35 BBY
Dooku's mornings began with meditation and practice. He rose before his wife did and quietly slipped out of bed to let her sleep, using the force to send feelings of warmth and protection to both her and his unborn child. Both were dreaming peacefully. While Athemeene was not force sensitive he sometimes felt as though he could commune with her through the living force. This morning was one of those days as he sat cross legged on the floor next to their bed.
After half an hour, he stood up and made his way to the walk in closet to get changed and collect his lightsaber.
Dooku hated that he had to leave Athemeene's side at this late stage in her pregnancy. Tan'ya had been born without him there. It was only while Kenth was being born that Dooku really began to appreciate just what it was his wife had been through to deliver his daughter. The memory of it brought him no small degree of shame. It was such a small thing to have happened, and compared to his other failures it had no real lasting consequences, but even so it was among his greatest regrets.
It didn't help that Athemeene occasionally liked to tease him about it. 'Imagine a man so caught up in brooding that he'd miss the birth of his own child.' She would occasionally say with a laugh to her parents or other family members. Despite her making light of it, Dooku could feel that trace of lingering regret and hurt in the back of her mind. It was an idea that took some getting used to, but more and more he understood that a husband and a father had important duties that a Count and a Jedi simply did not.
No, Athemeene wasn't due for another two weeks. Dooku knew that delaying the start to Tan'ya's training was a bad idea, not when the force was clearly moving through her so strongly at such a young age.
A Jedi gifted at paperwork?
Strange gifts indeed. Clearly the force intended her for leadership.
Though Sifo's prophecy hadn't mentioned anything about… bureaucracy.
Dooku heaved a sigh before finishing his morning lightsaber practice, and went to retrieve Tan'ya. He was surprised to find her bedroom empty, her sheets and blankets folded up at the end of her bed for the droids to clean later. Reaching out in the force, Dooku located his daughter downstairs in the kitchen. Curious, Dooku silently padded down the dark corridors of his palace to find the kitchen door open and with light beaming out.
Inside, Tan'ya was dressed and ready to go, standing on top of a stool to reach the counter top. With deft movements for a girl so young, she was putting together breakfast and a lunch bag for herself. In the background there was the sound of boiling water, and Dooku could smell the caf beans from the hallway. He watched for a moment as his daughter poured boiling water first into a mug, then into the soup mix she'd prepared in a thermal cup. With a satisfied smirk she screwed the cap closed on her soup cup, before putting it in her backpack.
Then Tan'ya pulled what looked like a plate of fried, smoked gringer to the edge of the table with a serving of warm Kodari-rice in a small bowl, before climbing down off the chair. Once she was on the ground Tan'ya carefully reached up to collect her meal and morning caf, before turning towards the door to find her father looming there.
With a shocked gasp she dropped her plate, and only Dooku's quick reflexes and decades of training in the force saved it before it was wasted on the floor. The mug of steaming caf floated away from her grip and the count gently collected it, before raising a disapproving eyebrow at his daughter.
"Your Mother would not let you have this."
"Father, I…" Her mind raced in the force to find a proper explanation that would let her keep her prize.
"No doubt you made this for me, daughter."
"Yes, father." The crestfallen look on Tan'ya face was so precious that Dooku almost regretted what he'd done. Almost.
Dooku took a sip and appreciated the well made mix of sweet and bitter flavors with a warm frothy texture. "You have been practicing." He gave his daughter a disapproving look.
Tan'ya broke eye contact and looked at the floor, guilt as plain in the force as it was on her face.
His daughter suitably chastened, Dooku turned and walked away. "Come then. You can eat on the ship."
Seeing Tan'ya's stubby little legs struggling to keep up with his longer stride, Dooku slowed his pace to let her catch up to him, his daughter letting out an annoyed little huff as she did so. His Consular-class Light Cruiser, the SCS Posture, was waiting for them on the landing pad. Its droid crew had been notified the night before that they intended to leave early in the morning, and so had carried out all maintenance and prepared for take off.
On board Dooku took his daughter to one of the nicer sleeping quarters. The floors were carpeted, the furniture befitting her station as his heir, and the bathroom even had real plumbing. Dooku was willing to use sonic showers and vacuum toilets only if he had to, and on his personal diplomatic vessel he did not have to.
"The journey will take nine hours. This will be your room from now on." Dooku informed his daughter, before making his way up to the bridge. The droid pilot only began take off after the Count took his usual seat in the passenger chair of the cockpit. As the ship rose up through the planet's atmosphere, Dooku extended his senses through the force and found Tan'ya by one of the portside windows, watching her homeworld shrink below with mixed feelings of wonder, excitement, and… wistfulness. Was she missing home already?
Her heart would have to be stronger than that. But then she was only four years old. There was time.
The passing light of a trillion stars glimmered barely through his closed eyelids, and Dooku meditated on what was to come. Though he communed with the force, he was aware of where his daughter was on the ship at all times. Tan'ya spent some time watching the hyperspace tunnel out the portside window, then followed her curiosity, wondering about the ship and questioning the droids as she did. Most of them couldn't answer, lacking voice output, and eventually she wandered her way up to the bridge.
Dooku was still meditating when the small form of his daughter climbed up into the passenger seat next to him. She pulled her feet up under her so they wouldn't dangle and sat there silent and cross legged.
Long minutes passed as her mind raced, searching for what to say. He could feel her work up the courage to break their silence.
"What made you choose a Corellian ship?"
Mostly he just liked the ship. The Consular class as a model carried a certain amount of prestige due to its official role as senatorial diplomatic vessel of choice. It also came with a range of optional extras that he appreciated. It wouldn't do for his house to travel in anything but the best, after all.
"I used this model often in my role as a Jedi."
Tanya nodded, and looked at the floor, her mind still racing. "Are you familiar with the idea of a resource economy?"
"Enlighten me."
"It's… an economy like ours. One that basically only sells resources to someone else who then takes those resources and turns them into something. Because, say, a starship is more valuable than the sum of its parts, if Serenno buys a starship with the money we make from sellings resources, we're actually losing money overall."
It was a dilemma Dooku was familiar with, though he'd never heard it described as a 'resource economy' before. He just knew he would be losing money to the damned Galactic Mining Guild.
"So, if we really want to make money off of our Sacanium and Silver, we need to start turning them into something more valuable."
Mostly Dooku was amused that his daughter was trying to explain something that basic to him. It wasn't that what she was saying was wrong, just that the Republic refuted all decency and good sense. A dizzying array of trade regulations were in place to protect the major corporations and manufacturers of the galaxy from any external competition, often passed in the Senate as anti-slavery measures. A noble goal, slavery was a problem rife throughout the Outer Rim, but so often people failed to read the fine print on these things. It was hard to blame them when legislation was often written in the millions of words by teams of lawyers in the most impenetrable legalese, and senators were expected to read and understand it in just hours.
Being elected officials, most senators were of mediocre intellect and vision, but possessing a passable charisma. Anyone with too much knowledge or vision would be perceived as radical and frightening by the equally mediocre masses, who would much rather elect another, just slightly charming old man from among them. This Senator or Representative, having no real talents of his own, only had a chance to win the election because they were chosen as one of two potential candidates by special interests, like the bureaucrats and the megacorporations that were the true rulers of the galaxy.
Someone with true willpower, moral fiber and a desire to change things for the better would be kept from office by an array of hit pieces, manufactured scandals, and armies of private investigators backed by the security apparatus of the Republic. No one was perfect, after all. Everyone had something in their history to hide. If by some miracle, one such good, upright, and visionary politician was elected, his voice would only be one in the Senate, drowned out by the ceaseless cries of those chosen for the role by special interests…
For a moment Dooku thought of sickly yellow eyes shining at him from under hooded black cloak, and felt a small worm of guilt writhe in his stomach.
A small hand tugged at his sleeve. "Father, are you listening?"
Dooku opened his eyes and turned his head to see the innocent pout of his daughter looking up at him. At first he tried to think of the best way to explain this to her, then he thought of crushing her dreams of turning Serenno into a major starship manufacturer, and finally he thought of protecting her innocence. It was one thing to know there was deep corruption in the Republic, it was another thing to lose any hope of ever seeing it fixed. He did not wish to share that despair with his daughter.
She deserved a happy childhood.
"An interesting proposal."
"I've checked, I'm certain we can do it. We have access to every raw material we need." Tan'ya explained in an enthusiastic rush. "We can refine plasma from our gas giant, Evrana, and we can mine hyper matter from its moons. There's plenty of ore for starship hulls on Serenno, plenty of oil reserves for rubber, and that's not even looking at what we can extract from our asteroids once we start producing our own shield generators. We even have some of the galaxy's largest silver reserves right here, and already in the form of a usable hyper alloy. We can make hyperdrives without even having to set up hyper-sinks for matter reduction! With the quality of Serenno Silver, all we have to do is filter for impurities and shape it!"
It was a beautiful dream, and somehow Dooku couldn't bring himself to crush it. They could make the cheapest, finest ships in the galaxy and it wouldn't matter if they weren't permitted to sell them by the powers that be.
"And you would run this company?"
Tan'ya nodded equally, practically vibrating with excitement.
"...I will consider it." Dooku finally allowed, not quite able to say no.
Tan'ya had been around for some time now. Thirty years in her first life, fifteen years in her second, and her fifth birthday was approaching in her third. That combined age of fifty years taught her one thing.
'I'll think about it' just meant no in so many words.
She slumped back in her chair, stung and disappointed. Of course Father wasn't going to give her the funds to start a company, she wasn't even five yet. Much like her second life, Tan'ya was stuck trying to explain to a much older man that she knew better than he did, when his every instinct told him she needed to be protected.
Having looked at the issue, Tan'ya was sure there was a solution to selling through the galaxy's endless trade barriers. When it comes to marketing, you could sell in quantity to the general public, or you can offer a premium product to a higher quality of clientele. In her original life the equivalent would be a yacht, or a private airplane. A billionaire who was willing to spend the money on such a thing wasn't looking for the best price, he was looking for a status symbol. A high price tag was probably what attracted him to the product in the first place!
In her mind Tan'ya could already see the ship, a veritable private yacht of the hyperlanes. A boat of luxurious black hardwoods, handmade furniture from the finest of traditional craftsman inlaid with silver, hulls not of common durasteel, but Sacanium. They could even shape it to somewhat resemble the Serenno palace, with customisable features to include personal sigils or corporate logos.
Father was a man of fame and reputation in many circles. Just the way he walked and carried himself was persuasive to many. If he could be persuaded to upgrade from a common Corellian Cruiser that even mere public servants traveled in, to a sumptuous Serenno Star Slicer people would notice. If it was good enough for the legendary Count Dooku, a king in all but name, surely it was good enough for anyone.
A ship like that wouldn't be enough to jump start Serenno's economy, but it would lay a foundation that they could build on for later. With a team of engineers and strong brand recognition, they could start to push ships from Serenno into the racing circuit. Young men in this galaxy were much the same as anywhere else, excited by images of sleek sports speeders and vessels published in flimsy rags and dreaming of owning their own when they grew up. Eventually, in a decade or so, they would be able to sell luxury speeders and personal vessels at an above market rate, all with the signature luxurious black coloring of the superior sacanium, just like the famous Serenno Palace.
Of course the tariffs would make them expensive, but that was the point. Exclusivity was the cost of prestige.
And now it just wasn't to be, not for years to come? How many decades would it take for her father to finally trust her?
Tan'ya heaved a sigh and rested her chin on her hands.
The time would come, she told herself. The time would come.
Seeing his daughter sulking, Dooku decided to distract her. He searched his brain for a moment, trying to remember what her interests were, he'd been so busy of late, and eventually he settled on the most recent thing he could remember.
"Have you finished your report?"
Tan'ya looked up at him. "I've got it on my datapad. I can go get it if you want to read it."
Paperwork? Not this early in the morning. "Summarize it."
Her mind raced, and she spoke quickly. "Well, very few pirates operate a ship larger than a cruiser, most just use converted freighters, so the three Cruisers supplied by the Trade Federation should be effective for dissuading the vast majority of raiders. The officers look and act professionally, but the Trade Federation doesn't openly discuss how it promotes or recruits its crews. From what I've read on the holonet from retired Fed officers, much of it is extremely nepotistic, with bizarre drinking rituals, personal relationships to your superiors, and strange tests of loyalty all being prerequisites to advancement.
"If any force of equal size were to attack, I don't think we could rely on them. As long as their safety isn't really threatened, they'll fight, but once something larger approaches they'll hesitate to engage. They're a lot like security guards, more concerned with protecting themselves and their own careers than us.
"Then there's the issue of the battle droids." Tan'ya looked almost upset at the mention of battle droids. "I've seen many better models of droids on the market, and I understand that the B1 is incredibly cheap, but their articulation is as bad as a protocol droid! Their marksmanship is fine against a stationary target, but against anything moving it's terrible. They have a limited battery life, needing regular charging and they can't crawl effectively, limited to crouching when they take cover. Worst of all they're controlled by a central computer. If the command console is destroyed the entire army shuts down!
Tan'ya heaved a sigh. "They have their defenders, and maybe in an industrial scale war where you simply produce a lot of them in a factory and ship them straight to the front lines, cost efficiency would become a major factor. I'd want to read some combat reports before I commit to that, though. But for us, I think they're terrible. They just do not reach the minimum bar of combat effectiveness for their numbers to be particularly important. We're wasting our money on these. Any prepared crew of pirates would cut through them like a vibroblade through flimsy."
Tan'ya report continued for some time after that, but Dooku already understood what she was angling for. Again, Tan'ya wanted to start building ships on Serenno. Internally, he sighed. She was right about the ineffective B1's, and the foreign starship crews that would never risk their lives for his people, but she was also completely missing the point. She was looking at the Trade Federation defenses and seeing a product, when what they really were was a flag.
In the Galactic North East there were two regional powers, the Trade Federation, and the Hutt Cartel. That small fleet of ships were here to firmly plant the Federation flag on Serenno, marking the planet as off limits to pirates and raiders. Sure, a daring crew in a small freighter might slip in system, jump through atmosphere, snatch up some civilians and rush off to sell them as slaves before a defense could be mustered, but the larger pirate fleets that Tan'ya was afraid of wouldn't dare try something like that. Their Hutt masters would never provoke a war with the Trade Federation, that was bad for business.
In short, Serenno was paying protection, and so they would be left alone. If Serenno were to start making its own ships all of a sudden, that would put them in competition with the Federation.
"Father, you're not listening!" Tan'ya tugged at his sleeve again.
He turned to her. "I will consider it."
Her face scrunched up with frustration, and she sat down with a sulk. Just like any child in a way, Dooku thought. She wanted to go out and play, and he had not let her.
They sat there in silence for a while, before Tan'ya leapt off her chair and rushed away to her room. After a moment Dooku reached out in the force and found his daughter crying in her bed. With a frustrated sigh he broke the connection and once more began to brood.
Hot tears ran down her cheeks as Tan'ya tried to get a hold of herself. She chewed on her pillow and grit her fingers, staring at the childish face in the mirror left her frustrated and confused. Even compared to her second life she'd never had an emotional reaction like this, not when soldiers died or her plans were rejected.
Father hadn't even said no! All he'd said was he'd consider the idea, and yet something had taken hold of her. All Tan'ya could do to protect her dignity was run away and hide.
"This isn't normal, damn it!" Tan'ya hissed at her face in the mirror. "I wasn't like this in my first life, I wasn't like it in my second either. Something different about this body."
Tan'ya was the Devil of the Rhine! She had reviewed and approved operations where acceptable casualties were in the hundreds of thousands! The smell of rotten blood and festering mud was hardly enough to make her nose wrinkle anymore! The Great War had lasted years, she'd been there from the start right to the end, never once had she lost composure in front of her soldiers, and she was nearly the same age then as she was now!
But it was different this time. All it had taken was a gentle rejection from her father, and Tan'ya had been moved to tears!
"It's this body!" She concluded. "This damn child is too soft, too pampered! The chemistry of my brain is out of whack because I've been coddled for too long!"
That was it, that had to be the answer. Even in Tan'ya's first childhood in Japan, when he'd been a young boy he largely had to take care of himself. His parents worked at infamous black companies, working long hours and barely seeing him. He'd been an only child, raised by television, school teachers and the internet. He cooked his own food following recipes he found online, and promised himself never to be like his parents. He would retire young, happy, and enjoy his life instead of sacrificing it all in obscurity as a corporate wage slave.
Then Being X appeared.
There was no point comparing the life of a literal princess raised in an actual palace to that of an orphan sent to war before her age was in the double digits.
Tan'ya reasoned her way through all this. It was so obviously true, and there was no better explanation. She'd figured out what was wrong, and now the obvious path forward was to implement a solution. She could do that, right?
But somehow the tears didn't stop.
"Damn it!" She hiccuped, pawing at the corners of her eyes hoping that they'd somehow stop leaking. "Damn you, Being X!"
By the time the ship finally arrived in system to the New Temple, Dooku was in a terrible mood and he could sense his daughter was much the same. After sulking for hours she'd finally come back to the ship's bridge, calmer and more composed, radiating determination through the Force. Seeing this, Dooku just knew he would soon be hearing about the Trade Federation cruisers. Tan'ya was even simmering with resentment.
Eventually his daughter's curiosity won out, and she asked him, "What planet is that?"
"That is Indinor, 5th planet of the Liana system." Dooku informed her.
Indinor was a barren world of black, brown, gray and red hues. Oceans of mud turned coloured with old rust, met great flats of exposed granite, that were darkened in places from plasma scoring. In the distant past when warring empires ruled the entire outer rim, Indinor had been strip-mined of every accessible mineral. After that, they cracked open the planet's surface to get at the plasma and hyper-matter reserves closer to its core. Whatever native ecosystem that had been present was annihilated by this process, leaving behind a toxic industrial wasteland, with only a few remaining drilling and pumping stations left to extract what little value was left.
Even with all that damage done to it, life proved to be a resilient thing. The planet still had breathable air, and water that could be soaked up from the oceans of slurry by certain crustaceans and amphibians. In the ten thousand years since, whatever native creatures had survived the apocalypse began to adapt and reproduce. Offworld visitors to the planet had left behind a variety of introduced species, and some forms of hardy molds and fungi native to Felucia could be found growing in the cracks and crevices of the Indinor's granite fields and abandoned strip mines. Perhaps one day, tens of thousands of years from now, Indinor could even heal, but right now no one would want to reside in such a worthless place.
Except Dooku. There were two features which led him to choose this site.
The best feature of Indinor, and what attracted Dooku to it in the first place, was its location. It sat directly on the Perlimian trade route, with many smaller hyperlanes spiraling off of it to give access to the Hydian way, and almost the entire galactic north east. A force of jedi located here was in a perfect position to monitor, patrol, and block any force moving from Huttspace or the Corporate Sector. It was a perfect place for his Jedi to check the two greatest threats the people of the Outer Rim faced. That location was the sole source of all of Indinor's economic activity, a hypermatter refueling station in orbit above it that was also host to almost its entire population.
The other reason Dooku chose to build here was that it was located in the Tion Cluster, which was central to his future plans. The Duke of Raxus had great influence across the cluster, and leveraging his relationship with the man had gotten Dooku an excellent price on the entire planet from the former Count Murgo, who only retained ownership of the station. Murgo was willing to exchange the title of Count to become a Baron in exchange for a suitable marriage into the Serenno lineage, provided by Dooku, and a hefty sum of credits, provided by the Temple on Coruscant. Tan'ya now had a new step-cousin, once removed.
Now the entire world was his, to do with as he pleased. No committees, bureaucrats, debates. or constituents. Dooku would simply tell his army of droids what to do, and it would be done according to his vision.
If only it wasn't for that meddling Jedi Council.
The landing ramp lowered, and the muddy, grimy air of Lianna rushed through the entrance of his ship. So far, almost all construction on the New Temple had been done by droids, and almost entirely in preparation for what was to come later. The first thing made was a landing pad to move large amounts of construction materials, then a small temporary power plant, a recharging station for the droids, a number of warehouses to store things, and so on and so forth, until finally the foundations of the temple itself were laid. Currently the droids were working on erecting a scaffold around the exterior of the building, swarming like so many little insects about the place.
Tan'ya felt distinctly unimpressed in the Force. Dooku didn't blame her. Right now the Indinor Temple wasn't much to look at, but to him it was a blank canvas. He could build anything he wanted, and in time he knew it would be beautiful and mighty.
Dooku directed Tan'ya to the temporary classrooms, a small distance away from the landing pad. The small collection of premade hab-blocks dropped from orbit was where his small force of jedi resided for now. In addition to classrooms there were places to sleep, meditate and a small data center for research. Dooku had even seen fit to clear a small square of stone and roll out some turf and soil to create a fifty meter square of green grass on this desolate world. He had intended it to be somewhere that younglings could play and exercise, but so far the knights mostly used it.
Currently, the Temple only had one student, a padawan, and with the inclusion of Tan'ya there would be another. One padawan, one youngling, ten knights, and two Jedi Masters. That was it, the entirety of Dooku's temple.
"A foundation to build upon." He told himself, making for the site office. Once inside he turned on the caf-stim machine, and began reading through the droid's construction reports. Progress had been smooth in his absence. According to the Command Droid, the scaffolding would be finished this week, shortly before he took himself and Tan'ya home for the weekend. The water hadn't even finished boiling yet, when the sound of footsteps outside allerted him to the approach of the Temple's only other Jedi Master.
Sifo Dyas stepped through the door, a worried expression on his face. He had tilted eyes and dark hair, and was half a head shorter than the Count. "Dooku, the Council requested a force nexus that wasn't tainted with the Dark Side. This is neither of those."
"Good morning, Jedi Master Sifo Dyas." Dooku replied. "There's water in the caf-stim machine if you want to help yourself."
Sifo did just that, shaking his head in disbelief. "People used to think of me and Qui-Gon as the rebellious mavericks, but you have raised the bar."
Dooku scoffed. "That's only because they don't know what you've been up to."
"We've been up to." Sifo corrected him. "But genuinely, Dooku, I have to know. Why here?"
"It has a very central location." Dooku replied. "The land was cheap, and compared to the rest of the Outer Rim it has a thin dark side presence."
"Only because there's such a small force presence here at all." Sifo scoffed. "Why not one of the moons of Yavin? There's little presence of the Dark Side, and it's a force Nexus."
"Because Yavin is in the middle of nowhere. The lanes into and out of that system take days to navigate, and hyperwave communication can't enter the system without additional transmitters. Any Temple built there would be even more blind and isolated to the threats and events of the Outer Rim than the one on Coruscant."
"The Council is furious, Dooku."
"This is the first I've heard of it."
"That's because they've given up trying to talk to you." Sifo shook his head, and smiled ruefully. "If getting married did this to you, it's no wonder the Council forbids it."
Dooku poured himself a cup of caf stim and turned to face Sifo. "The way the council treats the Dark Side, I can't help but observe we're slowly being driven from the Galaxy."
"How so?"
"Any world where the Dark Side is too strong, the Jedi abandon. Over time more and more worlds are tainted with the Dark Side, and the Jedi are driven further and further to the core of the Galaxy." Dooku swirled the stim in his hand, then looked up at Sifo. "We are slowly but surely retreating, and never advancing."
Sifo creased his eyebrows. "When you put it like that, it sounds like we're losing a war."
Dooku didn't reply, he just took a slow sip. After a long pause, he said, "This world will become a Force Nexus in time, with enough Jedi living here and communing with the Force. As they do, the taint of the Dark Side will slowly dissipate until it disappears entirely."
"That's going to take centuries. Millennia, maybe."
Dooku met his gaze. "Then we shall build a strong foundation, one that will weather the ages."