The Man Who Has It All

[Alric Kuhn]

"I was never really the religious type."​

​

A voice rang out within the dark.​

​

"My father was. Though I suppose that wasn't the kind of thing most people associate with religion. My sisters were the same, they were brought up just like he was. I think I was different, different from them in some way that my father resented. I understood a little more later, though truthfully I still don't really get it. It always seemed to me like he wanted something more, like he wanted me to be greater than I was capable of being. He resented me, and part of that was because of what he believed. My sisters...my sisters believed. Maybe in the force, maybe in the ancient gods my father called upon...I don't know, but I know they believed."​

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A shift of cloth, a slight clink of metal scratching against itself.​

​

"I never did though."​

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"I think it was because of my father, because I thought his own belief turned him against me, so why would I believe in something like that?"​

​

Distant coughing seemed to carry in the air, cutting off as the voice spoke again.​

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"The idea of believing in something greater than ourselves the thought that we were being guided, controlled by something that we can't see? I never liked that. I never liked the thought that I wasn't in charge of myself. In fact I never liked the idea of anything or anyone coming in between what I might want. It's silly now, to think that I was so self assured, to think that I was so confident that I could have everything, that I could be everything my father wanted to be and more. That I could have the love of my family, the respect of my peers, and all the riches I could ever want."​

​

"I paid for that thought in the end."​

​

Silence rung through the air as the source of the voice leaned forward into dim light. Alric Kuhn sat within a small concrete room, a chain was clasped around both of his wrists, a collar wound tightly around his neck. His clothes were torn, his hair bloodied, and his face filled with cuts and bruises.​

​

"I paid a lot."​

 

[Alric Kuhn]

"It wasn't with money, though I've wasted enough of that in my life to build an entire planet."​

​

There was a chuckle somewhere in the dark.​

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"No. No I paid with something far more important, something I didn't even realize I had."​

​

"It started with a woman. It always does I guess. ​

​

"No...it started before then."​

​

Again, silence held through the air. Whenever he paused it seemed that whoever was around him, or whatever was around him was eager for him to continue, as if they hung off every single word that came from him.​

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"I was born on Empress Teta. I lived a life that most people can only dream about. I had money, I had friends, I had everything anyone could ever want. My father despised me, my mother...I don't know, maybe she couldn't quite grasp what it meant to love, but my sisters...my sisters were everything that was right with family. They loved me, adored me. They taught me to be a man, to be what I would eventually become. They raised me better then my parents ever should have."​

​

There was sentiment in his tone, a love that carried for all the years of his life.​

​

"I never understood."​

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"They had never received that kind of love, I knew that. My father taught them, he showed them his ways but...he never loved them. My mother treated them the same way she treated me. They never knew what it was to be loved by a parent, they never knew the comforting touch that should be offered by a mother, the soothing words of a father. Maybe they never cared, maybe they wanted better for me, maybe they knew, maybe they knew what it would mean."​

​

He trailed off for a moment, and the silence seemed to sting the ears.​

​

"But it started with them. They were the first thing I had to pay for."​

 

[Alric Kuhn]

"Empress Teta has always been a purse world, its valuable. The planet is a rival to Coruscant, the system produces hundreds upon millions of tons of carbonite. We're a center of culture, production, high class, everything that one could dream of. Cinnegar has no slums, no poor...or that's what they say. Empress Teta is a dream, though like most dreams it would eventually come to an end."​

​

His words took up speed.​

​

"I was living off world by then, trying to make my way. Father had chased me off, saying I wasn't fit to live on the estate anymore and truthfully...I didn't want to. My mother had fallen into alcoholism, my father locked himself up, and my sisters had become increasingly...concerned. They wanted me gone, not because they no longer loved me, but because they wanted the best for me, they wanted me to succeed despite the stiffing my father offered me."​

​

"So I went."​

​

The rattle of chains rang through the darkness, the shifting of legs and the slight grunt of a man clearing his throat. Alric pulled his hand through his hair, grasping at bloodied locks and untangling them as he leaned back against the thick duracrete wall.​

​

"Kuhn Consolidated, my first company. I used it to buy up stock, purchase smaller corporations and get a foothold in larger ones. It worked out well, I eventually managed to grasp majority control in Blas-Tech. But while I was succeeding, while I was running around away from my home the One Sith came."​

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A slight hiss rang through the dark, distaste.​

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"They were good to Empress Teta, or at least, they weren't any worse then the Republic. I remember my father being overjoyed, I remember my mother smiling, the first time I had ever seen her smile. I didn't understand then, and my sisters wouldn't explain. Five years down the road I would find out, but at that moment I was in the dark. Either way, the Sith controlled the planet for months. The city flourished and business expanded faster then it had in generations."​

​

He let out a chuckled.​

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"My father...I actually thought my father was happy to see me the last time I visited."​

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"It was a strange feeling."​

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The scratching of chains echoed throughout the dark as Alric shook his head.​

​

"Things were going well. My business was growing, my Father could stand to look at me, my mother seemed sober, my sisters seemed to have hit a stride of joy and control they had never enjoyed before....and then...and then the Mandalorians came."​

 

[Alric Kuhn]

"I never blamed them, still don't. Don't blame the Sith Either."​

​

"It's within their nature. It happens. That's what I always told myself, that's what I still tell myself. The Sith would always create war, the Mandalorians would always fight, and there would always be casualties on the side. I knew that. I knew why it happened, but it still hurt all the same."​

​

He cleared his throat, the echo running through the air as he shifted again. His eyes folded closed, his voice strengthening as he continued on.​

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"The Mandalorian invasion of Empress Teta. It was retaliation...I think. An attack on the One Sith who had been sowing destruction within the core. The Battle...the battle was massive. It carried through the entire city, tore apart massive sections of Cinnegar. Most of the battle scene had been evacuated, most people had been forcefully made to leave. The Sith had known the attack was coming, they had prepared for it, tried to save civilians."​

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A laugh broke through the dark, Alric ignored it.​

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"My father...my father in all his ego, all his power...he decided to stay, and he made his family stay with him."​

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"The manor was located in Central Cinnegar. Not in the middle of the battle, but the edge of it, though in the end that hardly seemed to matter. The fight started, carried on for days. The Mandalorians landed and the destruction began on a scale that hadn't been seen since before the Gulag Plague. Half of Cinnegar was torn apart. Piece by the city began to fall, and eventually, my families home fell with it."​

 

[Alric Kuhn]

"I was told their deaths were quick."​

​

The silence was cutting when he said that. Every single thing within the darkness seemed to respect that fact, every single person, every single creature, every single thing there seemed to be completely still. Not even an insect made a sound. The silence seemed to simply hang there, waiting.​

​

"My sisters were on the second story when the building came crashing down. A turbolaser...maybe a bolt of lightning, it was hard to say. The Medical Officers told me that they had been killed via concussive force, not the burns that they had suffered. My father had died in his office, typical of him really. Part of the ceiling had collapsed on him and crushed him. Apparently throughout the ordeal there had been no indication that he had attempted to escape, to struggle, maybe that was a way of him accepting things."​

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"My mother...My mother...They didn't find her body for days. In the end they discovered her in the wine cellar."​

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There was a hint of irony in his voice, a hint of the darkest possible humor.​

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"My late wife later told me that she had been there. Not the manor of course, but the battle."​

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Another pause, a scratch of chains against the wall.​

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"I always thought that was coincidental. I always thought it was a bit too much of an ironic twist for the galaxy to not have planned it that way. Could she have saved them? Would she have saved them? I really only asked myself those questions once, mostly because I knew the answers."​

 

[Alric Kuhn]

"I never really mourned them."​

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Alric finally continued, having let silence remain in the air for far too long.​

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"Not my parents anyway."​

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"My sisters...my sisters were different. They were the only real family I'd ever had, the only people that I loved. My father was a wastrel, my mother was less of a human and more of a walking bag of alcohol...but my sisters. My sisters cared about me, they raised me. Their loss hit me hard."​

​

He let out a sigh.​

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The scratching of chains echoed out again, his head tilting back against the duracrete.​

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"I tried for the longest time to ignore it, I tried to focus on something else. That's when I first took on the project of taking Blas-Tech. It wasn't an effective grieving tool, I'll admit that now, and the methods that I utilized were...less then savory. I had a lot of people killed, stole a lot of money, blackmailed more then a dozen board members. It worked out in the end, and I could justify it by saying that they had all done worse, but I know that I was wrong."​

​

Alric chuckled.​

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"It doesn't help that only a few years later I did far worse then a bit of blackmail."​

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"That was the way of things though, still is in some places. I've tried to do better, tried to change how I do things."​

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"I don't think it's really worked."​

 

[Alric Kuhn]

"It's funny how that's relevant even now. Look at where I am, look at what I did. It's all connected in some way, in some perfectly tight knit way."​

​

He leaned forward into the light again.​

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"When I didn't grieve my Sisters I changed. The man I was...no the boy that I was...he shifted."​

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"I became focused, stubborn, even stupid depending on who you ask."​

​

Alric shifted again, this time completely moving into the light. He seemed haggard, half broken. Blood soaked him, scratches cut deep into his skin. His head had a wound on it, stitches lacing deep into his flesh. The former Titan didn't seem to notice though, instead he simply leaned forward and rubbed his eyes, as if he was trying to dispell some sense of tiredness that had fallen onto him.​

​

"That change, that shift...no that strengthening of what had made me so flawed..."​

​

There was distant rattling of chains, the distinct sound of people moving.​

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"It lead me to her."​

 

[Alric Kuhn]

"She would end up showing me the truth in things. She was the one that would open my eyes, guide me. She was, and still is indescribable."​

​

"I think many people would say that about the woman they love but...I didn't love her."​

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A smile passed on his lips.​

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"At least not then."​

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Amusement floated through his voice, as though he knew a secret that he wasn't ready to tell anyone else yet. The Titan had always had that secret, had always had that special something that lay hidden beneath it all. Alric Kuhn was a keeper of secrets, of knowledge. It was a roll that he liked, and one that he was suited to above many others in the galaxy.​

​

"I first met her at an auction."​

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He began again.​

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"I didn't actually know who she was at first, I was ignorant in that and many other things. She was striking, and by all accounts famous. Her name already carried more weight in the galaxy then that of many Emperors, Kings, and Prime Ministers. People knew her, knew of her. She was important, and there I was, ignorant as could be. It was that stubbornness, that focus, it made me do what I did. Perhaps it was in jest, though I don't really know anymore, I just remember thinking I had to do it."​

​

Alric remembered that moment so well, he remembered his exact words.​

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They still made him chuckle.​

 

[Alric Kuhn]

"I bought her a dress."​

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He continued on, swallowing a small bit of laughter that tickled in his throat.​

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"Not an ordinary dress. It was black, nearly see-through, and more expensive then half a moon in the core."​

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An exaggeration to be sure, but he still remembered just how much that article of clothing had cost. It was a reminder of just how much wealth he had squandered, how much money he had spent and wasted. Briefly he wondered what had ever happened to that dress, if it had been thrown away, burned, he would have to remember to ask when he saw her next, if he saw her next.​

​

"After that it wasn't long before she stood in front of me."​

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"I still remember the look in her eye. I still remember the lines on her face. I still remember how every hair was perfectly placed."​

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"She was like a portrait, a painting, something that you would find within the grand museums of Empress Teta. I remember wondering if she was really, I remember thinking that none of her was. It was an odd feeling talking to her, taunting her, getting her to bite on my hook. That had night was the beginning of something, another shift. It's hard to describe what happened that night, but I think we both knew. I think we both realized something changed."​

 

[Alric Kuhn]

"I think she knew before me, or maybe she realized it first. It was hard to tell, we parted from one another so quickly, walked away within minutes of it all. There was anger from the both of us, though rage only from me."​

​

He let out a chuckle.​

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"In hindsight, I could have handled it better...but then again the same thing could be said about her."​

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"She ran."​

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There was a truth in that, an indescribable truth. Alric had considered it in the past, and he had known Danger's actions for what they were. Back then she hadn't known what to do, she hadn't quite seen exactly everything that he was and she had run away. There had been nothing wrong with that, it had been a natural reaction. She could not have known what he would do, that he would come chasing her. It was simply who he had been..​

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Who he still was.​

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"There was a point where I could have let it go. There was a point where it could have all ended."​

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"I was on the cusp of something. I was about to come into more wealth then I could ever imagine, more power then my father had ever had. I was about to seize an opportunity that would grant me fame across the galaxy...but I couldn't let her go."​

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He stopped for a moment, as if his throat were too dry to continue.​

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"She sent word, offered a deal but...Whatever happened that night, whatever we realized, whatever we had come to know...It wasn't something I couldn't walk away from. I was angry, so angry. I couldn't stand the idea of it, I couldn't handle the idea of walking away...no...I couldn't handle the idea that she would walk away. The rejection, the push away. The idea of whatever happened, whatever it was, I couldn't stand the thought of her simply turning a blind eye to it. I was enraged."​

​

"So I chased her."​

 

[Alric Kuhn]

"At the time, I didn't really know what I was getting myself into. I didn't know the world of hurt i'd be in, I didn't know what path I would be stepping on, I didn't know just how much all of it would end up changing me."​

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"It's funny really."​

​

There was a smile on his face as he spoke.​

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"We take actions, sometimes without thinking, and those actions illicit reactions. Those reactions spiral and spin into things that we could never have predicted. I never thought things would go the way they did, I never thought things would work out like that. Yet here we were, everything having fallen into place. I suppose some could say its fate, others would say its the will of the force. To me...to me it was just life. I don't know if things would have been different, I don't know if I could've changed it, but I know that I wouldn't."​

​

That seemed poignant to him.​

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"In the end, she ran, and I chased."​

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"Her home is Tatooine. It was a planet I'd never been to, a planet that I now despise. The heat, the sand, the dry atmosphere, it's what many people would consider the definition of hell. It's her home though, and it's where I knew I would find her."​

 

[Alric Kuhn]

"It's no real surprise that I wasn't prepared for that world. Tatooine is a survivalists nightmare. No standing bodies of water, no rain, no real moisture in the air. About the only wild life is Krayt Dragons and those things are tougher to kill then Rancors. I went in with no idea what I was doing, a suit, some boots, and a single bottle of water. I had no plan, no clever scheme, I just went and started looking for her. Looking back now, I can't believe that I was so stupid. It was the rage, I think. I was reasonable even then...but I was just so angry."​

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He chuckled, scratching his beard.​

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Flakes of dried blood fell onto his fingers.​

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"It took less then a day for me to get captured."​

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A chuckle erupted from somewhere in the dark, eliciting a smile from Alric's own face. He knew how stupid what he had done was, he knew how bad the decision could have gone. Most would have been dead if they had done what he did, it was only luck that had saved him in the end.​

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"Tuskens don't usually take prisoners, but I guess I was lucky. They took me back to their stronghold, if you could call it that, put me in a room and locked the door. I think that was when I started paying for it all, when I made the first mistake of hubris. I tried to escape on my own, tried to get away. It worked out alright...until I got caught."​

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He chuckled remembering what he had walked in on, but left that detail out.​

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"They punished me."​

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"A whip, I think it was. The memory is one of the only things that still foggy in my mind. I don't remember the instrument, or who used it, I just remember the fire of pain licking against my back.​

 

[Alric Kuhn]

"They threw me back in the room after that, left me to suffer, or to die."​

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It had been hard to tell with the Tuskens.​

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"I don't remember when she got there, I don't even know if she actually was there. All I remember is the pain, the hallucination, the voices of my dead sisters."​

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"They appeared to me, showed up when I was suffering."​

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He bit his lip, finding it difficult to continue.​

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"I don't remember what they said, not exactly. I remember being told to trust her, I remember being told to rely on her. I don't know if they were real...I don't know if I believe that they could be real...but they helped. She treated my wounds. At the time I didn't know how, though later it would become clear. That night was the worst. Pain. Hallucination. More ghosts of the past. I'd never felt that much pain, haven't since. My back was a wreck, and even with how I was healed my nerves were dead. I could feel no touch, no pain, nothing. Still can't."​

 

[Alric Kuhn]

"We escaped the next day."​

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"It went fast, I still wasn't at my best, but we both knew that we had to do it. There was no way they would let us live another day, and there was no way that I was staying in a place where I had seen ghosts."​

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Alric paused for a moment.​

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"I haven't liked Tuskens since."​

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He shook his head, as though he were trying to dispel some sort of reasoning behind that.​

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"We made it out okay, fled to a nearby cave. She knew her way around of course, knew which paths to take and how to survive within the desert. It helped that we were in the right area, helped that I wasn't a complete idiot the entire time. We began to carve a path through the desert, finding some of the supplies she had left behind. I don't remember how long it took, I don't remember if it was a few days, weeks, or just a few hours, but eventually we made it through the sands."​

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"What we found..."​

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Alric laughed out loud.​

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"What we found still amazes me."​

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"It was a Star Destroyer. An entire Star Destroyer. Not the modern ones. Not the ones built by the Sith or the Republic, but a Star Destroyer from the Old Empire before the plague. It was massive, sticking half in the sand. I remember the irony still, that such a symbol of tyranny would be our savior."​

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"Funny, that."​

 

[Alric Kuhn]

"The thing had crashed ages ago, during the plague. We don't know how it survived so well, never really found any records. We do know that it crashed because of a mutiny. The troopers aboard didn't like what the ship was transporting, and eventually it was five hundred versus twenty thousand. The officers eventually tried to scuttle the ship, stop the mutiny in its tracks. The vessel somehow ended up downed on Tatooine, buried by sand and forgotten for hundreds of years."​

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He shrugged, chains scratching against duracrete.​

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"To us it was a savior."​

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"The vessel was still intact, the reactor still worked, and most of its systems were perfectly operational."​

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Alric chuckled.​

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"Were I a religious man I would call it a miracle...though it was a miracle that I would end up paying for."​

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"I guess thats the theme of this story, that everything has a price. The Ship was a miracle. It was a savior. It gave me more rewards then I deserved. It gave me life, it gave me love, not once, but twice, it gave me two beautiful daughters..."​

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"And it only cost me my humanity."​

 

[Alric Kuhn]

"Rhetoric of course."​

​

For some odd reason he felt the need to clear that up. He knew that most would understand, but he was no cyborg or anything of the sort. Once, his company had looked into the technologies of changing that, a way of achieving immortality. For him it had always been a bit too creepy. Perhaps in his youth Alric would have considered it, but now...now he knew what he would do once his life had come to an end.​

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"That ship was the next step in a long path. Upon it she and I discovered one of the greatest scourges that this galaxy had ever seen."​

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"Alpha Red."​

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He bit his tongue.​

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"It was a product of war, of desperation. When the Yuuzhan Vong dominated the galaxy, when they took planet after planet, the Alliance and everyone else began to look for a solution, any solution that would allow them to push back against the tide. Alpha Red was that solution."​

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Alric shook his head.​

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"I can see how they fall to that, I can see the appeal, but it went so wrong."​

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"Alpha Red was made to affect only the Vong, but quickly they found that something like that can't be contained. The compound twisted, changed, began to spread like a plague all over planets and starships. Thousands died within hours, millions within a day. It was a scourge that the Alliance had unleashed."​

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"We found it on that ship."​

 

[Alric Kuhn]

"I saw it first. The name, the logs. I remember reading, and I remember the recognition that dawned through me. I had studied Alpha Red during my days at University, knew all about it. History is pretty spotty in some places, but Alpha Red? That plague wiped out a planet, it wasn't to be forgotten. I remember the fear I felt, the horror. I remember the thought of what the contents of that room could do, the image burned in my head of thousands dying."​

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"There was no question that it had to be destroyed."​

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He stopped for a moment.​

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"But it wasn't."​

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"Not all of it."​

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"There was a group...an organization really, one that had lasted thousands of years. They got to the Alpha Red before we could. We don't really know how they knew about it, don't really know how they revealed the Star Destroyer, but we know they got their first. When we found the vault we found that one of the vials had already gone missing, we caught up with them just as they were leaving the Star Destroyer itself. We tried...we tried to stop them there, but we were hungry, tired, and half broken. They got away, and we watched as they did."​

​

Those words hit him hard. He had eventually caught up with the Star Cabal of course, but if they had caught them on that day? If they had stopped them right then and there? So much would have changed, so much would have gone faster and smoother. Perhaps he would have saved lives, or perhaps he would have doomed his own. It was something that he still thought about quite often, the idea of changing the past in that way.​

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Sometimes it appealed to him, other times it didn't.​

 

[Alric Kuhn]

"It took us months to find them."​

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He remembered those days.​

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"We knew they were out there, we knew they had a weapon and that they were going to use it. There was no doubt in either of us, we had to find them, we had to stop them. We both knew that the experience would change us, that hunting these people...finding them, it would bring us closer."​

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"I think she was afraid of it. I think she didn't want it, but it was inevitable."​

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Alric paused for a moment, looking at his chained hand.​

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"Three years. Three years we spent chasing, hunting, infiltrating. I...we did such terrible things. We watched as others did terrible things. We told ourselves that it had to happen, that it needed to be done, and it was true. With every horrible thing we did, with every terror that they committed...we got closer. We strived and pushed forward, until one day we stood within their ranks. We knew their plans, we knew their plots, we knew everything."​

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"It was worth it in the end."​

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"Sacrifice a thousand. Save a million."​

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Alric chuckled, his eyes squeezing shut as he tried to fight back a wave of tears.​

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"It's what I had to tell myself. It's what I said every day. I had to."​

 

[Alric Kuhn]

"In the end. It brought us closer."​

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The subject changed, back to her, back to him, away from them.​

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"Working together, doing those things together, knowing what was happening but staying still. It formed a link that I couldn't explain even today."​

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"I might have loved her at that point. Perhaps I did. After everything we went through, after everything we saw and did. If I had known what love was, if I had seen what was in front of my face, if i had just been a tad more experience, a tad older, I might have seen it, But I didn't. I wasn't. I was ignorant, stupid. An excuse would be to say she wasn't ready, she wasn't prepared, but I think it was just me. I think I didn't see it, and in the end that can only be my fault."​

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Alric shook his head, the chains scratching against wall as he did so. It was an odd conundrum, but he knew the truth of it all.​

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"In the end it took another woman to wake me up, and it took the original to show me the way."​

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He chuckled.​

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"It's funny how that worked out. How one woke me and the other showed me the way to her."​

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"Perhaps there was something fundamentally broken with me, something that had to be fixed before the end. I loved her, my wife. I loved her with every part of my soul. I couldn't explain it now, I don't think I could ever explain it. She grasped me in a way that even now perplexes me. It was instant. Not hidden, not broken, it was simply there."​

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Alric shook his head.​

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"That was the problem. I was blind. I'm always blind."​

 

[Alric Kuhn]

"You can call me a selfish man, you can call me idiot, but I think I always loved them both. In a way at least. With the one I knew, with the other it was hidden. It took the one to show me, the other to wake me up.."​

​

"At first I was hesitant, at first I didn't know what to do. There was no thought of marriage, no thought of love. It took her, it took the girl from Tatooine to show me the way, to open my eyes. She laughed, she scolded, she turned me in the right direction. Even then...I think she knew what she was doing, she wasn't thinking of herself, she was thinking of me. It's her flaw, it's what she always does, always did. I've tried to change that now, but I still don't think she gets it."​

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"My wife...my late wife, she was different."​

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He chuckled.​

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"She knew what she wanted, and she took it."​

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"It was selfish in a way, but I don't think she knew it, either that or she didn't care. I suppose that's the difference between them, that and many other things. One knew what she wanted, the other was too afraid. It was the seizing of opportunity. Something the other wouldn't do until I made her."​