1.09

We left the Rimma Trade Route on Yag'Dhul and took the Corellian Trade Spine for Coruscant. A full Bacta treatment for otherwise untreatable wounds needed a one-ton tank of the universal medicine, and we carried sixty million tons of it. The galactic capital however was a megacity of trillions; the cargo would barely last them a month. Another million tons of highest-quality Bacta extract would be quietly sold to senators, megacorp CEOs, crime lords, and other high-society people. Advanced medicine had nearly doubled lifespans without need of dangerous genetic tinkering, but substances that gave youthful appearance only the extremely rich could afford. I wondered if the difficulties in genetics and the limited transhumanism in the Star Wars universe was a result of the Force, but ultimately it didn't matter.

I stayed on the ship for the whole trip while Father negotiated deals with the movers and shakers of our world. Bacta wasn't our only cargo. Raw, natural biomass from Thyferra was sold to multiple research labs and bioengineering companies. It was supposedly meant for biochemical and synth-flesh development and production as natural raw materials almost entirely eliminated rejection of various cybernetics, but I suspected much of it would go towards attempts at uncovering the secret of Bacta. I also suspected the corporations controlling Thyferra had removed any Bacta components from the biomass beyond selling it, so corruption and underhanded deals countered themselves. It wasn't our business in any case, we were just honest merchants.

That I could think that without laughing out loud showed how things had changed.

Ratty kept giving me lessons into being the perfect Kuati princess I was supposed to be. Unsurprisingly, killing people was not against the princess code. Only a week after our encounter with the fake pirates, I got a private holomessage from my half-sister Jestra. A very beautiful, Oriental, college-age girl, she talked and acted like an airhead, giggling all the time. She congratulated me on my hundred and two new shoes and asked me about my new racing bike, elated that "little Arrie" was finally showing interest in the finer things in life. Laughingly admitting to being jealous of my new collection, she vowed to get one of her own; some good friends of hers would help her track the designer.

After some thought, I told her that Naboo fashion was ridiculous and that she should reconsider. The fortune of Kuat nobility being all spent on flashy jewelry and triangular headgear would be terrible. We giggled some more, the very picture of two estranged siblings finding common ground in being girly and shallow. If the conversation ever reached the wrong ears hopefully they'd dismiss it as something innocuous... but I doubted it. At that moment, I didn't particularly care, though.

xxxx xxxx xxxx

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Onara Kuat was an arrogant, self-centered, racist bitch. Apparently, that fake pirates had attacked and almost destroyed a merchant ship owned by Kuati interests was far less important than said ship being a Trade Federation vessel captained by a near-human. That the ownership of said vessel, while technically Kuati and from the First Ten at that, also belonged to a near-human was even worse in her opinion. She didn't actually say that, of course, but the dismissive way she treated Father's testimony and mine was telling... as was the disgust I could feel oozing out of her every pore. She sat there in her throne of Mandalorian Iron and Corusca gems, flowing dark blue robes over a short, plump body, and silly sky-blue Bishop's hat concealing prematurely greying hair, and looked down on us as if we were vermin.

"Honestly, captain, I can't take this report seriously," she said primly, waving a copy of the Doughnut's captain's log. "The honoured Jedi Order assured us the Nebula Front was destroyed two years ago. Seeking justice for your dead wife does you credit, but taking it too far might make one lose touch with reality."

"I did not -" Father spat back angrily but restrained himself from saying more, or strangling the bitch with his bare hands. "Madam Director, with all due respect, how do you explain the Nebula Front logo on the terrorists' armor?"

"Pirates, Captain, not terrorists." She sighed in fake exhaustion as if dealing with us was so very tiring. "As for an explanation, our labs found the logos had been spray-painted on at the same time as the attack, or an hour before at most, rather than being built into the armor. Given the other... irregularities, it is highly likely this was an organized attack from our competitors or similar malicious elements rather than either terrorists or pirates. There is no hint of connection between it an the extinct Nebula Front at all."

The stench of amusement mixed with a heady dose of deception, and a shade of satisfaction wafted off her like a dark cloud, but I did not need to sense her emotions to see the lie. Of course she would know the source of the armour could not be a terrorist movement or simple pirates; she had been given the secret order for producing armaments for the Grand Army only a year before. Project Icefang had to be underway in some secret shipyard already, and had already changed House Kuat's fortunes.

"But..."

"Enough, Captain!" the unfortunately competent Umbridge analogue interrupted him. "The Kuati government will reimburse you for all damages and the price of the captured corvette, plus the standard reward for defeating piratical elements. You are not of my House so I can't actually forbid you from pursuing this quixotic quest, but any further demands for help should be directed towards House Andrim, not Kuat. Good day to you."

We left then, Father still furious at the abrupt dismissal. We moved through the titanic ring-shaped space station orbiting the planet, a space metropolis built over many centuries to hold the entirety of Kuati industry so that the surface would remain pristine, a garden in perpetuity for our people to visit. The ring was actually six smaller rings locked in tandem via tractor beams, each one five miles wide, two miles thick, and forty-four thousand miles long. At two and half times the total volume of the Death Star, they were the greatest single construction in human galactic history and utterly awe-inspiring in their magnitude. Six thousand construction slips bulged out of the ginormous space station like mountains, each one capable of fitting ships up to twice the size of a Star Destroyer. Most of them were occupied by civilian construction all the time, serving the demands of galactic transportation across millions of planets. Only a few were reserved for military construction, but soon that would change.

A massive shadow fell on the entire area our hover-car was taking us through, as if a cloud had obscured the sun. As we were in space, the truth was far more awe-inspiring; a five mile long, mile-wide durasteel arrowhead flew over us, its slightly bulging, spindle-like shape shining white against the diamond-sharp darkness of space. The Mandator-II Star Dreadnought, a military ship half again as large as the Doughnut and more powerful than a hundred Star Destroyers sent a chill down my back. The previous class of dreadnoughts, only three ships in total, had been completed only a decade before. Even back on Earth, ship classes lasted longer than that, and in the Star Wars galaxies warships weren't updated for centuries in times of peace. Building something like this would have bankrupted House Kuat only a few years ago. It was a sign of the times, the moves in the shadows, the massive amounts of cash changing hands to fuel the coming war.

It was that very moment that the war became a reality for me, an inevitable future I had to prepare for...