Star Wars : Tanya

35 BBY

In the Serenno Palace, a small child was perched precariously atop a chair that was much too tall for someone of her stature. She stared at her face in her mother's dressing room mirror, scowling at her small, round, cherubic features and soft pale skin.

Maybe the only flaw in her appearance was her overly expressive eyebrows, but otherwise her long blonde hair was clean and her clothes were neat and well made. Compared to life in an orphanage, she was clearly much better off if the size of her room, and the quality of fabric were anything to go by. Nevertheless her face was contorted into a mixture of frustration and disgust

Her tiny fist slammed into the desk, and stung from the punishment. Her soft hand throbbing, Tan'ya grit her teeth at the pain and supressed a childish urge to burst into tears.

How could this have happened?! She was a child! "Again?!" She almost screamed with outrage.

Oh, she didn't even need to ask how. She already knew.

"Being X, you bastard." What she intended as a threatening growl came out as something almost small and helpless.

Her mother entered the bedroom to find out what all the bang and the yelling had been about, and found her daughter clutching an injured fist, looking like she might cry.

"Oh, did you hurt your hand?" Athemeene rushed over to her child, hurrying over as fast as she could when she was five months pregnant. Tany'a's mother reached out and effortlessly plucked her daughter from the top of the chair, before setting her on her feet. "What were you doing up there? Let me see your hand, sh-sh-shhhh." She hushed her daughter, nevermind that she wasn't really crying.

Tan'ya was ashamed to realise she was clinging to her mother, as though by instinct, and wiped at the tears in her eyes.

"Oh, I hope this hand isn't broken." Athemeene murmured, unable to understand the real source of her daughter's pain.

...

Later that day as the sun set over the palace, Tan'ya lay on her back in bed, looking at the ceiling and feeling ashamed of herself. There was no need to make her parents worry like that, her mother had even called in the medical droid to see if her hand was fine.

It was so unfair! She'd done it! She'd found a way out, a way to win against Being X, and in the end what did she have to show for it?

"What's this supposed to be, best two out of three?" She muttered to herself in disbelief. "When will you be done tormenting me?"

Scowling, Tan'ya rolled over and thought about the worried holocall Mother had made to Father, and his words to her.

"Are you hurt, daughter?"

She'd swallowed and shaken her head.

"Can you tell me what's wrong?"

Again, she couldn't.

Her Father's face took on a more stern countenance. "Tan'ya, you are my eldest child. Understand?"

She could see no choice but to nod.

"You're worrying your mother. As the big sister, you have to be strong. Your younger brother can't take care of himself yet, and your mother is carrying another child. Can you be a big girl for me, Tan'ya?"

Of course she could. She'd been a bloody grown man once! She'd fought in war zones that were likened to hell for several generations! Commanded armies and taken many, many lives in deadly aerial combat!

In the end she had to promise Father that she would indeed be good, that she could in fact be a big girl, and said that yes, she was sorry for scaring her mother. The memory of it was so embarrassing to Tan'ya that she stuck the edge of her pillow in her mouth and bit down, kicking her feet as she did. She was not a child! There was no excuse to blubber her eyes out like that! Eventually she calmed herself down, and Tan'ya clapped both of her stubby hands against her cute chubby cheeks.

"No more of this." She told herself, determination rising inside her. "Throw your worst at me Being X. I'm ready for anything." Tan'ya shot a hateful glare at her stuffed Bantha, half expecting it to come alive and demand her worship. "I'm not afraid of you."

...

The next day, Tan'ya decided the best course of action was to take stock of her situation. Hers was an organized, comparted mind that was good for assessing her environment, she was confident in that. It wasn't hard to put her hands on a data pad, Father had left his inside the nightstand next to his bed.

After breakfast, while Mother was still feeding Kenth, Tan'ya snuck off to find a quiet corner of the garden to sit and read. The first thing Tan'ya discovered when she turned the pad on was that her comprehension was terrible.

Nothing was written in Japanese, or Germanian, or even English which she'd learned but had little chance to practice. No, the language was Galactic Standard and it came with its own alphabet, which at four years of age, Tan'ya had only begun to learn the intricacies of. Tan'ya tried to force herself to read an article on galactic history, but found she didn't recognise many of the words, let alone how to pronounce them.

With a frustrated huff, Tan'ya ran off to find a solution. M8-ID was the family's protocol droid that Father purchased for his work, but mainly seemed to be used by her mother for babysitting their eldest. He was surprised when Tan'ya found him during his low power cycle and demanded she be taught how to read. His processor whirred for a few moments, before deciding there was no harm in it.

Later that day, her mother found her laying on her belly in the hall next to one of the droid power charging stations, a look of extreme concentration on her face as she read a brightly coloured flimsy picture book aloud.

"Tan'ya, lunch time."

"Can I eat it here?"

"No." Mother said firmly. "We eat together at the table, Tan'ya."

With a small pout, Tan'ya stood up and held the book out to her droid. "Could you please hold onto this until I get back, M8?"

"It would be my pleasure, Princess."

Tan'ya began to move towards her mother.

"Tan'ya, what do you say to M8-ID?"

She froze, mind whirling. Then Tan'ya remembered her manners and turned to the droid. "Thank you."

"It's my pleasure, Princess." He replied, inclining his head as much his limited articulation would allow.

Mother smiled at her, and they left to have lunch together.

...

Obviously Tan'ya couldn't learn to read and write Standard overnight, but as someone who was already multilingual and was reasonably competent in the spoken form of the language, it was far from challenging. With M8's help, Tan'ya was reading at the level of an average adult in just a few months. Soon she would be spending long hours researching into the night about the history and state of the Galaxy.

There was a lot to sift through, so she thought it wisest to start close to home with her world and her family, both named Serenno. The planet naturally had a lot of continental movement, which resulted in many earthquakes and tsunamis, meaning much of the population lived away from the coast. Tectonic collisions forced many mountain ranges to rise from the ground, but almost constant rainfall wore them all back down over millions of years. Her planet was tropical and mountainous, with countless soaring peaks, naturally formed stone monuments, deep unexplored jungles, wide open plains and vast oceans.

In terms of economy, Serenno was best known for its lumber exports, if it was known at all. Most people in the galaxy didn't know where their furniture came from, they just purchased it from a business called Oda-Attz, which as best as Tan'ya could tell was a lot like a galactic version of Ikea. Much like on Earth, no one really cared that Ikea got the wood for its furniture from slave labor in Russia, and similarly no one in the wider galaxy cared that many Serennoan men worked long hours in dangerous conditions with terrible pay. There were plenty of planets out there that could supply lumber.

More recently, her planet had discovered mineral wealth in the form of… sacanium? She hadn't a clue whatever that was, but apparently once refined it was used to create a lighter and stronger form of… durasteel?

Tan'ya's eyebrows came together in confusion.

Whatever. Something to research more later. For now she understood there was demand for it, and the Galactic Mining Guild wanted access to it, but so far her father had refused. It didn't take much more research to find out why.

The G.M.G. was a conglomeration of the galaxy's largest mining corporations that worked together to corner the market on valuable minerals. They worked hard to shut down their competition with trillions spent on lobbying the Galactic Senate alone. Worse still they had an incredibly cozy relationship with the major refineries who refused to buy from anyone who wasn't selling at rates set by the guild. The GMG was an absolute monopoly protected by the highest powers of the Galactic Republic.

While the Senate had the power as well as the obligation to bust monopolies as they form, they had yet to take any action. The flimsy reasoning for failing to do so was the technicality that classified the Galactic Mining Guild as a trade guild and not a unified corporate body.

No one actually believed this obvious nonsense, except for the Galactic Senate, apparently. In one article Tan'ya saw a picture of the Senator from Corellia snorting spices at a table, while in the background the GMG's Manager of Public Relations was laughing and cheering him on. She did a little more research, and found out the journalist who published that article was fired from their job mere hours after it went public, supposedly for entirely unrelated reasons.

The obvious stink of corruption was so powerful it nearly made Tan'ya's head spin.

To use a comparison from her original world, Tan'ya thought Serenno was trapped in a similar situation to many resource rich African nations. They would inefficiently sell raw materials at a below market rate, the major corporations would turn those raw materials into valuable products and sell those back at a substantial mark up. It was possible that a ruling class might profit, but the people would be made to foot the bill.

To further that comparison to a third world country from Earth, Serenno had even had a major civil war in the last decade! Tan'ya was shocked to discover that her now deceased uncle had even gone so far as to hire Ab… Abus? Abbyssan? Tan'ya mouthed the unfamiliar word aloud. "Abbyssinian?"

It didn't matter. Pirates. Uncle Ramil had hired crews of alien pirates to raid his own world! It was complete madness until Father came in and stopped it… by personally boarding Uncle Ramil's personal freighter?

Woah, that was cool. Tan'ya was impressed by Father's willingness to take direct action to end the conflict, though that did raise the question of what he was doing before that point?

...

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