I was there when it was written

[Ashin Varanin]

There's a meeting, a big one. I should be in there; I can't help but feel it. I know I'm not equipped for it, but I remember being equipped for it. I remember being more than I was. I remember power.

There's a seat on the board with my name on it, one among many. I'm lucky they let me stay on, former CEO that I more or less am -- it wasn't me, but I remember it. I think it's because of the Merrills, it's because when the founders walked, the Board vowed they wouldn't let another one go. I've lost my edge, though that was never me, it just looked and sounded like me. It thought like someone ancient. I've got an echo or two of that, too, right there with knowing bits and pieces of a thousand thousand lives. He was a telepath, Olra'en was. Finest in history. The more I dig, the more the memories and personality traits weave themselves in, the more I notice.

There's a story I shouldn't know. Force, it's audacious. And it'd be audacious to think I know who it's about. There's not enough certainty in it for my taste.

The story -- I must have picked it, no, he must have picked it out of a mind somewhere, sometime. If it's about who I think it is...

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The story goes something like this.

There's two women. One's like me -- hungry, scrappy, inventive, dark, no potential for the supernatural. Older than me, mid thirties maybe, good woman, bound to a good man whether he knows it or not. There's another woman, just as inventive, just as scrappy, but petty. Vindictive. Powerful. Needy. That man's enemy.

There came a time when that older woman got pressed a little too hard, and she gave in. And once the younger was spent, satiated, taken past where she thought she could go, the older one just...talked at her.

For the life of me I can't remember what she told her. I'd kill to remember that. It was soul-shattering plainspoken truth, it was emotional assassination of someone who could kill her with a snap of her fingers. And she left that Sith Master crying and naked and walked away.

No Force. No leverage. No tricks. Just insight.

I'd kill to remember, and I'd kill to have a mind like that for what I want to do. What I want to be.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

I've got pieces of brilliance in me, but I'm afraid. Velok's echo said it best. I'm low-wattage hardware with high-end software thrown in. This can't end well. I'm going to burn.

Not every little thing is an advantage. Life doesn't work that way. (So says what I was.)

But Circe Savan is right, says the Velok part of me. The Je'gan part of me. Circe Savan is right. Everything really is an opportunity.

For example, I'm a minor board member, I'm not in the meeting, it's not a board thing. I'm fading away to insignificance, a CEO who had a few months of competence and then suffered a rapid descent into obscurity after some kind of traumatic event on Rudrig. I'm not in there, and there's an awful lot of opportunities.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

I was a thief. That, as much as 'the Force is weak with this one', got me the AgriCorps slot that I later washed out of. I learned to steal when I learned to run, and that's no exaggeration, that's life on Metellos. The Republic never took a shot at helping there, not really, though maybe I heard wrong. I can't remember. My other selves believed the Republic never helped.

A kernel of an idea takes form. I could bring the One Sith everything -- everything -- in exchange for the power to fix my little world of a trillion beggars. The Velok part of me rumbles in amusement; the Je'gan part of me approves too, because it's a move that lends itself to options.

I'm fairly positive that I could make those contacts without stepping too far afield.

The station's docking bay is huge and busy, all the personal craft of the meeting's dignitaries. I'm a board member; my clearance is high.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Holocams go static when I look at them; I can't see that from here, of course, but I know what's happening, though I didn't mean to do it. It's like my subconscious is a grab bag of utility powers that I don't know I have. So the holocams go on the fritz, both in the hangar and in the security systems of the ship I'm looking at.

It's a gorgeous yacht, Naboo-built I think. Inside, there's crew, but not many, and loud enough that I fit right into cracks before they can bear down on me. Part of me knows how to sneak in a Metellos-gutterrat sort of way; another part of me is very, very comfortable picking the right moments to move, shifting my feet just so, tracking sightlines. I have Je'gan Olra'en to thank for that. He borrowed me, but he didn't leave me empty.

This yacht belongs to a biotech exec from Shri-Tal. The private hold is an arboretum, a small one. A dart flower's spikes scratch its glasteel cage; I had no idea Dromund Kaas dart flowers grew so far afield. There's a couple of masterfully tended vine-silk plants-

And a humble display case full of black orchids.

The sight sets me on fire. I'm burning, I swear it. Every part of me knows what those are, what they represent, what they're for, what they're worth.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

I've got a miniature hydrospanner I palmed from an EDY black room. The display case yields to me like a flower opening, and my gloves don't leave a mark. They're shell spider silk -- stop a vibroblade, turn blasterfire -- same as the rest of what I'm wearing. The orchids are in a long, bolted-down tray, and the bolt heads are under the dirt, with the corresponding nuts inside the base of the platform. There'll be no getting out the tray with the dirt, there'll be no getting out the flowers without flattening them, which means there's slim chance of getting the semi-sentient Murakami out alive. I probe them, still tired from the holocam staticfest, and feel a cold but naive regard.

I don't have a lightsabre, and I'm willing to bet the base is alarmed. Alarms might be going off elsewhere from my disassembly of the glasteel case, probably the cockpit of the landed yacht I'm in.

There'll be no possible explanation.

I rip the Murakami orchids from their soil and stuff them inside my shirt, against my belly and ribs. Might be my imagination that they burn a little.

See, they don't like it much.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

A guard appears at the door, he goes for his stungun, and all I can do is snatch up the nearest weapon. You'd think I would go for a gardening tool from one of the cabinets, but what I snare, in a grip so expert it stuns me, is a Dromund Kaas dart flower. It's a dormant sprout, not under glasteel, but I hold it just right with its roots dangling there. Dart flowers, too, are semi-sentient. This one decides to wail, but not with sound -- with violence. Spikes punch through the guard's face, flower recoils in my hands, dirt all over the floor.

The flower sags; they'll re-pot it, so I drop it and move on. The black orchids hiss against my skin, in sympathy maybe. I'm already moving, hopping over the downed guard. My bootheels catch blood and I tumble, but if there's one thing the Jedi taught me it's how to fall down. I'm up again with a roll that's only a little bit rusty, and out the yacht before the rest of the crew catches up.

Shouts rise behind me, but I'm already fuzzing holocams like mad, darting between ships. I strip off my mask and hood between a Rassilon and an Exalt, I tuck them into my belt, my thin coat reverses white and I go from skulker to shipsuited board member. I still my heart just enough, and rejoin the crowd.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"The hell are you doing, lady? Think a reversible jacket's the first we've seen?"

There's a hand at my elbow, guards from the yacht, must have seen me down a hall on my way out. Guess they were fast. I go to shake loose my elbow, but they're not letting me. I'm afraid. The grip vanishes; he clenches his fist like his hand's cold all of a sudden. "I'm Selka Ventus, I'm on the Silk board. Let go of me." Last bit's a formality, just something you say, though I've already gotten him to let go. "What's this about?"

"The hell," he repeats, jaw out. "You were on Lady Anscome's ship just now."

"Which one?" I say after just long enough that it's not a lie's too-quick response. See, the other parts of me, they know lying very well, and I think I've just gotten good at it. The guards exchange glances. They're sure of what they saw, but this is a Silk port.

Then my guards arrive, and it's a whole other conversation, but I'm merciful as I bail.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

I find Lady Anscome just leaving the meeting I wasn't in. By now I've cleaned the blood off my boot -- and you'd better believe I'm glad the guards of both sides missed that. That was sloppy. High-end software on low-end hardware. That was the kind of mistake that ends everything. I fuzzed the cams around where I changed, but I stop that as soon as possible. If a rolling fault lasts too long, the prime scrutiny gets significant.

"Lady Anscome?"

"Miss Ventus. Lovely to finally meet you in person."

We're at a side passage, a short one with a window that looks out over Mon Calamari. She's two, three times my age. What am I doing here?

I spell it out the right way. How a friend of mine, a collector, has asked me for a no-face introduction to Anscome in hopes of picking up some rare flora samples. Rave Merrill will pay an awful lot for the orchids currently languishing in stasis aboard my own ship, but Rave's an excuse right now. An excuse to get a little farther into Anscome's good graces.

One tug at a string. One raindrop raises the sea. And the Anscome family doesn't just do biotech.

They also have great taste in space stations.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

That's the tuber. When Anscome takes the call, right there in front of me, that's the stick. Her eyes go wide, then narrow, lock in on me like banned missiles. She hangs up, folds her arms under her breasts. "What do you want?"

She knows I have the orchids. Flowers of mass destruction. Death by Republic censure, by Jedi, by pious corporate rivals. She's likely planning to tip someone off that I have them, regardless of whether she gets caught in the area of effect. She's that irate.

"I want to offer you a deal. An option. An opportunity to get in on the ground floor."

"Not interested."

"You'll get your flowers back, minus one for my corsage."

"Not interested."

"You'll get to know a secret of mine, same as one of yours." I lean in close, one hand against the wall over her shoulder, and I just barely breathe it into her ear.

She starts to shake, I mean straight up shivering. She never blinks. And I just press myself against her and feel it, listening to her fear.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

I get a taste of her fear when I take a bite of her, like spice on good food. Just a nibble, all I can do, she'll never feel more than weak -- and she's already trembling hard enough to feel it in the morning. The little bit I got off the guard was more a whiff than anything.

I put the hungers away, though I've got several, and push back away from Lady Anscome. She looks like she's aged ten years in two minutes, in the haggard kind of sense, nothing to do with what I did to her. Everything to do with what I said, whispered in her ear.

"I'll call you," I say, and I leave before she realizes she doesn't want to have to come up with a response. Tough work, balancing dignity's shreds with staying alive. And she knows that I'll kill her if she takes this too far, so that's something.

I'm a being of my word. As soon as I'm back, I send her all the black orchids but one.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Don't tell me you know how things should be -- this is what I say to them in my head -- don't tell me what can and can't be done, don't tell me what consequences you proscribe for my acts. Don't look down on me.

Because I'll remember, just like I remember two hundred years of Velok and seven hundred of Je'gan: Imperfectly, but the gist is there, the essence, the emotion, the motivation.

I'll remember sooner or later. I will. I'll remember what I am, and what you all were to me.