The Strength of the Wolffe

Title: The Strength of the Wolffe
Author: Saydria Wolfe
Fandom: Star Wars
Genre: fix-it, time-travel
Relationships: n/a
Content Rating: PG-12
Warnings: Canon-level Violence, Kamino
Author Notes: The title comes from The Law of the Jungle by Rudyard Kipling because I cannot resist a good reference and a good pun.
Word Count: 1,421
Summary: A time traveling Wolffe changes Obi-Wan’s first visit to Kamino significantly.

 

“There’s a Jedi!” “Is that a jetii?” his brothers hissed around him.

Wolffe looked up and there he was, General Kenobi stood beside Taun We. Finally.

TALK. TO. ME. He thought as hard as he could, staring the Jedi down. TALK. TO. ME.

General Kenobi, almost casually swept his gaze across the gathered vode. Searching for him.

TALK. TO. ME.

General Kenobi met his eyes.

TALK. TO. ME.

Kenobi sent him a small, reassuring smile.

TALK. TO. ME.

Kenobi turned to the longneck at his side and said something. They disappeared from the observation deck. Minutes later, the main door to the mess opened, framing Kenobi in all his sopping-wet glory. Wolffe could just make out Taun We walking away behind him.

He tried not to watch as Kenobi made his way through the mess line, talking to brothers until they relaxed, refusing to pass as was the inherent privilege of his rank. Kenobi had always been good for that, being a vod, blending in. Wolffe could see why Kote and 17 had fallen bucket over boots for him.

A glance at Kote showed his little brother already on that road and they hadn’t even met yet.

Wolffe slowed his eating so he was stayed in place as his brothers finished and left.

“Is this seat taken?” a soft voice asked in a High Coruscanti accent.

Wolffe looked up. Kenobi looked so much younger than he had when Wolffe had last seen him, just days before Knightfall. “It is now, alor.”

Kenobi’s smile turned into more of a grimace. “I am just a warrior for my people, not a leader,” Kenobi said in fluent, easy Mando’a.

That got the attention of all of the Command Class nearby. Kote was practically vibrating next to him.

“May I ask your name?” Kenobi asked in Basic.

“CC-3636-712-B104.” Wolffe gave the Jedi his full designation as a test.

Kenobi’s lips pressed together in a hard, white line. “Do you have a name you prefer?”

“I just told you,” Wolffe doubled down.

“You gave me your serial number,” Kenobi pointed out. “Slaves are identified by numbers. People have names.”

“What do you think you found here, General?” Wolffe asked. Mostly to force the Jedi to accept the fact that they had all managed to avoid last time. “What are we but an army of slave soldiers born into the service of the Jedi?”

“Jedi do not practice slavery,” Kenobi nearly snarled. Then he switched back to Mando’a. “Jedi are the reason slavery is and remains illegal within the Republic. I cannot believe you or your brothers were commissioned by the Jedi. Not only do we not have the funds to support this sort of operation on this scale, but it is everything we are entirely opposed to on a moral level.”

He waited, holding Kenobi’s gaze. Weighing. He knew he could trust Kenobi with this but he still, somehow, had his doubts.

Kote kicked him under the table.

“You have a way to make this private?” Wolffe asked. Buir Plo had carried all manner of interesting devices on his person to address all sorts of needs but buir had been a Sentinel Jedi. Kenobi was a Consular for all that he often out-fought Guardians.

“As a matter of fact—” Kenobi dug into what Wolffe assumed we his boots even as his lightsaber floated up to rest just above the table top. The butt of his lightsaber came off and set itself down on the table.

Kenobi’s hands came back into view with two separate pieces of electronics. He slid them together and a power cord came out. The Jedi plugged the cord into the power pack of his lightsaber and the thing came alive, shifting form until a small, potbellied droid stood on two flippered feet on the table between them. The droid projected a red circle that spun out until it included Wolffe, Kenobi, and the vode on either side of them.

“We are as secure as I can make us without leaving the planet,” Kenobi promised. “As long as we remain within the circle.”

“My name is Wolffe. I am a time traveler,” Wolffe said, surprising two of the four brothers in the circle with him. He had told Kote and Fox, of course. Ponds and Rex, not so much. “The war you are about to be tricked into starting lasted three years, in the time I come from. Millions of my brothers and all of the Jedi died. On the last day of the war, after you had personally defeated the final Separatist general, Chancellor Palpatine used the control chips in mine and my brothers’ heads to turn us on the surviving Jedi. Two battalions I will not name marched on the Jedi Temple. There were no survivors.

“With the Jedi gone, no one stood in the way of Palpatine’s Sith Empire. Force-sensitivity became an executable offense. Any of my brothers that survived the war and Knightfall, were sent on suicide mission after suicide mission until we physically could not come back.”

Kenobi stared at him for a moment before he dragged his spoon through the slightly greener unidentified mush from the mess line. “Your talk of chips matches rather nicely with a warning Taun We just gave me.” Kenobi looked up at him. “Apparently the yellow and red…foods,” the Jedi named them such with pointed hesitance.

“The only ones that taste good,” Fox muttered.

“—Are made up of enzymes that nurture the development of the bio-chips you and your brothers carry. That these enzymes can be harmful to humans without said chips.”

“And to Stewjoni?” he asked, mostly to prove he knew things he couldn’t possibly know without time travelling.

Kenobi smirked at him. “We do not eat solid food, as you must know. We feed on energy.”

“Once you are fully physically mature,” Wolffe agreed. Kenobi was very young for his species. And he had a horrifically traumatic past if the hints he had received from his Kote meant anything. Wolffe would be very surprised if Kenobi was physically mature.

“Who was your general?”

“Plo Koon.” Wolffe tensed. He did not want to say—

Kenobi nodded. “I will not ask what happened to him.

“Taun We said these chips are merely the key to your advanced aging. I knew she was lying, but I could hardly call her on it. I wonder now if your advanced aging is merely a side effect of the growing of the chip within you, but I do not think the Kaminoans will give us time to figure that out.”

“No,” Wolffe agreed.

“What do you know about the chips?” Kenobi pressed.

“We were all made to memorize some horrific orders—I can get you a list. The chips push us back to a secondary position within our own minds and carry out the spoken order regardless of how much we fight it. And. They can only be activated by the Chancellor/Supreme Commander. Chip programming does not specify Chancellor or Supreme Commander of what or who.” He shot Kenobi a speaking look. “The Chancellor/Supreme Commander can’t be a vod.

“We already tried with Kote.”

Kenobi followed his look to Kote, seated at his right hand. “Do you have a title among your brothers?”

“Vode’alor,” Kote said gruffly. He cleared his throat. “We are the Manda’vode—the Vode for short.”

“Well,” Kenobi drawled. “I suppose you and I are in for something of a partnership.” Kenobi offered Kote his hand. “My public name is Obi-Wan Kenobi. Among the Vode, you may call me Supreme Commander Ben Tervho, Jedi Supreme Chancellor of Kamino.”

Something clicked in Wolffe’s head. “That did it for me.”

His brothers all nodded in answer to his silent question.

“Let’s cycle through the Command Class,” Kote said. “Introduce you to all of them, just to be safe.”

“And then I will need to make some holocalls,” Kenobi said. “A few Jedi I trust and some Freed I know that will help you find your feet as a people.”

“Help us,” Kote corrected and Wolffe was pleased to let the man wrangle his jetii. “Help us find our feet as a people.”

“Us,” Kenobi inclined his head. “Though if you have any plans to physically free yourselves from the Kaminoans—theoretical plans, of course—now might be the time to test them.”

Wolffe huffed, amused. “Is that an order, Supreme Commander?”

“Only if it has to be. As far as I am concerned, the only good slave owner is a dead slave owner.”

 

Back to Birthday 2025.