Olee is getting better.
She moves through the ten clones with a training sword — weighted durasteel, no edge, built to develop muscle memory for real blade work. No saber. Without one she can't deflect, which means she's relying on the Force and her own speed to avoid the stun bolts while closing distance. A Force shove staggers two men in overlapping armor — not enough to put them down, but enough to break their firing line for the half-second she needs to get inside their reach. The sword cracks against a clone's forearm guard. He doesn't drop. She spins away before his partner can line up a shot.
She hasn't dropped any of them. Ten clones in full kit with stun-set DC-15s is a problem she can't solve yet. But she's lasting longer than she did a week ago, and the mistakes she's making are new mistakes — which means the old ones are fixed.
In-hiss. Out-rasp.
The observation rail above the estate's training bay. The air smells like ozone and exertion — the filtration carries both through the mask in thin chemical threads. One eye on Olee. The other on the datapad in my gauntlet where the Force-hunter equipment requisitions are taking shape.
The DC-15 first. The standard platform is reliable, accurate, modular — and underpowered for what I need. The XCiter chamber can be bored out the same way Cassius modified his DL-44 — higher tibanna volume per shot, tighter galven collimation on the barrel. More energy per bolt. Faster cycling. The trade-off is heat buildup and power pack drain, but a squad that puts a Jedi down in the first thirty seconds doesn't need sustained fire — it needs overwhelming fire in a short window. I make a note: custom power packs, military-spec, extended capacity. Heat sinks on the barrel housing.
But a stronger blaster is still a blaster, and Jedi train their entire lives to deflect blasters. The deflection is reflex — precognitive, wired into muscle memory through ten thousand hours of remote practice. A Jedi hears the capacitor whine, feels the bolt forming in the Force before it leaves the barrel, and the blade is already moving. The math favors the Jedi every time.
Change the math.
An underslung slugthrower on the DC-15 rail. Compact, magazine-fed, cortosis-tipped rounds. The Jedi feels a blaster cycling. Hears the capacitor. Moves the blade. And underneath the blaster bolt — silent, no capacitor whine, no energy signature in the Force — a cortosis slug punches through the gap the blade just opened. The slug hits the saber and the cortosis shorts the blade for three seconds. Three seconds of a Jedi holding a dead hilt while ten men with uprated blasters correct their aim.
The slug doesn't need to kill. It needs to change the math. Make the Jedi's own training work against them.
I make a note on the datapad. Cortosis sourcing — limited, expensive, mostly mined in the Outer Rim. BlasTech won't have an underslung module for the DC-15. Custom fabrication. I'll need a weapons engineer who doesn't ask questions about why the Dark Lord of the Sith wants slugthrowers mounted on blaster rifles.
Sonic grenades. The Jedi can't deflect sound. A directed sonic charge at close range disrupts concentration, breaks the precognitive loop, turns three seconds of Force-enhanced reaction time into a man with a headache trying to find his balance. Pair it with the slugthrower volley and the cortosis rounds and the uprated suppression fire and the Jedi is solving four problems simultaneously with tools designed for one.
Flamethrower units. Two per squad, shoulder-mounted, short range. Fire can't be deflected. Fire can't be redirected. Fire has to be blocked or avoided and both cost time and attention that the Jedi isn't spending on the ten blasters aimed at their chest.
The Force-hunters won't be Jedi killers on day one. But they'll be Jedi problems on day one. And problems compound.
Below me, Olee takes a stun bolt to the left thigh. Her leg buckles. She catches herself with the Force — a pulse against the deck that arrests her fall — and rolls behind the equipment rack. Two clones flank left. She feels them coming and throws the rack at them with a snarl that carries up to the observation rail.
Good instinct. Crude execution. The rack clips one clone's shoulder and misses the other entirely. She'll need to learn to throw with precision, not desperation.
In-hiss. Out-rasp.
The integrated comm chirps. Tongue against the left contact.
"My lord." Estate operations. "Senator Bel Iblis's shuttle has touched down. He's been escorted to the residential wing."
The grin pulls at scarred cheeks. The faceplate presses into the ruin of my face and I let it.
"Acknowledged."
I clip the datapad to my belt and lean over the observation rail.
"Starstone. Keep going."
She looks up. Sweat-streaked, breathing hard, one leg still numb from the stun bolt. Gold eyes glaring — not just at the clones, not just at the exercise. At me. The anger is bright and directed and personal. Good. Anger at me is still anger. Anger at me is still fuel.
I press the turret activation on the rail console. Three spherical training remotes descend from the ceiling — modified with higher-output stun bolts and predictive targeting algorithms.
"Three more problems, Starstone. Solve them."
"Kriffing —" The rest is lost as the first remote opens fire and she dives behind the equipment rack. The clones adjust formation. The beast in my chest hums with satisfaction.
I have a senator to see.
-AD-
-AD-
-AD-
The residential wing is warm. Bright. The morning sun comes through tall windows and falls in columns across the polished stone floor. It smells like breakfast — caf and fresh bread and something with sweetspice that the estate kitchen has been turning out all morning.
Garm Bel Iblis is on his knees.
Not in supplication. In parenthood. The four-year-old is wrapped around his neck, face buried in his collar, legs locked around his ribs. The two-year-old is in his left arm, hiccupping, the residual distress of a toddler who cried himself out and is now just holding on. Arrianya stands beside them with her hand on Garm's shoulder. Her face is drawn with relief — the fear of the last twelve hours finally breaking against the reality of her husband's presence.
Garm looks up when the respirator enters the room.
He's tired. The HUD reads the signs — elevated cortisol, sleep deprivation, the micro-tension around the eyes that comes from four hours on a chartered ship running every worst-case scenario through a tactical mind that never stops working. Still in travel clothes. He came straight from the landing pad.
He stands. The four-year-old doesn't let go — he shifts her to one arm with the practiced ease of a man who's carried children through worse than this.
"Lord Vader." Level. Controlled. Whatever's churning underneath, the voice gives nothing away. "I owe you a debt."
The words cost him. The Force reads the price — each syllable dragged across something sharp on its way out. Garm Bel Iblis has spent his political career making sure he never owes anyone anything. The Contemplanys Hermi — shutting Corellia's borders during the Clone Wars — was the ultimate expression of that philosophy. No entanglements. No debts. No chains.
And now he owes a debt to Darth Vader and he's standing in my house saying so because Corellian honor demands it.
"Your family's safety is my concern, Senator. No debt is owed."
We both know that's a lie. I say it because the lie is more useful than the truth. A debt acknowledged and then waived becomes generosity. Generosity creates obligation.
"Could we speak privately?" He looks at Arrianya. "If you wouldn't mind taking the children."
Arrianya nods. She takes the two-year-old, gently pries the four-year-old from Garm's arm despite a whimpered protest. She moves toward the suite with the ease of a woman who's spent the night here and already knows which room is which.
Rivoche is by the window. She hasn't moved since I entered. Watching the exchange — her father, the children, Arrianya — with the same measuring attention she gave the estate's security points last night.
Garm looks at her. "Rivoche. Give us a moment."
She hesitates. Her eyes move to me.
I nod. A small motion — barely perceptible, the helmet dipping a fraction.
She leaves.
Garm's eyes track the exchange. The nod. His daughter looking to Vader for permission to leave a room. The tightening around his eyes is visible even without the HUD — a father watching his child defer to someone else's authority.
The door closes.
In-hiss. Out-rasp.
We stand in the bright morning room with the breakfast smell and the sunlight and the respirator filling the space between us. Garm in travel clothes, unshaven, running on no sleep. Me in full armor.
"Sit down, Garm. You've had a long night."
"I'll stand."
"As you wish." I move to the window. Give him the room, the space, the illusion of not being cornered. "Your family is unharmed. Arrianya and the children were secured within minutes of the breach. Your household guards are recovering — blaster wounds, neither critical. Both will be fine."
"And the attackers?"
"Dead. All ten." I let that settle. "Kath Street Runners — a mid-level Coronet gang. My intelligence assets had been tracking their movements for several days before the breach. When they moved on your residence, I deployed a commando team." A pause. "After the estate was secured, the team returned to eliminate the remainder of the gang's network. There is nothing left of the Kath Street Runners, Senator. No members. No leadership. No one to make a second attempt."
He processes that. Not just the information — the thoroughness of it. Tracked for days. Commando team. The entire organization erased.
"Fortunate timing," he says. "That your people happened to be monitoring a street gang in my district."
"I maintain assets throughout the sector. One of them flagged the threat pattern. I chose to respond directly rather than route through CorSec."
"CorSec's response was... delayed, I understand."
"Unfortunately."
Silence. He hears everything I'm not saying. He can't prove any of it and he won't try. Garm Bel Iblis doesn't make accusations he can't substantiate. He files. He waits. He remembers.
"Thank you," he says. The same words as before. Different weight.
I accept it with a silence that the respirator fills.
In-hiss. Out-rasp.
"Arrianya tells me you've offered Rivoche a position." The terrain shifts without transition. Garm doesn't signal his moves.
"I have. A role on my personal staff. Operational — logistics, coordination, field liaison. Attached to my command structure directly."
"Military."
"Yes."
The Force reads him — not political calculation this time. Parental. His daughter in uniform, on a Star Destroyer, in the orbit of the most dangerous man in the galaxy.
"She's sixteen, Lord Vader."
"Galactic legal adulthood. She qualified marksman at fourteen. And last night she took a firing position at a blast door and put a bolt into the chest panel of the first thing that came through." I let the respirator fill the gap. "She didn't hesitate."
He's quiet. The compliment is genuine and he knows it, which makes it harder to dismiss. Garm doesn't mistake flattery for truth — but he can recognize when someone praises his daughter for the right reasons.
"She would see combat."
"Possibly. Not on the front line — she's untrained for that, and I don't waste people. But the galaxy is not a safe place, and I won't insult you by pretending otherwise. I will do my best to ensure she is not boots on the ground."
"You'll forgive me if that's not reassuring."
I turn from the window. The mask gives him nothing but the respirator and the red lenses. "She told me she wants a purpose that isn't defined by your name. Those are her words, Senator."
Garm's jaw works. He's heard this from Rivoche — or sensed it, or both. The restless girl who maps security points and carries a blaster and argues politics over dinner. He knows what she wants. He's been trying not to see it.
"She accepted," he says. Flat.
"She did."
The sunlight moves across the floor. The caf is getting cold. Neither of us sits.
"The governance declaration." Garm changes terrain again. "Arrianya mentioned that House Aldrete has endorsed it. Along with Thomree."
I didn't bring it up. He did. He came here knowing the landscape — the declaration, the endorsements, the empty space where his name should be.
"Cassius Aldrete committed last week. The Diktat's office is aligned. The framework is straightforward — an acknowledgment that the current governance arrangement serves Corellian economic and security interests. Trade stability. Shipyard continuity. No martial law, no forced conscription, no dissolution of existing political structures."
"A reasonable document," Garm says. "Describing a reasonable arrangement. Authored by a reasonable man."
The way he says reasonable tells me everything.
"Corellia does well under the current arrangement. The declaration acknowledges that. Nothing more."
"Nothing more." He almost smiles. Almost. "And my endorsement? What would that add, given that Aldrete and Thomree already provide sufficient consensus?"
He's testing whether I'll name a price. Whether I'll say I need you or your signature completes the set. Any of those would be leverage — evidence that the consensus isn't as complete as I'm claiming.
"Your endorsement would add the most respected political voice on Corellia. But the declaration proceeds regardless. This isn't a condition of anything, Senator."
The silence that follows is the most honest moment in the conversation. Both of us know what's happening. Both of us know the other knows. The family. The daughter. The declaration. The courtesies that function as chains and the chains that look like courtesies.
Garm doesn't ask what do you want. He doesn't need to. The architecture is visible to a man this smart — and the cruelest part is that every piece of it is defensible on its own merits. Just a hundred small generosities that add up to a cage.
"I will review the declaration," he says. "Not endorse. Review."
"Of course."
"And I want weekly access to my daughter. Wherever she's stationed. Unrestricted communication."
"Granted."
"If at any point she wants to leave —"
"She walks. No penalty. No consequence. She's your daughter, Garm. She can leave whenever she chooses."
His name again. The intimacy cuts both ways.
He looks at me for a long time. The HUD reads elevated heart rate, cortisol still high. He came here to fight. To push back. To spit defiance in the face of the man who wrapped chains around his family and called them protection.
Instead he got reasonable. He got concessions before he asked for them. He got his daughter's freedom guaranteed and his own political position respected and a declaration he can review without signing under pressure.
And all of it — every courtesy, every concession, every reasonable word — tightens the hold. Because how do you fight a man who gives you everything you ask for?
"Thank you, Lord Vader," he says. "For my family."
His children are safe. His daughter has a career. His wife is comfortable. The thing in the deep hums.
"They're welcome here as long as they wish."
He nods. Turns. Walks to the door.
Something unresolved hums in the Force behind him — a question he's carrying but won't ask. Not about the declaration. Not about Rivoche's position. Something smaller, more personal. The blaster. The gun he gave back to a girl who shot at him. Garm can't reconcile that with the man in the black armor and the trail of bodies and the chains disguised as courtesies. It doesn't fit. And Garm Bel Iblis doesn't like things that don't fit.
He'll work at it. Turn it over on the shuttle ride home, in the quiet hours, in the space between sleep and strategy. And he won't find an answer that satisfies him because the answer is simple and therefore suspicious: I gave her back the blaster because she earned it.
The door opens. The door closes.
In-hiss. Out-rasp.
He'll sign. Not today. Maybe not this week. But he'll look for the trap in the document and not find it because the trap isn't in the words. The trap is in the signature. In the public act of a man who once shut Corellia's borders now endorsing Imperial governance.
I walk back toward the training bay. The muffled crack of stun bolts through the corridor walls.
In-hiss. Out-rasp.
Corellia is almost mine.
I now have a website!
Https :/ /mandtekad . github. io/ MandTeKad /