Chapter 18: The Magistrate's City
POV: Oliver
Calodan rises from Corvus's scorched landscape like a monument to systematic brutality. The city's walls tower forty meters above the dead earth, their duracrete surfaces stained with the ash of countless fires. Guard towers bristle with weapons emplacements that track their approach with mechanical precision.
[HP: 230/230]
[MP: 106/106]
[DANGER SENSE: ACTIVE - MODERATE THREAT DETECTED]
But it's not the obvious dangers that set Oliver's teeth on edge. It's the silence.
He extends his enhanced awareness as they approach the main gate, reaching out for the familiar warmth of living ecosystems. The response is immediate and horrifying: nothing. No plants, no animals, no insects—not even the microscopic organisms that should form the foundation of any biosphere.
[ECOSYSTEM AWARENESS ACTIVATED]
[MP: 81/106]
[SCAN RESULT: NO BIOLOGICAL LIFE DETECTED]
[WARNING: ENVIRONMENTAL STERILITY UNPRECEDENTED]
"Something's wrong," Oliver mutters, stopping so abruptly that Cara nearly walks into him.
Din's helmet turns toward him with mechanical precision. "Define wrong."
"This place is dead. Not dying—dead. I can't feel anything alive." Oliver's voice carries the particular horror of someone whose enhanced senses have been severed. "It's like being blind."
Through Calodan's gates, they can see citizens moving through the streets with the shuffling gait of people who've forgotten what hope looks like. Imperial-style guards patrol in pairs, their weapons clearly displayed, their body language radiating the casual arrogance of occupation forces.
A citizen approaches them—an elderly human woman whose eyes hold too much knowledge of suffering. When she sees Din's beskar, her expression shifts to something between awe and terror.
"Mandalorian," she whispers. "You shouldn't have come here. The Magistrate hunts anyone with... unnatural abilities."
Oliver's blood runs cold. The woman's gaze lingers on him with uncomfortable recognition—not of his face, but of something else. Something that marks him as other.
"We're looking for information," Din says carefully. "About someone who might be hiding in the area. A Jedi."
The woman's eyes widen. She glances around nervously, then leans closer.
"She comes at night. Like a ghost with laser swords. The Magistrate's been hunting her for months."
Oliver tries to say "Ahsoka Tano" and the words tangle on his tongue, emerging as "orange ghost lady." He gives up, frustrated by his speech curse's timing.
The woman points toward the forest beyond the city walls. "Out there. But be careful—the Magistrate has sensors everywhere. And bounties. So many bounties."
POV: Cara Dune
Cara watches Oliver's growing agitation with the analytical eye of someone trained to assess team readiness. His enhanced abilities clearly depend on biological ecosystems, and this sterile environment is affecting him like a sensory deprivation chamber.
"You okay?" she asks quietly as they move through Calodan's main thoroughfare.
"This place is dead," Oliver repeats, his voice tight with frustration. "I can't feel anything alive. It's like being blind."
The comparison hits harder than Cara expected. She's watched Oliver navigate the galaxy through an enhanced awareness that connects him to life itself. To have that connection severed so completely must be like losing a limb.
Around them, Calodan's citizens move with the careful steps of people who understand that any misstep might be their last. Children stay close to their parents. Adults avoid eye contact with the patrol guards. The entire city radiates the particular despair that comes from systematic oppression.
Cara recognizes the dynamic from her service with the Rebellion. This is what Imperial occupation looks like when left unchecked—not the clean efficiency of Core World governance, but the brutal pragmatism of resource extraction and population control.
"We're going to fix this," she says quietly to Oliver.
He looks at her with something approaching desperation. "How? I can't even sense what's wrong, let alone fix it."
Before Cara can respond, a new voice cuts through the crowd—amplified, authoritative, carrying the particular tone of someone accustomed to absolute obedience.
POV: Magistrate Morgan Elsbeth
From her fortress overlooking Calodan's main square, Magistrate Elsbeth watches the arrival of new variables through high-powered surveillance equipment. A Mandalorian, a former Rebel soldier, and a civilian whose biometric readings suggest artificial enhancement.
"Interesting," she thinks, adjusting the focus on her viewing array. "The bounty hunters weren't lying about unusual individuals in the area."
Elsbeth has ruled Calodan for three years, ever since her Imperial benefactors granted her administrative control over this particular corner of Corvus. The planet's natural resources—cortosis deposits, primarily—require systematic extraction, and systematic extraction requires systematic control of the local population.
The ecological purging was a necessary step. Native flora and fauna interfered with mining operations, while the planet's natural beauty made the population complacent. Better to strip away such distractions and focus minds on productivity.
"Ma'am," her lieutenant reports through the comm system, "the Mandalorian is requesting an audience."
Elsbeth smiles. Mandalorians are skilled, but they're also predictable. They follow codes, honor agreements, and can be bought if the price is right.
"Send him up," she commands. "Let's see what he wants."
Through her surveillance feeds, she watches the enhanced civilian—the one who reads as artificial on her scanners. His biometrics suggest severe physiological distress, as if the city's sterile environment is somehow harmful to his augmented biology.
"Perfect," Elsbeth thinks. "Fear makes people agreeable."
POV: Din Djarin
Din ascends the steps to Elsbeth's fortress with the measured pace of someone walking into an obvious trap. The building's architecture speaks of Imperial efficiency crossed with personal megalomania—functional spaces decorated with trophies of conquest.
Magistrate Elsbeth receives him in a chamber overlooking the city's main square. She's human, middle-aged, with the particular stillness that comes from years of wielding absolute power. Her clothing is expensive but practical, and her eyes hold the analytical coldness of someone who views people as resources to be managed.
"Mandalorian," she says by way of greeting. "What brings you to my city?"
Din chooses his words carefully. "I'm hunting someone. A former Jedi. I have reason to believe they're in this area."
Elsbeth's expression shifts to something approaching satisfaction. "Ahsoka Tano. Yes, she's been quite troublesome. Interfering with city operations, encouraging unrest among the population."
She moves to a display case containing various weapons and artifacts. From it, she withdraws something that makes Din's breath catch despite his helmet's filters.
A spear. Pure beskar, its surface reflecting light with the particular gleam that speaks of Mandalorian craftsmanship at its finest.
"Kill her," Elsbeth says simply, "and this is yours."
Din studies the weapon—easily worth more than most starships, forged from metal rarer than any element in the galaxy. It's the kind of offer that would tempt any reasonable person.
Which is why he knows it's completely genuine.
"I'll consider it," Din says carefully.
What he doesn't say is that he's already decided to help the Jedi, not kill her. But Elsbeth doesn't need to know that yet.
POV: Oliver
While Din negotiates with the Magistrate, Oliver and Cara wait in the fortress courtyard, surrounded by the casual brutality of Elsbeth's rule. Electric pikes mounted on poles display the remains of those who crossed the Magistrate's authority. Citizens hurry past with eyes downcast, their body language speaking of systematic terror.
Oliver's enhanced senses scream at the wrongness of this place. Not just the absence of life, but the active suppression of it. Someone has deliberately sterilized an entire planetary ecosystem, turning a living world into a monument to control.
"We're not actually helping her, right?" Oliver asks when Din emerges from the fortress.
"We're helping the Jedi," Din replies. "And these people."
They move away from the fortress to plan their next steps. Din explains Elsbeth's offer, and the strategy they'll employ—draw out the Jedi, but to ally with her rather than eliminate her.
"What's my role?" Oliver asks, though he already dreads the answer.
"Create a distraction inside the city when we need it," Din says. "But without nature to control, you'll have to improvise."
Oliver looks around at Calodan's sterile streets, its terrified population, its systematic brutality. Every instinct screams that he's useless here—his abilities neutered, his enhanced awareness reduced to conventional senses.
But as he watches a child cling to her mother's hand while Imperial guards patrol nearby, Oliver realizes that usefulness isn't just about having the right tools.
Sometimes it's about having the right intentions.
POV: Ahsoka Tano
From her concealment in Corvus's dying forests, Ahsoka watches the newcomers through the Force and finds herself... curious.
The Mandalorian radiates determination and hidden pain—a warrior carrying burdens that would crush most beings. The former soldier moves with the disciplined awareness of someone who's fought for causes larger than herself. And the child...
The child shines in the Force like a beacon, his power barely contained within his small form. Untrained but not untamed, touched by both light and dark but claimed by neither.
But it's the fourth member of their group that draws her attention most powerfully.
His presence in the Force is... wrong. Not dark side corruption—she's felt that particular stain often enough to recognize it. This is something else entirely. Artificial. Fragmented. As if someone has taken pieces of different souls and attempted to forge them into a single consciousness.
"What are you?" she wonders, studying him through enhanced vision.
The man moves like someone in physical distress, his enhanced biology clearly struggling with Calodan's sterile environment. But underneath the discomfort, she senses something else—a desperate desire to help, to heal, to make things better than they are.
"Interesting," Ahsoka thinks. "He wears a monster's face but carries a gardener's heart."
As night falls over Corvus's scorched landscape, she makes her decision.
It's time to meet these newcomers face to face.
The child's training can wait. First, she needs to understand what manner of being wears Dr. Elias Voss's body while radiating someone else's soul.
[FORCE-SENSITIVE ENTITY DETECTED]
[THREAT LEVEL: EXTREME]
[SYSTEM INSTABILITY LIKELY]
[WARNING: UNKNOWN INTERACTION EFFECTS]
Oliver's head snaps up from their campfire, his enhanced awareness suddenly screaming warnings about something approaching through the mist.
Something powerful. Something ancient. Something that makes his artificial nervous system convulse with interference patterns.
"Guys?" he says, his voice tight with growing alarm. "I think she knows we're here."
In the distance, twin points of white light ignite in the darkness—lightsabers drawing lines of controlled destruction through Corvus's perpetual twilight.
The Jedi has come to them.
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