Imperator-in-Exile
Spindle VI
Imperator Sarilia was as tired as she was far from home. Having spent the last three years aboard the Archduke was exhausting for her and the numerous refugees that put the capacity of her ship to the test. Admirably, her crew rose to the challenge to care for their people. Even with tensions between the crew and the refugees high, the single unifying factor that kept everyone in line was their sense of identity. They were all from Belsavis, and that strength of unity was what kept Sarilia herself going as well. Still, it was obvious that the time spent fleeing from pursuers had worn her thin. She had lost weight since the coup, and in spite of her best efforts to be perfectly presentable there was always something about her that showed just how emotionally spent she truly was.
The Elysium Empire was not so different from the principles that guided Belsavis prior to the coup. With the junta firmly in place, this place was more home than home was now. It broke her heart to know that her people suffered at the hands of cruel despotic monopolists. Her contacts on Belsavis had reported to her the motivation behind the coup, and it could not disgust her more if they tried. Her cousin, Queen Aria, was planning to open the planet to foreign embassy and trade. Feeling that their influence over finance and foreign policy was under threat, they executed their plan to protect their own personal interests and not the interests of the people of Belsavis. Each and every single one of them had forsaken their oath to the crown to preserve the safety and standard of living for Belsavis.
With those facts in hand, they were the final impetus for her trying to seek foreign aid in the arms of the Elysium Empire. It was the Confederacy that had initially offered to help, but having collapsed under its own substantial internal weight, help was not coming. Even now, Sarilia was treating the situation with great caution. Opening Belsavis for invasion was incredibly difficult, and now it was made only that much harder with the standing army of mercenaries kept on retainer by the High Command. They were draining Belsavis dry and threatened to collapse the whole economy of the world just to keep power. Resistance was strong at first, but with the brutal crackdowns it was only a matter of time before the planet succumbed to hopelessness.
Sarilia had arrived then in the greatest opportunity of all, and she was not going to waste it. She had outlined her plan to defeat the junta, and was not prepared to present that plan to the royal family of the Elysium Empire. It was by their grace that her world could be saved, and so she made certain to have every single detail down to the most seemingly innocuous minutiae. If this was to work she had to be meticulous, even if that meant she had a nearly maddened look after working so hard on the all-encompassing strategy. They would have to systematically dismantle the junta one at a time, as the world was a tightly defended fortress that had not been invaded successfully in hundreds of years following the defeat of the Galactic Empire. It was a monumental task, but Sarilia would either succeed, or she would die trying.