Private Reach

[Rinea]

UNV VAUNTED INTEGRITY - Officer's Quarters

"Here you are, ma'am."

A guardsman placed a tray of food before Linegrave , a renowned Master-Cipherum whom he had grown familiar with these past months.

"I made sure they prepared it exactly how you liked," he offered a warm if not sympathetic smile.

His role was a difficult one. The young man turned away and began to leave, but before he was even halfway to the door, it opened.

"You're not supposed to--"

Rinea stepped in, hands clasped behind her back. She made direct eye contact with the guardsman, whose tongue seized, and his head could not help but turn to stay fixed on her gaze as she sauntered past. The poor man went limp and dropped like a mannequin as soon as she turned her attention elsewhere. He'd wake up with a rather terrible headache--much later.

The chiss continued her slow march forward and soaked in the room as if it were a work of art. "So it's true then," she began to speak. "The great Master Linegrave under house arrest, and nary a soul knows save for High Command and one unfortunate guardsman." There was no point in maintaining an actual security team.

Her glowing red eyes settled on the woman before her, then on the food tray, and back up again. "Not the treatment I would have expected for someone accused of treason."

She took a seat in the chair opposite. "At least that is the rumor going around."

 

[Linegrave]

She watched impassively as the Chiss waltzed into her quarters as if she owned it, her gaze shifting to the prone body of the guardsman and then back to the way she said down as if it was a throne instead of just a comfortable chair.

"High Command could not establish consensus to put the mark of treason on me, child." Fingers flicked up and her food tray floated towards her.

"They barely managed it for the quarantine protocol."

She sounded bored, dismissive.

"I assume there is a point to you arriving here so theatrically and knocking the poor guy out. Out with it, I am not getting any younger."

Linegrave began to eat.

Her attention seemed oppressively focused on Rinea anyway.

 

[Rinea]

Rinea leaned to one side, supporting her weight on an arm.

"They could not?" She pretended to chew on it. "But they did consider?"

To hear that High Command was so indecisive, well... The officer smirked, only slightly. "A man from Spire--Knight Vale. He is about to face a fate much worse than yours, and yet he seemed more concerned with you. Or at least, what happened to you."

She withdrew a small datachit from her uniform and tossed it onto the table. "Your dessert." The chit contained analytics on recent fleet activities, namely the rapid decline in critical resources, and the indecisiveness in their operations. Not to mention witch hunt after witch hunt.

Rinea leaned forward as Linegrave examined it.

"I think you'll find it as tasteless as I did."

 

[Linegrave]

She gestures towards the Chiss and her seat suddenly pulled all the way up, the table to the side until their knees practically touched each other.

"That's a lot of foreplay, officer...?" Linegrave did notice that the woman had not given her name or shared her rank.

It wasn't necessary for her to read the datapad herself.

Quorum was already reviewing it. She would have a better idea of what it meant and how it would effec them than her anyway.

"Just tell me what you want. You didn't come here to play footsie. You want to commit. You are done with the dance and now you want me to take you back home."

She didn't have to reach out.

Ghostly fingers ran along her jaw.

"What is it you want me to do once we get back home again?"

Irreverent, relaxed, but behind those eyes there was a moment. When Quorum relayed her findings.

It wasn't anger. It was a hardening, as if Linegrave suddenly steeled herself.

Rinea

 

[Rinea]

Rinea nearly lurched forward as soon as the chair began to move. She squeezed one arm with a hand and stopped herself from awkwardly leaning closer to the Cipherum as soon as the movement stopped. To Linegrave's credit, she managed to get a reaction out of the chiss: a brief rise in her brow before that serious ambiguity annexed her expression again.

It all made the rest clear when the officer introduced herself. "Bodr'ine'ako, Sovereign Synthesis and Tactics--Loyalty Division." Any implications thereof would be left to the woman under house arrest.

Yet, if one thing had been made clear, it was exactly why the young intelligence officer failed to react to the ghostly fingers at all. Not only was she force-sensitive, but her extensive training made a ghost out of her.

"You correctly assume my... social inclinations." She sipped on the teasing. "Though I dare say work occupies even my personal life."

As if that weren't true for all of them now. Spy or not.

Rinea caught the exact moment when Linegrave understood what was on the datachit. Good.

The officer leaned forward--if only slightly. "Decisive action." She let the words seep. "That is what we need."

Rinea followed with a soft change in tone, as her words became more conspiratorial. "There is systemic failure within the fleet, and yet every order given has spread our resources thinner and thinner. There is no directive. We are beginning to suffer. And if nothing changes soon, we will fail to preserve any life at all."

"I was assigned to this fleet to ensure one thing--that we do not fail." Her nails dug into the armrest. She believed herself just in this regard.

The parameters may have changed, but for Rinea, the directive was immutable.

 

[Linegrave]

She stood up crisply.

Arms crossing behind her back, posture perfect, as she circled around to walk towards the viewport.

"Quorum has isolated this room's audio and video feed. From the moment I drew you close to me, the video will continue to show me flirting with you heavily. So we may speak freely." A pointed tone there, suggesting that Rinea was not as careful as Linegrave considered she had to be. "The Council assured me they'd keep in the loop for possible threats and concerns."

It was one of the stipulations that she set when agreeing to the house arrest.

"They lied and did not say a thing. The Sith, the Jedi, criminals running planets. It is much worse than I initially thought." She turned towards the Chiss with a raised eyebrow.

"You did not just come here to give me the news, so to speak. You are pitching me on something. On with it, child. I am old, I have no interest in glorious talk and resume polishing. What do you want to do and how are you planning on achieving it?"

Walking back towards her, her hands settling on the Chiss' shoulders.

"Every word you utter is against Consensus. You know this. So the path you wish to take must see you through it or it will be your end."

 

[Rinea]

The way Linegrave spoke proved to Rinea that the old woman wasn't merely a meathead like some within the more aggressive wings of the Cipherum, but a shrewd and active mind.

Good.

"Consensus only works when we are united by vision," she put her verbal foot down, "anything else and we fall into the same, corrupt trappings of democracy that sunk the Republic." Not a memory either of them shared, but a bitter ghost that they grew up with.

"I have established a network of informants, and even now have begun exploiting the resources of the Sith. Our next act must be to find a home for our refugees, and secure the necessary logistics to repair our fleet--and expand." All easier said than done, but the crisis of the present demanded it.

"If I brought my concerns, my plans... My initiative to the Council. Would I end up like you?" No, they would space her.

And now came the buy-in. "I can't exactly make a move if the great Linegrave would leap to their defense, or oppose the directive of the new Council... One that understands the directive doesn't end just because the stars have changed." One that doesn't play judiciary while all falls apart around them.

 

[Linegrave]

Rinea

"SOVEREIGN CODE kept us united in vision and purpose." She said with a sigh, studying the depths of darkness behind the viewport. She could not recognize a single star. Everything was different here. "It kept us moving, kept us committed and unshackled from organic caution and cowardice." In truth the moderates weren't moderate. They were just... people. Mortal, worried, anxious. That was what was frustrating about them. They weren't a special kind of evil that you could dismiss or vanquish.

It was in all of them.

When the topic came to the Sith Linegrave grunted there.

"They are vermin, you know." Voice steady, calm. "Some of them can be charming, in their own way, they will try and get into your head." Turning around again to observe the Chiss.

"But just like vermin they are only meant to be put down."

They didn't have the mass of a whole nation behind them anymore though. No more fleets to call upon except for the one they had right now, which wasn't exactly a war fleet to begin with. Linegrave knew this. Knew that they couldn't act the way she had wanted to from the start. In a way the moderates had been right... but as with many things, they became wrong in short order.

"They would execute you on the spot to block the proliferation of dangerous thought." Linegrave said, confirming her own thoughts in the matter. "But you are not speaking to them. You are speaking to me."

Finally returning to her seat and sitting down again. Relaxed as her hand flicked and a glass of wine slipped between her fingers.

"You are hungry, child, I see the fires of ambition burning in your eyes." Then a shrug. "The current council will be the end of us. I cannot lead either, my instincts are all wrong. Even now, knowing what I know now, my fingers itch to grab my gleave and to go to war." Which would be their end in short notice.

"It will not be enough to just depose them. Uninspiring as they are, they have their loyalists, people as cautious as them. Who is with you?"

Linegrave did not believe Rinea was alone. There were more like her. Hungry children who had been shackled by the senior officers for a long time. Now was their chance, they thought. Now they could change everything and show what they had.

 

[Rinea]

The officer listened well when someone like Linegrave spoke.

She agreed wholeheartedly with the Cipherum-Master's assessment on the Sith. Well... with one recent exception, but she knew better than to interject. As the topic turned to Rinea's own execution, should High Command see her for what she was, the woman's face grew sour. Her brow furrowed like trenches.

It was true what the old woman saw--Rinea was hungry, and she had ambition. It was for that reason that they reassigned her from SYNSTAT to OIC and inserted her within the fleet. Anything to keep her away from the very tools that perfected her.

Now, things were different; she felt back in the game--she felt alive.

"It will not be enough to just depose them. Uninspiring as they are, they have their loyalists, people as cautious as them. Who is with you?"

"Other Junior officers within the fleet. They are analysts, engineers, squad leaders, and security officers. Even the XO of this very vessel. There's also Knight Vale, as I mentioned earlier, he is the reason I knew where to find you." Rinea played her hand. She knew Linegrave only by reputation, and yet in this very moment, she felt every impulse to go all-in.

Which meant she had to reveal all of it. "And..." To bring the conversation back to the Sith. "I made contact with a Sith Lord. She is conflicted by her code, and now even questions her own motives. She has grown close to me--even relies on my insight. Though you may not like to hear it, I believe she may be our greatest asset, key to our current situation, and in time she will see our way of things."

Just saying so caused a spike in her heart rate and the rush of adrenaline. This was the work that motivated her, and there was no hiding the pride in her eyes, nor the subtle hint of a self-satisfied smirk.

 

[Linegrave]

Rinea

It was deadly silent.

Linegrave leaned in a fraction but stopped herself from more.

"You are playing a dangerous game, officer." She finally said, quietly, focused on her utterly. "And you are risking not just your own life, but that of the entire fleet, if this pet vermin of yours ends up playing you better than you are playing it." She breathed out and leaned back into her seat. "But I see you have this planned, organized, you are walking into this with your eyes open."

A soft shrug.

"And SOVEREIGN CODE always has said that the ingenuity of organics was one of the most beautiful things to observe." Then a soft smile. "We could... use this to our advantage, actually. To rally the fleet and convince everyone that we cannot hide any longer. Not just removing the obstacle of the council, but also winning the hearts and minds of the doubters."

She licked her lips.

Rinea would see it there. Linegrave had that spark of hunger inside of her too, but in her case it was more a wildfire barely tamed.

"Perhaps you have thought of it already? How do you wish to use your pet?"

 

[Rinea]

Did she believe Kaila was playing her, too?

The thought had come up, each time they met, and every moment afterwards when the Chiss had time to herself. She swallowed the fear, disregarded the risk.

The dangerous game continued. "I will prove that even a Sith Lord can be wielded... weaponized to kill, sheathed to obey. The Sith are without a doubt the greatest threat this galaxy faces." And yet.

Rinea paused, considering her next words carefully. "They have power. Tremendous power. They are also fractured, bound by infighting, and there is schism in their ideology. Their Emperor is not absolute, and must rely on their Assembly. This much I have learned from her and more."

"If we can use that doubt, exploit their situation... It will be possible to harness that power like a lance pointed back at the heart of this galaxy."

The UNICOM maverick believed so absolutely in her mission that what she suggested next was utterly treasonous.

"You are correct to assume that High Command has their loyalists, and you are proof that a soft approach is not enough." They too could pull a Linegrave, rally support from the inside, and be used in a countercoup if let live.

Rinea folded her hands, leaned forward, and reduced her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "I would use her to remove them permanently. I would direct the Fleet to find the resources we need by any means necessary, and I would carve a path to the heart of darkness, all the while building our forces along the way."

Linegrave

 

[Linegrave]

Rinea

A soft chuckle.

"Be direct, child. You are using your pet to murder your brothers and sisters of the cause. For the sin of being slow, cautious, more concerned with the well-being of today than the well-being of tomorrow." She raised a finger. "I do not disapprove, but when one plans treason, it helps to plan it with both eyes open and no self-deception involved."

But then finally nodding, curtly.

"I read between the lines. You are already planning what just inspired my own mind. You will use this pet of yours to kill them. Then you will frame the Sith as a whole of this sin. And use it to galvanize the Fleet and mobilize it against this nation of darkness."

It would bring a tear to Linegrave's eye, seeing something so beautiful unfold right in front of her.

"I will warn you now and I will only warn you once." Waiting to see if she is listening intently.

 

[Rinea]

Surely, was there any room for the Chiss to be surprised?

Linegrave proved that the Cipherum were worthy of their reputation--or at least some of them were. She remained silent but gave a confirming nod when the old woman guessed at her plan.

"I will warn you now and I will only warn you once." Waiting to see if she is listening intently.

"You'll kill me yourself."

 

[Linegrave]

Rinea

"Oh, see, you already know my line. You really did do your homework."

Finally taking a sip from her wine, legs spreading as she finally truly got herself comfortable.

"I serve the SOVEREIGN CODE and the SOVEREIGN CODE alone. If you had waited a bit longer, I would have most likely done the job for you, but then... of course... you wouldn't be in control. So all's well that ends well, yes?" Another sip taken, looking and observing Rinea in a more casual way now.

Not like a predator sizing up its prey.

"You will need to declare martial law once they are out of the way. It's the only way to keep the flow of information focused and getting the Fleet where it needs to go without consensus getting in your way every few minutes."

 

[Rinea]

There was a certain strangeness in the way Linegrave spoke of Sovereign Code.

It almost suggested there was something more to it than just what she and the rest of the Union natives were taught to believe. However, the Chiss realized she had extended the old woman's trust tenfold, that under any other circumstances, there would be a blue head rolling on the ground.

It was not the time to press.

"I agree," she said in concurrence with Martial Law. Consensus had its place, but right now?

Then, the final question on her mind. "And your role in all of this?" She wondered.

The Cipherum hadn't asked for anything, merely advised, and while that was all well and good, she did not expect the Korun to sit idly by in forced retirement. Especially being the only member of Aegis within the entire fleet. An idealist at that.

 

[Linegrave]

Rinea

"If this is done, I will consider Consensus to be suspended under further notice." The cup was halfway empty now. She took her time with it, enjoying the taste, the moment itself too.

It had been a while since more than just smashing of skulls or cutting of ribbons was requested from her.

"I already control the Cipherum, you will not stand in my way as I take control of the military assets we still have in the fleet. After all, you will need someone to enforce Martial Law and make sure nobody stands in your way."

Fast like a viper, which meant that in the span of Rinea stepping foot in the room and now, she had already calculated (or rather Quorum) what she could get out of this and for how long it would benefit her.

 

[Rinea]

Rinea waved her hand, "It is done."

There was no reason to argue with her, or else this whole conversation would've been a moot point. "We will need High Command to meet, all together, all at once." She pretended to consider it as if the details weren't forged days ago.

She pondered, tapped her finger against her chin, and then feigned an 'aha' moment.

"I will let slip the 'disloyalty' problem in the Fleet, and even have them question my own motives. That will get them together for an emergency summit."

From there, she would have to sabotage internal security and get Darth Anathemous inside the room. The Sith would, of course, have to fight her way back out, but via a selective route, with minimal casualties.

"Leave the details to me, you'll know when to act."

Linegrave

 

[Linegrave]

Rinea

"May the Code be with you." She said slyly and rose up again. "See yourself out, will you? I should celebrate my house arrest is almost at its end."

As if she couldn't have broken out at any point.

But it seemed that Linegrave had her own little rules. Things that made her mind a blank space with its internal logic. That could be a benefit to Rinea or make things more complicated.

Hard to say.

 

[Rinea]

Rinea stood without a word, only a knowing glance, then turned face and sauntered towards the exit.

Not even a moment to notice the poor guardsman still out cold on the floor.

The door shut behind her.

Linegrave