A New Player in the Force

“A-are you sure it’s safe?”

I stood back slightly, letting Anakin deal with Lena as she looked from the two Zeltrons speaking to her to my son. Unlike Plirs and Snaxiu, when we’d gone to the world Lena had been abducted from, we’d not found any remaining family. Instead, we’d come across a dozen ruined buildings. Everyone there had been killed and the building looted and burnt. I wasn’t sure if that had taken place during or before the massacre, but regardless of how it had happened, it meant Lena had nowhere to go.

After cleaning up the mess, giving any remains that we found a burial, and then letting Lena see if there was anything for her to salvage and then grieve for her family and friends, we’d left. It had been a long few days since then with Anakin and Fenrir doing their best to help cheer her up. For a while I regretted having killed every lizard before we’d left, as while I knew it wouldn’t bring back her family or ease the suffering she, Plirs, and Snaxiu had gone through and would need help recovering from, it would’ve given them some closure to execute at least one of those responsible for their pain.

Regarding what to do with Lena, I’d quickly dismissed the idea of heading to a nearby Republic world and dropping her off with local child services. Those were always underfunded and lost track of kids so much it was such a disgrace that the Senate and the planet’s government chose to ignore the matter. Nor was the idea of adopting her into Clan Shan viable. I had very specific plans for Anakin’s training, and Lena lacked anything like the Force potential to make it worthwhile for her to endure the same training. I had considered asking Adonai or Torrhen to adopt her, but I wasn’t sure she was ready now – or if she ever would be – to become a warrior. Thus, in the end, I’d reached out to the Lokella, and their council had dispatched a CR70 Corvette to meet me at the orbital station we were now on.

“Yeah. I lived there for a few years before Cam adopted me and began my training,” Anakin explained to Lena while wearing as comforting a smile as he could manage. Her hands were resting on Fenrir, the tuk’ata still serving as her comfort blanket as she came to terms with everything that had happened.

“I know this is hard, sweetie, but you won’t be the only youngling among our people.” That response came from Surmi, as she stood with her twin sister Syshe. The Zeltron pair had chosen to head the group sent to collect Lena, though after last night I suspected the pair had ulterior motives for taking the assignment, not that I was complaining.

“All of us have suffered pain,” added Syshe to support her sister’s words. “We were once slaves of a Hutt before the Lokella freed us. And now look,” she gestured behind her to where their shuttle rested on the other side of the bay from Raven. “We’ve got command of a ship with which we use to free others from suffering.”

“You’ll make lots of friends and no one will force you to talk about what’s happened. Not if you don’t want to.” Surmi added the pair was comfortable finishing each other’s thoughts when speaking. A skill that extended to other, more pleasurable endeavours. “Maybe one day, if you want to, you could command a starship as well.”

“O-okay,” Lena said slowly, accepting the Lokella’s offer to take her in. I was pleased to hear she’d be going, and my smile grew when she turned to Anakin. “You’ll stay in touch?”

“Yes.” He coughed gently. “I mean, I’ll do so when I can. Cam wants me to continue my training and I’m not sure how long that will take, or where we’ll go. But I promise that when I can, I’ll call. And not just you but my sister Lia as well.”

Lena smiled widely at Anakin, and I could tell the pair would remain friends. Perhaps, in five or six years, it might even become something more, but the future wasn’t certain. Not least because of my choices. She turned to the twins and nodded. “Okay. I’ll go with you.”

The twins shared a look and then approached Lena with matching smiles. “Good,” Syshe said before they turned to gesture to a Togruta male who was standing outside their shuttle. “Head to Felxi and he’ll get you settled aboard the shuttle. Before we go we’d like to speak with Cam first.”

“Anakin, why don’t you help Lena with her stuff?” I suggested, sensing the spiking desire from the Zeltrons, and having a hint that he’d not want to be around when they flirted with me. Something they’d been doing heavily since they’d arrived yesterday morning.

Anakin looked between me and the Zeltron twins, both of whom were giving me wide, encouraging smiles. “Yeah, um, I…” He paused and shook his head, clearing some of the redness in his cheeks. “Okay.”

I watched him walk off, taking Lena to Raven. Her stuff was already loaded on a hoversled, but getting the pair away gave me the time alone with the twins that I suspected they wanted.

“He’s cute when he’s flustered.”

I turned to Syshe and grinned. “I can call him back if you’d like.”

“Oh no,” Surmi replied as she and her sister moved toward me. “We much prefer the older model,” she added as he reached my left side; Syshe taking the right. They each took one arm, pulling it against their body. “It’s powerful, experienced, and has remarkable staying power.”

I chuckled as I turned my hands around so my fingers could brush against each girl’s exposed midsection. “I do my best,” I said as my fingers pinched their skin. “Though as much as I’d enjoy a repeat of last night…”

“So would we.”

“… I need to return to my travels and training my son.”

The Zeltrons smiled. “It’s okay,” Syshe said as they moved closer.

“We understand,” Surmi added before they each kissed one of my cheeks. “Though we look forward to when we might next partake in the pleasures of the flesh.”

“Perhaps you might ask your Jedi and Mandalorian friends to join us.”

I chuckled, enjoying the rush of mental images that thought created. Bo would be more than happy to experience what the Zeltrons could do. Force, I was still in awe of several of the tricks they’d used against me last night. Serra, however, was another matter, and not just because of her recovering from the death of Drallig and being taken on by Windu.

“We can but hope,” I said before offering first Syshe and then Surmi a tender kiss. That was the reverse order of the last act we’d shared last night – well, technically this morning given how long we’d been enjoying ourselves – and I made sure to never favour one sister over the other. Something they seemed to appreciate.

“Until next time M’tael,” Surmi said as Syshe slipped a hand down and pinched my arse.

I watched the pair as they moved toward their shuttle, escorting Lena and Anakin as they pushed the hoversled toward the craft. Once they reached it, Anakin shared a few final words with Lena, followed by a hug and then turned around and walked back to us.

Taking that as my cue, I turned as well and moved toward Raven. Simvyl was leaning casually against one of her landing gears, though the way his eyes scanned the bay, and a hand rested near a blaster made clear he was anything but unalert to potential danger. While I had forgiven him for what had happened, he still hadn’t and was now taking his duties very seriously. Too seriously perhaps, and I wondered if I’d need to drag him to a pleasure house – one where the females weren’t slaves – so he could unwind a little.

“How do you do it?” He asked once I was at the base of the ramp.

“Hmm?” I replied as I looked back and then guided Anakin into the ship.

Simvyl looked past me, toward the now departing shuttle and sighed. “A girl on every planet.”

“Technically we’re not on a planet,” I shot back with a smirk.

“You know what I mean.”

“Aye, and my answer is… Jedi secret.” He rolled his eyes and, understanding I wasn’t going to explain, he turned and moved up the ramp after Anakin.

Taking a moment, I turned back and watched the shuttle as it left the bay. Outside the Lokella’s CR-70 waited which would take my latest companions back to their people. Truthfully, Syshe and Surmi weren’t important to me, unlike Bo and Serra, and when they’d first offered their bed I’d rejected it. I’d only just moved to a more intimate stage with Serra and didn’t want to risk that.

Things between me and her were up in the air, and while I hoped that we’d recover what we once had, I wasn’t going to sit around and pine after it. I cared deeply for her, but not enough that I’d try and force her to return to my side, or mope around waiting for her to do so. She had the right to choose her path irrespective of mine.

Thinking on Serra and our situation my thoughts turned to the path I was taking my first steps along and Maul. Regarding Maul, I knew one day Serra would learn of my choice to keep the Zabrak alive. How she reacted to that would determine if our paths remained joined or if that was the end of what we shared. I hoped for the former but understood that the latter was possible. Probable even if Windu’s teaching before she was knighted sunk in deep enough. However, if I had the chance to do things differently after the battle of Naboo, I wouldn’t.

Maul represented a potentially vast reservoir of intelligence—not only about Sidious’ schemes but also about the inner workings of the Banite Sith and their broader objectives. He might even be – unlikely though it was – someone whom I could recruit to my cause. At the very least, he could help fill in the countless gaps in my understanding of the Sith's motives, goals, and strategies for eradicating the Jedi.

I was aware that the Clones were pivotal to this plan—at least in the timeline I had witnessed. Yet, there had to be more to their scheme than merely employing them and issuing an Executive Order to annihilate the Order and neutralise them as a threat to the Banite agenda.

Still, I knew it would be some time before I faced Maul again. At least until I felt my skill and power had returned to the point that it had been when I’d managed to capture the Sith Assassin. I had the time to get there. or at least felt I did as it would take Sidious and Plagueis time to consolidate their hold over the upper echelons of the Republic and cultivate a replacement for Dooku.

That alone was perhaps a greater help to granting me the time I needed to train myself and Anakin, but I knew it wouldn’t stop the plan indefinitely. That was why, at least before Anakin’s kidnapping, I’d spent almost every evening going over the decrypted records from the Scimitar. Maul was smart enough to wipe the astrogation computer regularly, meaning I couldn’t determine where he’d travelled before coming to Naboo – though I suspected he’d been on Coruscant as in the other timeline.

The problem was that only about ten per cent of the Scimitar’s data had been decrypted, with most of that being the basically empty flight log and data-recorder of when he’d refilled the fuel tanks. If I was only looking at a single planet, then it would be reasonably easy to use that data to determine likely locations that the vessel – and thus Maul – had travelled to. However, with almost an entire galaxy to work with, it was like trying to find a needle in a haystack as big as Coruscant, Corellia, and a dozen other Core worlds combined. HK and R2 were working to crack the encryption on the rest of the Scimitar’s files, but they didn’t expect to have any success for at least half a year, and that was their most optimistic projection.

Once up Raven’s ramp, I moved through her corridors. The ramp was closing before I’d even stepped off it – Raven once more anticipating my needs – and moved toward the cockpit. Our destination wouldn’t be Kro Var, as I’d been intending before Anakin’s kidnapping, but Eshan.

While we would still be heading at some point to the Shapers, as I wanted to learn what they did with the Force while controlling elemental powers, I felt a more combat-oriented focus would appeal to Anakin after recent events. Plus, it would put my mind at ease to know he knew more ways to defend himself and others.

I could’ve chosen to go to Mandalore and enrol Anakin in the Institute there that Serra and I had joined, however I wanted to broaden my horizons as well. Like Mandalorians, the Echani were regarded as one of the best warrior cultures in the galaxy. The difference was in composition – while a decent majority of Mando’ade were Human, not all were – and the fact the two groups disliked each other intently to the point the Echani had often allied against the Mando’ade in previous wars simply to test themselves against them.

Because of those issues, Anakin and I would be removing most of our armour while there. Some would remain, and even if there were questions about me having armour made of beskar, the fact I could publicly show I was a Jedi – thanks for that belonged to Palpatine who’d ensured I was front and centre when the liberation of Naboo had been a major news cycle – would counter most of those issues. Plus, as the two people hadn’t been at war for centuries, and the issues between them were more of attempts to prove which culture was better than any major ideological issue, we shouldn’t face too many problems.

It would take us at least a few days to reach Eshan, and during that time I’d speak with Anakin about his ordeal. While we’d had some conversations about it, those had often involved the other kids. Now it was just again, I wondered if he might open up a little about how he’d felt, and what he’d done that he’d not wanted to mention around the other kids. The obvious one was that, just before I arrived to save him and his friends, I’d sensed him drawing on his desire to protect others and make the Force do what he wished.

He needed to know that I wasn’t angry about it, nor would I hold it against him. We both just had to be careful of how he handled that experience. He was young and unable to handle his emotions to anywhere near the degree I could, so it would take training to ensure he didn’t become unstable in the way I felt Obi-Wan had ignored and then Sidious had exploited in the other timeline.

I wasn’t worried about others sensing his mistake with the Dark Side. When I’d gone for him on Tatooine, I’d have struggled to sense him if I’d not been looking for him. While whatever protections he’d naturally developed were weaker because he’d begun his training with the Force, it was still incredibly impressive. To the point that I planned to ask him how he did it. While my defences were decent, any help in improving them wasn’t something I was going to ignore.

Plus, while I had little intention of doing it soon, I knew I’d have to return to the Temple and interact with Palpatine and Damask. If I could harness how Anakin kept his Force presence hidden, I could ensure that neither group learnt of the changes I’d undergone or would undergo, when we next met. Otherwise, the moment I set foot on Coruscant, I’d have both groups out to capture, imprison, or kill me.

That would, to be blunt, put a major dent in my plans for the next few decades.

… …