4.03

"Three megs," growled the Mandalorian with the armor that shone like a mirror.

"Kriff," the bug-eyed Duros to his left cursed, angrily throwing his cards to the mudpile. A literal mudpile in this case - Hutt house rules were both smelly and awesome like that. "Too hot for me." He sighed theatrically, disappointment warring with relief and anger in his presence in the Force as he folded long-fingered, blue-skinned hands behind a hairless head and sat back to watch. "Up to ya, boys. Don't let the princess win!"

"Considering your flashy boasting yet ineffectual tactics, One-Eye," I interrupted what I was sure would have been a great deal of grumbling from the losing half of the table, "I'd say you're the princess. All pomp and dignity that somehow turns to tantrums when you lose." The crowd of mercenary leaders, crime bosses, high-end smugglers, and pirates burst into laughter as the Duros glared balefully at me. For some reason, he was beginning to think he shouldn't have folded so soon, unaffordable bet or no. Given how good his hand had been he should have gone all-in... a realization that came just a bit too late to do anything about. Sucked to be him, didn't it?

"Miss Andrim, your call?" the robotic voice of the droid dealer cut through the laughter before it could spark a brawl - for the third time that night. I had it on good authority that its mediation wouldn't work for much longer.

"I see your three megs and raise you two more," I told the Mandalorian as I added chips to the pot and fuel to the flame. Megs as in megacredits; exiled or no, I was a Kuati heiress. If the boys wanted to tango with me they'd need to bring their big-boy pants and their big-boy wallets. The better to fleece them with, of course.

"Call," grunted the last still betting player on the table, a grey-skinned figure the size of a child, of no species I recognized. Even counting his utterly black eyes, vertical eyelids, absent ears, and bonelessly flexible fingers, his emotions were far stranger. They leaped from curiosity to eagerness, to anticipation, to disappointment far too fast for a non-crazy, non-epileptic person, making grasping and understanding them so much harder. It had taken hours but I was finally certain his brain processed things faster than most, resulting in an altered objective perception of time. Without exposure to sensitives who could enter similar states through the Force it would have taken longer, but now... a hair-thin filament of light connected the bright sun of my presence to his much dimmer spark. Through it I drew forth those emotions I wished to discard and pushed them into the Force; a wariness, disappointment, caution, curiosity, all dimmed then faded away. At the same time focusing the Force on eagerness, elation, greed, I fed them until they grew strong. That they were not my own emotions made little difference. If Aurra Sing had a talent for concealment, blocking others from sensing, predicting, or reading her in the Force strong enough to deceive the 'Chosen One' in his face, my talent lay in forging and manipulating connections of energy. It was how sensing the flow of energy came so easily, how influencing others felt as natural as influencing myself, how the first overt application of the Force I'd managed was reaching out and taking the energy from existing links.

Why go to all the trouble of connecting to other players when I could easily predict both their cards and their actions? Sing and Ratty had asked this more than once. Then again, neither the assassin nor the nanny droid understood card games from a professional perspective. One didn't need the Force to win in such games, only good memory, and basic game theory. Casinos knew this. Worse, professional players that couldn't count cards also knew this. They might not be able to tell how I did it, but they'd certainly know I played with foreknowledge just from watching my tactics. When that happened I'd be blacklisted as a player at best. At worst, other suspiciously lucky activities of mine would be investigated - such as my stock market profits. No, to cheat at cards with the Force professionally one couldn't rely on just precognition. But if other players happened to underestimate the fifteen-year-old "princess" again and again, if they happened to make mistakes due to overconfidence, if they lost their cool and ragequit, or simply became nervous and easy to read... well, that was no fault of mine, was it?

The game continued for another few hands until Mr. Grey lost his last mark to the Mandalorian. Not winning too often was another way to deflect attention, to not appear unreasonably lucky to people who could connect it to Force Sensitivity. But with only me and the gleaming tin-can still in the game, subtlety no longer applied. Either he'd win or I would, and with the deck continuously shuffled, neither card counting nor luck should apply. Of course, the casino's anti-cheating mechanisms had the exact opposite of the intended effects. The future was always in motion because the seer's reactions to the vision influence it. But with the Hutt's special dealer droid ensuring no action from the players could affect the constantly randomized cards, the faces of all cards to be dealt were clear. In but minutes, the Mandalorian was out of marks and I was ten million credits richer. Served the idiot right; who wears platinum-plated armor and wants to be taken seriously? Even the God-Emperor had stopped with gold.

"You filthy cheater!"

Ah yes, the predictable resort to violence as he realized how much he lost. He isn't the only one, so I wrench his blaster off his hand a bit too quickly, and his thumb cracks under the crumbling 'armor'. I'm too busy shooting One-Eye's blaster off his hand before he can reduce my number of eyes by half to feel bad about it, and get grabbed by surprisingly functional Mandalorian crush-gaunts for my inattention. Hundreds of miniaturized servos whine but my own armor holds until I grab him back.

"Let me go, or you'll regret it," I warn him, but he laughs it off. Apparently, being underage and female doesn't afford me much respect so I grip him back with my off-hand and squeeze. Since there must be a layer of Beskar under all those useless decorations, it's not a matter of physical muscles or even servos any more. It's all about the Force and making a fist - no 'try' involved. Ever kicked a soda can hard enough to burst? It was like that only with more ketchup and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

No, the casino didn't blacklist me. Free entertainment, loot from defeated players, and winning bets on yours truly were too profitable for that.

xxxx xxxx xxxx

​

I imagined a flame in my mind until its warmth tickled my closed eyelids, then fed into it all emotions I found counterproductive. Anger at having to deal with the idiots in the casinos, displeasure at far too many everyday occurrences in the Smuggler's Moon, disgust at the state of the filth-covered streets and garbage-coated buildings, fear that I'd be discovered by players I was not ready to face, boredom at how slowly things were moving day to day. Serenity was not the desired goal of releasing those emotions in the Force - for I hadn't really released them. The flames fanned and fed into a small inferno, I fueled them into the emotions that remained. Curiosity about Star Wars technology. Determination to succeed. A certain child-like eagerness to explore the mysteries of the Force. Excitement at breaking the law and getting away with it. Satisfaction with every step taken towards more personal power.

The Jedi meditate by purging emotions into the Force, but while this grants peace and self-control it also makes one passive, reactive. The Sith meditate by focusing on their emotions, magnifying them, and drawing strength by the motivation they provide... yet they focus on fear, anger, and hate for their ease of access, to their mental and physical detriment. I found neither extreme to my liking and since this was about my mind, what I wanted was more important than a thousand generations of parochial philosophy. Was it arrogance to think I knew better than many far older and wiser Jedi or Sith? Sure. Greeks did have a tradition of hybris though, so I didn't particularly care. Besides, with Sidious bound to notice me sooner or later, it was either grab enough power, knowledge, and resources to oppose him or die horribly in either body or spirit.

Towards that ultimate goal, I was floating in the middle of my private meditation chamber, a three-meter tall, one-meter wide black cylinder slowly orbiting my position. Moving objects was usually the first overt application of the Force-sensitives developed, one that often came instinctively to those strong in the Force. In my case, moving objects was something I hadn't known how to do, instinctively or otherwise. Only after seeing another Force-sensitive do it, examining her attempts directly, could I alter the flows of the Force to lift objects for me. In the relative safety and privacy of the meditation chamber, I had multiple objects floating already, though none were as massive as the black cylinder. Saturated with the Force already, lifting the mass of carbonite needed only to redirect the existing energy to the desired result, something that came all too easy with how faint a grip the source of that energy had on the world.

Serifa Altunen was still alive. Killing a Jedi sent a far greater - and more easily traceable - ripple in the Force than capturing one. Keeping said Jedi captured on the other hand was normally nigh-impossible. Even if they didn't escape on their own, coincidence would stretch to impossible lengths to arrange for others to release them. The carbonite stopped escape attempts by the simple expedient of putting the victim in stasis they couldn't come out of without assistance. But Altunen still had a force aura, an energy pooling into her prison that might eventually arrange for its discovery and destruction. Which was why I reached out to the carbonite with the Force, through a connection forged with the captured Jedi in our one and only confrontation, and drained all that accumulated energy out of it and into my own reserves. More would accumulate in time and would be drained in future meditation sessions.

The Jedi temporarily secured, my attention turned to the other objects floating in a lazy spiral around me. Tablets, handwritten notes, empty pieces of flimsiplast, a very antique pen won in a recent bet, even articles of clothing. Without moving, speaking, or gesturing as was customary, I focused on altering their trajectories, with moderate success. Unlike the average Jedi, I did not want armor to restrict my use of the Force or simple bindings to rob me of its benefits. Considering many Sith could use the Force with unliving, artificial limbs, and that both Rey and Luke Skywalker had eschewed gestures on occasion despite their minimal training at the time, it was clear that hand gestures had to be some sort of habit, turned tradition, turned into a crutch. Perhaps some ancient Jedi had seen how easily the Force could influence non-sensitives and made gestures mandatory so that the Order wouldn't conceal its use of the Force from the public, or something equally asinine. No matter, I would train myself out of the limitations of the Jedi; it only took practice and determination.

A suspiciously lacy bra shook in mid-flight, then flew haphazardly around the room until it landed on my face. If it was the Force's response to my bold declaration, I did not want to know.