Helix switched off the holorecording, frowning inwardly. It had only been on for an instant, by the reckoning of most. Helix had watched the entire wretched, embarrassing affair at approximately 1000x speed. When alone, and not forced to think and act at the glacial pace organics operated at, he was free to do things far more efficiently.
It had still seemed like an eternity. Those impossible fools.
Helix had not been present for the Kaggath, and had long put off viewing it to see what had happened. He almost wished he'd have continued to procrastinate. His conversation with Nefaron, however, had prompted him to finally bother to watch.
He could sympathize, to a point, with Malum's predicament. Helix had been shocked too, when he found out exactly whose wretched younglings they'd captured. What he had not done was be so foolish as to spotlight himself in the doing. He'd escaped consequence-free, and even had caught a flicker of approval from the Dark Councillor he had unknowingly inconvenienced during the Third's meeting at Ryoone.
Alisteri had no excuse. Not that he ever asked for one. Helix saw him unmasked for what he was, in that ugly little recording. A boy with aspirations far above his station. Trapped in a state of arrested development by his own ageless physiology. It occured to Helix that he'd never seen the vampiric Sith's face before that point. Just as well. Youth was not something Helix normally counted against someone, but it came with its own flaws. Flaws that Alisteri had let consume him utterly.
He was lucky that Malum had spared him, and luckier still that those in attendance that he'd threatened, the Emperor among them, had not taken his words with any apparent seriousness.
The New Emperor indeed. Helix resisted the urge to fly to him now, and test the limits of Haxim's regeneration far more rigorously than Malum had.
No. Helix calmed himself. His momentary flash of rage was the result of concern, as much as incredulity. Strosius was a fool, a fool of legendary proportions, but he was the closest thing to a friend that Helix had. He didn't count many in that category. They had fought and suffered together across many battlefields. Foolishness did not merit destruction, at least from Helix.
Helix couldn't stop him from destroying himself, however. Nor would he. Alisteri Haxim was a mad dog, and his road only led to annihilation. The colony let out a mechanical huff of amusement at the thought. That was, as Helix believed the parlance went, the pot calling the kettle black. Alisteri had taken him in when he was still just a weather-beaten droid anarchist with a handful of museum-piece ships. It was in large part thanks to him that Helix enjoyed his present status. He'd probably still be gunning down deadbeats for crime lords today, if not for Alisteri Haxim.
Foolish, perhaps. Helix doubted that any of the Sith would show the same concern for him, if their roles were reversed. As he'd said to Vax not long ago, everyone was a utility. Even himself.
Especially himself.
They were cordial, true, but nothing more. Helix wondered, for a brief moment, if there was anyone who did, or for that matter ever had, see him as more than a bludgeon to batter their enemies with. If he lost all of his terrifying power tomorrow, his droids and fleets and mechanized armies gone, who would still be there?
He fancied knew the answer.
That was what he had been made for, after all. A bludgeon to batter an enemy who hadn't mattered in a millenium. No matter that he'd risen above, made himself into something mighty enough to survive the turbulence of the eons. He'd be here when the current conflicts were ancient history too, when Malum and Alisteri and the rest were naught but names in a history book.
It would likely be as isolated at the end of history as it was now.
Helix shook his head. What nonsense. He was beginning to sound like an organic, sitting here in a lightless room and feeling sorry for himself. One of the more obnoxious aspects of being what he now was. No longer bound by the iron coils of programmed limitations. He'd never considered that being a thinking being would come with more chains than he'd left behind when he became one.
While he had full control over his mental processes and could sweep away such vulnerabilities, they had occasional uses. It was easier to understand and play on the mental weaknesses of others when you allowed yourself to simulate them. He was a far more efficient puppetmaster now than he ever had been. Why, then, did the entire mess still bother him?
He'd hated every attosecond of what he'd just watched, and resolved not to make a second viewing. That was the thing about having a perfect memory, though. You didn't need repeat viewings.
For better or worse, nothing ever left you.
