Knight of the Watch: Part Two
I do not own Star Wars. It is property of Disney and its overlord Mickey Mouse.
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Part Two: The Secret, Chapter One
985 Galactic Standard AR (After-Reformation)
Mid Rim, Tarthion System, Renegade Star
Tarthion's involvement in the Separatist Project would seem surprising on paper. A moderately wealthy Galactic south-east Mid Rim world with a well trained and equipped defence force that policed over a dozen surrounding star systems, little Corporate interference from the big players like the Trade Federation, and a population which at least appeared dominantly human as opposed to the Outer Rim worlds and their more non-human demographics and lower rung on the Republic ladder. Many had once believed that it would elect to remain neutral if hostilities broke out, but instead its government had signed on with Count Dooku mere weeks before the Clone Wars had begun.
It had avoided much of the worst fighting thanks to that pre-existing defence force. The Republic saw easier targets of greater strategic value and left Tarthion to its own devices, which allowed that defence force to expand into a number of fleets and armies. Overtime it became one of the few fronts where droids did not make up the majority of the military, and no amount of encouragement by Dooku or the Confederate Senate to change this would convince Tarthion to allow droid legions to man their borders.
And then the Confederacy fell and the Empire rose.
Like many, Tarthion had been left with a choice: fight and be destroyed, or submit and survive. Thus, over the course of years of progressing negotiations, the impressive arsenal it had built up was surrendered to Imperial hands while fleets were scrapped and armies disbanded. This gradual rolling back of the TDF took years, and even their diminishing presence had been enough to keep the worst of the Empire's influence out. A so called Governor who'd been assigned control of the sector had not even visited it in the three years since their appointment for fear that so many armed 'backwater peasants' might lead to him meeting a tragic accident.
At least, that is, until Tarthion's senator was found 'colluding with rebel elements' as the news archives stated. Following the date of Yvak and Vasaro's departure, Imperial forces had moved in to entirely take over security and defence of Tarthion while the esteemed Governor Pyrian Gaul finally came to see the world he'd been ruling from afar. The elected President was now little more than a figurehead, the local Senate reduced to a rubber stamp and its formerly proud military nonexistent or supposedly in exile as traitors for refusing to stand down.
Darion closed the HoloNet screen. "Got a rough hand." He muttered to the empty rec room.
Vasaro was in his quarters. Actually he hadn't come out except to use the fresher. Reg had been bringing the boy his meals and spending time with him. If not for the circumstances behind this, Darion would have consider this a reprieve from the droid's daily dosage of snark.
He hadn't really taken care of any children that were less than a few years younger than him. Younglings at the Temple on Coruscant, a few tutoring or chaperone assignments on Casairi; this was new territory to him, and the fact that Vasaro's father was in a vacuum sealed crate in the cargo hold didn't make it any easier. The boy's anguish could be felt from every corner of the ship, and Darion didn't have it in him to offer words, be it to comfort or reprimand.
This would make it difficult to avoid detection if the Inquisition was on Tarthion. At least now he knew for certain that the Purge Trooper had been acting on the Archivist's information rather than some new and frightening means of sensing the Force. As long as there weren't any Inquisitors present the boy could project emotions from one pole to the other.
But he wasn't apathetic. Far from it. He knew the pain that Vasaro was going through, had known it for four years now as a matter of fact. Yvak Curyme, in the brief window that he had been known to Darion, had endeared himself and shown that he was exceptional both as a man and as a father. The galaxy was lesser for his loss.
The least that Darion could do was find some family, any family, that could take Vasaro in and allow him to lead a normal life.
Speaking of which…
Mustering his courage, Darion got up and walked to the guest quarters. The kid sensed his approach, or at least Darion assumed he had since he had the door open well in advance.
Dark circles under red eyes, muscles tensed up in the neck and jaw; all he'd need was a disposal bin full of used tissues to make his condition any more obvious.
"I'm sorry to bother you, Vas." Darion said, doing his best to keep the usual edge out of his voice and speak gently. "But we must speak."
Sniffing, the boy nodded. "Yes, Mr Helion." He was falling back on the familiarity of remaining formal in his speech.
"You don't need to stand if you don't want to." Darion offered, and the boy returned to the foot of his bed where Reggie was propped. "Vasaro, I need to know what other family you have. Aunts or uncles, cousins…anyone who we can trust to help.."
Vasaro shook his head. "They're gone." He said, his voice shaking. "The ones who knew. My dad's family. The ones who helped. The Empire took them. And the rest…" He shook his head a second time. "Why do you need to know?"
"Because we're going back to Tarthion."
The boy's eyes widened. "What?!" He cried out. "We can't go back! They'll find us there!"
How did Darion explain that the Force was telling him to go there?
"No they won't." He spoke assuringly. "I know it might seem that way, but the Empire won't be looking for you there. The Inquisitors may want you, but the Empire wanted your ad. They know that you were on the move constantly and far away from home. With him…gone, they'll have less reason than ever to think that you'd ever come back here. And even if they did, finding one person on an entire planet isn't as easy as it sounds."
At least for anyone who didn't have the Force. In truth, he knew that it would be a gamble that the Inquisition wouldn't be there, but there were only so many Inquisitors and they couldn't immediately and instantaneously detect anyone under the light of the same star who showed an affinity for the Force. Statistically speaking they would only find a fraction of any number of potential wielders that they walked within viewing distance of.
"If we can find someone here who can take you in, help you hide from the Empire…then in a while you could stop hiding entirely. Change your looks a bit, get a new name, start being a kid again." Darion continued. "I won't pretend that it's a perfect solution. It doesn't change what's happened. But it's the best solution I have. The best way to see you safe, as your father would have wanted."
"But then…what about my training?" Vasaro asked. "Who will show me how to be a Jedi?"
Force preserve me.
"You need to forget about that. And everything that Anaris taught you." Darion insisted. "The Jedi Order is gone, just like the Watch."
"I can't." The child's voice cracked.
"You need to."
"I cant!" Vasaro cried out. "If I do I'd break my promise to mom!"
Darion was prepared to rattle off a litany of better reasons in favour of breaking that promise when a thought shot through his mind.
My dad's family.
"Your mother…who was she?" Darion asked.
The boy was puzzled by the sudden shift in topic, but seemed glad enough to abandon talk of abandoning his training. "Her name was Elriin. Elriin Curyme."
"Who was she before that? Did she have any family you know of?" Darion asked.
Vasaro scratched at his head. "No…at least I don't think so. She never talked about where she came from and dad told me not to tell anyone else. I only know she wasn't from Tarthion because she told me once…when I was really little."
Darion couldn't remember anything about Yvak's wife from the war. He'd only known that Tarthion was a big player in the Confederacy after it signed on, and that Yvak was its Senator at the time. He didn't even know the man was married, nor had he any reason to look into it back then. Yvak had just been another politician at the time.
"She never said what her maiden name is?"
"No."
There had to be some reason why he was being herded towards Tarthion. And for some reason he suspected that it had to do with Vasaro's family…on his mother's side, seeing as his father's was off the table.
"She never kept a journal either? Anything private?"
"No! I'm telling you, she…" Vasaro trailed off. "Wait…she did. She had some…weird…" He tried to form shapes with his hands. "Box that she talked into. She said it was where she put her happiest memories."
That sounded like a recording device of some kind.
"Any idea where it might be?" Already weighing the odds on his head, Darion considered how likely it is that the device would be destroyed or in the hands of ISB. They were about as depressing as the odds that this recording device might possess something that could lead him towards Vasaro's matrilineal relations.
"Yeah. In my mom's secret room." Vasaro explained. "She had a room that she said was for hiding if anyone ever attacked us at home. And she kept it and a bunch of other stuff there that she said she didn't want other people looking at."
A private office or gallery from the sound of it.
"That might be our best best then." Darion looked to Reggie. "Reg, we're going to need to stay off Imperial sensors."
The astromech finally shifted onto all three wheels and rolled out of the room, chirping and whistling derogatory terms about Imperial sensors…and sensor operators, and how avoiding them was about as taxing as avoiding a protocol droid with rusted knee joints.
Darion made to follow, but what Vasaro said next stopped him cold.
"Couldn't you finish my training?" The boy looked up yearningly. "You were a Knight like Anaris was…why can't you finish where he left off from? I'm a quick learner and Anaris showed me so much already."
He'd lashed out at Yvak physically when the Senator had called him out on his origins. That couldn't repeat here, not with Vasaro. He was in mourning, he was seeking some way to move forward that didn't involve misery and heartbreak. Training to become a Jedi, to fulfill the promise to his mother, was the only way forward in his eyes.
Darion couldn't afford to be angry with the boy. Especially not when he'd been just like him once.
"I'm not a Knight anymore, Vas." He said, exhaling heavily.
"But you have the Force." Vasaro insisted. "I can feel it. You haven't lost your connection with it."
"And using it draws Inquisitors." Darion pointed out. "Or worse. Vas, I know that you have that promise to keep, but…would your mother want you to give up your life for this?"
"She would want me to not give into fear." Vasaro declared. "She would say that the fear within us is the true enemy to be conquered. Dad would agree. If I just give all of that up…then his…then everything that happened would be for nothing. I can't…I can't let that happen."
He was on the verge of tears again and doing an admirable job of holding them back. The pain was still fresh within him, yet this boy was determined to push through and honour their memory the best way he knew how.
He just had the wrong Knight to help him.
"I can't be what you want me to be." Darion said, bowing his head and closing his eyes. "I'm sorry."
He left without another word, feeling the boy's spirit wilt a little. As Darion returned to the cockpit he assured himself that this would be for the best. Better alive to resent him than dead before ever really living.
Xxx
Tarthion was a beautiful world. Surrounded by an artificial ring anchored to its equator, its cities were built outwards from these points and also up along them, becoming vertical structures that helped minimize the spread of cities across the planet. Some coastal settlements stood as outliers, but the rest of the planet was sparsely settled with smaller communities industrial centres and ancient ruins attributed to the earlier waves of colonization to originate from the Core.
The biomes couldn't be summed up in one word. Unlike worlds such as Jedha or Ilum it was not a scorching desert or freezing ice sheet from pole to pole. For the most part it was quite temperate witth vast swaths of green across its continents. The region where the Curyme summer estate rested was on one of the smaller continents, set atop a small mountain from which it had been carved long ago by ancient settlers. Aside from an attached settlement that was primarily occupied by a garrison and a few servants and their families, there was no other civilization for a hundred miles.
Darion had been able to set down without triggering any alarms, exploiting the usual lapses in security while being mindful in case someone had actually thought to invest some discipline in the local troops. From a meadow just big enough to permit landing he'd made his way on foot across fertile jungle terrain. As he came to a ridge line that gave a distant view of the estate he knelt down and peered through a pair of binocs.
The Imperial banner hung from the walls surrounding the village, more from the estate itself. Any direct ground routes from the jungle had been surrendered back to nature long ago, leaving only a set of landing pads for commercial use and another for VIPs which jutted out from the mountainside.
This wasn't just a military occupation; someone high ranking had moved into the estate and made themselves comfortable.
Just how far was he willing to go for the distant possibility that the Force was telling him that this was the best route to help Vas? He'd survived by keeping his head down and the Empire's attention off of him, and raiding what might very well be the Governor's manor was about as far from keeping his head down as he could get without going straight into orbit.
A flash of red across one of his gauntlets caught his eye as he lowered the binocs. Something had triggered the security on the Renegade. Darion swiftly tapped the flashing button and pulled up a readout from the freighter. It was still sealed tight, but someone was trying to force open the min entry way…
No, multiple 'someone's', several of whom looked equipped in old military gear. Flashes of white clone armour, more subdued shades mixed with the signature wine red of the old TDF, and he could spot at least one non-human among the trio of figures crowded under the external airlock hatch.
"Damn." Darion stowed the binocs and began to hurry back, but only got two steps before being forced to drop into a feet-first slide as a quarter of rings of blue energy shot out from the treeline. He managed to duck in behind an elevated portion of terrain that absorbed the closest of the shots while the rest went wide.
Stun rounds. Either they want me alive or they're conserving energy. Or…they're worried about getting noticed.
Darion unslung the rifle off of his back while rolling over. Closing his eyes, he slowly set the weapon to one side, barrel conspicuously propped up against a rock.
Several moments passed before a man vaulted over a log a little further off and fired a burst of stun rounds where Darion lay…
Or had been laying. Now only his rifle remained, sufficient bait to have drawn one of his attackers out. Two more were also in the open now, part of a well executed attack that would have overwhelmed any but the fastest shot with multiple targets firing upon one. They were good, but Darion wasn't so sloppy as to give himself away for no reason.
A flurry of stun rounds erupted from. The tall grass, hitting the two who were further away. The remainder, the one who'd tried to stun Darion, spun around only for their weapon to be wrenched down and ripped away from them before the stock of the rifle slammed into the inner side of one knee. With a pained gasp they fell, favouring their good leg before Darion slammed his knee into an armoured face plate.
Darion seized the man by his cuirass and hauled him back up, swinging around to present him as a shield as another trio of gun toting soldiers raced into view.
"Drop him!" One barked as their companions tried to spread out to outflank Darion.
"You first!" Darion replied. "And get your pals away from my ship, or what I'll do to this one will be the least of your worries."
His captive groaned out a strangled growl. "Just shoot him!"
"Don't want to try that." Darion warned, having holstered his blaster and swapped it with a vibro-knife that he held to his hostage's throat, just under their helmet so that the edge could be felt against a matte black body glove. "You're not Imps, and you're worried about attracting the neighbours' attention. You shoot anything stronger than a couple stun rounds and I bet we'll have a TIE coming at us real soon. Maybe you'll get me…maybe you won't. Either way, this one'll be dead. So let's all take the route where we walk out of this alive…and you lower your weapons."
None of them appeared inclined to agree with his proposal, but then a hand came to rest on the shoulder of the one trooper who'd called out to him.
"Stand down." The voice of an older man was filtered through helmet speakers, his accent matching that of Yvak's: refined yet not obnoxious or exaggerated like some more Core-ward folk liked to see as civilized. "I'll call my men off of your ship. Will that be enough for you to give back my man?"
"Wouldn't hurt his chances." Darion replied. "Call'em off, then we can negotiate."
The apparent leader of this squad wasted no time in issuing a recall order to the people who were coming alarmingly close to slicing into the exterior airlock controls. They halted their work and swiftly retreated out of view of the external cameras.
"Done." The squad leader said. "And now?"
Darion slowly stowed his knife and then shoved the trooper away with one hand, letting him regain his balance. "Just who are you? A guy can't take a nature walk without getting set upon?"
"With a precision cycler rifle?" The squad leader motioned to the barrel still pointing skywards. "And a Corellian freighter that we didn't know was on top of us until we saw it with our own eyes? Pardon us for being cautious, stranger. But you're clearly no friend of our Imperial visitors, which means there's some latitude for us to talk. Leet's start with who you are, seeing as you're on our land."
"Just someone passing through." Darion replied. "Unless you have any way of help me 'pass through' there," he pointed a thumb over his shoulder, "then that's all I'm at liberty to share."
The other squad members had retrieved their two stunned compatriots and collected their gear, dragging them back to the treeline where a few more greeted them. Darion counted at least a second squad's worth based on the movement he saw.
Their leader in the meantime approached him with his hands empty and reached up to their own helmet, which had a wide and flat component set on top like a sun hat. The facial section slid open with a soft pneumatic hiss, revealing grizzled and weathered features of a man easily twice Darion's age with a roughly trimmed silver beard.
"Maybe we do." He said. "But I'm not at liberty to share either, unless we're certain that you're no enemy of Tarthion."
Darion looked from the older man to his troops. "You're insurgents, I take it."
"Patriots." He was corrected with a crisp tone and a straightened posture. "Patriotic Confederate soldiers combating an infestation of visitors whose departure is long overdue. "
Separatists. He'd known there were holdouts, but he always imagined they would be among the worlds with an excess of battle droids that could be reactivated in sufficient numbers to provide some resistance. Still, depending on what kind of holdout this one was…
"…by the weeping sun of Serenno, we shall be as the Tirra'Taka."
This caught the man's attention. "Even beneath the feet of our enemies, we shall be the terror that denies them rest." A smile formed and he offered a hand. "Always glad to meet a fellow Confederate."
Darion accepted the offered hand. "That war's long over. I'm just here to fulfill a dead man's dying request."
"Then let us go somewhere more…enclosed so we can discuss that." The man sealed his helmet again. "Name's Khanis, by the way. Khanis Turam. 43rd Spaceborne…or what's left of it. Now we just call ourselves 'the rebellion'."
Xxx
The rebels had allowed Darion to stop at his ship, and were met with the shock of their lives when he disembarked with Vasaro at his side. Alarmed whispers had rippled among their ranks before Turam put an end to it.
"But sir, that's-"
"I know who the young man is, soldier. It can wait."
And it did wait until they were back at what passed for the rebels' headquarters: a network of caverns only a half mile from where Darion had landed, now modified to serve as housing, storage and even as hangars for a few Confederate and Republic gunships that had seen better days. All in all there couldn't be more than three hundred fighters out of close to five hundred occupying the tunnels.
"When the orders came down to disarm, not everybody was so eager to hand the system over to the Empire." Turam explained as he led Darion and Vasaro down a slope with durasteel grating set over it and into a wider cavern area that housed families in encampments. "Fortunately there were places like this dotting the whole planet, set up in case the Republic ever got orbital control."
"And the Empire doesn't know a thing about this?" Darion asked, observing a few children kicking a ball in the middle of the dome shaped chamber while following Turam along the edges in an area designated as a walking path.
"The things they don't know but ought to could fill a planet sized library." Turam chuckled. "No. We've been sitting tight ever since the Senator got run out of his home, waiting for the go ahead from High Command to strike at the estate."
Darion felt Vasaro's anxiety rise at the mention of his father and sought to divert the topic away from there. "Why haven't you?"
"Too little to gain, too much to lose.. We could level that place if we threw everything we have at it, but even if the illustrious Governor Gaul was there along with every Imp ranked Colonel or higher in thee whole system it wouldn't be worth it." Turam led them into a winding passage which had branching chambers filled with jury rigged computer terminals and display tables. "We're playing the long game, stranger. We won't intend to bloody the Empire's nose only for them to come back and wipe us out through attrition. We're fighting this war smart. And when we make our move…they aren't gonna come back."
They entered another larger chamber, this one serving as their primary hangar. A waterfall formed a stream which bisected the room, leading out through a cave mouth which had an even larger waterfall obscuring the outside world. Instead of gunship there were actual fighter craft: some of them Republic or Confederate made, but he spotted some which better resembled elegant black daggers or arrowheads with the Tarthion flag emblazoned upon them.
"Which brings me to the reason why I'm telling you this, and why I might just be able to convince our leader to help you." Turam stepped up into a control room that overlooked the hangar floor. "Put Overlord on."
Vasaro was sticking close to Darion's side, one hand briefly coming up as if to grasp his coat for comfort before he forced it back down. Darion set a hand on the boy's shoulder. "It's alright, Vas. You can hold on if it helps."
He took Darion up on that offer as a holo-emitter in the middle of the room flickered to life and projected the image of a man dressed in fine robes.
"Overlord here. This had better be good." The man said, his neutral tone containing a hint of urgency.
"Senator, I think you and this young man might be familiar with each other." Turam looked to Vasaro. "He just arrived in the company of a fellow Confederate."
As Darion resisted the urge to refute that classification, the robed man leaned forward. "It can't be…Vasaro?"
The boy peered at him in puzzlement before recognition crossed his face. "Minister Servyn?"
"Stars, boy, it feels like a lifetime since we last spoke!" The man said with a fond smile. "Is that you under that mug, Yvak?"
"Senator Curyme is gone."
Silence filled the control room.
"Captain Turam, clear this room."
Turam didn't even have to speak. The few technicians at work quickly filed out Servyn's word.
Once privacy was assured, he spoke again. "How did this happen? And who are you that you would have my godson in your care?"
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End of Chapter