"Clifford Telegenic is a Monster."

The Tolan Legacy

The classical wooden door swung open, and Zerina rushed in. Adlar was sitting in a room that had probably been lit by daylight a couple hours earlier, but he hadn’t bothered to turn on any lights, and now the twilight barely lit the space. A pale blue glow lit her son’s face as he slumped, staring at a video.

Zerina dutifully turned on the lights before she dragged a chair over next to her son and set the rucksack she’d brought along next to one leg of the table. She tried not to seem judgmental or passive-aggressive as she pulled the bottle of Whyren’s Reserve out of her view, but also out of Adlar’s grasp. “All right, son. Let’s see exactly what on Corellia got you to call me and get yourself in the state you’re in.”

Adlar didn’t move or otherwise acknowledge her presence. The hologram looped on its own, two humans from the shoulders up.

“Hey, dad!” the two said nearly in unison.

“We’re sorry we haven’t called much lately. You know how atmospheric and hyperspace interference can be,” Kera, the young woman on the viewers’ left, said.

“I mean, look at those storms they had over Alderaan and Ya–” Anden, the younger man on the right, said, before he caught a sharp elbow from his sister, while she grinned like someone trying to salvage a dinner party.

“We just don’t want you worrying about us,” Kera continued. “We’re doing fine out here on the Rim. And Anden’s becoming a really good freighter pilot!”

“Psh. I was a really good freighter pilot from day one. I’ve become a fantastic freighter pilot.”

“And I keep the ship running. And our ship droids! We have an astromech, Tripod, and a… humanoid laborer. He’s odd. A bit… old fashioned? But we get along.”

“I’ll have you know I navigated a canyon full of native flying… things and got everyone on the ground in one piece.”

Kera, previously having looked like a holocomedy housewife, was starting to look even more unhinged as the vid went on. “Yeah, some of the… crew we’ve been working with say that Anden really could have, um, been somebody. Special. Back in the Republic. Y’know what I mean? Hehehehehee.” Her grin was the grin of a hungry nexu. Anden was looking away from the camera awkwardly. He suddenly glanced up at someone or something to the side.

“Mmkay, Kera, he’s saying we gotta wrap this up.”

“Yeah! Super busy! Anyway, we may stop home sometime. I hope Gran-Gran has those old family books! Anden should know his, um, family better, I guess? You see where I’m going with that?”

Anden ran a finger across his throat at Kera. “Yeah, time to run! Love you and mom and Gran-Gran! Hope you’re having fun at home!” Kera practically shouted at the camera, the smiles on her face starting to recede into something resembling terror as Anden reached down to kill the video.

Adlar tapped a key on the projector to pause the looped playback. He looked up at Zerina with bloodshot eyes. “Mom… I did everything I could to keep our family out of conflict like this. What did I do to ruin that?”

Zerina looked over at her son. Half of her wanted to clutch him to her breast and shush him as she rocked him back and forth. The other half was the one that had been so quiet for twenty years, only resurfacing to break a glass during a military parade or randomly start a fight with someone at a CorSec fundraiser or make her boycott companies that vocally supported the Diktat.

“You raised your children right, that’s what you did,” she said coldly, almost scoldingly.

Adlar’s eyes went wide.

“You did what you had to do to have a family almost thirty years ago, Adlar. You faked some tests so that your daughter got to stay your daughter. Then the Wars happened, you saw what happened. You saw what happened to your father when the Chancellor declared himself Emperor. You faked more tests to save your son, and started faking other tests to save other children. You did the right thing for how the galaxy is right now.”

“Can’t that be enough? I just wanted them safe, and all it got me was both of them gone. I might never see them again, Mom! They could die, or, or, or the Empire could get its hands on them…”

“And I never lost you, Adlar. You were too old for the Clone Wars–”

“That’s crap and you know it. You got involved at your age.”

“Fine, then, you stayed here and did what you had to do.”

“What I had to do? I could have been a combat medic.”

“You did what you had to do on the homefront keeping people from falling apart in more ways than one. They call it the homefront for a reason. If the Core Worlds had fallen apart…”

“What? How could things possibly be worse?”

“We could have Count Dooku on his own throne, just as bad, but with a hundred sacked and ruined Core Worlds along the way, that’s what. So your father fought and I fought because neither of us could do what you can do.

“I told you when Kera was born and I told you in the wars, don’t you ever be ashamed of all you do. You were there when the galaxy needed. It cost you promotions you turned down to stay in the trenches and fake those midichlorian tests. It cost you your wife when she wouldn’t stand for what you were doing. You made your sacrifices.”

“Exactly. That should be enough. I don’t want to lose Kera and Anden to this. They come home. I’ll go patch up soldiers in exchange. They can have me instead, and Anden and Kera can come… be normal.”

“No, they can do their part. The galaxy still needs them, Adlar.”

“I need them,” Adlar said quietly. “I need Kera making oil stains and messes and Anden getting speeding tickets.” He lurched toward the bottle of Whyren’s Reserve, but Zerina pulled it away.

“And I needed your father. The galaxy needed him more.”

“The galaxy doesn’t come collecting a toll of death, mom.”

“I don’t know what your father was doing when the New Order happened, Adlar. But I know him well enough to know that when he died, he was saving lives or making a difference somewhere. Otherwise the powers that be wouldn’t have had to kill him. I’m not a Jedi, but I can feel that in my bones.”

Zerina reached down into the sack she’d brought along and pulled a book from it. It was the same family history she’d had when Kera had been born, but atop it she set a portable power pack and connected it to what must have been an absurdly old projector.

“The file’s not intact after thousands of years, so try not to laugh,” she said to her son.

When she pressed the power button on the projector, a figure flickered to life. The corruption of the file was obvious: the projection’s resolution was horrendous, and bits and pieces of the projection rendered as solid cubes instead of the normal outline of a human form. What was visible along half of the face and torso was that of a robed, late-middle-aged human male with long hair and a moderate beard, and eyes that seemed to fall into singularities a thousand light years deep.

“The masters… …said the Force runs in families… …a horrendous fate,” the speaker said, cutting in and out. “I shudder… …generations of pain my passion may have caused… …the most positive… …of care and love… …have I condemned parents and children to… …the warrior, the thankless life of the diplomat or general… Forgive me, my dear young Jalkor, and any of your own children… …if the Force chooses you for this path… …that your ancestors walk with you in the Force. When you struggle… …galaxy struggles with you. The fabric of the Force… …every living being. Do not despair… …a greater joy. It’s just harder to find.”

As the recording ended, Zerina opened the family history, and pointed to a name on the green tree on the inside cover. It was right next to the name he’d given his daughter.

Adlar’s eyes welled up, not from sadness, but from the terror of several thousand years of perspective suddenly landing on him as the hideous patterns of destiny appeared in his memory. He leaned into his mother and clutched at her hand and sobbed for a moment.

A few seconds later, he sat up and wiped the water from his eyes. “There when the galaxy needs,” he said softly.

“There when the galaxy needs,” Zerina repeated. “So relax. You’re not the first father to worry about what he did to his kids.”

“Well, how’d the guy in that recording’s kids do?” Adlar asked.

“Well, there’s this book full of names I’m holding. That’s got to be worth something,” she said.

Adlar restarted the recording of his children, who waved at him, smiling, from somewhere in the galaxy. “Yeah, there’s still a couple of them left,” he said. “I guess we’ll find out.”