Chapter Text
Chester woke up the next morning right back where she’d started, or at least the most pleasant version of where she’d started, curled in the softness of a Temple bed. She rubbed her face and staggered off to shower and dress, peering at the schedule on one of the datapads that she’d been handed on arriving; Plo was taking the morning to finish recovering from his headache, and she was more or less at loose ends until her appointment with Master Windu in one of the training rooms.
“Hm,” she said aloud, and briefly eyed the window, entertaining a half-fantasy of trying to flee again. But she was a great deal more cognizant of the risks. More importantly, she’d made several new enemies.
She went to breakfast instead, feeling faintly guilty about Plo and his lingering discomfort. It had been better than letting the droids and Tarkin’s stupidity kill half a fleet, but still. She should have learned more about his physiology on general principles, just as she would any other member of her crew—never mind that here he certainly outranked her.
She ate lightly, quite sure that the activities Mace had planned would not be conducive to a heavy breakfast, well aware that she was being watched. More than she had been, especially when she tentatively lowered her shields and reached out a little. Her awareness still didn’t extend far, the most challenging problem Plo had identified with her training, and the most persistent, but the sense of people and voices and the friendly brushing of minds verged on painful. An entire gaggle of Initiates came in for breakfast, and she was almost overwhelmed by the exuberance—and worry, the class had an exam the next day. She furled herself back behind her shields. No wonder Vulcans were so reserved. It was a lot.
She spent a little time in the library, then headed for the designated salle. It was… nice, to walk around unaccompanied, and she felt some of the tension lift from her shoulders. Perhaps something to do with not being on a battlefield. Perhaps something to do with the Temple itself, big and light and airy and full of calm and quiet voices. Thousands of years of history in these walls, a span of spacefaring civilization far older than many of the civilizations in her galaxy. It was wonderful, in its way.
If she were not still basically a prisoner; one now not only confined by the Republic, but by the fear of what Dooku might have in store for her.
She dismissed the thought. First Master Windu. Then, working on getting home. She was going to get home.
She turned the corner, double checked the room number, and stepped inside some ten minutes before their scheduled time to find him already there, kneeling in the center of the floor in what she guessed was meditation.
She’d spent enough time training with Plo to know the correct etiquette. She toed off her shoes and walked across the mat to join him, settling into a crosslegged position to wait. A little light meditation might be appropriate, she’d learned, but given Obi-Wan’s horror from watching her, she didn’t think this was going to be the best approach.
Especially since this was obviously to do with her outburst on the flight home. She didn’t exactly want to remind them just how different she was right now. So she settled for just waiting.
After a few moments, she realized he was looking at her, evaluating. She inclined her head. “Master Windu.”
“Commander Chester,” he said, no inflection in his voice, and continued scrutinizing her. She felt a sense of pressure; not inimical, like Krell, but a hand passing over a wall to make sure of its soundness.
After a long moment, he said, “I see why the depth of your Force Sensitivity had initially been dismissed.” He lapsed into silence again, but didn’t even blink; Chester, accustomed to Vulcans, looked steadily back with her face politely still.
“As you are aware, we do not train individuals out of early childhood,” he said, “even if they are strong in the Force as you are. An eight year old human would be an edge case, let alone a full adult. You have already amply demonstrated many of the reasons behind those policies, and I would gather, experienced others for yourself.”
“It was not my intention to seek training,” she said.
“So I have been told,” he said, “and I don’t doubt it. But it seems the matter has been taken out of all our hands. Whether Dooku’s attempts have sensitized you to your own abilities, or your first exposure to the potential of those abilities has led you to instinctively reach for them, the fact remains that you will become a danger to yourself and others if you do not learn to control them.”
She swallowed, hearing her exact fears spoken aloud. “So I understand,” she said.
That scrutiny continued. Not unkind, but intent and unsettling, and now expectant, as if the next move were hers.
She decided it wasn’t a good time to be difficult. “You’re worried about my anger. And that I may turn into Dooku, or something like him.”
Master Windu nodded, less confirmation than acknowledgement of her answer. “You are playing with fire, Commander,” he said. “Very few Force Sensitives can use their anger the way you do for long without posing a danger to others, or themselves.”
“Plo did say something like that.” She thought about it, what it would mean not to draw on her anger again. She didn’t like the idea. Even Vulcans got angry, ferociously so. They controlled it, like channeling a raging river into a pencil-thin jet that could cut steel. Anger was no worse than any other emotion; it should inform, but not command.
She’d only ever seen her friend Sotek absolutely lose it once , on an ugly little mission right after the Academy that had entailed breaking up a cell of the Orion Syndicate—the three massive Nausicaans who’d made the particularly bad decision to take a kid hostage hadn’t known what hit them. He hadn’t actually killed them. Neither had he needed to draw his phaser.
She remembered that every time she was tempted to think of him as an owlish, quiet astrophysicist.
“With a bled kyber, that risk is multiplied,” Mace said, as if he’d sensed the drift of her thoughts. “Master Plo tells me that your emotional self-control is considerable, or we wouldn’t even be having this conversation, but the risk remains. It isn’t that the kyber will actively distort your thinking, so much that as you bond with it, it could create a feedback loop for your own negative emotions, blowing them up out of proportion and forcing you to work far harder to control them. Do you understand?”
Chester nodded, appreciating his straightforward manner. “I believe so.”
Mace gave her a short, approving nod. “I am one of the few in the Order who does make a habit of using anger as a motivating force. To this day, there are those who doubt the long-term sustainability of my methods, even as a member of the High Council. My record speaks for itself.” He paused, meaningfully, and his unceasing gaze somehow grew sharper without a single muscle moving in his face. “Your record thus far also speaks for itself. Your initial escape attempts from us, and your dramatic escape from Dooku, as well as your deliberate antagonism of Master Krell.”
“All necessary, from my perspective, but I understand why my actions were alarming.”
He gave her a very faint smile. “Do not misunderstand—I agree that the latter two were necessary, and I can sympathize with the former given your situation. There is little about your presence here that hasn’t been a little alarming, from a certain point of view. My point, Commander, is that you do indeed have a solid understanding of and justification for your actions and are able to articulate both based on ethical and moral reasoning without appeals to emotion despite the necessary role that emotion plays in your decision-making process. There are far worse ways to approach a bled kyber.”
She inclined her head. “Thank you,” she said. “Though I would invite you to consider that, should I give in to my worst impulses, I would still be able to clearly articulate my reasoning.” Her mouth twisted bitterly. She’d heard enough of those justifications over her career. “Most people can, in fact.”
He regarded her with a distant thoughtfulness. “In my experience, very few such justifications are morally or logically sound.”
“But enough are,” she said. “Our society has made a commitment to standing against the worst of what we can be, but that does not mean that our demons are slain or even quiescent. And in Starfleet, we are in a position to see the worst of what we can be—and become the worst of what our diverse species are capable. But I suspect my people’s approach to anger does not construe it as a threat in the same way that I am given to understand you do.”
Master Windu watched her for a quiet moment, his dark eyes flashing sympathetic. “If your people are largely not Force-sensitive, then I am not surprised to hear that. Think of it in terms of risk factors. If you can effectively manage your emotions, then anger is just another entirely natural aspect of your emotional experience. The intensity of your feelings, your own self-control, the role you are playing in the situation, and whether or not you are capable of throwing furniture around with your mind when you feel like it; these are all elements of risk. Jedi tend to score highly on the last, which means our risk analysis is comparatively more stringent.”
“Throwing things around with one’s mind is rather more unusual, but certainly not unheard of,” she said. “As I have discussed with Master Plo, there are multiple cases of officers exposed to external influences that have given them powers… not dissimilar to those of a Force Sensitive in this galaxy. There are even more of ships and crews encountering beings like Dooku—or entities still more powerful, who regarded them as servants or toys. It has given us a profound respect for the danger of such abilities, no matter the motivating emotion.”
“He noted your statement that you would have expected to encounter several such entities by this point in your career,” said Mace, and the slight variance in his tone perhaps indicated a certain skepticism.
“ Very few people become executive officer of a Nebula-Class starship by thirty,” said Chester, “so yes, I would have, especially with a standard five-year deep space exploration mission. But external circumstances meant I was promoted faster than normal. At least Dooku was a reasonable starting point.”
That was irritation, a flicker quickly tucked away behind an impassive facade. “And what would you find an unreasonable starting point, Commander?”
“On its maiden voyage, the Enterprise encountered an omnipotent being who proceeded to put the crew on trial for the crimes of humanity. All of humanity, over all of history.”
Mace drew a little breath, as if he meant to respond, then gave her a deeply unamused look, somehow without changing his expression at all. “What exactly do you mean by ‘omnipotent’?”
Chester considered what she knew of Q. “I mean it as close to literally as you can imagine. We really don’t know much beyond that he seems to be able to do whatever he likes and go wherever he wants, and whenever he wants. You can’t really do anything to stop him; you kind of just have to put up with it, or persuade him his time is better spent elsewhere.”
“Hm,” said Mace, skeptically. “Did they survive?”
“Yes,” said Chester. “Omnipotent being included. He’s spent the time since intermittently harassing Captain Picard—commanding officer of the Enterprise, our flagship. He tried it with Captain Sisko—that’s my former superior—once, but Captain Sisko punched him.”
Mace raised one eyebrow. “And this was effective?”
“Well, he went back to harassing Captain Picard afterward, so I’d say yes. Picard himself might disagree.”
“Hm,” said Mace, still very skeptical. “I will keep that method in mind.”
He rose smoothly to his feet and stepped back, the look in his eyes evaluating. “Activate your lightsaber. Training intensity.”
Chester thumbed it to the requested level and settled into her guard. Her guard still, not Dooku’s. The salle was well-lit; the red glow of the blade cast only a slightly concerning glimmer against the shiny metal fittings on the hilt.
Mace circled her, looking her form up and down. He gave a subtle, satisfied nod. “Are you shielding yourself now?”
She nodded.
“Please cease doing so.”
She drew a long breath. It helped to imagine herself home on the Bedivere. Being open here, where she knew she was surrounded by people accustomed to communicating through emotions and perfectly able to sense hers, was incredibly difficult. She’d been shielding to some extent since she’d woken up in that brig, in the faint hope it might have bought her more time before the Dominion cracked her open like an egg, and it had been an easy, almost comforting habit to slip back into. As if she were back with T’Volis again, on Vulcan.
It had been stifling, but with T’Volis she had felt safe. Everything since then… Faisal’s death, her promotion, the kidnapping—it made it easy to be nostalgic.
Releasing them had only just started not feeling horrible around Plo. Mace, with his cool judgemental regard, was a different story. He didn’t feel hostile, exactly, certainly not the way Dooku or Krell had… more like someone who knew exactly what was riding on the outcome of this assessment.
She did it anyway. She was not going to be a danger to her crew when she returned.
Mace’s expression didn’t even flicker. “Master Plo tells me he has done this exercise with you before. There will be no need for the helmet this time.”
She frowned. “We usually do this with quarterstaffs. Aren’t the lightsabers more dangerous?”
“Training intensity will limit an injury to a mild burn,” he said. “Arguably, the lack of a solid weapon makes this less dangerous than using the quarterstaffs. Proceed.”
She was expecting it to be easier without the helmet on. This wasn’t true, because Mace was absolutely not playing fair.
She’d seen Plo and the others in combat, at least briefly, but she’d never experienced it herself—that unfortunate spar with Anakin aside. The lightsabers were a very different weapon from a staff, and a Jedi Master in a training salle, intentionally challenging her, as versus one in a ship trying to demolish a squadron of droids as fast as possible, was a very different proposition. Dooku had been brute-force trying to beat the shit out of her to scare her into using the Force the way he wanted her to; Mace was pushing her, finding the limits of her abilities and then drawing her beyond them, a degree at a time.
She also suspected he was showing off, at least a little. Challenge and reward, all at once— look what you could learn to do. The fact that he was one of the few Jedi who did use his anger was not lost on her.
Is he trying to recruit me or test me? she wondered, bemused, and then he closed with her, locking their blades together.
Chester, as a rule, avoided locking blades. It turned swordplay into a contest of strength, which took the fun out of it, and in the Federation, humans were on the weaker end of the spectrum—as soon as you got into such a contest, you were probably going to lose. But Mace was also human, for once a much more equal opponent, and far more importantly, he’d trapped her blade in such a way that escaping the bind would put her at very high risk of being struck. So she leaned into it, hoping for an opening that would give her leverage against him, sliding the base of her blade against the midpoint of his.
“Commander,” he said, “what are you so afraid of in your home galaxy?”
Her stomach dropped; she stared at him in blank shock.
“It is a war, is it not?” he said, utterly certain. “And your Starfleet is losing.”
The anger came first, after the lead weight in her stomach, the blistering rage at herself, for blurting it out, at Plo, who had to have told him, and then at Mace himself for throwing it in her face like this. She had thought she could trust Plo. She couldn’t trust him.
Starfleet is losing. She’d seen what the Dominion had done to Betazed. She could see that destruction on Earth, so easily.
She snarled and hurled her weight against her blade, breaking the guard and taking a stumbling step backwards. She raised the lightsaber into a guard again, the bone-aching roar vibrating up her arm and clutched around her heart and throat, bared her teeth in instinctive outraged challenge—
—and stopped, because the man in front of her wasn’t the problem.
She stepped back again—he was just standing there in his own guard, with a fierce serenity flowing around him, like a stone in the sea, watching her.
She was still angry. His words had jabbed a knife into the center of her fear and pain and twisted; she could feel the pit in her stomach, the burn of tears behind her eyes. She didn’t cry when she was angry or scared, not in years, she hadn’t even cried with the pain of the radiation burns eating through her hands and forearms, but he had cut to the heart of the matter so swiftly and unexpectedly that she had been caught utterly offguard, focused on the fight, not protecting herself, and her shields had been down.
The realization this was a fucking test didn’t make it hurt any less.
Her first instinct was to attack him. Her second was to power down the blade, turn away. We’re done here . Turn her back in righteous rage, show him she knew exactly what he was doing and that she wasn’t going to let him just fuck with her like that.
But that wasn’t how it would work in a real battle, was it? There were times she wouldn’t be able to step away, rather than lose her temper. And she knew all of a sudden that that was the point of this little exam, more than anything else.
This isn’t about me, she told herself, as she had told herself many times over the war, and stepped back into measure, it’s about getting the job done.
And the job, right now, is making sure I’m not a danger to the people I care about when I get back.
Her anger strengthened her, kept her on her feet long after anything sensible would have laid down and died. It settled into her bones, an ally, as much a part of her as skin or muscle, but just as skin and muscle and flesh didn’t make the decisions, neither did it.
When Mace stepped back into measure, meeting his blows seemed simple, as if he’d taken pity on her and gone easy because he realized how acutely he’d hurt her. That was irritating, but she set the feeling aside and focused on the task in front of her.
At last he stepped back and deactivated his blade. “That’s enough, Commander.”
She deactivated her own. “And?”
“It will become easier with time,” he said. “You will have no time to step back to master yourself in a real fight. But I suspect that next time, you will not need to.”
“So I passed the test,” she said, and couldn’t keep the bitterness out of it.
“Plo had already made his assessment of you clear. I concur, for the most part.”
“For the most part.” So her hesitation had counted deeply against her.
“He believes you have the discipline and instincts to learn to control your anger in such a way that using it does not threaten you or others.” Mace hooked his lightsaber to his belt and looked at her. “I disagree. You have already done so. The realization of your Force sensitivity has shaken your trust in yourself; that is what you will have to repair.” Something like a faint smile touched his lips. “I suspect the galaxy would be a far better place if people who commanded starships realized they could as ill afford to give into rage as we Jedi do.”
She found herself smiling, too, twisted and uncomfortable. “True.” A pause; she was still angry. If anything, angrier now she’d had time to think. “How the hell did you know about our war?”
“Deduction, a skill in some demand as the Master of the Jedi Order,” he said, so straightforwardly it almost circled back around into humor. “Your emotions were a large part of it. Your very personal disdain for our war; we reserve our greatest fury for the familiar. Yoda mentioned your mentor had died, and you had taken his place; your own comment about your rapid promotion sealed it. People do not get promoted so quickly in wars that are going well .”
“No, they don’t,” she said. “There are seven hundred and fifty people waiting for me back there, Master Windu. Seven hundred fifty people who lost their first officer two months ago, and lost his replacement one month ago, and they’re fighting for their lives right now. The kid who replaced me is two years older than Skywalker, green as fucking grass and scared shitless, and they’re losing and they know it, and I belong back there with them. Krell’s bullshit mistake is going to cost the people I love a hell of a lot, and if any of us needed proof I can control my anger, it’s that that son of a bitch is still breathing. ”
His expression went very slightly pained. “I take your point. You have our deepest gratitude for pressing the issue with Master Krell, and our deepest regret that it was necessary to do so. Your actions have given us the evidence we needed in order to remove him from military service entirely.”
She inclined her head. “I’m glad of it. But be assured, he’s far from the only one—maybe the only Jedi, for now, though that may change under the strains of this war—but the men are afraid of the natborn officers for very good reason.”
“Of that,” he said grimly, “I am abundantly aware. Our authority, however, is circumscribed, and victories like yours unusual. Speaking of victories,” he fixed her with a look that all but nailed her feet to the floor, and Chester found herself unintentionally raising and reinforcing her mental shields, her mouth going dry. There wasn’t an overt threat in it, but the profound and powerful air of cut the crap made her feel like a cadet again. She realized in that moment that she most certainly did not want to see this man genuinely angry. “Your encounter with the droids begs more questions than it answered.”
“I,” she started, and then shut her mouth. There was really nothing she could say. No handwave she could give him. She’d have to wait for the question, see if she could answer it.
His own face was immovable. “At this point, you have demonstrated that you do not intend any harm,” he said. “Your actions, as I have noted, have made that far more clear than your words—or lack thereof—might. But what is also evident is that you have omitted significant details; Master Plo noted that you were evasive in response to his own inquiries. Have you considered that your evasions might cost the life of anyone tempted to replicate your results?”
“I emphasized my role as a third party,” she said. She had considered that, and thought it unlikely enough anyone would try as to be an acceptable risk.
“There are third parties available, more neutral than you. Would you be willing to risk one of their lives, knowing that it wasn’t the only factor at play?”
Shit. No. Was she being too secretive? She thought of Tarkin and his interest—but allowing people to die of her fear of him, that wasn’t right either.
“The droids responded to you as if you were one of them,” he said. “I spoke with Skywalker as well; he told me that you were evasive about why you understood Basic, implying that the two issues were related.”
She squared her shoulders. “It would be unwise for someone to attempt to replicate my results,” she said firmly. “I do not feel I am at liberty to explain why.”
“Because you are afraid.”
Not as far off the mark as she would like him to be. “Because you are correct,” she said. “I have told you very little about the galaxy I come from, or my people outside of our social structures and ethics. I am sure as the Master of the Jedi Order, you have a healthy appreciation for how easily one culture or government can manipulate another, even unintentionally, especially where technologies differ. I suspect you also understand how the same technology can be used to very different ends in different societies; that it can save lives in one, and be used as an executioner’s blade in another. I don’t want to be the person who brings something like that into this galaxy. I understand little of it—”
“—which has done little to discourage you so far.”
She made a face. “And I’ll be answering to my superiors for that, you may be sure. If anyone’s feeling vindictive over there, I might already be looking at a court martial for Dooku, let alone the droids.”
Mace tilted his head very slightly to the side, and the lines around his eyes deepened. “For rescuing yourself from a hostile captor?”
“For interfering with the internal conflict of an uncontacted civilization.” Chester took a deep breath, concentrating on the feeling of her ribs and diaphragm expanding, and let it out. “Given the circumstances, there is a good chance I would be exonerated. However, the laws exist for a good reason, and they would be duty-bound to investigate nevertheless.
“My people have a very ugly history, Master Windu. We don’t intend to make the same mistakes—of imperialism and genocide—a second time. We don’t interfere with other societies. That’s cost us enough lives in our history. And when it comes to things like the droids…” She trailed off, rethought her next sentence, sighed. “It could tip the balance of power here. And I can’t take sides in this conflict, no matter my personal feelings. Handing you that technology would be taking a side.” Would it? something in her wondered. Maybe they could use it to negotiate a truce. Maybe it could end this war, peacefully and productively, maybe she was being a paranoid fool for not providing it. It was a translator, a way to promote peace; it was very likely even the most hardassed of Admirals would see it as a reasonable measure to take.
But… it might not be. Shut down the droid army and overrun the Separatists, and who knew what might then happen? How many Krells were out there, enabled by this whole rotten system? How many well-meaning people broken down by this war who’d suddenly discover a hunger for revenge? The translator could be used to make peace, but it could also be used to simply win. “I’d prefer not to discuss specifics, because then people like Tarkin might get interested. And Tarkin in particular is not very good at taking no for an answer.”
Mace just eyed her. “Even when you would be sure interfering would save lives? Is it just to ask us to pay for your ugly history?”
“Even when I am sure that interfering would save billions of lives, or the lives of people who trust me,” she said, because that was the letter of the law, even if she felt it wobbling under her feet. “Pre-spaceflight societies die very, very frequently, Master Windu, often of their own follies as my species almost did. We don’t get to save them, either. Think of the level of interference it would take; think of what it would do—forever a people beholden to their saviors, their own uniqueness butchered from the moment we stepped in to stop them. A colonized species by necessity, as their saviors monitored them to keep them out of trouble as they rebuilt, one with our values imposed on them from above—we may be sickened and horrified to lose them, but to do that again, as we did to one another while we were still planet-bound? There are cultures and traditions and languages of my people that will never breathe again, be seen again, be heard or spoken again—what of those of an entire species? No. Because even if we paid lip service to their traditions, what of the ones we found morally repugnant, the oppression of minorities, or the mutilation of the helpless? In the end we would decide what would stay and what would go, no matter how kindly or gently we did it. The hand that holds the oxygen mask to your face has as much power as the one around your throat.
“The difference between our peoples is of course not at that scale, but if we can’t step in even in such extreme circumstances, I cannot interfere in this one, and I have to take all the precautions I can. I can argue that my actions where Dooku was involved are permissible because he sought to threaten that neutrality. But it is my duty to keep that interference to a minimum, and to use the minimum possible force to resolve each situation.”
The look Mace gave her now was longer and cooler, somehow. He had the best poker face of anyone she’d ever met, but somehow she could read him even so. (Maybe that was the Force at work.) “Are you not simply concerned for the safety of your own galaxy?”
“That too,” she admitted. “The two problems are closely related, and I’ve hardly made a secret of my opinions of your government.”
“That you have not,” he said. “As it would cause more damage than it is worth to get a truthful answer to my question, I will leave it be. But I would invite you to reflect on the consequences of your inaction, consequences which are not theoretical but continue to play out as we speak, and which your fear, however well-founded, continues to enable.”
She nodded, sharp. “Believe me, I am.” Was she certain of it? She was not. She would not go so far as to say she was doing the right thing. But it did not feel like the wrong one, either.
“Then I leave it to your judgment,” he said, “and will tell others not to attempt to negotiate with the droids, even if they are sentient beings whose lives will otherwise be lost.”
Ouch. Would it hurt to tell him that she’d probably been speaking their programming language? Surely they could do something to imitate it. She didn’t even have to mention the translator.
She set the thought aside. It was certainly possible, and might keep interference minimal, but she reminded herself she knew so little about this galaxy, had so little knowledge of the consequences, and what would someone like Tarkin do with that knowledge? Dooku falling out of power would be good, there was little to be argued with there. But what about all the people on all the worlds that followed him, once the Separatists collapsed? What would happen to them? She had no way of knowing. That would take careful thought, as much as she wanted to save everyone.
And that very motivation was why she wasn’t going to barge ahead with that approach. She closed her eyes and let out a long breath. “I wish it could be otherwise,” she said quietly, and left it at that.
Mace sat a little heavily in his chair, the only outward indication of the fatigue that lined his Force presence with deep grey. “She passed,” he said, “and she’s definitely using a translator field.”
Depa raised her eyebrows at him. “You tested our hypothesis quite thoroughly, then?”
Mace gave her a very flat look. “I started with Chalactan, then cycled through Huttese, Korunnai, Mirialan and Bocce throughout the conversation. Two trade languages, two planetary, and one galactically endangered. Not once did she give any indication of having noticed, and not once did she respond in anything other than vaguely Core Basic.”
Eeth Koth sighed and leaned back in his chair. “That is a comprehensive list of languages,” he said, “and denotes a remarkable degree of computing power. Where might she be carrying such a device?”
“The one thing she retained from her uniform was her badge,” said Plo, thoughtful. He made a small gesture to the side of his chest, where the Commander was wont to wear the small arrowhead insignia. “She has not struck me as overly sentimental, and if it were an issue of retaining her identity in a new place, one might have expected her to retain the insignia of her rank as well. Perhaps that is it.”
“Can you imagine how much that could help?” said Depa, a little wistfully.
“Help that the Commander is unwilling to offer,” said Mace with disapproval in his voice. “When I asked about the droids, her response was a lecture about her people’s noninterference regulations.”
“She treated Wolffe to a similar speech,” said Plo. “I cannot say her reasoning is entirely unsound.”
Mace’s face set into further immovability. “ This galaxy has weathered many would-be Empires. Her Federation is small; her adherence to these noninterference regulations speaks to either arrogance, or a substantial threat, or—perhaps more likely—a concern that interests in this galaxy might see opportunities in hers. The latter is not an unreasonable concern, but regardless of the reason for her silence, the price it exacts may be a high one for the people of the Republic. I am not pleased about paying it on her behalf.”
“Considering that she asked Commander Wolffe about light-speed torpedoes, I suspect the smallness of her Federation is not terribly relevant.” Plo could sympathize with Mace, who like most Jedi prized lives above more abstract principles. He also occasionally thought that rock-solid certainty could be counterproductive in the long run. “I can’t speak for Chester herself, but to me the greatest risk is presented by the elements within the Republic that have been gunning for this war from the start. If we don’t pay the price, someone else will, and most likely in much much higher numbers.”
“Recall Admiral Tarkin’s interest in her, we should,” said Yoda. “Concerned about him, with good cause, she is.”
“Despite her personal encounter with Dooku, she regards him and Sith Lords in general as a relatively trivial threat,” said Plo. “I do not think that is from mere arrogance—Dooku apparently demonstrated both violent telekinesis and Dark-side lightning for her. We should perhaps consider what other threats her people face within their own galaxy, and whether this has any link to her eagerness to return to her crew.”
The look Mace gave him at that made Plo fairly certain he’d gotten the information about the war out of Chester as well. He refrained from saying it aloud, at least.
“Recall also,” said Plo, “that the Commander has very little, if any, obligation to us. She is not here of her own free will.”
He thought of the dread and sorrow in her voice as she’d told him about her Federation’s war, and regretted that fact profoundly. For all the horror of their own position, it sounded as if her Federation were in a far uglier one, with fewer resources. He’d read enough histories himself of what happened to small interstellar entities unlucky enough to find themselves in the crosshairs of older, stronger empires.
Despite what popular fiction might have to say on the subject, the empires hardly ever had cause for regret.
When and if they returned Chester to her home, would it be to the torture and execution she’d expected upon her arrival?
Plo put it from his mind; it was not something they could control, or even predict, but the grief of the thought lingered.
Mace again looked at him as if he had caught the direction of those thoughts as well; there was a drift of sympathy from where he sat. “You are correct,” he said, his tone now very different. “She is not here of her own free will.”
There were a few curious looks around the circle, but no comment, at least not aloud.
Plo watched Mace. Whatever Mace had learned from Chester, it wasn’t showing in his expression or his presence.
“There is one more thing,” said Depa. “Chancellor Palpatine would like to meet her.”
Plo considered, for a few moments, the prospect of Chester coming face to face with the Chancellor, all her opinions on display. Palpatine tended toward a mild and understanding demeanor, and was by all accounts a reasonable man. However, Chester was very likely to put that to the test.
“Perhaps what we need is someone to coach the good Commander,” he said aloud. “Inform her as to the delicacy of the situation, and give her the relevant information about current balances of power, issues, and so on.”
Mace, the usual liaison to the Senate, looked still more pained. “I regret that my other duties would make such an intensive undertaking difficult.”
“Perhaps Senator Amidala?” Plo suggested. “She has been quite willing to assist the Order in the past.”
“Master Plo,” said Obi-Wan, a deeply amused edge to his voice, “you have met Senator Amidala, have you not? The two of them might start a revolution.”
“That is true,” Plo conceded, “but Senator Amidala is most likely to guide any such revolution in an effective direction, rather than a disastrous one. And I believe that the two of them will find they hold many common values, which may improve Commander Chester’s view of the Republic━an advantage not easily dismissed before a meeting with the Chancellor.”
“No harm in asking, there is,” Yoda put in, his presence in the Force swaying with laughter. “Master Kenobi, relay our request to the Senator, you will? Assign your former student to the task, perhaps you will?”
Obi-Wan sighed and dropped his head into his hands. “Don’t encourage him, Master.”