Mission Yaga Minor: Whatever It Is, I'm Against It

[Inland Empire]

Whatever It Is, I'm Against It​

Objective: Assassinate a Sith Lord. Weaken the grip of a Sith despotate. Parameters: PM this account to join. Imperials only. Slots limited.​

The Dark Empire is gone. The wheel of history turns over again, but a few offcuts from the New Sith Order haven't gotten the message yet. Three of them have impressed themselves into an existent remnant government on Yaga Minor and have come to be called the Sith Tribunal. Their goals are unknown, their prospects are dubious, and their reputations are deplorable. Nobody wants them there.​

​

Local forces are beginning to eye Yaga Minor. Their objectives are varied in language, but uniform in purpose: remove the Tribunal and set up a more palatable government… Preferably before the Diarchy sinks its claws into the system. It'll be easier now than later. Not all of them are on the same page. They don't have to be.​

​

The tribunal's members are rarely far from one another, barring this passing opportunity. Lord Rusk is aboard the orbital shipyards carrying out a surprise "loyalty inspection." He's accompanied only by a few old hands from the last regime. The snivvian is reported to be a master of mind control and illusions, so he hardly needs anyone else.​

​

There won't be a better chance.​

​

You know what to do.​

 

[Antipater]

YAGA MINOR - ORBITAL SHIPYARDS
SEGMENT 1 - RECEIVING BAY​

Mitchell fidgeted the entire walk: scratching his arm, rubbing his hands, itching the back of his neck. The yaga that was following him around, Ninltkim, waggled his antennas disapprovingly. "If you act nervous, he'll assume you're guilty of something."

"I'm not guilty of anything," Mitchell muttered, "He reads minds, doesn't he? He can just… Telepathize me or whatever. Then he'll know."

"Then why are you nervous?"

"I've never been telepathized. What if it hurts?"

They entered the receiving bay. Lights flicked on one by one, revealing long rows of storage containers. All the necessary supplies and materials to keep the shipyards ticking over. Mitchell had no idea how they kept getting their hands on all this. It didn't really matter. He just had to check everything in.

Mitchell walked them to the first one and started unlocking it. "He's still all the way on Segment 4, anyway. Might not even get to us today."

"That's not what I heard. He's on Segment 2, grilling the foremen."

"No, that can't be right. Where did you hear…"

The container door swung open, revealing six large battle droids. Black-armored and sculpted to look like mean stormtroopers. They were perfectly still, photoreceptors dark. Dormant.

Mitchell stared disbelievingly. "The hell are these?"

Ninltkim's antenna twitched and he consulted the datapad. "Manifest says canned goods. Must be a mistake."

Battle droids? In the fucking canned goods container? What kind of mistake was that? Mitchell swallowed with great difficulty.

"Should we call it in? Will Rusk think we're involved?"

"Look, as long as we follow pro…"

A soft hum came from the droid in front as it powered on. Red photoreceptors snapped to life. Servomotors whirred with power as it drew itself up to its full height. Its gaze settled on the two dockworkers.

"Please remain stationary."

Mitchell looked back at Ninltkim for support and - finding only the inscrutable and unmoving face of an insect - looked back to the droid. "What?"

An audible crackle of electricity came from the droid's slowly extending right-hand. "Hold still."

---​

Antipater's hand still thrummed after discharging those electro-filaments. It would be some time before they were ready to fire again. The dockworkers were restrained and left in the shipping container. One of his proxies began to shut the container door.

"No," Antipater said. "They will require oxygen."

The dark trooper stared vacantly at the droid-moff while it adjusted the door to be slightly ajar. When Antipater continued to hold its gaze, it made another minute adjustment to the tune of a few centimeters.

"Acceptable. Proceed."

The dark trooper stalked off to its objective. It seemed Rusk was in many places at once. But Antipater had more than enough resources at his disposal to see to all of them. It would only take time...

Attn: Tydeus of Tion Orestyn Carda​

 

[Orestyn Carda]

As the dark troopers exited the container and stalked off towards their objective Antipater was joined by one of his co-conspirators. Orestyn Carda had been part of a shortly-lived attempt at reigniting the imperial flame after the New Imperial Order's demise. Sadly as it often went with these things it didn't last long. Infighting, a loss of focus, the arrival of larger nations into the area... they all played their role in making sure that the Sovereign Protectors were swept away in the tide of failure.

Here Carda was again.

He was here because Carda was, apparently, a Yaga native. A progeny of one Imperial program or the other to import humanoid stock onto the alien world and affect demographic change for the benefit of the Imperial cause.

"Moff Antipater." Carda said calmly as he watched the dark troopers march towards their target. "I am surprised you care about the fate of two organics under your charge."

Eyes flicked to the container with the door ajar for a few centimeters.

Then flicked up towards the impassive droid face.

"My loyalists are awaiting the signal. Once the Sith Lord has been neutralized, they will take the control of Intra-Com Hub on the surface." Orestyn looked over his shoulder. "I do hope our young compatriot will pull through as promised." Without his forces from Borosk it would make all of this much more complicated.

Tydeus of Tion

 

[Tydeus of Tion]

Tydeus strode through the halls with the walk of one who did not have time nor patience to be bothered, trailed by a small retinue. No more than a dozen volunteers for this mission.

They came here from the small fortress world of Borosk, allegedly to pay homage to the Sith Tribunal. Tydeus would be personally meeting with Lord Rusk to bend the knee.

Of course, the only thing the boy intended to bend was the snivvian’s spinal column.

Ahead, at the end of the hallway and blocking the door, he saw a Pantoran in dark robes. A lightsaber hilt dangled conspicuously from the man’s waist.

Tydeus’ brows drew together and he came to a stop.

“I am here to see Lord Rusk,” he said evenly.

“Of course, my master has been expecting you.”

Master? Nothing in Antipater’s intelligence suggested an apprentice. This must be a recent convert.

Tydeus felt a presence suddenly brushing across his thoughts. He’s trying to read our minds. Tydeus sought to make a fortress of his mind. But not all of his troops had had an education like his, tutored by a Miralukan monk in Teras Kasi and a Thyrsian Sunguard in combatives and techniques on Tion that would make the Imperial peerage green with envy - whatever was left of them.

If one of the soldiers behind him thought too hard about their purpose, this could all end here…

 

[Kasmion Duum]

From nowhere, Kasmion Duum smoothly interposed himself between Tydeus of Tion and the Pantoran who was apparently Rusk's apprentice. "How nice to see you again," Kasmion told the apprentice garrulously, and co-opted that telepathic attempt with aplomb. "How very nice indeed."

"Lord Duum!" A broad smile broke over the apprentice's face and tension bled away. He was, at this point, recognizing an old friend and ally despite them never having had the slightest preexisting acquaintance. As Kasmion adjusted certain elements of the apprentice's priors and disposition, he waved Tydeus and company past with a little hurry-up flip of his hand down by the side of his robes. His other hand was busy with a handshake and he kept eye contact with the apprentice.

Rusk was probably a better telepath than Kasmion, a prospect that Kasmion felt some eagerness to test. The apprentice could have stood up to 'you don't need to see his identification.' Against something subtler, more professional, and drawn from a completely non-Jedi/Sith skill base — sudden and welcome recognition — right now he didn't have a prayer.

The downside, of course, was that Rusk might start sensing that something was up. Sensing something was up was a classic Sith skill, or so Kasmion was given to understand.

For the moment, Kasmion focused on being chatty, the Pantoran's new best friend.

Orestyn Carda Antipater

 

[Inland Empire]

The apprentice brought them to where Lord Rusk was carrying out his inspections: a cavernous hangar. The skeletal hull of an incomplete frigate hung overhead, silent and bereft of the workers usually tasked with assembling it.​

​

Instead, the only occupants were Lord Rusk and a fireteam of scuffed, weary stormtroopers. The snivvian was inspecting a twitching corpse that still had smoke curling out of its eye-sockets.​

​

"Apology accepted, foreman," he grunted, and wiped his nose with a sleeve. A pair of stormtroopers took the unfortunate foreman by the arms and dragged him off.​

​

His snout twitched at the approach of Tydeus Just a cursory sniff. Habitual. "Well, well. If it isn't the angry boy who didn't quite die."​

​

It twitched again. Now out of suspicion. Featureless black eyes scanned the accompanying retinue.​

​

"You brought friends. More than..." Rusk trailed off and his snout wrinkled again, eyes swept to the pantoran apprentice who was smiling absently next to Kasmion Duum. "Muriel, who is that fat man?"​

Attn: Tydeus of Tion Kasmion Duum​

 

[Antipater]

YAGA MINOR - ORBITAL SHIPYARDS
SEGMENT 1​

"I am programmed to attend to the welfare of all thinking organisms," Antipater replied flatly. "By force, if necessary."

He took the lead, and they departed the receiving bay. If there was one thing to be said about dark troopers, it was that they were ridiculously noisy: a cacophony of stomping metal feet and humming power generators.

There were no alarms or blaring klaxons to drown it out. Perhaps there would be, soon, but nobody missed those two workers for the time being.

Four of Antipater's droids went left, leaving the two moffs and two accessories to go right. The halls which stretched ahead of them were worn with terrible age. It had been some decades now since any government with the means of refurbishing these shipyards had controlled Yaga Minor.

"Tydeus insisted he be deployed alone. I suspect he will perform adequately. If not, he is eminently replaceable." Kainate genocides, like inclement weather, could be predicted reliably with the correct data-sets. Harvesting Force-bitten, traumatized survivors was less trivial, but still possible. "I would be more concerned with whether your sorcerer's ways are a match for the tribunal's."

They came upon a monorail station. The tracks were vacant, of course. These had been relegated to official and emergency use, commensurate with how expensive they were to run. Very frugal - but for two moffs, exceptions had to be made.

A scomplink extended from Antipater's wrist, which he inserted into a nearby control panel. Data scrolled across his vision. Warnings and exceptions. Irrelevant. The rail shuddered with power as Antipater called the train to them.

"I am detecting passengers aboard the railcrawler I have commandeered. Prepare yourself."

Attn: Orestyn Carda​

 

[Tydeus of Tion]

"One of my vassals," Tydeus said, unable to contain the anger that flickered in him at Rusk's jibe. "And potentially now one of yours - if our deal holds."

The defiance in his eyes had the benefit of drawing back the Sith's attention. Briefly. Tydeus tried to ignore that frown on the apprentice Muriel's face as the Pantoran stared at Duum. He pushed it aside, focused inward, on the smoldering embers of a fury that never quite went out. A storm that never quelled. The echoes of so many of his people, trapped within him. They told him it was a Wound in the Force. Said it would destroy him eventually.

He did not care.

All that mattered was every footstep forward. Every Kainate warlord struck down. Every false idol toppled. Until he could at last stand before Carnifex, that tyrant's line extinguished, and end him once and for all. If Rusk helped him to achieve such an end, then so be it.

He would bend the knee. He had before Empyrean, one far greater than this aspirant to power. What was one more?

"Are you true to your word, Lord Rusk? My allegiance for ships to use against the Kainate?"

Calculations and distrust became more and more evident on the Sith's features, alien as they were. The Sith had detected something amiss. It would only be a matter of time b-

A million tortured souls inside you? That must feel a w f u l. Said the voice suddenly in his mind. Why don't you kill your - what did you call them? Vassals? As a gesture of loyalty. To me. Go on, angry boy. Go kill them for me.

The sudden mental pressure on his psyche caused Tydeus' eyes to roll back into his head and he swayed where he stood as foreign hands picked apart at his fears and anxieties before finding and tugging on his rage.

How many of those behind him had served in Sith forces? Veterans of many conflicts. Mercenaries. Had they been there that day, aboard Sith vessels? Had they been there the day he lost everything? He had never asked. How could he have never asked?

The boy stumbled backward under the mental assault, blinking rapidly, shaking his head. His vision hazed at the edges and he stared down at his hands, the fingers splaying and trembling. The voices in his soul cried out for vengeance.

Kasmion Duum | Inland Empire

 

[Kasmion Duum]

The apprentice brought them to where Lord Rusk was carrying out his inspections: a cavernous hangar. The skeletal hull of an incomplete frigate hung overhead, silent and bereft of the workers usually tasked with assembling it.

Instead, the only occupants were Lord Rusk and a fireteam of scuffed, weary stormtroopers.

eyes swept to the pantoran apprentice who was smiling absently next to Kasmion Duum. "Muriel, who is that fat man?"

"One of my vassals," Tydeus said, unable to contain the anger that flickered in him at Rusk's jibe. "And potentially now one of yours - if our deal holds."

The boy stumbled backward under the mental assault, blinking rapidly, shaking his head. His vision hazed at the edges and he stared down at his hands, the fingers splaying and trembling.

Muriel's confusion struggled against the comfortable familiarity with which Kasmion had gifted him. Rather than mitigate that, attempt to counter the obvious mental assault on Tydeus, or lower himself to petty indignation, Kasmion took the simplest approach.

A whisper much like the Snivvian's voice, tainted with familiarity and fear, entered the minds of those poor tired stormtroopers still amped up from killing the foreman. The boy's being attacked! Can't you see them on the claw gantries? Fire, you fools!

A decent portion of the stormtroopers diligently opened fire on the key connectors holding the half-constructed frigate overhead of everyone. Joyfully, the frigate entered the warm embrace of gravity.

 

[Inland Empire]

"Are you true to your word, Lord Rusk? My allegiance for ships to use against the Kainate?"

"My word?" Rusk issued a deep, throaty chortle. The fat man was forgotten - presence eclipsed by the opportunity to engage in gloating cruelty. "Why would I give you anything when I can do this?"

Rusk's mind came crashing into Tydeus' own. There was no subtlety to it. Art and elegance were for people who lacked raw power. Rusk dredged up every discomfort and misery and shock of horror he could find and brought it bubbling back to the surface. He didn't have to dig deep.

The sudden mental pressure on his psyche caused Tydeus' eyes to roll back into his head and he swayed where he stood as foreign hands picked apart at his fears and anxieties before finding and tugging on his rage.

His influence spidered out from Tydeus and lashed onto his cohorts. They were all of a mind, bound together in that spiritual way all survivors were. It was trivial to ride those bonds from one to another, and they joined their leader in the dizzying pain, clutching their heads and stumbling this way and that.

The boy stumbled backward under the mental assault, blinking rapidly, shaking his head. His vision hazed at the edges and he stared down at his hands, the fingers splaying and trembling. The voices in his soul cried out for vengeance.

Rusk tapped the tips of his fingers together gleefully as he observed the pitiful struggle of smaller creatures. And then he once again noticed Kasmion still standing there, unscathed by virtue of having very little, if anything, to do with Tydeus. Practical strangers to one another.

His brow furrowed. "Muriel, would you…"

A decent portion of the stormtroopers diligently opened fire on the key connectors holding the half-constructed frigate overhead of everyone. Joyfully, the frigate entered the warm embrace of gravity.

"Stop! Idiots!" Rusk bellowed and swiped at the air. Stormtroopers ragdolled this way and that, spinning away like toy soldiers knocked aside.

Too late. The frigate groaned and twisted as the clamps released it. Its skeleton could not support itself, and it tore apart into a few large segments. The hangar was showered with small debris and a few unfortunates were crushed entirely.

Worse, certain elements of that frigate had been assembled ahead of schedule. A natural consequence of the disregard for safety that usually came with Sith rule.

The half-installed engines promptly exploded.

---​

Rusk emerged from the chaos and conflagration looking miraculously - perhaps suspiciously - unscathed, rubbing one shoulder with an aggrieved expression. "Muriel, where are those fucking protectors?"

There was no answer. Muriel was dead or gone in all the excitement.

Rusk huffed. He selected four of the surviving Sons of Tion at random, adjusting their perceptions to replace Kasmion and Tydeus with some hated enemy or another.

Combat knives were ripped from sheathes. Two went sprinting for the keshiri, and two for Tydeus, eyes glossed over with frenzy.

Attn: Tydeus of Tion Kasmion Duum​

 

[Orestyn Carda]

"I would be more concerned with whether your sorcerer's ways are a match for the tribunal's."

Orestyn didn't even dignify that with an eyeroll.

In his youth he had been trained to be a Fel Knight under the Imperator's successor. For the longest time the New Imperial Order had been extremely discriminatory against the Force. Presumably because of the mess the Sith made at every turn. But with Tavlar gone a new order arose, one can hardly discriminate against the Force when you were a Forcer yourself.

But by the time his training was done, so was the Imperial Order.

Some might think that it proved the old points correctly. The moment a Forcer came into power, the nation ate itself, but Orestyn had never believed in such rubbish.

The Empire had fallen because it became decadent. It rewarded the wrong people, it slipped into the oligarchy that defined every single Sith enterprise from the very start on Korriban to now.

"I am detecting passengers aboard the railcrawler I have commandeered. Prepare yourself."

He turned towards the railcrawler. "This should be amusing." And as the railcrawler's doors slid open they revealed the statuesque shapes of the Sith Sovereign Protectors. Refugees of the Dark Empire's destruction. They were the elite of the elite. Tasked with protecting the Dark Lord himself against any and all threats. Each and every one of them was fury incarnated and could stand alone against fully trained Jedi Knights. Together they were an army on its own.

But they expected a warm welcome and celebrations.

Instead they were greeted by Orestyn Carda's stretched out hands. They could not even grab for their lightsabers or duck for cover. Instead a storm of lightning met them and burned through them. The first row was burned to a crisp, the others had natural cover from those bodies and began to rise up but in the chaos Orestyn made a fist and the Force took them. Slamming them up into the ceiling of the railcrawler.

"Feel free to assist at any time, Moff Antipater." He said clinically as he surveyed the scene and waited for any potential retaliation, if one of them got lucky.

Antipater Tydeus of Tion Kasmion Duum

 

[Tydeus of Tion]

Things happened very quickly as mental claws raked across his brain.

The sound of blasterfire.

An explosion.

His body sent flying backward by the shockwave.

Ears ringing, Tydeus picked himself up off the deck. He felt something wet and warm leaking from one ear, but the voice in his mind was gone.

Distracted.

The boy turned, looked around. Where was Kasmion? He saw his Sons struggling to recover, but more than a few were not rising.

Suddenly, two of his own drew daggers and raced toward him, blind fury in their eyes. Tydeus hissed through his teeth as he ducked a slash and a kick, backpedaling. Rusk was manipulating their minds, Tydeus was sure of it. He'd felt the same effects not moments earlier. Drawing on his Teras Kasi training, the boy moved with shocking speed, caught an outstretched arm, snapped it with a downward elbow, leaving the man to drop to the ground with a scream. The second came forward, the boy feinted high with a jab, then lashed out in an oblique kick to the thigh, hyperextending the knee as he pushed through and felt the give of an ACL tearing. The Son stumbled. Tydeus put him down with a blow to the jaw.

Only then did Tydeus draw his lightsaber, a silver-embellished thing from Antipater's vaults, and activate it with a snap-hiss. He'd found a crystal for the blade after his time on Empyrean's worldship, prior to his imprisonment in carbonite. The blade glowed white, like that of the fallen Imperial knight who had once wielded it. Beautiful. Deadly. But still no more than a tool.

A tool he would use to cut down this Sith.

Tydeus looked for Kasmion in the chaos. Together they stood a chance.

Kasmion Duum | Inland Empire

 

[Kasmion Duum]

Combat knives were ripped from sheathes. Two went sprinting for the keshiri, and two for Tydeus, eyes glossed over with frenzy.

Tydeus looked for Kasmion in the chaos. Together they stood a chance.

Kasmion, despite the chaos, the frigate debris, the smoke, the generally obstructive ambiance, knew himself to be hard to miss. Easiest target in any given room. Bruised and battered, he straightened up from Muriel's hand, which protruded from under a chunk of frigate, and weighed the Pantoran's lightsaber in an evaluative kind of way.

Not a weapon with which he had any skill. He wasn't a Jedi, Sith, Dark Jedi, or any of their spinoffs, and never had been. The tradition in which he'd learned the Force was the Shamers.

He shouted then — just bellowed at the two men sprinting towards him — and the words and directives he used were not appropriate for this venue. And they faltered, yes they did, as their hatred for however they saw him was challenged by a vertiginous self-loathing.

Rusk's directive won out, of course. But when Kasmion whipped that lightsaber simply and vigorously through both men, they died distracted and with something like relief.

 

[Antipater]

YAGA MINOR - ORBITAL SHIPYARDS
SEGMENT 1​

The railcrawler doors opened. Antipater had barely enough time to behold the presence of the Sith Sovereign Protectors - along with some common acolytes - before Carda saturated the area with a storm of lightning.

Olfactory sensors identified the scent of cooking flesh. Many were killed quite quickly. For the survivors, Carda gestured and pinned them to the railcrawler's ceiling. Screams, grunts, moans - all the conceivable sounds of pain and rage and confusion came from that railcar.

"Feel free to assist at any time, Moff Antipater."

"I have deactivated the relevant safety protocols."

The railcrawler suddenly lurched, reversing back in the direction it had come, picking up dangerous speed as it traveled further and further down the ringed shipyards.

After several long moments, a distant explosion could be heard, then felt in a faint tremor. The system Antipater had interfaced with registered a collision about a millisecond beforehand. "Catastrophic" was the word it used.

Thus passes the glory. Antipater retracted his scomplink. "It seems we will be walking."

Attn: Orestyn Carda​

 

[Inland Empire]

Tydeus looked for Kasmion, but where he thought Kasmion had been standing, he found only Kaine Zambrano. Darth Carnifex. And Darth Carnifex presently cut down two of Tydeus' men with a spirited flick of a lightsaber. Casual. Trivial. Just like the real thing.​

​

Rusk's illusions could not have killed those two retainers, but they could replace a pantoran with an epicanthix after a fashion. Muriel's lightsaber had already been red, so that didn't even need to change.​

​

Some of the details were wrong. The Sith Lord had only a goatee which itself was too long. His iconic forehead tattoo was rotated by some degrees so that it looked more like a compass rose than the emblem of the Sith religion.​

​

It was not Rusk's finest work. He had never been in the same sector as Carnifex - but then again, neither had his victim. More relevant was that the snivvian was mildly panicking. Where were his sovereign protectors?​

​

"Well, Tydeus?" the illusory Carnifex bellowed. "Here I am. Strike me down."​

​

For his part, Rusk was standing there, brow furrowed, hands held in front of him, fingers twitching as he worked his illusions on the boy from Tion.​

Attn: Tydeus of Tion | Kasmion Duum​

 

[Tydeus of Tion]

The dismembered bodies of two Sons of Tion lay at the feet of the Tyrant of Panatha.

No. Not him. Not here. Not now.

I’m not ready.

Panic welled in Tydeus. Panic and memories of how his last clash against one of Kaine’s lieutenants left him broken and barely breathing.

How could Carnifex be here? And why?

There he stood, a bulwark of a man clad in the dull bronze of alchemized armor. His head bare. His features seared into Tydeus’ cortex. How many hours had Tydeus spent reviewing combat footage of the Epicanthix Warlord? Studying his every move. Planning his vengeance against the one who stood before him now. This Carnifex. This butcher. This object of all his misery made manifest.

So it was that rather than the tattoo or the speech pattern, it was the way Carnifex held his lightsaber that unraveled the fantasy.

Carnifex had incorporated almost every lightsaber form into his own hybridized style, though he primarily relied on Djem So and Juyo to take advantage of his natural strength and imposing stature to dominate fights.

The simplest of things. Just the way he held the lightsaber, how his fingers sat and where - like a club more than a sword hilt. How he moved. Deadly results, but none of the oppressive strength and graceful lethargy of the Epicanthix Warlord.

Tydeus ground his teeth and his body shuddered with the adrenal urge to commit violence.

“You’re not him,” he spat, then rammed home the gates of his mind like blast doors slamming shut, seeking to repel Rusk from his thoughts as his eyes sought and found the Snivvian - somehow alive and untouched by the conflagration of the ship’s smoldering wreckage whose fumes now occluded the bay, wreathing them all in a haze of smoke.

Reaching out in the Force, Tydeus yanked on a piece of twisted durasteel debris from the ship the size of his forearm and sent it hurtling toward Rusk.

Kasmion Duum Inland Empire

 

[Kasmion Duum]

Inland Empire Tydeus of Tion

Something was happening and Kasmion couldn't put his finger on it. Tydeus' 'you're not him' elucidated that wonderfully, eventually. Until that happened, Kasmion was left with breathing room, in which he hacked up a lung (smoke) and also strategized a little bit.

When Tydeus hucked the chunk of debris at Rusk, Kasmion thought back to how uninjured and, in fact, unbothered Rusk had looked after the ship crash. That suggested two possibilities. Rusk might have technological or Force shields, or he might be projecting an illusion of himself to draw fire. It hadn't so much as flickered while Rusk was disguising Kasmion as someone Tydeus hated, which made possibility Aurek more likely than Besh. Either way, the durasteel chunk's reception would be enlightening.

Kasmion wiped damp off his mouth, deactivated the lightsaber - a clumsy, random thing - and attempted to send a thought into Rusk's mind, just a little barely-verbal whisper.

They don't respect me. They need to see what a Sith Lord can really do.