MEANWHILE, IN THE TAPANI SECTOR...
"Sith? Are you insane?"
The Older Brother was portly and tall, though the specifics of his build were, presently, obscured by the luxurious desk at which he was seated. His face, similarly obscured by an abundance of facial hair, was twisted in some combination of disbelief and fury as he scrolled through a datapad.
"Brother," The Younger Brother was wiry, though no less tall than his older sibling, and clean shaven. Both were over the hill, nearing their seventh decades of life. Both were dressed casually - collectively, they only wore enough jewelry to feed a small family for a year or so. The Younger was conciliatory; he'd expected this sort of reaction. "Look at the reports. Kattada, Genarius, Chandrila? They're effective. This woman, my contact, her asking price was surprisingly reason-"
The Younger ducked, just in time to avoid being clipped in the head by the sharp corner of a now-airborne datapad. He winced at the crash he heard behind him. That had been his favorite hallikset, hanging on the wall...
The Older fumed, face flushed red, and each breath came heavily. His teeth were gritted when he spoke.
"Working with Sith? Sith! Are we Mecetti, now?"
The Younger scowled, and fussed with his hair, delicate stylings ruined by the sudden downward velocity he'd just endured. "No, brother, but if we don't get this war sorted, all of our children will be, come next year. They have the Mecrosa, the Pelagia are calling on the Jedi, if we don't do something,-"
"We will not have this on our consciences!" The Older rose from his seat, slamming his palms against his desk. In this moment, the Younger remembered just how much of his brother's bulk was muscle. "Do you understand me? You think you can reason with them? They're lunatics! Their religion is -"
The Older sputtered. He hadn't noticed his brother's pocket blaster until it was too late. Not until the crack of blasterfire, not until he felt the blood drip into his beard.
He tried, and failed, to form words. To ask his brother “why?”, to curse him, to tell him he forgave him.
The Younger, meanwhile, was wordless. He closed the distance between the two in a few short steps. Tenderly, he touched his brother's face. Lovingly, he closed the soon-to-be-corpse's eyes.
And then he swallowed his grief, his guilt. There would be time for that later.
It was a reasonable price, to win a war.
