A Young Girl’s War Between the Stars

  07

  Coruscant, 43 BBY.

  “How is she doing?” Dooku asked, looking down on the sparring ring from the observation booth, where the red skinned, white haired form of Tanya stood across from another student—a green skinned Twi’lek female who looked to be in one of the more senior classes to Tanya’s own. The Twi’lek was easily three years Tanya’s senior, towering over her in height and with superior reach.

  A tone sounded and the pair ignited their lightsabers, a green blade for the green girl, while Dooku’s prospective student’s own blade was white with a silver core—rare in and of itself and almost unheard of for coming from Ilum.

  He remembered the report on that event. The later exploration and discovering just how deep she went. The revelation of the deep cave structure below the temple. The state Qui-Gon’s padawan Obi-wan had found her in, after apparently killing a gorgodon. Somehow. Unarmed. With a cut that neatly bisected the creature vertically—so thin a lightsaber couldn’t have managed due to the width of the plasma blade and without any of the telltale burns of a lightsaber. It was just one more mystery surrounding the girl.

  “Hmm. Advancing quickly, she is,” Yoda murmured from where he stood beside Dooku. “Too quickly, perhaps.”

  “Oh?” Dooku raised an eyebrow, an amused smile quirking his lips up. Yoda frowned at that. “How so?”

  Down below, the Twi’lek student rushed Tanya, swinging her saber in one of the opening Form IV patterns. The Zeltron girl skipped back a step as the Twi’lek leapt into the air, before coming down in a spinning slash that would have sent the smaller girl to the ground if it connected. Tanya shifted side-on to her target and lunged forward, a single forward thrust of her lightsaber connecting with the other girl’s chest and sending her sprawling.

  A chime sounded and Tanya stepped back to her starting position as the green girl picked herself up, frustration radiating off of her that Dooku could feel from the booth. Tanya, meanwhile, was silent in the Force—hidden behind her mental shields. Her body language showed she was being cautious, calculating, and taking the fight seriously—but she showed no signs of emotion at all. Her focus was entirely on her sparring partner.

  “Too willful, some of the council feel she is. Impatient. Unwilling to wait, or accept being told to wait. Skirt the rules, then justify her actions with results, she does. Mm, yes. Someone I know, she sounds like.”

  “It’s my understanding that she has been spending time with Qui-Gon’s apprentice,” Dooku chuckled.

  “Meant you, I did,” Yoda grumbled, leaning on his cane and moving closer to the window. “Hard to read in the Force, she is. Not hard at all, if one but looks and listens. Speak louder than words, actions do. Unsatisfied with her progress, she is, and so she advances without guidance. Very dangerous, the path she walks.”

  “Then perhaps someone should actually guide her, instead of leaving her to her own devices,” Dooku nodded as the chime sounded below and the Twi’lek began slowly circling Tanya, apparently taking her seriously this time.

  Deciding to take advantage of her longer reach, she approached more cautiously, resorting to probing strikes while maintaining her guard with Form III. Tanya moved to counter the taller girl, matching her pace and occasionally parrying a strike when she couldn’t dodge, sticking to the most basic of the basics.

  Abruptly, the larger girl lunged forward, coming down hard with an overhead swing, keeping her body outside of the reach of Tanya’s lightsaber. Tanya stepped in, bringing her blade up in a move that, if the sabers weren’t in training mode, would have seen the Twi’lek girl’s wrists severed on Tanya’s blade from the force of her own blow—that is, if the larger girl didn’t stop herself in time.

  Managing to just halt the blow, the taller girl grabbed Tanya’s dominant wrist. This turned out to be a mistake, as the smaller girl let go of her saber, at the same time she stepped in and jumped into a knee strike to the Twi’lek’s groin. The green girl doubled over with a quiet squeal of pain as Tanya caught her saber in her off hand and whipped it around to smack it into the taller girl’s side in a strike that would have bisected her.

  The tone sounded again and Tanya shut off her saber, offering the older girl a hand up. Slapping it away, the Twi’lek girl lunged forward in a swipe at Tanya’s head. Tanya ducked and swung her saber at the same time, activating it and disarming the other girl with a strike to the wrist, catching the green saber and drawing it to her with the Force. A moment later, she had the older girl’s neck scissored between argent and green sabers.

  The tone sounded again and this time, the Jedi master monitoring the class stepped out into the ring—a human woman named Depa Billaba, Mace Windu’s former student recently made master herself. Dooku watched as Tanya shut off the other girl’s lightsaber and tossed it to the master, before heading off to the side, to stand beside the other students waiting for their turn.

  “Quick to react in unconventional ways, she is. Sometimes violent, painful ways. Not honorable. Not taught here,” Yoda assessed, and Dooku frowned at the judgment he heard in the old alien’s voice.

  “Against an opponent twice her size and mass, should she not take every advantage she can make for herself?”

  “No,” Yoda shook his head. “Win the battle, it may—while losing the war. Not the physical war, but the war of the self. The battle between light and dark. An advantage sought here today, instead of taking the lesson in loss and humility. An advantage sought tomorrow, heeding the call of the dark side of the Force. Creates a pattern, it does. Trains one to think only in one direction, instead of reflecting upon one’s actions and seeking alternate paths, alternate solutions.” Waving his hand down to the Twi’lek girl storming out of the room, Yoda sighed. “Create needless conflict, pain, and suffering, it does.”

  Dooku raised an eyebrow, before scoffing quietly. “You would advise her to lose? Why? To sooth the other girl’s ego? Allow her to save face? No, if there is a lesson in humility to be learned here master, it’s that you shouldn’t underestimate your opponent, and that you shouldn’t allow your emotions to get the better of you when faced with defeat, especially not in a simple spar. But they’re children—”

  “Last thing she is, a child,” Yoda shook his head. “Feel it too, you do. Treat her not as a child, I have seen.”

  “Perhaps,” Dooku admitted.

  The old alien turned to look up at Dooku. “On her advancement, agree with you the council majority does not. Seek a way to slow her we do, without causing resentment.”

  “I see you’ve been holding meetings without me,” Dooku sent his former master a rueful look.

  “Too close to see objectively, many of the council feel you are. After your last student, worry you we did not want.”

  Dooku frowned, but otherwise kept his reaction in check. It was a cheap shot, but his former master wasn’t wrong. The council were approaching the issue of Tanya cautiously—perhaps too cautiously, in his opinion. Unfortunately, it seemed many of them had made up their minds to take the ‘wait and see’ approach and in the meantime, wanted to try to slow her advancement to a more manageable pace, which just wasn’t going to happen because Tanya herself was too determined, too stubborn to let anything slow her down.

  Then the best thing to do would be to try to placate them and at the same time, give her experiences she wouldn’t get here. Unofficially take her on as a padawan early, but without actually saying as much.

  “I’ll take her off-world, then,” he said, as Tanya moved into the ring again for another turn. This time, Depa joined herself and Dooku frowned. “I’m sure there’s a mission suitable to taking her along.”

  “Your padawan, she is not,” Yoda pointed out, but Dooku didn’t sense that he was actually denying the request.

  “I didn’t actually hear an objection.”

  Yoda chuckled quietly and nodded. “Out of sight, out of mind. But voluntary, it must be. Agree, she must.”

  “I’m sure she will.”

  Dooku winced as, down below, Depa began to soundly thrash the Zeltron girl—going all in with Form VII. There was no malice in the act, but Dooku couldn’t help but feel this was the council’s wishes finally coming to a head and the instructor trying to hammer the point into the girl’s head. And perhaps a lesson Windu himself wanted to send, not necessarily to Tanya, but to others who thought they were good enough to warrant advancing faster than their peers, given the man’s near fanatical loathing of anything that could be perceived as favoritism or special treatment.

  And yet…

  Tanya ducked under a swing into a sliding slash at the instructor’s knees, that the older woman leapt over, bringing her foot down and trying to kick Tanya in the head, only for the girl to roll out and retaliate with a slash at the offending leg. Depa pushed the smaller girl relentlessly, quickly increasing her speed as she went on the offensive. When the hits started coming, the buzzer didn’t sound this time—something Tanya noticed immediately as she was punished for trying to back off and reset.

  As Dooku watched, Tanya’s stance firmed up. Her parries and dodges came faster, using less energy as she fell deeper into the groove he recognized of two Force users using precognition to attempt to defeat each other. The hits piled on as the instructor continued, not giving Tanya any time to rest—eventually adding in kicks, punches, and other unorthodox moves. Things Vaapad allowed for that other forms didn’t.

  Dooku smiled as the girl he had found simply rolled with the hits. Picked herself up when she was knocked down. Learned from every mistake she made and corrected herself. Improved as he watched. All with that smile on her face that even now, was beginning to unnerve the instructor facing her.

  Beside him, Yoda hummed, studying the fight going on as his displeasure began to show. Dooku couldn’t help but needle his former master, just a bit. “It seems that in trying to force her to see your point of view, you’ve only given her what she truly wanted. A challenge.”

  And then, down below, everything changed as the fight ended in an instant.

  Depa’s blue lightsaber came down in a swing that would have caught Tanya in the face as Tanya leapt up into the strike. Only, it didn’t.

  There was a sudden shift in the Force and a brief flash as the lightsaber slammed into a small, translucent blue hexagon floating in front of Tanya’s head and angled off to the side. The lightsaber slid off the shield, missing Tanya entirely as the instructor’s brown eyes went wide in momentary shock. The red girl then somehow accelerated with another burst of Force, the white-silver lightsaber in her hand, already in motion, connected with the instructor’s neck in a solid blow as Tanya flew past and landed on her feet. It didn’t do much more than force Depa to take a step back, but that didn’t matter. A strike like that would have left her a head shorter.

  The buzzer didn’t sound, but it didn’t need to as the room fell silent. Turning around, the Zeltron girl shut off her lightsaber and hooked it to her belt, before bowing. “Thank you for the lesson, master. I’ll be sure to put it to good use.”

  Then, before Depa could recover from her shock, Tanya strode out of the room, the automatic door sliding shut behind her. Taking a breath, Dooku let it out quietly. “I will be taking her with me tonight.”

  “Mm. Inform the council, I will,” the old master nodded. “Tomorrow.”

  “Thank you.”

  “That’s a pretty nice shiner you’ve got.”

  I rolled my eyes, glancing up from my reading as master Dyas settled in across from me. “Thank you. I earned it from master Depa.”

  Blinking, master Dyas looked me over, then reached out with the Force—not to probe my mind, but to check my body. He frowned, then his eyes were drawn to the book I was reading from. After a moment, he nodded. “Yes, I suppose this would be a good excuse to learn how to heal with the Force. I’ll warn you, not everyone can use this method. Don’t be disappointed if it eludes you. There are other, less efficient methods that are easier to learn.”

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  “Then I’ll learn those as well,” I nodded, closing the book and raising an eyebrow expectantly.

  The master smiled at that, before reaching into his robes and pulling out a compressed bacta spray. “I had a feeling I should bring one of these with me. Now I know why. If it turns out you don’t need it, keep it. I’m sure it’ll come in useful at some point.”

  “Thank you,” I took it and tucked it away into my robes.

  As I did, master Dyas asked, “You wouldn’t happen to know how to find out if a large sum of credits had been moved around, would you? You know, in case something were to happen and we needed to recover the money.”

  Chuckling, I hummed in thought as I considered the question and what he was really asking—if he wanted to disappear a large sum of money, how would he keep someone like me from finding it.

  So, how would I defeat myself?

  “Look for large transfers in a short period of time. One big transfer would obviously stand out, of course,” I said, and master Dyas nodded along. “Ten, twenty, even a hundred smaller transfers might also arouse suspicion to the trained eye. At the very least, they would make me want to perform an audit. Track down who spent the money and have them justify the purchase and provide receipts. But a thousand, much smaller purchases over a period of six months to a year? Especially if they were made regularly, and by the same people, over and over? With boring names like ‘office supplies,’ ‘sanitation products,’ or…”

  I thought over what I knew of the temple and began ticking things off on my fingers. “Food items we don’t bulk order. Medical supplies that need to be replaced regularly. Uniforms and clothing items. Common lightsaber components that would be replaced during routine maintenance, such as the emitters on the training sabers—those things have to be replaced all the time. No one would notice any of those, because they’re so ordinary, so mundane, so easily explained that no one would even think to question it. Especially if it were spread out across several other masters all ordering different things at different but routine times. Most trained auditors would look at that, shrug, and move on unless they were doing a deep dive.”

  “That’s pretty clever!” Dyas laughed. “I would’ve never thought of that! So, what if they do all of that? Go out of their way to hide the spending, but I find it anyway, because I’m doing a deep dive like you said. How would I find out where it went?”

  “That’s much harder,” I shook my head. “There will be a record of where the credits were sent, of course. This many credits to so-and-so account at that business on this date and time. But that’s only the first step in the chain, because you won’t have access to their accounts to find out where the money went from there. If our hypothetical thief was brain dead, he or she sent all the money to one place and you might be able to apply pressure in an official legal inquiry, but that would take time. It’d be faster to slip in and ask,” I mimed waving my hand in front of him and stressed the words, “Would you mind looking up an account for me?”

  “Assuming it’s not a droid, or a species immune to the mind touch, then you’re in trouble!” the man opposite me grinned.

  “Exactly. The most vulnerable part of any system is the people that use and operate it.” I’d had to deal with more than my fair share of those in two lives. What was the point of having a login password if you put it on a sticky note stuck to your monitor? Likewise, what was the point of encrypted communications if you’re dumb enough to broadcast in the clear? That second one had almost seen me execute someone else’s subordinate for endangering an entire operation…

  “If our intrepid money launderer is smart, however, they can make it much harder for us. For instance, by going to several different banks and setting up accounts with very mundane sounding business names. Fly By Night Transport. Coruscant Import Company. Things like that. So bland, so name on the label, that it looks legitimate at first glance. Then, you buy your ‘food’ from one, your ‘toilet paper’ from another, your ‘replacement lightsaber components’ from yet another, and so on. Then all of those bank accounts transfer the funds they’ve received to a new account at a separate bank. Then do it again, just to be sure. Before finally, they would send it all to between one and ten accounts to hold all of the funds depending on how much we’re talking about. Again, an account with a very mundane sounding business name, such as Coruscant Investment Management Firm.”

  Humming, master Dyas asked, “And then we’re just out of luck for tracking it down? What about using the Force?”

  “I think you’d be more of an expert on that than me,” I shrugged, then winced as the motion made one of my bruised muscles twinge. “Can the Force guide you through that many layers of disconnection, not even touching the hands of a living person but ones and zeros being flipped inside a computer database somewhere to indicate money moved?”

  “I haven’t tried anything like that, but I’d imagine it would be very time consuming.”

  “By which point, the money is long gone. A money transfer moves at the speed of data, after all. It’s not like they physically move the credits around between the banks. It’s all digital these days, unless you deposit physical credits somewhere or request them. So all of that shuffling could take place over the course of five minutes by someone setting up an automated script and then the thief could have the money spent or transferred off-world before you ever caught wind that something was wrong, let alone launched an investigation.”

  Considering that, master Dyas murmured, “Then the only real defense is to try to prevent it from happening in the first place…”

  “Which we would need a dedicated department for.” I paused, then asked, “We do have such a department, don’t we?”

  “No,” the master shook his head. “We usually assign a few people to handle audits once every year. Usually older, unattached initiates or padawans who are on leave.”

  “That’s bad. Perhaps you should bring it up to the council?” I suggested, and he nodded slowly.

  “Yes, I’ll do that.” An annoyed look flashed across his face before he shook his head and grinned ruefully. “And knowing my luck, they’ll decide I’m volunteering myself for the position!”

  “You have my sympathy,” I chuckled.

  “Forget your sympathy, I could use your help! Don’t make me do this alone!” he begged, but I could tell he was joking by the amusement coming off of him.

  “I’ll have to look up the going rate on Coruscant for a professional auditor, but I believe we could work out a deal,” I nodded, playing along with him.

  Master Dyas gasped. “And you’ll want to be paid, too? In money?! No way! I can’t afford that. How would you feel about payment in secret Jedi techniques?”

  I snorted. “No sale.”

  “Ah, you’re no fun,” he grumbled, before pushing his seat back and standing. “Well, I’ll get out of your hair and let you get back to studying. Oh, and I managed to find a bit more money in the budget for you to play with, so I’ve sent you an updated spreadsheet. Let me know when you’ve had a chance to look at it.”

  “That will probably be tomorrow, but I will,” I agreed, and he smiled, reaching out and patting my head before hurrying off. I blew a stray strand of white hair out of my face and reached up to fix it, before getting back to my reading.

  Sacrifice one’s vitality and life essence to incite regenerative healing in the target. Restore vitality through rest or meditation. The directions seem simple enough. Just use the Force to touch upon your own life essence…

  A knock sounded at my door and I reached out with the Force, hitting the unlock switch. A moment later, Dooku entered, pausing as he found me hunched over my bedroom table with my lightsaber disassembled. The older man chuckled as he approached, looking it over.

  “I remember I was a bit obsessive over my first lightsaber as well.”

  I continued running a lightly oiled cloth over the metal, nodding absently as I directed a brush to gently scrub at the emitter using Force telekinesis. “I like to keep my weapons clean and ready.”

  “A good habit, but not one you’ll always be able to maintain. Luckily, lightsabers are very resilient—more so than you think.”

  “Mm,” I shrugged, before asking, “Just stopping by for a visit?”

  Dooku chuckled. “An old man can’t simply want to check in and see how you’re doing?” I turned and sent him a knowing look. Dooku smiled and nodded. “Very well. To business, then. How would you feel about leaving the temple?”

  I blinked, a frown coming to my face. Leave the temple? I had only been here eight months! I’d barely scratched the surface of what I could learn, because I’d found myself inexplicably stymied at nearly every turn! If I were the paranoid sort, I would think someone was trying to keep me from learning, except that couldn’t be true, because that was the entire purpose of this place and people like Obi, her own master Qui-Gon Jinn, and master Sifo-Dyas all had no problems teaching me when they were around or had time, if I happened to come across them.

  On the other hand, the last sparring session today was a bit excessive even by my standards. Fun though! Next time, warn me before we go full contact and do away with the standard scoring and time limit rules. I do have to wonder if it wasn’t some sort of attempt to discourage me, however. Perhaps petty revenge for dealing with my sparring partner the way I did.

  If I did have to leave the temple and quit at this Jedi thing, I had enough money in an account thanks to helping master Dyas that I could survive on my own for the next several years. I would probably go back to the idea about joining the Republic Navy, even knowing that a war was definitely coming. Now though, I had a few more tricks up my sleeve. I could perhaps persuade someone to make sure I was assigned far out away from the conflict…

  “Temporarily, of course,” Dooku continued, and my spiraling thoughts stopped. “I’ve taken a mission on to go out and investigate Dathomir, in the Outer Rim.”

  I had the names and profiles of all of the Core and Inner Rim planets memorized and was currently working on the Outer Rim, but I had yet to come across Dathomir. “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Yes, and I doubt you would have. It’s not something that the Jedi Council likes to talk about. Dathomir has been used as a penal colony for nearly a thousand years and, before that, the ancient Sith had an academy there somewhere. The Council doesn’t like not knowing what’s going on there, so they occasionally send someone to quietly poke around, mingle with the people, and make sure that nothing untoward is going on. And also, check on something we were forced to leave there, some time ago.”

  So, it’s Space Australia. I wonder if the local wildlife is just as dangerous. …With the Force? Probably more so.

  Nodding, I felt myself slipping back into the role of Tanya the soldier as I summarized, “Intelligence gathering in a hostile environment, then. What’s the expected mission duration?”

  At that, Dooku’s smile turned a bit mischievous. “We should be thorough in our investigation, young Tanya. Not rush things. You should take this as a lesson in patience,” the words had a certain ironic ring to them as they left his mouth, and I felt as he deliberately showed his own annoyance at the words. Someone, likely the council, had gotten under his skin with that one and this seemed to me like a case of malicious compliance.

  Well, if he wants to mess with the Council, I don’t mind helping.

  “It could be as short as a month on Dathomir, to as long as six months,” Dooku continued. “In fact, events could transpire which could see us there for a year or more. That’s not entirely uncommon on long term information gathering missions, and Dathomir is a large, mostly undeveloped planet. We wouldn’t be traveling by speeder, as that would draw too much attention.”

  “I see,” I murmured, before nodding. “I’ll start packing.”

  Grabbing the components of my lightsaber in the Force, I began putting it back together. I had opted to go with a fairly simple design for my very first lightsaber. The body looked like round tube of brushed aluminum with a rubberized grip. There was a simple external horizontal ring that served as a switch just under the emitter with only four settings: off, on, non-lethal, and another off setting, in that order. The emitter had a shroud over the top in case I needed to rest my hand there for extra leverage. Inside was a standard power pack and field charging unit to use the Force to recharge it if needed.

  The whole thing came in at just about a foot in length. When extended, a normal blade would be roughly four feet, nine inches in length. I had done a bit of fine tuning in the months since getting my weapon. A fifteen percent reduction in blade size corresponded to a fifteen percent increase in either power output or runtime. I opted for more runtime, sacrificing nine inches of length to be able to use it for longer if I needed. Of course, being that I was already small and with a short reach, this cut my reach with the blade even further. So, I had come up with a way of increasing that reach during my solo training, involving projecting a mage blade formula from the tip of the saber—effectively doubling the length of the blade with a second, invisible blade if I wanted.

  As soon as the last component clicked into place and everything felt secure, I clipped the saber to my belt and began packing. I had taken one of my free evenings to leave the Jedi temple and do a little exploring of the local shops, once the money started coming in from working with master Dyas. Given how woefully unprepared I had been on Ilum, I wasn’t going to make the same mistake again. So I’d bought a few things.

  I had cut everything down to fit in a single relatively small bag, with a diagonal strap across my body. Inside, was a small med kit and some survival supplies, a few light toiletries, with room to fit a couple of changes of clothes. I stuffed two sets of robes, underthings, and extra socks in, along with a thicker over robe for if it got cold, and a dark poncho to deal with rain.

  A second bag contained camping supplies for an indefinite stay outdoors. I had been camping a few times in my youth in Japan, while large portions of my time in the German Empire was effectively one long ‘camping trip.’ I had plenty of experience learning what essentials to bring and what I could cut out. So when I’d visited stores dedicated both to high end recreational camping and actual pioneers moving out to settle some new planet, I’d been amazed at some of the space-age options available. Even the simplest of things, like my skillet, were just plain better by virtue of weighing virtually nothing compared to cast iron. The second bag was bulkier than the first, but might have weighed ten pounds, total. I could carry it all day.

  Tossing my tablet in as well, I pulled it on and hurried to follow master Dooku, who had moved outside. As we were leaving the temple, we came across Obi-wan returning from the city. The older girl raised an eyebrow upon seeing us and sent me a smile. “Going somewhere?”

  Master Dooku moved away and waited at the taxi for me. “Off world for a mission.”

  “How long will you be gone?” Obi asked, curious and a bit concerned.

  “A few months, maybe. Could be longer.”

  Sighing, she said, “Vidcom me when you can.”

  Obi had been the one to take me out of the temple and get one of the handheld hologram transceivers—the closest local equivalent to a cell phone—so we already had each other’s contact information. Nodding, I patted the pocket where I kept it. “Will do.”

  Blowing out a breath, she pulled me into a hug and squeezed, making me wince as she put pressure on my bruises. Pulling back, she ruffled my hair and gave me a push towards the taxi. “I’ll see you when you get back.”

  The girl hurried inside as it began to sprinkle and I climbed into the taxi beside Dooku. It was pouring down by the time we made it to the spaceport and boarded his ship. Strapping into my seat after stowing my things, I asked, “What can you tell me about the locals?”

  Dooku gestured towards the controls and, taking the hint, I went through the pre-flight sequence, then requested clearance for launch. As I worked, he spoke. “There are several factions on Dathomir, many clans, but the group we most often make contact with are the Witches of Dathomir, or Daughters of Allya. They are essentially the local equivalent to Jedi given that they are descended from the exiled fallen Jedi, Allya. We will be visiting the various clans and making contact, learning what we can, and extending the hand of friendship.”

  “Coming around to fly the Jedi flag and remind them we exist?” I surmised as I lifted off and took us out, and Dooku chuckled, nodding.

  “Essentially. Or perhaps not. Perhaps it would be best to approach under the guise of simple travelers, the victims of a malfunction with their star ship who were forced to crash land.” Sending me an amused look, he said, “I’ll leave it up to you and go along with whatever you decide. Consider this a learning experience in planning and executing a mission, padawan.”

  A grin pulled at my lips. Master Dooku was speaking my language. As we ascended and I began laying in a course for Dathomir, I started mentally dusting off a few more skills from my previous life.

  “One more thing,” Dooku murmured, and I glanced over. “We’ll be focusing on lightsaber forms for a time. I’ve seen your progress and I believe it’s time for you to move beyond the basics. Had you known more, your fight with master Depa Billaba would have been less one-sided. And make no mistake, that was a fight, not a training session. The Council, and in particular Depa’s own former master, Mace Windu, wanted to make an example and send a message, to you and to others.”

  Frowning, I went back over the fight in my mind and nodded. “I see. That explains it, then.”

  “Quite. Mace developed the Vaapad variant of Form VII, which is what she was using. However, Form II—Makashi, that is—was developed specifically for lightsaber duels and still tends to come out on top in one on one fights. As it happens, I am a master of Makashi myself, and I would very much like to see a rematch between my student and Mace’s, once you’ve been properly trained.”

  My frown shifted back into a smile. “I’d like that, too.”