“I see.
Dono it is.
Shall we go get your things?” the teacher smiled, showing white teeth.
“Sure,” I smile with my lips, not showing my teeth.
First, it’s a sign of aggression, and second, most people just get scared.
“Getting my things” sounds dramatic.
In reality, I have a datapad, a dozen memory chips — something like flash drives, but incomparable storage — and several sets of regulation clothing.
Plus training weapons: a couple of sabers, two shoto, and a dozen practice drone-spheres with a helmet.
A pretty standard set, though the package of nuts looks original.
I cadged them from the technicians back in the day — perfect for training telekinesis.
I also had weights, which the quartermaster shared, but they’re advanced and always on me; I just disabled them without taking them off during the tournament.
I said goodbye to the people I knew, thanked the instructors for everything, briefly hugged Ahsoka, reflexively pulling my tail away from her grasping little hands.
The irrepressible Togruta, with her undying passion for fencing and pestering everyone, wriggled free and dashed off to her room.
As the best swordsman among the kids who happened to be within her reach, I was appointed as her sparring partner — and she didn’t even ask for my opinion.
And I only trained with her a little at first.
Gave in to some vague spiritual impulse.
An adorable little hellspawn, of course.
I already feel sorry for Skywalker — with his talents, nurtured and developed by the wise teachings of Kenobi… “Not my problem,” I mentally growled, flattening my ears for a moment and bristling my fur.
“Ready?”
“Yes, teacher.”
Five minutes of formalities at the Order’s secretariat, and after a short walk through the temple, I moved into new quarters.
What can I say — twelve square meters, a bunk in one corner, a wardrobe in another, one desk and one chair, an attached bathroom.
A mat on the floor, blinds on the window.
Oh, there’s a shelf above the bed and a nightstand with three drawers under the desk.
Fancy.
Not long ago, I was picking up my stuff from virtually the same room.
The only difference is the color scheme — the shades of light gray, sand, and white are a bit different.
Asceticism is our everything.
The barracks-temple is our home.
Whistling a jaunty tune — more like purring — I unpacked my things and went to see my teacher.
The master lived nearby.
His room was identical to mine.
Funny and sad.
Oh, I almost forgot the most important thing!
After Nemak informed the Order’s bureaucrats that he was taking me as his padawan, I received a communicator.
Hooray — now people can call me, or I can dial someone.
I just need to build up my contacts; the list is, well, sparse so far.
My sensei and a dozen Order corps and services.
Not much.
A separate entry is the emergency contact number for the Masters.
I was strictly forbidden to call it unless I encountered a Dark Side adept or someone started invading Coruscant without the Order noticing.
Then I’d have full right.
Though I suspect in both cases, I’d have a few other things on my mind.
How does a youngling become a padawan, anyway?
De jure, by the teacher notifying the secretariat.
Factually, a few records are entered into the Order’s database, and that’s it — you can braid your braid.
Which, by the way, is a real pain.
My fur is stiff and dense, almost like needles; it provides decent protection against slashing claw strikes or cold weapons without high-tech upgrades.
So I have to get creative, braiding a braid from ribbons and attaching it behind my ear.
This is done immediately after a joint meditation with the teacher, during which a Force bond is formed.
Essentially, we open ourselves to each other and weave together the threads of fate.
All those ceremonies with oaths to obey and protect the master?
They’re just for atmosphere and psychological pressure.
I didn’t spend all that time on mental techniques for nothing — I didn’t want to share the truth about my reincarnation.
It’s a good thing not many people can seriously rummage around in others’ minds these days.
Probably only our Grand Master Yoda, and maybe a few others on the Council or specialist masters.
In any case, not a freshly-minted knight like my sensei.
Of course, there was some risk of disrupting the attunement and failing to create the master-padawan bond, but it was minor.
More accurately, I just considered it acceptable.
Besides, such precedents have happened now and then.
We’ll manage, if it comes to it, without the ability to exchange short thoughts with each other.
The emotions accessible through the bond are, if you believe the Code, an unnecessary element anyway.
They solemnly swore to each other in the grand hall of one of the towers.
Though the queue of mentors with their Padawans did spoil the moment somewhat.
For me, personally.
The younglings, having finally found a coveted teacher, noticed nothing around them.
They were floating somewhere up in the clouds entirely.
I’d bet my tail they were lost in dreams of travels and great deeds.
Children who’d never seen the real world.
I already felt sorry for them.
I’d at least spoken with ordinary beings working in the temple.
Sometimes openly, sometimes just poking into their heads.
And I’d chatted with droids and ship AIs in the hangars more than once, so I had some idea of how things really were.
A rough idea of what Jedi faced on missions.
I didn’t even know who had it worse — the diplomats forced to constantly deal with corrupt politicians, bloated officials, and various crazy revolutionary idealists, or those who fought slavers, pirates, drug cartels, and other such folk.
And here was the meditation hall.
We sat down across from each other.
I slipped into meditation as usual and, opening myself to the Force, found the bright spark of a gifted being nearby.
I gathered all the extraneous thoughts and, mentally compressing them into a tight ball, hid them deep inside my self.
My secret was shielded by a dense shell of childhood thoughts and memories.
It was hard.
I needed to start and finish quickly.
In my perception, we were like twin stars reaching toward each other with hundreds of solar prominences in a vain attempt to become one.
Essentially, we were just saturating each other with Force filtered through ourselves.
In a sense, tuning to the same frequency, like two radios catching the same wave.
At the same time, there was an exchange of images, memories, thoughts, and emotions — a useful side effect, albeit completely incidental, which I naturally couldn’t resist exploiting.
My teacher was, to put it mildly, not great.
A worthy continuer of a dynasty of code-obsessed hermits who knew nothing of life.
Master Nemak’s mentor was from the Corps of Prophets, had spent his whole life in meditation, and if he ever left the temple, it was only to float in some sector of the galaxy and do his favorite thing.
Simply put — float in space and meditate.
How someone like that even got a student was another question entirely.
The Force must have whispered it.
Alas.
He managed to raise a worthy successor.
The same kind of meditation fanatic and seeker of the incomprehensible.
Only one spiteful green Cheburator, after a meaningful grunt, sent him off to do archaeology.
And foisted a student on him too.
No, no violence — they just skillfully directed the newly knighted Jedi’s attention to a suitable young man.
Truly talented.
At the time.
So there was Nemak, happy and proud, flying off with his mentor into the distant reaches, dreaming of greatness.
Funny, naive, forgivable.
And then — the ruins of a civilization wiped out by some disease, a pile of droids, and a couple dozen beings.
Boredom, tedium, and desolation.
The only thing the Order found interesting on that planet was vague information about the natives’ ability to awaken the Force.
So far they hadn’t been able to confirm or deny anything.
Droids dug, the scholarly types scratched their heads, and the Jedi overseeing it all meditated.
Year after year.
Everyone was perfectly content.
One Padawan suffered.
His teacher, in those rare moments he returned to the real world, just sighed.
Nemak dreamed of heroic deeds and was generally the wrong sort of boy — he wanted to do good, to root out evil.
He fussed and distracted.
He didn’t want to ponder eternal questions and think about lofty things day and night.
“Tiresome.
Enough,” my mentor’s teacher must have decided, and sent his Padawan back to the temple.
And to make sure the boy, Force forbid, didn’t fly back, he sent a note to the leadership saying the kid was ready for knighthood.
I’d bet my tooth on it!
That was the experience and knowledge base with which Nemak became a Jedi Knight.
His dream came true.
Three days before the tournament, he was knighted.
They didn’t even test him — they just credited him, automatically.
A fairly common practice in recent centuries.
The teacher said, “He’s fit.” Well, he’d know best.
Congratulations, prepare for the ceremony, and all that.
A naive Jedi who knew nothing but meditation and, essentially, had no real skills.
In general, my brethren were a bit lacking in the head department.
That was purely my opinion, of course, but let’s just look at a couple of facts.
Let’s start with small things.
So Qui-Gon arrives on Tatooine, finds the parts he needs, and runs into two problems.
First — a rare case, a seller from a race immune to mental Force techniques.
Fine, coincidences happen.
Second — Republic credits aren’t accepted on the planet.
Not such a rare occurrence in the Outer Rim.
Especially in worlds near other star nations, corporate fiefdoms, or just fairly developed star systems with their own currency.
So go to the next shop and mind-wipe the owner — he’ll happily exchange money, give it away, or loan it to you.
Morality?
Judging by how they initially tried to use the Force on Watto — it wasn’t even close.
What exactly stopped them from frightening the miserable slaver a bit?
How would that differ from the fraudulent scheme of taking the chosen slave and getting a T, for fuck’s sake, fourteen hyperdrive?
Because in the end the merchant would have gotten his money, just not in the currency he liked?
The kid wouldn’t have had to risk his life?
Or should I believe there wasn’t a single exchange office or money-changer on the whole planet?
Don’t make me laugh.
A more general example.
What stops them from putting a couple of Jedi in the Senate Presidium to simply state the real reason a particular senator is proposing a particular bill?
Or attaching such personnel to officials?
In my opinion, that would be a far more rational use of fifteen thousand gifted beings.
Certainly better than tearing around the galaxy in a doomed attempt to maintain peace and law.
You don’t cut off the hydra’s heads — you tear out its heart and crush its spine to dust.
The Code doesn’t forbid that — and it’s been changed dozens of times over the tens of thousands of years the Order has existed.
Though, essentially, that would mean taking power into your own hands.
Can’t do that!
Boo!
Daaaarkness!
Yoda would plot the route in an instant.
He’s a master at that.
Though, if you wanted, you could find a path to the dark side from anywhere.
Don’t believe me?
Easy as pie.
Uncontrollable laughter leads to hiccups, hiccups to irritation, which breeds anger, and then the standard path.
You could also get there through tears of laughter, through envy, for example.
In short, keep your face like stone.
Everything strictly by the Code and regulations.
Don’t you dare even twitch the corner of your mouth.
The darkness never sleeps!
Constant vigilance!
Nonsense, honestly.
The bond formed quickly and surprisingly well.
Well, one fewer problem.
Excellent.
I’d barely had time to rejoice when I got a new one.
My mentor, chomping at the bit, flew off to get us an assignment and actually succeeded.
Open exploration?
No, seriously?
I was in shock.
They were giving us a ship and a zone of responsibility in the Outer Rim.
Uh-huh, on the principle of “everything to the right is yours.” The mission was to gather information.
If anything interesting turned up, they recommended reporting it to the Order.
Had a confederation started forming there, or something, and rumors reached the Council?
Who could answer and tell me why we’d been so blessed?
You know, I always thought teaching someone to swim by throwing them into the water was a joke.
I was wrong.
Jedi are harsh.
If it were a hundred, better yet two hundred years ago, that would be one thing, but the Outer Rim and a hothouse knight with a greenhorn Padawan?
No, seriously?
After several incidents where the paladins of light showed themselves in all their glory, we were slightly hated.
They never liked us much anyway — after all, we were one of the pillars of the Republic, the very one that sucked the last juices dry.
Now there was a very real chance of catching a blaster bolt in the back.
And for no reason at all.
Just for the distinctive outfit.
Fun times.
Where to run, really?
Only to the Outer Rim.
Yeah, damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
The only good news was that our ship would take a few more days to prepare.
Some ancient thing that had been gathering dust in the warehouses for two hundred years, if not more.
Not that long a time for a starship.
Ships built millennia ago were still cruising the galaxy.
Construction materials really contributed to a ship’s longevity.
It looked old, but the internals could be top-notch.