roccoschili 87
87
A Young Girl’s War Between the Stars87
???. ?! BBY/?! GSC.
“
“Where is ‘here?’”
“
“…How do I get out?”
“
“Clear as mud.”
“
“Back it is, then.”
The world filled out around me as I stepped onto solid ground, breathed real air… .
“Shit!” I cursed, as bolts of pure energy rained down around me, clouding my senses. I had only a moment to raise a shield, even as my the Force within me split, responding on reflex as the next bolt struck true and I redirected it into the ground. Then the next, and the next.
A formula shielded my eyes from the flash and my ears from the continuous boom of thunder and, between flashes, I looked around and took in my surroundings. I recognized the terrain instantly—after all, I had been here before, during exactly these conditions, and it was here that I had mastered the very exercise I was now using. A look up into the sky confirmed my suspicion.
Specifically, to the largest neutral Force nexus on Tython. The one where I had set up camp when I was sent here to investigate.
Well, that was… interesting. I now had some idea of what the mural puzzle did. Apparently, it was some kind of inter-planetary teleportation device! Likely created by the Jedi. But if it worked this well, why not put one in every Jedi Temple across the galaxy and use it to cross distances in moments that would take a ship days, weeks, or months?
Shaking my head, I turned towards where I remembered we had left the prefab shelters when we had left Tython. It was a short walk through the rain and the lightning, but I managed to navigate it well enough.
I was nearly on top of the shelter when I paused, frowning. It was hard to sense through the ongoing natural Force storm around me, but as I got closer I began to feel emotions—several sets, in fact. Moving through the trees, I found the clearing just as we had left it… as we had left it, actually. The jungle hadn’t reclaimed an inch. And more worrying, I spotted lights on in the camp.
Spinning up an optical camo formula over myself, I suppressed my Force signature and moved in closer as I drew my lightsaber but held off on activating it. Nearing the wall, I spotted our first guard post and a quick peek inside showed it was occupied by a Mandalorian. The man looked bored as he watched the monitors fritzing out in the storm and occasionally glanced out the transparisteel window. My frown deepened as I him. Sure, I didn’t remember his name because it had been a while, but I recognized that he was part of the research expedition on Tython.
Pulling away, I made my way through the camp, peering into windows and eventually letting myself into the main dormitory building. All of them were familiar faces. The expeditionary and research team and the security team sent to guard them.
I left the building and took a few moments to test myself as well as I could, using the Force, medical Force techniques, and a few diagnostic formulas. Everything came back normal—or at least, as normal as it ever would for me. Which left me to conclude that whatever I was seeing was .
…very I growled mentally, as I found an unoccupied piece of equipment and checked the local time and date:
teleporter
I paused as the and hit all at once. Swallowing thickly and suppressing sheer, , I very carefully left the camp, using the storm as cover. After all, if I couldn’t sense through the storm, then . And I really, really needed my to not sense that a version of her had traveled here from the future—because that hadn’t happened. I didn’t recall that happening, thus it hadn’t happened. Which meant it couldn’t happen—or couldn’t be allowed to happen. Otherwise, I’d either create some sort of branched timeline and in doing so to a future timeline without me, or I’d end up in a paradox or something equally asinine. Or maybe absolutely nothing would happen, things would go on as they should have, and it’d be fine. .
Getting far enough away, I took shelter in a cave I remembered passing and checking out at one point, and then never investigating again when I had determined there was nothing interesting in it. Sitting down, I used the Force to gather some branches from outside and dry them off, before starting a small fire to warm myself up.
“Okay, think. Either I am and I need to find my way back to Lothal and into that damned painting so I can wring that old bastard’s neck and make him send me back to my Padawans, or…” I paused, considering the options. “Or things will be fine, as long as I don’t cause too much of a stir.” Chewing my lip, I paced back and forth in the confines of the small cave. “That’s the key, isn’t it? He warned me. Small pebble, big ripples I can’t see. Right. So just keep my head down and wait—”
I blinked as a memory surfaced, of a conversation I’d had a bit over a week ago with Taria. A conversation… and a video.
“…Mother ”
Taking a deep breath, I collapsed onto the floor of the cave and let it out in a brief, slightly hysterical laugh. “Okay, I’m not entirely fucked. Obviously, that wasn’t a copycat. No, it was . I left a clue for myself. So, I just need to wait. As long as I move where the Jedi and the Sith aren’t looking and I don’t do anything , it’ll be fine. Bide my time, wait until the attack on Botajef, then hit the old Jedi Temple hidden in the lower levels of Coruscant. After that, I just need to catch up to the and meet up with Allaya and Asajj.”
That should be easy enough. I just needed to first get off of Tython without drawing the attention of my past self. Then, I needed to avoid all attention from literally every Jedi and Sith in the galaxy—actually, probably easier than I was making that one out to be. Finally, I needed to be at a specific place and a specific time to to ensure that it a loop and not some kind of branching path crap.
With that decided, I pulled on my helmet and stood, heading back into the storm and back to camp. Once there, I borrowed a field tent and some supplies, packed everything up, and evacuated before the storm cleared. Then, I found shelter somewhere I knew my past self hadn’t gone, made camp, and began watching, waiting, and planning. I had much to do and a few short windows in which I needed to act very quickly.
Coruscant. 39 BBY/961 GSC.
I waited until young Tanya was well out of my sensory range and most of the crew had left the ship before making my last checks.
Cream colored hooded poncho over a set of simple light green top and borrowed set of pants that felt painted on. Hand cannon blaster clearly on display, smaller blaster pistol with the ghostfire crystal tucked into a holster under my arm, hidden beneath my poncho. Gloves and a scarf acting as a full head covering to hide everything but my eyes, which themselves were hidden by a set of goggles I had borrowed from a toolbox in the engineering deck. Mando armor and other gear stuffed into a bag I had liberated from one of the science crew—a woman who had too many bags already and wouldn’t miss one, after I’d repacked everything but the clothes and scarf I’d borrowed.
The Mask of Mandalore and the Darksaber were safely accounted for, hidden in the same cache as my stash of beskar and dragon hide back on Tython—along with a stash of songsteel I’d spent some time using alchemy to make, my sabers and staff, and my primary computation orb. Everything recognizably belonging to that couldn’t be reasonably purchased anywhere else, I had left behind—and if I was going to be leaving the raw materials there until I finished growing, I may as well add a few extras to soak in the Force nexus.
Checking the mirror, I looked… nothing like my usual self. The colors were all wrong for my preferences, being brighter and more attention-getting than I liked. The clothes fit my body a little too well, in a way that was sure to draw the eye. Combined with everything else done to conceal my identity, on top of the hand cannon, it practically screamed . It would draw exactly the sort of attention, if I wanted to keep a low profile.
I needed resources and seed money, and I couldn’t exactly pay for things with my past self’s money, or she’d notice. I kept records of expenditures, so there was no way I—or she, rather—wouldn’t. That meant acquiring them the fun way—liberating them from the criminal element of Coruscant.
Night had fallen by the time I left the ship, using my senses to navigate around the few remaining crew and hurry out into the dock. From there, I looked around and followed my senses to find a cantina serving the spaceport. Heading inside, I sat down at a table and ordered a drink, asking for a straw so I could drink it without removing the scarf. Then, I hunched in on myself and waited. Already, I could feel the interest of several people on me.
It didn’t take long before that interest grew into something a bit more nefarious from one of those watching me. I glanced around, taking advantage of the tinted nature of the goggles to observe my watcher. He was human or near-human, with a green twi’lek woman pressed into his side, his arm over her shoulder and the hand down her top and blatantly squeezing her breast. The woman looked… on the young side. She be of legal age and just young, or she may be underage but close to legal. Twi’lek were hard for me to estimate ages for, honestly. But considering how she was dressed and the company she kept, along with her own emotions, I was willing to bet she wasn’t there entirely of her own volition.
When the man didn’t act after half an hour, I decided to entice him a bit. The next time I went to drink, I allowed the scarf to slip, exposing my lower face and lips. He perked up immediately, interest spiking, along with lust. I quickly fixed the scarf and stood, leaving the cantina. As I did, I felt the man and his female companion hurry to follow.
I didn’t make it far before the woman, or perhaps girl, rushed up from behind me. “U-um, he-hello?”
Turning my head, I eyed her for a moment before picking up the pace a bit, not bothering to answer—making it clear I was leaving and not willing to stop and chat. The girl glanced back behind me, before worry filled her and she spoke up again. “You, you look troubled. Is there something I can do to help?”
“No,” I denied, turning suddenly into an alleyway and picking up the pace again. Once more, the woman turned and gestured at the man following, her worry turning to mild panic.
I heard footsteps hurrying to catch up from behind, then the familiar whine of a blaster. “Girl. Stop.”
When I didn’t, he fired—a red blaster bolt flashing by and hitting the ground a bit ahead of me. The girl flinched, jerking away from me and radiating guilt, but also.“I said stop!”
I stopped, feeling my lips pull into a smile.
“Get her pistol,” the man ordered, and the girl hurried to comply, pulling the pistol out of my holster and pointing it at me as she moved away. She glanced down at the pistol in her hand and I could her planning something—likely to betray her ‘friend’ given the hostile intent behind it.
“Now, turn around slowly.” I did so and could feel the man leering before I saw it. “Take off the hood and the mask.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, and something in my tone must have penetrated through the haze of lust and ill intent.
Survival instincts kicked in and he looked around to make sure we were alone. I pulled with the Force, jerking his pistol out of his hand to hover beside me, while grabbing my own out of the air and turning it on them.
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
“Shit! Jedi! Run!” the man yelped, turning to do just that, only to let out a yelp of surprise and fear as I pinned him and the girl to the wall and clamped their jaws shut.
Moving up to the man, I hit him with a blast of Mind Trick, releasing his jaw as I demanded, “Tell me what you were planning.”
“…Was gonna rob you. Sell your shit. Get a slave collar around that pretty neck. Sample the goods a bit before I sold you to the Hutts when I left this shithole.”
“Do you have a ship?” I demanded, and he nodded. “Are you working alone or as part of an operation?”
“Solo.”
Nodding, I questioned him a bit to get the access codes to his ship and find out how much money he had stashed away and where—which turned out to be a fairly large sum which he kept on his ship, in physical credits. Cash was much harder to trace than electronic currency. Much easier to steal, too.
With that done, I clamped his jaw shut and looked to the girl as I hit her with Mind Trick as well, only for her to actually resist. “And you. You were just going to let him do all of that?”
She spat in my general direction and I frowned, catching the glob of spit with the Force. I did her the favor of returning it to where it had come from, smearing it all over her face as she tried and failed to jerk away. “Answer me.”
“Yes! Better you than me!” the woman hissed.
“What were you planning to do with me, once you killed him?” I asked.
The man’s eyes went wide, before he glared, managing to get out a few muffled words around his clenched jaw. “Traitorous bitch!”
“The Hutts pay well for slaves,” the woman admitted.
Shaking my head, I quickly searched their pockets for anything useful or salable. Once I had everything of value, I dragged them down the alley. One of the interesting things about Coruscant’s geography, if it could be called that, was that one didn’t have to go far to find a void leading down to the lower levels—either a wide, open lane used for vehicles, or just a gap between buildings. I had planned my little counter-ambush with that in mind. The cantina was situated practically right beside one such lane and I had led them behind it and back towards the lane when they stopped me.
The pair of them screamed as I tossed them over the side, watching until they disappeared into the dark below. Swallowed up by Coruscant’s lower levels with the rest of the trash. From there, I made my way back into the spaceport and found the slaver’s ship. It was an old YT-1000, but despite the owner being a walking pile of trash, he kept a tight ship. It was clean, well maintained, and in working order.
“This will do,” I murmured, looking over the captain’s cabin.
I took stock of what they had on hand and tossed out the old sheets, then pilfered the captain’s stash of credits. After locking up, I made my way back into the city. In between checking directory listings and following the Force, I navigated my way down to a clinic run by droids. The door chimed as I entered and a droid at the counter beeped, before greeting me.
“Greetings valued customer unit. How may this reputable establishment serve you?”
“Skin job. How much?”
There was a brief pause as its eyes flashed, before it asked, “Permanent or reversible?”
“Reversible.”
“Eight thousand credits.”
I mused, before nodding. “Do it. And if you try to put me to sleep and harvest my organs, I’ll melt your body down to build a but I’ll leave everything you need to think and sense it intact.”
“Your threat has been logged. Right this way,” it agreed, gesturing towards a door leading to a back room. “We also offer hair recoloring for a nominal fee, if you are interested.”
“Yes. Blonde, please.”
Thankfully, the process didn’t take long. A bit of blood was drawn, both to use to tune whatever they used for the process and to give me a stored sample to hold onto in order to reverse the process. Then, they gave me a shot with a hypo injector and had me strip down and stand inside something that looked like a modified sonic shower cubicle. I was subsequently blasted with ultrasonic frequencies and lasers, until all of my hair fell off and my skin shifted from light red to a healthy shade of Caucasian white.
, I suppressed the whine I wanted to make as I watched my beautiful, long white hair vacuumed up and incinerated. I knew I could regrow it, and that it could be reversed eventually, but it still hurt more than I expected to see it removed and destroyed. I was of that hair, damnit! It was mine and , and I had worked to keep it that way. Seeing my hard work reduced to trash and go up in smoke in an instant was .
Forcing the thought aside, I stepped out and used the same Force technique I had used for Asajj to regrow my hair and eyebrows. Looking around, I spotted a full length mirror set up nearby and moved in front of it to examine myself. I took a few minutes getting my hair in the style and length I wanted, before pulling my clothes back on.
“Are the results to your satisfaction?” the droid asked, and I nodded.
“Yes. You do good work,” I agreed, pulling out the credits and settling the bill.
The droid offered me a small metal case. “This contains your sample and the necessary injection to reverse the process, should you choose to self-administer it. Please note that without our equipment, it may take several standard months for the process to take effect.”
“Noted. Thank you.”
I pocketed the vials and left, taking a taxi to a higher level. There were always shops open on Coruscant, so I didn’t have any trouble getting replacement clothes and supplies for myself and the ship.
Finally, I made my way back to my new place of residence for the foreseeable future. Putting everything away and taking off the scarf, I put my new sheets and pillows on the captain’s bed and laid down to sleep. The following morning, I put on my new clothes and made my way to a local government office.
Finding the most bored looking individual there, I headed to their desk and smiled, putting on my best nervous expression. “Hello. Excuse me, but could you help me? I was told that I needed to register here so I’d be in the system?”
The man frowned, tapping away at his keyboard. “All citizens of Coruscant are entered into the system upon birth—”
“I was born in the undercity.”
His mouth opened in a silent ‘ah,’ before he nodded. “I see. Yes, give me a few moments.”
After that, the process was even simpler than I remembered getting a driver’s license in my first world.
“Name?”
“Tanya von Degurechaff.”
“…And how should I enter that? One word? Two? Apostrophe, hyphen, or other special characters?”
“Three words, ‘von’ being lower case.”
“Date of birth?”
I had adjusted my date of birth to match the time difference. If I was born in 947 GSC originally and had traveled back four years, that would mean this identity would have to have been born in 943 GSC to be my current age of fourteen right now. “Thirteenth day of the Month of Exploration, 943 GSC.”
I wondered idly, before deciding against it. It wasn’t important. Tanya Mereel was legally considered an adult and no one who mattered would care what the official paperwork said. And if the sort of officious busybody who actually would look at those records and care did so, well… there were ways to very quickly rearrange their priorities.
From there, I was photographed and fingerprinted—a quick use of a healing technique changing my prints to make them different enough to be unique, before changing them back. Once that was done, it was only a five minute wait before my identification cards were printed and I was slipping them into my pocket.
“And that’s it. You’re done,” the clerk nodded.
I sent him a smile. “Thank you.”
With that, I left the government office and headed for the spaceport. I didn’t want to stay on Coruscant a moment longer and risk running into the Jedi, or worse, myself.
I settled into the pilot’s seat and got the ship started. A few minutes after that, I broke atmo and engaged the hyperdrive for my next destination.
Dathomir. 39 BBY/961 GSC.
Getting down to the planet was actually fairly easy, when I could just park my new ship in orbit, put on my armor and a vac suit helmet, and fly down under my own power. From there, I quickly located the wreck of the Chu'unthor and slipped inside invisibly.
Casting an illusion from memory, I studied the lightsaber held by the future version of myself as I got to work collecting parts and drawing up schematics on the computer. I had brought some songsteel and beskar ingots down with me, freshly made on the ship while I was in transit from junk iron ingots I’d bought on Coruscant. I had enough material to make myself a new saber and a replacement helmet, while I was here. My only problem was a lack of kyber crystal.
Sure, I could use the kyber I had on hand, and I would… but my white-silver blade was very distinctive. The only crystal I had at the moment that I could use and not give away my identity was the ghostfire crystal in my A-180, which came with its own set of problems of the sort and the fact that if it was in my saber, it wasn’t in my blaster. Luckily, I knew exactly where to get more kyber crystals and another ghostfire crystal. I’d just have to make the trips required.
, I mused as I worked, putting together an improved design for the whip emitter now that I had a better understanding of how it functioned.
I blinked, my head slowly turning to the illusion of a video of myself a few years from now, wielding the lightsaber I was building now. The bottom half that had bothered me, leaving me wondering why it had what looked like two stacked hilts. Obviously, part of the bottom hilt would host a second power source, giving it a much longer run time than a normal lightsaber. But the question of had teased me since I’d first seen it.
That is, until I remembered a conversation I’d had with Cindy, and my request for an ejectable kyber crystal chamber to the anti-ship rifle I was having her build for me. I knew that kyber could only handle so much power before it broke. That’s why I didn’t want to use kyber crystals for it. I would either need to tear it down and yank out the destroyed crystals every time, or I’d need a system that —a bunch of cheap, mass produced artificial kyber crystals turned into cheap ammunition replaced with the pull of a bolt. Which would require individual, self-contained chambers filled with kyber. Kyber shells, if you will.
But what if I needed to quickly switch crystals in a system that wasn’t made with the possibility of destroying kyber in mind? What if I wanted to switch between two different crystals with the flip of a switch… or the spin of a cylinder?
I drew the RSKF-44 from my hip holster and studied the cylinder on it for a few moments. It was just about the right size for what I needed, and a bit of tweaking the design would give me a two-chambered cylinder I could twist and cycle between crystals inside them.
I holstered the hand cannon and got to work inputting the design. When I was finished, I wouldn’t even have to fully disassemble it to install the proper red crystal.
Hyperspace, in transit from Lothal to Serenno. 35 BBY/965 GSC.
“So wait, you ?” Aylin asked, sitting across from me with her legs crossed, holding her glass with one hand.
“Yep.” I polished off my glass only for Cindy sitting beside me to fill it up again. She put the bottle back on the table and leaned into my side, blue eyes staring at me from a few inches away. I glanced over at her and caught her grinning. “…What?”
She looked me up and down and wagged her eyebrows. “Missed me so much you went blonde, huh?”
I snorted quietly, rolling my eyes. “I was a blonde in a previous life.”
Aylin continued from where she’d left off, sending Cindy an annoyed look for interrupting. “You and you’re telling me you what? Just for four years?”
“For most of it, yes. I changed my mind about taking any jobs, since there was too much risk of something I did affecting things. Instead, I took the freighter out, found a nice little paradise world, and settled down on an island hundreds of miles from anyone.,” I smiled. Between sushi, seaweed, fruits, vegetables, and the occasional bit of trade for rice, it had almost been like being back in Japan. The only thing missing was soy sauce and miso. I had tried reproducing miso, but the less said about the results of that, the better.
“I did some meditation, experimentation, and study. Kept up my training, but I couldn’t exactly use it as a free hyperbolic time chamber on the off chance someone detected my Force signature. I worked out how to properly teleport, but I haven’t gotten it down to a time that would make it usable in combat, or to a range that would be usable at interstellar distances. It turns out, Catya and she’s been going back and forth between us to get fed twice. Practically every time I remember not being able to find her the first time was apparently because she was with me. This me.”
Cindy sent me an amused look. “I mean… . What’d you expect, boss?”
“Forget the damn cat! You a chance to change things. And then you had me destroy a working time machine?!”
“A chance to ruin things, and a time machine that anyone with the Force could gain access to. The risk was too great. I couldn’t leave it to potentially fall into enemy hands. , well-meaning friendly hands looking to ‘fix’ something. Tell me, can you honestly name more than three people you would trust to use a time machine and absolutely ruin everything we’ve built?”
Aylin made a frustrated sound, before blowing out a massive sigh. Downing the rest of her drink, she poured herself another. “Alright. Okay. If it was too risky, it was too risky. So what now?”
I smiled. “Back to Serenno for a while. I’ll take the girls out and do some training, just the three of us. In the meantime, you and the crew can take shore leave and get the ship in for repairs and maintenance. Next year, I’ll leave Allaya with Master Dooku and take Asajj with me to Anaxes, so I can attend the Republic Naval War College.”
“Do you actually need to?” Aylin asked, frowning. “I’m sure we can get you a spot in our own training program.”
I shook my head. “It’s the same reason I joined the Republic military. Someone needs to go see how they’re training their officers for the coming conflict. Go through the entire course and see what their tactics and strategies look like as they’re actively preparing to fight both the Trade Federation and us, so we have the most up to date information. Besides…”
I frowned, my finger running along the rim of my glass. “I was unprepared for the battle at Botajef. I had no idea what I was doing. I that—flying completely by the seat of my pants and relying entirely on surprise and the enemy being unaware of our capabilities and tactics. Eventually, we’ll lose that advantage. I don’t want to ever be in that situation again, where I have to make it up as I go along—nor do I want to be unprepared when it happens. This way, I’ll at least know standard Republic naval doctrine and how to respond to counter it with what we have.”
“What about us?” the brunette asked. “Not much point of a flagship without a Mandalore on it.”
“Unless I’m mistaken, you’ll be too busy to act as my personal chauffeur,” I chuckled.
Cindy grinned. “Gonna put us to work, huh?”
“Yes, actually,” I nodded, turning my head to find the older blonde raising an eyebrow. “I want you to build a stealth craft for me, using everything we’ve learned to date. I’ll be helping with the design while we’re on Serenno. You’re going to be limited in size to a craft roughly the size of the . She needs to be fast and maneuverable—and capable of flying herself. I’m not overly concerned with armaments, but it would be nice to have options. Class one or lower hyperdrive. Assume it’s going to be used for solo covert ops, when I need to do anything questionable.”
The blonde whistled. “That’s a big ask, but it sounds a fun project. Sure, I’m in!”
“As for you,” I turned my eyes on Aylin, who met my gaze with an expectant look. “What do you say about having your own dreadnought?”
Aylin hummed, considering. Eventually, she shook her head. “No thanks.” I raised an eyebrow and waited for an explanation. She smiled, taking a small sip. “It’s not .”
“Oh? Explain.”
“Nn. Nope. Sure, riding in the big, fuckoff dreadnought sounds nice, until you realize that . Any system it enters will consider itself . Something of that size will be large enough to spot for light minutes out, meaning the enemy is going to see you coming before your first shots can hit. It’s also a very big, comparably slow target. And that goes against everything I know of you. You want a ship that’s powerful, but you aren’t willing to sacrifice speed, maneuverability, or stealth for it. The is at the upper end of those needs intersecting.”
The woman smug certainty as she tucked her legs under herself and studied me. “What I think would happen is, you would ask me to break in a new ship of the line. I’d spend a few years doing exactly that. You’d settle in and enjoy it for about a month. Then, the first time we saw combat, you’d see she’s comparatively slow to maneuver and gives up our range advantage unless we’re hiding behind something. You’ll hate it. Until eventually, you decide you want to go back. Except by then, the crew of the —the crew who volunteered to serve under you, knowing what that meant—would have been reassigned and we’d have to either try to track them down, or break in an entirely new crew.”
She paused to take a sip, before finishing. “So, in order to avoid all of that wasted time, effort, and money—which I know you I’ll have to refuse. Politely. Ma’am.”
I stared at the woman across from me for several seconds before Cindy smothered a snort. Finally, I sighed and looked away.
does
“Very well. Then I hope you don’t mind spending long hours hiding near Chandrila, staying close enough to respond inside of six hours if I need you. I don’t want a repeat of the last time I worked for the Republic’s military.”
Aylin smiled. “Right in your back pocket. If anything happens, we’ll ride to the rescue again.”
I nodded and Cindy took that as leave to move the conversation back to something she was more interested in. “Great. Now, and tell me about this new ship you want.”