Private Scarcity

[Rinea]

Rinea returned to the Fleet after her Talay excursion with Darth Anathemous , a Sith Lord turned unlikely asset, and unwilling to betray her masters.

A deal had been struck among complicated emotions and a near-death experience. Such is the life of a spy. Rinea reached up to feel her throat, which had a faded bruise from her internal bleeding. She placed the corvette in autopilot and went to put on her uniform. Thankfully, the collar was high enough to hide the blemish.

The Chiss' corvette docked with the flagship, and to much alarm.

Error: Implant failure. Diagnosis incomplete. Priority: critical.

Her implant had failed on her, an emergency signal was sent, and as telemetry failed, it would be natural for her colleagues and superiors to assume her dead or compromised.

The airlock door opened, and Rinea was met by a gaggle of security personnel and medical staff, including one Sachi Maren whose expertise has been greatly relied upon in a fleet severely stretched to its limits.

"I wasn't expecting a welcome party," said the officer.

Her voice was a little hoarse, but she spoke with professional confidence and held the composure of a soldier returned.

 

[Sachi Maren]

Sachi stood at the front of the medical team, arms crossed, datapad glowing faint blue against her forearm. Her face didn't betray much but the tightness around her eyes, the extra second she took to confirm Rinea's identity, did.

Not that she had much to go off. The Intelligence officer was mostly a ghost in the machine. A masterful manipulator and someone who wore hats and faces as interchangeably as the situations demanded. But resources were scarce, and how many faces could the Director have to wear?

"And we weren't expecting an S.O.S at 04:16 local Talay standard. Signal encrypted, but telemetry flagged at ninety-three percent integrity loss with a report that looked like it came through a meat grinder and full of corrupted diagnostics."

She stepped forward, slowly, and lifted her scanner to ping once across Rinea's vitals and implant node. Her eyes dropped, consuming the information that scrawled across her screen. A frown found its way across her lips.

"Your biomonitor was moments from putting you in a medically induced coma. You're lucky your spinal interface didn't fry your motor cortex trying to 'help.'"

Another pause. Another scan. This time, she locked eyes with Rinea.

"And if this thing is still dirty, I need to know now. Because if you're about to seize, drop, or—" she flicked her gaze to security "—compromise the network, I'd prefer to catch it before your next sentence."

Only then did her tone drop, ever so slightly. "...In the past, when an alert like this comes through, it means death. And the only way you're walking back in here is a relay with your face and someone else's thoughts behind it."

Another scan. A slower exhale.

"You have no idea how close the system came to quarantining everything you've ever touched. If you're clean, then I'd like to see you in the medical bay. We can continue there. But we need to know what we're dealing with first. You might look fine but.."

---

Rinea

 

[Rinea]

"My implant was damaged," Rinea interjected.

However, the Outreacher was not to be dissuaded from taking her job seriously. The spy closed her mouth and didn't interrupt further, though she did tighten her jaw and wrinkle her nose at the verbal bombardment.

"You have no idea how close the system came to quarantining everything you've ever touched. If you're clean, then I'd like to see you in the medical bay. We can continue there. But we need to know what we're dealing with first. You might look fine but.."

The chiss stood with hands clasped behind her back, and eyed security as Sachi said it. "The broken monitor was surgically removed. The rest of the implant is intact and functioning." Rinea replied.

A medic with security approached, grabbed the Chiss' hand, and took a DNA sample. He placed it into a reader, and seconds later, the signature came back positive. "It's her alright, right down to the bone marrow." He turned to Sachi. "What about her brain patterns?"

There was certainly an amount of tension in the others, who stood there waiting for orders to go one way or another. Of course, precedence had conditioned them to expect the usual--all is safe, return to the barracks for chow or a shower. Yet, with the crisis as of late, there was a certain amount of anxiety towards the unlikely.

Rinea looked at Sachi with glowing red eyes and a tired brow. "Well?"

Sachi Maren

 

[Sachi Maren]

Her thumb flicked to initiate a second sweep, deeper this time, into cortical response patterns and emotional lability spikes.

"Pulse stable. Hormone levels... elevated. Cortisol's up. Neural rhythm shows recent strain. REM disruption. Fragmented memory encoding—expected, given the trauma—but no foreign signatures. No echo-patterns. And no forced overlays."

She blinked once. The scanner beeped its last confirmation and she flicked her gaze up to meet ruby, irisless eyes, while she faced her datapad outward for the security personnel to verify the contents of the screen. "It's her, and brain's still thinking." They seemed satisfied, and the tension wound thickly within the airlock seemed to loosen. "We've got a new unit calibrated for you already—clean firmware, clean sensor nodes.

She stepped aside and gestured down the corridor with the subtle authority of someone who was in charge of the scant resources they had for replacements. "Follow me to medbay. I'll walk you through the reinstall myself. You can debrief en route if you're up for it — can record and save you from repetition later."

---

Rinea

 

[Rinea]

A sigh between two pale purple lips.

"Very well," Rinea resigned herself to the checkup.

She gave security a dismissive glare and walked with Sachi through the corridors towards medical. It was quieter now, just the two of them.

The tightness of her collar evoked that memory, and finally, she opened up. "I had an incident with an asset... Things turned violent, rather quickly, but I got the situation under control. It will not happen again." She said with determination, yet her hand reached up to touch her throat.

The impression of the phantom hand lingered, and she knew hiding it would only delay the inevitable.

Her hand reached up to unbutton the collar of her jacket and revealed bare skin beneath. A dark purple--almost black--bruise blemished her otherwise blue skin. It wasn't an external injury; there were no signs of lesions or scratches, nor the impression of fingers. It was internal, deep, and indicative of a far more severe injury. It would have been impossible for Rinea to have survived this long without medical intervention, by the look of things.

Sachi Maren

 

[Sachi Maren]

Resignation was unsurprising. This exchange was purely from a source of duty and the need for medical sign-off to continue oeprations. Nobody liked going to the doctor. Sachi knew this. She knew she'd rarely be in a situation where people were delighted to meet her acquaintance or have her hands on them. Her touch often came with bad news. And yet, she stuck with it. Because as unpleasant as folks' visits could be, she helped them in the end.

Medical was bright, white, and sterile. It smelled faintly of antiseptic and a whiff of mint — trying to mask the antiseptic scent.

Sachi set down her scanner and turned to look at Rinea, giving her as much of a okay, you may proceed look as she could muster. Thankfully, Rinea did. Once it was just the two of them in the confines of the bay, the Chiss revealed the source of her mishap.

She listened in silence, observing the subtleties of the Director's motions. Precise and delicate she reached up to unbutton the height of her stiff collar and Sachi's eyes widened briefly. A benefit to Chiss skin, deep, blue, was that it oft' hid bruises well. The violence didn't appear as readily as human skin. So this, the fact that Sachi could see damage with her naked eye, meant it was bad.

Instantly she clocked the lack of legions or traumatic fingerprint shapes. No blunt trauma. No broken vessels at the surface. Nothing to explain this from the outside. And yet the bruising was deep. Dark. Centred too perfectly over the trachea to be incidental. Not a grip, not a blow. It was pressure, concentrated, suffocating pressure, but with no physical source.

Her hand moved automatically, lifting the scanner as she cross-referenced vitals, then adjusted for depth tissue analysis. The results confirmed what her instincts had already decided. Subdermal hemorrhaging. A collapse risk in the esophagus. Residual cortisol still leaking from adrenal glands despite no current stress spike.

Sachi's mouth opened slightly, a silent exhale of disbelief.

"You said it was an asset. Was that their title or their function?"

She didn't wait for an answer. Her fingers flicked open a second data file and matched the bruising pattern side-by-side with the report from Sluis Van. The autopsy logs from the morgue there. A dozen bodies with similar trauma. All tagged with the same vague classification:

SITH INVASION

"Director," she said, voice suddenly low and urgent, "This is the same trauma I logged from the Sluis Van case.."

She stepped back from the scanner, giving Rinea space, giving her the berth and appreciation that came with the awareness the Director had just become the center of a very dangerous diagnostic.

"I need you to be honest with me. Did they use the Force on you? Were they a Sith?"

---

Rinea

 

[Rinea]

Rinea was every bit the 'good patient' as Sachi explored and examined the injury.

So far, so good. But then Sachi's expression changed. The medic began to cross-reference data, and the Chiss shifted, trying to glance at what it was that made her so curious. Of course, it was too little, too late.

"Director," she said, voice suddenly low and urgent, "This is the same trauma I logged from the Sluis Van case.."

The officer shifted uncomfortably at the question--like she had just been accused of unauthorized shore leave. She was ready to provide an answer, but then the doctor honed in even further. Already, she knew it was a Sith.

Good eye, Rinea noted.

It wasn't unusual for medical staff to be overreliant on technical solutions from medical droids to bioscanners. The diagnostic tools alone could do an organic's work and then some, but they wouldn't have had the shrewdness to nail the truth home like that.

Rinea nodded, "Yes."

There was a pause. "I pushed her a little too far, too quickly, but she relinquished."

A knee-jerk feeling told Rinea to deny everything, but the UNICOM officer inside her was every bit intrigued by Maren's analysis. It was the exact kind of trait people like Rinea looked for in new recruits. Of course, the only difference is that this one already belonged to the Cipherum.

"Like I said, though, it won't happen again. She is sufficiently controlled."

"Oh... and keep this off the record." There was cold insistence despite the smile in which it was delivered.

Sachi Maren

 

[Sachi Maren]

Sachi felt her gut coil. Yes. They used The Force. Yes the asset was a Sith.
They had a Sith asset?!

She stared at the director, mouth parted slightly, astonished.

"Controlled? She's within Cipherum ... custody?"

As if this conversation couldn't become any more bizarre, the director seemed to imply that the asset was truly an asset and working for them.

"Which part is off the record, director? The Sith-caused injury, the Sith asset, or the Sith asset being sufficiently controlled. Do we dare define sufficient?"

---

Rinea

 

[Rinea]

"No, she's a Governor within the Empire."

Now this was becoming a game for her. Sachi's curiosity fed that interest, and in turn, Rinea would feed hers back. How far could this conversation go before the doctor threatens protocol?

Rinea wandered around the space, but her eyes stayed ever locked on her sole counterpart in the room. Finally, she took a seat on the edge of the medical table. "All of it--off the record."

"Sufficient in that she has come to depend on me, and in time, I know that dependency will only deepen."

She glanced down at the datapad, then up again. "It seems to me you have some understanding of the Sith in this galaxy, yes."

Wait. "You're from the Sluis Van team, aren't you?"

It only made sense. Who else within the Fleet knew what they were up against? Rinea had become quite familiar with the report.

Sachi Maren

 

[Sachi Maren]

She was an asset within the Empire. Deeply embedded in..was the Empire the cause of what had happened on Sluis Van? She tried to recall what the tall, strange-speaking man had said — Gerra, his name was — about Sith. There was a Blackwall, and threads, and intersecting destinies and..

Involuntarily, she shuddered. That whole interaction had left her with a feeling of unease she hadn't yet been able to shake.

How a Sith could become dependent on someone who was not from this galaxy was beyond Sachi. It seemed impressive, if not a little overconfident. If Sith were capable of the ruin and devastation witnessed on Sluis Van, why would they ever need anyone else?

"Hm." She said, sounding unconvinced and resting her hands on her hips.

"Yes, I am. I'm the one that sourced the reports of the Sith Invasion. If you're familiar with those reports, then you understand the implications of the threat you're dealing with and why all of it being off the record could backfire."

---

Rinea

 

[Rinea]

"They are the greatest threat we face in this galaxy."

At least where they were from, Sith were a passing legend, something that used to exist, and never in numbers. The thought of thousands of Sith, their legions, the expanse of their empire... It was actually quite impossible to grasp the reality of that threat. Only to know, rationally, that it existed.

Rinea rebuttoned her collar and patted down her uniform. "Yet I've learned they are not invincible, not without weakness."

She paused to consider for a moment how much she wanted to share. To keep playing the game or to put it down. The director was impossibly fixed--no, she didn't kid herself, she was fethin' addicted.

"There is schism within their ideology, power divided among the few, but those few compete, and..." She thought back to the moment on the ship when Darth Anathemous exposed all the doubt and vulnerability she felt. "... this one doubts herself."

Out of context, it might've been a poor line, but to Rinea, it was the single point that justified everything she was after.

Cracks in the empire.

Sachi Maren

 

[Sachi Maren]

Rinea's additional divulgence did little to quell Sachi's initial skepticism.

"Doubts herself." Sachi parroted, and folded her arms across her chest, head tilted at Rinea. She should have been prepping an implant to replace the damaged once, but the concept of an asset who was simply labelled as insecure captivated her entirely.

But there was more to the simple statement of the asset. Rinea referenced an ideology.

"You know their of their ideological beliefs?" That was fascinating, but Sachi shouldn't have been surprised. The Eternal Union was built on a foundation of ideologies, unifying group after group, department after department, ensuring each's behaviour was to the betterment of the greater sum.

"It's a competitive system? Disharmony built into the foundation? How do they operate beyond themselves? That level of systemic rivalry sounds like the breeding grounds for civil disrest — in a way that wouldn't allow them to organize something to a scale of the," she used air quotes with her fingers "SITH INVASION the intelligence tagged."

---

Rinea

 

[Rinea]

"My understanding is their continued existence is rise and fall. Not one, then the other, but a cohesive whole. A measured pour of chaos," she waved her hand vaguely as if at something only she saw. "The most powerful is spilled so the weak may lap it up--fight and starve until the most powerful among them is ready to be poured again." She pondered.

"I think that extends not just to their empires, but to the individuals within it... At least those who claim the title Sith." Rinea explained.

The Chiss inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. "But of course, I am only starting to understand. There must be a mechanism to their current strength..." She trailed off as soon as she realized how far she had stepped out of her station.

"Don't you have a job to do?" A defensive change in topic.

Sachi Maren

 

[Sachi Maren]

Everything about the Sith Empire, per Rinea's description, made it sound like the exact Antithesis to the EU. Sachi's upper lip curled in brief disgust, attempting to correlate it to an ecosystem she might have studied prior to her dispatch to the Outreach group. Her mind didn't wanter too far, however, lest she miss some of the active musings from one so interestingly exposed to the culture itself. Anything Sachi could come up with would be mere supposition, but Rinea's explanation was direct from a source.

"Fascinating." Sachi offered, halfway to a compliment.

Any further questions stamped out at Rinea's decisive change of topic, and Sachi gave a small smile of feigned politeness. In truth, she felt nothing but disappointed at the sudden cut off.

"Of course." Her back turned to Rinea and she crouched to rifle through a drawer with a set of replacement modules. Signs all around the bay cautioned rations, and being very selective with administrations of medicine. Scarcity and tension could be felt throughout the whole ship, but especially in the bay where resources meant health or not.

"Implants are running low," Sachi spoke over her shoulder, plucking a metal containment cube from the drawer and turning to approach Rinea with a nod of her head toward the examination bed. It already had a fresh roll of thin, translucent paper stretched over it to mitigate germs from one patient to the next "—Please sit. You'll have to remove your jacket as well."

And without missing a beat: "Which leads me to ask, as part of my Job, director, if your pursuance of understanding more of the Sith's mechanisms will result put a replacement implant at risk."

---

Rinea

 

[Rinea]

The Chiss watched the medic work. Whether or not she read the woman's disappointment, it didn't show.

"Running low?" She sighed, then muttered. "What isn't on this damn ship?"

Rinea unbuttoned her jacket, removed it, and placed it onto a nearby chair. Underneath was a simple, all-black PT tank top, which hugged her body with supportive fabric. She then took a seat on the examination bed.

And without missing a beat: "Which leads me to ask, as part of my Job, director, if your pursuance of understanding more of the Sith's mechanisms will result put a replacement implant at risk."

"I said I'd be more careful, didn't I?" No. She did not. What she did say was that it wouldn't happen again. "I understand the risk factor... quite intimately, now." Unclear if she referred to the risk to her implants, or the asset herself.

Her face was quite unreadable. Many found it difficult to read a Chiss' facial expressions. The eyes alone were prominent, glowing, and had a certain intensity to them as a result. "I apologize if I've put our dwindling supplies in jeopardy. I promise to be more respectful of that fact."

Sachi Maren

 

[Sachi Maren]

"It sounds as though it was for a necessary cause." Sachi said simply, bartering with the truth for her own intrigue. "Without the damage, you likely wouldn't have advanced with your asset." She put on a pair of gloves and opened the containment box with the implant inside, carefully adjusting some pieces on the edge with fine, long, thin metal tools. The biosuture wand gave a quiet chirp as she calibrated it for spinal integration.

"That is what will be the gist of my report. That it was unavoidable but for the necessity of your role. The details will remain redacted, if that's what you need."

She tapped a few keys on the diagnostic pad, calling up the neural map from Rinea's scan. It lit up in gentle pulses—a constellation of nerves, blood vessels, and the jagged ghost outline of the last implant failure.

"Tilt your head forward. This one's a subdermal subspinous seat. We'll put it somewhere out of sight, right between the dorsal plates."

Efficient and well-practiced, she cleaned the implant site, injected the numbing agent, and sliced a thin, clean line along the curve of Rinea's upper spine.

"This model's reinforced," Sachi added as she worked, guiding the new chip into its housing. "New, not yet field tested, but supposedly hardened against both kinetic disruptions."

The biosuture wand closed the incision seamlessly, a faint antiseptic hiss escaping with each pass. Once the device was seated, she checked the neural sync: Green. Secure.

"There. Online." A pause. Then: "But if you go chasing another Sith 'incident,' I swear I'll implant the next one in your forehead and let the Fleet ask why." Sachi peeled off her gloves, her expression wary as she looked over Rinea. "You're cleared for duty. Light, for the next twenty-four. And no Force-wounds for at least eighty. Would you like me to give you something for your throat, as well?"

---

Rinea