VI.

"So you understand, finally? This is good!"
The master sat hunched slightly forward, looking much leaner and small without his cloak. With the need of public transit came the need for a wardrobe change.  The student remained the same, a watchful, fidgity little boy with fingers too chubby to train with weapons, legs too short to leap and arms too soft to bear the inevitable strain of his destiny, all in a simple shirt and shorts.
The Master wore plain breeches and a featureless longsleeve shirt, all in the most inconspicuously bland shade of blue.
"Yes, Teacher." the boy's voice was still sounding a bit coarse. The master preferred it, it cut some of the awful pitch out of his youthful vocal cords.
"So no more flinching. Flinching is always time wasted. Time is too precious. Our mission transcends my lifetime and yours. Now, repeat the lesson back to me."
"Harm comes from anything anywhere." the boy said solemnly. The master, the sith lord, had to admit that he'd miss the boy's smile while it was gone. But it would come back. One couldn't be in tune with the darkside without at least a few smiles. 
"And?"
"The worst harm comes from those closest to you." the boy said, even quieter this time.
"Exactly." The Master reclined back from his hawk-like perch, breathing a lonesome sigh. The student didn't like how fearsome the master looked in the shadow of the storage container overhang. Without his Sith mask, Teacher looked even worse, having chosen to hide his face with guaze bandages, like a mummy. 

"Someday, a day thankfully far from now, you will harm me. You will kill me and take my prize as your own. Or you will die trying. But! But..."
The master returned to his forward lean as the freighter decelerated and the cabin lights brightened a bit to signal passengers to get ready to depart.
The student was grateful for this. The crisscrossing bandages that made the master look so much like a bogeymonster weren't so bad in bright light. Not so much, but that wild right eye that remained uncovered kept it's own form of terror on him.
"That will be a happy day, at least for me. You're very lucky that I'm so happy  in the darkside, you know. My master was a cruel and straightforward man who never stopped to appreciate the small things. Come." 
The master took the boy's hand and led him out of the cramped coach booth and filed into the thick line of tired humans filing out of the transport.


Kashyyyk. Not much better than Ithor. Honestly, that droning yammering the Ithorians used to communicate might have been preferrable to the ululating wails of the Wookies. Mercifully, none of those hairy giants were in charge. With the massive ammount of resources on Kashyyk; wood, water, iron, irridium, deuterium, and the massive amount of trade that garnered, a surprising number of humans learned Wookie speech. And a surprising number of wookies understood basic. Cadence had no desire to learn to count the numbers of warbles and grunts that were the speech of these toothy, bipedal bears. 

After twenty minutes of watching one half of Captain Ducarde's conversation with whatever tribal leader this monolithic black creature was, Cadence wished he could understand Wookie. Ducarde never extrapolated or expounded enough for the Jedi to know what the heck he was talking about.
"Yes, Elder Jawjucca. That is on the table in our comittee discussion." Ducarde prattled on, his tone as pretentious as the Wookie tribal leader was tall. "You have my support and vote in this issue as well."

Now you're just keeping me out if the loop on purpose, howler-butt. Cadence finally lurched back against the thick, aromatic wood wall of the docking platform and glanced around. That didn't tide him over long. For all the cool creatures and sleek predators native to this big planet, he couldn't see any of them from here. Or anything much at all, really. The green needle canopy was so dense here that he couldn't even see sunlight through it. Barring the patch of blue sky past the opening the shuttle had descended through, there was nothing here to see but wood and chlorophyll spines.

Ten more minutes passed before Cadence got yanked out of a daydream about barrel roll maneuvers by the captain.
"All right, Lieutenant Slifer! Let's get you in the simulator. See if you didn't cheat your way through those aptitude courses!" 
Cadence decided to keep track of how many times he jinxed himself. Now he wished Elder Jawjucca had joined them, so Ducarde had someone else to show off his snobby planetary knowledge to. Cadence passed the time wondering if the captain's fat, floppy blonde hairstyle was real or a toupee, and after that, imagining giving the chubby jerk a haircut with a lightsaber.

"You know, all these Wookie's used to be slaves. The trade for indentured Wookie labor was galaxy wide! It was really hard to see the natives here as true, intelligent sapients," Ducarde had a habit of tilting his head sideways at Cadence while they walked, as if he was using his cranium to emulate body language for his whole body. He pointed with his head, shrugged with his head, drove Cadence insane with his head-- it was a versatile talent.
"I mean, even today they shun technology, except for agricultural stuff. Doesn't mean they're savages. The Wooshyr trees provide almost every structural resource they could want. Why bother with machines?" 
Cadence ignored Ducarde's speech. He was remembering the technique of a reverse twist. It was damn near impossible in the current issue multipurpose starfighters to barrel roll fully while performing a "loop the loop," Cadence's signature means of getting behind a bogey on his six o click. But the young Jedi had perfected the technique so well in an interceptor style anti-fighter craft, and was certain it could be done in the heavier multipurpose fighters. If Cadence could alter the throttle input and loosen the inertial limitors on the yoke, he was pretty sure he could flip a fighter as if it was half the size. Much as he hated flying bigger, clunkirr multipurpose ships, it was worth having all the proton torpedoes. And the extra shields. Plus, if the maneuver worked in the simulator, he'd destroy everything put on screen.
"... Now, you talk about Wookie politics,  THEN you've got some barbarism and caveman nonsense going on! Ah, here we are!" 
Cadence snapped out of his thought train to find himself already at the military depot, with Ducarde holding the door for him.
"After you, Master Jedi Lieutenant."
Ducarde took the boy's face turning red for embareassment, and grinned wide as they passed inside.