Shasa, Shasa, Shasa

[Ashin Varanin]

MANAAN​

SUBMERGED PATHFINDER-CLASS VESSEL 'BAOBAB'​

SILK HOLDINGS REGISTRY​

​

Selkath filled the Baobab's immense meeting room -- Selkath from all walks of life, though all had made an effort to dress formally, in their way. Blue robes, mostly, the kind that made a point of hanging front-to-back, or surcoats. The Force was strong in this room, and full of anger and grief. They sensed hers as much as she sensed theirs. They'd discussed the atrocities and abuses of the Republic and the One Sith; they knew her from long business here, and from her convalescences. They knew exactly what she'd lost, and how she'd stood with them, but in a very real sense she was still an outsider, and nothing would change that. Least of all what came next.

"Some of you," she said, apropos of nothing, "will want to leave when I say this."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

She'd come here, not as herself but as Velok, with Tahira Solo -- a woman she remembered intimately from a whole other life. She'd come to Manaan, long before Selka Ventus had been assigned here for the first time, and uncovered the remnants of the Order of Shasa.

"You all have a gift," she said, "to one extent or another, for discerning truth. Some of you have the truthseeker amulets of your order. Hear the truth of what I'm about to say, and hear it for the whole truth.

"You know I love this world and its people, that I helped rebuild Ahto City after the Republic tried to sink it, that I've taken the lead in rebuilding it since the latest battle. You know I respect your culture, your kolto, your traditions."

Truth could be used against her; all secrets were mortal.

"What you don't know is that I was the one to kill the Progenitor."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Rage exploded from them. A few of the larger Shasans stood, trembling with a palpable desire to kill. Against a room crammed full of the Order of Shasa, one little Sith Knight would die in moments if this came to blows. But this was the price of conscience.

"I hate myself," she said, knowing they would feel the truth of it, "for doing it, but there was only one chance to keep the alchemists of the One Sith from turning it into a monster. They're already trying to use its body for their creations, though I did my best to prevent it. I hate myself for killing what I loved, but it was the only way. I was able to get close to it because, when I figured out that the One Sith would strike at Manaan...I joined them. I am the reason they tried to keep the kolto secure, rather than blow up everything like the Republic. I did nothing to betray Manaan, Ahto City, or its people. I love this world. Hurt me if you need to, it's what I deserve, but taste the truth of what I'm saying. When it turned out that Praelior and company meant to scoop up the Progenitor and probably alter it into one of their warbeasts, I didn't want to be the one to solve the problem. I watched the Jedi, the Republic, and the Selkath defense forces attempt to rescue the Progenitor, but the Sith forces were too strong. I had one chance, and I took it.

"I will keep working to rebuild Ahto City. I will keep doing my best to protect you within the ranks of the One Sith. I will accept whatever judgment you give, understanding that the Selkath people can never forgive me for what I've done."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"But before you decide what I deserve -- you, who felt the Progenitor die -- I want you to know that your grief won't always sting like this. You, each of you, had a Force-bond with the Progenitor; that's part of the Shasan heritage. I've brought you here because the weapon I used to kill the Progenitor resonated along your Force-bonds; dig deep enough in your memories and you'll remember the sense of the being who took the Progenitor's life. Dig deep and remember the lullaby I sang to it -- to her. To the Mother of Seas.

"Remember the lullaby, and find a song of your own for your new mothers."

The windows opened, and calm, gentle, inquisitive minds reached in. There was no preexisting bond here, not yet. Not yet.

"There are other worlds where firaxa sharks have brooded over lesser Force nexuses and grown strong. There are other worlds that produce kolto. When I was interim CEO of Silk, I made it my business to go to each of those worlds, meet the Selkath tribes and cities that split off from you in the Dark Age, and understand kolto as well as I could. I met the Progenitors of each of those worlds. And some of those worlds had more than one homegrown Progenitor."

On each side of the submerged frigate swam a firaxa shark, bloated with age and progeny, each rivalling the Baobab for size. The tension in the conference room approached waveform status.

"I told them my story -- I told them your story -- and they agreed to come to Manaan, to honor their mother and yours."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

They had things to say, of course. Quite a bit of it, as it happened, with every moment an outstanding question: Would the Order of Shasa kill her for her crimes? Exile her from Manaan? Take the blood price from her?

Or would they recognize that anything as public as death or exile, here on a Silk consular ship, would blow their own secret wide open? The Order of Shasa could not afford to be unmasked to the One Sith, just as Selka could not afford to be unmasked to the Selkath people and the galaxy as a whole. And so the final choice was one of forbearance, though she earned no friends in the process. Her actions stood independent of how she felt about those actions -- a lesson the Jedi Order had never learned, collectively or alone.

And when word reached her and the Shasans, still sitting around the ovoid diplomatic table in the heart of the Baobab, that Silk's CEO had vanished under suspicious circumstances...well then.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Her tenure as interim CEO of Silk had comprised two portions. The first had been Je'gan masquerading as her, and she had most those memories but only hazily. The second had been her, freshly awoken from a long coma that had begun on Manaan, struggling to adjust to two new sets of memories and fragmentary personalities -- new skills, new strength, new knowledge. And so, so much uncertainty. How had she explained it to Dissero? High-end software on unimpressive hardware? Her lack of mathematical aptitude, compounding with her lack of relevant lived - as opposed to remembered - experience, had made her somewhat unsuited for the job.

With benefit of hindsight, though; with full three-mind integration; with months of experience on the Board of Directors; with her acquisition of powers she'd never dreamed of controlling; suddenly this seemed more an opportunity than an obstacle. And as former interim CEO, and with Jorus Merrill still mapping the feth out of Wild Space, to whom would the Board turn...if not to her?

The Shasans knew it as well as she did. They were far from conciliatory, but she was used to being the lesser of evils.

She didn't have much taste for it.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The meeting room was on its third round of kelp bagels when it occurred to her that the Shasans were testing her. As they made plans to manage the Order's secrecy and the new Progenitors' safety during the One Sith regime, they kept their truthseeker amulets oriented toward her. A good long board meeting could stretch anyone to the limit, remove barriers, give you a glance of the other side's true self.

She had a vision of duelling Praelior -- of the new Progenitors taken and alchemized -- of earning her stripes among the One Sith by applying a little Makashi, a little judgment, and a great deal of Force Drain -- of spitting on a Sith Lord's fallen body and calling that lord a karking idiot. She wanted it so badly it hurt, with all the wounded fury of a broken home's mother. With all the indignation of the violated and all the rage and ambition of who and what she'd decided to be.

Abruptly, she realized that the room had gone still, and that the Shasans had, perhaps, seen more than she'd expected. The daydream faded.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

That about killed the meeting. The first meeting, anyway. The Selkath were prone to taking a long time to think through their decisions, and this was a thornier one than most. Which suited Selka fine, because being provisionally installed as new interim CEO required...meetings, and more meetings. A few Selkath sat in on one or two of those, outside the intake of the holocam, as if the Order of Shasa owned her, or deserved to see inside her. Her fault, certainly, but it worked out.

Because that was exactly the impression she was trying to nurture in them. The risk existed that they would start to see her as the sort of Sith who would make them her creatures; she aimed to project the opposite power relation.

In the end, though, she was alone when she messaged [member="Danger Arceneau"] using Tionese encryption, explaining that she might be about to be reinstated as interim CEO, reminding Danger obliquely that the first half of her tenure as Silk CEO had not actually been her, and asking if Danger was willing to meet, by holocam or in person, with her and the Order of Shasa on occupied Manaan.