The Force of Magic [Star Wars SI]

[WerewolfEros]

This chapter is dedicated to proper CHEESE.

Click to shrink...

But there's been no mention or hint of Sheogorath?? lol

 

[Vyraco]

I'm just waiting for Palpatine to steal all the knowledge of Magic he wants, deciding he don't need no Magic Oath with no stinkin Force Ghost, and going (more) absolutly batshit insane...

 

[Doomsought]

Ooh, I figured out the catch. The blessing of Hecate also protects against dark side corruption. Since many forms of Sith indoctrination rely on it, the effects will be especially noticeable to Sith acolytes.

 

[readsalot]

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Secura watching him a little more closely than necessary. There was surprise in her expression—and wariness.

He was a rather strange sentient, actually. On the outside he looked completely human, and inside his anatomy matched closely enough as well, but certain quirks in his biology pointed to some kind of shapeshifting chimera only distantly related to humanity.

Click to shrink...

Who's this dude a Vong?
Also great chapter, old Palpy has been shown the wonders of a Hardcopy Book well done

 

[FTR2017]

At this point it seems like the entire first class are spies.

Click to shrink...

Spies, and one or two viziers and ambitious princes while at it.

 

[Boroda Orka]

Tann watched the group of Force-sensitives passing in the distance out of the corner of her eye, with just a hint of curiosity. At their head were the visibly pleased Academy Director and a chuckling Thisspiasian. The Chiss pretended to be absorbed in the notes on her datapad. Yes, while standing in the middle of the corridor. Strangely enough, that was perfectly normal here—the students had a habit of picking up some of the Guild Master's quirks.

No anger stirred in her at the sight of the Jedi, nor any resentment. She found them interesting; she didn't particularly like them, but that was as far as it went. Her patron and teacher, however, had a... complicated attitude toward Force-sensitives who followed the Light Side. The Count never missed a chance to make some cutting remark whenever he encountered them. "A shadow of former strength." "Fragments of a glorious past." That was roughly how the aristocrat spoke of his former Order. And often, somewhere deep beneath the obvious disdain and the generous helping of contempt, a very attentive observer could glimpse a trace of bitterness and disappointment.

But to the Chiss, the Jedi were simply opponents. The young woman had a quick, powerful mind and was skilled at gathering and analyzing information from every available source. She had been trained for it—back home on Csilla and here, in Republic space. And from everything she had learned about those who followed the Light... she had no desire to follow their path. That insane mountain of restrictions they piled onto themselves and carried for the rest of their lives held no appeal for her. No enjoying the fruits of hard-earned glory, no personal possessions, no family.

At the thought of family, the Chiss failed to keep her expression perfectly composed. The faintest hint of an angry grimace crossed her beautiful face, forcing her to pay closer attention to controlling her emotions.

Vandalor...

Fucking sex-crazed piece of four-assed acklay shit! When Sev'rance found out what that primate had been doing after completing the Count's assignment... she did nothing. There was no point in arguing or making a scene. As always when dealing with outsiders, the Chiss kept a mask of icy composure on her face and simply handed him a datapad containing a recording of how he had spent his time in a Nar Shaddaa brothel. That was all that piece of filth deserved. After that, she stopped paying him any attention. If "a little variety" mattered more to him than she did, then he was welcome to enjoy all the variety he wanted.

Those who knew little about the Chiss tended to think them almost unemotional. The young woman allowed one corner of her mouth to lift in a faint, mocking smile. That wasn't true. It was simply a matter of her people's traditions. Emotion was reserved for those close to you—friends, family, those you respected enough to consider worthy of seeing what you truly felt. Showing everyone else what was in your heart was weakness, and weakness deserved no respect. The sex-crazed bastard she had once considered her lover had proved unworthy of that privilege.

Yes, Tann allowed for the possibility that all of this had been some elaborate game on the part of her patrons. Whether it had been the Lord's initiative or his Master's made no difference. But that did nothing to lessen Vandalor's guilt. Nor did it give her any reason to resent her mentor or his Teacher. In fact, even if the information that had found its way into her hands—and that animal's little adventure in the brothel—had all been arranged by the Count, she could only thank him for it. Who knew how long it might otherwise have taken for her former lover's true nature to reveal itself in all its glory? It had been another harsh lesson. Whether from her Teacher or from life itself, she had learned it.

She had learned the lesson, drawn her conclusions, committed them to memory, and moved on to the Count's next assignment. A disciplined, responsible officer—that was how the young woman saw herself—and she kept her attention firmly on the task at hand: mastering sorcery, studying the Guild, documenting its teaching methods, and becoming acquainted with the most important figures on Jabiim. The last part, at least as far as circumstances allowed.

So far, the only person she had managed to meet was Siith'khara'Dziha. A man of... contradictions. Probably human. She simply wasn't sure. After spending some time at the Academy, she had even begun to wonder whether he might be part Chiss. Sometimes, especially when meeting someone for the first time, his face remained just as cold and unreadable as those of her own people. But when he smiled, he reminded her of Count Dooku in the moments just before an especially painful lesson.

A faint air of madness seemed to follow their Director wherever he went. Talking to him, it was often difficult to tell whether he was discussing some serious, important philosophical subject or simply making fun of everyone involved. One moment he would look at the people around him like some ancient sage; the next, he would be animatedly discussing some moment from an online game with the young Togruta, Romri. Then he might suddenly stop in the middle of a corridor, his face intensely focused and his gaze fixed on nothing, only to pull out his datapad half a minute later and start frantically typing out notes. His lectures were lively and packed with easy-to-understand analogies. Easy to understand, yes—but most of them were either downright crude or outright indecent. Much like his sense of humor.

Then there was that habit of walking down the corridor with a glowing sign over his head that read I'M NOT HERE. If anyone tried to speak to him, the Director would look at them as if they were an idiot and point at the sign. And the nicknames he gave the students? Penro the Muun had become "Stretch," the Devaronian girl was "Hit-Girl," the Rendili was "Shipwright," and both Sephi were "Ears." The girl from Kuat, at least, had gotten lucky. He called her by her name—Littia. When Shipwright objected, the Director explained, "Shipwrightess sounds awful, and everyone will think the two of you are a couple." The Rendili refused to give up. Pointing at the two Sephi, he noted that they weren't a couple either. The Director looked surprised, asked the natives of Thustra, learned that they were brother and sister, shrugged, and said, "Still relatives."

Some of the students complained, but Tann saw more than simple mockery in it. There was recognition there as well: everyone the Director singled out in his peculiar way had caught his attention during practical lessons. The Devaronian girl, Wilmar Grark's daughter, had earned her nickname after she literally killed one of the other students with a bolt of fire. Burned a fist-sized hole straight through his chest.

While some of the students—including the killer herself—were busy losing their lunch and the rest stood frozen, unsure what they were supposed to do, the Director gave the fluffy girl a light pat on the shoulder and said, "Not bad, actually, but you need to work on your directional vector. Don't puke. I've seen spells with a lot more mistakes than that." Then, right in front of them, he held the body suspended with his aura and, with a running commentary, stripped the dead student to the waist, closed the hole, restored the organs, bones, muscles, and skin... and brought the corpse back to life.

"First corpse," the Academy Director said with a satisfied squint, clapping the slightly unsteady young man on the shoulder. "Go join the others, Deadman. Thanks for giving me a chance to demonstrate what chimerology can do. Next time, though, catch the pulsars with your head—the circlet will protect you."

And that was the full extent of the man's reaction. Though after watching the sorcerer work with her own eyes, Tann could understand why he was so calm: Deadman, a young man from Coruscant, had been dead for no more than ten minutes, and any problems involving his dead brain had been taken care of by the student circlet on his head—the only item of the uniform that everyone was required to wear.

Siith had added at the time, "If you somehow manage to drop dead, this artifact will keep your head in stasis for a week, giving me enough time to repair any damage done to the body. And if the brain itself is threatened, it'll generate a shield that keeps your skulls from suffering irreparable damage."

"Yes, young man?" the Director said in response to the raised hand of the student with a hole burned through his clothes where his heart had been. He was still a little pale, but he was standing steadily now, which earned him a small measure of respect from the Chiss.

"Why does the circlet protect only the head and not the whole body, sir?"

"So you'll have some motivation to learn the basic defensive spells as quickly as possible, obviously," Dziha said with a snort. "Pain, suffering, lost limbs, torment, the agony of death... You have no idea how motivating that can be!"

Tann could imagine it quite well. Pain, at least, was a perfectly workable motivational technique in her Teacher's repertoire. She herself had occasionally used similar methods back home to motivate certain subordinates.

"Admit it—after seeing how efficiently our fluffy beauty," the red-eyed man said, giving the Devaronian a playful wink, "breaks boys' hearts, every one of you thought you should probably put a little more effort into learning defense, am I right?"

At the low murmur of agreement from the students, the sorcerer bared his teeth in a grin that was both cheerful and unnerving, prompting a wave of nervous flinches through the room.

Speaking of names and nicknames, Dziha called the Chiss herself by her full name, which had sparked yet another wave of rumors that the two of them were, at the very least, acquainted—and still left the blue-skinned woman herself puzzled.

But none of that mattered. Why had so many Jedi been sent here? And with an actual Jedi Master—a member of the Council—leading them? That would definitely have to go into her next report. Before that, though, it might be useful to have a word with her new friend. Suti was a busy Twi'lek, but she was also very open and friendly. Tann could easily drop by for ten minutes after classes. The Director usually spent that time in the laboratories, working on his own projects.

---

The Dark Woman watched the strange little girl work. She was tiny, yet handled the Force with complete confidence. Just as the Jedi who had encountered these sorcerers before had said, the Force felt strange around them. There were no shades of either Dark or Light at all. Instead, there was a sense of rigor and precision—and in this case, a taste of blood and the stench of slaughter.

On the metal table near the center of the fairly large room lay a young bantha. The breed was called a "swamp bantha," though in truth it was simply adapted to worlds with rainy climates. Shorter fur, broader hooves—that was about all the Jedi knew about it.

The room itself was some strange hybrid of a spacious surgical ward, a sorcerer's lair from an old tale, and a technician's workshop. Medical equipment stood alongside cabinets filled with vials of various substances. There were machine tools, two medical droids, everything was sterile and spotless... and a little girl in a floor-length black robe, her hood thrown back.

The Jedi herself remained motionless under concealment atop one of the tall metal cabinets, which looked more like a safe than anything else.

Her independent mission had gone smoothly enough... if she ignored the journey here, when she had been forced to hide from her fellow Jedi, and that peculiar moment when someone—or something—had begun studying her intently from behind. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't identify the source of the observation, and after several attempts the woman had started to feel rather foolish, twisting around beneath the ceiling. Once she activated her concealment and moved to a new vantage point, the sensation of being watched disappeared.

In Kuro's opinion, the Council was taking the newly formed Guild far too lightly. Especially with the shadow of the Dark Side shrouding the future so completely. And the JMG's controversial leader himself raised far too many questions. Who was he? Where had he come from? What exactly was he trying to achieve with the organization he was building? The woman trusted the Grand Master and the Council, but... a little independent verification couldn't hurt. Especially since Master Rancisis was clearly far too favorably disposed toward the red-eyed man.

"Yes!" The girl standing in front of her "patient" jumped up, throwing both fists into the air in triumph. Then she launched into some incomprehensible but exuberant little dance. The redhead's face was glowing with joy and triumph. Very cute child, the thought slipped into the Jedi's mind before she could stop it.

The little girl darted toward the comlink lying on one of the tables, then suddenly froze. "But something's missing," the young sorceress drawled thoughtfully. "Right! The color sucks!"

A few quick steps, and the girl once again froze over the bantha in intense concentration. An'ya felt the Force begin to pour out of the child again. The amount was relatively modest, but the structure of it was another matter entirely. The redhead stood perfectly still. Only her darting pupils, focused on something visible to no one but her, and the faint twitching of her fingers betrayed the fact that this statue was a living person.

Nearly twenty minutes passed with neither of them moving. Then a wave of change swept through the animal lying on the table.

"Heh-heh-heh," the girl giggled in the cartoonishly sinister way only children could manage. "A pink, dwarf, swamp, guard killer bantha. P.D.S.G.K.B.-1. Heh-heh-heh. Dad's gonna lose it! Or maybe... Naaah... The four-butts joke won't be funny a second time. Hee-hee!"

"Mistress, have you finished?" the 2-1B medical droid spoke for the first time. Its companion, an FX-6, also began blinking to life as it came out of standby.

"Yeah, I think that's it." The girl ran her fingers into the hair at the back of her head and scratched thoughtfully. Kuro remembered seeing Siith'khara'Dziha make exactly the same gesture in a holorecording. "Pillkin, you, uh... keep an eye on the PDB... er... PDSGKB-1, hee-hee-hee. If the bantha's still doing fine in an hour, ask someone to move her to a separate enclosure. We'll test her tomorrow—there are Jedi visiting Dad, and I want to see the ones I'm actually allowed to notice!"

The girl grabbed her comlink and dashed out of the room, but not before casting a sly, barely suppressed look of amusement toward the spot where the Jedi was hiding, making her raise an eyebrow in surprise. The Dark Woman did not believe in coincidences like that, so...

A few seconds of silence followed, broken only by the sounds of the medical droids moving about—and by a quiet voice, too soft even for the machines' sensitive sensors to detect:

"I feel... stupid again..."

---

The young Knight Secura was a little disappointed. She had expected something far more insane from this place than an atmosphere that felt much like an ordinary school. The students they passed gave the sorcerer respectful nods, which he sometimes ignored entirely as he showed the Jedi around his domain.

Lecture halls, rooms for "practical exercises," testing grounds, laboratories... Allowing for the Academy's unusual specialization, it all looked like an ordinary educational institution. Even the students resembled perfectly normal young screwups—or, at the opposite extreme, overachieving nerds hurrying off to whatever they had to do. And for a complex this large, there really weren't that many people around. Aayla had been in places like this before, and while she wouldn't always have described herself as especially... disciplined, she did consider herself observant.

One of the students they passed did make her a little uneasy—a young man who felt very strange. His emotions were there, clear enough, but in the Force... not quite a blank spot, though close to it. It was as if, instead of a young man nearly six feet tall, she were sensing some small animal. His emotions were odd as well: dislike and envy mixed with a sense of... superiority? A rather unusual combination, but... the galaxy was vast. There was no telling who—or what—you might run into.

The biggest dose of cuteness, though, came from the Director's daughter—the red-haired child Aayla had seen at the library opening. She joined the tour right near the end, promising her father a "huuuge surprise" tomorrow. Siith seemed to have mixed feelings about that. His expression held both obvious fondness and a trace of apprehension. Though if the stories about the acklay were true, Aayla could understand why.

"Well, that's about it," the sorcerer said, spreading his hands with that perpetually unpleasant smile of his. "How about dinner now? My house isn't far, and my cook... Trust me, you need to try the food."

"If it wouldn't be an imposition," Master Rancisis said, looking at him questioningly.

"No, not at all. As soon as I was informed that the arriving Jedi were headed for the Academy, I gave orders for dinner to be prepared with guests in mind. And you can tell me what's been going on out there in the wider galaxy. I've been buried in work—only rumors ever seem to reach me," the man added with an exaggeratedly mournful sigh. "We can bring your injured colleague along as well."

"No. He's on a restricted diet and bed rest," Aayla cut in, giving Master Rancisis a stern look. The young woman had no doubt that if Quinlan were offered the chance, he would cling to the opportunity to escape the ward with his teeth and his remaining hand. Her former Master... wasn't exactly disciplined either. "Master Vos is still far too weak to go visiting."

"That's all right. Tomorrow, after the treatment, he can try Maria's cooking," the sorcerer said with an easy shrug, then turned his head toward an empty corner. "What about you, Master Kuro?"

The Jedi turned in surprise toward the white-haired woman who had appeared out of nowhere.

"Damn it! Third time today I've felt like a..." she muttered, trailing off before finishing the sentence, then fixed the red-eyed man with a suspicious stare. "How?"

"The concealment is good," Dziha said with a serious nod. "You just decided to hide in the home of a reasonably competent artifact-maker. And I have a hundred students here, Master. A hundred novice magic-users. Demons only know what might pop into their heads at any given moment. And the instructors aren't much better—mostly youngsters who were sitting behind desks themselves just yesterday, and most of them have already amazed me with the sheer force of their stupidity..."

"Hmph." Karray lifted her little nose, making Aayla smile. The child clearly did not consider herself one of those who had impressed her father with the sheer force of their stupidity.

"So, what about dinner?" Siith'khara'Dziha repeated.

"I don't mind. And what exactly gave me away, you're not going to tell me, are you?" the Dark Woman asked with a caustic, bitter smirk, casting a strange glance at the girl.

"Why wouldn't I?" the sorcerer said in surprise as he headed toward the exit from the academic building. "Body mass and scent particles—that was what gave you away first. And you kept tripping the security system's sensors, which don't rely on the visual spectrum alone. Echolocation, for example."

"So that's what those clicks I keep hearing are," exclaimed the Master, slithering along beside the sorcerer and occasionally shooting Master Kuro looks that promised a conversation later.

"You can hear them?" the red-eyed man asked, surprised all over again. "Your auditory system must be more advanced than ours."

"That's right," the Jedi Master said with a smile. "But don't even think about vivisection!"

"All Jedi are stingy," Karray snorted, still holding her father's hand.

"Karray!" the sorcerer said, giving her a reproachful look.

"But Dad, it's true!"

"Karray!" Dziha said firmly, shaking his head. "No name-calling. Apologize to our guests."

"Ugh..." The girl pulled such a mournful expression that Aayla giggled. "I'm sorry."

"That's better," the sorcerer said with satisfaction, ruffling the child's hair. "Tomorrow you'll be assisting me with the treatment of an almost-whole Jedi Master!"

The girl's eyes went wide with delight, and with a squeal she launched herself at her father for a hug.

"Children," the red-eyed man said to the Jedi with an apologetic smile, though somehow it still came out a little unsettling. "It takes so little to make them happy..."

---

Original Russian story

You can find more chapters on my Patreon.

The translation of new chapters will also be published here—but with a bit of a delay.

 

[Vyraco]

Some children would love to watch a lightsaber being disassembled and reassembled... Karray wants to watch the dis- and reassembly of a Jedi Master. She'd love to poke his liver, maybe even his heart or brain, but that would be unprofessional.

 

[Elmoslayer5]

... if you poke a specific part in a Jedis brain with electricity do you think you could get the body to do a force trick?

 

[WerewolfEros]

... if you poke a specific part in a Jedis brain with electricity do you think you could get the body to do a force trick?

Click to shrink...

Now I want Karray to ask Siith that with all the Jedi present, with Siith seriously considering it, that would be so fucking hilarious

 

[FTR2017]

I think this could be the STar Wars equivalent of The Addams Family, we're only missing an undead butler, an old hag well-versed in cauldrons, and a sapient disembodied hand.

I also foresee this pink bantha goring someone in the near future! Thus providing Siith with more opportunities for willing near-whole Jedi vivisections for researchrestoration purposes!

 

[Elmoslayer5]

Now I want Karray to ask Siith that with all the Jedi present, with Siith seriously considering it, that would be so fucking hilarious

Click to shrink...

Might be funnier if she asks that while siith is mid "healing".

and a sapient disembodied hand.

Click to shrink...

Hmmm i dont think Anakin would miss his hand, just gotta find the thing and bring it to life...

Anakins hand could totally do force tricks, also would the hand be considered the "chosen one".

Imagine it, his hand standing on its stump mutely screaming 'unlimited power!!!' While electrifying a misbehaving student.

 

[Boroda Orka]

"That little one gives me the creeps," Vos confided to his former Master, flexing his new arm. The Jedi was still impressed by how quickly they had restored the limb and rid him of the lingering weakness left by his severe injuries.

The operation had gone surprisingly quickly and, despite Quinlan remaining conscious at his own request, was almost completely painless. The only discomfort came from faint, sharp twinges as the nerves were connected. There were even "bonuses," as the sorcerer put it. After grafting the arm in place—which the spellcaster had pulled out of some kind of tank full of "soup"—he went over the Jedi's entire body as well. "Everything looks good overall, but we can make it just a little better. At the very least, I can get you off that diet right now," Dziha had said, instantly putting an end to any hesitation on the part of the Jedi Master, who was thoroughly sick of eating extremely healthy and completely tasteless paste.

Overall, Quinlan found himself liking the sorcerer. There was something cheerful and reckless about him, much like Quinlan himself. Even the looks the Jedi occasionally caught him giving his red-haired ward felt familiar. Vos had looked at his own Padawan, Aayla, much the same way—and the girl looked at her adoptive father exactly as the little Twi'lek had once looked at the Kiffar who had saved her. It was obvious there was a deep bond between them, no matter how hard Siith tried to act like a Mentor rather than a father. Not that it fooled anyone outside the two of them. If anything, it felt more like some private game between two people who were very close, with rules only they understood.

The only problem was the way the little thing looked at the Jedi... like a child eyeing a new present. A toy. He had seen little girls happily giggle as they pulled the arms and legs off their dolls, then "played doctor" with them. Brrr... And then there were comments like, "Oh, that's interesting! Dad, look at his gallbladder!" followed by delighted clapping, or, "His respiratory system is completely standard. Boring, even," accompanied by a disapproving shake of the head and a reproachful look aimed straight at the Kiffar. For a second, he had actually felt ashamed of having such unremarkable lungs!

A charismatic little thing. Charismatic—and frighteningly well versed in anatomy, biology, biochemistry... Well, compared to the Jedi Master himself, at least. Most of the terms the girl casually rattled off while peering into a Force projection visualizing the state of his body went completely over his head, even though the education provided at the Temple was very good.

"Come on, Quinlan," Tholme said with a smile. "The child is simply brilliant—and very enthusiastic."

"About your inner world, Master," Aayla giggled, looking over the now whole and healthy Jedi.

"I'd say our inner world," the healed Jedi Master said with a snort, sweeping his gaze over his fellow Jedi. "Not implying anything, but if we ever send one of our people here again, make sure there are at least two of them."

"I second that," Master Bulq said with a crooked smile. "'Mister Sora, you're a Weequay, right? I've never met a Weequay before,'" he quoted the little girl.

"Uh-huh, uh-huh," the Twi'lek nodded, then continued. "'Nothing hurts, does it? No? Pleeease?' Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! And then she just bats those eyes at you."

"You may find it funny, Knight Secura, but I nearly blurted out that an old leg fracture—healed for five years now—still aches from time to time," Bulq said with a snort. "Sweet child, but yes, a little terrifying. I just hope she doesn't grow into someone we'll have to hunt down."

"Exactly," the Jedi Shadow said darkly, looking at Oppo Rancisis. "With all due respect, Master, you are far too well disposed toward Siith'khara'Dziha."

The Jedi let out a short, weary hiss and rolled his eyes slightly.

"Master, I think you're looking at the situation from the wrong angle. Yes, there is no Darkness in them—the mages, I mean. But there is no Light either. I consider the sorcerers from both sides: their neutrality can be both a danger and an advantage. And I believe I'm handling this correctly. Even you, An'ya, think the old Thisspiasian is taking this new institution that has appeared on that rain-soaked world far too lightly. But I'm not. That is precisely why a member of the Council is here. And not alone, either—Master Bulq is with me, one of the finest swordsmen in the Order. Master Tholme and Knight Secura came to Jabiim with me as well, as Quinlan's former Master and former Padawan. No younglings. No Padawans. Knights and Masters. Not every Council assignment gets a team this strong."

"Master?" the blue-skinned Twi'lek asked, raising her brows in surprise. "So you're not actually fond of the sorcerers—you're only pretending?"

Rancisis laughed cheerfully and shook his head.

"No, Knight Secura. I genuinely like the Guild as a whole, and Master Siith in particular. But two hundred years in the Order have given me a great deal of experience. Not everything is what it seems. Supposed friends stab you in the back when you least expect it. Sentients who seem noble and kind can turn out to be rotten and vicious. And a man named Siith, who looks like a Sith, has red eyes like a Sith, and wears a sinister, unsettling smile... may turn out to be a perfectly reasonable and pleasant fellow, while his Guild may prove a useful ally—or, at the very least, a reliable supplier of Force artifacts. Do you understand, Knight Secura?"

"Master Rancisis is here," Sora Bulq said, nodding to himself. "And he's doing exactly what he should. We're investigating this remarkably stupid report with a team that, in my opinion, is even stronger than necessary. The JMG restored Master Vos's missing arm, which is excellent in its own right. Besides, Master Rancisis's genuine goodwill is far better for diplomatic relations than a grim-faced Master Kuro—or me, for that matter, forgive my bluntness." The Weequay gave the woman an apologetic nod, and she merely waved it off. "And no one tried to obstruct you either, Master. Siith took your... hm, little game of hide-and-seek rather well."

"And that, An'ya, is exactly what spared you an unpleasant conversation with the Council," the Thisspiasian said, shaking his head in disapproval. "It was a reckless decision to go sneaking into the home of Force-sensitives we know so little about. Especially while your colleagues were trying to persuade the leader of those same Force-sensitives to heal one of our own. What would you have said to Master Vos if Siith had dug in his heels and refused to treat him?"

Quinlan merely smiled good-naturedly at that and waved his new hand. Secura, however, gave the Shadow a look that could hardly be called friendly.

"What would you have told the Council if Dziha had refused to work with us the way he refused to work with Corellia? The Greens are still chewing on their lightsaber hilts in frustration, while Corellian shipwrights seem to spend half their time spitting in the direction of the enclave and the customs officials. Our new acquaintances' products have already become extremely, extremely sought after. Jabiim physically cannot meet the demand from the thousands of companies interested in buying their protective amulets, charms, and all sorts of other useful items. And those new hull-strengthening devices? Those alone are worth a fortune. The JMG could simply downgrade the Temple's priority and lose absolutely nothing. We, on the other hand, would lose the already tiny trickle of those concealment rings. You liked those, didn't you, Master? And the amulets that make it much easier for our people to survive combat missions aren't exactly useless either."

"I took the possible threat seriously..." the Shadow began, raising her voice slightly.

"So did I. So did the Council, Master Kuro. So did Grand Master Yoda, who asked me to test the waters as carefully as possible," Rancisis cut her off. He looked perfectly calm, but an attentive observer would have noticed the faint, irritated twitching at the tip of his tail. "I probably would have brought you along without a second thought if you'd come to me with your concerns. I would have calmly taken responsibility if you were discovered. But! Not only did you act on your own, you also made me and the Council look like fools who can't even keep one of their own Masters under control! You're a Shadow, after all—an experienced Jedi Master, not some young Padawan!"

The Dark Woman stood there frowning, doing her best not to meet the eyes of the Council member, who was very clearly in a bad mood.

"Perhaps, Master, it would be better to speak with Master Kuro in private?" John Tholme suggested mildly, casting his colleague a sympathetic look.

"And we'll speak in private as well," the Thisspiasian said with a nod. "But Master Kuro needed to put herself in my place—to feel the embarrassment, the awkwardness, the sheer stupidity of the situation. And it was twice as unpleasant because of how indulgently Master Siith treated the whole thing. He called your little escapade 'a game of hide-and-seek,' An'ya. And he reacted more calmly than some Masters do to youngling mischief. Perhaps, Master Kuro, he meant nothing demeaning by it. Perhaps you see nothing particularly terrible in it either. But I do not like one of the Order's strongest Shadows looking, in the eyes of outsiders, like some girl who not only got caught, but apparently knows nothing about discipline."

An'ya Kuro took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Then she exhaled and looked directly at the Thisspiasian.

"I'm sorry, Master. My actions were reckless," the woman said, bowing her head in acknowledgment of her fault.

"Ah..." Rancisis sighed, almost like a human. "Our lives are an endless education. All of us Jedi, from younglings to Masters, must walk our path with our eyes wide open and listen carefully, so we don't miss the lessons life chooses to teach us. I only hope that you, Master Kuro, everyone here, and myself included, can take at least a grain of wisdom from this situation. We must remember that the actions of a single Jedi can have consequences for the entire Order."

For about a minute, silence hung over the ship's compartment as everyone processed what the Master had said.

"Ahem..." the healed Jedi cleared his throat. "By the way, whoever this Maria is, she's an incredible cook. During dinner, I actually found myself regretting for a moment that Jedi aren't allowed to marry!"

"Pfft." The Twi'lek snorted. "That's only because you've been living on paste this whole time, Master."

"Envy is the path to the Dark Side," Quinlan said with a snort. Master Rancisis chuckled softly, while the others answered with smiles of varying width. Even Master Kuro allowed herself a cautious smile, the corners of her mouth lifting slightly.

"Laugh it up," the Twi'lek said, folding her arms across her chest. "Let's see how funny you find it when the healers get their hands on you and start checking your health." Then, watching the Kiffar's face fall, she added with a wicked little smile, "Vokara Che in particular. She wasn't exactly thrilled by the idea of you being treated by 'some shamans.'"

"Master Rancisis, don't you happen to have some assignment for me? The Force is whispering that I really shouldn't go back to the Temple just yet."

"That's not the Force. That's your survival instinct," the Weequay said with a snort. He was a frequent visitor to the Order's medical wing and knew the head of the Healing Halls' formidable temper firsthand.

"Take it easy for now, Master Vos," Oppo Rancisis said cheerfully. "Tomorrow we still have a trip to the 'military base of the ruthless Gungans' and a tour of the local metalworks. But I think you should start mentally preparing for your meeting with Master Che as early as possible."

---

"Where am I supposed to find you a Weequay?"

Karray's big, beautiful, terribly sad eyes stared up at me, full of pleading.

"No, sweetheart, we are not kidnapping Master Bulq!"

The girl shifted her pleading gaze to the head of Jabiim's Internal Security Service, who was sitting in the chair beside her.

"And don't look at Cordelia like that! She's not going to kidnap a member of the Order either just so one tiny manipulator can poke around inside him!"

"Well, technically..." the head of Security began hesitantly.

"Cordelia, have you lost your mind?!" I stared at the tough young woman in outrage. One look from my ward and she was already starting to melt. "Stop that immediately! We are not kidnapping Jedi! At least not while they're here on an official visit to Jabiim!"

"Pleeease! Daddy, pleeease! Please, please, please!" Those enormous eyes held all the sorrow in the universe.

"That won't work on me! And besides, you already have a project to work on!"

"Dad, it's a bantha! What could possibly be interesting about a bantha?!"

"What you made out of it! P.D.S.G.K.B.! Venomous spines that stand on end whenever it senses danger, hollow fangs full of venom, the instinct to stay at the edge of the herd, away from other similarly modified banthas... No, it turned out well, I'll give you that. Predators will go for them, get a dose of venom, and die. I even understand the pink fur—it draws attention! But why doesn't it moo? Why does it scream 'SHAZUUUUUU!'?"

"Hee-hee-hee-hee! Did you see how that blue Twi'lek jumped?" the little menace cackled shamelessly, remembering how Aayla Secura had practically leapt like a mountain goat when the redhead's creation suddenly let out its roar earlier that day. "But I'm almost done anyway! One more week, tops, and that's it! Dad, come on, huh? Just one Weequay! Their hides are really tough! They can even take a blaster shot! Besides, they started it! Spying! Aunt Cordelia, tell Dad!"

"Siith, what if we took that white-haired one and..." Stratus perked up when Kuro came up. She wasn't being serious, of course—mostly just teasing me—but the Jedi Shadow had taken a painful swipe at the young woman's professional pride, so the joke carried a distinctly unhealthy amount of enthusiasm.

"No, no, and no! How about... how about I get you a rancor instead? You wanted a rancor, right?"

"Daaaaad... Rancors are boring!"

"What do you mean, boring? Even a five-meter one weighs two tons! And those ugly bastards can grow up to twenty meters! Hide like armor, nearly sentient, fangs, claws, a mouth big enough for you to crawl right into! Come on, say yes and I'll contact Wilmar! Good old Willy will bring you the finest rancor on Dathomir, huh?"

"Can he get one here within a week?" the girl asked thoughtfully.

"Of course he can! Grark's been whining about upgrading his Inferno for ages. I'll hint that we'll move him to the front of the line—he'll come running faster than he would for a request from his daughter. Or an order from his wife. Heh... Those Devaronians are all horned, henpecked husbands."

"Okay, Daddy..." Karray drawled sadly, letting out a mournful sigh. The little girl trudged toward the library door, then sloooowly closed it behind her, watching me all the while with a gaze full of inhumanly profound sorrow. Only the cheerful tap-tap-tap of my ward's little feet spoiled the image of galaxy-sized despair.

"Seriously?" Cordelia raised an eyebrow with a mocking smile. "'Devaronians are all horned, henpecked husbands'? And I'm the one she can twist around her little finger? Karray played you perfectly, and you fell for it! My little darling was after a rancor from the start, not a Jedi. Or maybe a krayt dragon."

"Pfft..." I gave her a condescending look. "As if I didn't know. I'm the one who taught her tricks like that. Just asking for a rancor would've been boring for her, and I didn't want to disappoint her. Let the little one enjoy her small victory."

"Tch, you're annoying!" she snapped, waving me off like some bothersome student before going back to her book.

We sat like that for another ten minutes. Stratus read her book, I read mine, taking occasional sips of caf from an enormous mug.

"By the way, did you know Alto asked your employee out to dinner?" she asked, pulling me away from the page with a distinctly mischievous edge in her voice.

"Shmi?" I asked without looking up from the text.

"Tch. You knew!" Another irritated click of the tongue.

"I didn't know. I guessed," I said with a snort, taking another sip of caf. "I figure after his adjutant landed himself a wizard in the kitchen like Maria, our Commander-in-Chief started thinking that man does not live by the army alone. And Shmi, if she falls short of the mistress of my kitchen at all, it isn't by much. She's a good person too. And after I put her through a few cosmetic procedures and repaired the damage slavery had done to her health... well, she turned into quite the beauty."

"You two are obsessed with cooking," my companion grumbled. Her own culinary skills amounted to opening a self-heating ration pack or ordering from a restaurant.

"You're being unfair." I brushed off her grumbling easily. "Cooking is a good thing, but it's nowhere near the most important one. Skywalker is a wonderful woman in her own right. Very kind, pleasant, caring, fond of children. She has plenty of virtues, one of them being an almost complete lack of self-interest. And you and your brother... you're practically relics in that regard."

"We simply do what's right."

"I'm not arguing with you." I set the book aside and met Cordelia's stubborn stare. "Besides, Shmi is closer to his age, and generally speaking... Suti would be intimidated by him. Romri... her personality just isn't the sort that would appeal to Alto. A couple of the instructors are practically kids themselves. It's only the new students chasing after them. So that really leaves Shmi Skywalker. Especially since your brother was over at her new domain just the other day, inspecting our orphanage."

"Oh, whatever!" The irritated Security chief buried herself in her book again, snorting angrily.

What was wrong with her this time?

---

Original Russian story

You can find more chapters on my Patreon.

The translation of new chapters will also be published here—but with a bit of a delay.

 

[readsalot]

Oh, whatever!" The irritated Security chief buried herself in her book again, snorting angrily.

What was wrong with her this time?

Click to shrink...

Ha the drama is delicious

 

[FTR2017]

The tsundere who can't spit it out is strong in Cordelia.

About as strong as the sense of schadenfreude that Sora Bulq and Rancisis felt for Siith's treatment of their Jedi Shadow, as if she were naught but a naughty student playing hooky!

 

[Boroda Orka]

"Oh, woe is me. Why didn't I die in my cradle?" I practically collapsed into the chair, and a couple of seconds later felt my assistant's gentle but surprisingly strong hands begin kneading my shoulders.

"Thanks, Suti. What would I do without you?" I groaned, closing my eyes. Four days without sleep. Yeah, it had been a long time since I'd buried myself in work this completely, but it had been worth it. Now all that remained was to run a series of tests... Yeah. Right. "All that remained." Pfft. The tests would uncover a whole pile of flaws, and then it would be right back to work again. Sigh...

"I honestly don't know, Boss," the Twi'lek said, and I could practically feel her smiling behind me. "You'd find another assistant?"

"Nah..." I drawled blissfully as she worked the tension out of muscles that had gone rock-hard. I could've used magic, but this was much nicer. "You, my dear, are irreplaceable! Where else am I going to find someone smart, beautiful, dependable, hardworking—and who can dance, too? Just remember one thing: you're the best!"

"Thank you." Suti's soft voice rang with delight. Everyone liked having their efforts acknowledged. I tried not to miss opportunities like that and actually say it aloud, because that sort of thing mattered to loyal people close to you. I had read about—and seen—far too many supposedly devoted sentients betray their patron simply because they no longer felt valued in his eyes.

"So, you said something about a proposal from one of the students?"

"Yes, Boss. Sev'rance and I went into town about a week ago—to a café, for sweets and a chat. Anyway, she asked me to pass along that her employer would be happy to speak with you about the 'Void Hide.'"

"Hmm..." I fell silent. The project was secret. As secret as anything could be under the circumstances, with only one small dock and outside personnel involved. The Stratuses were doing their best, but things still leaked. And I trusted Suti's discretion. The girl wouldn't have blabbed about something like this. We'd worked through far too many lessons on a patron's confidentiality together for that. "So why didn't she come to me herself?"

"Saving her quota," Suti giggled, and I snorted too. Personal meetings with me, as head of the Guild, were limited to one audience per year. Anything beyond that had to go through the secretariat in writing. The rule existed because, during the first year, I'd been absolutely buried in business proposals. That was the downside of having students who were far from nobodies on their own worlds or within their organizations.

I had no desire to deal with anyone outside Jabiim either. I'd had enough of them too. The only exceptions I made were for the Jedi Order and the Chancellor's office. Neither abused the privilege, though. And talking to Palpatine himself, when he once decided to contact me personally, had actually been quite enjoyable. A very charismatic man and an interesting conversationalist.

"Reasonable, though a little petty... Ooooh... Yes, yes, yes! Harder right there! Mmm... Perfect..." I nearly grunted with pleasure. "Set up a meeting with her for next week. Pick a time in my schedule and remind me the day before, all right? And tell Tann I'd be very interested to know where she got her information about the 'Hide.'"

"I'll do it," the Twi'lek replied, and I could hear the delight in her voice.

Suti, for all her lovely personality, was rather reserved and shy whenever she wasn't dancing, and she hardly spent any time on herself. There was always too much work, and her studies ate into what little free time she had. So she didn't have many friends. I just hoped that blue-skinned girl with the pretty eyes wasn't taking advantage of my assistant's fondness for her. Otherwise, I might have to curse someone.

"Would you like caf or an herbal brew?"

"Let's go with the herbal brew. I'll drink something hot and grab a couple of hours of sleep," I decided, but then I glanced at the message that had just popped up on my datapad and changed my mind. "Actually, no. Suti, bring me a stimulant, please. Blue vial, third shelf in the bar. The Jedi have finally arrived."

I sent a reply to the comms staff, and they routed the call from our long-awaited guests to my workstation. A hologram appeared above the desk, showing a fairly young Jedi with a short beard and the Order's traditional robes.

"Master Dziha, greetings," he said. Despite his attempt at the usual Jedi composure, it was obvious the man was nervous. "I'm Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi. The Council should have informed you about us."

"Greetings, Knight Kenobi. Everything's been arranged. Bring the patient to me—we're ready to get started."

"Thank you," the Jedi replied, obvious relief entering his voice as his whole posture relaxed. "We're already coming in to land."

"I'll be waiting." I nodded to the hologram, which vanished a moment later, and headed for the office door, downing the vial Suti had handed me as I went. Chimerology or no chimerology, the body still needed certain substances to function at its best.

"Wait." I stopped by the door. "Kenobi... He's the one training Shmi's son, isn't he?" At Suti's puzzled look, I just shook my head. Talking to myself.

I called Skywalker on the comlink.

"Shmi, hi! Listen, I just had an idea. Gather the older kids and bring them to the Academy. We'll give them a tour—just make sure you bring one of the caregivers with you. Yes, I need you here too. Great. I'll make sure someone meets you when you arrive."

I turned to my assistant.

"Suti, find a free instructor and have them organize an unscheduled tour for the kids. Just make sure they don't half-ass it—tell them to stretch it out for a while. Have them take the children to the dining hall for lunch, walk them through the classrooms, show them the animal enclosures too, but carefully. The last thing we need is those little monsters tormenting our animals."

Once the Twi'lek nodded and pulled up the class schedule to find someone suitable, I called in the next elemental force of chaos.

"Karray, my joy, I need your unparalleled acting skills... What?! You little— Have some shame, you pint-sized version of that greedy Togruta! Where am I supposed to put a sarlacc for you?! And that's way too much for ten minutes of hamming it up! A chocolate cake! Fine, two—but your greed is starting to scare me! Are you sure Romri hasn't bitten you? All right, all right, listen carefully..."

---

"Knight Kenobi." I nodded to the man. Behind him floated a repulsor stretcher carrying the patient, followed by a young Padawan and a scowling Twi'lek.

"Master Dziha," the Jedi said with a slightly strained smile. "It's good to finally meet you in person. Allow me to—"

"I'm Master Healer Vokara Che. This is Anakin Skywalker, Padawan," the Twi'lek cut him off rather brusquely, gesturing toward the boy, who shot her an annoyed look. "Now, to business."

"Business it is, then." I nodded, letting the delegation into my private workshop. "Pillkin, let's get to work."

While the droids transferred the patient, I layered on a cascade of diagnostic spells and activated the necessary modules of the artifact complex built into the "workbench." Judging by the way the Jedi kept turning their heads uneasily, they could sense the magical constructs moving, but aside from a certain wariness, they showed no reaction.

The door slammed behind me...

"Dad! You've got a patient, and you didn't call me?!" There was so much surprise, disbelief, hurt, sadness, and disappointment in little Karray's voice... A born actress, no question. And the best part was, every bit of it was genuine.

Some Jedi could sense an outright lie with ease. Useful, sure—but people had learned how to fool them a very long time ago. Even on the HoloNet, on certain sites, you could find thousands of articles along the lines of "How to Fool a Jedi." Almost all of it was garbage, but hey. Anyone with a functioning brain understood that if you couldn't lie, then you simply had to tell the right truth. So that was exactly what Karray and I were going to do—serve up the truth, seasoned with genuine emotion.

"Sweetheart," I began, playing the part of someone caught red-handed. "This is a very difficult case. I'm not even sure I can pull it off myself, so you'd only be a distraction."

"But... but..." The sniffing behind me made it clear just how "deeply" I had wounded my ward.

"Karray, my joy..." There was a slap as a new, fully charged amulet landed beside the old stasis amulet. I turned to the girl, tears already running down her cheeks. I caught the boy giving me a hostile look and chuckled inwardly. Perceptive kid. I liked him already. I crouched down and looked into the eyes of my "hurt" little ward. "This is a very serious case of poisoning. The patient literally died just as she was being placed in stasis. Please..."

Then I "suddenly noticed" Skywalker. He had softened a little, but was still clearly upset. The teenager cast a look full of pain and hope toward the table where the patient lay, then lowered his head with a heavy sigh.

"Please, Karray, show Anakin around our Academy. He's a real Jedi." The boy clearly started to object, then thought better of it, lifting his chin slightly and giving his Padawan braid a little toss. "And he can tell you all about the Order. You'd like to hear what real Jedi are actually like, wouldn't you?"

"Really?" The girl's eyes lit up with wide-eyed admiration as she looked at him, and the boy visibly straightened his shoulders before giving her an important little nod.

"Kenobi..." the Master Healer said impatiently, looking at the boy's teacher.

"Yes, ahem... Anakin, go take the tour. Master Rancisis said there are plenty of interesting things to see here."

Skywalker gave Obi-Wan a slightly wounded, accusing look, then glanced back at the patient's body, sighed again, and gave my ward a genuinely pleasant smile.

"Want to go? Jedi life isn't all that exciting. But if you want, I can tell you about a couple of missions where I had to save my Master from some pretty difficult situations..."

I nearly laughed under my breath. From the look of things, the two of them had a pretty good relationship if the boy listened to his Master but wasn't afraid to throw in his own two credits. Kenobi's long-suffering expression was pretty funny too.

"Back to business," the blue-skinned Twi'lek practically growled, fixing me with a demanding stare. Then, after a long exhale, she bowed her head apologetically. "Forgive me, Master. It is difficult for me to see Master Yaddle in this condition."

"I understand completely." I nodded gravely as I approached the workbench. "There's no need to worry. The job is difficult, certainly, but not impossible. I recently had to regrow a student's torso—now that was a pain. Deadman lived up to his nickname yet again..."

Muttering under my breath, I had already brought up an illusion of the dead goblin woman's body in front of us. Whatever had happened to the Jedi, they had at least managed to get a stasis amulet onto Yaddle in time when the lethal dose of toxins killed her. The Jedi had very quickly come to appreciate just how useful those artifacts were. So much so that Alto and I were starting to consider raiding pirates ourselves, because the sort who specialized in robbery and slave-taking had become rather scarce visitors lately.

---

Anakin walked beside Dziha's ward, listening to her chatter and answering her questions, but he was a little distracted. The teenager was worried about Yaddle. The kind, wise, and sometimes amusing Master had quite literally sacrificed her life, using a Force technique to draw all the lethal poison the villains had released into herself. She had saved everyone else at the cost of her own life.

"And then, after all that, my Master says to me..." Anakin smiled softly as he told the amusing story he had promised about one of his adventures with Obi-Wan. Even as he talked, his thoughts kept drifting back to their frantic journey to Coruscant, to the healers throwing up their hands in the Healing Halls, and to how Vokara Che herself—who had recently put Master Vos through endless tests and examinations and was none too trusting of the sorcerers from Jabiim—had ultimately been the one to suggest contacting Master Siith.

The boy was glad his Master had volunteered to accompany Master Che and Master Yaddle to Jabiim, and he had flatly refused to stay behind at the Temple to rest. There was little he could actually do, but Skywalker felt that coming with them was the right thing. No, it wasn't the Force whispering to him. It was his conscience. He needed to be there for the one who had died so that he could live.

"And these are our little ones," Karray's bright voice broke the brief silence that had followed Anakin's story. Some of the children in the group—about twenty of them altogether—looked roughly the same age as the sorcerer's ward, which made her dismissive "little ones" rather amusing. "Some of them might become mages too, if they want to! Hi, Shmi! How are you?"

"Oh, Karray." The woman, who had been standing with her back to them a short distance from the group of children, turned toward Anakin and the young witch. "Do you know where Bo—"

She froze, staring at the Padawan and completely forgetting what she had meant to ask Karray. She opened her mouth as if to say something, then began looking around frantically, perhaps searching for the other Jedi. Her gaze flicked over the sorcerer's student before returning to her son's face, which she stared at in disbelief.

"Ani..." she whispered, barely audible, taking one small, hesitant step forward. Then she stopped.

Anakin had no idea how long he stood there motionless, staring at the painfully familiar features of his mother's face. His mother, whom he had left behind on Tatooine. Whom he had abandoned in slavery. Force, how many hours had he spent blaming himself for leaving with the Jedi? How many times had he begged the elders to save her? And how happy had he been when that letter finally came... He would be lying if he said he had flown here for her. But saying he hadn't expected to see her would be a lie too.

"Oh no, oh no, oh no..." the girl beside him suddenly wailed in a very unconvincing voice, wearing a strangely bright, sad little smile. "I just remembered! I haven't fed my rancor! I have to go right now! Shmi, could you please show the Jedi around the Academy? I'm really, really late! Pancake gets grumpy if he doesn't eat!"

"What... Ooooh..." the teenager drawled as realization finally dawned on him.

"Yeeeep," the little menace said with a cheerful grin, giving the Padawan a roguish wink. She took a couple of steps, stopped, then turned back again. "There aren't any classes in the north wing today, Shmi. Oh, and just so you know—I like chocolate cake!"

By then, the girl had already put enough distance between herself and the Skywalkers that they couldn't hear her giggling to herself and counting her winnings.

"At least four cakes! Two from Dad, and Shmi will definitely give me two more. And if that boy isn't as stingy as the rest of the Jedi, he'll cough up another cake or two! Then I'll invite Romri over to help me eat all the goodies!"

---

Yaddle thought she was dead. Those were the first thoughts that came to her when awareness returned. The one thing arguing against death—and dissolving into the Force—was just how utterly awful she felt. Everything hurt. Literally everything, right down to the tips of her ears. She was badly nauseous too, and there was such a fierce ringing inside her skull that she couldn't hear anything else.

The moment she opened her eyes, she regretted it. The blurry ceiling seemed to have a life of its own, performing some kind of insane dance. Oh, this felt awful...

The Master remembered how, a very, very long time ago, just after earning the rank of Knight, she had made a mistake in a cantina and drunk quite a lot of something sweet that had turned out to be alcoholic. Fortunately, she hadn't had a Padawan at the time. A vomiting Master was a poor example for a student.

"So I survived," she didn't so much whisper as breathe out softly, closing her eyes again. The mad dance of her surroundings threatened to have some very unpleasant consequences.

She had no idea how long she spent fighting the nausea. Maybe a minute. Maybe a couple of hours. It was hard to focus on anything. But then, in one beautiful, glorious moment, a soft, gentle warmth enveloped her mind. The pain began to fade. The nausea receded. Even the vile high-pitched ringing in her head slowly died away.

"Ooooh..." she heard a vaguely familiar male voice, tinged with respect and admiration. "So that's what Force healing is like! What finesse, Grand Master! I'm impressed!"

"I'm a Master," came a voice Yaddle knew very well. Vokara Che—the stern Twi'lek, senior healer of the Medical Corps, and a good friend of hers.

"Swinging sticks around and shoving people with the Force doesn't take much brains!" the man spoke again. "But your skill—that's practically a divine miracle! Believe me, I know what I'm talking about."

"You don't need to flatter me. And besides, Master Siith, I need to concentrate. Could you perhaps..." Vokara fell silent, but Yaddle could practically hear the unspoken request for him to kindly fuck off to Sith-knows-where. She smiled faintly. The Twi'lek rarely bothered choosing her words when someone got in the way of her work.

"Understood, Grand Master. I'll be quiet," the man said. Yaddle was certain that if she opened her eyes again, she would see that terrifying but cheerful smile on the Jabiim sorcerer's face.

After that, she lay in relative silence, washed over by waves of gentle, healing Force. Somewhere in the background, she could hear the sorcerer speaking softly, heaping praise on the Jedi art of healing. Knight Kenobi answered him in the same hushed tone. It was obvious that the young but very talented Jedi appreciated the praise. Even Vokara, standing nearby, radiated a quiet sense of approval.

"Yaddle, how are you feeling?" the Twi'lek suddenly asked.

The Jedi Master risked opening her eyes again. The result pleased her: the ceiling was barely swaying now. Granted, Master Che seemed to have four eyes and an extra lekku, which made the diminutive Jedi break into a rather silly smile.

"Better than before," she replied quietly, feeling her tongue stumble over the words. Only three words, yet saying them had exhausted her so much that she could feel herself rapidly slipping into sleep... Or was Vokara working her magic again?

---

The Temple's finest healer let out a relieved breath. Master Yaddle's life was no longer in danger. Praise the Force. The woman allowed herself a quick glance at the sorcerer standing nearby and, catching his questioning look, gave him a grateful smile.

"Master Siith, would you mind if we stayed here for a couple of days?" Truthfully, she would have preferred to return to the Temple, but Yaddle would be better off resting for a while. Space was unpredictable—and dangerous.

"Of course." The sorcerer smiled faintly, sending a small herd of goosebumps racing between Vokara's shoulder blades. "I was actually going to suggest the same thing. To be honest, right up until the very end I wasn't sure it would work. Master Yaddle was literally saturated with that filth. Yes, Master Che, if it hadn't been for your help..."

The presumably human man gave a sealed jar of black-and-red sludge a shake—only for Knight Kenobi to immediately take it away from him.

"I'm a Master," the Twi'lek said wearily, shaking her head with a faint smile and giving Obi-Wan a small nod. "And I can say the same to you: without your method of removing the toxins, the stasis, and the ability to work on each organ separately... The Force may be all-powerful, but I am not."

"Well, I'm not a Master either," the sorcerer snorted, glancing toward the young bearded Jedi, who was tucking the jar beneath his robe while wearing an expression of complete innocence. "And since you Jedi insist on calling me by that title, I'm now honor-bound to exact terrible revenge, Grand Master!"

"Indeed," Kenobi said with a smile as he closed his robe over the jar. "A truly devious revenge. And if I understood correctly..."

The man glanced questioningly toward the sleeping Yaddle. Master Che closed her eyes in satisfaction.

"Everything went well. We'll keep her under observation for a couple of days together with..." The healer gave the head of the JMG an exaggeratedly vindictive smile. "Together with Master Siith. After that, we should be able to fly back to Coruscant."

The sorcerer was smiling cheerfully, which made both Jedi a little uneasy, though by now they were almost used to it. Almost. Master Rancisis hadn't spent all that time briefing them before departure for nothing. The Thisspiasian had lamented over comms that he couldn't accompany Che and Kenobi himself, but he had done his best to prepare them for meeting the Jabiim sorcerer.

"Then, my dear guests, would you honor my household by allowing me to host you at my manor for these two days?"

---

Original Russian story

You can find more chapters on my Patreon.

The translation of new chapters will also be published here—but with a bit of a delay.

 

[cestus41]

Oooo yaddle lives that's going to change some things and those stasis amulets are going to change even more. Many important beings that would otherwise be killed will live now and I can just see the unending torrent of the galaxy's richest and most powerful that would do many many things for a pause button on their death from organ failure assasination or accident and the ability to go from dying on the floor to inside a T1 med center in the span of a subjective second

Edit: further thoughts the number of disintegrations requested on assassinations of the powerful will go up quite quickly you can never know if that CEO ruler official crime lord or hero you left dying on the floor SURE to be dead in seconds/minutes might have one of those hidden on them

new opportunities for LMD droids to serve as body doubles (I forget their exact designation) and for people you thought dead to turn up again later after faking their disintegration I mean if it's going to happen a lot more it inherently becomes less suspicious to use that as a way to fake your death

Further edits: I can see a cottage industry for those in the bounty hunter or merc trade akin to trauma team or Doc wagon you are dying on the job you hit your distress beacon and trigger the stasis and they come pick you up for a fee

 

[Vyraco]

I mean, yeah, you can't really keep your pet salarcc in a doghouse, but at least you don't have to worry about it running away, am I right?

 

[FTR2017]

Palpy will be salty that his plots to kill Jedi are being derailed by his newest friend, and I foresee more ... thorough methods of assassination flourishing to compensate.

Methinks the new 'insurance' will be a circlet to preserve the head of the victim who suffered a disintegration demise!

I mean, yeah, you can't really keep your pet salarcc in a doghouse, but at least you don't have to worry about it running away, am I right?

Click to shrink...

Nah, use an asteroid to house the sarlacc! That's thinking big, and you'll even provide your children an inheritance while at it!

 

[Boroda Orka]

"So... yeah." Karray stared at the enormous box, trying to imagine just how big the cake inside must be and how much chocolate it contained. The Jedi boy had turned out to be a decent guy after all, not a cheapskate like some members of his Order.

"Thanks." Karray wasn't stupid. One look at the boy, several years older than her and concentrating hard on keeping his bulky load balanced, told her she should accept the gift, but doing it right here in the corridor was probably a bad idea.

As for the gift itself... She looked at the young blond's face, happy and serious at the same time.

Yeah. He meant it.

Which meant...

"Come on, hurry up. That's gotta be heavy, right?"

Ignoring the Padawan's raised eyebrows, Karray scampered toward her private workshop. It wasn't far, and the young chimerologist could easily have carried the oversized sugary token of the Jedi boy's gratitude herself, but... She was a girl, right? And a boy had given her a cake to make her happy! Besides, she was so very delicate. Dad still wouldn't let her start tinkering with her own body.

"'Better not start making changes until your body's fully developed,'" she muttered, mimicking Dad under her breath. Karray understood the reasoning, but it was still interesting! She didn't believe for a second that he couldn't deal with any negative consequences. Dad was just busy.

And lazy.

Anakin was huffing and puffing right behind her, so Karray hurried to pull open the door to her inner sanctum and let him go in first.

"Put it right here... yeah... just don't squash it!" The boy set the box down with obvious relief. "Careful, Ani! There's a cake in there!"

"A huge cake!" the Padawan breathed, looking around. "Whoa. This is just like Master Siith's."

"Of course it is." The girl tilted her nose proudly into the air. "This is my workshop. I study and work here! Dad says you should never skimp on your workspace. That's how you end up making really stupid mistakes. And the huge cake is chocolate, right?"

And then the dummy went and opened the box! She almost smacked him. Half the fun of getting a present, after the present itself, was unwrapp...

"Wooooow..."

"I heard you wanted a sarlacc. I don't have a real one, so..."

"No waaaay!!!"

Young Skywalker smiled with satisfaction as he watched the sheer delight spread across the girl's face.

The cake was a genuine work of art, one Anakin had ordered in Jabiim's capital. The top had been made to look like desert sand, with a deep pit in the middle and the maw of a gigantic monster peeking up from its depths. The sides and interior were made from layers of chocolate cream in different shades and the softest sponge cake.

The cake itself was huge, and then there was the rush delivery on top of that. Jedi weren't allowed to own personal property, but flying around with no credits at all would have been stupid and inconvenient. If only his Master would bring a little more money on missions.

In the end, Anakin had spent every credit he had on the cake.

Though compared to what Master Siith and his apprentice had done for him, the gift still felt like such a small thing.

"And that's not just decoration," Anakin said with a chuckle, pointing at the maw. "There's an actual chocolate sarlacc buried inside the cake."

"That is so coooool..." the girl breathed in awe, then slapped the Padawan on the shoulder. "I've never eaten a sarlacc before. Not even a chocolate one! Thanks!"

The boy actually grunted in surprise. Well...

"Actually, I'm the one who should be thanking you," he said, shaking his head.

"You know..." The girl suddenly looked at the Padawan with complete seriousness. "I lost my parents when I was very little. All I remember is their scent, their warmth... vague images..."

Karray fell silent and stared at the cake. A few seconds passed before a sly glint appeared in her eyes and she looked back at Anakin.

"Have you ever fed a rancor by hand?"

"You mean with my hands? As you can see, I still have both of them, so no," the Padawan snorted, holding up his intact hands.

"Come on, I'll introduce you to Pancake!" the little witch lit up, grabbing Anakin by the sleeve and dragging him toward the door. She was already reaching for it when she glanced back at the cake.

"We need to hide it!"

The young Padawan found himself released while Karray scampered over to something that looked like a safe twice her height. She shielded the password interface from view, tapped it a few times with one finger, and the obviously heavy door began to swing slowly open. A breath of cool air drifted out.

Boxes stood on the shelves inside. Anakin counted six of them, all different sizes.

"Put it right here, please," Karray said, pointing to an empty spot on the bottom shelf.

Without a word, the teenager picked up his gift and set it in the designated spot. Then he raised one eyebrow and looked at the little witch.

"You did not see the strategic cake reserves," Karray said with a solemn little face, waving one hand in front of Skywalker's eyes while using the other to hit the button that activated the closing mechanism.

The boy's eyes widened at first, but when he felt no touch of the Force, he burst out laughing at the girl's utterly serious expression. Then he pulled himself together, wiped the grin from his face, and stared blankly off into nowhere.

"I did not see the strategic cake reserves in the refrigerator with the vault door."

His composure lasted all of a few seconds before he started laughing again.

The little menace gave him a sly grin, snorted, grabbed him by the sleeve again, and dragged him toward the door.

"Now we're going to see Pancake. Just don't be scared. He's nice, and really smart. Way smarter than an acklay. He even understands what people say. Dad told me they ride rancors on Dathomir," the little witch chattered as she towed Anakin toward the animal enclosures. "He promised that once he's sure Pancake is safe, he'll let me ride him too."

The Padawan was about to say a few words about how dangerous ambitions like that could be, but the little chatterbox cut him off.

"Just imagine it! Me all in black, hood up, riding a rancor to the pastry shop! That's epic levels of epic!"

---

"Exactly, Master! Just imagine it. Us in flowing robes, lightsabers ignited, charging the enemy... on rancors!"

"Anakin..." Obi-Wan Kenobi wearily rubbed the bridge of his nose. "We are not training rancors."

"More's the pity," his Padawan huffed, pretending to be offended. Kenobi knew him far too well to believe it. "It'd be epic levels of epic!"

"Quite an impression Pancake made on you, young Skywalker?" Grand Master Yaddle asked with an amused but tired smile. She was sitting with the others in the ship's common room.

"Oh, definitely." The young Jedi scratched the tip of his nose. "A giant monster obeying a tiny squirt without question is not something you forget. And when Karray made him wear a sheet like a bib before we started feeding him... I'd read that rancors were semi-sentient, but still. It was amazing. There's a lot of interesting stuff there in general."

"Master Che?" Kenobi tried to change the subject, turning to the healer, who had fallen deep into thought. "You've been awfully quiet. Is everything all right?"

The blue-skinned Twi'lek slowly raised her eyes to the Knight. It was obvious she still wasn't quite with them.

"What?" the Jedi Master and head of the Healing Halls asked in surprise, as though only just realizing she was sitting there with everyone else.

"All right, are you, Vokara?" Even Yaddle was beginning to worry. "Deep in thought, you seem. About what?"

"Ah! Yes, I'm fine." The healer smiled a little sheepishly and made a reassuring gesture with one hand. Then she looked seriously at the Grand Master. "Yaddle, we need to send someone to Jabiim to study. Please support me when I bring it before the Council."

"Not so skeptical of them anymore, are you?" Skywalker asked with a faintly teasing grin.

After they had arranged for him to see his mother, and after Master Yaddle had been healed, Anakin had come away with a very favorable impression of the mages. And then there was the fact that Dziha had bought his mother from Watto, taken her away from Tatooine, freed her, healed her, and given her safe work she genuinely enjoyed.

After that conversation with his mother, Anakin felt calm and happy, perhaps for the first time since leaving Mos Espa. For the first time, he understood the peace of mind the older Jedi spoke of so often.

His mother was safe. He no longer had to fear that some drunken mercenary might shoot her in a fit of rage and settle things with Watto afterward for a mere handful of Hutt credits. Or worry that some failing machine might explode and maim her. Or... there had been so many things to fear. Far too many.

Young Skywalker couldn't even remember how many times he had woken from a nightmare with his mother at the center of it.

So Anakin felt deeply grateful to Master Siith. And he liked little Karray too. The energetic girl was a little cheerfully unhinged, just like her adoptive father, but as the Padawan had already realized, that was perfectly normal in their strange family.

"Well... he didn't adopt me. I dadopted him," the little squirt had giggled as she told Anakin how she and her sister had been taken out of the orphanage. "The moment I saw him, I decided that the cool red-eyed guy was going to be my dad. He still puts up a fight and won't call me his daughter, but I'm not stupid. I can tell how he feels."

Listening to Karray's stories about all the crazy things that happened in her life, Anakin had thought he wouldn't mind having a fun adoptive father like that himself.

And life with mages just seemed more... eventful, somehow. With a touch of chaos and mild insanity. Something was always happening. Things exploded, extra asses grew where they shouldn't, limbs got torn off and then reattached by a grumbling headmaster... One of the local students, nicknamed Deadman, had even managed to die four times. Compared to the Jedi Order's usual solemnity, there was definitely no chance of getting bored here.

But he also remembered what Master Che had said about the Jabiim mages and the doubts she had voiced about them. He remembered, and it bothered him a little. The teenager knew he shouldn't feel that way, but he couldn't help it.

"Anakin," Kenobi chided his Padawan, but Vokara only gave a quiet snort.

"I stopped thinking of them as clowns when Quinlan Vos came back with a working arm instead of a stump, young Padawan." The Twi'lek smiled faintly at the young Jedi's challenging look. "I've spent many years devoting myself to healing my brothers and sisters. And I didn't become a Master Healer through stubbornness alone."

Then, as if she had forgotten what she was saying, Vokara fell silent. Her fingers traced the seam of her robe, and her gaze wandered around the common room.

"What I saw was a miracle, Padawan Skywalker." The healer's sharp, intelligent gaze settled on the blond Padawan, taking some of the wind out of Anakin's sails. "The work of our healers is a miracle too. It's just that our miracles are different. There are things the sorcerers do less effectively than we do, and vice versa. Their methods are different. They don't work with the Force the way Jedi or Sith do. Until recently, I would have considered what Siith was doing impossible."

"It was also extremely unappetizing," Obi-Wan said with a grimace, remembering the operation on Grand Master Yaddle.

"If it means my brothers and sisters don't die in my arms, I'm willing to do a great deal. Even sort through every organ one by one, the way Dziha does."

"There is no Death," Yaddle said calmly.

"There is only the Great Force," the healer agreed with a nod. "But I see no reason to rush off and meet It."

For a while, the Grand Master stared thoughtfully at her palm. Back then, on Mawan... If not for Kenobi and that Jabiim artifact, she would not be sitting in this common room now, listening to this conversation.

She had gone to her death knowingly. Her life in exchange for the lives of two young, promising Jedi and an entire city behind them was a fair price. It was difficult to put into words what she had felt when, after being revived, the turmoil in her mind and senses had finally subsided.

Life... was wonderful.

She had always known that. But to understand that simple truth in all its detail, to see the countless shades hidden within that one small word, life, to savor its full taste and feel every letter of it, she had needed to die.

And no, the Jedi Master was not afraid of death. It was hard to fear something you understood and were prepared for. But she had realized just how much she loved being alive.

And if, as Vokara said, Master Siith and his methods could save even one mortally wounded Jedi, then Yaddle simply had no right not to support the healer. More than that, the Council's lack of urgency on the matter no longer seemed prudent to her. It seemed criminal. And in the eyes of the head of the Medical Corps, Yaddle saw her own thoughts reflected back at her.

Regrowing Master Vos's arm in such a short time, then attaching it successfully, had already dealt a serious blow to Che's skepticism toward the JMG. Fast, effective, cheap. It sounded like a scam or a fairy tale.

That was why the Twi'lek had practically tortured the Kiffar with analyses, tests, and examinations. And she had found nothing.

The arm was as good as his own. No defects. Not even a scar. The healer had found nothing suspicious, nothing worrying, nothing that gave her pause. Quinlan felt perfectly fine and was already putting his newly restored limb through its paces, while complaining every day about the atrocities committed by the Order's healers.

And now Yaddle. They had literally taken her dead body apart organ by organ, put her back together, and revived her. And, as Dziha had put it, "patched up a few minor things as a bonus." According to Vokara, the Grand Master now had the healthiest insides in the entire Order.

"How do you see this working?" the Grand Master asked, turning her attention back to the Twi'lek.

"Send two Padawans to Jabiim to study: Barriss Offee and Aubrie Wyn. They're the most gifted healers of the younger generation. If they can master the art of magic as well, then..." Vokara Che let the thought trail off, but the pleased, almost dreamy look in her eyes said everything for her.

"Hmm... Young, they are, Vokara," Yaddle said doubtfully. "And their Masters, Unduli and Sirrus... Two Masters spending years sitting in Jabiim's rain is not an idea the Council will approve. Nor will they send them there alone. What may come of Siith's influence if it proves less than beneficial, we do not know. See Jedi fall again, neither I nor the Council wish to. Knights, perhaps. Only Knights could be sent, Vokara."

"Mmm..." The Twi'lek closed her eyes briefly in agreement, accepting the logic of Yaddle's argument. "Then Knight Stass Allie and Knight Rig Nema, who currently serves as a healer with the Medical Corps. Allie is already close to earning the rank of Master, and Nema's talent never ceases to impress me."

Yaddle smiled at the flicker of displeasure that crossed Vokara's eyes. The Master Healer took any weakening of the Medical Corps very personally, and this proposal of hers... One might say she was practically tearing Knight Nema away from herself. It was a sacrifice that showed just how seriously her friend took the matter.

"Very well." The Grand Master nodded. "At the next Council meeting, your proposal I will bring up for discussion. Support you, I shall. Speak with Oppo, I will, and with the Grand Master as well."

---

"Um... Grand Master, with all due respect," I said, staring at the hologram of the little goblin with a mixture of confusion and mild irritation.

My colleagues were right: if you're going to do good, do it in such a way that people only come to you as a last resort. Apparently, I'd overdone it showing everyone what wonderful, upstanding people my mages and I were. As if I didn't have enough to do already without teaching Jedi.

Although...

Hmm. How would magic behave in the hands of Force-sensitives? Hmmm...

And besides, getting the students into diagnostic rituals would be ridiculously easy. I could study the whole phenomenon of Force users while I was at it. Looked at that way, they were practically handing me experienced Force-sensitives who already knew what they were doing.

"Master Siith?" the little old Jedi reminded me of his presence, eyes narrowing in amusement. "Still with me, are you?"

"Mmm... Yes, yes. Got lost in thought. So, Grand Master. In principle, I don't mind, but I won't take more than three. Two would be better. We don't teach chimerology at the Academy, so it would have to be personal apprenticeship. And I'll warn you now: it'll be expensive, take a long time, and be very, very miserable..."

"Hmm? We were planning to ask you to take two. Why would the students be miserable?" the little goblin asked, raising his eyebrows.

"I'll be miserable," I sighed, scratching my beard mournfully. "It's the time, Grand Master. I hate giving up the time. I just hope they're not children?"

"No." The goblin's good-natured smile returned, and somehow it still irritated me a little. "Both are Knights. One nearly a Master is. Strong healers, both are. Master Che recommended them. Trouble for you, they will not cause. Speak with them, I will."

"Then we have a deal, Grand Master. I very much hope the candidates know how to listen to their teacher. Otherwise, no hard feelings, but I'll send them straight back to Coruscant. Chimerology has no patience for carelessness or foolish stubbornness."

"Good. Acceptable, that is." Yoda nodded gravely.

We talked for another hour or so. About this and that: the students, the problems that came with them, Grand Master Yaddle's condition, the state of the galaxy in general, and the separatist sentiment spreading everywhere.

That last point, incidentally, had Alto seriously worried. Our Commander-in-Chief had been grumbling about the trouble it might cause. Jabiim had only just begun clawing its way out of crushing poverty, chronic shortages of practically everything, and a miserable standard of living when unrest started brewing across the Republic, and the reports from our analysts were anything but reassuring.

Stratus had even, astonishingly enough, wished the Jedi luck in restoring order during one of our conversations. Whatever his feelings toward the Temple and the Senate, Jabiim's well-being always came first for him.

Yoda, as it turned out, was just as concerned about the situation, and so was Chancellor Palpatine. The diminutive Jedi shared no classified information, but according to him, both the Order's diplomats and the Senate's diplomatic staff were being run ragged trying to stabilize the Republic.

"A will behind all this, I can feel. An evil, dark will," the Jedi said with a frown. The Grand Master gave me a sharp look and worried his lower lip for a moment, as though hesitating. "Certain we are that the Sith are behind it. The heirs of Darth Bane are stirring up trouble across the galaxy. Unseen, they taint everything their schemes touch. Even the Order can feel the foul breath of the Dark Side. More Jedi are falling. Master Yaddle's condition, too, was the result of unseen puppet masters and their intrigues."

The Grand Master let out a heavy sigh and spent several seconds staring grimly at some point beyond the hologram.

"Old I am, Master Siith'khara'Dziha." He smiled, but not as he usually did. There was sadness in it, and a trace of bitterness. A couple of seconds later, though, he gave a quiet huff and let the mood go. Or perhaps merely hid it, his usual good-natured, faintly sly amusement returning to his face. "With age comes the urge to complain, especially in the company of the young. Pay it no mind. Know I do that you understand the burden of command. Only the scale differs between us."

So the goblin and I spent a while grumbling like a pair of old men. Truth be told, talking to him, or to Yaddle for that matter, still catches me off guard sometimes. I'm too used to members of his species being short-lived back in my world. There were exceptions, obviously, but still. And their conversations usually revolved around three things: fucking, drinking, and fighting.

Some part of me probably still expects Yoda to start bragging about how many young Knights he's managed to bed over the past fifty years.

Yeah. Mental inertia.

All right, that was all well and good, but today I had a meeting with another Jedi. A former Jedi this time, one who had left the Order and gone back out into the world, so to speak.

The Count of Serenno, Sev'rance Tann's patron, had struck me as a very respectable representative of the aristocracy. We hadn't spoken for long, just enough to arrange our upcoming meeting, but I found both his manners and his calm, friendly way of speaking quite pleasant.

And his beard was almost as good as mine.

A man with a beard that well groomed simply couldn't be a villain.

I smirked at the absurdity of the thought as I made my way toward the conference room at an unhurried pace. Right then, a message popped up on my datapad informing me that the Count was already waiting.

Everything was lining up perfectly.

---

Original Russian story

You can find more chapters on my Patreon.

The translation of new chapters will also be published here—but with a bit of a delay.

 

[readsalot]

And his beard was almost as good as mine.

A man with a beard that well groomed simply couldn't be a villain.

I smirked at the absurdity of the thought as I made my way toward the conference room at an unhurried pace. Right then, a message popped up on my datapad informing me that the Count was already waiting.

Everything was lining up perfectly.

Click to shrink...

Ah you are mistaken Siith, a well groomed beard is needed to be a qualified villain.

 

[FTR2017]

This story never ceases to entertain me, kudos to the writer and to you the translator for this fine work!

And his beard was almost as good as mine.

A man with a beard that well groomed simply couldn't be a villain.

Click to shrink...

Says the villainous-looking sorcerer with no patience for murderous judgemental do-good wannabes!

 

[Boroda Orka]

Shella Grark strode briskly into the dining hall and headed toward her usual group of students. The Academy's second-year veterans had begun looking down their noses a little at the latest batch of first-years, and not without reason.

This place did not forgive carelessness. And when students ended up injured or maimed, the administration and instructors usually laughed and piled on with some truly venomous mockery.

The daughter of a smuggler well known in certain circles had been spectacularly lucky. In all her time at the Academy, she had never suffered so much as a bruise. Her fellow students in the combat department were nowhere near as fortunate. There was a reason she had two nicknames: Fluffy and Hit-Girl. Sometimes, mostly when the Director was involved, the two were combined.

One of her friends was Deadman, a student in the General Magic department. At this point, it was probably both a nickname and a calling.

Despite being human and from Coruscant, the guy had no particular prejudice against non-humans, so he had fit easily into their little group of oddballs. Well, that and the fact that the other humans had started giving him a wide berth. Apparently, the young man had left all his luck back home. He died about once every couple of months.

Rarely through any fault of his own.

The first time, Shella herself had been the one to kill him. The guilt gnawing at her afterward, along with a heavy dose of remorse, became the starting point of their surprisingly pleasant friendship and of the human's eventual acceptance into the little group of assorted species.

And after that, things really got rolling.

He broke his neck falling down a staircase. Then some Mando's blaster decided to fire all by itself and put a bolt through his throat. After that, Karray's pink Killer Bantha mauled him to death because he smelled like a local predator. During a visit to the enclosure, he had somehow managed to step directly into one of the creature's scent marks.

Karray had been extremely grateful to her involuntary "test subject" afterward. According to her design, the animal wasn't supposed to attack humans.

Apparently, nobody had told the bantha.

And so on, and so forth. As for injuries and missing limbs, he had long since lost count. Director Dziha had even given him an amulet enchanted with anesthesia, for which Deadman was deeply grateful to the red-eyed sorcerer.

And now Shella had heard that her friend had somehow managed to die yet again.

Maybe some people found it funny, but Shella had seen what came after. Every time Deadman came back, he spent the next few days quiet and miserable.

"Deadman, how in the name of a Hutt's slimy tongue did you manage to kick the bucket again?" the fluffy Devaronian exclaimed, throwing up her hands as she reached the lunch table where the rest of their little group had already gathered.

The Coruscant native only let out a heavy sigh and gave a mournful shrug. The cute little Devaronian took every one of his deaths harder than he did himself. In a strange way, it was almost nice.

The accusatory tone, though, was a little depressing. As if he were doing it on purpose!

The young man had only just come from the Director's workshop. By then it was already lunchtime, and he had missed all his morning classes.

Now he'd have to catch up.

Again.

"He botched the water-condensation spell, and before that he forgot to put up protection against direct effects. Blew up like a soap bubble. Splattered half the classroom," the young Sephi snorted, rolling her eyes. "This isn't funny anymore, human. That was basic magic. We learned it practically at the very beginning! What were you even thinking about during class?"

The Muun sitting beside him continued eating with impeccable manners, merely nodding in agreement and giving the human, once again recently deceased, a disapproving look.

It wasn't that Deadman's habit of dying at random particularly bothered him.

What bothered him was that the last time the man had exploded, he'd decorated the Muun with most of his internal organs.

Lunch had suffered.

"I think it's the nickname," Tolvit, the Rendili native everyone called Shipwright, said thoughtfully, rubbing his cheek with one finger. "You know how it is with starships. Give one a name, and sooner or later it starts living up to it. I suggest we try not calling Deadman 'Deadman' for a while."

"Oh, sure. Next you'll tell me that after a whole year you'll somehow switch gears and start calling him by his actual name. Even the instructors use the Director's nicknames for everyone," snorted the male Sephi whom Siith'khara'Dziha had, with characteristic generosity, also dubbed Ears. His sister was Ears too.

She only let out a heavy sigh. Their nicknames had driven her absolutely insane at first, but eventually she had gotten used to them and accepted her fate.

"And Deadman..." her brother went on. "It just fits him way too well, you know? At this point, we're stuck in a vicious circle."

"Um... actually, buddy, what's your name again?" Tolvit asked awkwardly, scratching the back of his head as he looked at his perpetually dying friend.

They had introduced themselves once, but that had been a long time ago, and the nickname had stuck to the Coruscant native like glue.

"Kenny McCormick," the guy answered calmly.

He was, in fact, the most even-tempered sentient in their entire year. Even the long-lived Sephi and the slightly stuffy Muun seemed overly emotional by comparison. Kenny himself explained it by saying that Death had touched him far too many times. Sooner or later, you started looking at life from a slightly different angle, and little things simply stopped getting under your skin or stirring much emotion.

"Don't worry, Kenny." The Devaronian gently stroked the back of his hand, mistaking the guy's philosophical calm for distress. She had already taken her seat and started working on her lunch. "It's just that the Academy is a little more dangerous than..."

A loud crack snapped from the next table. Something shrieked through the air. There was a heavy impact, and Deadman's chest simply burst open.

Hot blood hit them first.

Then came the rest.

Wet scraps of flesh and shredded tissue slapped across the table, splattered the food, and stuck to clothes, fur, and faces. For one frozen second, nobody moved.

"...than everywhere else," Shella Grark finished grimly, staring down at her ruined clothes and the fresh streaks of blood matting her fur.

"Oh my God, they killed Kenny!" Ears said mournfully, shaking her head as she glanced at the shocked group of first-years at the next table. Whatever had hit their friend had come from over there.

Actually, what the hell had that been?

"Bast'rds!" Penro growled, using two fingers to pull a shard of rib out of his arm.

At that exact moment, the once-again-dead Deadman pitched face-first into the bowl of soup he'd been eating before everything went to hell, sending a generous splash straight over the Devaronian sitting beside him.

"Well..." What followed was a complex string of obscenities in Fluffy's native language. The serving of broth had been the final shot to what remained of her patience. "Hutt-damned first-years!!!"

And it probably would have ended in bloodshed, because Shella had already conjured a pulsar in her palm, a spell she was the best in her year at handling, and turned toward the terrified cluster of first-years.

A couple of them, overwhelmed by the sudden carnage, were busy losing their lunches. The rest looked distinctly pale and green around the gills.

Even the Rodian, whose skin was green to begin with, somehow looked a little sick.

So yes, a couple of deaths were probably about to happen, followed by a lecture from the Director and almost certainly a call from her father. Maybe even her mother.

Shella was prepared to accept the consequences.

The brand-new, obscenely expensive dress she had put on for the first time that morning looked absolutely perfect with her fur, and she had been planning to show it off in front of one very handsome Mando who happened to be on duty at the animal enclosures today.

And now it was ruined.

Her fur was a mess.

She reeked of blood...

And soup!!!

Grrrr!!!

The first-years were saved by the delighted squeal of a little girl behind the Devaronian.

"I told you we needed to check on Deadman!" The Director's adopted daughter sounded absolutely thrilled, and that cheerful squeal cooled young Grark's temper a little. "We got lucky! Thank Hecate and the clumsy hands of beginner artifact-makers! Did you see the amulet go flying? And how it splaaattered?! Blood everywhere!!!"

"Karray, you shouldn't be happy about someone else's..." began a delicate-looking green-skinned Jedi, trying to admonish the girl.

"Blah-blah-blah, la-la-la! I can't heeeear yoooou!" The little girl clapped her hands over her ears and cheerfully hurried over to the body lying face-first in the soup.

With a flick of her aura, Karray tipped Deadman back against the chair, presenting the room with a hole in his chest roughly the size of a child's head. You could see his spine through it without even having to squint.

"Ooooh... That hit hard! What did you guys shoot him with?"

"Bleeergh!" came the answer from the next table.

Deadman's friends looked a little shaken too, though none of them showed any particularly strong signs of disgust or horror. After a year and a half at the Academy, they had seen plenty. And if they hadn't personally witnessed horrific-looking injuries and even outright death being fixed by the Director or his ward, most of them would probably have fled the Academy long ago, non-refundable tuition be damned.

Against that backdrop, the two Sephi stood out rather favorably, calmly wiping themselves clean with napkins, as did the red-eyed Sev'rance Tann. She, in fact, had managed to dive under the table in time, and her perfectly clean, neat appearance was currently irritating Shella more than a little.

"Was that a force-field umbrella?" The speaker was answering Karray's question, but his voice was practically overflowing with uncertainty.

"...Huh?" Karray froze for several seconds with one finger raised and an utterly blank expression on her face. It was such a simple artifact, practically one of the first things students learned to make on their own. Especially for the local weather. "But that's... How... how did you even manage that?!"

The girl stared into the killer's eyes with a hint of admiration, trying to imagine what you had to screw up badly enough for an artifact to launch itself across the room and then explode like a weak, unstable pulsar.

But the shock and utter confusion on the would-be artifact-maker's face made her sigh sadly. Apparently, there would be no explanation.

And the little artifact that had gone berserk, probably not even an amulet but just a simple protective charm, was... well.

It had killed Deadman.

"Eh, whatever." She waved it off and turned her attention back to the body, which slid off the chair and onto the floor under her gaze. "Come on, girls! I'll show you how it's done. You can assist and get some practice."

An aura tendril wrapped around the corpse's ankle, and the body went dragging along behind Karray as she headed for the cafeteria exit, leaving a bloody trail across the floor.

The two Jedi women exchanged a look, sighed, and followed the little girl.

"Karray, listen, you really can't just drag him like that..." Knight Rig Nema tried once again to steer the Director's daughter onto the right path, only to be cut off immediately.

"La-la-la! I can't hear you!!!" The girl clapped her hands over her ears again and quickened her pace. "Hecate, why couldn't they have sent Ani here to study? He's definitely not this much of a bore," she muttered under her breath.

Stass was at least fairly easy to get along with. Rig, on the other hand, was the very definition of a goody-two-shoes. All her "you can't do that," "that's wrong," and similar lectures had already driven the little witch up the wall.

The people watching the three chimerologists and today's test subject leave fell into two distinct camps. Those who had already survived their first year and were heading into their second simply went back to eating as if nothing had happened. The more squeamish among them just swapped seats with someone less bothered by the view so they wouldn't have to look at Deadman's table.

The newer students, who had only just started practical training, were having a much harder time working up an appetite.

The table of the "killers" stood out in particular. One especially sensitive girl from Naboo was already on the verge of hysterics. No one blamed her for it; plenty of them had gone through something similar themselves.

But then she said something that made everyone's attitude toward her words change rather abruptly.

"...! And that psycho little br—"

The girl from Naboo never got to finish. Shella Grark seemed to teleport across the room and clapped a hand over her mouth. Fortunately, she'd at least managed to scrub the blood... and soup... off her palms first.

"Girl, what are you doing?! Are you completely out of your mind?" Despite the indignant tone, the Devaronian was suddenly smiling very broadly and very openly, her whole demeanor changing in an instant. "That is the sweetest little girl, Karray. A chi-me-rol-o-gist and a sorceress. And she's also the personal ward of Siith'khara'Dziha, our Director!"

The girl from Naboo tried to say something, but the Devaronian pressed one finger to her lips.

"Shh, shh. Let Shelly finish first, and then you can do whatever you want, okay? Now listen, girl. Shelly's trying to help you here." The fluffy Devaronian bared her teeth in a smile that was somehow both predatory and friendly. "Little Karray learned surveillance spells a while back. And she will find out what you say about her. Kids are curious! And they get offended easily too, trust your friend Shelly on that one. I should know. Every new little brat Mom produces after Dad's latest visit to Devaron somehow ends up becoming my problem."

The girl from Naboo tried to speak again and once again got cut off.

"Shhh. She'll find out if you say something nasty about her, and Hecate forbid she takes offense. The kid's a genius, and she's making incredible progress in chimerology. And lately the Director's been dumping most of the injured on her to deal with, savvy? Shelly sincerely does not want you waking up after 'treatment' and discovering that instead of one adorable little ass, you now have four."

Watching the Naboo girl's eyes widen as understanding dawned, along with the rest of her table, young Grark stretched her friendly smile even wider and gave the girl a hearty pat on the shoulder.

"No, of course she'll fix the unfortunate little mistake. She'll even apologize. If you're lucky, the sweet girl might give you some cake too... But that'll all be later, savvy? She might suddenly have something urgent to do, and your life won't exactly be in danger, right? So you'll spend three or four hours shaking four asses around. Maybe a couple of days, until she gets some free time.

"And don't forget, friend, sweet little Karray might decide your buddies think badly of her too... Want me to keep going?"

The entire group shook their heads in unison. Satisfied, the Devaronian winked at the now even paler student from Naboo.

"There we go. Much better! Shelly's glad she could help her new friend and all her buddies! And hey... if you ever need something rare, don't be shy. Come to Shelly. We're friends now, and the Grarks always give friends a nice discount."

Under the deathly silence of the whole group, the girl headed back toward her own friends. They were getting ready to go change and had only been waiting for her. Sev'rance, oddly enough, was still with them too, just for the company.

"Shelly, in m'ments like this, y' remind me of your father," the Muun said with a smile.

"Spit that out! Hecate forbid my fur starts falling out!" young Grark widened her eyes in mock horror. "And look who's talking! The second you hear credits clinking, your ears perk right up."

"Pffft. Weren't you the one who just offered to smuggle things for them? Even promised them a discount?" Ears chuckled quietly.

"Mollob, look at me!" the Devaronian said, rolling her eyes. "This dress cost almost six hundred credits! At the rate my wardrobe keeps getting destroyed, I'll be walking around naked soon! Tolvit, not a word!"

The Rendili, who had already opened his mouth with a lecherous grin spreading across his face, deliberately clicked his teeth together and shut his "talker." That earned a round of amused snorts from everyone around him. Shipwright had long since earned himself a reputation as both a joker and a womanizer, so it wasn't hard to guess what he had been about to say.

"Anyway! Dad pays me a modest cut of every client deal, so my wardrobe has a very personal stake in the prosperity of the family business."

"And, if it's not a secret, how modest a p'rcentage are we talking?" Penro asked.

"Secret! But between us, for his own daughter, he could afford to make it a little less modest. Horned miser," the girl grumbled. "By the way, Pen-Pen, if you're interested, I happen to have a couple of kyber crystals..."

"Still a bit early f'r me to work with those," the Muun sighed.

"I'd like to see them," Tann suddenly spoke up. "Will you show me?"

"Of course, friend." The girl, who had been looking a little deflated, immediately perked back up and broke into a wide smile. In her imagination, she was already counting the credits she could use to refresh her wardrobe. Maybe even buy herself a new pair of shoes. Jabiim's shoemakers only made closed leather shoes, but they were beautiful and exceptionally well made.

"You don't need to change, right? Then come on, let's go to Shelly's room! Shelly will show you her whole collection! They sparkle and shimmer like treasure from a fairy tale! Trust me, even if you don't end up needing them, you can always sell them to some Jedi!"

"And there goes the sales pitch," Ears said, rolling her eyes as the others laughed.

"I'm practicing. I can't live off my mother forever. Besides, I'm not the heir, so I need to prepare for an independent life." The Devaronian lifted her nose proudly. Under normal circumstances it would have looked rather cute. Covered in blood as she was now, however, the effect was mildly infernal. "So my plan is to have my own business, a normal husband who keeps his nose out of women's business, and a couple of clever daughters."

"Ah-ha-ha-ha!" the Sephi burst out laughing. "Make a move on the Director. He'd be perfect for you! He's got more than enough of his own business to deal with, so he definitely wouldn't stick his nose into yours... Uh... Shelly?"

The young Devaronian was frowning in deep concentration, clearly giving the idea serious thought.

"Wait..." she muttered. "He does keep calling me Fluffy... Maybe he likes me? I mean, why not? He's a good-looking man, doesn't waste his time on stupid things, doesn't chase after girls. Unlike my father! And he's a chimerologist. I doubt species compatibility would be much of a problem for him!"

"Whoa, whoa, friend!" Tolvit exclaimed. "You're forgetting he doesn't just call you Fluffy. It's Fluffy Hit-Girl! Or sometimes Furry Death! And if all those rumors are true, there's already been a whole pack of predators circling him for years!"

"You don't circle around a good man," young Grark said instructively, raising one finger. "You whack him over the head with a club and drag him back to the cave by the horns! Men never understand hints anyway."

"Uh-huh," the Sephi snorted. She knew perfectly well that her friend had been eyeing a young Mando for quite a while now, one already sporting a few scars and often assigned to duty at the animal enclosures.

Funny how Shelly was never seen anywhere near him with a club.

---

Original Russian story

You can find more chapters on my Patreon.

The translation of new chapters will also be published here—but with a bit of a delay.

 

[Vyraco]

Deadman is a real go-getter, learning about life, death and the universe per true, hands on experience!

 

[Xx_BoneIdle_xX]

Is Deadman the sacrifice that Palpatine sent to the JMG in order to sacrifice later on and gain his knowledge? That's almost like the Force is acting to give Deadman some clues about his future fate... Perhaps Siith will make him a Lich as a graduation present since he seems to have an affinity for Death and thus ruin Darth Sidious' plan without meaning to!

 

[Morkail]

One of the best South Park references I've seen in a long time. Thanks for the chapters.

 

[FTR2017]

Truly hilarious chapter, I was cackling all down to the end of it!

Furry Death is courting her namesake with the competition around the beloved Director, yet being so helpful to her 'younger students' in telling them that how their health and body integrity are in the hands of the same girl they were going to trashtalk as wannabe high school queen bees.

Truly, she is such a generous fluffy gal! Her marketing is to die for!

"Kenny McCormick," the guy answered calmly.

Click to shrink...

Well, that explains everything about Deadman, really.

 

[Boroda Orka]

Alto Stratus was quietly happy. Cautiously so, still not quite trusting the feeling, but... For more than a year, not a single citizen of his world had died at the hands of bandits looking to profit off Jabiim. Six months had passed since every library promised to Siith had been completed. Four months since the foundry had reached full capacity. For the past two months, modern hospitals had been fully operational in every major city, staffed with doctors hired from the wider galaxy. His own people had been sent to study at prestigious medical schools, while three chimerologists were now gaining practical experience in the capital: young Karray and two Jedi.

And home... Yes, his home—a place he had probably visited once every six months at best, spending most of his time in quarters scattered across military bases or in the living space set aside for him in the government building. His wife lived there now, and at last the Commander-in-Chief actually wanted to go home. Of his own free will. Eagerly. Happily. Impatient to get back. A small, private happiness for a man who had spent so long trying to make his whole world happy.

Looking back, he remembered the road he had taken. Long, difficult, bloody, exhausting. But every hardship along the way had been worth it. He had chosen that path himself, and he alone was responsible for everything he had done. Back then, still just a boy, standing over the bodies of his mother and father, he had understood one thing with absolute clarity: the life of an ordinary civilian was not for him. He simply could not live that way.

Now Commander-in-Chief of Jabiim's armed forces and, in practice, the leader of his world, Alto had long since mourned his parents. Their deaths had not broken the boy. They had hardened him. Maybe even poisoned something inside him. Back then, watching the accursed Lythian ships vanish into the rain-dark sky, Alto had thought that a strong Jabiim would never have allowed this to happen. That was the moment the dream first caught fire in him—a dark, hungry flame, orange-red like the houses burning through the downpour, roofs collapsing inward as fire chewed through timber and flesh alike. Black smoke rolled low and greasy through the rain, thick with the stink of scorched meat, wet ash, and blood turning cold in the mud. And inside the crackle and hiss of the flames, Alto could almost hear it all again: the broken groans of the dying, the raw screams of those who had survived by accident, and beneath them both, heavier than any sound, the silence of the dead.

A dream of strength. Not for himself, but for all of them. For old Vort, sitting there with empty eyes beside the mangled body of his daughter, too numb even to notice the blood still running from his own wounds. For their neighbors, whose son Alto would never again be able to visit so they could play on the game console his uncle had brought back from Pzob. For everyone who, in that moment, could not decide whether to be grateful they had survived or collapse under the weight of everything they had lost. And for Alto himself. A dream of a future where bastards like the ones who had just descended from the sky would be dead—and the people of Jabiim would not.

But dreams were for the weak, so young Stratus chose to act. He gave the dream a new name, called it a goal, and set out on a road made of millions of steps. He chose the path of a warrior and poured every spare hour into training. Then came his first battles, his first kills, and with them the fierce satisfaction of knowing that those particular bastards would never hurt anyone again. There was an old saying: "If you kill a killer, the number of killers in the world stays the same." So what did that mean? Simple enough. You just had to kill more than one. Then the numbers worked out.

In every battle, Alto tried to make the galaxy a little cleaner, as much as his strength and circumstances allowed. But he never lost his head. There were always good people of Jabiim fighting beside him, and their lives depended on his judgment. One mistake, and those who rushed to save an overzealous comrade who had trapped himself through reckless action could die with him. And their deaths would be on the hands of a fool who had thought too highly of himself. Bronze Halo, one of his world's elite units, was not a gang of idiots but a force of serious professionals, and earning a place among them had cost Alto an enormous amount of work. Even with the help and influence of his uncle, Cordelia's father, who served as a captain in the planetary-defense forces, they would never have taken him if he had not scored highly in the selection tests.

For that, he trained until the blisters bled, spent the lion's share of his inheritance on instructors, tutors, and endless hours at the firing range. He even managed to persuade a veteran of the Black Gloves to train him, which, truth be told, had not been all that difficult. The old warrior, a true patriot of his world, had recognized and respected the young man's determination.

His first promotion. His first real success in his career. Another step toward the goal he had set for himself. More battles fought beneath sheets of pouring rain. Victories and failures for his unit alike. The most bitter failures were the ones that had not been his fault at all, but the fault of Bronze Halo's command, which at the time was made up almost entirely of the second and third sons of aristocratic families.

Aristocrats. Most of them could not have cared less about the problems of ordinary people. A break in the clouds, and two pirate ships had gone down through it? There was a small settlement and a mine below! Send a unit to secure the mine first. The settlement could make do with whatever was left.

And the result... A mine left completely untouched, because the pirates had never even looked its way. There was too little room in their holds for stolen ore to bring in any worthwhile profit. And a settlement left in ruins. Homes looted. Civilians murdered, wounded, raped, dragged away into slavery. The endless rain seemed like the bitter tears of his homeland, weeping for the maimed, the dead, and the lost. Jabiim suffered, and young Alto suffered with it. Unlike his world, however, the young man hid his own tears behind his helmet. Bitter, furious tears. Salty drops running down his cheeks, each one carrying a promise of death for every bastard he crossed paths with.

The decorated officer's rise through the ranks was slow from then on. Not because he lacked merit, but because he had made the mistake of speaking far too honestly about the wealthy to someone who should never have heard those opinions. Even so, he eventually forced his way to the very top. First he became commander of Bronze Halo, and later, after earning the unofficial title of People's Hero, he took part in consolidating four elite units into a single formation.

The Black Gloves, D.E.E.P., Stone Avalanche, Bronze Halo. All four became part of a single organization: Nimbus. And Alto Stratus stood at its head. He approached the job thoroughly. Most of the aristocracy's little darlings could be pushed aside one way or another: framed, removed through carefully arranged accidents, or helped into transfers to more comfortable posts in the capital. Patrol routes were redrawn, greatly improving the effectiveness of the special forces. And so the already famous name of Alto Stratus began to be heard across Jabiim even more often, and with ever greater weight.

His soldiers were everywhere, and often he was there with them. The commander went into battle alongside his people, generously watering the soil of his homeland with enemy blood. Nor did he forget the fallen, fighting successfully for increased benefits for the families of soldiers who had given their lives defending the people of Jabiim. Support for disabled veterans, better weapons and equipment for the troops, promotions for officers who had earned them. He was loved and respected. People followed him. His name was spoken with admiration, and young Jabiimites dreamed of "being like Alto Stratus—the Hero of Jabiim."

But despite all the Commander's successes... it still was not enough. Nimbus could not be everywhere, and sometimes it simply could not arrive in time. Stratus tried to secure funding to expand its ranks, purchase air-defense systems for smaller settlements, and obtain authorization to form local militia units, but the aristocracy...

Stratus had become far too influential among the military establishment. The local bigwigs feared that one day he might use the soldiers who adored him for something other than defending the planet—namely, overthrowing the government. Without even realizing it, they pushed Alto closer and closer to that very idea. And in the end, it was they who convinced the Commander that such measures might indeed be necessary. Cordelia, his cousin and most loyal supporter, uncovered several agents who had been preparing to bring the Hero's glorious career to a permanent end.

Those men met tragic ends in yet another battle. A simple matter of unfortunate circumstances. A shortage of personnel had forced even headquarters staff into the fighting, after all. Nimbus was an elite unit, where even the accountants were trained to fight and kill.

They had a plan. Alto, Cordelia, and their most trusted supporters were already working to put it into motion. Only two things held them back: the Republic, and their unwillingness to spill the blood of their own people. The same Republic that could not have cared less about Jabiim might still interfere. Justiciars and senators well greased by the aristocracy could easily draw attention to what was happening. And after that... it would come down to luck. Coruscant might shrug indifferently, as it usually did, or it might send in peacekeepers. And then there was the prospect of civil war...

He did not care how many offworlders died, but he wanted no deaths among his own people, no slaughter of Jabiimites by Jabiimites. Revolution always meant fratricide, and Alto was not desperate enough for that. Again and again, he sent the plan back for revision, postponed it, bargained with new allies, and waited for the right moment—for an opportunity that would guarantee both the least possible bloodshed among his own people and no response from the thieves on Coruscant.

And then he met Siith. The red-eyed sorcerer, whom Alto had initially taken for a Sith, was blunt, candid, utterly unscrupulous, and at first glance perhaps even insane. After a while, the commander of Nimbus stopped doubting that Siith knew about most of the plans concerning him and simply regarded them with indulgent amusement. He openly showed Alto and Cordelia what he was capable of, making no attempt to hide it, and spoke with disarming directness about things that could easily have been dismissed as the ravings of a madman. But when madness was backed by facts, could it still be called madness?

The sorcerer began working for Nimbus and Stratus. At least, that was how someone unfamiliar with their relationship might have described it. In reality, it was more of an exchange of favors, a peculiar kind of "barter in gratitude." Siith, for example, supplied Nimbus with cheap but remarkably effective equivalents of personal shields, while Alto provided him with whatever he needed. Siith healed wounded soldiers, and Stratus "thanked" him in material terms. The sorcerer demonstrated his power over the weather, and the Commander ensured that he had every prospect of a comfortable life. Siith never inflated his prices or tried to gouge them simply because his abilities were unique, and Alto Stratus did his best to match that same sense of fair dealing.

Clever old sorcerer. The Stratuses had not even noticed when he stopped being a suspicious Force-sensitive and became instead the man with the habitually unsettling smile, someone to whom they owed a great deal and no longer thought of as an outsider. There had been frank conversations whenever their schedules allowed, fascinating stories, enticing possibilities. And generosity, yes. Generosity that seemed almost unbelievable to the Commander and the head of his Security Service, though the sorcerer himself did not consider it generosity at all.

Sharing knowledge? Gladly. The sooner there were mages capable of churning out charms and amulets themselves, the less often people would bother him about it. The "airspeeders," whose design he had simply handed over to a pair of students, waving aside any talk of royalties or a percentage of the profits. The slightly frightening little Karray and her sister Karina, both of whom adored their patron and whom he was teaching the deeper mysteries of the sorcerer's Art.

And his goals? His goals were to work on his own projects in as much comfort as possible. "I'm investing my time in Jabiim and the JMG so that, a few decades from now, I'll have a place to work where no one keeps dragging me away from it, and perhaps a group of spellcasters who share my interests," the sorcerer had once said.

That had been after the "pandemic" did all the dirty work for Alto. It killed off most of the aristocracy and his political opponents, opened up positions throughout the government, and made it possible to hold genuinely free and democratic elections. Fortunately, the information that surfaced in the process meant he barely had to worry about campaigning at all. More than ninety percent of the planet's population logged into the voting portal without hesitation and chose him as the new leader of their world.

Then came... office work. Ohhh... Ooooooh... No, there had been plenty of it when he was general of Nimbus too, but the scale was incomparable. Alto shuddered inwardly whenever he imagined the sheer mountain of work resting on the shoulders of someone like the Supreme Chancellor. And Palpatine, unlike Valorum—may his name not be spoken after dark—clearly took a much more active role in the affairs of the Republic.

The Commander-in-Chief would gladly have dumped all that paperwork on someone else and gone off to fight another battle. But first, there was no one to dump it on: Cordelia was already working herself to the bone, and all their supporters had their own posts and more than enough to do. And second, he had not fought his way to power for so long only to finally gain the ability to change something and then shove the burden onto someone else.

And so Alto and his people threw themselves wholeheartedly into an offensive against corruption, bureaucracy, military weakness, the lack of a fleet, the poor standard of living, and the appalling state of healthcare. Jabiim's problems could have filled a very long list, and fighting them consumed an enormous amount of time.

But the results... Alto narrowed his eyes in sheer satisfaction as he took a sip of the excellent caf his wife had made before disappearing into the bath. A former captive of a desert world, she could spend an eternity soaking in water, and her love for Jabiim's endless rain never ceased to delight her husband.

The results brought deep satisfaction in the work they had done. A small squadron capable of repelling most pirate raids; an expanded Nimbus force; better-trained troops; small militia units established throughout the planet; air-defense systems, and in some places even anti-space defenses, protecting nearly every settlement.

The last part had turned out to be mildly amusing. The people of Jabiim had suffered pirate raids for thousands of years, and they welcomed the small military installations so warmly that the rations sent for the soldiers and support crews were almost never needed. Village matrons, kindhearted townswomen, and simply concerned citizens had gotten into the habit of feeding the troops home-cooked meals. The soldiers were only too happy to oblige, and command mostly turned a blind eye to it, especially since the men chipped in for groceries in return, even if some of the locals protested. The only problem was that when the Commander-in-Chief happened to attend one inspection in person, he found, instead of ten lean, fit soldiers, ten well-fed little dumplings with rosy cheeks and bellies already beginning to form.

Stratus furrowed his brow ominously as he watched those rosy, well-fed faces drain pale, then issued an order requiring the personnel at every air- and anti-space-defense installation to pass their fitness standards at least once every three months. He swept the ten soldiers with a disapproving look, sighed sadly, and asked whether they understood that if the enemy ever broke through the defensive fire of their little battery, those who survived would have to take up arms and protect the very civilians who, out of kindness and a certain lack of judgment, insisted on stuffing their soldiers without restraint. Were people's lives really worth their laziness, negligence, and gluttony—especially when all that loving care was already beginning to spill over their belts? There were no punishments the first time around, but the squad leader was marked for closer scrutiny, and the regional defense chief received a verbal dressing-down.

The fact that pirates had been "treating" their world to raids less and less often did not give the planetary-defense forces any right to relax. Every soldier and officer had to be ready for anything, because Jabiim remembered not only raids by squadrons of two to five ships, but also massive assaults by entire pirate fleets.

And thanks to the weather-control artifact complexes, command had plans for just such a scenario. The part of the squadron stationed in orbit would evacuate the personnel from the orbital dock and withdraw, while openings in the cloud cover and ion storms, created where and when they were needed and then sealed again at the right moment, would allow the planetary-defense forces to destroy the invaders on the ground—under conditions where Nimbus would tear the enemy apart the way Siith's mysterious dog would tear up a rag.

Recent tests had shown that even specialized cloud-dispersal compounds were almost useless if the weather-machine operators pushed their systems to maximum counteraction. So if the Lythians or Trandoshans ever risked launching a raid on that scale, they would drown in their own blood, while Jabiim would gain a substantial supply of "resources" for the creation of stasis amulets—artifacts whose value was measured against the most precious thing their planet possessed: the lives of the sentients who called it home.

Another of Stratus's victories was Jabiim's industry, finally clawing its way out of the humiliating position the aristocracy had left it in. Siith had a hand in that as well, once again stirring a wave of gratitude in the Commander-in-Chief. Once again, the sorcerer had not made the whole enterprise dependent on himself. He had created a smooth-running process, trained the necessary personnel, and generously handed the whole thing over to the people. This time, Stratus simply could not bring himself to accept such a gift for free and made sure a percentage of the profits was regularly transferred to Siith's account. If he had done otherwise, his conscience would have strangled him... and most likely Cordelia would have finished the job.

Now that the foundry had reached full capacity, it was providing a substantial boost to the planetary budget. Local manufacturing had begun to grow as well. Not exactly like mushrooms after rain just yet, but the private sector was gradually coming to life, slowly but steadily supplying the domestic market and even producing some goods for export.

Those same "speeders" were wildly popular on certain worlds and among particular groups of sentients, largely because even a military-grade EMP could not disable them. Their main drawback was that rapidly recharging the reservoirs required special stationary pump platforms, but even so, buyers kept taking them and asking for more. They also kept sending the machines back for tuning and routine maintenance. Production remained limited, which was unfortunate—but scarcity did make it possible to put truly enormous markups on units intended for export.

And Siith's latest project was something else entirely. The "Void Hide": an interface module that allowed a mage to control a starship as though it were their own body. It required an initiated mage as the pilot, and learning to "fly" it—or, as the sorcerer put it, to use a "puppet body"—was an extremely difficult and dangerous process. The human brain had to adapt to being a starship as well, with sensors instead of eyes and engines instead of limbs. The pilot had to learn how to maneuver, take off and land, interact with the life-support systems, and push the engines into afterburner. It was difficult not only physically, but psychologically as well. Their only pilot had complained that she sometimes got confused and tried to take off in her real body. Dziha had reassured her, though, that it would pass with time.

For now, the project remained relatively classified. Access was limited to Jabiim's fleet and small craft. Well... and to the Count of Serenno.

Alto grimaced as though from a toothache and took another sip of the fragrant drink, trying to wash away the bitter taste of his Security Service's defeat and the phantom sting of a finger-flick to the nose. As always, caf made by Shmi Stratus reconciled him with reality and drew a resigned sigh from his lips. It had been far too naive to assume that powerful sentients would be unable to get around the information-security defenses of what was, if he was being honest, a backward world.

It was fortunate, at least, that Count Dooku was a man of genuine honor. He demanded nothing, made no threats, and attempted no blackmail. During his very first face-to-face conversation with Siith, he had even promised that if the sorcerer refused, the information would remain secret. The ruler of Serenno, a former Jedi who had somehow learned that testing of the sorcerer's latest development was complete, had become eager to have a Dziha-Trant Control Module installed aboard his own ship.

The ship itself, incidentally, was truly one of a kind, and Tano, who was teaching the Count how to use the new interface, practically drooled over it—both over the exclusivity of the modified model and over its staggering price tag.

As one might expect, the Count's request—a very well-paid request—was granted. Siith performed Dooku's initiation as a spellcaster, showed him exercises for developing his aura, promised to offer advice if needed, and then dumped the Count on his only mage-pilot so far: a greedy Neimoidian in the body of a pretty Togruta, the aforementioned Romri Tano.

Their meeting as fellow rulers had gone very pleasantly as well. The former Jedi's views on the Republic's current state resonated strongly with Alto; the Count's criticisms of the situation were simply too precise and too incisive not to. The result, as Dziha liked to put it with one of his sly, unsettling smiles, was a successful test of the system with a Force-sensitive, a substantial sum transferred to their dock—and therefore into the planetary budget—and generous payments to Tano as the instructor, to the sorcerer himself, and to the young engineer from Rendili who had co-authored the technical side of the project and was now the wife of Ras, second pilot and navigator aboard the sorcerer's personal cruiser, the Rung. And then there were several verbal agreements with the ruler of Serenno which, in the future, could bring Jabiim a healthy profit... and Alto himself a fair amount of satisfaction.

In particular, Count Dooku had hinted, lightly but unmistakably, that he would be willing to take part in a raid on Lythia, whose pirates occasionally harassed Serenno's merchant ships in the surrounding sectors. And that was another slap on the ass for the Security Service, because such a plan did exist—but only as something still being developed, not even as a proper draft yet.

The Jabiim government had launched a "Return of Our Own" program, under which any bounty hunter or slave owner who brought an abducted Jabiimite home could expect a cash reward. For now, the payments were modest—the treasury was not bottomless, and the number of people who had been taken away ran into the thousands... But Alto was working on that, as was the planet's entire population, donating whatever sums they were willing and able to part with to the program's accounts.

Besides those willing to return his people voluntarily, there were also places like the pirate capital of their region. Those bastards were never going to negotiate. So headquarters was now trying to figure out how to hit them as hard as possible, evacuate as many slaves as possible, and avoid getting smacked down by the Republic's justiciars, who were unlikely to appreciate a unilateral military operation.

Alto had given the Count no definite answer yet, only promised to think it over. The Commander-in-Chief had never been spoiled by kindness from outsiders, and alongside his growing regard for the ruler of Serenno, the situation stirred his suspicions as well.

---

Author's Note:

Boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen! Thank you so much for still reading this fanfic. Huge thanks as well for all the moral support in the form of likes and comments—and for the financial support too. Hapsiel smooches-smooches to everyone.)))

---

Original Russian story

You can find more chapters on my Patreon.

The translation of new chapters will also be published here—but with a bit of a delay.

 

[Vyraco]

Nice to see him not trusting Dooku unilaterally.

 

[KneelPoultry]

did you mean to post chapter 43? you posted 42 twice

 

[FTR2017]

I am now pondering just what is Dooku plotting with that assault on that pirate world.

Weaken Jabiim? Get rid of Siith? Test both?

Is this Dooku not fully inside Palpy's dark pocket yet?