Judgment Day: Butcher Of Korriban

[Connor Harrison]

Continued from 'The Finale'
http://starwarsrp.net/topic/98875-the-finale-butcher-of-korriban/page-1​

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piLwaJKQGkA

The verdict was life imprisonment.

For the death of 10,000 plus, destruction of a city, ridicule of an Order and the lack of care for those in it, that was the life ahead for Charzon Loulan. Life in prison. The Silver Jedi would begin to pick up the pieces of the destruction left behind from this nightmare, as things would never be the same again.

The Prism in Wild Space was agreed to be the prison where she would spend the rest of her days surrounded by electrical storms and hidden by a moon in a prison overseen by Jedi. She would have nothing. Nothing to live for. Nothing to fear for.

But first, a diversion was required. Not by Thurion, or Charzon, but by Jedi Master Connor Harrison, charged with taking the Butcher of Korriban to the Prism. He wanted her to see one last time the result of her actions and understand just what a life sentence really meant.

Judgment day was here.​

​

- - - - - - - - - -
PART IV
Life Means Life​

Korriban
Horuset System​

The Prism was the destination, and prison was Charzon’s final destination.

But not before she saw what she had done first hand. The Council members had seen the results of her bombing raid, as had Sith and Mandalorians and eyes of the galaxy from news feeds and social media. It had been a month or so, maybe less, since it happened? Time had bled into one recently, and Connor wasn’t keeping track.

The city clean-up had been completed, just, and the re-build continued. New development and new life was going to be injected back into the city, but many buildings still stood ready to be demolished or rebuilt.

The small craft Connor used from Voss was two-man, and it was built for speed. Get to the Prism, get Charzon in, and get back, and waste no time in the process. But Connor had left Voss and maintained a course for Korriban.

Face set, he looked into the void of space, bleak and lifeless, as Charzon sat shackled beside him.

”I think you’ll enjoy this, Loulan. You made quite an impact on the whole galaxy with your little bombing campaign.”

[member="Charzon Loulan"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

When her time on remand ended, her ditanium balls attached to her feet were removed. Now that her trial ended, she was put these ditanium balls back, as well as re-shackled. Her post-sentence declaration was a little unorthodox: she might have been a psychopath, she might have been a butcher, but at least she acknowledged that the Silver Jedi was losing money. Her crimes all end here. To think that this one miscalculation cost 10-15,000 lives and the Engineering Division somehow allowed me in a command position. The Engineering Division of the Silver Jedi Navy WILL be questioned about just how I was able to be placed in command of the Mateus, she thought. All the explanations they will provide will revolve around my technical expertise of starships and how I was the lead in the design team that built it. But the field of ruins... that was horrible, if what they say about it is accurate. That was her horribleness or, at best, inconsistency as a commander, that was her miscalculation, and it resulted in a pile of bodies and a pile of rubble all over Korriban City. That was the cost of firing several rounds of a 380mm-caliber hypervelocity cannon, and other turbolasers, at Korriban City in orbital bombardment.

[member="Connor Harrison"]

 

[Connor Harrison]

Connor took the ship into the orbit of Korriban, flying low and keeping up the speed, and headed for the Ground Zero coordinates.

He looked over to her, suspicious why she was so quiet.

”Are you not speaking to me now? Without a canon under your fingertips can you not communicate?”

Shaking his head, he flipped a switch to slow the ship and headed out to the site, the orange and brown terrain passing below, and soon the Valley.

”Why did you do it. What made you think this would be a good thing? Did you want to hurt them. To harm them all, regardless?”

[member="Charzon Loulan"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Zombies. I was afraid the zombification process would have affected the civilians. I knew it wouldn't have saved me in court, so I didn't say it back then. There was nothing I could have said that could have absolved me or reduced the amount of guilt"

Charzon tried a lot harder to think of the consequences more than of the reasons why the crime occurred, let alone why she was placed in a position to commit said crimes in the first place. After the sentence was handed down, she couldn't help but think, at the time, of the financial consequences of her act on the Silver Jedi budget. The main source of revenue, pre-Korriban, has always been donations. But post-Korriban, donations no longer cover the budget as it used to, and to her eyes, a six-bracket corporate taxation plan involving Jedi-owned businesses headquartered in SJ space was the solution, and the brackets were based on the size of the corporations being taxed. For sure she didn't want the Silver Jedi to be taking an unduly high amount of loans, but she knew that Jedi tempted to commit tax evasion often get close to the dark side, hence why she warned about it. She always found Jedi to be a little clueless when it came to public finances. She knew not whether the Heavenshields would accept or reject the taxation plan but what was for sure was that she wouldn't live to see the plan come to fruition, and Ringovinda StarYards wouldn't be subject to it until Ringo Vinda was back into the SJ fold. But she was compelled to think about how this crime could have been avoided, or how she was placed in command.

"The only reason why I was somehow placed in a command position was that I was the lead designer of the ship involved in the crime and that, for this reason, the Engineering Division of the Silver Jedi Navy somehow thought that, since I knew the ins and outs of that ship, I would be a good fit to command the prototype in operational service"

[member="Connor Harrison"]

 

[Connor Harrison]

Connor listened as he took the ship down slower and hovered behind a broken building, bringing it down gently kicking up swirls of orange soil and rocks, letting the skeleton of the bombed building shadow them from any wandering Sith in the area.

”There are more alternative to bombing a city to get rid of zombies. Did you not think of anything beyond that? The ones caught up in the fight? The effect it’d have on the Order?”

Killing the engine, Connor pushed back the canopy and promptly stood, lifting Charzon by her arm to stand. She was shackled at the wrists; her legs were free.

”You’ve got a lot of thinking time ahead. I just don’t understand why you did it. And you know what? You don’t even look sorry for it or the cracks you’ve made across my Order.”

[member="Charzon Loulan"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"I am paying the price for my inexperience as a naval commander: this is a miscalculation and a deadly one at that, one that caused far too many deaths for the zombies that were killed. My descent into madness was sudden, everyone in the Silver Jedi that actually knew me in person before Korriban happened will tell you that"

That, even though she still managed to blast through the Rogue One Sith's escort screen on their left just a few days after the fact, knowing that someone had to fire the first shot at the Rogue One Sith, and that someone had to make the first step. How Charzon became such a madwoman was a mystery to many: even herself did not know it any more than [member="Connor Harrison"] did. In Charzon's experience, Jedi had little clue about public finances and they always seemed to rely on NFU diplomats for the more economic side of diplomacy.

"However, until Korriban happened, donations were enough to cover the Order's operating costs. Now that donations are sharply down, it gives me the impression that most Jedi, and in particular those in the Silver Jedi Revenue Service, are fiscally incompetent, to the point they do not even acknowledge that the operating expenses of the Order can't be covered anymore. They announced NO measures to get the finances back in order. Oh I assure you that Thurion and Coci have done everything to keep expenditures down, meaning that it's strictly a revenue problem. Unless the Silver Jedi now issue bonds, or anything, I don't see ways other than corporate taxes levied on Jedi-owned corporations to right the financial ship - taxes on individual income are much more unpalatable to the people in Silver Jedi-land and bonds have the disadvantage of bearing costs after said bonds are issued. I always found the Silver Jedi financial structure to be too volatile because it is so dependent on donations. That's why the Confederacy of Independent Systems puts the onus on Force-cults to fund themselves without using public funding, and preferrably with as little use of charity as possible. Unfortunately, I'm aware that business-owning Jedi can fall to the dark side for the purposes of tax evasion if such a plan was enacted"

[member="Connor Harrison"]

 

[Connor Harrison]

The more she talked, the less Connor cared for her or her motives. Was she fuelled by money? Taxes? Numbers? Turning on the ground, he grabbed her arm and pulled her forward, scuffing her feet on the ground to keep up with him.

”I'm getting sick of hearing you talk like I care about profit or tax or money or whatever the hell you think we needed from you. Tax-evasion? Is that your excuse for dissolving 10,000 people in a heartbeat? For our sake?”

Connor kept hold of the prisoner as they started to touch upon the edges of the bombed city. It was ghostly quiet. Their feet crunched over the ground, a low lying mist at their feet.

”Do you think you were funding the Silver Jedi? Do you think you were that important to us? Charzon, we couldn't care less for what you did. We had bigger things to take of other than credits and accounts.”

[member="Charzon Loulan"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Doesn't mean you yourself don't care about credits and accounts on a personal level, that Thurion or Coci don't. Your role contains no financial responsibility over the Order, I'll accept as much. So you have no connection to the Silver Jedi Treasury or its subsidiary, the Silver Jedi Revenue Service. But any hope of recovery for the Silver Jedi will require the finances to be back in order. The needs of the many as I understand it, require that the Order's finances be stabilized. If the Order goes bankrupt, there will be no Order left for you to serve. Perhaps I had but a very limited role in the Order's finances, and that some actual Jedi contributed more money than I did. But I still paid some dues to the Order until Korriban happened"

Clearly Connor had no knowledge whatsoever of what went into the Silver Jedi budget; in fact very few among the Silver Jedi did. At least the [Third] Republic made clear that there were three sources of funding for their Jedi: the investment assets on Tython, public funds and donations. Charzon or Jessica could have taken the command of the Silver Jedi Treasury were it not of Korriban; the Treasury was one of the more unsavory areas of the Silver Jedi power structure - and the SJRS was under its purview. Yet the head of the Treasury reported directly to the Heavenshields. But she knew that the Heavenshields would never have willingly allowed a Padawan to take control of the Treasury at the time, no more than they would today. May the new Treasurer of the Order prove to actually be competent, she thought. As she approaches the edge of the crime scene...

"However tax evasion has nothing to do with the crimes in themselves. This crime was the most boneheaded move I could have done as a naval commander in the circumstances, you may kill me now if you wish. Just make it quick: the residents of Korriban City will probably kill me before you do, if I get too close to the city limits"

[member="Connor Harrison"]

 

[Connor Harrison]

Charzon was getting personal, and hiding her attacks behind talk of finance, and she was evidently fighting back against her captor.

”You caused the Order nothing but pain. You made the galaxy feel nothing but loathing towards everything I stood for and for that, you deserve everything you get. The galaxy wants you dead. The Order wants you dead. You are only alive because the code of the Jedi permits it - but you are nothing but a CRIMINAL. Do you understand me? You have NOTHING left. NOTHING to fight for.”

With a fire in his chest, tightening with ever mounting frustration as to why he was even her, he pulled the Butcher of Korriban up across a half broken stairwell, leading to a large mound of rubble and twisted iron which was still steaming. Connor grabbed the back of her neck and made her look out over the city.

”And this isn't about Thurion or Coci anymore. Don't try drag them into this mess you made.”

The place stank of death.

”Look. Look at it. Tell me one last time WHY you did it to me. To my Order. And make it good,” he said, voice dark and laced with hate, holding the one who caused all of this right in his palm.

[member="Charzon Loulan"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

Charzon was being held by Connor, being asked one last time before as to why, even though she knew that, while she took ownership of the event, and the miscalculation that was at the origin, after Omega happened, she knew she had no opportunity to come to the aid of Korriban City without herself being hunted down trying.

"I'm afraid that there is no explanation whatsoever, that there is no why, beyond it being a miscalculation. As a miscalculation, however, I know it is a miscalculation beyond measure that cost all parties dearly"

The Sith found Charzon's crimes exceptional in scale, and there was no shortage of people among the residents of Korriban City wanting to exact revenge on her. She knew that, for this reason, they'd rather not dally around much longer. Thurion or Coci were already dragged into the mess if only because they allowed her to live as her sentence for these crimes. Now they must assume the financial consequences of these crimes. The head of the Silver Jedi Treasury has been sacked, the Sith Inquisitor leaked that information: the latest issue was released not long after Charzon arrived on Korriban. But, while there were a number of trustworthy Jedi capable of taking over the command of the SJ Revenue Service, or Treasury, Connor has definitely shown to the eyes of the Force that he is unfit for the position. Also that position is reputed to be one of the most difficult to fill among the senior positions of the Silver Jedi bureaucracy, because the Jedi have traditionally been inept with public finances. Oh, sure, the Heavenshields would prefer a member of the Silver Jedi Order in good standing but they would probably want someone with actual expertise of public finances, so it was likely the position would fall to a NFU. Jessica would have been their first choice in that situation if not of her rather unfair excommunication; the latter was excommunicated.

"I would have loved to help the victims at the time but I would have been killed trying, by those very victims, before there could have been a trial in the first place"

[member="Connor Harrison"]

 

[Connor Harrison]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxFR0VIbmyE​

A miscalculation. That’s what all this had been about – a miscalculation.

And for that, a whole Order was targeted by smear campaigns, alliances were fragile and Charzon Loulan was off to jail, leaving the others to clear up her mess. She had paved the way for the Sith Order to rise from this fallout.

Connors grip tightened on the back of her neck as he held her looking out at the ruined city, eyes fixed on her as she spoke about wanting to help, wanting to put right her wrongs and play the victim. His muscles tensed through his body.

He had suffered humiliation at the hands of both Sith and Mando retaliation, and all the while he could do nothing. Restrained by a code while his Order broke down. Seen as weak and powerless. That time was over. Her words grated in his head like a nail down glass and Connor saw it was time to be the expendable asset he always wanted to be.

To sacrifice himself for the greater good.

Without saying a word, his arm snaked around her neck, curled her hair around his fingers with the other, and twisted.

Charzon was dead before she hit the ground

A shiver ran up Connor’s back and he stared out into nothingness for minutes, silence all around him. It felt normal, like a weight had been lifted. Feeling nothing, he grabbed her lapels and dragged the body over to the wall of the building, shackles fixed on her limp wrists still, and sat her up to be discovered in a few hours, days, weeks…he didn’t care. It was a message sent to them all that with her death, it ended here.

Charzon Loulan wouldn’t have survived in prison, and so the roguish Connor Harrison granted her the final right to wander the Korriban ruins until fate caught up with her. Seemed like some vengeful Sith or bounty hunter or Mando or whoever else had gotten to her first and ended the Butcher. That was his story, anyway.

Connor looked back over the city, before turning and hopped down onto the dusty plain below and headed back to his ship, to wait before returning. He would say nothing on the matter, but knowing his life and future had changed forever.

[member="Charzon Loulan"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

It was over in an instant. The Butcher of Korriban was finally dead, right where the crimes that earned her the title happened. To Charzon's eyes, it was nothing but a monumental miscalculation but few others saw it that way. And, since there was no shortage of Korriban City residents wanting to kill her, the Sith now in control of the city could easily blame one of their own for the deed. But now that Charzon was one with the Force, may the Force have mercy on whoever will be blamed for Charzon's death. And the new head of the Silver Jedi Treasury as well. This mess has been ex-pen-sive, exhausting all their contingency funds and then some. Rumors abounded that high-ranking enemies that Sith kill in their own territory would be displayed in a conspicuous location as appropriate for their deeds. This could mean a variety of things but the only certainty was that Charzon's body will stay somewhere in the city for a while, if not in perpetuity. But Connor mustn't dally around for much longer before the Sith discover the lifeless body.

[member="Connor Harrison"]