the rest of the Archive network, so if a book went missing it’s not like we’d lose the information on it. But you don’t want a Shadow showing up in your quarters and finding you reading the forbidden literature! They definitely would, too. Eventually. Once they noticed it was missing. They’d search almost every room in the temple for anything that went missing.”

  “But if nothing went missing,” I murmured, and he shrugged.

  “Then why would they bother looking? Anyway, good luck on your research. Have fun,” he waved and took off, leaving me sitting there.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Closing out the screen I had been browsing, I stood and made my way around the library, keeping track of everyone present. After a while, I eventually found the ‘window’ in question—a back lit piece of glass with a monitor behind it, showing an exterior view. I could see how it would fool most passers-by. Reaching out, I probed it with my senses and touched the sides, pulling and pushing this way and that.

  Magnetic lock, I confirmed, finding the lock in question with a narrow, directed sensory probe slipped through the tiny crack between the ‘window’ and the wall, similar to the ones that had been used against me on Dathomir. Every lock has a key or switch. So, how do they unlock this one?

  Following the feeling of the wiring, I back traced it through the library a ways, before coming to a small statue not far away. Probing that as well, I found a seam. A bit of prodding revealed that the head would twist slightly to the side with enough force, which tripped the lock on the door.

  I reset the lock and moved away, making my way to the row of servers in the back of the main archives room. Looking around, I noted the make and model, along with the connection interfaces—assuming that any servers in the forbidden archive would likely be the same, or an earlier model. From there, it was back to my room to collect my tablet and do a little research on the model we had and previous models, and any current known but unpatched vulnerabilities.

  Once I had an idea of what I would need, I changed out of my temple robe and into a set of normal clothes I’d bought while I was out with Obi to blend in. Tucking my lightsaber under my jacket, I left the temple and took a little shopping trip for some tools. It seemed I would be pulling another all-nighter doing some more coding, but if master Dyas was right, it would be worth it.

  The statue clicked and I hurried to the door, pulling it open and slipping inside. I checked the inside and found what I had expected—not far in, another switch to unlock the door from the inside. I left the door open and reset the statue, before closing the door behind me so no one would be able to look and tell that it had been opened.

  Clicking on the red light of the flashlight I’d brought, I dropped my optical camouflage technique and hurried down the hall. It was covered in spiderwebs and didn’t look as though it had been disturbed in years—which made sense, if no one ever really came down here, except to store something recently found or when someone got caught breaking in. A look around showed the place didn’t even have security measures—no laser emitters, no motion sensors, not even cameras.

  Shaking my head, I found the main room and held off on looking around, instead going straight back to the lighted server sitting in a corner. Reaching under my robe, I pulled a new tool off of my belt and found the standard droid access data port. Plugging it in, I tapped the small screen and the little device came to life.

  It was a Frankenstein’s monster of different pieces of tech that I’d spent two days cobbling together and a couple more coding for. There was a small screen taken from a maintenance display panel for a star fighter, two small handheld diagnostic computers that had been repurposed and linked to each other, a small physical keyboard, a storage drive for whatever data it pulled, and a cable soldered to a droid data access probe of the kind seen on an astromech—I had made a few other cables just in case, but I’d discovered that the droid ports were all identical, standardized, and hadn’t been changed or updated in over a thousand years and damn near everything bigger than a laptop had one.

  Tapping away at the keyboard for a moment, I smiled as I saw it connect to the server. Selecting the program I wanted, I ran the custom data extraction tool I’d slapped together—a combination security/encryption cracker, search algorithm, and file copy utility. One of the many benefits of an open source code repository was that nearly every bit of this thing had been pre-written by someone else, just as different parts of other things. All I’d needed to do was cut out the parts I needed, stitch them together, and make sure they worked together. Then, I’d stuck in the search terms I wanted to look for, along with a command to generate a list of every file on the server so I could look them over and determine if I wanted to come back and get something specific later.

  In this case, I was not just searching for the information I’d told master Dyas about, but I had decided to have it dig up anything on the Mandalorians as well. Everything I’d read so far had the feeling of sanitized works—I wanted the nitty gritty, the dark and dirty past that would give us some kind of edge in the coming negotiations with them.

  Sticking my new tool to the server via the magnet on the back, I left it to run silently and had a look around. There were all kinds of relics suspended on repulsor pads, kept behind glass cases, locked securely behind force fields, or just sitting out in the open on shelves. Books, scrolls, weapons of all kinds including lightsabers, armor pieces, pieces of jewelry, strange crystals that radiated with the Force that I had only read about—holocrons.

  Moving through the collection, I reached out with my Force senses, carefully feeling everything around. Some of it didn’t feel like much of anything at all. Other things felt particularly powerful in the Force—many of the pieces steeped in the Dark side, while others were surprisingly light, and a few felt… familiar. Natural. Balanced, almost—maybe a little to one side or the other.

  My senses touched something in particular and I turned, finding myself drawn that direction. Following the pull, I found a strange looking holocron—a clear geometric crystal sitting atop a base of organic looking red material, like a big piece of coral. In terms of dimensions, it was relatively small—the base would fit in the palm of my hand, but was large enough vertically that I couldn’t close both hands around it. It felt dark in the Force, but not necessarily evil—not dripping with malice, bloodlust, and barely leashed insanity like some of the things down here. Definitely a Sith artifact, but not one of the immediately dangerous ones.

  The holocron sat by itself, on a shelf with no label, no security, nothing to make it stand out from anything else—there were many more eye catching displays nearby, in fact. And yet, it pulled at my attention—or rather, it stood out to my senses. It wasn’t as though it was actively reacting to my presence. A few of the pieces in here had done that and I’d immediately pulled away—the feeling of some of the things in here trying to influence me, calling out to me, had me itching to respond with a mage blade and destroy them all. This one didn’t do that. It just stood out.

  Curious, I reached out and carefully probed it with the Force directly. When it didn’t react, I picked it up. That’s when I felt it react, reaching out with the Force and feeling me, probing me in return. I almost dropped it, but it stopped before I could. I felt Force gather within it and, a moment later, something flickered into view off to my right.

  A human man stood, studying me as I studied him. He looked… normal. Not at all what I was expecting, really. Tall and large, classically masculine one could say, with a square jaw, short brown hair, and blue eyes. He wore fairly plain brown robes and a rusty red hooded half-cloak.

  “Well, that’s interesting,” he murmured.

  I raised an eyebrow, reaching out to the projection. To my senses, it felt very much like a hologram or illusion, created using the Force. “Who, or what, are you?”

  The image of a man smiled. “I am one of the gatekeepers who guard and oversee this holocron and test those who would seek the knowledge within. I am little more than an echo, a memory of the man who created me. A partial copy of his mind.”

  “I see,” I murmured, nodding. It’s possible to copy memories and personality? Interesting! This bears looking into. Later. “And that man was…?”

  “Ajunta Pall.” His tone said he expected me to know the name and, when I shook my head, he frowned. “You have not heard of me? What year is it, and where are we?”

  “In the forbidden archive of the Jedi temple on Coruscant. The year is…”

  I told him the year and his frown deepened. “Nearly seven millennia since my creator’s death and over nine hundred years since someone last used this holocron, and in that time, they have erased the name of Ajunta Pall. Tell me, what of the Sith Order?”

  “Destroyed nearly a thousand years ago, I believe,” I answered honestly. “At least, that is what the histories say. That’s why I’m here. I have reason to believe that we’re being lied to, so I came in search of knowledge.”

  A smirk pulled at the illusion’s lips for a moment and he nodded. “I see. You have found it. But are you worthy to learn it? We shall find out.”

  The artifact reached out and, before I could stop it, I felt it probing again—not just the Force within me, but deeper. Reaching into my memories. Quickly ghosting over more recent stuff, before it hit paydirt. Every battle. Every victory. Every kill. Every moment of bloodcurdling terror. Every moment huddled in the trenches fearing for my life, soaked in the stench of the blood, mud, and shit of the front lines. Stopping on the moment I had acted in defiance of a being who claimed to be God, diving into nuclear hellfire in a futile effort to save one of the very few people I actually cared about.

  The probing retreated and I glared at the illusion, feeling my heart pounding at the vivid memory of that moment—the pain of my body burning up, between mana burning my body from the inside out and nuclear fire burning it from the outside in. “Never do that again.”

  “I don’t need to. I know you now, Tanya von Degurechaff. This holocron and the knowledge herein is yours and I appoint you its new keeper. Safeguard it from those who would seek to destroy knowledge.”

  With that, the illusion disappeared. I slipped it into the bag on my belt as I breathed and willed my heart to slow. My anger faded over the next few moments and I went back to browsing. I would look at the holocron later, when I had time and privacy. Now was neither the time nor the place—not if I wanted to avoid getting caught.

  Master Dyas said I shouldn’t take anything, but I don’t feel comfortable leaving it here. It wasn’t theft when the artifact in question had chosen me, though I doubt the other Jedi would see it that way. With that in mind, I made a mental note to find some way to hide it soon—outside of simply carrying it on my person at all times.

  One more curiosity caught my eye on my way back to check on the progress my slicing tool had made—a lightsaber floating on a repulsor pad. It even had a label: the lightsaber of Exar Kun.

  It was definitely the lightsaber and not the name ‘Exar-kun’ that drew my attention.

  Looking closer, I saw there were two emitters, but the handle was only wide enough for one adult sized hand—unlike my own version of a double-bladed lightsaber, which was just two lightsabers joined together at the end, capable of separating as needed or being attached to the songsteel pole. Curious, I probed it and found that like many things here, it was closer towards the middle than either light or dark. Gray, you could say.

  Picking it up, wary for any more alien probes, I spun it in my hand, testing the weight of it. It was impeccably balanced. Just a little thick for my hand, but then, I was young and it felt like it would be a near perfect fit when I was older. Thumbing the activation switch for one side, I raised an eyebrow at the brilliant blue blade that sprung forth.

  I thought Sith weapons were historically red? I mused, playing with the other buttons. I quickly discovered it had settings for length and power output—far more granular settings than my own, in fact, which left me wondering at the reasoning behind it. Spinning it around, I activated the other side and carefully flipped it through a few strikes. It felt comfortable in my hand. Right, really. Almost as good as my own sabers.

  Shutting it off, I considered putting it back, before shaking my head and sticking it in the pouch with the holocron. I was already stealing one artifact and data, what was one more at this point? Besides, I could actually use this one relatively openly, as long as I swapped out the current crystals with some chips off the big one in my room and claim I built it myself.

  No one would think it weird to have a backup backup lightsaber, right? Right. That was a perfectly normal thing to do. No one wanted to be disarmed, after all.

  There was the question of what one could do with more lightsabers than hands to wield them, but the answer to that was simple. I’d use the Force! Keep whatever enemy I was fighting busy with the ones in my hands, then use the last one to attack them from angles they didn’t expect.

  It was definitely useful and not something I grabbed on impulse because it looked cool and called to my inner weapon otaku! …I was already regretting not taking the time to go spend some of my funds on a blaster pistol before the mission. I’d have to do that tomorrow, before we left.

  Finding the data pull was done, I disconnected my tool and shut it off, then slipped out of the archive room to head to my quarters. I had some work to do before dawn and not a lot of time to do it.

  “You look awful. Did you sleep at all?” Obi asked as I joined her in the hall, carrying a thermos of space coffee that I was slowly draining as we walked. Ahead of us, masters Dooku, Dyas, and Qui-Gon walked together, speaking quietly as they led us from the temple.

  Shifting my bag on my back, I grunted. “Not really, no.”

  Swapping out the crystals on Exar-kun’s lightsaber hadn’t taken long at all, once I figured out how to safely disassemble it. All told, it had taken maybe two hours to clean it, cut new crystals, check the components and rush down to get some replacement parts for things that looked like they could stand to be replaced before they failed, swap out everything, and put it back together.

  No, what had kept me up until the sun rose and Obi knocked on my door was going over the data on the Mandalorians on my laptop—and then getting distracted by the findings from the comparison between the map data when that finished in the middle of my reading. I would need another day or two to go over everything I needed to, but we’d have plenty of time in hyperspace on the trip to Mandalore to do that.

  “You work too much,” she sighed, shaking her head.

  “Yes, well, I’d rather suffer now and be prepared going in than suffer later, go in unprepared, and potentially die,” I retorted, perhaps a bit snippier than I meant to.

  Obi hummed and nodded, falling back a step. Before I could do anything more than look back to see what she was doing, her hands were on me, rubbing at my shoulders and neck. “Relax~. It’ll be fine. We’ve got plenty of time to prepare. You should take a nap.”

  Considering it for a few moments, I nodded. “I will. Once we’re in hyperspace.”

  She shook her head but didn’t press. We took a pair of aircars to the spaceport. “We’ll be taking two ships for this mission,” master Dyas explained as we arrived. “Just in case we need to split up, or if we need to provide transport and protection. Better to prepare ahead of time for these things, you know?”

  “With that in mind,” master Qui-Gon turned a knowing look on Obi. “Padawan, why don’t you accompany master Dooku and Tanya?”

  “You’re sure, master?” Obi asked, and he nodded.

  “You can spend the time training together.”

  Obi beamed happily and gave her master a quick hug in thanks, earning a chuckle from the man. Dooku smiled, shaking his head before turning his attention to me. “Any word on the data?”

  “My program finished putting everything together last night. I’ll need a couple of days to go over it before I give you my report.”

  The older man nodded, even as Qui-Gon raised an eyebrow. “Very well. I’ll leave it to you.”

  “Do we have time for me to go purchase some supplies I forgot before we leave?” I asked, and Dooku sent me a curious look.

  “What did you forget?”

  “A blaster. If we’re going to be going into a war zone, I’d like a weapon with more range than a thrown lightsaber.”

  At that, all three of the masters chuckled. I sent them a confused look, Obi beside me radiating curiosity. “What’s so funny?”

  “That’s a good idea and we should probably all get some, but,” master Dyas trailed off with a mischievous grin.

  “But?”

  “We’re going to Mandalore,” master Qui-Gon pointed out. At my curious look, he elaborated, “They’re mercenaries and specialize in that sort of combat. You’ll be able to get one there, and they don’t deal in junk. Just as we each construct a quality lightsaber for ourselves and take great care of it, the Mandalorians take pride in their own weapons. While the blaster is certainly not as elegant as a lightsaber, it it not nearly as clumsy as some masters claim. In the end, they’re both tools to be used towards the same goal—keeping the owner alive and completing the mission. They are tradesmen whose trade is war. They know their tools. They will have already sorted through and collected the best weapons for themselves, so anything you get from them will likely be better than what you would find anywhere else.”

  “I’ll arrange something when we arrive,” master Dooku promised, before gesturing towards the ship. “Let’s be on our way. I look forward to hearing what you’ve discovered.”

  With that, we boarded and stowed our gear. Taking my customary seat in the cockpit, with Obi taking the seat directly behind me, I ran through the usual checks then got us into the air.

  If you enjoyed the story, please give it a like, favorite, a comment, even a review if you've got the time. RR's system is algorithm based and all of those things impact the ranking. Thanks for your support.

  On another note: you will never see me request a shoutout swap, nor do I give them. I believe a system that encourages a culture of potentially blindly advertising stories you may not have read yourself in order to gain advertising using someone else's audience is disingenuous, so I refuse to engage with it. This story made it to #150 the first time without it and will do so again, and then surpass that number.