Private The Bright and The Broken

[Aymeric Prendergast]

THE BRIGHT AND THE BROKEN
Ghost of the Core’s Past - Chapter 1

EXCAVATOR​

NIRAUAN

The air in the Inquisitorius chambers on Nirauan was recycled and cold, tasting of sterile metal and the low hum of high-security containment fields. It was an environment that mirrored the architecture of the Fourth Brother's own mind; hollowed out, efficient, and devoid of the clutter of his previous life.

He stood before a flickering hololith, his yellowish-red eyes fixed on the data streams. A ship had just exited hyperspace, tripping the high-sensitivity sensors of the Inquisitorius. It wasn't a scavenger or a merchant; the signature was distinct, a relic of a splintered past. An asset from Barran’s splinter cell. A week late for a Conclave that had already decided the future. In the Inquisitorius, tardiness was not a mistake; it was a threat.

The walk from the HQ to the spaceport was short and quiet. Aymeric preferred the transit through the fortress's shadow-drenched corridors, his boots making no sound against the polished floor. Every time he passed a window and felt the biting wind of Nirauan through the structural seals, the scars at the base of his skull gave a familiar, rhythmic throb. Daedalus Tarkin was watching. Not physically, perhaps, but the ghost of his labs was always present, a silent overseer ensuring the tool remained sharp.

By the time he reached the landing bay, the ship was already beginning its final approach. The roar of the sublight engines echoed off the high durasteel walls, a defiant sound in the oppressive silence of the Initiative's stronghold.

Aymeric stepped out onto the gantry as the landing struts hissed against the pad. He didn't ignite his blade. He didn't call for the purge troopers. He simply stood at the base of the ramp, a silhouette of sharp angles and black synth-weave against the swirling Nirauan mist.

He reached out, not with the warmth of the Force he once knew, but with the cold, grasping senses of an Inquisitor. He felt the presence inside the ship; a light-leaning resonance that felt like an itch against his sensitized nerves. It was a familiar flavor of righteousness, the kind that usually broke so beautifully under pressure.

Like he did, under the brutal palm of Tarkin.

As the ramp began to descend, Aymeric tilted his head. He allowed his yellow gaze to lock onto the opening, his presence expanding to fill the hangar with a suffocating, clinical weight. He wasn't there to welcome a guest or to parley with an ally. He was there to intercept a threat that had arrived too late to matter and too early to escape.

Silthe Aerin
cc: Valyra Keth | Odessa Caeli | The Agarian | The Madclaw​

 

[Silthe Aerin]

RIGHT PLACE WRONG TIME
NIRAUAN

Being late wasn't a habit. Being a week late, when she was expected and invited, no less, certainly wasn't, either, but the galaxy often had its own ideas. So she had come to learn.

After the Lightsworn dispersed a few months before, it'd put her in a foul mood for a time, and not because of that. What did she expect? After the eons of ineffectual conflict she'd been made to learn of, she knew better, had been taught better, had it ingrained and trained into her to know and be better, but it was complicated. Tied up in family.

Fast forward to now, and the young Aerin was coming in after extracting herself from the onset of Sith-on-Sith conflict in the Core, where until that point she'd been acting the pest where and when she could. She'd never set out to be a vigilante, but it'd been a sight better than swallowing her feelings and going back to nothing, with the deaths she was informed of in her absence the only thing remaining to greet her, back home. Those feelings she did swallow, did push down. Peering at the invitation that'd somehow found her raised her suspicion and her misgivings in tandem. But as she fled what was intent on devouring everything and anyone that didn't go their way, the clarity of her situation became stark.

There were no other options. Imperial was what she was, who she would always be, even if she was late. The landing struts of the now-battered vessel hissed in a clean landing; she may have left in a hurry, but she didn't need to come in at the same chaotic clip. Sil sunk back into the pilot's seat after powering down, and blew out a breath, only to tense in the next second, her thoughts spiking in alert as as a cold touch whispered against her awareness.

[ What th'feck was tha? ]

It didn't feel like what she'd just fled from. If anything, the frigid quality only reminded her of the last person she wanted to talk to. Sil frowned faintly, unbuckled herself, and rose just enough to peer around the edge of the forward viewport, only to slam right back into her seat soon as she saw it.

[ Tha' isn't... what the actual... ]

On the one hand she was relieved, but on the other hand... was that a Sith? Had she been followed all the way here? Her mouth became a line in the next moment, when she grasped the reality of it well: there was no way but out. She'd seen enough in the Core to know she could end up crushed in here. That was motivating enough.

Craning around the edge of the pilot's chair, she flicked the ramp controls then stood and hugged the bulkhead as she paced slowly towards the descending ramp, her hand hovering by the hilt clipped to her side. She peered around the edge of the opening... only to be whacked with an exacting, suffocating presence. Sil stumbled back and away from the opening, but it did little to change anything, and after a further moment of trying to will her way past it, she became frustrated. Sil settled against the bulkhead, just inside of the edge of the opening as the ramp finished its descent.

She was no chicken... and this felt awful. Sil cleared her throat and raised her voice.

"If. you. want. me. to. come. out," enunciating in the way she'd been firmly schooled to, in her mother's inflection... that it came out severely clipped was an effect of the pressure, "this. isn't. the. way. to. go. about. it."

A beat.

"You. could. ask. you. know."

Aymeric Prendergast​

 

[Aymeric Prendergast]

THE BRIGHT AND THE BROKEN
Ghost of the Core’s Past - Chapter 1

EXCAVATOR​

NIRAUAN

The proper inflection of her voice; clipped, rhythmic, and steeped in Imperial heritage, no longer held weight on Nirauan. Aymeric didn't answer her immediately. He sharply watched the edge of the bulkhead where she stood, his yellowish-red eyes tracking the slight tremor in the Force that betrayed her location.

He didn't need to hear her thoughts to sense the scent of frustration and the sharp, metallic tang of fear she was trying to suppress. It was a familiar resonance; the sound of a spirit trying to bolster itself against a weight it wasn't prepared to carry.

Suddenly, Aymeric pulled back.

The suffocating pressure he had been projecting vanished instantly, replaced by a vacuum of sensation that was arguably more unnerving. He stood perfectly still, his arms hanging loosely at his sides, his presence retracting until he was nothing more than a dark, quiet hole in the world.

"Manners are the crutches of the indecisive," Aymeric rasped, his voice a dry friction against the humming vents.

He took a single, deliberate step back from the base of the ramp, creating a hollow pocket of space. He was aware of the surveillance droids hovering in the rafters and the distant, prying eyes of the spaceport technicians. A public execution or a forced extraction would be a political stain Tarkin did not currently desire. The Inquisitorius were the hidden blade, not the blunt hammer.

"You have brought a battered ship and a shattered reputation to a fortress under high alert," he continued, his yellow gaze never wavering from the opening of the ship. "If you truly wish to be asked for your cooperation, then consider this: your ship's signature is already flagged for decommissioning."

He gestured vaguely toward the dark, sleek transport waiting in the shadows of the landing bay; a vehicle with tinted viewports and no Imperial markings.

"There is a secure location prepared for your processing. A place where we can discuss why you were in the Core and why you've chosen to emerge now." His head tilted slightly, a predatory bird watching a cornered mouse. "Step down the ramp, walk with me as a guest Director Tarkin. Or wait here until the port authority decides your ship is salvage."

Silthe Aerin
​

 

[Silthe Aerin]

RIGHT PLACE WRONG TIME
NIRAUAN

When the pressure fled, Silya felt a scant flicker of relief, but that was quickly disturbed by nothing she had ever felt before; the sudden deprivation felt more disorienting than outright unnerving, yet it nonetheless brought forth a choice selection of words that never made it past her lips, when she thought better of it as that lack of sensation also began to recede.

"Manners are the crutches of the indecisive," Aymeric rasped, his voice a dry friction against the humming vents.

That was a line the half-Echani never heard before, and it pulled her narrow, judging, light slate gaze around the edge of the opening at the moment he took a step back from the ramp. She gave the... whatever he was a cursory once-over, and stepped out to stand fully at the top of the ramp while she did, folding her arms over her chest while he started to expound on the situation she was in. The very reason for his response to her mere presence.

No, the purpose of manners would be a pointless debate with this heathen, and when there was a pause, she gave him a flat look: tell me something I don't know. The vessel was old as it was, all the heads of the Protectorate were, as far as she was aware, dead. Being out in the galaxy had contextualised for her how much of what she had left behind was futile. Ineffectual. Pointless.

That too had made her angry.

Sil followed the arc of his arm to where the unmarked transport sat waiting, listening to the... not-Sith? lay out what was to happen, and the particular words used; they suggested to her more than what was to come, but that supposition of something that was familiar still felt off. He sounded ISB, dark and unmarked transports with tinted windows tended to scream it, but he did not look the part. Enough of the details didn't add up to that conclusion. It was, however, enough to not make her question how he knew where she'd been.

"Step down the ramp, walk with me as a guest Director Tarkin. Or wait here until the port authority decides your ship is salvage."

Her attention tracked back to those unwavering eyes, that seemed as if they could nail her feet to where she stood. Then she unfolded her arms and walked down the ramp, continuing to observe the Yellow-Eyed-Not-A-Sith with no small measure of suspicion.

"What are you?" Not who — what, like he was some thing — once she reached the bottom of the ramp and stepped off of it. Ceasing any further progress once she did, turning to the darkling, now having to look up at him with her hands planted on her hips.

Testy... or defiant?

"You're not ISB."

Aymeric Prendergast​

 

[Aymeric Prendergast]

THE BRIGHT AND THE BROKEN
Ghost of the Core’s Past - Chapter 1

EXCAVATOR​

NIRAUAN

Aymeric's jaw tightened, a sharp contraction of muscle that was the only outward sign of the irritation prickling beneath his skin. To be questioned as a what by a Knight whose ship smelled of scorched wiring and failure, the way she sees him, like he is some kind of disgusting creature, was a stain he would usually have scoured away with a flick of his wrist.

He didn't move as she planted her hands on her hips. Her posture was one of defiance, one adopted by a brat who was raised by a weak man, sheltered away from the pain and struggles of the world. It felt remarkably small against the cold, monolithic backdrop of the fortress-world. His sulfurous eyes tracked her movements with the clinical focus of a predator watching a wounded bird puff out its feathers.

"The ISB deals in ledgers and whispers," Aymeric rasped, his voice like dry stone grinding on bone. "They are the accountants of the Empire. I am the silence that follows the audit."

He took a half-step toward her, not to threaten, but to loom. The scars at the base of his skull gave a sharp, warning throb; a phantom reminder that Tarkin would not appreciate a spectacle on the landing pad, but he would appreciate a tool that allowed itself to be mocked by a stray asset even less.

"You ask what I am because you are looking for a category that does not exist in your limited understanding of the world. You seek a title to make me less... uncomfortable. To provide a name for the weight you feel in your chest."

He gestured again toward the waiting transport, his fingers curling slightly as if he were already imagining the magnetic seals of a processing room locking into place behind her.

"But titles are crutches for the insecure. You will find that I am exactly what is required to ensure the shattered reputation you brought here doesn't become a terminal liability for the Initiative. Now, move. My patience is not as refined as my master's, and the wind on Nirauan is far less forgiving than I am."

He turned slightly, not quite giving her his back, but clearly indicating the path toward the darkened vehicle. He expected her to follow; in his world, the alternative was simply a slower, more painful form of obedience.

Silthe Aerin
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