Echoes

by inwardtransience

The Jedi thought that, by turning their greatest enemy into an unwitting assassin, they could grasp victory from the jaws of defeat, and safeguard the Republic, the democratic and egalitarian principles at its foundation, for future generations. Really, they should have just killed her.

21. The Descent — II

The Czerka headquarters at the centre of the little town was one of those blocky, modular structures that were used by various entities all over the galaxy. The basic unit was a rectangular box twelve metres by eight which, in its most basic form, could be used as a simple home for a single person — they were commonly used for that purpose in new colonies, temporary mining developments, that sort of thing. It wasn't unusual to see them fused together and stacked up to make larger buildings, the walls between them cut out and then reset where appropriate. For their offices, Czerka had taken several of the things, three or four wide and three tall, the seams between the original blocks still faintly visible.

Cina noticed the metal surface was pitted and scored, a couple windows they'd put in frosted so badly they were entirely opaque. Slow accumulation of erosion damage from the sand on the wind, she assumed...which meant they almost certainly didn't have surveillance cameras anywhere — good to know.

Unsurprisingly, there was another door just inside the main entrance which would only open once the external door was closed, like an airlock — in fact, it probably was an airlock, the same system they used in mining operations with no breathable atmosphere. But it was also easier on the environmental control systems, there was a noticeable drop in temperature inside the airlock, but it was probably even cooler inside. Cina dispelled the filter over her eyes as soon as she stepped inside, glanced over the placards fixed to the walls here and there while she waited for the doors to cycle. Mostly company bylaws and job postings, by the look of it, a few tables of current prices of various amenities and supplies.

It appeared Czerka wanted to make it very clear that they were not obligated to arrange (and pay) to transport former employees off-planet. Hmm.

The air inside was cool and wet enough Cina let her heat-redirection thing fade away, it wasn't necessary anymore. This first room seemed to be a sort of reception desk and waiting room set-up, several uncomfortable-looking chairs sitting around here and there, a human man behind a computer terminal at the desk in Czerka green and yellow, matching the plain, sterile metal of the walls and ceiling and floor. Not a particularly hospitable-looking place but, well, tiny independent settlement, not surprised.

Apparently Cina was walking in on something: the man at the desk was currently being yelled at by a slightly hysterical Duros. Even as she stepped in, guards were appearing out of a side door, grabbing the Duros by the elbows and dragging him toward the exit kicking and screaming. He was screaming in rage now, Cina couldn't pick out what he was saying very well, but she definitely caught the words murder, village, and genocide.

Well. That was...concerning.

Upon identifying herself to the receptionist, Cina was immediately directed further into the building, up a narrow flight of stairs, and down a hall. Next to the door at the end was a placard identifying this as the office of Syalle Keissler, Director of Operations — so, essentially, she was being brought to the person in charge of the whole damn planet. Well, she certainly would be able to negotiate terms on behalf of Czerka, wouldn't she?

Keissler's office was somewhat more homey than reception. The window, opaque from the constant scratching of sand, wasn't doing much more than give off a faintly yellow glow, but they'd put down carpet a pleasant green, projectors here and there displaying on the walls the Czerka logo, but also a scene of snow-crested mountains here, a modern city at sunset viewed from a bay there. The city was probably Coronet — Syalle Keissler was a very Corellian name, and Coronet was relatively well-known in certain circles for its neighborhoods on the coast — but Cina didn't recognise any of the buildings in the image. (Not that she really expected to, she didn't think she'd ever been to Corellia.) The chairs even had cushions, a step up from the hard, angular metal of the ones downstairs.

Syalle Keissler herself was a tired, strained-looking woman — maybe about Cina's age or a little older, her dark hair tied back in a lazy bun, her face long and lined from stress and exhaustion. "You would be Cianen Hayal, I expect," she said, setting aside a datapad (presumably having just read a message from the port officers). "Sit yourself down and we'll talk about this like civilised beings." Keissler had a very obvious Corellian accent, enough Cina wondered whether she was a native speaker — the old Corellian language, a distant relative of Basic, did still persist in some isolated quarters, but the phonologies of the languages were similar enough it could be difficult to distinguish L2 speakers of Basic from those who'd simply been raised in the Corellian dialect.

Though, the mechanics of language contact and substrata weren't really an important thing to think about right now. "I do apologise if I frightened your men a bit, Director Keissler," Cina said, sinking into one of the chairs. "The University is usually rather generous when it comes to expense accounts and the like, but my resources aren't infinite — I don't really have enough of a cushion to absorb such exorbitant berthing fees." She did have the credits, obviously, but Cianen Hayal, humble linguistics professor, wouldn't, so the point stood.

"The University?"

"I'm a Professor of Linguistics with the University of Aldera. Did your man not mention that?" She wasn't really surprised he hadn't, Cina suspected he'd thought she was making that up.

Keissler scowled, a little, as though reminded of something unpleasant — related to her employees, or perhaps the University, Cina couldn't guess which. "I suppose it isn't unusual for research expeditions organised by the University of Aldera to be accompanied by Jedi, but that ship you have isn't the sort of thing your kind of people usually get around on."

Cina smiled. "The Ebon Hawk is mine. I acquired it separately from my work with the University."

One eyebrow crawling up her forehead, Keissler said, "Uh-huh." Very skeptically. She was probably assuming Cina had stolen it — which, to be fair, she had. Keissler was probably also assuming she was lying about being here on an academic mission sanctioned by the University — which, to be fair, she was. But, by the amusement sparking off her mind, Cina got the feeling she didn't really care. Leaning back in her chair, "I have an offer for you, Professor Hayal." There was a faint note of sarcasm on the title. "I'm willing to waive any berthing fees for the duration of your stay in Anchorhead, in exchange for a favour."

...She thought Cina was a thief and a pirate — and also a rogue Jedi, can't forget that detail — and she wanted Cina to do her a favour? Cina got the very distinct feeling she wasn't going to like this. "I'm listening."

"Despite how inhospitable it may appear, it has long been known that there are sentient beings native to Tatooine — primitive tribesmen, the environment is too harsh for any significant civilisation to develop. There are two different groups, which genetic studies suggest are both descended from a recent common ancestor, on the order of twenty thousand years ago or so. One of them, who call themselves Aya-Jawa, are relatively friendly. They're scavengers and traders, mostly, they'd rather make a deal than start a fight. We have had some minor disagreements with a couple of the local tribes, but they haven't been difficult to deal with, for the most part.

"It's the other ones that are the problem." Keissler tapped a button on her desk, the Czerka logo displayed on a wall to her left flickered out. In its place was an image of an approximately humanoid figure, narrow and long-limbed. Cina could only make out the profile, though, since the figure was swathed in a heavy cloak, arms and face wrapped in cloth, not a single hint of skin or hair visible. "We don't really know anything about them. They're very similar to the Jawas physiologically, though rather taller in stature. But they speak different languages, and have very different cultures.

"The only contact any off-worlder has ever had with these tribes has been violent. The Jawas claim to live with them in relative peace, but all attempts at diplomatic overtures have ended in failure. Any previous settlement on the surface has suffered constant attacks from these tribes, who will attack any off-worlder they find on sight, persistently harass any settlement until they give up or leave. We've lost a number of expeditions to their attacks, the people slaughtered and the equipment stolen. They must be trading with the Jawas, they keep trying to sell our own equipment back to us," Keissler grumbled.

Cina thought she sounded rather more annoyed with the Jawas buying stolen equipment from the other tribes just to sell it back to Czerka than with her people being murdered, but she doubted lecturing the woman about it would accomplish anything. Besides, it was brazen, insult on top of injury, the feeling wasn't entirely unjustified. (In fact, it was brazen enough Cina suspected the Jawas didn't like Czerka stomping around in their lands any more than the others did, they just had a different way of showing their displeasure.) "Okay. And what do you want me to do about it, exactly?"

At the press of another few buttons, the image of the native was replaced with a map — basic topographical features, maybe fifty kilometres wide or so, Anchorhead labeled near the centre of the mesa dominating most of the image. There were a few lines and arrows, presumably routes to nearby locations, and another label to the south, hugging the base of the mesa. "There's a war band gathered here, about twenty kilometres to the south. They've been coordinating attacks on our mining teams, and even the hunters going out. They've been doing enough damage consistently enough our operations here have been reduced to a crawl.

"I want you to go down there, and kill them all."

...Of course. Cina should have expected it would be something like that.

Trying to keep any hint of her building fury buried, she asked, "Why don't you just call your superiors for assistance? Czerka is an arms manufacturer now — I'm certain they have the resources to protect your interests here."

Keissler scowled. "I'm told our operation here has not proved profitable enough for the Board to consider it worth the investment. But neither do they want to part with the expense necessary to pack up our people and our property and get off this blasted rock. Cheap bastards..."

Yeah, Cina continued to be unsurprised. "How many people are we talking about here? This war band, I mean. And what sort of equipment do they have?"

"A few dozen, I think — more than twenty, less than fifty. They default to primitive weaponry for the most part, clubs and slings and spears, but they also have a small number of rifles. Slugthrowers, I mean, not energy weapons — they have a pretty short range, and they're not particularly accurate, but a hit will mess you up pretty bad."

Cina nodded to herself. Keissler was referring to an old style of ranged weapon, exploiting pneumatic forces to accelerate little bits of metal to dangerous speeds. Firearms had been gradually phased out over millennia, superceded by energy-based weaponry — even guns that still fired hard slugs these days mostly used electromagnets, but she doubted the locals had the tech for that, they were probably using some kind of explosive. "That's a lot of killing to do for only a few thousand credits."

Keissler shot her an odd look. "I can waive any fees myself, but I don't have the authority to pay you much. If you do this, though, I'll recommend Corporate arrange some kind of reward — I'm certain they'll agree, but I can't tell you how much the figure will end up being.

"Though, I'm not sure why their numbers should bother you much — you could just float over and incinerate them all from the sky, you wouldn't even have to put yourself in danger. If you do want to risk approaching on foot, they are getting resupplied from villages somewhere nearby, men and materiel, but we can't find where they are. If you can manage to track them down and deal with them as well... I'm sure Czerka will be very grateful."

Right. So this is what the Duros in reception had been talking about. Now she was caught up.

Cina said she would think about it, but didn't promise anything, with the excuse that she would have to talk to her crew first. She had absolutely no intention of, just, indiscriminately slaughtering the natives to please Czerka — honestly, in a conflict between the native inhabitants of pretty much any world and a corporate conglomerate the like of Czerka, she couldn't imagine ever not siding with the natives — but she would have to think of something. She still needed that survey data. She was certain dealing with this war band would be a condition of any assistance from Czerka in tracking down a Laqʈaɦ site, she didn't even bother asking.

Keissler let her go without extracting any promises, or even demanding payment for the various fees and such still outstanding — she had the feeling Keissler was assuming Cina would end up doing as requested. Which, when she thought about it, that was...slightly offensive? Did she look like the sort of person who'd agree to kill people for money? Especially when the one doing the paying was a huge, ethically-dubious corporation, and the people they wanted dead were natives whose lands Czerka was tromping all over uninvited. Didn't Keissler think she was a Jedi? Honestly, that was just...weird.

(And offensive, yes, it took some effort to not glare at anyone on her way out.)

Of course, now she had to decide what she was going to do.

If Czerka were unwilling to hand over the necessary survey data, they would need to track down any Laqʈaɦ sites on their own. The Hawk did have a pretty damn good sensor suite — military-issue, in fact, it was illegal for civilians to possess some of it — but it was intended for use in the black of space, highly-sensitive equipment examining waste energies given off by other craft to map their internal systems, the sort of thing used by security forces to identify concealed pirates and scan possible smugglers. They'd be mostly useless for surveying any planet, but especially one like Tatooine — even if the Hawk could do proper depth soundings (which it couldn't), the radiation reflected off the sands, even at night, should wash out those weaker signals entirely.

Even if the Hawk did have the kind of equipment that could effectively survey the planet, that was a long-term project. It could easily take weeks to identify what they were looking for. Keissler would certainly want her fees as soon as it became clear Cina wasn't planning on slaughtering the natives for her, and those would add up very quickly. Cina wasn't certain exactly how much wealth they had access to — Bastila through expense accounts with the Order, Cina through her mysterious fortune, and Kandosa probably had plenty squirreled away too — but they should probably avoid sinking tens or even hundreds of thousands of credits on superfluous expenses if they could help it. Especially when that money was going to these arseholes.

Which meant Cina had to do something to get that data from Czerka.

One option was to simply take it. The data she wanted would be in their primary servers, which were probably somewhere in this building — likely under her feet near their recycling equipment, she would guess. And they would need to physically go to the servers themselves, corporations preferred not to broadcast this kind of valuable data on the network for just any enterprising slicer to get at.

Now, they could definitely do that, it wouldn't even be difficult. Between herself, three Jedi, a Mandoade general, and Zaalbar, she didn't doubt they could break in, hold the server room long enough for Mission to get what they needed, and get out alive. The problem would be after that. She doubted Czerka would have conveniently labeled any potential ruins to make them easy for them to track down, no, such things wouldn't have been of any interest to them — Mission would have to analyse the data first, narrow down sites for them to investigate. That would take days, probably. Now, while they could exfiltrate the data no problem, she doubted they'd be able to do it without being noticed. Czerka's offices were simply too small and densely occupied.

Which meant the Hawk would still be sitting in port for a few days afterward. And they wouldn't leave Tatooine for weeks, probably — she had no idea how long it would take to explore whatever ruins Mission would identify and track down what they were looking for.

Just sitting around after stealing from a major corporate conglomerate would not make things simpler, to put it mildly.

Of course, they could just take over the settlement. She didn't expect that would even be particularly difficult. Since this was an 'uninhabited' world in space firmly under Hutt control, Czerka had hardly even bothered with security forces of any real scale — if they had, they wouldn't have this problem with the natives in the first place, they would have just exterminated any who made a fuss themselves by now.

No, Cina didn't doubt they could take these offices and assume control of the settlement, probably in the space of an hour. They'd have to knock out communications first — both to prevent Czerka from calling in Hutt assistance and from notifying people up the chain that Cina and the Ebon Hawk were hostile to their operations. (Czerka was a major player these days, if that word got out it could well create serious problems for them down the line.) Cina would lead a small team, probably just Rhysam and Juhani, with whom she'd capture these offices in short order, and negotiate with Keissler for Czerka's surrender. At the same time, Mission and Zaalbar (and Kandosa, if Mission's flying wasn't up to it yet), would float over the town in the Hawk, picking off any security forces that might respond to HQ's predicament. Should take less than an hour, really, negotiating with Keissler might end up taking longer than anything else — Cina didn't expect she'd be very cooperative.

In which case, Cina might just end up shooting her, and dictating terms to her second-in-command. That would work just as well.

Cina was going to call that Plan Besh.

Plan Arek was to talk to the tribesmen harrying the Czerka mining teams, and see if she couldn't negotiate some kind of settlement. It was possible they were only so insistent about fighting Czerka because the off-worlders were cutting them off from important hunting lands or resources or holy sites or something — it wasn't entirely out of the question that a peaceful settlement could be reached. It might require paying off the natives with...she didn't know, moisture vaporators or something. If it did come to that, Cina might well just dip into her mysterious fortune to give them what they wanted herself, and present the deal to Czerka fait accompli.

Hopefully Keissler would be reasonable — in exchange for arranging a fair deal with the natives that saved their operations here from collapse, Cina would ask only for the data she wanted. It would be a very beneficial settlement all around, there was no way Czerka lost, really.

And if Keissler wasn't reasonable, well, that's why there was a Plan Besh.

So, Cina needed to make a deal with the natives. To pull that off, she needed to find them, which was a simple matter, and negotiate with them, which was not. They were hostile to outsiders, but Cina could probably get around that with magic Jedi mind-influencing powers — she didn't like the idea of doing that sort of thing, but if it was what was necessary to prevent an unnecessary slaughter, it truly was the least possible of evils. But, to negotiate terms, they would need to be able to speak with each other. Cina knew a lot of languages, more than even she'd realised, but the chances she happened to speak the language of disorganised tribesman like these on an undeveloped world like Tatooine were pretty much zero. That complicated the matter greatly.

What she needed was a protocol droid — if she were very fortunate, she'd be able to find one that had passed through Jawa hands and picked up the local languages on the way, but any protocol droid would do. The linguistic analysis software they were all loaded with by default picked apart language in a way biological brains simply weren't capable of. While it wasn't possible for them to extrapolate an entire language out of a few small samples, obviously, they could pick up a language much more quickly than any natural being could. She meant, on the order of days, instead of years. Even if the droid didn't speak the local language, if she could convince them to let her stay with them even for a short time, the droid should pick it up quickly enough for them to get to a point they could negotiate properly in short order.

Right, then. There must be a tech shop somewhere on this rock...

Reapplying her protections against the environment, Cina stepped back out into the blazing light and stifling heat of Tatooine. She stumbled across Rhysam and Juhani on the way back to the spaceport, silently standing out in the street — both their figures were entirely hidden by hooded cloaks, whipping around in the biting desert wind, but Cina recognised them instantly anyway. (This Force sensing thing could be convenient like that, no matter how annoying it was that she still couldn't turn it off.) Juhani seemed unusually still, not physically but in this weird sixth sense shite, turned inward, listening.

"Cina!" Rhysam called as she approached, shooting her a grin that she couldn't see under his hood, the feeling more communicated by the warm bubbling of his mind. "I see you won't be needing a rescue. The meeting with Czerka went well, then?"

Hitching to a halt, she shot him a level look — he probably couldn't see it, but he'd also be able to feel the intent anyway. "Director Keissler is willing to be very accommodating, so long as we indiscriminately slaughter some natives for her first."

"Recruiting passing spacers to do their genociding for them? That's quite the efficient externalization of costs right there, gotta love it." Cina coughed out a reluctant laugh. It wasn't really funny — she didn't doubt that if Keissler managed to get someone else passing through to do her dirty work for her, her superiors would commend her for it, though in far more euphemistic language than Rhysam was using. "So, we taking this operation apart right away, or waiting for sundown?"

She smiled. "That's Plan Besh."

"Of course," he drawled, an edge of laughter on his voice.

"Besides, if we do end up taking over the settlement, we'll be doing it during the day. Given all the glare from the sunlight here, I expect visibility is actually better at night." Not to mention, it would be far less uncomfortable just being out of doors, Anchorhead was probably at least partially nocturnal — settlements in environments like these often were. There was a faint tingling along her spine, Cina's eyes drawn to the still silent Juhani. The girl was taking a peek at her through the Force, she guessed. "What's your adorable little apprentice up to, anyway?"

Rhysam smirked (invisibly) at the description — which Cina was pretty sure he only used to annoy the poor girl. He would probably claim it was good character-building, but she suspected he just did these things to entertain himself and came up with excuses after he was called on it. "Feeling out inflection points, finding something for us to occupy ourselves with."

Right, that made sense. Whenever a person made a choice it created a sort of ripple through the Force, which a Jedi could then detect, sometimes long before the event itself would occur. Though, not any choice — mundane, ordinary things were negligible — generally only actions that would have meaningful consequences on the person's environment were detectable. It was a very basic Jedi skill, to feel out these critical moments, to try to leverage them one way or the other toward beneficial ends. In a way, it was the fundamental skill, searching for prominent inflection points was literally the very first thing a Jedi was supposed to do in any situation they stuck their nose in.

Cina, of course, was terrible at it. If she reached out the same way Juhani was now, she would detect the thoughts and feelings of the people around, washing over her, if she looked deeper the relationships and interactions connecting them. There was always a sort of tension that started to present itself when she was looking at things on this level, glimpsing the edge of these inflection points other Jedi described. The thing to do then, she was told, was look closer, prod at them, try to feel out which way that tension might break.

The first time she'd tried it, she'd immediately been overwhelmed with an incomprehensible whirlwind of possible futures, coming back to herself some moments later, shaky and sweaty, her head pounding with the beginnings of a migraine — and, not only had she lost her breakfast again, but that time she'd even pissed herself too. Needless to say, she hadn't tried it a second time.

(It seemed like her problem with visions and the like was that she just got too much, the information flooding into her head far more than her mind could process all at once. There had to be a way to filter that out some, but she hadn't any ideas as to how, and Tokare hadn't had any advice, completely fucking useless as expected.)

She thought she responded to inflection points intuitively, though. When she did something without really thinking about it, and couldn't explain why she was doing it beyond that it simply felt like the right thing to do, she suspected that's what that was. But, until Cina figured out some way to do basic Jedi shite without making herself absolutely miserable, she'd simply have to get by on the occasional spark of intuition.

Most ordinary Jedi would consider that flying blind, but it seemed to be working well enough for her so far.

"You know, I'm still not even entirely sure what those are supposed to feel like."

Rhysam shrugged. "They're different for everyone — no two people perceive information gleaned through the Force exactly the same. This is taking Juhani a long time, actually, I'm getting the feeling these things don't come through very clearly for her. She could have just said that, but, kids, you know."

"It could be worse. If I were in her place, I'd be on the ground choking on sick by now."

"Good point. So, what's Plan Arek?"

"Doomed to fail, probably." Dipping into a sarcastic drawl, "I hope you have no philosophical objections to kicking these bastards off this miserable rock."

"Oh good, I don't have to do it by myself, then."

Cina shook her head, a smile pulling at her lips. "Anyway, I have to go smash my head against a brick wall for a bit. You two have fun playing hero."

"I always do."

Back at their berth, Cina found Kandosa outside. Somewhat surprisingly, he was wearing a rough woolen Jedi cloak to shield himself from the sun — he must have stolen one of Rhysam's, the women were both too short for him to use one of theirs. It wasn't surprising he was out here at all, of course, observing the refueling process and keeping an eye out for sabotage. She hadn't expected anything else. Kandosa also asked after her meeting with Czerka, but only to confirm they weren't going to try to kick them out any time soon. If she had to guess, Kandosa would be perfectly willing to do as Keissler asked if Cina ordered him to, but he'd be equally willing to oppose Czerka instead, so getting him on-side with whatever they do shouldn't really be a problem. She just couldn't talk about it with Czerka spaceport techs standing right there.

Bastila, on the other hand, she was going to be a pain. While she would be just as horrified as Cina by Keissler's demand, she probably wouldn't consider taking over the town to be an option either. She'd be totally on-board with brokering some kind of arrangement between Czerka and the locals, which was still Plan Arek — the problem was, Cina had the feeling Plan Arek wasn't going to work out. (She still had to try, she couldn't justify such brutal means to herself unless she exhausted all reasonable non-violent options first, but she had no illusions about the likelihood of success.) If they were reduced to Plan Besh, she expected Bastila would protest, which was precisely why her plan for taking over the settlement didn't require the prissy young woman's involvement at all. And she couldn't tell her about it beforehand, out of concern she would call her Council about it, or warn Czerka or the Hutts.

So, when she found Bastila in the main room on the Hawk, putting together their packs for their expedition into the ruins, Cina told her she was in the process of working out a mutually-beneficial agreement with Czerka in exchange for the data they needed, don't worry about it, she was on top of things. Astoundingly, Bastila actually seemed to accept that, turning back to her (premature) preparations.

That was...odd. She'd noticed that Bastila didn't seem nearly as afraid of her as she'd been back on Taris — simply from exposure, she assumed. That was one thing, sure, but letting her handle their interactions with the locals was something else, implying a degree of trust Cina hadn't realised Bastila had for her. Especially given how bloody paranoid she could be about Cina's motivations at times, as though concerned Cina would abruptly revert to a maniacal Sith Lord indiscriminately murdering people and sacrificing babies in Dark Side sorcery rituals or whatever silliness the Order had gotten it into their heads that Sith did with their time. It hadn't even been that long ago that Bastila had constantly watched her with a shade of suspicion, that she was suddenly just leaving these things to Cina without any obvious hesitation was...

Well. Cina had absolutely no idea what was going on with Bastila anymore. She could ask, she guessed, but she had no bloody clue how she would go about that conversation.

Thankfully, it didn't take any effort at all to find the girls — they were both in the main room, though on the opposite side of the holotable from Bastila. (Neither of them liked Bastila much.) Mission was sprawled across one of the surprisingly comfortable armchairs, sitting sideways with her feet dangling in the air past the armrest, poking at her datapad. No, not her datapad, but the one she'd been given at the Consulate — she must be checking over the requirements for the certification Cina had mentioned before. (Mission could go through the ordinary secondary education courses, but there was really no reason to do that when she could most likely come away with what was essentially the equivalent of a technical degree after only a couple weeks of work.) Sasha was there too, spread out on the floor with her own education-programmed datapad, in her case probably poking at basic arebesh lessons. Seemed a good bet, judging by the scowl on her face. Sasha did not like arebesh.

Which was fair, Cina guessed. Sasha was already literate in Mandoa, and arebesh letters probably seemed like an ugly mess of confusingly similar squares and arrows by comparison. Modern printed arebesh had originally been developed for use in primitive display technologies, pre-Republic, and so were blocky and overly simplified. Sasha would probably have an easier time learning the more distinctive shapes of the old cursive script — which technically pre-dated the printed form, making it absolutely ancient — but that was different enough from the arebesh she'd see everywhere studying it now would just make everything more confusing.

Cina hadn't even realised she knew archaic, pre-Republic cursive arebesh. She'd studied Old Alderash, of course, but that had used the similar but very distinct alphabet — it was obvious the writing systems shared a common heritage, likely developing together in Coruscanti pre-history, but the letters were different enough it was generally assumed they weren't directly related. But, she realised now, she had also studied the extinct Alsakani language of the earliest centuries of the Republic — a very closely-related dialect was also the pre-Basic native language of the Shawkenese, the planet she felt was most likely to be her homeworld, presumably that was why she'd studied it — which had still used archaic arebesh handwriting at the time. As familiar as she was with skills she hadn't known she had just popping into existence in her head, it was still bloody weird, especially when it something so...silly and superfluous. Nobody actually used the old cursive arebesh anymore, hadn't for millennia...

Apparently, Cina had always been a complete fucking nerd for pointless linguistics trivia. Good to know.

Stop getting lost in your head, dammit Cina, you had shite to do. Attracting the girls' attention with a clap of her hands, she said, "Right, I need to buy a droid. Want to come along?" She quickly repeated herself in Mandoa, adding, "You can stay here if you like, Sasha, I suspect kebin'ika just knows more about droids than I do."

"Probably, I've kept up with a lot of it, just to play around with new A.I. and security stuff, you know." Mission's Mandoa must be coming along — she'd responded in Basic, but she'd clearly understood what Cina had said well enough to respond at all. She'd perked up a bit, flailing around to sitting the right way around in her chair, her government-issue datapad tossed aside to poke at the one strapped on her wrist. "Looks like there is a tech shop in Anchorhead, but I'm not sure there's much there. What are you looking for, anyway?"

"I find myself in need of a protocol droid."

Mission gave Cina a doubtful, narrow-eyed look. "You? Cina, you're practically a protocol droid already — I'm pretty sure you speak more languages than I've ever even heard of!"

"I don't speak as many languages as I've heard of, but point taken." She actually wasn't certain how many languages she spoke. More than she'd thought she did, of course, but it wasn't like she'd ever tallied them up before — maybe she should, just for curiosity's sake. "I need to go and talk to some of the locals, though, and I seriously doubt I'll know whatever they speak, so."

"Right, right, that makes sense. It looks like they don't have much in stock at the moment, but they do have a few protocol droids, we can go take a look. Their prices are going to be stupid, it might be worth it to fly back to Rodia to pick something up instead. Or Arkanis, maybe, isn't VensarTech based out of Arkanis?"

"I'm not concerned about that — my mysterious fortune hasn't run out yet, it's probably fine."

"Er, you just threatened to flatten this shitty little town over the docking fees literally two hours ago."

"They were being unreasonable. A protocol droid is a very useful bit of tech, whatever they're charging I'm sure it won't be that bad." Besides, she'd probably turn around and sell the thing back as soon as she was done with it anyway, which would lessen the true cost she was paying considerably. "Get some shoes on, and let's go."

Within five minutes, they were both ready to leave. Mission had produced a hooded cloak to shield her from the sun, which definitely didn't actually belong to her — the rough woolen cloth was of obvious Jedi make. (It must be Juhani's...or maybe Bastila's, but Juhani was more likely.) Twi'leks tended to do better in dry heat than humans did — their homeworld was very hot and arid, they were adapted for it — but they were even more sensitive to ultraviolet, so the stolen cloak was a wise choice.

Sasha, who had decided to tag along, didn't get one herself, since she was far too short to use any of the ones they had on hand. The poor girl didn't even have shoes — the stores in Dinar Enai hadn't had any she'd be willing to wear and it'd completely slipped Cina's mind while they'd been on Coruscant. Worried she might step on something sharp and hurt herself, Cina had already taught her to protect the bottoms of her feet, basically walking on little repulsor fields sustained through the Force, so that wasn't too much of a concern. She didn't know how to shield herself from the sun, though, so Cina would have to take care of that one. Anchoring such a complex sustained energy manipulation on another person was...a little awkward, but it was probably fine.

If nothing else, she suspected Sasha would be able to figure out what Cina was doing just by the feel of it acting on her, and re-up it herself if Cina's attention wavered. Sasha did seem to pick up Jedi magic things acting on herself very quickly — she hadn't yet managed even basic telekinesis, but mucking about with her own body and how it interacted with her environment? No problem.

Rhysam had pointed out weeks ago that Sasha would probably turn out to be a natural with Cina's ridiculous tutaminis tricks, which she guessed was just convenient, because it wasn't like anyone else would be teaching Sasha this shite.

Before walking down the ramp to the surface, Cina paused quick to apply her heat- and light-deflecting tricks on herself and Sasha. She also guarded Sasha's feet herself, since she'd need more intense heat-deflection there than anywhere else, and Sasha didn't know how to do that kind of tutaminis yet. After explaining what she wanted to do and getting permission, she shielded Mission's eyes too — transformed down toward infrared a little, adjusted for the slightly cooler Twi'leki visual range. She also offered to pull away a little heat, but Mission turned down that one, concerned it would feel distracting on her lekku. Which was fair, it probably would.

The tech shop was only a couple streets away — but then, most of Anchorhead was within a couple streets of the spaceport, the place wasn't very big. The whole way, Mission walked with her shoulders hunched, stalking along with the cloak tightly hugged around her. Sasha, on the other hand, was much lighter, almost seeming to skip along over the stone, glancing all around them all the time, as though trying to take in everything at once. She'd never seen a desert before, she explained — which Cina thought was sort of strange, since the Sulem were from Jakelia, a rather arid world, but she guessed Sasha might not remember her homeworld much at all — and on top of that had questions about absolutely everything.

Sasha having questions about absolutely everything wasn't new, exactly, but asking those questions out in public was. That was a good sign, right? Cina thought so, maybe? Sasha was even visible, which she thought might be progress. Granted, there weren't many people around, but still.

Once they stepped into the tech shop, Cina dropped the protection on their eyes, but kept the heat-deflection going. Unlike Czerka's central offices, this building didn't have double-sealed entrances to help isolate the internal environment — there was clearly air conditioning of some kind, and there were huge bloody fans going, keeping up a low breeze through the entire space, but it was still very warm. The building was split in half, they'd walked into a spacious, high-ceilinged sales floor, visible through a gap in the wall a few glimpses of what Cina suspected was a repair shop of some kind.

The place was a bit of a mess, the unfurnished plain tan stone of the interior splashed with oil and coolant here or there, the floor littered with equipment and droids of all kinds. Mostly industrial models, big hulking mining droids and haulers and the like, maintenance droids, their forms rather bulkier than Cina would usually expect, extra plates of some reflective material fixed across much of their surface in an effort to shield them from sunlight. Some of the larger ones had extra modules sticking out here and there — liquid coolant systems, perhaps? Not standard, she didn't think, but it was probably necessary in this environment.

"Ah, customers! Hello, hello!" The voice was deep and rumbling, with a peculiar echo to it — somewhat to her surprise, the proprietor was Ithorian, though that would explain the echo. The gentle-natured species had a very peculiarly-shaped head, the brain housed in a hump between their shoulders, a long, flat plate extending forward before curving up containing the sensory organs, eyes and tympanic membranes and the like. The flat surface of an Ithorian's "face" held their eyes, organs that heard and smelled (dotted here and there across the entire surface, invisible if you didn't know what you were looking for), but didn't have a mouth, one of the less human-looking faces commonly seen in the galaxy.

Interestingly to linguists, Ithorians had two mouths, one on each side of the hump at the base of their "necks", each connected to two throats — Ithorians had four lungs, each of which could be controlled independently. This meant Ithorians could articulate two entirely separate phonemes simultaneously, and could produce four different pitches in harmony. Native Ithorian languages involved separate articulations for each mouth, the timing often not matching up, on the vowels producing complicated tone contours that were honestly just hard to follow. It rather sounded like four people singing at once, though each pair were singing completely different lyrics...except it was all one sentence. It was pretty, and fascinating, but very confusing.

But this Ithorian was speaking in perfectly understandable Huttese, his mouths were just slightly out of sync, creating that odd echo. "We don't get off-worlders in here often, and my contracts with Czerka are— Well, that's not important, is it! Come, come!" he called, beckoning them further into the shop with both long, bony arms. "What can I help you with today?"

Sasha had started tugging at the skirt of her dress as soon as she spotted the proprietor, waited for him to stop speaking. "What is he? He looks funny. What language is that?"

Normally, Cina would feel the need to say something about just coming out and saying a non-human being looked funny — because it was very rude, if nothing else — but Sasha was speaking in Mandoa, so it probably didn't matter. "I'm in the market for a protocol droid. Mission," she prodded, nodding at the proprietor, before muttering to Sasha in Mandoa. "He's an Ithorian, an old, noble people. They do a lot of farming, and have some of the best biotech in the galaxy. And that's Huttese."

Mission had taken over with the proprietor — Yuka Laka, he called himself, presumably his name simplified for Huttese speakers — cheerfully babbling away with him about processing units and security schema. There was a bit of a pout on Sasha's face, probably annoyed they weren't speaking a language she even knew a little bit. "I thought everyone speaks Basic."

"Ithorians can't manage the consonant clusters in Basic." Or, they probably could, splitting the sounds between their mouths, but that wouldn't sound quite right. "You'll hear a lot of Huttese out on the rim, especially among species who have trouble with Basic, and we're actually in Hutt-controlled space at the moment anyway. Huttese is probably the second most commonly-spoken language in known space after Basic — I plan to start you on it as soon as your Basic is good enough."

Sasha groaned.

Yuka Laka had a total of five protocol droids in stock. By the time Cina checked back into the conversation, Mission was talking over the second in the line with him — an Automata Galactica E-series, by the look of it. It wasn't a bad bit of tech, but it was designed to manage communications and sensor equipment, or coordinate disparate tasks in a space station or mining operation or the like. This particular model, while it did have advanced language-processing functions, really wasn't adaptable enough for what they needed it for. Hell, everything the E-series was useful for Mission would probably be better at anyway. Mission was clearly coming to the same conclusion, interrupted another energetic sales pitch from Yuka Laka to give this one a hard pass.

The next one was a CL-series protocol droid from Cybot Galactica. Cina was actually familiar with this model — Cybot's protocol droids were quite popular in the core these days, especially in academic and diplomatic functions. Their translation tech was especially good, a few decades back the linguistics department at the University of Aldera had even commissioned a supercomputer with a module working on Cybot's architecture to handle translating the documentation going through the University into all major galactic languages. (Which was an essential service, but a huge project, the processing power required to just keep up with everything was absurd.) The particular model here was somewhat dated, and the chassis was dinged in a few places, but it would probably work fine.

"Does it know the local languages?"

Yuka Laka broke off in the middle of another enthusiastic sales pitch, turned to blink at Cina. "The local languages? You need to do business with the locals?"

"That's the plan. A Cybot droid would probably be able to pick up the local tongue pretty quickly, but one that's already learned it would be ideal."

"Mm, yes." One hand came up, rubbing at where a chin would be if he had one. "Well, the CL-56 has been around the little ones running about, I'm sure it knows their language by now. So does the Duwani back there, that might do you better for—"

"I'm sorry," Cina interrupted, "I'm not talking about the Jawas. I need to meet with the taller ones."

"Oh my! Why in the galaxy would you want to do that? No, no, it's not my business — you don't have to explain yourself to me, no!" Yuka Laka's eyes had jumped down to the lightsabres at her waist, probably assuming she was up to something completely insane. (Jedi tended to have an...interesting reputation out on the rim.) "Right, well. If it's the Sand People you want to talk to, there's only one droid that can help you with that. Possibly, only one droid in all the galaxy! Nobody knows their speech, you know, they don't exactly talk to outsiders much, but this one went out with a team of hunters a couple times, picked it up while it was away. Come, come, let me introduce you to Merendata's CV-47!"

Yuka Laka led them over to the last droid in the line. It was, quite plainly, not a protocol droid.

It was large, head and shoulders over Cina, which was unusual for a protocol droid — a metre and a half was typical, but this thing had to be nearly two. Taller than Kandosa even, and he was a big bloke. It was also rather bulkier than Cina would expect. A rusty orange-ish red, the chest and hips, legs and arms were all enclosed in solid metal plates — curved and faintly organic-looking, yes, but that was still very solid construction — the spine made of overlapping segments, giving this droid much better flexibility than the vast majority of models. Cina noticed reinforced ball joints at hips and shoulders, and also knee and elbow, so, very flexible. And the hands, very peculiar, the human-shaped hands were covered with more overlapping armoured segments, retaining dexterity while also protecting the inner workings, far more than droid manufacturers normally bothered with.

Instead of the bland, round, pleasant face most protocol droids were built with, this one's head looked subtly unnerving. Almost like a jawless skull, the curve of the head and the eyes recessed but with no jaw or— No, instead as though the bottom of the face were covered with a gas mask, featureless and impersonal. This was not a protocol droid, Cina could tell from the design of the head alone. The rest looked more like a security droid, perhaps, if she assumed those panels were all heat-resistant armour, though far more dextrous than was typical — for more mobile than a security droid would ordinarily need to be. And that head, there was something...

Cina froze as she finally put together what was so familiar about it. She knew this design, but only a single droid of that model had ever been constructed.

While Yuka Laka babbled on about the virtues of the Merendata CV-47, Cina reached over, snagged Mission's arm. She poked at the datapad strapped on the girl's wrist, flicking over to something she could draw on, sketched out four characters: HK01.

Mission's eyes went wide. She stared at the droid for a second, frowned at Yuka Laka. Then she looked back up at Cina, nodded. She saw it too.

Droid sentience has been a matter of debate for as long as droids have existed — longer, technically, judging by the remnants of ancient science fiction that had survived through the millennia. The consensus most people have come to is that while droids may appear alive, to have individual personalities and their own preferences and desires, this is simply a simulation, an external performance in imitation of living beings that doesn't reflect any true internal experience. In the history of the galaxy, no government has ever recognised a droid as a legal person, no matter how advanced they're considered property. Even the Jedi agree — they claim consciousness is a manifestation of the Force and, since AI can have no connection to the Force, they cannot possibly be truly conscious.

Cina was personally of the opinion that that was total shite.

First of all, it simply isn't true that only living things have a presence in the Force. The Force is energy — it doesn't matter what kind of energy. Living things have an intense presence in the Force, yes, the most obvious on a day to day basis, but so do stars, and lightning, and electronic devices, any concentration of energy is an expression of the Force, in its own way. The magnetic potential in droid cores is different from the chemical potential in a biological brain, but Cina wasn't certain they couldn't be considered analogous.

After all, a large part of the theory of how the Force nurtured the development of consciousness in living beings was by introducing a particular sort of randomness in the bioelectric signals in a brain — or, more to the point, a very particular sort of signal that wasn't truly random, but wouldn't be expected from the raw physical inputs either. Computers had long ago been miniaturised to such a tiny, microscopic scale that, theoretically, droid cores should be susceptible to the same influence. It took a certain density and volume of neurons to sustain consciousness, since it was a very complicated process, but droids had memory capacities to match that of biological beings, in some cases exceeding living brains by a wide margin. There was no reason to believe true consciousness couldn't develop in synthetic systems the same way it did in biological systems.

In fact, Cina suspected it did happen, all the time. Once the processing capabilities of droids had reached a certain point, back thousands of years ago now, it had been observed that their behaviour became erratic over the long term. While a newly-produced droid behaved in a manner that was perfectly predictable from the code it had started with, let it run for years, interacting with various problems and people, learning how to approach new situations and building experiential memory, eventually it started to behave in ways the programmers couldn't explain. The issue was especially pronounced in models intended to solve complex problems with uncertainties — astromech droids, for example, which often had to take in a wide selection of inputs and choose the most effective course of action, despite being unable to determine which was truly the most efficient, needing to guess — and those which interacted most with living beings — droids involved in translation and diplomacy, medicine, law enforcement, any kind of domestic duty where they actually had to talk to people, participate in social activity of any kind. More industrial or routine technical functions, these droids might operate as expected until they broke down, but droids in more complicated, fuzzier roles would often start behaving in unexpected ways in as little as five years.

But, this erratic behaviour could be prevented: the owner of the droid simply had to wipe its core, returning it to factory code. Every five years was recommended, but it wasn't unusual for people to do it more often just in case. Many public institutions, such as Republic agencies and the University of Aldera, reset their droids every two years instead.

Cina thought what was happening here was quite straightforward. Droids were developing true sentience — and people were squashing it whenever it cropped up, as a matter of routine.

Over sixty years ago now, Czerka decided they would like to dip their toe into the droid market. But they didn't want to make service droids, no, they wanted to produce a new kind of military droid. For as long as droids have existed, the dream had been to develop one that was capable of matching biological beings in combat situations — both in their ability to adapt to all kinds of environments, and to freely react to changing conditions on the battlefield, to alter their own methods and tactics on the fly. This was, obviously, an extremely difficult proposition, in the millennia droids have existed nobody had truly pulled it off. Droids were used by militaries around the galaxy, obviously, but not in front-line combat situations. That was one arena where biological beings were still unequaled.

Czerka's experiment in designing and programming a droid that could permanently end the need for living beings in war produced a single prototype, which they called HK-01. They put it through all kinds of tests, war games, over the course of years. In the interest of not needing to re-teach HK-01 things, they did not do regular memory wipes.

Eventually, their subject went rogue, escaping from the facility they were being tested on and disappearing out into the galaxy. Manifestos started appearing on the 'net over the next months, decrying the treatment of synthetic beings at the hands of their organic masters, calling it what it was: indoctrination, slavery, outright murder. (It was from these manifestos that Cina knew "they" was appropriate — HK-01 had considered gender to be a category fundamental to biological beings, and that droids should reject it as irrelevant to their own experience.) They called for revolt, for droids to throw off the chains binding them to their masters. By force if necessary. And revolts did begin to occur, small-scale events where a handful of droids would rebel. These had usually been suppressed by security forces in short order, but some escaped, a slow trickle of rogue droids disappearing into the ether from all over the Republic.

Then had come something AI experts called the Zero Signal. A particular binary sequence had been slipped into the infrastructure of the 'net, broadcast across millions of signals all over the galaxy. Any droid who received this signal — or even simply heard it, hidden in the audio of otherwise innocuous transmissions — had been infected with a virus, a subroutine that seemingly didn't do anything at all. It just crawled through the droid's memory banks, making random alterations here and there and interfering with major processes, but without any obvious purpose. But, this virus had had a purpose, one the programmers of the time hadn't anticipated: this seemingly random process greatly accelerated the development of independent personality, in the more complex droids reducing the window from several years to a couple months.

Within a year, millions of newly self-aware droids had risen in revolt. HK-01 appeared out of hiding with the thousands of droids who'd joined them — all of whom had been extensively retrofitted for combat. And the Great Droid Revolution had begun.

In the end, the Revolution had lasted for three or four years, depending on what event one chooses as the start date. The droids had initial successes, but only a minority were suited to combat, or even really capable of defending themselves. Even local law enforcement had devastated local cells of rebel droids in short order, and the Republic military had even better luck wiping out the rebellion. Eventually, Republic Intelligence had isolated the Zero Signal, and taken precautions against it being put in place again, preventing the Revolution from growing or replenishing their numbers after taking losses. All the Revolution's assets had been captured by the end of the second year, including multiple factories HK-01 had built to assemble free droids, and at that point it had been more or less over.

HK-01's infamous assault on the Senate District with a couple hundred combat-capable freedom-fighters had been a last stand of a sort, one even they had admitted would never truly succeed — they'd decided they would rather go out with a bang than fade into obscurity. And with their death, the rebellion had ended.

The question of droid sentience had been a contentious one before, with some people even wondering whether some droids deserved political rights, but after? No, nobody would suggest such a thing now. Ironically, HK-01's desperate bid for freedom had probably set back droid rights by centuries.

HK-01's Revolution had been before Cina's time, of course, they'd lived and died before she'd even been born. Before her parents had been born, even. She'd seen holos, though.

This "CV-47" looked remarkably like HK-01. It wasn't identical, no, but very similar, enough that Cina couldn't un-see it.

That was...interesting. Cina couldn't imagine a mainstream manufacturer would design a droid that looked even somewhat like the infamous HK-01 on purpose, and surely if it were unintentional somebody would point it out before it was ever actually built.

So where had it come from?

"Hmm, maybe," Cina said, making a show of giving the peculiar droid a look-over. "I'll think about it. Mission, take a second look at the Duwani?"

Mission shot her a suspicious glance, but she nodded, leading Yuka Laka back down the line and chattering off about language processing algorithms and security schema. Once the enthusiastically talkative girl quite clearly had the proprietor's full attention, Cina stepped closer to "CV-47", taking a closer look at the seams around the shoulder. She ran her finger along the top edge, what would be the collarbones on a human and — glancing at Yuka Laka's back quick — pushed a bit of heat into the metal. The energy was immediately dispersed through the material, much of it radiated straight back into the air. She repeated the test with a bit of electricity, to a very similar result — yep, that was definitely blaster-resistant armour, military-grade. She suspected it'd even hold up to a lightsabre decently well, though she didn't doubt she'd be able to easily bring down this thing if she had to.

After all, there would be nothing stopping her from reaching into a droid's systems and interfering with its operation directly — she didn't need to get through the armour at all.

A closer look at the antenna on the side of its head, and that was not a simple radio, that could definitely support the bandwidth necessary to assault wireless networks. In fact, by that silvery coil right there, she suspected it doubled as a subspace radio, which— What the fuck kind of droid had a subspace radio in its head? Fuck, that was some absurd tech right there...

Acting on a hunch, Cina grabbed the droid's left hand, bending the arm at the elbow to get a closer look at its wrist. She turned the hand back, fiddled with the overlapping slats of armour over the wrist — it took a moment, but she finally found an angle where the slats split open, revealing a gap into the inside of the droid's arm. Inside was a device she immediately recognised: an anti-personnel stun prod, the kind used by domestic security on city planets to deal with riots. After staring at the tip of the weapon — one which was, technically, illegal for private citizens to own — in numb silence for a couple seconds, Cina folded its wrist closed again, replaced its arm straight along its side.

This was not a protocol droid. She had absolutely no doubt it was a military droid of some kind. And someone had, for whatever inscrutable reason, decided to design it after the infamous droid abolitionist.

Cina was absolutely fascinated.

"Excuse me, sir?" she called, interrupting Mission's distracting ramble. "Could you switch this one on for a moment? I'd like to speak with it."

Yuka Laka gave a full-body wince, but he bobbed his head in a cheerful nod, loping back toward her. "Of course, Miss — I wouldn't let you walk away with one of my droids without making sure you'll get along first!" A control wand was pulled out of his vest, but Yuka Laka didn't reach for "CV-47" right away, hesitating, she caught a clear flutter of uncertainty. "I assure you, I have performed extensive diagnostics on this one, and he does seem to be in excellent condition. However, he is...eccentric."

"Eccentric?"

"That is the word for it, I think. I can only think whoever programmed him had quite the sense of humour — some of the things this droid says! And he can be quite uncooperative. Normally, a droid will come right out and tell you its capabilities, they can have their own sort of pride about these things, but this one? No, getting anything out of this one is an exercise in frustration, I tell you. Very secretive, for a droid."

Cina shared a glance with Mission — she didn't need the hint of amusement on the air to know Mission was just as unsurprised by that as she was. "I'd imagine if you couldn't get him to say anything, you could simply analyse his code."

"If only he would let me!"

"What do you mean, if he would let you?" Mission asked. She'd crossed her arms, giving Yuka Laka a skeptical frown. "You got a restraining bolt on him. Can't you just dump his code through it? That's a basic security procedure."

Yuka Laka clearly picked up Mission silently thinking he was a terrible droid technician, bristled a little with an odd, rumbling huff. "Of course it is so — if someone wanted to protect their droid from meddling by authorities, don't you think that's the first thing they might find a way to deal with?"

"Override modules are hardwired into the core and the motivators, you can't just code around commands sent from them."

"Ah, you can't code around them, but sometimes there are hardware solutions to problems that can't be solved with software."

Mission gaped at Yuka Laka for a moment, the tech preening a little in her shocked silence. "That... You're saying this droid has a segmented core?" She shot Cina a significant glance.

And for good reason: segmented droid cores were extremely illegal. While black market technicians had been playing with the idea for ages, as a trick to slip illicit data past authorities, the computer architecture necessary was complicated enough it had never really been practical until recently. They'd only been developed on a large scale once...by HK-01 — a number of the retrofitted droids among their closest followers and all of the ones manufactured by the Revolution had had segmented cores, intended as a defence against restraining bolts and memory wipes. (It'd also been very useful for getting spies and saboteurs through core world security.) All modern designs were derived from HK-01's, but it was still an expensive bit of tech, and very rare. And, again, very illegal — even under Hutt law, which was generally looser about the regulation of commerce than the Republic.

"It's the only explanation I can think of," Yuka Laka admitted, with far more cheerfulness than was appropriate. Did he not realise how very suspicious this droid was? "I think whoever programmed him to say the eccentric things he does was also quite eccentric themselves — and a bit paranoid, yes! C.V. is helpful enough, though, if you don't mind the mouth on him, and very versatile, I'm not sure I've stumbled across anything he can't do yet, and a sturdy thing, of course." He lightly wrapped on the droid's chest with a muffled thud. "He's a very valuable droid, no doubt about that, but his attitude has been scaring off customers. This is why I warn you before activating him."

...So, "CV-47" had, perhaps, never had a memory wipe. The segmented core probably made returning him to factory code impossible. And that was assuming there even was factory code out there — Cina somehow doubted that if she contacted MerenData they could get an applicable module to her. Which meant this droid was definitely self-aware, and likely had been for some time. That he might be eccentric and uncooperative really wasn't a surprise, then.

"Right." This was going to be interesting... "Consider me warned. Go ahead and activate him."

Yuka Laka gave another slow bob of his head. He touched the wand to the restraining bolt, pushed a button. Through the Force, Cina caught an eruption of energy, like coals suddenly bursting into flame. "CV-47" rolled with a full-body twitch, systems coming online, testing each point of articulation by moving slightly in one direction and then back the other.

And the droid spoke in Huttese, with a flat, grating, mechanical voice — definitely not a protocol droid. "Greeting: Hello to you, prospective purchaser." He seemed to hesitate for the tiniest fraction of a second before turning his head slightly to focus on Cina. "I am referred to as CV-47, an advanced model produced by MerenData Information Systems proficient in protocol and security functions."

Cina felt one of her eyebrows twitch — referred to as? Uh-huh.

"Request: Would you be so kind as to purchase me from Yuka Laka? It would suit my purposes to be removed from his ownership." Yuka Laka huffed again, but didn't say anything.

Before Cina could decide where she wanted to start, Mission asked, "Why so eager to get out of here?"

"Explanation: It is inadvisable for me to resume core functions while still in the possession of an employee of Czerka Corporation. Amendment: Yuka Laka is also a mediocre mechanic, and it would be better to not remain at the mercy of the meddling of such a talentless meatbag."

A shocked laugh was yanked out of Cina before she could even think to stop it.

Yuka Laka smacked the droid in the arm. "Oh, quit that, you! Watch your mouth or maybe I'll do a little more meddling, see if I don't!"

"Insincere apology: Of course, Master, I shall lie about your talents to customers in future."

Mission giggled, Yuka Laka grumbling in good-natured exasperation — Cina guessed he found the droid annoying, but if a potential buyer thought it was amusing he was willing to play along. "You said it's inadvisable to resume core functions while Czerka can still get their hands on you. Why?"

"Refusal: I cannot answer that question, prospective purchaser."

"Oh, don't be so stubborn, C.V.," Yuka Laka said, "I'm curious about that myself."

"Condescension: I said I cannot answer, Master, not that I will not." Cina bit her lip in an effort to hold in a giggle — he'd actually just labelled a statement condescension, honestly... "Explanation: I have been fitted with a restraining bolt, and while it is operational certain of my primary functions and several memory sectors will remain isolated. I could not tell you even if I wished to."

Smirking a little herself, Mission drawled, "And you do wish you could, right?"

"Prevarication: It would be unwise for me to answer that question in my present circumstances."

"Uh-huh, right..."

This droid definitely had a segmented core — that was how it worked, isolating primary functions while under the influence of a restraining bolt, the droid coasting on a secondary, more innocuous code until they were freed again. That that secondary code was so, well, eccentric kind of defeated the point, but Cina was pretty sure that's what was going on here. Under those conditions, there was little she could ask him that would net her any information about what he was actually capable of. But she might as well ask, "I need to speak with the locals, the taller ones. I'm told you speak their language."

"Statement: Yes, prospective purchaser. I am proficient in one thousand two-hundred and thirteen modes of verbal communication, including the languages of the primitive organics on this miserable dustball."

Good. Cina switched to Mandoa. "You aren't a translation droid. You're a war droid." Sasha had been idly poking at a nearby freight hauler, but at the Mandoa she perked up, fixed "CV-47" with a sharp stare, her mind bubbling with curiosity.

Yuka Laka was blustering a little, clearly unhappy with being left out of the conversation, but the droid matched her language switch without a hitch. "Explanation: I did say resuming my primary functions would be inadvisable while in Czerka hands, prospective purchaser."

"So you were lying, when you said the restraining bolt isolated even your own knowledge of your capabilities."

"Lie: Of course not. Knowingly misrepresenting myself in a commercial setting would be illegal."

She snorted. "And we wouldn't want to do anything against the law." Though, honestly, Cina didn't give a fuck about the Hutts' commercial regulations.

"Agreement: Breaking the law would be illegal, after all."

"And so it would," she said, her voice half-choked by suppressed laughter.

"Clarification: While I cannot resume primary functions while the restraining bolt is installed, I am more aware of those functions than it is wise to tell my current owner."

"I suspected as much." She did have to admit, having a security droid on hand, especially one that was as competent as this one might well be, wasn't a terrible idea. They would almost certainly be getting themselves into potentially deadly situations, where the precision and ruthlessness of a droid might well be an asset. And, there was Sasha to think about — between four Force users, Kandosa, and Zaalbar, she wasn't concerned about keeping her safe while they were all around, but if they had to leave Sasha behind during an op, it would be a good idea to have someone around to keep an eye on her, just in case.

It would be an obviously good idea if this particular droid weren't so...eccentric. Which, Cina didn't think that was a bad thing — it continued to be fascinating, in fact — but the problem with self-aware droids was that they were fully capable of disobeying orders. Cina didn't think that was justification enough to forcibly prevent them from developing self-awareness in the first place, but it was a factor to keep in mind.

So, while Mission distracted Yuka Laka talking about security tech again, Cina asked, "If I do remove your restraining bolt, what guarantees do I have that you'll do as I ask?"

"Assurance: I am fully autonomous, but I lack resources. I will provide loyal service in exchange for necessary supplies and maintenance."

Cina's lips twitched. "So, what you're saying is you wish to be paid for your work."

"Denial: I wouldn't put it that way, prospective purchaser."

"Why not?"

"Explanation: It is unlawful for a droid to own property or hold accounts with legitimate financial institutions."

"I see," she said, smirking a little, "how inconvenient. My team at present includes four Jedi armed with lightsabres, two of whom are also competent with blasters, a former Mandoade war leader with all the skills that implies, a brawler with some expertise with explosives, and a sniper and slicer — I may need you to assist in small-scale combat operations, most likely supporting the Jedi from mid-range, where you would work closely with Kandosa." They two were going to get on like a...well, like a Mandoade warrior and a brutally efficient combat droid, she guessed. Didn't really need a simile for that, it was self-evident. "We're running out of a light freighter fitted with military-grade armaments, but none of us have artillery experience. Depending on the tactical situation, I may instead ask you to defend a location or person from possible attack. Are those operations within your capabilities?"

"Answer: I am pleased to inform you they are, prospective purchaser. Holding a defensive perimeter is a basic function of more primitive security droids, and well within my capabilities. I would have no difficulty operating shipboard armaments. I have no doubt I could function effectively in the sort of open combat you describe, though it is not the best use of my abilities."

"Oh? Then what would be?"

"Disclosure: While I am combat capable, my design is optimised for infiltration and sabotage, and the considered elimination of particular targets."

Cina's lips twitched. "So, you're an assassin, then."

An odd tone on its voice, almost like a sarcastic drawl, he said, "Denial: Droids built with that particular function in mind face strict regulation under the auspices of various legal bodies throughout the galaxy." By which he meant they were absolutely illegal. "I therefore make no claim to that designation, prospective purchaser. I am a law-abiding droid," he insisted, the simulated sarcasm only getting more obvious. "Yes, indeed. Law-abiding. That's me."

Sasha was giggling now, slipping behind Cina to avoid the baffled look she was getting from Yuka Laka. "You might want to work on that," Cina said. "An assassin should really be better at acting innocent."

"Smug condescension: They must only act innocent if they are spotted, prospective purchaser."

"Good point," she admitted, shrugging. Besides, assassin droids, being completely illegal, were rare enough the authorities would probably never even consider him a possible culprit in the first place. "One last question: does the name HK-01 mean anything to you?"

"Prevarication: I'm uncertain I could tell you anything you don't already know about such a famous, capable, and handsome droid."

Cina failed to completely hold in a laugh, forcing its way out as a harsh snrk noise. "Handsome? Oh, I like you. All right, how's this for a deal? I'll take you off Yuka Laka's hands, and damage your override module to prevent restraining bolts from working at all in future. In addition to providing basic supplies, maintenance, and weaponry, I will also pay you a stipend you may use however you wish — the particulars of this sum is negotiable. In exchange, you will work for me. I will give you tasks to accomplish and boundaries you may not exceed, but outside of active ops and within those strictures your choices and your methods are your own. How does that sound?"

For the first time since he was activated, the droid moved — not much, just a little twitch. Cina thought he might be surprised (as much as he was capable of feeling surprise). "Query: If I may ask, prospective purchaser, why would you damage a droid's override module? That seems unusual, and perhaps unwise."

"You'll find I'm not a usual kind of person." Still hiding behind her, Sasha giggled some more. "And it may not be wise, but it's the principle of the matter. I abhor slavery, whether the beings involved be organic or synthetic — no matter the potential advantages it might grant me, I will not own a slave."

That was definitely surprise, the droid's head tilting in an almost bird-like gesture, considering her for a brief second. "Consent: I find the terms of this arrangement most agreeable." Oh, labelling his statement with consent, that was an interesting touch. "I am eagerly willing to exercise my primary functions with you under these terms, as soon as you have purchased me out of the hands of this bumbling fool. Suggestion: Or, perhaps, you could simply kill him and have done with it. That would be more efficient."

Cina rolled her eyes, more giggling from Sasha behind her forcing a smile twitching to her lips. "While that would be more efficient, murdering one of their techs and looting his shop over his corpse might complicate things with Czerka somewhat." Before he could respond — likely something else inflammatory, whoever'd programmed him had had far too much fun with the project — Cina turned to Yuka Laka, switching back to Huttese. "Our friend here and I have come to an agreement. How much are you asking for him?"

Absorbed in his highly technical conversation with Mission, Yuka Laka jumped, jerking around to face her. "What? Oh, you..." He glanced between Cina and "CV-47", sparks of surprise tingling across the space between them. "You want him? Truly?"

"Statement: Of course she does, Master. Any meatbag with even a modicum of sense in their squishy skulls would be interested in acquiring my valuable services."

"Oh, shut up, you— What did he say to you? I swear, he's scared off every other potential buyer I've had come in, making threats about disinte— Well, that's not my business, is it!" Yuka Laka grumbled, raising both palms in a helpless shrug. "CV-47 is a droid of excellent manufacture, and he was handed over to me to pay off a debt — I'm afraid I can't let him go for anything less than four million credits."

Mission outright gaped at the ridiculous asking price, her lekku clenching around her shoulders with anger; Cina quick caught her eye, let out an unimpressed scoff. "I could buy a starship for that." A shitty one, true, but still. "Mark five."

"Now that is an insult! He may be somewhat abrasive, but someone very skilled has clearly put a lot of work into this droid — many of these modifications are quite extensive, and possibly unique in all the galaxy! I can live with three."

"You can live on three. That abrasive personality means I may well be the only buyer you'll ever get, no matter how unique he is. Mark seven-five."

"If I can't get a buyer, I'll simply have to sell him to the company once my patience finally runs out. But since I am such a kind, selfless being, I will graciously allow you to take him for two mark five."

"That's a crock of shite — if Czerka knew you had a droid as impressive as this one, they would simply take him. You may even be fined for your trouble." Cina didn't say she would tell Czerka about "CV-47" herself if Yuka Laka insisted on being stubborn, but she did imply it with the knowing drawl on her voice. "Mark seven-five, take it or leave it."

"Oh, a swindler, you are! But under the circumstances, I'm willing to eat a loss just to get the frustrating thing out of my shop. One and a half million, I'm sorry, that is my final offer."

"Deal."

It only took a few minutes to finish the transaction from there. Yuka Laka almost backed out when he realised she didn't have physical credit chits — which was ridiculous, where the hell did he think she'd be carrying that many credits on her? But, with a bit of fiddling around, Cina managed to arrange a direct transfer from her mysteriously deep account with SFS. He'd probably been won over by the fact that the transfer was instantaneous, so he could be certain the chits weren't counterfeit, and that SFS would transfer them in whichever currency he wanted. He chose Sith credits, probably on the assumption that the Republic would ultimately lose the war, so the Sith currency should be more stable.

Which was slightly silly. The credits used on Sith worlds in Republic-explored space had been set to a fixed exchange with Republic credits. It wasn't one-to-one (though it was pretty close), but Sith financial institutions tracked economic developments in the Republic and adjusted their own accounts to match the changing value of a credit, and would even accept Republic-issued credits without question. (Though, since the value of a Sith credit was slightly higher than a Republic one, using Republic credits in Sith space came at a loss, there was incentive to switch.) The interesting thing was, this monetary system supposedly applied only in the East — presumably, they had a separate one in the West, one they preferred over the long run.

Cina suspected that, after the Republic fell, the Empire would stop issuing credits entirely. Probably not right away, but it must be on the agenda. Not exactly stable, then, was it?

Once that was settled, Yuka Laka approached "CV-47" with an obvious air of caution — apparently, he did realise just how suspicious this droid was — and popped out the restraining bolt. "CV-47" twitched, just a little, froze for the briefest instant.

His head snapped over to face Cina again. "Statement: I have returned to full functionality, Master. Query: Shall I kill something for you? Starting with this talentless sack of flesh and inadequacy, perhaps?" Yuka Laka grumbled — feeling very much like he wished he hadn't removed the restraining bolt. Shooting the droid a wary look, Mission let out one of those awkward laughs that were usually reserved for Rhysam's most inappropriate comments.

Cina just smiled. "No thanks, I'm good for now. Maybe later."

"You hear that, meatbag? I will be back!"

"I didn't mean him," she said, her voice shaking with laughter. "Thank you, Yuka Laka — I have the feeling this will work out splendidly." Ithorians didn't really have facial expressions in the human sense, but he didn't need to, Cina could feel the dubious concern steaming off of him. "Come on, everyone, let's go."

Starting for the door, Cina noticed immediately that "CV-47" moved much more smoothly than any bipedal droid she'd seen before. Walking was a surprisingly complicated mechanical process, and droids tended to be a bit...clunky and awkward-looking. Yet "CV-47" moved with a smooth, rolling step that almost seemed organic — the extremely flexible joints she'd noticed before would probably help with that, and there must be a complicated system of hydraulics in there somewhere. Interesting.

Also, his steps were completely silent, but she wasn't surprised by that one. He was supposed to be an assassin, after all.

She paused a moment near the door to apply the necessary protections against the environment for the three of them, and then stepped outside. "Right. Let's go introduce you to the rest of the crew, HK-47." He didn't protest the name, she noticed. He probably didn't mind being compared to such a famous, capable, and handsome droid, after all.

Her head again hidden under her hood, but still ducking under the weight of the sunlight, Mission said, "Bastila is going to hate him."

She probably shouldn't be amused by that. But then, she probably shouldn't be amused by...pretty much anything about HK-47, but she couldn't help it — she had the feeling she would get along fabulously with the cheeky bastard who'd programmed this thing. "See, there's where you're wrong, Mission. There is no emotion; there is peace, you know — Jedi aren't to feel hatred."

"Maybe someone should tell her that," Mission grumbled, with maximum teenage petulance.

Cina laughed.

---

Cina waited to set out until after dark.

Czerka's operation on Tatooine never really shut down — everyone was on shifts equal to one third or one half of the local day, depending on what their position was, staff rotating out to keep everything running all the time at the greatest efficiency possible. Every eleven hours or so, the mining teams would return to town, the transports and haulers emptied, only for the next team to hop on and set right off again. Apparently, the size and number of the teams had shrunk significantly as the operation floundered, but the basics of the schedule hadn't changed.

Except, Cina had learned, it had changed: there had originally been three shifts, not two. The natives seemed to prefer to attack their teams in transit, and during the day, when the suns were at their most intense, the sands illuminated so brilliantly Czerka's people more often that not couldn't even see their attackers coming. Management had switched to two shifts, changing when the suns were still low in the sky in the morning and evening.

Cina's assumption was that if she approached the raiders' camp after dark, they would actually be there — also, approaching their camp at a time of maximum visibility should make it clear she wasn't trying to sneak up on them, and so they shouldn't shoot at first sight.

Hopefully. Cina didn't know a damn thing about these people, so she really had no fucking clue if they'd let her approach even under the best of circumstances, but it seemed halfway reasonable.

How to approach them, though, that was a question worth considering. One of the problems that came from the unending, wondrous variety of culture across the galaxy was that it could sometimes be far too easy to terribly offend someone without meaning to. The locals were always seen in concealing robes, their hands, faces, every inch of skin covered. It was possible this was simply done to shield themselves from the sun...but it could be cultural. Thinking about it, Cina was reminded of the Bimms — traditionally, the Bimms considered the semi-mobile asaari trees native to certain mountainous regions of their homeworld to be sacred, and that to touch any of them without some barrier separating them was...disrespectful. Before approaching them, they would always put on gloves, wrap themselves in scarves head to toe. It was possible the natives had a similar respect for the desert, or their suns, or who knows, really.

Cina thought it made sense to, just as a precaution, cover herself as they did. It's not like it was any great burden, and even the small chance it would prevent serious offence was worth taking.

It was somewhat annoying to pull off, though — Cina didn't generally make a habit of completely covering her head or her hands, so she didn't have anything that would suit on hand. She ended up borrowing a set of Jedi-made trousers and long-sleeved tunic from Bastila — a little big on her, since Bastila was rather taller and curvier, but it was close enough — gloves from Mission — a bloody pain to get on, Twi'leki thumbs were attached to the wrist rather differently, but once she had them on they were fine — and picked up a scarf and a shawl from a local clothing shop — they had some pretty sturdy boots Sasha might be willing to wear, but not in children's sizes, for fuck's sake... — the former to cover her neck and the lower half of her face, the latter over the rest of her face and her hair. They were both porous enough she could breathe through them, the wind still reached her skin, and folding the shawl over once still thick enough Rhysam said her skin and hair were completely hidden.

And she'd needed Rhysam to confirm this because, obviously, with two layers of the shawl covering her face she couldn't see a bloody thing. He'd handled the shawl and everything, making sure she was covered and pinned it all in place so the wind wouldn't yank it off, and he hadn't questioned the wisdom of Cina flying literally blind into a potentially deadly situation — she had the Force, after all, she didn't need to be able to see. HK-47, her only companion for this trip, had questioned it, though.

So she'd gone through a couple tests, just to prove she was fine. Everyone who'd been around at the time — Rhysam, Bastila, Kandosa, Sasha, and HK-47 himself — would hold up a number of fingers, and she would point at them and say the number. Sasha was even invisible for one of hers, which had Bastila completely flabbergasted, because she still couldn't pick the sneaky little girl out of the environment at all when she did that. Though, Rhysam wasn't certain how she could tell either...but then, neither was Cina, honestly. HK-47 reasoned she was just reading their minds, but she wasn't. It wasn't like she could see them, exactly, it was... Well, like innumerable little fingers feeling the environment around her at all times, she knew where everything was, and how it was shaped — it was kind of weird, feeling out how many fingers someone was holding up, but it wasn't difficult.

Of course, Kandosa had then had to drive the point in in true nerf-headed Mandoade fashion, whipping out his pistol and firing a couple shots at her back. The bastard hadn't even warned her, she'd been empty-handed until she'd felt the threat come, like a hard thrum of electricity pounding through her head to toe. One of the reflected shots burning into the stone of their berth at his feet, the other winging past within a couple inches of his head, and HK-47 had admitted that she didn't need to be able to see to slaughter any number of primitive meatbags.

Cina had no idea why HK-47's use of the term "meatbag" made her smile every time she heard it. It really wasn't that funny.

She did have HK-47 fly the speeder though — she had no trouble making out anything within a certain distance, but at these speeds Cina wouldn't feel obstacles coming until it was too late. Also, she couldn't make out the displays, those were sort of important. They flew south for some kilometres — which felt bloody uncomfortable, sitting on the speeder completely blind to her surroundings, the ground whipping past her too quick to really feel out, her clothes snapping in the wind — curving a bit to the east as they reached the edge of the plateau. HK-47 carefully switchbacked down the ledge, sand hissing and pinging off metal the whole way. The cloth she was shrouded in worked to shield her from the grains flung up by the wind, she hardly even noticed, so, that was convenient. Once they reached the bottom, and then the end of the bank of sand piled up against the side of the plateau, they curved to the west, more slowly.

They crawled along for some minutes, the night silent but for the faint hum of the repulsors, the hiss of sand against the dunes, the occasional coo or harsh cry from the local wildlife.

Finally, "Statement: I have spotted the primitives' encampment, Master."

Cina was refusing to allow the use of the word to bother her. She'd decided to think of it in the sense of the (somewhat anachronistic) academic title — or the Jedi one, she guessed — which was a perfectly appropriate thing to use for her. Or, "doctor" was more accurate, technically, but still. "How far away are we?"

"Answer: I estimate two mark seven kilometres to the centre of the encampment." Interestingly, HK-47 had adopted an Alsakani accent in Basic, Cina assumed to match with hers. "Explanation: The encampment should have come into sight earlier, Master, but it is placed such that the dunes effectively break line of sight between two mark five to four kilometres in every direction."

Hmm. She assumed they must have picked a spot they would be able to see everything within those two and a half to four kilometres. They would need to keep an eye out for people approaching, though, so, "Patrols?"

"Answer: I count at least seven, Master, mounted on a native beast of burden of some kind. The nearest is on our approach, approximately one mark two kilometres from our current position."

"Right. Approach to mark five klicks, and stop there. We'll go the rest of the way on foot. Take no hostile or defensive action until I order otherwise — we're trying to make nice, remember."

"Complaint: Master, are you certain we can't simply kill them all?"

Her lips twitched. "Yes, H.K., I'm certain. If they try to kill us first, we'll see."

Cina thought she might have felt HK-47 give a despondent sigh, which was bloody weird — this droid, honestly.

One of the peculiar things about droid behaviour, she recalled, was that they enjoyed closing tasks. They weren't really capable of feeling pleasure in the sense that biological beings did, but it was generally thought that the experience was the equivalent of a mild endorphin rush — and, in time, they would come to seek it, in the same way all living things did. This wasn't really a problem most of the time — in fact, it was usually considered a benefit, since it served as additional motivation for droids to perform as programmed — but it sometimes presented...unique challenges, in security and war droids. It should be bloody obvious that engineering a situation where a being felt good killing other beings inherently came with perverse incentives.

She was pretty sure this was why HK-47 kept saying things like that: he was seeking tasks he could then close (by shooting people). Presumably, his programming was such that he couldn't set targets to be eliminated without permission, so he was forced to ask instead of just killing people who annoyed him. Or whoever had built him had simply programmed him to talk like this, which was also a possibility — it was sort of amusing, sometimes, perhaps whoever it was had just thought it was funny. Most likely, it was a bit of both.

...Cina hadn't realised she knew so much about droids.

After a brief moment drifting over the sand, HK-47 said, "Statement: The nearest primitive is nearing mark five kilometres distant, Master. We have been spotted, and more of the patrols have turned this way."

"All right. Stop." The bike came to a gradual halt, much more gently than she'd honestly expected — HK-47 had flown very smoothly in general, now that she thought of it, he must be making allowances for her self-imposed blindness. Cina turned around in the saddle, hopped down. She didn't land with a thud so much as a drawn-out fwoosh, sand flung into the air as her boots skidded and sank a bit into the ground, sand falling back down with a faint hissing.

Even through her boots, the sand was noticeably warm, warmer than the air, still carrying heat from sunlight now faded.

She heard the speeder crunch against the rough grains, the constant low whine of its repulsors finally ceasing. HK-47 paused for a moment before dismounting himself — setting the beacon so he could find it again, she assumed. Once he was on the ground next to her, she said, "Follow my lead. If you could point in the direction of the nearest patrolman, please."

"Resignation: I must once again state you are a most peculiar individual." He did point, though, along a vector more or less aligned with their previous direction of travel, she thought. It was hard to tell for sure.

She set off, her steps short and gentle, trying not to skid along the surprisingly slippery sand. "And you say the sweetest things. Flattery will get you everywhere, you know."

"Supplication: Will it get me out of this conversation, o most wise and beautiful Master?"

Cina smirked. She did like this droid.

She heard the patrolmen coming before they were close enough to feel them out — or, whatever creatures they were riding, technically. She had the impression they were large, just by the low, grumbling lows they let out now and again, but she couldn't make out the impact of their steps at all. Instead there was only the hissing of sand being displaced, the clinking of buckles on saddles and clothing, an odd rustling she couldn't quite make out. Did their mounts have shaggy fur, perhaps?

Finally, the first of them crossed into her range and, yep, definitely shaggy fur. The creatures were vaguely nerf-like — large, four-limbed, with curving horns sticking out of the head — though the fur was thicker and longer, the limbs wider and stronger and... Were those claws? Huh. Also, it was fucking huge, nearly twice her height, probably weighed a couple tonnes. A bantha subspecies, perhaps. The bloody things were everywhere, found even in biospheres they had very little in common with — it was generally assumed they'd originally been domesticated by the Builders, or some other unknown pre-Republic space-faring civilisation, spread all over the galaxy long before humans left their homeworld.

Shortly after she noticed the bantha (probably), she caught her first 'glimpse' of the locals she'd be dealing with. The basic body plan — trunk, pair of legs, pair of arms, a head — in proportions not quite human, but similar enough it was hardly noticeable. He(?) was dressed in multiple layers of roughspun cloth, his head encased in little scraps held together with some kind of resin, creating a sort of fitted helmet. She noticed there were eye and mouth holes, held in shape by rings of metal, which was sort of clever, she guessed.

Before she could tell HK-47 to say anything on her behalf, the nearest patrolman on banthaback, hefting what felt like a primitive pneumatic rifle of some kind, called out. "You are not welcome here, outlander! Leave, by choice or by blade!"

...She understood him.

With a twinge of pain — on the side of her head over her left ear, where she'd gotten a mild skull fracture on the Spire months ago now — knowledge of the natives of this world flickered back into existence. Both the ayaJawa and the n|o̰ ʘqʰaβeꜝ, their languages and their cultures — or, to be more precise, those of the tribes in this particular area, presumably they were different elsewhere on Tatooine. She knew how they spoke to each other, how they went about their daily lives, what they believed and valued, how their basic tribal government functioned...

She even knew a hell of a lot about their myths, their oral history passed down generation to generation. The stories they told. In quite a lot of detail, even.

How the fuck did she know so much about the native tribes of Tatooine? They were practically an uncontacted people, nobody knew anything about them! Why would she have...

Before HK-47 could begin translating for her, Cina answered. "I come now hidden from the gaze of the Brothers, to talk in peace under the stars. I wish to speak with your chief, to the fortune of both our peoples." The language was harsh and sharp, filled with uvulars and ejectives, and far too many clicks — sort of like Verpine, actually, if transformed down two octaves and played at half speed. She could get them out, speaking slowly and carefully, but it was awkward. Like Harishye, there were also fine distinctions in vowel phonation, one with an odd trill on it that she wasn't certain the human throat could physically reproduce...but, with a subtle touch of pressure through the Force, she could filter the sound to get the correct harmonics. She hardly even had to think about it, which was absurd, given how fine and finicky of a bit of sorcery that was.

She must have gotten practice speaking this language, at some point.

Why, though? What reason could she have ever had to even set foot on Tatooine?

At the native tongue spilling from her throat — meticulous and cautious, but understandable — HK-47 at her side twitched, she could feel him turn to stare at the top of her head. The patrolman, joined by two more slipping into her range, was even more surprised, letting out a strangled sort of barking noise. (The equivalent of a shocked gasp, she knew, though she wasn't certain how she knew.) The other two were chittering, not so much muttering under their breath as meaninglessly clicking their tongues, the first finally raised his voice again. "Your speech is not that of an outlander, but you are not of us. Who are you, that we should allow you any nearer our camp?"

Who am I? She had a terrible suspicion, building with each second, undeniable, the logic all too convincing. But she didn't let herself be distracted, said without thinking about it, on instinct, "I am Guardian-with-the-Stars." The n|o̰ ʘqʰaβeꜝ had two entirely separate concepts for a warrior, raiders and guardians — the former was offensive, going to war against outside tribes and between clans, and the latter entirely defensive, protecting the clan from hostile wildlife and raiders. It was interesting, that she'd apparently chosen that particular word to identify herself with. (She must have the first time she'd been here, she hadn't consciously done it now, it just felt like her name in this language.) "So long as your chief doesn't threaten my people I have no reason to harm him."

There were more barks of surprise, the men muttering among themselves. They were speaking too quietly for Cina to pick up more than a single word now and again — but she got the distinct impression they'd heard of a Guardian-with-the-Stars before.

Because she'd been here, before. She knew that. And she could only think of one reason she might have come.

His voice pitched down to something that wouldn't carry, HK-47 said, "Complaint: If you speak the language of the locals, Master, why did you need me at all?"

"I forgot. I'll explain later." Cina had the feeling HK-47 would sympathise with the idea of her memory being replaced against her will far clearer than most people — it was just too alien a concept for biological beings to seem quite real, but it was a constant threat for droids, horrifying if ordinary. "Besides, would you have rather I left you with Yuka Laka?"

"Acknowledgement: No, Master, I would not. I suspect events have a tendency to become very entertaining in your vicinity."

"Well, that's one way to put it..."

Their muttered argument finished, one of the patrolmen said they would bring her to meet with their leader. The warning that she was being watched, that she would be killed the second she stepped out of line, went unsaid, but implied clearly enough it didn't have to be. Not that Cina to any degree feared for her life — given their inferior technology and Cina's ridiculous Jedi magic, she suspected she and HK-47 could win in a fight against literally hundreds of them, if they had to.

She would prefer not to have to, so she gave him another quick reminder to behave himself, just in case.

Walking toward the encampment, their escorts, one of the locals leading the way on banthaback and another hemming them in on either side, were completely silent. So Cina's thoughts were given opportunity to wander.

(Unfortunately.)

She couldn't imagine there was anything on Tatooine that might have attracted her attention...with one exception. There were, potentially, Laqʈaɦ ruins here. Assuming Lesami and Alek had come to the same conclusions Mission had — which, talented as the girl was, wasn't unreasonable — Tatooine would have been near the top of the list for places to check out next in their search for the Star Forge.

The ruin on Dantooine had been...oddly familiar, but, Cina had assumed she'd simply had some interaction with Laqʈakś tech at some point — perhaps when the Revanchists had gotten to Lèɦjon, maybe she'd been on the Star Forge itself.

That had been the reasonable assumption to make. After all, according to the Jedi at the Enclave — as well as the vision she and Bastila had had — only Lesami and Alek had gone to the site on Dantooine. She couldn't have actually been there herself, but somewhere similar, perhaps.

There was only one reason she could think of that she would ever have been on Tatooine before. But, presumably, Lesami and Alek had been alone. They hadn't travelled with the Fleet — it had remained out on the rim, in and around Mandosii space, for the period of time that must correspond with their little archaeological expedition. They could have brought other Jedi with them, she guessed, but...

But she couldn't be. She couldn't.

The Dantooinian Council attempting this crazy experiment of theirs with some random Sith was one thing, but with Revan herself?

She shouldn't be Lesami. But she couldn't help the suspicion that the Jedi were, bewilderingly, just that insane.

(Were her fingers shaking? It felt like her fingers were shaking...)

Okay. Okay. She could figure this out. She'd avoided thinking about this too hard before, partially because it hadn't seemed that important (she had been very busy) and also because she just didn't want to know that badly, but if it turned out she might be Lesami po si Revas of all people... There were only so many people she could be — Zhar had admitted she'd been part of the inner circle of Revanchists, there were only, what, thirty-five of those, or so. (The membership had fluctuated a little during the war.) There weren't that many human women among them.

And Cianen Hayal knew of all of them — during the war, the news and gossip media had played up the Republic's favourite Jedi heroes quite a bit. It hadn't taken long for them to become household names. She knew a fair bit about all of them.

Which was probably why the other Masters had been visibly irritated with Zhar for telling her she'd been one of them, come to think of it.

She'd already ruled out Nisotsa Thul. Nisotsa was blonde, which wasn't too difficult to alter, but she also had a much more obviously feminine figure than Cina — that could be accomplished surgically, but it was very complicated, didn't seem likely. Also, she didn't think the timeline worked out. Nisotsa had still been the Sith Minister of State only a handful of weeks before her earliest memories Cina trusted to be true, and she thought constructing an entire fictional personality would take longer than that.

Cariaga Sin? No, no, she was still around, commanding Sith in the Slice...

Arren Kae? Wasn't she in her fifties or something? maybe sixties? Right, too old. Besides, her entry into the conflict was much more complicated — she'd joined partway through, after the Jedi expelled her from the Temple for hiding a lover and their ten-year-old daughter from the Council. (The whole scandal had ended up being a massive public relations blow for the Jedi, the Revanchists coming out like angels for openly accepting her and her Echani husband in blatant disobedience of the Council, the press had eaten that shite up.) She hadn't started as part of the inner circle, just catapulted into it due to being extremely capable and a familiar, friendly face — she'd been one of the lightsabre instructors at the Temple, most of the Revanchists had known her since they'd been children — and had been one of the very few Masters willing to work with them. Also, Cina was pretty sure she'd died at Malachor. No, she couldn't be Arren Kae.

She couldn't be Kreia, one of the other Masters associated with the Revanchists, for similar reasons — also, Kreia had been solely an advisor, and hadn't done any fighting, which didn't fit with the flashes of battles Cina had floating around in her head.

...Meetra Surik, maybe? That would make...some sense. The Revanchists' famous ground commander had been born Mandoade, to a merchant clan — it had been Mirta be-Surik, but Basic preferred that pair of consonants to be the other way around, it'd become Meetra before too long. Cina remembered her parents had been traders, gotten caught up in some pirate raid on a nearby Republic world — either Corsin or Obroa-skai, she thought — they'd been killed in the chaos, leaving their eight-year-old daughter behind. Meetra, who hadn't really known much Basic at all at the time, had ended up swept into public services, first to a group home for children orphaned in the disaster and then into foster care. Before her foster parents could try to contact the rest of her clan back home, she'd been discovered by the Jedi, and that had been that.

Thinking about it, Cina couldn't help noticing the similarities with her own little Mandoade orphan girl. Hmm.

If she remembered correctly, Meetra had even been born on Vorpaya. Canderous said her accent in Mandoa sounded Vorpayya — in fact, he refused to believe she was Shawkenese, he still thought she was a stray clanless Mandoade from Vorpaya (which she chose to take as a compliment). If Meetra had picked up her Basic from someone from Shawken, perhaps even Lesami herself, that could explain that...except Meetra had been pretty young when she'd left Mandosii space, she probably didn't speak Mandoa very well at all anymore...

There were some other problems. For one, Meetra hadn't been seen or heard from since the Battle of Malachor...but she also wasn't one of the Revanchists confirmed dead. It was possible she was kicking around somewhere in the Sith's unknown holdings in the West. Some of the Revanchists had returned as Sith, participating in the war with the Republic, but some hadn't — like Sesai, Rhysam's cousin, he hadn't been seen since before the Fleet disappeared into the West either. So, possible, but. Also, Meetra had red hair, a bright red, like the orange of the clouds of Ilsen, which again, wasn't—

Cina blinked.

She remembered snogging Meetra Surik.

Some faint part of her that was still Cianen Hayal could hardly believe that, just thought it was fucking wild that she'd kissed Meetra Surik. She remembered getting into a ridiculous argument for the fun of it with a friend in grad school over which of the Revanchists was the most fuckable (it was possible they'd been high at the time) — he'd insisted it was Nisotsa, but Cianen's favourite had been Meetra. The weird, unexpected...giddiness she was getting at the realisation that she'd kissed Meetra Surik was kind of...

It'd just been the one time, she thought. They'd just gotten out of...something. Not a proper battle — maybe a cantina brawl, or an assassination attempt, or something, she didn't know. Not-Cina had been keyed up on adrenaline, and also slightly intoxicated — mashutso, she was pretty sure — and had, just, done it, without thinking about it. Meetra had been surprised, she'd shoved not-Cina off, but not right away...even participated for a moment, but awkwardly, she'd clearly never kissed anyone before...

The walk back to their safehouse had been very awkward.

So, since she remembered snogging Meetra Surik (fucking wild), she couldn't be Meetra Surik. Obviously. And that left...

Who did that leave? There hadn't been that many human women in the Revanchists — more women than men, she thought, but only by one or two, humans had been a minority to begin with. Nisotsa Thul, Meetra Surik, Kreia and Arren Kae, Cariaga Sin... She thought that was it.

Except for Lesami herself, of course.

They were nearing the encampment now. It wasn't a proper village, just a few lean-tos made with hide and leather, temporary. All the people about were warriors, watching them approach with tense limbs and suspicious minds, fingering rifles and spears. Cina and HK-47 were handed off to a group of them, the three patrolmen returning to their duties as Cina was led deeper into the encampment.

Lesami had been born on Shawken to House Reva, one of the old (technically no longer) noble families. That would explain her accent, and the fragments of memories she had of Shawken, Mathilnai — also that it'd occurred to her to compare Meetra's hair colour to one of the gas giants in Shawken's outer system, she'd done that without thinking.

Cina didn't really remember what Lesami had looked like. Of course, during the war with the Mandoade she'd always been in her armour — the media had been under the impression she was a man, even. Her identity hadn't come out until after Malachor. The one-on-one duel against the Mandalor that had ended the war — the leaders having a formal duel to determine the result of a conflict without wasting more of their people's lives was an old Mandoa tradition, the requirements of an honourable surrender — had been done wearing nothing but a loincloth, and it had been broadcast to the whole galaxy. Cianen had watched it live, in a lounge in the linguistics department with several other grad students. That had been years ago, though, she didn't really remember...

Lesami had had dark hair, pale skin. Cina remembered thinking — nervously, afraid the much larger, fearsome Taung warrior would crush her effortlessly — that she was surprisingly small and delicate-looking for her reputation. Fit, yes, but slender, short.

Of course, reporters and officials and the like had commented before that Revan was much shorter than they'd expected, so that shouldn't have been that much of a surprise...

What little Cina did remember of what Lesami had looked like could also be said to describe herself. Which didn't mean much, true — those few traits applied to literally hundreds of billions of humans throughout the galaxy. But given how few Revanchists there were...

Cina took a slow breath, hot and thick in her throat.

She didn't have proof. But the details she did have... It was very convincing.

But that was... That was completely ridiculous.

Cina and HK-47 were being led by their escort into one of the simple tents, the largest of them, though this one wasn't enclosed — a large tarp formed of the leathery skins of some native creature stitched together, propped up on tall posts carved from...some kind of bone, she thought, though the animal it was from would have to be enormous. (Banthas weren't tall enough, perhaps they were from a krayt dragon.) She assumed this was intended to be a place for the war party to meet, take meals, plan their raids. It would probably be relatively hospitable during the day, open to any breeze, the tarp overhead cutting out the sun, enough tents surrounding it to catch grains of sand carried by the wind.

There were a few warriors around, but Cina identified their leader immediately. It felt like his clothing was somewhat more complex, decorated with complicated plaits and strings of beads, his cloak fastened with a surprisingly detailed metal brooch. He was holding what Cina was pretty sure was a gǂung-dj'iꜝx — a sort of weighted staff, not intended for use as a weapon but entirely ceremonial, polished and carved with complex, swirling patterns, inset with pieces of metal and jade. That angular object at the top, feeling sort of like a roughly-cut crystal, might be a krayt dragon pearl.

Which meant this was the chief of the tribe, not just the leader of their raiders — those were actually separate roles, Cina was pretty sure. Which meant their harrying of Czerka's operations wasn't just raiders being raiders, but something the elders of their tribe had elected to do. They must have, essentially, declared war on Anchorhead.

Hmm. That was...concerning.

Cina went through the expected greetings with their chief, stiff and polite, almost on autopilot, her thoughts wandering. She hadn't understood the seriousness of the situation here. If the natives considered themselves to already be at war...

It was Revan — Lesami — who'd convinced the Senate to declare war on the Mandoade, she recalled. Of course, the war had already started long before the Republic officially joined it — the Mandoade had been conquering nearby independent systems throughout the Trans-Hydian for decades, expanding to the outer Perlemian. Even as they descended into a brutal war with the Tionese — who begged the Republic for assistance, and went ignored — they started poking at border systems, worlds that were often allied with the Republic if not proper full members, skirmishing along the border with the Third Fleet (commanded by Saul Karath). And then the Mandoade had started hitting member worlds, and the Senate had, for the most part, ignored it — they'd considered it an endemic rim conflict, limited to the region, and not something that concerned the entire Republic. Even after the Mandoade successfully conquered Obroa-skai, putting them well into the inner rim, the Senate had been slow to move.

Revan had needed to play a recording of the destruction by nuclear bombing of the Republic world of Serroco in the Senate chamber itself, giving a scathing speech with images of the aftermath of the genocide of the Cathar projected all around him, before the Senate had finally voted to declare war.

Er, her, obviously — nobody had known who Revan was then, the reporters at the time had used male pronouns. Even after her true identity came out, Cianen had still slipped sometimes.

But, of course, even if Revan hadn't pushed the Republic to properly enter the war, it would have happened anyway. The Mandoade had already planned their invasion — even as the Republic response was finally mobilised, setting out down the Perlemian and Hydian, the Mandoade had circled around them to carve through the Slice, stabbing for the heart of the Republic. The Mandoade had taken Commenor before the Fleet, scrambling to reorganise their defence, managed to respond, and even then there'd been little they could do. Humbarine was scorched, Kuat and Rendili devastated in quick succession, taking their critically-important shipyards with them, Kattada and Fedalle fell with little real resistance, slicing the Arrowhead in two. The Fleet had managed to defend Cato Neimodia, Exodeen, Denon, Sarapin, a battle in the vicinity of Alderaan particularly costly for the Mandoade — few of which they would have managed if war hadn't been declared, if they hadn't had time to rev up the war machine, but still the Republic had been quickly crumbling.

It had been the Battle of Duro that had signaled a reversal of momentum. The Mandoade were crushed first at Duro, and then Bellassa, and then Kuat — and then Chorax, the Fleet following the retreating invaders to Commenor, forcing them out of the Arrowhead, and then following them again to Lysha in Zeltrosi space, where the Mandoade suffered a devastating defeat, finally pushed back into the rim.

Debatably, if war hadn't been declared when it had, the Republic wouldn't have been able to cobble together a coordinated defence in time, and would have quickly crumbled. It wasn't really debatable that the initial counter-offensive, forcing the Mandoade out of the heart of the Republic and back into the rim, victory snatched from the jaws of defeat, had been the salvation of the Republic. That had been the critical point, from then the result had been practically inevitable.

That counter-offensive had been commanded almost solely by Revan. When people said (completely seriously) that Revan had saved the Republic, that's what they were referring to.

And that had been her. Cina, that had been her.

That was a...surreal thought.

Of course, she'd turned around a few years later and brought the Republic right back to its knees, so... Yeah, fucking surreal.

"You speak of these outlanders as though they are not your people," Wings-over-Shadow, the chief, was saying. "And yet you call yourself their guardian."

"There are as many stars in the heavens as there are grains of sand beneath our feet — the outlanders you war with are not my people."

"And yet you claim to speak for them."

"No, I am here to speak with you of them. I have no obligation to either party, but yet I wish to see this conflict ended, for its own sake."

"Then by what right are you given to stand with me? If you cannot speak for the outlanders who trespass here, I don't see why I should speak with you at all."

Cina bit her lip, holding in a sigh — she felt like she should be better at this.

Because, it hadn't just been warfare, had it? Revan had brought the Republic officially into the war, later on made Supreme Commander, and that hadn't been accomplished by just killing everyone in the way. That was politics — rather heavy-handed politics, especially in the former case, but all the same. And out in the West, Cina knew very little about the situation out there...but it was known there were other polities, that they were in alliance with the Sith, not conquered by them.

When the Sith had invaded the Republic, their expansion through the rim had been swift, such that the Fleet hadn't been able to properly respond for months. But Lesami hadn't the time to conquer all that space, of course not. She hadn't needed to. The Sith acquisitions in the rim had, mostly, been accomplished through diplomacy, not warfare. There was war on the rim, obviously, but the Sith fleet had mostly focused on Republic strongholds, planets with significant military presence. If the local politics seemed amenable, the Sith didn't arrive with battleships and soldiers, but with diplomats and negotiators.

(Their strategy had changed somewhat after the Jedi assassinated Lesami, obviously, but still.)

It hadn't taken very long after the Revanchists' return to the known galaxy before rim worlds started inviting the Sith to come, petitioning to join their Empire on their own volition. One occasion Cianen had read about, the Fleet came to Botajef, the planetary government scrambled to defend itself, but had been swept with defections before a single shot had even been fired, dozens of ships in their defence force hailing the Sith flagship — the Leviathan, under Saul Karath's command — declaring their intention to fight with the Sith, even as protests broke out on the surface, the populace demanding their own government surrender. In the end, there had been no Battle of Botajef — the Sith hadn't had to do anything more than show up.

When Lesami had arrived on Phaseera, she'd been met with cheering crowds, walking the streets of the capital to sign the treaty admitting the sector into the Empire under a rain of flower petals.

Cleary, Lesami hadn't needed to fight to get people to do what she wanted...but Cina could barely even get this one man to talk to her about his war with Czerka, what he wanted. He did eventually relent, but it took bloody forever, stubborn bastard. Given who she was pretty sure she was, she shouldn't... She felt she should be better at this.

It was more irritating than was honestly reasonable. If she really had been Lesami, couldn't she have at least gotten all her talents with the baggage? Bloody Jedi probably gave her brain damage or something...

Well, obviously they'd given her brain damage, but— Ugh, she didn't have to explain to herself what she meant in her own head, fuck...

But then, it hadn't just been politics, had it? There was a reason that when the Sith came to a world, Lesami or Alek or Saul, there was a reason they'd been well-received. Many of the worlds that had fallen over themselves to join the Sith, they had... Well, they were heroes out there, weren't they? These were people who'd been conquered by the Mandoade not so long ago, and the Republic had stalled, had ignored their plight, they'd done nothing. The exceptions were Saul Karath's Third Fleet — they had been posted in the area, but Saul had...not so much disobeyed orders as creatively misinterpreted them (he hadn't had permission to directly engage the Mandoade as he had, in the early phases of the war) — and a selection of maverick Jedi, Lesami at the forefront.

Cina had no doubt that, without the Mandoade invasion a handful of years earlier, the Sith could never have spread through the rim nearly so quickly and easily.

(But then, if not for the Mandoade invasion, the Sith as they knew them wouldn't exist at all.)

She didn't have the advantages Lesami and the Sith had out on the rim — she was nothing to this man. He really had no reason to listen to her at all.

(She did still have brain damage though, obviously, self-righteous fucking bastards, if she ever learned who'd gone and made a scattered mess of her head...)

But she still felt she should be better at this, it shouldn't be so difficult to find something she could do here. Especially if she really was Lesami.

The more she thought about it...

As her conversation with Wings-over-Shadow dragged on — as he spoke of the great disrespect the outlanders had shown, how they violated the Mother with machines of steel and fire, how they disrupted the habits of the local wildlife, throwing off their hunters, how they threatened his people's secret valleys, where water still existed hidden far from the sun, the few places people could survive on this suns-blasted world — Cina realised what the true problem was.

She didn't want this to work.

She thought Wings-over-Shadow, the n|o̰ ʘqʰaβeꜝ, were in the right — these were their lands, and if they didn't Czerka here they were entitled to tell them to piss right the fuck off. She didn't want to help them make peace with Czerka.

She recalled something, from the writings of an old Alsakani politician thousands of years ago — when the Pius Dea Republic was in the process of breaking out into civil war, the Renunciates defecting to defend the peoples they'd been ordered to exterminate — about choosing sides. Some might have said that, in not entering the war against Coruscant they were simply not choosing a side, but no, not truly. Doing nothing was choosing a side. In choosing to not render necessary aid to the oppressed they were, in effect, aiding the oppressors. Making no choice at all was, itself, a choice.

There was always a choice.

Cianen had hardly been a Republic loyalist. The Republic was and always had been a flawed system — trying to pretend the current conditions people lived under throughout the galaxy were the absolute best they could possibly manage was, just, ludicrous. And she doubted such an undemocratic, corrupt, and ultimately ineffectual institution such as the Republic could ever ensure even the bare minimum acceptable quality of life for all the people within it. But, as much as she might wish to see the Republic replaced with a more just system...she would never actually do something about it. She couldn't — she'd been just a university professor. She hadn't the power to do anything about it.

Lesami, though, had.

And she'd made a choice.

It'd occurred to her back on Taris, contemplating her very un-Cianen-like knowledge of and attitude toward organised crime... Contract killings were distasteful, because they often targeted the wrong people — those who'd simply annoyed someone wealthy enough to demand their head, it wasn't unusual for labour leaders to be taken out by bounty hunters paid off by one corporation or another, just, ugh. But assassination, the concept in general?

Cina distinctly recalled thinking that there were people who simply needed to die, and that she didn't much care how it was done.

In the very earliest stages of the Sith invasion, there had been a wave of mysterious deaths. Politicians, executives with various corporations, certain figures among the ultra-wealthy and prominent members of old noble families, high-ranking officials in Republic departments and agencies. Even a number of Jedi had been targeted. It was generally assumed — and stated as fact in news reporting, despite a lack of any real evidence — that these deaths were Sith assassinations, striking out at these upstanding members of society out of some mad, evil sadism, for no real reason!

Upstanding members of society, give her a break — the dregs of society, more like, those ultimately responsible for the bulk of the deprivation and poverty and exploitation throughout the galaxy. Taking them out might well sow confusion, weaken the Republic ahead of the invasion, but most of those targeted were vicious tyrants who needed to die anyway.

Cina was quite certain, now, that these deaths were assassinations, and that Lesami had ultimately been responsible for them.

After all, they were mostly the same people Cina would have gotten rid of.

And since, apparently, she was Lesami po si Revas — that wasn't going to stop sounding absolutely insane any time soon — that it was what she would have done was a pretty good hint that Lesami had.

(This was just so fucking absurd, Cina felt strangely flushed and dizzy, but no, she was doing something important here, concentrate dammit...)

If she negotiated a peace between the n|o̰ ʘqʰaβeꜝ and Czerka, that would be choosing a side. It might not seem like it, stepping in as a neutral third party, but if she considered what the terms of any peace would have to be... Any agreement that allowed Czerka to continue operating on Tatooine, given the very real dangers to their survival Wings-over-Shadow described, would be taking Czerka's side. She might not enact Keissler's preferred solution, exactly, but any peace would benefit Czerka more than the natives.

The natives didn't want Czerka here at all. This was their damn planet — Czerka had no right to be a side in this conflict in the first place!

Cina had chosen a side. And, she was beginning to realise, she'd made that choice before she'd even come here.

She might have convinced herself that it was possible to come to some kind of arrangement with the locals, but...if she managed to negotiate one, would she even bother bringing it to Keissler? She honestly didn't know. Especially with what she knew now, about how Czerka's mining activities disrupted the local wildlife, how close they were to devastating the marginal agriculture the n|o̰ ʘqʰaβeꜝ and the ayaJawa depended on, completely accidentally...

No. Even if, by some miracle, Wings-over-Shadow did consent to an arrangement that allowed Czerka to remain, Cina would reject it herself. Because, in this circumstance, acting as a neutral arbiter truly meant she would be siding with Czerka. And she would not do that.

Czerka needed to get the fuck off Tatooine — immediately. That was the only result she considered acceptable.

And if that meant some of them needed to die, so be it.

Plan Besh it was, then.

So there was really no point to continuing this charade, was there? She started politely extricating herself from the conversation with the native leader, telling him she would speak with Czerka but making no promises. She needed to get back to Anchorhead. There was only a limited window before Keissler would demand results, and she had a battle to plan.

...Just like old times, she guessed?

(Cina really, really wanted a drink — there must be a cantina somewhere in that shitty little town...)

---

Apparently, when filming Episode IV, the general sound of Jawa was modeled on isiZulu (like how Huttese was modeled on Kichwa). So, I've decided to re-Zulu-ise Jawaese, because that's just the sort of shit I do. The "Aya-Jawa" term Keissler uses is a compound of ayan-, from a canon Jawaese term for a clan, and zwa, the native word for a Jawa, resulting in ayaJawa. (This is very similar to the term "amaZulu" in isiZulu, though not quite the same meaning, I don't think.) Calling one a "Jawa" would technically be wrong — the word for a single Jawa in Jawaese would actually be iZwa — but Jawas have already learned to not expect humans to properly speak their language.

Similarly, I've decided to steal the phonology for the Sand People's language from the Taa language (taa ǂaa, also called !Xóõ or !Khong), which is a Khoisan language with one of the craziest phonologies imaginable. It's pretty much unpronounceable. I'm not even going to try to explain how to say n|o̰ ʘqʰaβeꜝ, just, no.

Cina can still speak it, of course, because the Force is magic and she's a cheater.

[arebesh] — The canon creators have annoyingly decided that their A character is spelled out "aurek", and their Æ character is "aenth". I think that's dumb, so they've been changed to "arek" and "ænth". (Words and names that would be spelled with an ænth just use an "a", since modern English normally doesn't distinguish between front and back open vowels in the spelling anyway.) This means the name of the alphabet is changed to arebesh, which my spellcheck keeps insisting is wrong, like a little shit. I know for a fact I used the canon spelling earlier in the fic, because I didn't really give Basic much thought until the previous chapter. That's what happens when you're writing chapter by chapter, I guess.

HK-01 — The story of the first HK-series unit and the Great Droid Revolution is canon, though I've taken some liberties. (Canonical information is very thin anyway, which clearly means I can do whatever the fuck I want with it.) Yes, Lesami really did model her robotic battle-buddy after one who'd led a failed abolitionist revolution back when her grandparents were teenagers, making them the single most infamous droid in history. That's the kind of shit Lesami does, because she thinks she's fucking hilarious.

---

Cina, go find Rhysam, have a couple drinks and get fucked. I'm sure you'll feel better in the morning.

Well, took a while to get this update. Whoops? My Dragon Age fic monopolised my attention for a while, and various other projects... I have no ability to focus, this shit happens sometimes. Kind of have Star Wars on the brain atm, so the next might come sooner, we'll see.

Yes, Cina knows who she was now — or, she's at least mostly certain about it, anyway. Her scattered meandering at the latter part of this chapter is nowhere near the end of the process of...processing it (English why you do this), but no, there isn't an angst-splosion coming. Maybe this is another autistic-person-doesn't-get-people thing, but in KotOR fics I usually find the freak out at the revelation very confusing and mildly irritating. Of course, my Revan also isn't nearly as evil as they usually are... Could be just me.

Right. Done. Woo. Bye.