Shaak Ti was meditating when someone knocked at the door of her modest chamber in the Jedi Temple. She interrupted her meditation to call in her visitor, to see Master Yan Dooku who smiled friendly.
"May the Force bless you, Master Dooku. To what do I owe that honor at this early time?" She asked just a little bit irritated.
"You are chosen, Master Ti," Dooku said promisingly with his raspy voice.
"Is it not enough of a Chosen One, like your former Padawan brought to the temple recently?" She asked, twinkled to Dooku with her right eye, motioning for him to come in.
When she had closed the door behind him and Dooku, she offered him a seat and some tea. Dooku himself was not to be told twice. Then he took up the thread again.
"Now, not only I was of the opinion that the small Skywalker for the mission, which the Council has for you now, probably is a little bit too young," Dooku said with a slight grin.
"You make it exciting, Master Dooku," the Togruta replied with a reassuring smile.
"The point is to protect the investor and the member of the Intergalactic Banking Clan Hego Damask in his penthouse in Kaldani Tower on the eve of the election for the new galactic Chancellor. That mission starts this evening from five p.m. until next morning, when the election is opening."
"Oh ... it's an honor ... but since I'm already assigned to a mission that will take me to Rodia. I am already from four p.m. local time ..."
"Not anymore," Dooku replied with a sweeping gesture. "Master Yoda sends Master Jorus C'baoth to Rodia instead and you remain here on Coruscant and can guard Damask."
"Well, when Yoda has decided so, then so be it," Shaak Ti replied composed.
"Do not worry, my dear. Even in case that no attempt is made on his life, as feared, Hego Damask is a very interested interlocutor and thus this mission will be many times more pleasant for you than the trip to Rodia and back again", Dooku said elated.
"You dealt with him already, if I remember correctly," Shaak Ti tried to elicit her colleague some information.
"We have had some meetings at my home planet Serenno where Qui-Gon Jinn was also present. At that time we talked about the urgencies of politics and the future of the Republic. I wish there were more such clever predictive people like Magister Damask," Dooku said with a sigh.
"Is there anything, I have to be mindful of with him? I had never been personally involved with Muun", she asked the elder Jedi.
"No need to be worried about anything, my dear. Hego Damask is a cosmopolitan and knows the different species at least as good as many Jedi should do it actually. If anything, he will tend to you. I'll pick you up a quarter to five p.m. to bring you to him."
Dooku drank his tea, then was about to leave. While he was still standing in the doorway, Shaak Ti held him back.
"I've heard that your former Padawan did duel on Tatooine with a Sith. Now the Council has ordered him to Naboo. Do you think that this Sith will appear there again?"
Dooku saw the concern in her violet eyes.
"The Sith came unexpectedly, in fact. But Qui-Gon will not be there alone. His Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi is accompanying him. Against both that Zabrak will have no chance," Dooku said firmly.
"I hope for the two and for you. It would hurt me to see, that you would lose another Padawan by the Dark Side, "replied Shaak Ti.
"I know what happened to your Padawan a week ago. And I wish you with all my heart that such will not happen again to your next Padawan" Dooku said and Shaak Ti could feel the compassion and confidence that resonated in the voice of the more than seventy years old Jedi Master. On one hand, his words were solacing, on the other hand Dooku's words tore on old wounds.
On time at five Dooku brought his colleague to Hego Damask into the apartment. For a moment the Togruta was uncomfortable, as Dooku left her on the doorstep of the apartment of the businessman well known throughout the galaxy. Then she turned calm and composed again to meet her latest protection subject. As a Jedi she had seen many things, but at the sight of Hego Damasks transpiratory mask covering the lower half of his face, she felt alienated.
"It's nice that you were able to spare the time, Master Jedi," he began the conversation and Shaak Ti heard a metallic sounding voice reaching her hearing organ, which sounded half-natural, half droid-like. But she sensed also a certain warmth that went far beyond the performance of a protocol droid.
"Would you perhaps like a glass of wine, Master Jedi?" he offered.
"No, such would not be appropriate being on duty," she replied politely but firmly.
"I have non-alcoholic wine, which will probably be to your liking", he turned off her objection and immediately the faithful droid 11-4D rolled by to proffer the wine.
Shaak Ti looked interested on the droid with his four different arms. He seemed rather to be a medical droid than a mere mechanical butler. Nevertheless, she had an idea that the Muun with the transpiratory mask would need the droid possibly for many other things too. She let her eyes wander through the apartment. Dooku had brought her to the top floor of Kaldani tower in the fine Manarai district. From the large window on the right of her seat she had a fantastic view on the Western Sea. She remembered that the Nautolan Jedi Master Kit Fisto had once told her that he was here sometimes to swim and to dive.
She asked Hego Damask initially about emergency exits, other means of escape or about possible intrusion ways for enemies. This lasted about half an hour. Plagueis was impressed by the diligence the young Togruta did show to exclude any risk that someone would kill him in his own home. After this official conversation Hego Damask led to other, more entertaining issues. After they had talked for a while about Shaak Ti's home planet Shili and Shaak Ti did explain the ritual of the Great Hunt, after which a Togruta was declared adult, Hego Damask felt that his interlocutor thawed slowly. Time, to ask his guest a question about the Order of the Jedi:
"What is it like to train a Padawan?" He asked in a cheerful tone.
"My Padawan was killed a week ago," the Jedi Master gave back with downright icy voice. "How did that happen?" The Sith Lord asked curious.
"Gangsters killed her while I was elsewhere," the Togruta said with composed voice.
"A test that is part of the maturation of a Jedi Master in these difficult times, one might say," he replied with a trace of compassion.
"I wish all Jedi would see the matter how you do, Magister," Shaak Ti replied with an almost inaudible sigh in her otherwise stoic voice, which did not escape the attention of her counterpart.
"What do you mean, Master Jedi?" Hego Damask asked seemingly guileless.
"Can this stay in this room?" She asked him.
"Everything that is said and done in this apartment, will remain among us," he replied with a smile, which she perceived despite his transpiratory mask by the Force.
"Master Luminara Unduli shares my opinion, that we must accept the death of another Jedi as well as the death of one's own Padawan as a necessary sacrifice and examination, at which you should grow. Master Oppo Rancisis on the other hand uttered that I was too cold and too unconcerned because of her death and that would not be good for the cohesion of the Order if other Padawans noticed that. Master Qui-Gon even accused me of being selfish and lacking compassion. And this only because I had told him that during a hunt on Shili some Togruta are killed, then as now. And this is accepted as a natural selection of the strong. Too great sorrow over such a loss however is seen as a weakness in our culture. Only here in the Jedi Order, which has me but sent for a while back to Shili to familiarize myself with my own culture, my handling of the loss of my Padawan is criticized. That hurts", she said, her violet eyes sparkling vividly in this revelation of her feelings.
"Almost all living beings with a healthy survival instinct would share your view", Hego Damask elaborated on her complaint.
"But for a Jedi that's a contradiction," Shaak Ti said. "On the one hand, the strongest beings are chosen throughout the galaxy to become Jedi in order to pacify the galaxy and make it a better place. On the other hand always sympathy with the weak is propagated, even if those weaker subjects do not always earn this compassion or even help by the Order in my opinion," she added, encouraged.
The red-skinned Togruta wondered if the wine was really alcohol-free, as claimed by Damask, or whether perhaps just any other lock had opened inside her.
"My dear, have you already heard of the legend of Darth Plagueis?"
"No, never," Shaak Ti replied puzzled.
"Well, this is not a story that somebody would tell you in the Temple. It's a legend of the Sith", Hego Damask explained with a mysterious voice.
"Sith stories are told in the temple truly not too often," Shaak Ti admitted. "Well, tell me," she urged the Sith Lord who sat opposite her.
She was suddenly aware that she had grown accustomed to his metallic voice.
"Darth Plagueis was a Dark Lord of the Sith, so powerful and so wise that he was able to save the lives of those who were close to him by the manipulation of the midichlorians. He was even capable to stop the aging process of those close beings."
He made a dramatic pause after these words.
"I am Jedi healer, but about stopping the aging process, I've never heard," Shaak Ti said stunned.
"After Darth Plagueis had killed his master, as it is with the Sith tradition, he was designed to be the Dark Lord of his order. And in this way he was looking for an apprentice. He found a young Nautolan, who was armed with a vibroblade and radiated the power of the dark side. This Nautolan told Plagueis that he had been trained by another Sith, which was, however, lost for some time. At the same day, the same place it happened that two Jedi were on the trail for this Nautolan, because he was wanted for crimes. Darth Plagueis considered it a risk for the Order of the Sith, when a wanted criminal would become his apprentice. So he asked the Nautolan to kill the two Jedi in order to prove himself being capable and worthy, while he retreated to watch the fight from a distance. The two Jedi found the Nautolan, killing him almost instantly. Darth Plagueis saw it as natural that the Nautolan who, armed only with a vibroblade, encountering two lightsaber wielding Jedi, perished in this bold endeavor. He did not grieve about his loss but sought instead a new apprentice", Hego Damask ended his narration of the legend.
"So you tell me, that I think like a Sith - at least in this issue," Shaak Ti replied with an embarrassed expression in her red, around the eyes white-tattooed face.
"No more, no less like other intelligent beings would think" Plagueis gave back, smiling.
"Do you know, Magister, sometimes I think that I should have done more lightsaber training with my Padawan. I wanted her first to learn to master the Force, before directing her to the lightsaber training. Sometimes I think that was a mistake. She was doomed. Just like this Nautolan having a vibroblade only. But what if I first taught her lightsaber fight and she would fall prey to other challenges because she didn't control the Force enough? I'll never know. Nor like Plagueis would ever have known, what could have become of this Nautolan, if he had stood by his side in the fight against the Jedi rather than just to observe."
"Well, we'll never know anymore in both cases. But we can draw strength from such feelings, no matter what people are saying when they noticed it since. The question is: Do you grieve about losing your Padawan, or rather about the fact that one accuses you of lack of compassion?"
"It is probably a mixture of both," Shaak Ti confessed.
"The edges of our galaxy are always rebellious and unpredictable. And despite the many force wielding Jedi fighters, they will not be sufficient in the near future to pacify the Galaxy permanently. The Jedi will need more military support on their missions", Hego Damask mused aloud.
"Do you mean about a regular army? The planets and systems have their own armed forces and need the Jedi only to mediation purposes. If there were, however an Intergalactic standing army, this would probably provoke more disputes, because certain systems would feel patronized if not threatened", the Togruta considered.
"Additional military forces would lead to more security. Even and especially for you and your next Padawan, so that you would not have to tackle all those many tasks alone."
"This is a promising idea, in fact. But from where do we take such an army?" She asked the Sith Lord.
"There are some concerned citizens, who would stand up for the funding and planning of such an army. And there are cloning facilities that would do an excellent job for the Galaxy, if somebody would just ask them."
"Would you even support such a project, Magister?" Shaak Ti asked Hego Damask and her violet eyes glowed again, revealing some red sparkles.
"Yes, I would," he replied with a naturalness that impressed the young Togruta.
"Did you talk about that with Dooku too?" She asked.
"Yes, among other things."
Meanwhile, it was getting late.
"Do you know, Magister, at the beginning your mask made me feel quite strange, but now it seems to me like a part that belongs to you," Shaak Ti said, elated after the fifth glass of wine.
"The philosopher Shassium said once, that everyone in this universe is condemned to wear a mask, whether be it visible or not. And not all beings are that privileged to have a retreat where they can drop this mask for a moment," Plagueis said on this rather dubious compliment of the Jedi Master.
"I know Shassium, however I have red only a little bit of him so far," the Togruta replied slightly melancholic. "I can lend you the related tome, when you like. You can later return it to me, where you are but so busy," he said, getting up to go to a bookshelf, where many precious bound volumes and tomes were arranged.
Shaak Ti noticed at this moment, what energetic movements her host did display while he went to the shelf to unerringly pull a book off there. The Muuns she had seen at Holo-transmissions from Cato Neimoidia or Muunilinst shuffled often powerless over the floor, their long thin arms hanging limply down from their shoulders, so that one had the feeling that all these Muuns spent all their energy on thinking or mathematical calculations related to, a trait for which their species was so famous in the galaxy. But now in this moment, when Hego Damask swung back with the thick red tome to give it to her, she saw that he had well-defined muscles on shoulders and upper arms.
"You do some sports occasionally, Magister Damask?" She asked him with a look on his upper arms as he handed her over the book.
"I have my own gym two floors below. That keeps me in shape," he said.
"Just to have a look on you like that, one might think that you could also very well defend yourself", she returned with an easy grace.
"If so, I would not need you today, Master Jedi," he replied with a shrug.
Lost in her thoughts, Shaak Ti flipped around a bit in the red book.
"It's already late. I hope that no disturbance will occur during the now beginning night. I have already shown you your sleeping place. I will now retire for the night", Hego Damask announced.
It had caused him pleasure, to have the Jedi Master this evening around. The sight of her was simply a delight. And Shaak Ti was so decent and conscientious. And almost totally devoted to her order's doctrine … almost … so that it was all but touching, if he does not know better what the Jedi was imminent. Shaak Ti looked at Hego Damask as he headed for the door. She was relieved, in a way that so far nothing unusual had happened. No one had tried to break into the apartment. She did not feel any other forms of life in the building but the two of them, at least not in this and the lower floor, nor on the roof which was above them. But something shouted in her then that this evening was still missing something. She flipped a bit more in the book. Suddenly she found the phrase she was looking for. ...