Harbinger (Prelude to the Invasions) [Open]

[Geneviève Lasedri]

She stood before the podium--the woman in white; the warhawk; the Chandrilan Raven; the Prime Minister--stray strands of hair dancing in the moderate wind on a cloudy Chazwa day. The floppy sunhat was absent from her outfit for once, and her face remarkably somber for her usual steely and resolute expression. Something was stirring. Somewhere, something was about to happen. It was the right time for a speech.

Lasedri cleared her throat and glanced about the new Senate Hall, its magnificence not comparing to the prior arrangements at Coruscant; Anaxes; Onderon. It was humbling, though it might make the occupants of such a building representing high station to feel a little more personal. Even for Gen.

"Hello, Republic.

"I come before you today as the same woman in form; same woman in practice. But I am not the same woman I was when I was elected. Nor am I the same woman I was last week. That is not to say I have given up, or that I am incompatible with the office--though judge me as you would, for I am no capable judge of myself. It is not to say that I am in despair. But the confession must be made that I am not unlike you, and that my confidence may falter and my faith grow still. It is difficult for even one who seems to have the control to see through the lies that are not so much created by the enemy but by the mind. But we must choose that our minds will not succumb to this perishable ailment.

"There are those within our people who believe that we will not be victorious. They believe that we are not strong enough. And sometimes a lie such as this one can come true.

"Though there is one invariable truth that I subscribe to: that all people believe what they choose to believe in the end. So you must choose to believe, with all your heart, that your faith is correctly invested in this Republic; that you can do all you can; that the man fighting for you on the fleet lines is firing the cannon you made not for vain.

"Someday we will all learn of sacrifice that no story has ever expressed before now. We will learn what each and every one of us chose to believe. Those on Csilla, Anaxes, Coruscant; Rendil, Glee Anslem, and Khomm; Fresia--they persist because they have one thing that is the only thing that will matter for the days to come. There is hope. And death will not destroy hope. It will rise again one day. This is not the end, for we have survived this far. We have learned to fight, and we will soon be the masters of our fate by our undying resolve.

"And so I hope along with you that it is tomorrow; today. Pray for rain. Victory will come when our hope remains.

"I love you, Republic." The Prime Minister dipped her head and walked away. She had a date with a bottle.

 

[Cryax Bane]

Some slicers sliced for fun. Some, to steal things, or to go to forbidden places. Today, Cryax Bane was slicing to disrupt. His target, Republic propaganda posters that had been distributed all over the galaxy, ones containing faces of key members of the Republic with a tagline that called on the galactic population to join them. Using some Holo-image editing software, Cryax first manipulated these posters to replace the portraits with that of Dave, the Coruscanti citizen killed at the hands of Rebel Alliance terrorist attacks, now a potent symbol of those very attacks. The coup de grace was the addition of text, underneath Dave's benevolent smile and rendered in the same font as the original posters, that read: "Protect your family, protect your life. Join the One Sith." Oh, and couldn't forget the #neverforgetdave hastag.

Once the new posters were complete, he hacked into various news sites, blogs, Holo-magazines, and even sites for Holo-tv listings and began to spam the doctored images all over the 'net, attaching a benign string of code that made it nearly impossibly to close the Holo-pic, lest hundreds more pop up in view.

Bane was rather proud of this act of civil disobedience. It was almost as good as the time he hacked into McYoda's site and changed all of the menu items to those of Bantha King's. Almost.

Once confident that enough sites had been targeted. Cryax spun away from his array of computers and turned on an action Holo, a cop buddy movie, where a no-nonsense, by-the-book enforcer got reluctantly paired with a sassy HRD. Man, this movie never got old.