IN THE SHADOW OF THE MANDALORE

CHAPTER 1 PART 3

ARCHANGEL approaching orbit around Taris

Kazi’Zanza-Imran, The Lord Fitt, would never understand how the threat of impending war could come as such a surprise to anyone. It made him wonder how they managed to compete in life if they were not prepared for life’s eventualities.

Not to me, he told himself. Not in this day and age.

Doesn’t make sense, all the same. The fact there’s always a threat of war about to erupt somewhere in the galaxy makes it obvious that sooner or later, those useless bastards in the Senate will have to acknowledge there’s a problem. I guess I should be grateful the Senate doesn’t enact those Senatorial Mandates they issued all those thousands of years ago. Someone might actually take them seriously.

No one could ever know or suspect that he was involved with those same wars along several different fronts—willing to go as deep as he dared, without drowning he liked to tell himself. As one of the founding members of the Star Merchants Guild, Fitt made it his business to know what was going on in the galaxy. A man in his position had to understand the general harmonics of any Star System he entered in order for his business to succeed—especially if that business was freight. He’d found out long ago that if a man could control a Star System, he could control the different Sectors, and he could control the trade.

And I can either blame it on the Sith Empire—or the Republic.

As of the third hour today—at Universal Standard Time—the spectre of yet another impending war would raise its ugly head once again, this time in the Mandalore Sector, where the Star Systems included Concord Dawn, Phindar, and Mandalore itself, all of them locked in the grip of a deadly blockade.

He’d known for several months now that Mandalorian rebels were forcing a blockade along the Outer Rim. They were essentially handcuffing the three Star Systems and putting a stranglehold on trade. A thousand conflicted worlds were waiting for an answer from the Galactic Senate. Like everyone else, Fitt assumed the Republic would send in troops to stabilize trade routes, maybe even a delegation of Jedi to oversee negotiations; but there was nothing. The seat of government for the Republic—the Galactic Senate at Coruscant—remained silent. He knew the Core Worlds depended on trade with the Outer Rim more than planets of the Outer Rim needed the Core. It made him wonder what they were doing about it back on Coruscant; the Republic couldn’t afford to let Mandalore become a threat again.

They should at least send a delegation.

But it wasn’t the Mandalorian blockade that was troubling him at the moment—not as much as the headache that seemed to be sitting on the edge of his skull, seemingly sticking a needle into the middle of his brain. His mind was elsewhere. He was troubled by the failure of the lobbying group they’d put together within the Guild.

For some reason, his lobbyists were unequal to the task and it was starting to frustrate him. The Guild had always had secret access to Sith Space—long lost and forgotten space lanes as well as hyper-routes—that allowed the Guild to trade with several planets along the Outer Rim. To make it profitable, the Guild had to reach farther into Sith Space than the present treaty allowed. Slipping into Sith space was as simple as by-passing the Mandalorian blockade.

But now my efforts are blocked at every turn. Why? How?

He pushed his chair out from under the desk he was sitting at and stood up, feeling his age as he stretched to his full height. Turning his head slowly, he forcibly twisted his torso, waiting until he could feel the familiar pop in his lower back. He could feel the joints cracking in his neck and spine and heard them echoing in his head. Pacing the length of his quarters, he paused at the cavernous side port window, watching the galaxy slip by in a cascade of vibrant colours. He could never understand how people took the colours in space for granted; he never did. Every star had its own spectral trail that stretched across the black void of hyper-space, and he enjoyed watching hyper images stretch and snap out of view like a child’s soap bubble.

But he turned away from the window and began pacing again.

War makes for great opportunities, he remembered someone telling him years ago. Who was that, he wondered? While he may have forgotten who his lost benefactor was, it was a lesson he’d taken to heart early in life. It wasn’t all about running blockades, or supplying arms to one faction or another in an armed conflict—which was how he’d made his fortune as a young man—it was political now. Politics was the reason the Star Merchants Guild had become so powerful, but there was something he missed about the old days.

Free enterprise. That’s what makes this Republic great, he told himself, wondering what he liked more, the Republic, or free enterprise?

He placed the spectacles he was wearing on top of his head and sat back, rubbing his eyes and massaging his temples at the same time. He preferred wearing spectacles because they’d always afforded him the time he needed to focus—and not just on endless reams of print outs, or computer scrolls—but beings he’d meet during contracts and negotiations. As long as he’d worn spectacles they’d served as a distraction to some, and a novelty to others, allowing him to shut down endless worlds by letting them underestimate him. He was amazed at the reverential silence that seemed to follow whenever he removed his spectacles—as if beings thought the spectacles were somehow related to his hearing, of all things.

A long-time advocate of ancient artefacts—his collection of Sith scrolls and Jedi manuscripts was considered the largest private collection outside of Hutt Space—while his collecting had become more of an obsession rather than the hobby it started off being. He remembered how he’d been inspired the first time he saw the spectacles, and Sith artefact or not, it didn’t matter, they were his most important find to date.

Known to pay handsomely if the seller had something he wanted, Fitt had wanted the spectacles.

I paid handsomely, he thought.

He could feel the headache building up behind his eyes—a dull throb in the front of his head echoing with the pulse of his blood—and he wondered if it was because of the spectacles. His doctor told him there was a direct correlation between the headaches and his eyesight, and while wearing the spectacles may have alleviated the problem for the moment, it was not about to go away.

I suppose he was right.

Sitting on a long divan against the starboard wall of his quarters, he watched the swirl of stars and planets through the transparisteel window, taking a quick glance at the seven chronos mounted above the window. Each of the clocks synched to a different Star system—and he looked down at the chrono on his wrist out of habit. Above the clocks, he had seven monitors built into the bulkhead, each with a running scroll in Basic that read off the latest facts coming in from each of the seven Star Systems he controlled. He pressed a button in the small console on his left and the screens went blank.

Sometimes, you have to force yourself to sit back and let your mind rest.

He’d promised to join Semolina for re-entry when Archangel dropped into orbit around Taris, but now, while he had the time, he wanted to enjoy his solitude. Thirty or forty years ago, he would’ve sat in a hyperbolic chamber and meditated, but he hadn’t done that in fifteen years. It was one more thing in a long list of things he told himself he needed to let back into his life. Back home on Araxis, he was in the habit of rising before anyone else, and he saw no reason to change his routine while he was away. It would be another two hours before they reached Taris.

The galaxy never feels as close to you as when you’re dreaming, he remembered his father telling him once. He never did understand what it was supposed to mean. His supposed his problem was that he hadn’t slept in what felt like years. His dreams were nightmares more than he could say they were a comfort to him. He knew his father would never understand his reasons for not sleeping—and he doubted if he understood himself anymore.

The first nightmares came out of nowhere. There was no graduated time or traumatic event he could recall; it was more like one night he went to sleep and the nightmares came.

He hit the button on the console again and looked up at the viewing screens, the familiar logo for the holonews on several of the screens—each Star System running its own local headlines—and each promising to follow the Guild’s involvement with Taris. At last, all seven screens showed the same news anchor, and though the anchor gave the story in Basic, there were subtitles running along the bottom of each screen.

The Guild was making headlines, capturing the attention of the galaxy’s Core Worlds. It was free advertising as far as Fitt’s partners were concerned, but he knew different. When the galaxy’s largest news feed wants to do a story on your company, you accept without questioning their reasons. If they expect a little something in return, you gave it to them. No questions asked.

Everything has a price, he thought.

I just hope they’re worth it.

“Taris is re-emerging once again as a major trade centre,” the reporter said. “Following its destruction by the Sith Overlord Darth Malak during the Mandalorian Wars more than sixteen hundred years ago, and thanks to the combined efforts of the Star Merchants Guild and several other prominent businesses from across the Galaxy, Taris has once again become a viable investment just off the Hyperian Lane....”

It cost me a fortune to get them to say that.

The planet’s steady growth over the first half of the century had helped establish Fitt and the Guild as a major power in the Galactic Republic. The money and connections he’d made helped place one of his partners in the Senate. As far as Fitt could see, his investment and subsequent development of the Guild forty years ago looked like a masterstroke of negotiation. Small companies like his Red Star Shipping Line helped supply raw materials needed to complete more than six centuries of rebuilding. But it was men like him, men of vision with an eye to the future, who made all the difference. Thanks to his innate tenacity, the Guild was able to manoeuvre itself politically, as well as becoming involved militarily, in seven complete Star Systems. With a private army carrying more than one hundred thousand tonnes of weaponry, the Guild was able to defend itself against outside attacks from any of the Pirate Warlords, as well as opening negotiations with the Hutt. The Guild held sway over several major planets and governments that didn’t agree with their practices, but found themselves with few options. The Guild’s influence helped to open major hyper-lanes into Sith Space—a direct violation of Galactic law—but something he circumvented with endless bribes and brutal threats.

“Brokering a deal with the Galaxy’s larger companies who promised a return to Taris—” the reporter went on, “—and exacting guarantees from the Galactic Senate that any new hyper-lanes would include Taris as part of their routes—it looks as if Lord Fitt and the Star Merchants Guild have accomplished in twenty short years, what the planet’s ruling government has failed to do in six centuries of negotiations. The deal looked set with the return of the Jedi to Republican space ten years ago, followed by the reopening of both their Padawan Academy and the Advanced Training Facility on the Rogue Moon, but plans fell through with the sudden death of Jedi Grand Master, Vasasiki Gil. With the election of a new Jedi Grand Master, Hasarat Setti, it looks as if this new incarnation of Taris is well on the way to recovery,” the reporter concluded.

Fitt found himself looking at the close-up of the Tarisian Jedi Temple with its four spiralling towers stretching eight hundred meters straight up; he froze the picture, magnifying the image. He tried changing the image to his 3-D feed, but there was no holo-feed link.

Two hundred million credits to build this rust bucket, and I can’t even get the holo-feed to work?

He punched the controls in the arm of the divan—freezing the picture in place—and stood up to take a closer look at the image. Similar to the Temple on Coruscant, the Tarisian Temple outmatched the original in every way. Larger, taller, and more up to date, it was set up as an advanced school for studies, with a library, archives and Arcanum for housing holocrons and ancient manuscripts.

Now that’s a place I’d like to get into. I wonder if I can get a tour?

He sighed as he turned to look back out at the galaxy passing by the window. Fitt considered himself lucky to be living in an age of relative peace. A contradiction he realized, but still he thought, peace is relative to what your own world has to offer. And living in the outskirts of the Core Worlds in the New Republic, he felt safe and secure.

He turned the monitors off and sat back in his chair rubbing his temples and watching the stars swirl around him.

Fitt hadn’t been to Taris in years—he hadn’t been off-world in more than twenty—but Dax was graduating from the Jedi Academy and nothing was going to keep him from being there—not even an impending war with Mandalorian rebels.