Signs of Life

[Caulder Dune]

THE MACHINATOR
BRIDGE

It wasn't often that someone had the opportunity to watch their own funeral. Darth Adekos imagined he was supposed to feel some sort of sadness. Look at all these people come to mourn his loss. Look at all his friends and family come together, united in their grief. Touching, really, but Darth Adekos had no friends and after the Republic repeatedly lost and recaptured Umbara his family had no desire to speak with him either. There was no one there to mourn him, largely because anyone who would bother to mourn him was already aware that any funeral taking place without his actual, bonafide Umbaran carcass was a terrible sham.

He suspected the new Triumvirs did not share those sentiments. He didn't want to ruin their newfound status for them, even if one of them was a filthy traitor who had mindlessly slaughtered one of his staunchest, most capable allies out of a misplaced devotion to the so-called old ways.

With a wave of his hand, the screen shut itself off. Just as one Darth Sinistra was going to start her speech. He had not heard it, yet he already had. "Blah blah blah, ideas are bulletproof, blah blah blah, stronger than ever." The same drivel every time a gaggle of heads of state died all at once. It all reminded him very much of the Galactic Republic. "Blah blah blah, keep calm and carry on." Unbearable, really. He was not sad over this funeral of his. Disappointed in that his successors deemed it necessary to hold on, maybe. Disgusted that his legacy with the Triumvirate would be reduced to perishing during the orbital battle against that rancid, renegade nation calling itself a Silver Coalition.

Adekos gave a raspy, mechanical sigh and turned away from the screen, facing [member="Siyndacha Aerin"]. This one had been far more receptive to his teachings than [member="Spark Finn"] ever had. Case in point was that when he made his way back to his Lucrehulk, Finn was gone and Aerin was still here. Not that he would have continued Finn's detainment anyway. He couldn't. Not with what Adekos had to go and do now. "Try to contain your grief, will you?" He gave a hacking cough, fist over his mouth even though he was wearing his mask. "I know how hard it must be to lose a master."

That was a lie. He never had a formal master. Darth Adekos was pulled up from his own bootstraps.

And look at all the good it's done me.

 

[Siyndacha Aerin]

Hanging back, arms folded beneath her chest, Aerin wore an impassive expression for the holovised proceedings. It was a sham, yet she wouldn't feel a single mote of sentimentality, if it had been different. Perhaps the capacity for sentiment had been ripped out, perhaps it had been numbed; either way, with the screen switched off and the mask turned in her direction, she snorted at the Umbaran's words with less delicacy than the look of her could say, eyeing him in slight derision.

"Don't flatter yourself, Adekos," she said flatly, eyes returning to their ever-critical way, "you're a means to an end, you always were" her arms disengaged, one hand carding through her silvered strands, rarely loose as they were now, "and you're far from the first to leave me."

Did that say something about her? About them? No matter, it was of little consequence. It was better to take what she wanted and needed, do what suited her best, with detachment, because they left. They all left, or pushed her out, given time. This was nothing new. Her hand dropped out of her hair, metallic blues settling on the mask and its sheen, the other hand perched to one side of her slim hips.

"I suppose you'll be melting into the shadows, then?"

Sith stereotypes 101. Right up there with lame jokes.

[member="Darth Adekos"]

 

[Caulder Dune]

His laughter quickly sputtered into a harsh cough, but then he caught his breath. "There is such a thing as speaking too candidly, you know."

A droid abruptly approached him, handing him an unlabeled folder thick with flimsiplast documents. As always, Darth Adekos maintained his preference for physical documents. It was better to have something that could be held tangibly. Not to mention he didn't have to worry about a slicer remotely accessing his filing cabinet. He leafed through the folder, selected one page, and quickly slid it out. "As relaxing as that sounds, no, never anything so boring. Some of us have a responsibility to serve the galaxy at large." He examined the page for a moment, then turned it towards Siyndacha so that she could actually see it.

It wasn't writing, but a photograph- the aftermath of a large space battle. A time stamp in the lower right corner indicated it had been taken by a probe droid, only a few weeks ago, only a short distance away from the Charal System. An impossibly large, spherical space craft with what looked like a giant red photoreceptor on the front. The photoreceptor was darkened, the hull had been blasted open in several distinct areas. Surrounding the destroyed hulk were a host of other spacecraft- jagged and random, no two looked the same. Perhaps the only thing that didn't look alien were the remains of several Ssi-Ruu battleships.

"Not that you particularly care, I imagine." He sniffled mockingly and returned the photograph to the folder. "Since I won't be here to further your training myself, what do you plan on doing?"

[member="Siyndacha Aerin"]

 

[Siyndacha Aerin]

His laughter provoked a ghost of a smile, but little else. The photograph, though, garnered the scrutiny of her attention, and raised eyebrows. She had made it her business to be familiar with the vessels spat out by shipyards the galaxy over for years, and save for the Ssi-Ruuvi battleships, nothing in the photograph sparked a look of recognition; she was sent off scouring through her mental catalogue, a train of thought that halted for the time being when the snapshot was filed away, and her soon-to-be former mentor asked after her intentions. A calm blink, and her eyes lifted.

"I'll acquire a partner," she deadpanned, "and settle down."

Her gaze remained on Adekos, one beat, two beats. She didn't have what could be called a sense of humour, per se, insofar as what the average individual would find humourous. The likelihood of 'settling down' was a nigh-nonexistent thing, for the half-Echani acolyte, and 'romantic' partnerships had fallen off her radar ever since she and a blonde witch had drifted apart. Never mind that Siyndacha had changed in ways that said witch may not have liked - for all intents and purposes, there ceased to be any mutual benefit beyond fleshly needs, so the connection frayed and broke. Her eyes slipped over to the nearest viewport, studying the stars a moment.

"Or build my empire of machines," she mused, "overtake the galaxy, and institute order and control."

That made her smile, however brief. Aerin glanced back to Adekos, knowing full well she couldn't gauge a reaction from the impasse of that mask, then turned to him fully. If there was one thing she was going to miss, it was the lack of bull in their discourse.

"But until that or any remotely similar action is feasible, there is a saying: 'One is never served so well as by oneself.' I'll further my own training, one way or another, free myself of this... helpless reliance on others."

Others that wouldn't or couldn't stand the sheer bluntness of her personality.

"And put my skills and education to use."

[member="Darth Adekos"]

 

[Caulder Dune]

Darth Adekos studied her without perceivable reaction for that same period of time, then lightly scoffed when she inserted that or. That was what he wanted to hear, the sounds of fully automated progress. Something he had failed to bring about and continued to fail to inspire in others. "I will admit, you concerned me for a moment." This sort of work was tiring, as it was. He hadn't expected Aerin was the sort to call in quits, but he wouldn't have been surprised if she did. How many times had he considered dropping the space wizard act once and for all, forsaking everything, throwing [member="Ivy Lasranae"] over his shoulder, and vanishing for good? Probably to some resort planet. Something luxurious, but also on the fringes of society.

But neither of them had the temperament for it. Tragic. So tragic it made him want to split his sides open with howling laughter.

"Yes, I suppose training yourself is an option. Many Sith have pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps. But by isolating themselves from the knowledge and teachings of their predecessors, they are doomed to only rediscover." Adekos snapped his fingers, and a door behind him slid open. There was another droid now, might have even been the same one, only this time it was holding a crate. "I would have wasted the rest of my life unknowingly retracing the steps of those who came before us if I hadn't actively sought out their teachings."

Belia Darzu, Darth Mekhis, the Ismaren scrolls, Perek... Countless others! He had to dredge them all up from the deep. If he were in some sort of monastic order, Adekos wagered, he ought to be venerated as a saint for recovering and amassing knowledge thought lost. He had gone so far as to add the most important knowledge pertaining to Mechu-Deru to the Telos Holocron. While being part of the largest reservoir of Dark Side lore was nice, Adekos also strived for something more... Private.

The full breadth of his knowledge would be on his own holocron.

The droid sauntered right on past Adekos, approaching Siyndacha and opening the crate. "No disciple of mine is going to waste their youth stumbling to achieve passable replications of things people had done infinitely better centuries ago." Inside was a holocron, shaped traditionally as most Sith ones were. It differed in that it was entirely translucent- the complex internal matrices were plainly visible. A mishmash of hair-thin lines, red and black, red and black. "Everything I've taught you, everything I intended to teach you, and much more has been imparted into this holocron. You will also have the advice of the gatekeeper, should you require it."

Typical of Sith holocrons, it pulsated with the Dark Side- practically begging for her to take it.

[member="Siyndacha Aerin"]

 

[Siyndacha Aerin]

It pulled at her, beckoning her will, reaching beyond her self-control; she dragged her eyes up from the translucent, three-sided object to the mask that seemed to be eternally in place over his visage. The thing seduced her, slipping past the resistance to it brought on by her deep-seated need to control, and pulled the cooled silver-blue of her eyes down to it again. Her lips became a firm line as she wrapped fingers and palms around it, and lifted it from the crate to have a closer look.

"Fascinating..." she breathed, brushing fingertips down one side, turning it over, examining the innards that were very plain to see, "...and beautiful."

Not by any conventional definition of beauty, but by the appreciation of design and perfection of lines and angles. The internal matrices were a form of art, in her mind, and functional. She sought the mask once again, but the holocron remained in her grasp, and she thought on what it was that he had been intending to teach her, and what more there was beyond that. Now was not the time to find out the breadth and depth of what the device contained, but that time would come soon enough.

"Thank you," she said, moments later. She meant it, which was more than she could say for those that came before Adekos, "it's not often that one is given the sum of another's knowledge in a container."

No-one needed to impress upon her the power of knowledge.

"It will be put to good use."

[member="Darth Adekos"]

 

[Caulder Dune]

Was that sincerity he detected from the young Aerin woman? How out of character. Then again, perhaps the same could be said of Adekos these past few months. And he hated it. "I don't doubt as much." He replied, noting her already evident fascination with the device. It was an unconventional design, to be sure, and someone unfamiliar with the Umbaran might have suggested that this was because Darth Adekos considered himself an unconventional Sith. In reality it was because he suspected Siyndacha would go on to amass many more Sith Holocrons, and the general uniformity of their designs (black and red pyramids, save the Telos Holocron) would make them difficult to tell apart.

Had anyone ever known him to prioritize aesthetics over functionality? They were even on a Lucrehulk, after all...

"You will have to consider this your graduation, in any event." Adekos continued. "I cannot release a mere apprentice into the wider galaxy with my holocron. A Knight, however, would fare much better. Wouldn't you agree?"

Once Siyndacha had the holocron safe in hand, the droid closed the case and quietly returned from whence it came.

[member="Siyndacha Aerin"]

 

[Siyndacha Aerin]

She was silent for a moment or two, while considering the potential attached to such a conferrence. It was in line with her goals, and thus, important.

"Agreed," she replied, cradling the holocron in both her hands, "the authority such a title holds would be of considerable benefit."

And she wasn't surprised at the idea, not at all. It seemed a natural progression, for her diligence.

"So, then. I suppose this is where we part ways, yes?" she said with finality, "Adekos, do keep that sense of self-preservation healthy, would you? I shudder to think what the galaxy would be without the likes of you and I."

[member="Darth Adekos"]