fit check for my napalm era
THE HIGH ASSEMBLY OF THE REPUBLIC SENATE
THEED - NABOO
Verity had arrived to her Senate office early, as requested by her Chief of Staff, to make one last-ditch attempt to convince her to slow her pace. "Senator, your speech at the DPI was generally well-received by the Druckenwell press, but we've already seen an uptick in credible threats afterwards. You don't want to get too far ahead of the rest of the Senate on this. If you have to walk it back it could be the end."
The office coffee was tolerable -- in large part because it was fresh, and hadn't been sitting around for a few hours -- as Verity sipped it. "I hear you," she told him, looking up from her notepad. "I do. But if the Senate can't agree on this -- after what we all saw on the holo from Tapani and Coruscant -- then I'm not sure the institution is worth the gunpowder it would take to blow us all to Hell and back." She took a breath and picked up her pen, jotting her initials on the final draft of the bill, then rising and holding it across the desk to her Chief of Staff. Their eyes locked.
"File it," Verity said coolly. "And alert the Chancellor that I'll be bringing a main motion at the gavel."
* * * * *
[The vibes? Immaculate.]
[The vibes? Immaculate.]
True to her word, Verity signaled her intention to speak when the Senate gaveled into session. When recognized, Verity maneuvered her pod toward the center, where it slowly orbited the Chancellor's podium, bathed in the Senate's spotlight, spied by the holonet cameras that had settled in to cover the business of the day. "Thank you, Madame Chancellor. I rise today to introduce Senate Bill 6338, the Core Sanctions and Access Denial Act, which will impose sanctions and access-denial measures aimed at the Sith Covenant and those who choose to enable them. If my colleagues will indulge me, I would spend some time this morning laying out my reasoning for this legislation."
She swallowed and leaned forward. "I will begin with the underlying truth at the core of my approach to the Sith Covenant problem. That truth is this: doing nothing in response to the brutality we witnessed at Tapani and then at Coruscant earlier this month is not a default position, a careful neutrality that allows us to watch from a respectful distance and observe. Doing nothing is a decision -- a decision that tells every victim of Sith repression that their suffering is a manageable, if regrettable, issue. It tells every opportunist with a cargo hold and a flexible conscience that the High Republic's systems are open to paying a profit from that repression and suffering."
"I will not stand for such a decision; I will not lend the imprimatur of my office or the dignity of this august body to it," said Senator Stuyveris, pausing to allow her gaze to sweep over the well of the Senate. "I will not dignify the decision with polite language about being prudent and cautious, about being over-extended and interventionist."
She paused to swallow again, her mouth suddenly dry. "Coruscant itself has fallen into the hands of a dangerous movement -- far more dangerous than even the Galactic Empire. The Sith Covenant has claimed no political aims but a will to power, demonstrated no willingness to be constrained by law, custom, or the basic expectations of civilization. That they are a death cult is obvious. They have demonstrated already -- and not just demonstrated, but proudly declared -- that they view cruelty as a point of pride. Whether they want Coruscant for its proximity to galactic gravity, because its symbolism makes them feel inevitable -- or merely because there are trillions of lives or more that they can eradicate for their perverse bloodlust -- is not yet clear."
She raised an index finger. "My esteemed colleagues, we should be very, very careful about allowing them to become inevitable." Verity's hand lowered and she clutched the sides of her podium. "Now, I can already hear the first objections forming in some of my honorable friends' minds. Senator Stuyveris, they may say, you said it yourself: Coruscant is the third rail. Touch it and die. What are you proposing, exactly? Are we to rush a fleet into the Core, guns blazing?"
Magnificent blonde head shook subtly. "Not at all -- though I would not rule it out. But it is not what I am asking you to support and authorize today." She pointed at her podium, at the text of the bill her office had drafted, finger tapping just loud enough to be picked up as a dull thud by the microphone. "This bill is about our own house: our routes, our banks, our ports and shipyards, our insurers, our exchanges and professional services. In short it is about the ordinary, everyday scaffolding of legitimacy that allows commerce to happen at scale."
Her fingers returned to the edges of the podium, flexing lightly. "The Sith Covenant have shown themselves to be bandits, so they ought to live like bandits. Let them trade in the shadows -- in dangerous spaces where the law does not protect them. Let them scrape favors from criminals, and patch their ships with whatever junk they can find. What they must not be allowed to do is use the Republic's infrastructure -- not any part of it -- as a means to support their barbarism and conquest."
A grave pause and she looked around, her eyes settling on one of the holonet cameras. "Make no mistake: that is what will happen if we do not act. It will not happen all at once -- I do not speak of massive Sith Covenant flotillas and fleets parking at our shipyards and demanding repair. No. It will come in a long chain of small choices." A beat, her eyes earnest. "A freighter captain tells himself that if I don't do it, someone else will and takes the charter to deliver materiel. A banker tells herself that it's not her business what a client does with the money she's transferring. A shipyard manager tells himself that a work order is a work order, and it keeps his people employed An insurance executive tells herself that her company is only assessing and underwriting risk, not funding violence. A customs clerk tells himself that the paperwork says private security and not mercenary raiders and that's good enough for her."
She paused to let the list linger. Any one of them could imagine any number of those events. Some of them had probably been in the room when such rationalizations were made. "One thousand polite decisions later, and the Sith Covenant is resupplied, reinsured, refinanced -- and respected. Because despite the fact that no sane and rational individual believes in them or their bloody ambitions, too many people have found a way to profit from their existence to stop now."
"This bill is designed to break that chain, and it does so in four practical ways. First, it creates a clear designation framework -- a defined standard for identifying individuals and entities that materially support the Sith Covenant, facilitating their trafficking, laundering their credits, maintaining their fleets, procuring their dual-use components, or helping them evade scrutiny. Accountability is for actions, not thoughts or words. The bill offers protection: criteria, due process, records, and oversight."
"Second," she said, leaning into the microphone. "It denies access to the systems that makes predation scalable. Third, it criminalizes circumvention -- because there will be circumvention. There is always circumvention. Shell firms and nominee owners, swapped transponders and false manifests. This bill imposes penalties with teeth in hopes that it will disincentivize attempts to get around the requirements of this bill. Fourth, it includes carve-outs for humanitarian relief by licensing life-saving aid, evacuation, medical shipments, and the work of legitimate humanitarian actors, with protections for sensitive routes where disclosure would create serious risk."
The Senator inclined her head, allowing a moment to breathe. "Now, if what you've heard so far leads you to support the moral purpose of this bill, but perhaps fear its teeth and claws, your concerns will likely fall into one or more of three categories: humanitarian harm, executive overreach, and economic blowback. Allow me, please, to address these concerns plainly."
"Sanctions can -- and do, often -- hurt civilians. This bill seeks to mitigate that as much as possible by its general and specific humanitarian licensing, by requiring protections for sensitive location information, with oversight that takes diversion seriously. But we cannot preserve life by failing to act, only by acting with care and building strong walls with accessible doors." She paused a moment. "But if there are concerns that this bill will produce famine, then join me and let's build stronger license language, faster approvals, and robust auditing. I welcome your input."
"As to executive overreach: yes, the designation authority is a sharp instrument. It could be abused and therefore it must be constrained. That is why this bill requires reporting, periodic review, Auditor-General oversight, and offers delisting mechanisms. And it is why I will support feedback and amendments from my colleagues that tighten evidentiary standards, require notice, and set firm review timelines so that emergencies do not become a habit. I am not interested, my honorable friends, in creating a machine that is unanswerable to the people by way of the Senate."
Another pause. "Lastly, economic blowback. Look, I represent Druckenwell. I am well acquainted with industry and trade, shipbuilding and finance. I am intimately aware that our world -- and others like ours -- is woven into the arteries of galactic commerce. It has given us a measure of prosperity and privilege. But we must not allow our prosperity to come, in any part, from doing business with monsters. It cannot." She paused again. "The fastest way to poison a commercial system is to allow it to become an accessory to barbarism. If our registries become a joke, if our insurers become sponsors of slavery and mass murderer and trafficking, we are likely to provoke a market crisis. Legitimate actors will flee, and risk premiums will spike, and everyone will pay."
She cleared her throat and again looked into the holocamera as it floated serenely, its dispassionate lens observing without interest. "Rejecting protective measures in the name of the economy, of prosperity, of profits is asking to trade the Republic's credibility, piece by piece, for shareholder gains." She paused and when she spoke again her voice was glacial. "I will not stand for it. I will not support it. And let me be clear: I will not allow polite silence and the decorum of this chamber to protect any who will."
Verity lifted her head, glancing toward the empty pod once populated by Monaray Dod. "I would say a word, too, about the context we find ourselves in. We have lost citizens, in the wrong place at the wrong time. We have lost our own colleagues, not least our previous Chancellor's abduction, and our honorable friend the member for Toshara's assassination." A trembling hand gestured toward the Toshara pod. "We have watched assassination become a kind of punctuation in our politics, and that should terrify us. But it must also clarify us. When violence becomes normal, people like the Sith Covenant thrive. They thrive on the idea that law is a costume, that moral clarity is propaganda. They thrive on the idea that no one will hold a line unless they are forced to hold it."
"This bill is a line that we can hold, but it is not the only one we need. It does not stand in the place of strategy or intelligence work, of diplomatic efforts or humanitarian stabilization, or the hard, slow, grinding work required to build credibility in regions galactic powers have neglected. What it is is a bulwark that stands in defense of the proposition that if the Sith Covenant wants to hold Coruscant, they must do so without the willing support of the civilized galaxy."
Senator Stuyveris took a slow breath, as if wearied by her own garrulousness. "I will come to a close, Madame Chancellor and fellow Senators, by humbly asking for your vote -- and not just that. Your attention and interest. Your experience. Your ideas and amendments. Most of all I ask for your partnership. Madame Chancellor, I yield and reserve the remainder of my time."
SB.6338 creates a Republic-wide sanctions regime and acces-denial framework aimed at The Sith Covenant and anyone materially supporting them. It is designed to cut off the enablers of their regime: financial systems, registries, ports, insurance, and other logistics and infrastructure, without creating a military mandate.
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