Life is a journey, a path on itself...

One of the few things that could really nag me was keeping bothering me about my own person. In my family past there were as many Jedi Knights, as had been Sith Lords. Why would I follow a path loose from those orders, and choose my own life? From my journey at Valc IV I went back to teaching classes at the Imperial Academy and have contact hour for students who ran into troubles. I kept on helping them, because those hours were actually the finest around, where no commanders or officers came down with other news. But ahead was a problem and I felt the ripples in the Force from it.

It was the start of a new week and in the night I hadn’t slept very well. After the first cycle of sleep I had a strange dream about a blue coloured world from space. A temple was there inhabited by all sort of dancing girls, and they kept dancing on and on, day and night. The dream had dissolved right before I woke up. The dancing girls kept somewhere in the back of my mind and I wondered if it had been a normal dream of a Force vision. The rest of the night I was up walking first around and after it taking some nourishment. Behind my station I checked upon news and reports. With my high clearance I accessed each file. There was a classified mission for two ships of the Second Fleet would be sent on toward the Corporate Sector. A colonel was about to sent out on that mission. I read the orders of making a connection with the Sector for negotiations and perhaps some alliance.
I got the impression that the Empire wanted to strengthen the position here in the northern regions of the galaxy permanently. And with the support of the Corporate Sector the Empire would be much stronger than now. I knew for some time already that they were on an expending vector, but not that it would be set in work so soon. I closed down the file and kept the information in the back of my mind.

Soon the destroyers were away and a couple of days passed by I learned from reading intelligence reports from the Republic that they had gotten wind of the mission and a quick secret meeting was out. Some heads would be present as well a few Jedi masters. I knew the time and the location. And as Commander I was not supposed to know, neither of the secret mission to the Corporate Sector. With me was my R15 droid I had bought and until now it had been off standing merely in storage. But in the dark of the night I worked to complete the memory chips of the droid with all sort of information I felt it needed. Then he needed also some kind of personality, and that hadn’t been developed yet. At each question he reaction clean and formal without any kind of emotion. Diving into the hardware core of the R15 model learned that a section of chips was missing and that so the droid was not able to develop a personality of its own. So I headed with droid over to the maintenance section of the Academy and fitted the droid out with chips. Soon I had brought the chips in, loaded with information, it responded to the extending of his programming and was first only embarrassed and confused. The first question was if it was not violating a set of laws that was also somewhere in his hardware hidden. I found a lock and destroyed it immediately. My clearance code was accepted without delay.
In the early morning hours the other station filled with personnel. And when they noticed me, they looked confused. A R15 half open and attached to the computers was not something they saw every day, neither the screens were I had all my information on. They knew the programs and the schemes, but not what it all meant in this case. I ignored them and worked on. I closed the inner work of my astromech and saw how he watched the screen and absorbed in the meanwhile all the data. In the late morning hours I read through all R15 stuff and let him run through many different tests. I wanted him to crack all sorts of clearance codes and files. But first I tried him upon overriding and deactivating security systems. The art was not to set off an alarm. If necessary it had to get into a palace of a vault.

I knew suspicion was there already toward me among the teachers. But also the technici around this maintenance section kept also an eye on me and right when I left, I felt one leaving after me, walking down the hallway and going to a room where his commander was located. I kept my focus in that room to read the amount of anxiety coming from the man. And it radiated pretty high in the Force. In my own quarters I tested my astromech droid on to see what more he could do. The droid listened quickly to the name Five, but it was not something I really liked. I would change it somewhere in the future to a name more appropriate. The alarm went around and the report upon my presence in the maintenance room came at the desk of the vice-admiral who led the whole academy. From him I received an invitation to his office and tell what I was doing really with an R15 astromech. I could stay away and see what would happen, I could go and explain what I liked. I chose for the latter because it was raise less questions and they were not fond of insubordination. The droid stayed in my quarters and I closed the door to it with the secret clearance code I had. No other card could open the door that way. And I knew it would be tried anyway.

The office of the vice admiral was familiar to me. Almost everyone knew it, because every teacher heard her about his functioning. The meeting was formal. The vice admiral was still unhappy that he had been forced to elevate me to the position of Commander to the fact I was the personal owner of the lead stardestroyer in the Navy. He began with that evil and expressed how it was possible that I could be so rich, that I could pay for a stardestroyer. Where came the funding from? I shrugged, unwilling to answer that. Working fully in the maintenance room was only possible to those who had clearance and on my card to commander it was not assigned. To that I gave an unknowing shrug. But in the Force I felt he didn’t believe me. I reached out to lessen his suspicion a little and it worked. Soft I triggered a thought of a secret meeting. Then I withdrew myself from his mind. I hadn’t taken a chair and also I didn’t stand facing him front. Acting on my feelings I stood for the window and crossed armed I stared to the trainees on the exercitation field down. The office lay on the second floor and had an excellent view over the whole academy. I admired it pretty well.
That I stood for the window irritated the vice admiral clearly and thus he voiced it at one moment. The next emotion was regret that he had said it; I registered his fear toward me. I closed my eyes against it and shut the world out for a moment. It was something I didn’t want and had never wanted. I wanted to be respected, not be feared. I knew it was something not from today, but generated already years back from the moment that was discovered that I had full control over my powers. I did nothing, allowed the moment to go by and gave the vice admiral the time to find his courage again. I knew he was embarrassed and when I looked aside to me I gave him a faint smile. At that moment I knew I had somehow won a friend. I would regard him as he would do to me. Yet still I refused to answer him about the questions. It all belonged to my family history and I wanted to keep that quiet. I answered him only, that it would be wise not to ask about it more and profit from what I would bring in. With that answer I left him alone.