Inquest at Kiribi

[Ashin Varanin]

Spoiler

She took a break from her brooding and stargazing to issue a live message over the HOLONET to address to the current unrest on Denon, relayed through several nodes to avoid backtracing, the final node being through one of her private biocomm networks that no one had chance accessing. On camera, people would be able to see the Kiribian plainly dressed in plain black fatigues as she stood on an empty bridge, dark hard tied up in a simple bun. As she settled into her new life, she had abandoned the fine trappings of the former. However, her tawny eyes still glittered as bright as topaz. Finally becoming unhinged, she had been reinvigorated. "This is Suravi Teigra, formerly Supreme Commander of the Republic Armed Forces. To all those who still claim to fight under the banner of the Republic, or as my 'loyalists', I ask you now to cease hostilities against your compatriots on Denon. We did not fight against savages just to be reduced to savages ourselves. If you feel the need to continue bearing arms, then there is a whole galaxy in need of your aid. Make no mistake, the Sith did not disappear when the One Sith and Triumvirate collapsed. They infest every corner of of the galaxy, from Voss to Dossum, still pulling the strings. For any to believe that my recent campaign was a result of some bout of madness, I'm afraid to say it was not. My enemy is, and will forever remain the Sith and their puppets, no matter if they decide to swath themselves in black cloaks, or shining armor. If you wish to continue the fight, then join me." "For the rest of you, your fight is done. Lay down your weapons and return home. For many of you, that is Denon itself. Denon, Mimban, Gyndine, Torgoria, Deneba, Kashyyk, Alderaan, Korriban, Drommund Kaas, Roche, Voss, Ossus, and a host of other planets...remember the monsters (on all sides) who devastated the worlds and see that you do not follow down their path of destruction. Bendu knows that the Republic hasn't been perfect. People have been hurt by my mistakes and those of previous administrations. While we can't undo the past, we can right our future, starting now."

A Director General’s office in the Palace of Theed merited a high-resolution holoprojector and communications access. The projector was set in the glossy art-deco desk. Its image, one-quarter scale, stood more or less at eye level with Ajira Cardei as she sat down. She rewound the transmission and sat back, steepling her fingers to rest the tips against her mouth and chin.

Suravi Teigra had never really been on her radar. That had less to do with the Kiribian general’s undoubted accomplishments than with Ajira’s own obsolescence. The movers and shakers of the galaxy had changed and changed and changed again since she’d been one of them. While she was building her life and her cover here on Naboo, Teigra had been centralizing control of the erstwhile Galactic Republic. Teigra had been the final Supreme Commander before the last dissolution, the ultimate defeat. By all accounts, she’d been the strong hand on the tiller of an already-sinking ship.

There’d been a time when the Republic’s failure and humiliation would have satisfied Ajira, who’d been Ashin Varanin once. She would have derived happiness from seeing the Republic humbled: for their contempt toward the Lords of the Fringe, for their destruction of everything she’d built around the Stygian Caldera, for their treatment of her wife. The sins of other regimes, but held up as triumphs by their successors, who’d thus inherited a measure of culpability. And yet when it came, the Republic’s destruction offered nothing of the satisfaction that she’d gleaned from the dissolution of the One Sith. She had nothing against Teigra; in fact, by some accounts, Teigra’s leadership had been exemplary in an authoritarian way.

After that, however, circumstances had conspired to put Teigra front and centre in Ajira’s field of attention. Teigra had joined forces with the Sith who had recently destroyed numerous Naboo ships; she’d laid a minefield that destroyed Naboo probes; she’d attacked Galactic Alliance vessels unprovoked. And when His Majesty’s Office, in the person of Lady [member="Jamie Pyne"], issued a strongly worded protest, Teigra had almost certainly ordered a terrorist assault on Theed Spaceport. When an electromagnetic pulse brought down a standard AA-9 personnel transport, half-loaded, fifteen thousand people had died. There had been other casualties throughout the spaceport, but all a drop in the bucket by comparison.

As Director General of Strategic Security Branch, Ajira now had two conflicting and implacable mandates. Investigate to provide His Majesty’s Office with options. Avoid attracting further retribution to the Naboo system.

Her third mandate was to improve security for the planet as a whole. More orbital stop-and-scans before landing, better planetary shield generators, better cooperation with GADF commanders. So be it. But all the time she didn’t spend on that, she spent on the other two mandates.

Due to various probes and sensor intercepts, Teigra’s fleet was believed to have originated from the Deep Core. You could hide anything in there if you knew your business, and Teigra clearly did, despite her boondoggle error in supporting Darth Mephirium’s Sith Lords. Ajira had already been contacted by the former Techno Union spymaster, a curious and amorphous fellow, who’d accepted a secret contract to hunt down Teigra’s ships. That angle was, for the moment, covered.

The incidents at Denon, involving a rogue Republic commander who’d proclaimed himself a Teigra loyalist, had failed to provide another angle of attack. It appeared that Teigra’s call for surrender and disbandment indicated she had no real connection to those who’d held up her name as a symbol. Disappointing, but at least it had yielded this message. Only time and data forensics would tell whether something might come of it.

That left the dangerous and obvious third path. Going to Kiribi, in secret, unofficially, and doing what needed to be done -- whatever that turned out to be.

OOC/ This isn't a hostile thread; Ajira's goal is investigation and exploration. [member="Suravi Teigra"], if you're still around and feel like joining or throwing in background information at any point, go nuts; if not, I'll continue as planned. Otherwise this thread is closed.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

In the end, remarkably little separated Ajira's secret self from Teigra. Both had been authoritarians who’d believed themselves in the right and lost their sense of proportion. Ferocious defenders of their people, their causes, their followers. Women who took necessary action, and often erred on the side of the unnecessary rather than fail to act at all. Commanders who pursued unlikely alliances to fight a potentially common enemy: the Sith. Despite her actions, Teigra certainly claimed enmity with the Sith as loudly as possible, in a way that reminded Ajira of a conspiracy theorist.

That, too, sparked a touch of empathy in Ajira. So did Teigra’s rejection of good-and-evil affiliations, of acceptance and opposition based on color schemes. Pragmatic moral relativism in a galaxy that made no sense, where all self-proclaimed heroes failed eventually -- Ajira could identify with that. In other circumstances, they might have been allies. Friends.

But the attack on Theed had severed that possibility utterly. In a way, Ajira suspected that Teigra would be able to empathize with the stance she had to take. The more she read of Teigra, the more she felt they shared an outlook. You protected your own. Kark anyone who messed with them - as Teigra had done to Theed Spaceport, and as Ajira might well do to Teigra and associates.

It helped, in such deliberations, to consider the matter from Teigra’s perspective. Could she have known that her empion attack on the spaceport would have caused deaths, not just property damage or inconvenience? No question about it, which made her action reckless at the very best. Could she have known that Naboo was protected by someone with Ajira’s hidden capabilities and resolve? Well, yes: the King of Naboo was Marcello Matteo, formerly of the Jedi Council, a man of martial prowess and extreme strength of will.

Teigra had to know that; it was common knowledge and easily found. Which meant she’d anticipated a civilized but uncompromising countermove. That, in turn, had implications for what Ajira might find once she made it to Kiribi, Teigra’s homeworld and, by some accounts, the heart of her personal powerbase.

Unarmed, alone, and furnished with an airtight cover identity, Ajira made for Kiribi by public transportation.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

She’d handed the bulk of her mandated tasks to fellow senior staff after receiving approval for this mission. The same went for her administrative duties. She couldn’t well meditate on the Force without potentially compromising the quey’tek shielding that made her seem like any common-or-garden untrained Force-sensitive, to those with the knack or knowledge to detect such things. A HALCYON space train traveled at a leisurely hyperspace factor. Therefore, the trip afforded Ajira all manner of time to sit in her small private booth and read.

She started with the briefing material on Kiribi and on Suravi Teigra. Not much was known about the latter, really, but her analysts had done their best. From there she graduated to a cursory, amused reading of Mara D’Lessio Merrill’s They Call Us All Traitor, a flawed but impassioned takedown of Mandalorian ethics. That got Ajira as far as Corellia, and lasted a good deal longer in thought once she’d turned the last page.

At least, a handful of lines stuck with her. The bulk of her reminiscence had nothing to do with the book; instead, it touched on her relationship with the Mandalorians as Ashin Varanin. As Sith Empress, she’d kept a leash on her Empire, forcing them to avoid Mandalorian territory in pursuit of the Republic. After being deposed at the Battle of Roche, she’d saved Mandalore a couple more times. She’d fought on their side against the Sith of Wild Space. She’d ridden a Basilisk down from orbit. She’d been adopted into Clan Ordo. She still wore simple Mandalorian armour during some of her incognito operations. Her cover identity, her stolen life as Lady Ajira Cardei, was totally incompatible with keeping the resol’nare.

But she’d lost and moved past so many lives and careers. She’d adapted. She’d attempted to do right by herself. Her life had been so many things, for years or decades at a time, and not all of them admirable. The lingering sparks of worth, of significance, were precious few in hindsight. Occasionally wearing beskar’gam in private was one such memento of better days. Days when she’d been relevant.

Nothing lasted. No kingdom, no ideal, no legend, no goal, no secret, no creation, no identity, no reputation. Suravi Teigra might yet adapt, morph into something new with more adeptness than she’d gone from general to terrorist. Ajira’s goal, apparently, was to catch her on the cusp of another transformation and either facilitate or sabotage that transformation. All that depended on what truths and options she discovered. Only a fool went into a foreign situation with a solution already chosen.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The Kiribi system had its charms to a spaceborne observer, and the train's liesurely course offered a view that could pull Ajira out of her cabin. The train's observation deck seated two dozen. This particular train was a high-end variant, spotlessly clean and packed with vacationing civil servants and retirees. Ajira, as a senior civil servant, blended in perfectly insofar as she interacted at all. She took a seat at the end of a row, port aft, and leaned back to watch the Dyson satellites. Kiribi was known for its technological capabilities, and a loose Dyson shell around the sun spoke to Kiribi's prestige. As Core Worlds went, it wasn't the most heavily populated, but those who lived or vacationed here had cause to thank the Force for it.

Past the Dyson shell, the train ambled around the sun and made for the planet itself, a journey of several hours. Ajira spent that time silent in the observation deck, feeling the ebb and flow of the Force here. Kiribi was the system's second world, with two unassuming moons. From this angle, the bulk of the available land mass appeared to be in the southern hemisphere. Eight or nine billion people called Kiribi home, if she remembered right, and the number was high enough to make civilization visible from space. As the train pulled into low orbit, she began to spot gleaming, modern cities that dotted the green continents. The train rendezvoused briefly with orbital security for an in-depth scan; it would detect no anomalies from Ajira or her luggage. She'd come entirely unarmed.

The train slid into atmosphere and made for a city. At this point, Ajira returned to her cabin and connected the data terminal with updates from the digital democracy servers.

The planet Kiribi, and the rest of the system, comprised the Kiribian Systems Union. The lower half of its bicameral legislature worked via electronic direct democracy. So far as she understood it, digital avatars represented -- at any given moment -- proportions of the population which stood a certain way on any given issue. She'd once stumbled across a comparable if smaller-scale system on Hagron's World, deep in Wild Space. If those lessons were applicable to the unconventional half of Kiribi's legislature, there might be opportunities here. Ajira Cardei wouldn't take those opportunities. Ashin Varanin, once upon a time, might have taken them by the reins. Might still, after due consideration.

The main issue with a digitized direct democracy, as far as she'd ever seen, was the essential problem of democracy writ large. Your average voter, your average citizen, was an endlessly biddable idiot, prone to flights of outrage and fancy that came and went quickly. The Kiribian Senate would, in theory, curb the excesses of the literal vox populi. In practice, everyone liked reelection. When the winds of change blew, they could move elected legislatures almost as quickly as the digital equivalent.

Somewhere on this planet, there had to be polling data on Suravi Teigra.

She gathered her simple effects and exited the train with the rest of its occupants. Security, while professional, offered the kind of process that you found on planets which saw significant intersystem and intrasystem traffic, including a whole lot of vacationers. Ajira's cover identity and legend were completely seamless, and she was not a public figure. She passed through security without incident.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Offworld, only a certain amount of information -- thirdhand or sanitized -- was available about the last Supreme Commander of the Republic. Here, advance contacts had gleaned more, some of it a true surprise to Ajira. Any number of people who’d brushed against Teigra or shaken her hand had noticed she was unusually dense, maybe like a human replica droid. (Conspiracy sites on the HoloNet made a big deal of this.) She was bound up in Kiribi’s trademark advanced biotechnology industry, a leading entrepreneur and innovator. She was a career philanthropist who’d focused on housing refugees from the One Sith depredations in the Core. She’d served as Kiribi’s Senator before her accession to the rank of Supreme Commander.

Suravi Teigra had spent a long time entrenching herself in her homeworld’s politics, business endeavours, and civil society. A person like that had to have developed rivals or even enemies somewhere along the line. Considering her recent history of power and unpredictability, those people tended to keep quiet, so far as Ajira’s contacts could glean. She’d expected interviews, surreptitious meetings, anonymous messages. What she faced was a deafening silence.

When she saw the latest polling data, she understood why.

Teigra was no longer the Republic’s leader or the planet’s Senator. She’d recently been outed as -- according to some -- a Sith collaborator, not to mention associated with that mess on Denon despite her total lack of connection to the instigators. Nevertheless, Teigra was still polling pretty well around here. Decades of devotion to her homeworld had clearly reaped their reward. Loyalty bred loyalty.

Ajira couldn’t help but think of the planets she’d called home over the years. New Cov, growing up with her family. Varunda Nine as a young Jedi, serving the Jade Worlds. The planet-wide slums of Trevel’ka where she’d spent a year in hiding. Chandaar as a new Sith Lord, then any number of worlds in the Unknown Regions. Nar Shaddaa and Mimban, where she’d lived with Spencer. Dromund Kaas, then Korriban as Empress. The Vagrant Fleet, no world, all worlds. Annaj and the Spires of Hell, for the Lords of the Fringe. Then back to Korriban as Watchman. Then long years of wandering, just killing Sith after Sith for what they’d done to Spencer. Then Naboo, and still Naboo for a few years now, the most stability since all the way back to Varunda Nine. Nothing like the stability, the allegiance, that Teigra had shown toward Kiribi. Maybe her absence in the Core was loyalty too, rather than abandonment: Ajira knew what it was like to leave someone for their own protection.

What would her life have been, if she’d never been infected with Sith poison as a young Jedi Knight? Where would she have called home, and would she have lived somewhere for longer than a few months or a year?

Someday, she decided, Teigra would want to come back here.

 

[Eugen Aker]

[SIZE=14.6667px]((Oh it's fine. I had expected someone to drop by sooner. Been waiting a half a year for this.))[/SIZE]

It had been a hectic few months for Carlisle[SIZE=14.6667px], to say the least. The Republic crumbled apart from repeated onslaughts from many foes, and from a great deal of internal strife from the result of a great many losses. Now, the latest, and perhaps most devastating blow had come from one of their own. Seemingly without rhyme or reason, Suravi had taken up arms against the Galactic Alliance.

Since the crisis at Atrisia, he hadn’t heard a single thing from her, so he, and the rest of Union were left to speculate what had driven her to take such drastic actions. For the sake of his administration, many within his cabinet and the Senate had urged him to denounce her. The KSU sat smack dab in the middle of the Galactic Alliance and the Mandalorians. If it appeared that they had been complicit in any way, then the KSU may receive the Kashyyk or Artisan treatment itself. [/SIZE]

Carlisle [SIZE=14.6667px]wasn’t quite ready to give her up. He had known her for several decades, becoming one of her closest allies in the Kiribian political scene, and a friend. He wasn’t ashamed to admit that he owed his entire political career to her. So, he had been sitting on the issue for weeks, torn between loyalty and political expediency.

That whole time he mulled, he still received no word, until civil war on Denon had lured Suravi back to the camera. The reasoning she provided was some mention about fighting the Sith, but from other reports from abroad, the narrative had been that she had been working in the service of Sith who had apparently overtaken Atrisia. Outside a confirmation that she was still alive, he learned nothing more.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Then in the middle of the night, a few days after the incident, a strong urge for chocolate milk woke him and sent him downstairs. When the lights in the kitchen flickered on, he just about had a heart attack when he saw Suravi in casual wear, sitting at the kitchen table with two tall glasses of chocolate milk. He shrieked out of surprise, but he found that his mouth made no sound as he did. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Careful, Carl, we wouldn’t want to wake Veronica or the children. Relax and have a drink with me.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Dumbfounded, [/SIZE]Carlisle [SIZE=14.6667px]made a weak nod and took his seat. She then pushed a glass to him and he picked it up to drink. He gulped it all down in one go. Suravi’s tawny eyes crinkled in amusement as she took a few sips of her milk.

“Better?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]He started mouthing out yes, but then shifted to another nod as he failed to hear himself again. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Good, I thought you would enjoy your favorite drink. A shame you didn’t have any sparkbee honey lying around.” [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]The woman was notorious for her consumption of the mild but flammable intoxicant. He had always wondered how she had managed to keep herself from combustion, but now he had an idea as he sat mute. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Then I’ll trust you to speak, but if you voice raises above a conversational level, then I’ll have to keep you quiet until I’m done.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]He nodded in acknowledgement. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Alright, feel free to speak. And to answer your question, yes, I am a Force Sensitive, though I imagine that isn’t too much of a surprise. Ciana never paid much mind to my words for discretion.” [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Even among Kiribian humans, Suravi was considered quite advanced in age. She had always maintained that it was the result of her developments during her time presiding over Panacea. Maybe she had even been touched by the Force by a Kiribian alchemist, but she never acted like she could use it on her own. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“So...the dreams of chocolate milk? You?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“It was. I apologize for the intrusion, but I didn’t want anyone else alerted to our meeting. It was a risk coming here, but I thought you deserved to see my in person one last time.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“...One last time.”[/SIZE][SIZE=14.6667px] He frowned in confusion. [/SIZE][SIZE=14.6667px]“Just what hell have you been doing? I’ve just been having the time of my life trying to explain to the senate why an entire flotilla[/SIZE][SIZE=14.6667px] just went dark, only to appear over Cuvacia before disappearing again. I trusted you.” [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]Confusion was replaced by anger as his grogginess left him and he recalled all the hell she had just put him through with her escapade. He couldn’t help but raise his voice near the near the end, but quickly remembered her warning after he finished speaking. He became qiuet for a moment, fearful that she may carry out on that warning. She just sighed in response, propping her chin on her arms resting on the table.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“You did, and I can’t apologize enough.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Su, I don’t want your damn apologies, I want an explanation.”[/SIZE][SIZE=14.6667px] Instead of shouting like he wanted, he just hissed out those last words. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]She turned her eyes down to the table like a child scolded, fully accepting his admonishment. She had no defense for keeping him out of the loop as she enacted her plans. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“The Sith,” she started simply, looking up to meet his glare.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Yes, the Sith, the ones you were helping on Atrisia.” [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“I did, I admit it. Darth Mephirium, or Cyril Grayson as I know him.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]He almost fell out of his seat. He had half expected her to give some kind of excuse, or claim ignorance about situation on the ground, but never for her to just own up to it. Though he shouldn’t have been surprised. She was nothing if not brazen. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Have you lost your ever loving mind?! What have we been doing for the past decade? Why did I just send a expeditionary group to the [/SIZE][SIZE=14.6667px]Wornal sector[/SIZE][SIZE=14.6667px], just to have you shoot at the Alliance the next month. Why did you---”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]She raised her head and a hand to silence him, fire in her eyes. From experience, he knew from that look not to proceed further with his tirade.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“I could spend weeks breaking this down to you, but I don’t have the time. You can just review the telemetry for yourself. The Sith aren’t one monolithic group, and often work against each other. The Alliance and Mandalorians were led to Atrisia by Sith. Then the Alliance sent in their Mandalorian dogs to take the planet and the fleet that protected Atrisia. My entry into the battle was to reinforce Dominion forces and force the Alliance to the table to negotiate for a peaceful solution.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“I’ve found it hard to believe that the Alliance was acting with justice in mind when they attacked the Dominion on Atrisia, whilst Sith Lords practically galivant freely across First Order space and the Caldera without opposition. They allowed genocide to happen on their doorsteps on Sekalus while they idly sat by. Yet somehow, the Republic was able to manage send aid a half a galaxy away. It was the same situation with the Silver Jedi at the Caldera. When the Republic was being bled dry by the Sith and then the Mandalorians, the Alliance couldn’t be bothered to help while they were busy annexing new territories to enrich themselves. After a few half hearted attempts against the One Sith, they only made a serious effort when the One Sith was on its last legs from in-fighting, then they didn’t even finish the job themselves.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“There’s other things I could mention, but the short of it is, the Galactic Alliance isn’t as noble as they make themselves out to be. They are cold and calculating like any empire. Maybe it didn’t start out that way, but their crusade for justice has become a quest for power. The Republic wasn’t an ally to be saved, but competition to be quashed. I’ll be the first to admit that the Republic has been a mess since day one, myself compounding the problem, but that was no excuse to abandon the people. Maybe the Alliance has done some good all these years out in the Outer Rim, but at the cost of the quadrillions they left to suffer in the Core. Now, triillions more as the First Order and the Mandalorians are allowed to grow unopposed.” [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“I do not hate the Galactic Alliance, but I also don’t agree with the path they have chosen to take in promoting their brand of order. This is why I opposed them. Not for Grayson, not for his Sith posse, but for the future. Tyranny under Jedi or Mandalorians is no better than tyranny under the Sith.” [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]There had been another reason for her alliance with Grayson that she did not share. Through his connections, her enemies from the Caldera had been revealed. If they hadn’t killed themselves, then she would have gotten to it herself. The Sith were like locusts upon the galaxy. Not all necessarily evil, but a great danger if even one was allowed to advance to the final stage of their evolution. Her true struggle with the Sith extended beyond petty fights between the misguided extremists of the Dark and Light. That particular discussion was just a little too advanced for her friend. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]She was done speaking for a moment, she leaned back in her seat, enjoying more of her chocolate milk as she allowed [/SIZE]Carlisle [SIZE=14.6667px]to process her explanation. She got about halfway with her drink before he spoke again, his features softening as he gained some understanding.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“I know you, and I figured you had your reasons, but this is a lot to take in. I really don’t know how to respond.” [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“There is only one way,” she answered, letting her glass hit the table with a soft clink. “Denounce me and move on.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“...what?” [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“You’ve always been a little too compassionate for your own good. Stop hesitating and do what needs to be done to preserve the Union. I’ve dragged you all through enough with my failed campaigns. Just let me go.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Suravi…”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“You don’t do this now, or Kiribi will suffer more. Denounce me, and remind the Galactic Alliance what your administration has done. Hell, follow up on my original proposal for Kiribi to join the GA. I don’t know if that will be enough, but it’s a start. It turns my stomach telling you these things after what I just said, but it needs to be done.”

Now it was his turn to study the table. Carlisle the politician agreed with her whole-heartedly, but as her friend, it was still a tall order as he believed she had acted with the best intentions. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“I’ll have to think about--”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“No more thinking! The Senate will impeach you if you don’t set the record straight. Everything we have worked for will be undone. Again, denounce me. I acted under my own volition. That’s treason. Mishandling of classified information, grand larceny, I could go on with the charges. By the letter of the law, I am an enemy of the state.”

He couldn’t say anything, just grit his teeth in frustration, and grip his empty glass until he was almost sure it would shatter in his hand. He remained tense like that for a long time, lost in a war of emotions. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]After what seemed like an eternity, he finally relaxed, and slumped back into his seat. His glass wobbled as it nearly teetered over, but was right again by an invisible hand. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“I’ll do it.”[/SIZE]

“Thank you.” She stretched out over the table, grabbing a hand with smile on her face, tears welling up in her eyes.

Distracted by her expression, he barely felt the crystal drive passed to his hand, only when she let go and stood up from the table.

[SIZE=14.6667px]Wordlessly, she gave his shoulder a loving caress as she passed by him on her way out of the kitchen. As she entered the dark hall, he considered following her out, but ended up remaining rooted in his seat, sticking by his word to let her go. He sat there for much of the night, thumbing the small drive in his fingers while he absently stared at her half finished glass. [/SIZE]

------------------------​

That very afternoon, an emergency broadcast was transmitted across every spectrum of the Kiribian airwaves, from subspace to biocomm. The navy symbol of the Union appeared against a black backdrop, then immediately cut to the image of President Blake behind a podium. He looked haggard, but still neat and composed as ever.

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Good day my fellow Kiribians. Within the Union, we subscribe to the notion that justice is blind. It should applied equally across all strata of society. No individual, no matter how rich or powerful, is immune from the reach of the law.”

“It is for this reason, that today, I formally denounce Supreme Commander Teigra for her actions in the Cuvacia system. The people and this administration entrusted her to act in accordance to our values, but she betrayed our trust by going against them in assisting this ‘Dominion’ who left Atrisia in ruins. Suravi Teigra, and the rogue elements of the Kiribian Spacy who joined her are hereby charged with treason. Bounties between the sum of a hundred thousand credits and ten million will be offered for information that leads to their apprehension, and the return of lost Spacy vessels and other materiale.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“The administration stands by the Galactic Alliance in condemning these heinous acts. While rogue elements of the Kiribian Spacy acted without our knowledge or consent, we are fully prepared to provide humanitarian aid. Furthermore, we are willing to provide reparations to the people of Cuvacia, Naboo, and affected private entities in place of the Galactic Republic.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“Our hearts also go out to the people of Atrisia and Lialic, both planets ravaged by the by senseless attacks. We also offer assistance to them, including our terraforming technologies.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]“I look forward to reaching out to my counterparts on Cuvacia and Theed for a final solution. Thank you, and may the Force be with you all.” [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.6667px]His head immediately drooped in shame as the cameras stopped rolling. He had convinced himself that he had acted in the greater good, but he still ended up feeling like slime. There were no winners whatever fate may come. [/SIZE]


[member="Ajira Cardei"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Suravi Teigra"]

There was an obvious depth of feeling behind the President’s announcement. Obvious, too, was his connection with the woman who’d served as his planet’s Senator. Lacking any more specific leads, Ajira opted to explore President Carlisle Blake.

The night after his announcement, he was once again awoken, this time by nothing so subtle as a taste for a midnight snack.

Ajira sat alone in a hotel room twenty klicks away, soaked in sweat. A Vectivus-style phantom projection normally required a true Force vergence, a nexus. Then again, instead of interstellar distances, she was casting a phantom across a single city, and she’d been doing this for a very, very long time.

The President’s family and aides slumbered with unnatural depth, a side effect of the technique being used. The phantom drew from life near its area of manifestation, with such a powerful link that destroying the phantom tended to kill the linked sleeper. To minimize risk of unintended consequences, Ajira had linked this particular phantom to everyone in the house: should it be destroyed, they’d wake up with a lesser reflection of the phantom’s wound. She avoided including anyone who was awake: the last thing she needed was for alarms to go off because, say, half a security team passed out simultaneously.

A Vectivus-style phantom could look like anything. Ajira chose to appear as Suravi Teigra.

She had no way to know the political context, the backroom situation, the intelligence reports that might have influenced the President’s denouncement. Nor did she have any firm knowledge of the quality and proximity of his relationship with Teigra. Therefore, when ‘Teigra’ shook him awake in the middle of the night, and beckoned for him to follow her out onto a balcony, she did so in silence.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The ensuing conversation was carefully phrased, brief, and stilted. Barely awake though he was, the President had the wit to realize the disjunction between Teigra’s methods now and last night. He also noted that she’d said only the night before that she would never see him again, or close enough. Furthermore, he had the presence of mind to keep those discrepancies to himself.

More or less. When you had the attention of someone who’d been the acknowledged Dark Lord of the Sith two decades back, your odds of retaining your secrets went way, way down.

Suspicion was her stock in trade. She noticed it at once, watched the texture of it as he shifted from the surprise of seeing an unexpected friend, and understood that the suspicion had to come from somewhere. From there, it was a relatively simple matter to get a general sense of its origin. Part of that was conversational and part telepathic, via the telepresence of the Vectivus technique. As his suspicion swelled, he disengaged from the situation as best he could, and she let him, then erased his memory of the incident. She allowed the phantom in Teigra’s form to fade. Her awareness returned to the hotel room.

Methodically, she ensured that her Quey’tek concealment remained undamaged, then pondered the conversation while taking a sonic shower.

Clearly, the President had been in contact with his old associate -- recent contact. He hadn’t seemed afraid of retaliation over the denunciation, and that point stuck in Ajira’s mind. She drew two possible conclusions: either he had some personal or political advantage over Teigra such that he didn’t fear her even after denouncing her, or they had already resolved the issue in private. Maybe even before the denouncement.

The second possibility led itself to a few interpretations. There was a world of difference between ‘we already talked about this’ and ‘this is part of our plan.’ The President could be completely extraneous, or he could be integral to whatever organization Teigra spearheaded.

For about half a second, she contemplated killing him. If his death came so soon after the terrorist attack on Naboo, though, the inferred connection would be obvious, potentially sparking a counterstrike. For similar reasons, she discarded kidnapping or extortion out of hand.

The more she thought about it in the hotel shower, the more she saw the benefits of a different kind of confrontation. Obtain an interview, make insinuations, ask for the government’s presumable wealth of data on their erstwhile Senator. The only downside to that strategy was that it revealed Ajira's presence on Kiribi, but secrecy wasn’t an advantage she was willing to sacrifice just yet.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

There was no telling how long ago the President had been in contact with Suravi Teigra. Therefore, Ajira would have to retrace his steps comprehensively in order to find what she needed.

A very long time ago, she’d learned flow-walking from someone who’d taken a pilgrimage to the deep Kathol Outback. She’d learned from a student of the Aing-Tii monks, and honed the relevant techniques over the course of decades. Now, still safely ensconced in her hotel, she laid down on the bed and closed her eyes.

Flow-walking was location-specific in most instances, but a true master of the technique could see the past from some distance away, even at interstellar range. The twenty or thirty klicks between her, the government centres, and the President’s home were effectively nothing.

Flow-walking couldn't claim to be the most reliable art around. She'd have liked nothing better than to rewind the President's life step by step, or begin a month ago and sweep forward in time inside her mind's eye. Perhaps Rach could have done that, or even Spencer, but Ajira’s specialty lay elsewhere. A certain amount of randomness would be unavoidable. Perhaps even the will of the Force could obscure and scramble her visions.

If the Force liked terrorists, anyway.

Still swathed in Quey’tek concealment, with a Force disperser beside her on the bed, Ajira let her sense of self drift in the deeper currents of the Force. She'd gained a feel for the President through her telepresence visit. Now that familiarity served as a guide and anchor for her mental travels. She found him almost at once, as easily as if teaching this technique to Spencer or any of her other trusted students over the long years.

The life of a senior civil servant was intimately familiar to Ajira; the life of a head of state, even more so. Through frequent glances at his calendar and datapad, an unseen presence over his shoulder, she got a more precise feel for the rhythms of his career. He struck her as a capable governor, a decent politician. One appointment and family dinner at a time, she bounced around his life.

It became clear within several hours work that the 'denounce Teigra’ announcement had been made almost out of whole cloth, not long before the event itself. Oh, various aides and public figures had urged him to do so, but loyalty had kept him resistant to the idea until literally the day before.

From there, it was a difficult but not prohibitively challenging task to narrow down the source of the decision, in a temporal server. She checked comm messages, listened in on meetings, and found nothing. Only by chance did she happen to catch a whiff of baked goods while viewing his home two nights ago. The night before the announcement.

Instead of diving right in, she let herself glimpse just enough to verify the moment's significance. Then she pulled out of the flow-walking trance, out of the recent past, and snapped back to the present day.

Eighteen hours had elapsed. She ate mechanically, showered again, and slept comprehensively. She checked the encrypted comms that she carried with her. Once rested, she took a long walk around the city in the wee hours of the morning, just a tourist enjoying the sights and the mild weather. She unpacked a fun diversion, an obscure offworld toy based on the hat of the notorious Lilicky the Ropo. Then she went back to the hotel and the night in question.

Beneath layers of expert concealment, she watched over the President as he slept. When he left his bed and made for the kitchen, she followed. In a very distant sense, she could still feel her body in the present, in the hotel room. She reached up to her temple and flicked a switch on that offworld toy.

A commitment to the moment brought her more fully into the past. Colors deepened and sounds became clearer. The images and the sounds scrolled through the visual and auditory centres of her brain, as sights and noises tended to do.

In her mind’s eye, she stood beside the dumbstruck President as Suravi Teigra appeared in his kitchen. The conversation that followed was most enlightening.

Now, granted, it wasn't everything Ajira had hoped. Clearly he hadn't known about the Naboo plot or the Sith alliance or Teigra's other sins. Just as clearly, she'd left him with no indication that they would have future contact -- quite the opposite, in fact. And the conversation provided no actionable intelligence on her location, her forces, or her current associates.

That didn't mean the whole effort had been useless.

If Teigra had been truthful with her old associate -- friend, really, by the way he addressed her -- then her motives had just become interesting. Of special note was her allusion to Sith within the Alliance. Parts of her account failed to jive with Ajira’s understanding of the situation, and those elements needed to be investigated fully, but the Sith infiltration issue stuck with her like a catchy song. It eclipsed even the realization that, in many ways, Ajira and Teigra agreed on the nature of the Alliance.

That line drilled into Ajira’s skull.

The Sith aren’t one monolithic group, and often work against each other. The Alliance and Mandalorians were led to Atrisia by Sith.

Naboo’s scanning flotilla had accompanied the Alliance police action to Atrisia based on intelligence that the Alliance had only shared in digested form. The raw sources hadn’t been relevant at the time. Now they were relevance incarnate.

How did Teigra know about this? Could she have known, reasonably? She had Sith connections, via Mephirium and probably others, but most of those people were confirmed or presumed dead. At a guess, the remnants had retreated to the Deep Core like Teigra’s followers.

The Sith often work against each other. Some led the Alliance to Atrisia.

The Alliance, with or without the New Jedi Order, would never work with Sith -- or so Ajira had always believed. But there’d been that Sullustan Admiral who’d bargained the Panathans into switching sides, so maybe she couldn’t discount the notion of knowing cooperation. Still, unknowing cooperation appeared far more likely: hidden Darksiders, not unlike Ajira, prompting the Alliance to destroy Mephirium for their own ends.

And if those hypothetical Darksiders had that much influence and were that willing to use it, and if Teigra knew about them, they weren’t nearly as careful as Ajira. Meaning the surveillance and internal focus that she’d so long anticipated might yet come to fruition. She’d always assumed a degree of monitoring over domestic Force-sensitives: that was common sense. But all it would take would be the discovery of one Sith infiltrator and the Alliance could become a police state overnight, gripped by a witch hunt, spurred by their vaunted ideals.

She’d long since prepared for that possibility, but bloodlessly, without actual apprehension. Now it appeared that some amateur could ruin everything. If Teigra was right, and if she was telling the truth, and that needed to be verified.

For now, though, Ajira woke from the trance and reviewed the headset’s recordings.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

***​

​

Two days later, having made certain preparations, she slipped offworld via public transit again. She left the train after a couple of systems and met an official Naboo transport, at which point she made a call.

This time, when she landed, she did so as Lady gorram Cardei, in the diplomatic landing bays of the Kiribian Systems Union’s government complex. She exited the K-type yacht, a corvette-scale chrome dagger, and led a team of aides in to meet their opposite numbers.

Her meet and greet with the President was supposed to be five minutes, with aides. If she stretched that time or changed the conditions, people would notice. Instead she went low-tech, non-Force, and just palmed his chief of staff a note when she shook his hand.

The bulk of the note was a transcript of his conversation with Suravi Teigra. Underneath was a single line:

Complete files on S.Teigra, all known associates and family members, and all Kiribian citizens believed to still be serving with her, regardless of clearance level.

The files arrived the next day, anonymously, as she left the Kiribi system for good. Within hours, they and the transcripts were on their way to [member="Raziel"].