Ten years and twenty-eighth day after the Battle of Yavin...
Or the forty-fifth year and twenty-eighth day after the Great Resynchronization.
(Seven months and thirteenth day since the arrival).
Who would have thought—he is portrayed in the pages of books as nothing less than an anti-hero, full of inner rage.
A man who, without batting an eye, blew up a star in the Carida system and burned millions (if not more) of lives simply because of the death of someone close to him.
A death that has not yet occurred.
And, honestly, it is within my power to stop it.
At the very least—by removing the catalyst of everything that is happening from the "playing board."
That very scrawny catalyst who is now sitting across the table from me, shyly chewing his lunch and warily-negatively regarding the uniform he is wearing.
"I must apologize, Kyp Durron, for the fact that you are forced to wear the cadet uniform, but on a military ship, a supply of civilian clothing is not provided," I said.
Mentally distancing myself to my wardrobe, in which one can find quite a bit that clearly does not fit the category of "established sample military uniform."
Only two dozen sets of snow-white Grand Admiral uniforms fully comply with this rule.
The rest...
Someday I will get around to sorting out the wardrobe inherited from Mitth'raw'nuruodo.
"Why am I here?" the black-haired boy grumbled, staring at the plate right in front of him.
"I want to talk to you," even despite the ysalamiri located a couple of meters from the dining area, Rukh standing guard behind the boy, and several guards at the entrance, which nullified any "tricks" from Durron, I preferred to be frank with him.
"Why?"
"I want to understand what kind of person you are," I explained.
Kyp Durron in his teenage years.
Well, clearly an idiom not for a child's mind.
If the records in the Kessel card file are to be believed, Kyp Durron was born almost seventeen years ago on the planet Deyer.
The card file does not have this, but from the Jedi Academy trilogy of books, I remembered that the boy has a brother who, at the moment, is a recruit on Carida. And it was precisely for his release that Durron, in a surge of emotions, blew up the star of Carida.
Of course, this did not save his brother, but only doomed the planet and everyone who remained on it.
"Why?" the teenager stubbornly repeated.
"So that I can understand if we can be on the same side," I clarified.
"We can't," Durron replied clearly, setting aside the tableware and clearly intending to leave the table. "Thank you for feeding me, but I have no intention of befriending the Empire. You are evil."
"Sit down, young man," I ordered, watching as Rukh stood in the path of the representative of burgeoning youthful maximalism. "Interrupting a conversation in this manner is a sign of ill-breeding and poor manners. Your parents would hardly be pleased with you at this moment, Kyp Durron."
For a second, Durron locked eyes with the Noghri in a struggle, but yielded, realizing that he could not even claim a phantom chance of success.
Plopping back into the chair, he folded his arms across his chest, looking away.
A demonstrative "closed pose," which non-verbally signals the interlocutor's unwillingness to listen to the speaker or participate in the dialogue at all.
"Thank you," I said.
Well, we will break this ice just as I broke it in my relationships with my own children, who one fine day learned that the man who left their home at dawn and appeared when they were already asleep was their birth father, about whom their mother had told them.
"For starters, I still ask you to continue eating," I said calmly, demonstratively scooping a portion of grayish porridge from the common dish onto the plate set before me and sending a spoonful from my own portion into my mouth.
"I don't want to eat this tasteless food," the minor declared in a haughty tone, as if it could offend me.
Ah, yes, this is the position of denying the proposed as a way to humiliate the efforts of the proposer.
"Your medical examination showed that you need to replenish a significant amount of beneficial elements and vitamins," I said. "Yes, the food is tasteless due to the diet prescribed to you, but it was much worse on Kessel. I assure you, as soon as the doctors stop fearing for your health, the diet will be canceled, and the food full of medicines will be replaced with standard fare."
The boy glanced at me sideways.
Then he looked at his plate.
At mine.
He realized that we were eating exactly the same thing.
"Were you also prescribed a diet?" he asked uncertainly.
"No," I replied.
"Then why are you eating this tasteless stuff that smells like medicine?" the kid grimaced.
"So that you don't feel alone," I explained. "It's best to deal with nastiness together. The doctors will be unhappy if you don't eat a double portion of porridge with medical additives. If they find out that you didn't get the required amount of nutrients, they'll give you painful injections with medicine."
The boy shuddered, clearly recalling the "kindness" of the prison medical droid, which Major Tomax Bren had told me about yesterday.
"And since you don't particularly appreciate the efforts of our cooks and medics, I thought it right to cover for you from their wrath and injections, helping you cope with the volume of porridge you need to eat as per the doctors' orders," the explanation caused surprised blinking from the boy's large brown eyes. "Even though I command everything around, I don't argue with medics. So, we'll resort to a tactical ruse and split the porridge between two."
Considering that only two standard portions optimized for easy assimilation by a young, weakened body malnourished organism were served to the table, there's nothing complicated about it.
"So I'll get half as many nutrients?" the kid squinted, drawing a certain conclusion from my words.
"That's the situation," I reminded him. "You don't want to eat the porridge at all. The prospects were already outlined. I wouldn't want you to feel discomfort aboard my flagship. So I'm helping you."
"Not for nothing, though?"
A resourceful boy.
Well, if he weren't quick-witted, he clearly wouldn't have lasted so long on Kessel.
"Of course," I did not lie. "My goals haven't changed—I want to talk to you and understand what kind of person you are."
"I already said that your attempt to befriend me is doomed to failure," the kid reminded me in turn. "I won't cozy up to Imperials."
"Good for you," I praised, continuing the meal.
Actually, not so bad.
"You're being evasive," the boy said, raising his voice to drown out the rumbling of his starving stomach. "An Imperial who praises me for not associating with Imperials... What's the logic in that?"
"If you don't see it, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist," I said. "It's just a statement of the fact that you don't know something. And that's it. No more, no less."
The boy stared straight into my eyes for a while, then shifted his gaze to the plate and set about dealing with the porridge.
He did this silently for several minutes, then froze, staring at one spot, slowly chewing the porridge...
"You're not an Imperial?" he asked cautiously.
"Now—no," I confirmed. "In the past—yes."
"Are there former Imperials?" Kyp was surprised.
"As you see," I replied.
"But you have the cog too," the boy pointed at my counter-epaulet.
"Exactly," I confirmed. "Because the Dominion arose from the ruins of the Empire. We took from it stability and the principles of militarism, leaving local self-government, civil liberties, and much else from republican society. It may sound lofty, but the Empire could have become a great state if it hadn't relied on the doctrine of fear of its own population toward the military might of the armed forces."
The boy sat for a while, digesting what was said, then shook his head.
"The Empire sent me and my parents to Kessel just because they condemned the destruction of Alderaan!"
The teenage psyche, it seems, couldn't digest what I said and correlate it with his own words.
The infamous "That's different!"
"It wasn't the Empire that did it," I noted gently. "It was specific Imperial executors. Whom I do not welcome in the Dominion. And intimidation methods toward the population—including that. The destruction of planets is a war crime for which Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin should have been punished. But even death would have been too easy an exit for him. The problem is the very existence of such executors in the power structure. And such permissiveness happened with the direct approval of Emperor Palpatine, who preferred to rule with the fear of his own population toward his power. I prefer to annex those territories that agree to it themselves. Those who refuse to join the Dominion are not subjected to orbital bombardments or superlaser shots."
"You talk as if you yourself haven't killed Republicans," the boy bristled.
"There's a war going on," I reminded him. "The Empire has fractured, and most of it either doesn't want to or doesn't understand that there's no need for despotism. The New Republic intends to destroy what remains of the Empire, disregarding the opinions of those peoples who want to live under Imperial laws."
"And there are fools who want to live like that?" the boy asked incredulously.
"One shouldn't demean sentients just because their point of view differs from yours," I cautioned. "Yes, among the peoples, there are those who wish to live under the clear and understandable laws of the Empire, under the protection of Star Destroyers. The Dominion includes more than a dozen sectors that we have freed from pirate bands, armed raids, threats of slavery. We provide planetary populations with protection and the opportunity for safe labor, while they supply the Defense Forces with recruits, food products, raw materials, and much more."
At the mention of recruits, Durron winced.
"Do you conscript everyone who fits the draft age into stormtroopers like the Empire?" he asked.
"There is conscription," I agreed. "Into the Defense Forces. These are army and space formations engaged in guarding the security of Dominion territories. Escorting convoys, guarding resource extraction sites, patrolling, rescuing those in distress, and so on."
"Then what is your Star Destroyer doing?" the kid blinked.
"The Chemaera belongs to the regular fleet," I explained. "The latter acts to defend the Dominion's borders, planetary defense, and waging war with our enemies. Periodically, they are involved in patrolling hyperspace routes in particularly dangerous sectors that have not yet been studied and where the Defense Forces have nothing to do yet. This part of our Armed Forces is formed on a contract basis—people and other sentients apply to offices themselves to sign contracts for military service. After which they are trained in everything necessary and assigned to ships or ground units. No coercion—I learned the lesson of popular discontent in the Empire regarding forced conscription into the army or stormtroopers. And this mistake will not be repeated. The Dominion has enough professional soldiers who are ready to risk their lives to protect the peaceful population from those who intend to impose their opinion and way of thinking, life on us."
"It sounds too good to be true," Durron stated, stirring the porridge with a spoon.
"No one says everything is perfect with us," I noted. "There are problems. But we are actively fighting them."
"That's all well and good, but why do you need me?" the boy couldn't hold back. "I'm an ordinary person who spent most of his life in spice mines!"
"Don't underestimate yourself, Kyp Durron," I advised.
"Yeah, right," the boy snorted.
"I propose a deal," I stated. "You tell me about what happened in your life before we met, and I—why exactly you are sitting across from me now and participating in this conversation, and not any other hermit from Kessel."
It took the boy some time to make the final decision.
During which his plate emptied.
He glanced at the container with the remnants.
Bad or not, the porridge was undoubtedly better than what he ate on Kessel.
And the young body, having gained access to good nutrition, demanded its due.
"The food is at your full disposal, don't be shy," I said.
Well, shyness is not about Durron.
He ate the porridge so quickly that he didn't even notice that a new vat with the same contents had been brought.
He ate and told.
At first reluctantly, then in more and more detail.
So, he was a simple active child whose childhood passed on the planet Deyer in a family consisting of parents and an older brother, Zeth, six years older than my guest himself.
In other words, Zeth is now about twenty-two or twenty-three years old.
And the last time the brothers saw each other, the older one dreamed of entering the construction school on Deyer to help manage the planet.
Which, by the way, was a planet predominantly covered with swamps and lakes.
Cities on it were located on the surface, on peculiar rafts, and the colonists engaged in fishing.
The sale of which, through a cooperative system, brought a decent profit to the backwater colony.
The Durron family lived in one of the numerous raft-cities of Deyer, little different from the rest of the population.
The boy did not say whether his parents wielded the Force or not.
Either he didn't know or deliberately omitted this moment, distrusting.
He can be understood—I would behave the same way.
Family secrets are sacred.
Especially when you know for sure that Imperials hunted Force-sensitives.
Now for him, it's practically a matter of survival.
According to the boy, his parents were political opponents of the Galactic Empire.
Precisely haters of the authoritarian government that came to power after the dissolution of the Galactic Republic.
It's foolish to blame them for that too.
If I recall what I read and studied about this period, it's surprising how they survived at all with such sentiments when, right after the Clone Wars, dissent was suppressed, and quite harshly.
If I correctly understand the boy's retelling, he positions his parents' worldview as a conviction that moderate actions are preferable to repressive governance.
The colonists of Deyer as a whole, despite modeling the charter of the fishing cooperative on the ideals of the outdated Galactic Republic, lived quite well.
I think the reason they were ignored was that the planet's population was at most a hundred and fifty thousand sentients.
On a galactic scale, that's just nothing.
Especially when peaceful protests don't go beyond limits and don't turn into armed clashes.
But after Alderaan was destroyed, and the public didn't believe Imperial propaganda that the Alliance to Restore the Republic was behind the planet's death, many colonists, including Durron's parents, actively spoke out against the actions of the Galactic Empire, believing that democracy and peaceful protest could lead to change.
Unfortunately, the Empire at that time was not particularly ceremonious and silenced those who disagreed with it with weapons.
Representatives of Deyer condemned the destruction of Alderaan and demanded that Palpatine eliminate his New Order.
How one connected to the other in a peaceful protest, Durron, of course, didn't know.
But it seems more like the representatives of Deyer, seeing that nothing had happened to them for their schismatic sentiments in the past, grew bold and poked where they shouldn't have.
The Emperor's response was not long in coming—already the next year, Imperial stormtroopers arrived on the planet, who turned the colonies upside down, mercilessly dealing with all demonstrators.
The rest of the population was sent to prisons in connection with nearly unanimous support for their government.
Kyp Durron was only eight years old during the attack.
His family was having dinner when the stormtroopers broke down the doors.
The parents were arrested on charges of treason.
Zeth was recruited, having reached the age of fourteen, and sent to train as an Imperial stormtrooper.
Yes, I understand that most likely Zeth was first thrown into a special cadet school where they brainwashed him until he forgot his own name.
And he got to Carida clearly later.
But these are details that voicing now would undermine the fragile trust that has formed between us.
The parents and Kyp were thrown into a correctional facility on Kessel, where the mother and father passed away after some time.
To be more precise, they died during the Morut Dul riot, choosing not to side with the ribbet.
The boy was left alone.
Well, almost.
***
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