L A E K I ATHE OUTER RIM
The boy looked out into space and saw a swarm moving in the darkness.
Worker bees shuttled through veritable clouds of droids that were slowly piecing together a gargantuan husk. It was the frame of one of Corellia Digital's star defenders.
This was, after all, where Corellia Digital's military defense contracting had started. Expanding into orbit of the planet Laekia, it was here that the company assembled its battle droids and other items that it didn't want constructed under the public scrutiny of the Core. Corellia was a great location for business, but it offered very little privacy.
If nothing else, the Corellian Confederacy and CorSec were both keeping tabs on what the company was doing. Which was to be expected. Sor-Jan had dealt with the same when the Galactic Alliance, the Metal Lords, and even the One Sith had laid claim for the Five Brothers.
Turning away from the large viewport, the gangly child made his way over to the table where his breakfast was growing cold. A half eaten poptart and some blue milk rested beside a datapad that held the current newsfeed.
The article on display had been the cause for why the boy had walked away from his meal. The news of what had happened on Mandalore made him lose his appetite.
Sor-Jan knew Mandalore. He knew Mandalore and the people of Mandalore at what had been, perhaps, their darkest hour. And he had worked to try and lift the Mandalorians from the ashes, even as some among them had threatened him for the aid that he had offered. Now, it seemed that the Sith Empire had done to Mandalore what it had to Voss, to Mon Cala, to any number of worlds. Sor-Jan wouldn't claim to know the exact count. The One Sith had been a monster. The Primeval had been a monster. Now, the Sith Empire festered in the wounds left behind by both of those evils.
And the Sith were hardly the only ones carving out their own fiefdom. The Confederacy had laid claim to Omwat, while some kind of political debate over the Confederate claims to Eriadu had popped up in the news feeds regarding a fleet that had amassed in the system there. It seemed as though a voice had expressed dissatisfaction with the government of Geonosis' control. And that voice had been summarily silenced. And whatever had happened on Kabal remained something of a mystery.
An Imperial Remnant had propped itself up in the Core, forcing worlds to bend to its way of life. Only to disappear and leave those same worlds lurching inside a political power vacuum that continued the chaotic cycle of instability that undermined every effort at instilling real change.
The Coalition was continuing the grand tradition of convincing worlds to join out of a strength in numbers argument. Which, on Parmathe appeared to have carried the day.
Which was the problem, not the solution.
Planets were pressured to ally themselves with the geo-political superpowers. The briefly lived Galactic Empires of whatever stripe, name, creed, or branding that they might assign themselves. The end result seemed to be the same. Planets that surrendered the right to govern themselves freely.
Perhaps the exchange was couched in diplomatic niceties. Or perhaps the aggressive negotiations took place at the end of a gun. Was there really a difference? The Silver Jedi had effected a blood-less transfer of political power when they had moved their capital from Voss to Kashyyyk. But what had been the result?
The Voss now served the Sith Emperor and the Wookies of Kashyyyk had their way of life threatened purely by association with an organization whose numbers featured very few Kashyyyk denizens.
Meanwhile, it seemed that the Jedi had involved themselves in the purely internal affairs of Hapes' politics. How convenient, then, that the government supported by the Silver Jedi intervention then became just another notch on the Silver Jedi's belt. And for what? What was any of this if not expansion for expansion's sake.
What do the powerful want? More power.
Sith. Jedi.
They were more alike than they were different. In his youth, the Anzat would have professed to have believed differently. Now, whether age or experience, he found himself jaded to the very ideals he had once pledged himself toward.
The Republic was well and dead. Democracy had died when Palapatine had declared the New Order. The fires of the civil liberties and freedoms that had once existed were now the enemy destroyed by a pervasive colonial mindset that seemed to view the worlds of the galaxy as pawns on some grand chess board.
For more than sixty years, Sor-Jan had been a Jedi Knight. Commander of the Republic Judicial Forces that had responded to the Yinchorri Uprising. General of the Grand Army of the Galactic Republic that had fought their way through the Clone Wars. Master of the Holy Order of Jedi Knights. And right now, he was frustrated by how utterly powerless he had become.
Giant armies swarmed around planets, who were forced to capitulate. Made to believe that they had to surrender their inherent rights to self governance for the collective good... or just because the other guy had a larger gun. And what could he do about it?
Once, Sor-Jan had served as an ambassador for the Alliance. Taken the rote speech and flimsy excuse to Crystan V about why joining the Alliance was better than falling to the advance of the First Order.
Now both the First Order and the Alliance were gone, and what good had any of what Sor-Jan had said been for the people of Crystan V who had always simply been caught in the middle of two warring gods, each convinced of their own righteousness?
It was a cycle of lies in which truth became treason.
He had no idea what he could do about any of it, but he had an idea of someone who might. After all, information was Sor-Jan's business. Such as information about a political dissident group that had been massing in the Outer Rim. A place that the dark net had dubbed Scintillia.
So he'd extended an offer.
The only question was, would she accept the invitation to coffee?
[member="Scherezade deWinter"]
