"I find it hard to celebrate the death of people. Fortunately, slavers are not people."
"My lord, I regret to inform you that your day's schedule has been cleared."
I looked up from the report comparing cultural dimensions of Zygerrians in their home empire and in the breakaway Combine I was trying so very hard to sway to my side to see who interrupted me. Unsurprisingly, it was a young red-haired woman in the uniform of the distinctive and vivid red uniform of the Diplomatic Service. However, I knew that it was little more than a costume to her.
After all, the last time I had seen her, she had been wearing the uniform of Imperial Intelligence. And I had just gotten hauled out of a Kolto tank.
Wait, what was that she said about my schedule being cleared?
"Don't tell me they're all attending the same private funeral," I said, scrolling to the next section of my report and bracing myself for a yawn-inducing description of how minutely power distance varied across two different slave-driven economies.
"They're the star of the show, actually," she said, showing me a datapad. Parsing the collection of headlines and screengrabs took me a few seconds, thanks to the Basic runes. Once I had deciphered them, however…
"Get me a newsfeed," I ordered, casting aside the report I had been reading. "Unless you have a preliminary report on this matter?"
"Those headlines were the preliminary report, my lord," she answered.
"Newsfeed it is," I declared, striding towards the big central projector in the center of the suite my entourage had been given for the duration of this visit. Decorated entirely in crisp white stone and gold leaf, it felt like an exercise in excess, like someone had tried to see how much ostentatiousness was too much and just kept going.
As I stood inside a half-circle of white couches that were quickly filled with the rest of my staff, the holoprojector sputtered to life. Almost at eye level, a projected screen began hovering in the air, tuning into a news anchor in the middle of a sentence.
"… though the placement of the belt makes foul play unlikely," he said. Clad in an unremarkable tunic of the typical Zygerrian cut that revealed far too much of his chest for polite society, it would have been easy to peg him as just another media personality. Except that I could see the unmistakable slave collar clamped around his neck.
The display split in half to reveal another Zygerrian, female this time. Likewise dressed in a revealing tunic that stood in marked contrast to the color of her fur, and likewise with a slave collar clamped around her neck.
This world really was the worst.
"Crookurch, do you think there's any chance of this being related to the other deaths all around Zyg Prime after the Empire and the Republic arrived on their diplomatic visit?"
"No," he said after a moment, his tone decisive. "No, I don't think so. Yes, the sheer number of accidents is concerning, but nothing that cannot be explained by simple bad luck. A malfunctioning slave collar, a misplaced energy cell, a ruptured powerline, a gas leak… these can happen anywhere, not just because of visiting diplomats."
Oh good, dead slavers. No doubt the Republic had been hard at work. Unfortunately, that made my job of getting on the good side of the Combine of Zyg a bit difficult, seeing how a lot of the people who mattered on this planet were suffering from an acute drop in life expectancy.
And even a single failure of the diplomats meant the Warhawks would only get louder and more influential.
"Everyone I was supposed to meet today is dead, aren't they?" I asked no one in particular as the talking heads jabbered on obliviously.
"Yes, my lord," came the answer. Surprisingly, there was not a hint of disappointment to be detected, but no doubt they were just very good at hiding it.
"What about the backup?" I asked. Surely there had to be a backup, even if it was as simple as walking down the street to get to know the… enslaved locals. Whose opinions did not matter to the people making decisions. And unless I wanted to inspire a slave revolt spanning multiple star systems, there was little they could offer me.
Damn it.
"Let me check." The sound of fingernails on a shallow keyboard filled the air before an answer came. "She fell out of a tenth-story window and into a trash compactor,"
"Hm," I grunted. This wasn't good, yet also very good. Bad politically, very good morally. I could live with that. "Find me something to do. I will be meditating."
Some might assume that withdrawing to my personal quarters to meditate was a not-very-clever way of taking a nap. I assure you, I was planning on using this time to meditate. So long as meditation involved training my control over the Force.
Telekinesis? Easy. Elementary, even. The bread and butter of most Sith and Jedi! Also something I already knew how to do.
Reading minds? Ethically dubious and required someone willing to have their mind's secrets laid bare. Pass.
No, my training was a bit more… unusual.
I was staring at a candle in my gaudily decorated apartments, making the flame surge at regular intervals. Starting from the natural state, the flame grew three times in height for a seconds, and then it shrunk. Then I made it three times as wide.
Then I tried to make it even bigger, and I felt a headache come on.
After that, I decided to make the flame more elaborate. Round fire. A ring of fire. Small fire. Bright fire. It was shockingly intuitive, so I got a bit more creative.
I was giving the surging flame little arms and legs, creating a stick figure of flame that was busy searing itself into my retinas, when I heard something pull at my belt. More than a little alarmed, I cast about my room, trying to see who had managed to sneak up on me to… pull a minor prank? To spook me?
The quick glance around the gold-caked room revealed absolutely nothing. The bed was pristine, the bedside tables empty, and I still had an open flame a few inches from my face.
But something was still pulling at my belt. No, not at the belt itself, but at what I had hanging from my belt: my lightsaber. My little recombinant abomination of modern and centuries-old technology pulling away from me, straining towards balcony doors.
Doors which were obscured by heavy white drapes.
Doors behind which I sensed a familiar presence.
Reaching out with the Force, I did not hesitate to unlock the doors. They slid open smoothly and with deathly silence. Were it not for the brief breeze of fresh air, I would never even have noticed they had slid open.
The small figure that rolled through the bottom of the drapes, however, was pretty hard to miss. Those green robes were quite distinctive, even if covered in dark splotches, as was the figure's small stature.
I waited for the doors to slide closed again before speaking up.
"You had best have the best excuse in the galaxy," I said, my tone more than a bit jovial, but making sure to keep my voice low. Even if these guest quarters had been thoroughly swept for bugs, I had no doubt that my people were listening in. And had probably placed their own bugs, just in case.
"You owe me," hissed the Little Jedi as she got to her feet, giving the room a quick once-over. Looking for possible escape routes, no doubt. Aside from the window she had come through, that left the door back to the main living room, the dumbwaiter, and… that was it. The only other door was for the bathroom, and that did not have another exit.
"Pretty sure you got that switched around," I argued.
"I saved your life," she pointed out. As I got a good look at her, those dark splotches looked awfully reddish-brown to me. Almost like blood.
"And because of me, you got to take four more," I countered. Yeah, that was definitely blood. Only one question: whose? "By my math, you owe me three lives."
She glared at me, and I tried very hard not to laugh in her face. How she thought she was threatening…
Why did my belt feel lighter all of a sudden? Wait, what happened to my lightsaber?
The bronze tube had detached itself from my belt and was now resting quite comfortably in the Little Jedi's hand. It made for a funny sight, the oversized hilt in tiny hands, but I chose not to comment on that. She raised a brow as if to illustrate her point.
"People have told me I'm important to them, but this has got to be the weirdest way yet," I commented, summoning a fairly limited first-aid kit from across the room. Travel-sized, part of the standard imperial diplomatic luggage list. And, as I learned upon opening it, not nearly as well equipped as the one I had pilfered on Chembau. "And I really hope that isn't your blood on your robes."
"Oh, so now you care?" she asked, lifting herself onto the bed where I was going through the first-aid kit.
"Please," I scoffed. "I cared all along."
...
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