Umbrous - Shadow of the Force

Part 1 - Awakening of Shadow

When I said the action would build up slowly, I meant it...

Chapter 5

Kaan walked back home silently, thinking along the way of the man he had to salute and call Governor, but who in fact was only still in power because it allowed other, more competent people to use him as a puppet.

What a coward! Kaan knew as well as the stormtroopers that had been surrounding them both that Matap had not opened the door for Kaan because he was too scared to look into the eyes of the Ukians he had infuriated. Kaan thought grimly that the only remarkable thing about him, outside of the fact that he shared a name with the late Grand Admiral Tarkin, was his supreme incompetence.

His second in command had been competent, but she had died a few months before, in a riot surrounding a water canal that had broken after a group of Rebel fighters had had a skirmish with an Imperial Star Destroyer while fleeing the Battle of Scarif. They had quickly been eliminated by TIE fighters, but one Rebel pilot had landed a good shot at the water canal that led out of the city and irrigated much of the farmland near the town of Ukon. Naturally, the farmers had wanted it repaired quickly, but only a few days later, news had reached of the Death Star's destruction, and suddenly the governor's office was swamped with requests for Imperials to come and study what remained of Scarif's archives, to try and figure out what could possibly have gone so wrong, the water canal at the bottom of their list of priorities.

For three long weeks, almost every Imperial on the planet had devoted time to the Empire's needs, responding to urgent messages from Coruscant, summons to meetings and new dogma and official news to disseminate amongst citizens. And in those weeks, the Ukian farmers had been ignored, and no explanations given, and they had turned violent. A massive crowd amassed near the tank which had been sent to initially determine where the water canal had broken, and Vice-Governor Mutra had gone to dispel them and assure them that their needs would be met. Instead, the angry crowd had torn open the tank, and used the stormtroopers' weapons to kill her. What ensued was a bloody fight in which many Ukians and stormtroopers went down in blaster fire and brute force before a ceasefire was declared.

Ever since, there had been even more bad blood between Ukians and Imperials, and the position of Vice-Governor had been left unoccupied.

And no doubt Matap was looking to have Kaan take up that position when he graduated from university soon, to save his skin from this crisis. As if Kaan was going to stay here on Ukio any longer than he needed to.

He had reached home by the end of this reverie, and walked up the steps of the house, then turned around to look at Ukon. His was by far the largest house on the planet, bigger than even the governor's house, and smaller only than the university and town hall. Not because his mother earned more than Matap, which she did, but because it needed to be this big.

The Emperor did not like officials to have too many frivolous expenses, and if the Pritcher mansion was spread out over, and indeed under, two hills, it was because it was holding something which required massive amounts of storage. Kaan turned and headed, as he always did, towards his mother's library and storage room.

Almost everyone on Ukio knew the name of Shara Pritcher, the wealthy archivist who had written a vast collection of papers on the evils of the Jedi, studying countless old Jedi texts and High Council meetings, and using them to churn out even more anti-Jedi dogma. What many fewer people knew was just how many Jedi artifacts had been taken from Jedi temples across the galaxy, including the one on Coruscant, and stored partially underground on Ukio. Everything from holocrons, to texts and lightsabers had their own hall, or set of halls.

And there were few, if any security cameras, meaning Kaan had grown up practically surrounded by lightsabers and next to no supervision, and as a child he had often given in to the temptation of activating a lightsaber and pretending to be a Jedi or a Sith, sometimes even with Bongo. While his mansion had few Sith artifacts, most of which were stored on Coruscant, he did know where the red lightsabers and training lightsabers in his house were to be found.

He had always known himself to be slightly Force-sensitive, and often times wondered whether it was because of his father, a man of whom his mother spoke little, "What do you want to know? He was a human male, with skin the same beautiful colour as yours, and with whom I saw fit to sleep a few times, and then nine months later out you came. I hope I don't have to explain the biology behind that part. I don't know his name, don't know where he came from, don't know if he was a Jedi in disguise, though that could explain your attunement to the Force. He may be alive, or he may be dead; I couldn't care less, and neither should you. There's really nothing more to it, you know. You don't even really look like him, except for your brown eyes."

His mother had known that he was Force-sensitive ever since, at the age of three, he had played with Bongo, they had gotten into a fight, and Kaan had sent the much larger child tumbling across the floor with a push. Shara had passed it off as Bongo having slipped, but ever since then she knew, and Kaan was certain that Bongo suspected, that there had to be a better reason, given Bongo had been many times Kaan's size then. Kaan's mother had been very level-headed and accepting about it, but neither of them had known what to do with Kaan's Force-sensitivity beyond simply hiding it and passing it off as him being exceedingly skilled at, it would turn out, manipulating people and athletics.

In the days of the Republic, Kaan mused, he could have gotten a midichlorian scan and been sent off to Coruscant to be a Jedi, but nowadays Force-sensitive children were either sold as slaves, killed, or worse, sent to join what remained of Vader's Inquisitors. Shara Pritcher had therefore endeavoured to make sure he was never discovered, and it was part of the reason why, even when given the chance to, she hadn't left Ukio, realising that on a more populated planet, Kaan was more at risk. She had instead passed herself off as a lonely scholar, with only cleaning droids to indicate that parts of the mansion were even inhabited. Still, she had always encouraged him to delve into the archives they kept at home, and Kaan now found himself gravitating towards the library.

So... now that I've got a vague explanation for Kaan's Force-sensitivity, I can begin to properly delve further into it