Star Wars : Tanya

"You're upset." Athemeene reached over to take his hand, before shifting across the bed to lean against him. Unlike in the past he didn't flinch away from her touch. It took Dooku a moment to relax, but the tension left his shoulders and he placed his free hand on top of hers. "It's not the datapad, and it's not about the servants. The Council again?"

"What else could it be?" Dooku growled.

...

"Oh no." Athemeene let out an exasperated, sympathetic sigh. "What is it this time?"

"Ky Narec."

Athemeene searched her memory and found nothing. "Is he on the council?"

"No, he's a mere knight." Dooku explained. "Who happened to find a young force sensitive slave in the Outer Rim. She was too old to join the Jedi, but he felt sympathy for her so he brought her to me. He had been training her in secret for years, so she was at an advanced level for a padawan of her age. So the simple, sensible solution was that I take over as her master. I'm building a temple, I need students for that temple. This seemed to me to be a plain stroke of luck."

"But the Council didn't see it that way."

"But the Council refused to see it that way." Dooku all but hissed out. "She's too old. Her attachment to Ky was simply too great." He waved a hand in contemptuous dismissal. "The Jedi spend countless hours meditating and searching for all force sensitive children in the Galaxy to bring to Coruscant, and as we know they do a fine job of that. Too fine a job. All that's left for us is the ones they don't want! Of course my students will be older."

"But they just won't listen."

"They. Will. Not. Listen."

Athemeene shook her head in sympathetic disbelief. "Even after all that trouble choosing a site for the Temple."

"Don't remind me." Dooku pulled away from his wife. "I'm surprised we got through that without causing a civil war!"

Just getting the New Temple site chosen had taken half a year. The Council had said it was important the New Temple be built at a nexus of the force, and so he proposed Raxus Prime. Just those words had nearly made the Council explode with outrage.

Raxus Prime was a hub of the Dark Side! The Empire had once rested its laurels there! So Dooku had suggested they build the Temple on Serenno, but no, that wasn't a nexus of the force. Well where else could they build it? Dooku couldn't build the New Temple on lands House Serenno didn't own, now could he?

When they heard that, the Council had a meeting, and after much deliberation agreed to support Dooku in purchasing land at a Force Nexus that had no connection to the Dark Side. They seemed to think it was such a reasonable compromise. What they failed to understand was that the entire Outer Rim had been ruled by a Dark Side Empire of one kind or another at one point. There was no Force Nexus without a connection to the Dark Side because the Sith had already been to every one of them!

The Council then spent half a year doing their best to avoid a decision until Dooku made it for them. Of course the Council was upset, and sent many a passive aggressive message questioning the wisdom of his decision, but he simply told them it was time to start working and to stop procrastinating. They had not liked that at all, but eventually they stopped complaining when they realized it was falling on deaf ears. That suited Dooku just fine.

Presently they had only just finished laying the foundations for the building, and it would be half a decade before construction was complete. In the meantime Dooku had no choice but to put up visiting Jedi and prospective students in premade hab-blocks transported in from offworld, the kind you might see on a construction site. No one had complained so far, thankfully. Dooku might just fall to the Dark Side if they did!

He might have fallen already if it hadn't been for Athemeene.

"I better go take this call." He said, pulling away from his wife. "And then I have some more calls to make."

Athemeene rolled her eyes. "I love it when you bring your work home with you."

"I will only be a few hours." He promised her, heading to his office where his stationary communicator was installed. Everyone carried a normal pocket holo communicator, but when it came to formal situations it was convention to use a stationary holocommunicator, a larger one that projected more than just the person carrying it.

In his office, he reached across the table and pushed the button to receive the transmission from the Trade Federation representative.

The communicator projected the large face of a Nemoidian, with its bulbous eyes and flap-like mouth. The representative bowed respectfully. "Good morning, Count Dooku."

"Representative." Dooku inclined his head politely.

"I can see you're busy, and this isn't a major issue, so I'll just hurry this along?" The Representative gave a polite smile. "We've received a complaint from Captain Sugreth about inappropriate conduct from a client towards his crew."

…Who? Dooku's eyebrow shot up.

The representative paused to allow a response, but when none was forthcoming continued. "Currently you're on our Deluxe Planetary Security Plan, which comes with three frigates and support ships, and of course we invite you to inspect our ships and crews at any time you choose to arrange, we're confident in the quality of our product. But we do ask you to understand that these are warships, intended exclusively for defensive purposes."

Of course, where was this going?

"So Captain Sugreth has put in a complaint, asking us to make sure you understand that it's not appropriate to arrange a tour of the ship for a child."

"I made no such arrangement."

The representative paused, then reached over to touch something off screen. On the holographic display appeared footage Tan'ya accompanied by M8-ID walking through the halls of a starship.

They continued. "Now, this isn't a serious incident, and so we're not going to put a formal mark against your name or withdrawing our services, but we are issuing an official warning-"

Dooku hung up. Turning, he marched from his office down the hall to Tan'ya's room and threw open the door. His daughter had been laying on her belly on her bed, lounging about on a weekend morning with her legs kicked up behind her. When he opened the door without warning, she'd jumped, looking shocked and dropped the datapad she was holding.

Wait. He never bought her a datapad.

Dooku's eyes narrowed. "Get up. Now."

Frightened, Tan'ya hurriedly threw herself off the bed and stood practically at attention, with her back completely straight and her arms at her sides. She looked frightened, and guilty. Like she'd been caught doing something she shouldn't. In the force he could feel her mind racing, trying to find what she'd done that had made him angry.

Dooku reached out in the force for his datapad. He wanted to know what game she had been playing, and was surprised to find an article on the structure of the Trade Federation corporate body. He opened the history tab, to find his daughter had been reading much about history, politics, astrography and economics. Much of it was quite advanced and technical, things that he knew about but had never had a great interest in.

In the force, Tan'ya seemed to come to a realization about why she was in trouble. "Father, I should have asked permission, first." She lowered her head. "I'm sorry."

Dooku regarded his daughter for a few moments. "If you want a datapad, I can get one for you. Tan'ya, why did you arrange a tour of the Trade Federation ships?"

Strangely, she perked up at that. Any sense of guilt in the force disappeared as she rushed to explain, "It's very important to understand our defense capabilities. I was working on a report, recommending a new defense policy, and there's no substitute for an in person inspection."

Curious, Dooku opened the documents section of the datapad and found the report his daughter had been working on. The first thing that shocked him was the quality of the work, and how professionally the whole thing was put together. It started out by establishing its goal of finding a cost effective method of defending Serenno and its citizens from pirate raids, without violating any laws of the Republic.

It then outlined various options, like the Trade Federation, hiring mercenaries, training up a permanent professional army, creating a semi-professional militia and more. There were other documents in the folder that she had only begun working on, like options for the creation of a navy, and the necessity of the creation of a 'military industrial complex'?

"You wrote this?" He looked at his four year old daughter in disbelief.

"Yes, Father." She puffed out her chest proudly.

Dooku's mind raced. He had always known his daughter was special, being the most powerfully gifted force user discovered since Yoda, but this went far beyond even that. This level of focus, and depth of knowledge wasn't possible in a regular child. Dooku had heard of prodigies, children who were unnaturally gifted in mathematics, science and the arts. Such prodigies were rare, let alone ones who were also force sensitive.

He could feel in her emotions that she didn't even think she'd done anything wrong. She hadn't snuck out to inspect the Federation Ship, she'd done it simply because it was a necessary step in getting her report complete. If the evidence of it all wasn't right in front of him, Dooku wouldn't be able to believe it.

A slight bit of nervousness slipped into her emotions when he was silent for a long moment. "What do you think, Father?"

He was reminded of something Yoda once said to him, about the Force giving strange gifts sometimes. "I think… it's time for you to begin your training."

...

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