Nemak mechanically poked his finger, confirming receipt of yet another message and authorizing the logging of incoming cargo into the ship’s manifest, but his thoughts were far from the routine work.
The Zabrak standing nearby, thank the Force, didn’t bother him with conversation either.
Unlike the Twi’lek who was receiving the cargo.
That one was impossible to shut up.
Nemak even tried using Force Suggestion, but either he did it wrong, or he’d just encountered a being of that particular nature — in any case, it didn’t last half an hour before the fountain of verbiage gushed forth again.
And with triple the force.
The Twi’lek simply couldn’t stay silent.
Physically couldn’t.
The poor Jedi had to train his patience and humility.
An attempt to steer the conversation toward something interesting for Nemak yielded no success.
In the end, over five hours, he learned everything about the shipper’s biography.
“But about my own padawan, I apparently know nothing,” the young Knight sighed to himself.
What a joke of the Force.
He’d dreamed of not being like his own teacher, and here he was — unable to teach anything but meditation.
And even that was questionable — who among them felt the Force more deeply and fully?
Pif readily provided recordings of Mirr’s training on request.
After watching them, Nemak felt sad.
Of course, Cathars, like Wookiees, were a unique species — a prank of nature.
Both species inhabited planets with only slightly higher gravity and atmospheric pressure than the universally accepted standard, yet possessed incredible physical capabilities.
Any one of them could tie a being from a world with double or even triple gravity into a knot.
A paradox, but what else can you encounter in a galaxy with tens of thousands of sentient species?
Having finished loading and said goodbye to the Zabrak, Nemak ordered the ship to take off.
He checked on his still-sleeping padawan and, having made up his mind, headed to the observation gallery.
Their little vessel had one.
Quite shabby, honestly, but after a recent rework, it had become a perfectly decent training hall.
You could swing a saber there, meditate in the starlight — basically do whatever you wanted.
A Jedi doesn’t need much, and this was a whole, specially designated space.
Pure luxury, a dream.
“Greetings,” Nemak nodded to the three ghosts that emerged from the holocrons.
“Ah, young Knight,” the eldest of the mentors answered for all.
“Glad you finally made it to us.
Decided to train?
Commendable.”
“Not quite,” Nemak felt a little embarrassed — one thing was an ancient holocron of a long-dead Jedi or even a Sith, and quite another when the creators of the artifact were still alive and quite active.
“You want to consult about the young prodigy?” the ghost nodded knowingly.
“Yes.
I’m afraid I was too hasty taking Mirr as my padawan.”
“I won’t argue with that, but I also won’t share your defeatist attitude.”
“Colleague,” the eldest of the ghosts grinned into his beard, “it seems you still haven’t familiarized yourself with the materials on your padawan’s species.”
“Not all of them,” Nemak didn’t deny the truth.
“But we have,” the ghost pointed to his translucent colleagues.
“Rather, our physical originals,” the Chagrian corrected.
“Yes, yes,” the first didn’t argue.
“We read everything we could find about Cathars.
After all, we’re not asked to make a holocron every day.
So, combining our knowledge and generalizing our observations, I can assure you that for as young and, forgive my bluntness, weak and indecisive a Jedi as you, Mirr is the ideal padawan.”
“Why?”
“It’s in his nature.
Though he is a rather unusual boy — even for his species, he’s, hmm, let’s say, idiosyncratic — the legacy of wild ancestors always strongly affected young Cathars.”
“Colleague, you’ll never get to the point at this rate,” the Pantoran sighed.
“Fine, fine.
I’ll try to be brief,” the human waved dismissively.
“The thing is, Cathars, at a certain age, need someone.
Of course, it’s better if that someone takes care of them, but the reverse is also quite possible.
As I understand, it’s due to the behavioral traits of their distant ancestors.
Those, by animal standards, lived quite a long time and didn’t possess from birth the skills — or, if you will, the instincts—of a predator.
Therefore, they had to learn.
According to several authoritative researchers, it was this particular trait that eventually led to them gaining sentience.”
“Colleague.”
“Yes, yes, apologies, I got carried away.
So, another two or three years — four at most — and you’ll have to let the boy go into free flight.
His combat skills are good, and they’ll get even better — we,” the ghost nodded toward his translucent colleagues, “will see to that.
Don’t doubt it.
All that’s required from you is to prepare him for independent life.
Teach him to understand people.
Instill the skills necessary for survival.
In short, I believe you understand.”
“I understand, but it’s all somehow not quite…” Nemak hesitated.
“Consistent with our path?” the Chagrian smirked.
“Yes.”
“Rejoice that you don’t have to constantly defeat him and prove your leadership.
Already now, purely physically, he noticeably surpasses the average human, and he’ll only get stronger,” the Pantoran consoled the Knight.
“We’ll help you, Nemak, but you understand our capabilities are limited.
As for the Jedi path — everyone has their own.
Cathars don’t often awaken the gift, and even fewer become Knights.
Around sixteen, their youthful maximalism, backed by instincts, turns them into outright rebels.
If you keep him close, that’s when you’ll have to prove your right to command almost daily.”
“And the saddest part is that if you do manage it, he’ll never be able to become a Knight.”
“This knowledge was paid for dearly.”
“And for the most part, with blood.
Now, let’s assess your saber skills.
After all, we specialize in combat.”
“Alright,” Nemak nodded, making a vow to himself that, immediately after training, he would sit down and finish reading the material provided by the temple’s AI.
After the training session, the Jedi practically crawled into his quarters and, as if scaling the spire of the central temple tower, climbed onto his bed.
Sure, the teachers from the holocrons couldn’t physically affect the world, but they made up for it with elaborate imagination.
Though, much more than physical fatigue, the young knight suffered from wounded pride.
How could they demand that he not demonstrate his lightsaber skills to his own student?
“Give me a break!” Nemak fumed.
No, he admitted that swordsmanship wasn’t his strong suit.
But that he absolutely couldn’t defeat a Padawan?
And not even someone else’s, but his own, and a mere child at that?!
In short, he’d completely forgotten about his intention to finish reading about the Cathars.
He contented himself with having come up with an excellent way to buy himself time to polish his sword skills, and at the same time give Mirr experience interacting with sentient beings.
* * *
After visiting the fifth planet in a row and completing a loading operation that dragged on for thirteen hours, I decided it was time to start preparing my master for an idea I’d been mulling over for a while: foisting the work onto a robot.
The joint meditation helped a bit.
Nemak calmed down — he’d been rather irritable lately.
And on top of that, the clients had been difficult.
All of them were jumpy, fussy, pestering me with the same questions.
Just awful.
Rrrr!
Though, of course, I could understand them.
We weren’t flying around with such full holds for nothing.
On one hand, there was the Order’s authority and all that, but on its own, that wasn’t enough for people used to counting credits.
The treasurers understood that perfectly well.
That’s why we were, to put it mildly, engaging in aggressive price dumping.
If ordinary mortals were in our place, we’d have been taught not to do that.
Maybe they wouldn’t have immediately started paying bounty hunters, but they’d have started with a simple talk, or a fistfight, which is more likely. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
Here’s an interesting point, by the way — those very bounty hunters.
Essentially, they’re legalized killers.
You can hire them easily and casually, and the Justicars only start chasing them — or rather, crawling after them — once they kill the wrong person.
Nonsense, especially considering that the Republic’s own law enforcement openly resort to using killers themselves.
Hell, even Vader hired them in his time.
Or rather, he will hire them, if the canon stays unchanged.
And that was when the Empire was already in full swing.
In short, it’s not a life, it’s a fairy tale.
A rather creepy one.
We were protected by our Jedi status and the specter of the Order behind us.
Or rather, not even that, but the understanding among our temporary colleagues in the transport business that we weren’t doing this permanently, but alongside and temporarily.
Anyway, I bided my time.
I fanned the flames, as I thought, quite skillfully.
After all, we were soon to visit a world inhabited by an insectoid race that breathed methane.
You can imagine how long we’d be stuck there and what joy it would be to do tedious routine work in a spacesuit.
Those oversized ants prefer to manage on their own and use minimal technology, and we’d need to unload and load a full hold.
No, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad there, but why not embellish the prospects?
So I embellished, as best I could.
In short, I decided to start the conversation with my master.
I prepared a speech about the benefits of robots.
I was even ready to prove with numbers that we didn’t need to buy something on the level of a protocol droid — a simpler machine with a third, or even a second, class intelligence would suffice.
But I didn’t get the chance.
I shouldn’t have put off the conversation until after dinner.
“I believe,” Nemak smiled, pushing his plate away, “you’ve gained enough experience to handle it on your own next time.”
“Master, maybe we shouldn’t spend so much time on routine tasks that a droid could handle perfectly well?” I tried to dodge, clearly understanding that the attempt was doomed.
“You need to gain experience in communication.
Believe me, many people are quite happy to chat and share interesting stories from their lives.”
“But I…”
“Besides, we don’t have any droids.”
“We could buy some.”
“A Jedi is supposed to overcome difficulties and endure hardships steadfastly.
They build character and train the will.
Besides, you know the Order doesn’t approve of hoarding.”
“I could assemble a droid from scrapped parts.”
“No.
That’s unnecessary.
You’ll do just fine.
I believe in you, Padawan.
This will be part of your training.”
“I understand, Master.”
“Good.
I’ll register you as supercargo now,” the master patted my shoulder approvingly, getting up from the table.
“Finish eating, we still have meditation ahead.”
“Yes, teacher.”
“Well, let’s try to find some positive moments in this,” I encouraged myself, put away the dishes, and went to meditate.
I think I should practice the “Center of Being” technique.
I figure it’ll be much easier to endure the next couple of months with it.
It’s useless to start a new conversation before that anyway.
From what I’ve managed to learn and understand about Nemak, he’s one stubborn ram.
Well, I’ll endure.
Where else can I go?
Exactly — nowhere.