Sins of the Genius

[Jessica Med-Beq]

Glyss. The one planet in the galaxy where Jessica can truly be herself, where she can confidently harken back to without fear of either Imperial Remnant or other bounty hunters, if only because it was some backwater planet in the galactic northwest. Even so, it was clear enough to the patient that, despite the whole Christophsis affair being successful in achieving one thing, that is, the defeat of the Black Tie Syndicate, the cost was steep, and unbelievably so. Clearly she was still in the bedroom when Catria arrived. But she can't come to terms with the events without first understanding the whole process that led to it even happening. Yet Catria, who was there because she was known and trusted by the patient, witnessed her patient attempt to replay the mental tapes of the problems she is afflicted with in the Force. These were not the most pleasant tapes but until now, the tall patient never "watched" all of them in full. She watches the first of them in chronological order: the formulation of the then-top-secret plan that was to become the Christophsis Campaign.

"What's wrong with you, Your Royal Highness?"

"Ouch, why is it that these thoughts surface so often these days? Coming back to Summer was for Summer's good, and Glyss, all right, but I never told her much about the Black Tie Syndicate other than its defeat on Christophsis caused massive casualties. Sure, knowing her, she would still love me even after telling that, but she's too biased to be of any use in the aftermath" Jessica moaned.

"I can tell that you are attempting to replay the mental tapes in your mind" Catria responded, while her patient's mental tapes are being replayed in her mind for the both of them to watch in the Force. "It's important to play the tapes in full so that I can know what's wrong with you"

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One week after the conquest of Lok. Things were starting to go awry for the Confederacy, in the face of two big diplomatic nightmares, called Ryloth and Stalgasin. She already atoned for the first two, and they were pretty minor in the face of things; plus they happened when she still was a padawan. It appears that the big nightmares are now over, but Cato Neimoidia is still reporting that the Black Tie Syndicate is a threat in the sector.

"Anyone has any plans to defeat the Black Tie Syndicate?" the Neimoidian police commissioner asked. "They are overwhelming the local police force"

"It would be best if the plan is kept classified until the entire operation ends: it shall only be de-classified if necessary to the resolution of the fallout"

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[Jessica Med-Beq]

"That seems to be just one piece of the mental tapes"

"It was just the beginning of the tape; now it will be clear why I never told that even to the shadowport staff, or the Neimoidian getaway pilot that brought me to Cato Neimoidia in the wake of phase 2" Jessica commented after the first mental tape was paused.

The plan being classified has its own set of implications, namely that, under the conditions outlined there, Jessica would not reveal the secrets to anybody that isn't a party of the operation, and even those who are, can't reveal it without exposing themselves to trouble. Oh, of course, abusing the secrets is a serious thing, and they could both imagine the kind of consequences it may have to abuse the secrecy classification system. And Catria knew that professional secret, in a medical context, could be lawfully breached either when the breach can prevent acts of violence, when ordered by the courts to do so, or for public health reporting purposes under exceptional circumstances. The tape would continue being played in their heads, but it was clear here that her patient had some responsibility in the Christophsis Campaign. Exactly how much still was nebulous in her mind at this stage, but then again most of the mental tapes pertain to the plan itself, its execution and the aftermath, and not around the little details of why the plan was a secret, or why Jessica was to be chosen. Her patient's expression becomes much more tired, as if digging in memory was physically taxing, either because doing it was energy-hungry in itself or because of its content.

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Over secure comm systems, the conference would continue and the methods for defeating the Black Tie Syndicate are still being debated. The Neimoidians question why there even were a need for secrets surrounding this operation. The target would not be a secret, and neither should its aims be, nor its methods, not to the Neimoidians that were part of the task force.

"Why must this plan be a secret?"

"I'll tell you in due course: it's because of the operational plan. Someone will need to be imprisoned for this, preferrably not someone that is a known rival of the Black Tie Syndicate. Now, I volunteer for this"

"Why?" the Neimoidian judge gasped, in horror.

"The Neimoidian cartels are known rivals of the Black Tie Syndicate, albeit only as far as Neimoidian space is concerned" the Neimoidian police commissioner commented.

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[Jessica Med-Beq]

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"The crime will have to be perpetrated outside of Confederate space. I'm sorry but since this is for the greater good of many factions, including the Confederacy, might be best if it was in unaligned space"

"Why unaligned space? What does that imply?"

"It means that the usual stuff that would people in my position imprisoned, namely graft, corruption, bribery, extortion, defrauding, moneylaundering, influence peddling, embezzlement, would not suffice: Stalgasin was mostly Herr's doing"

"Why?"

"Non-CIS worlds would have no reason to lay that sort of charges on me: they have no evidence"

"Many other criminals with that sort of crimes on record would be imprisoned in minimum security or perhaps medium security prisons" the Neimoidian judge commented.

"Only a prison break from maximum security would force the Black Tie Syndicate to come in sufficient force for the plan to work. They are classified as a major threat to galactic law and order, larger than anything else short of a major faction"

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At the time the Confederacy was a somewhat ailing faction, what few planets they held were pretty valuable. According to that mental tape, the list of constraints for the target planet was: a planet with a maximum-security prison, but that wasn't by itself primarily used as such (which usually meant a planet with at least some semblance of resources or population), a planet outside aligned space being the main ones. That doesn't answer the question: why Christophsis? (Even though her patient knew that both major criteria were met on Christophsis) What was already known at this point was that a big crime had to be perpetrated, big enough for maximum-security imprisonment. A servant of the royal palace opened the door and found Jessica to be in a strange condition, as if she was a bomb of tears ready to detonate at any moment. Nevertheless, the servant was ready to open the door and get closer to what the local population of Glyss called a princess consort, being completely oblivious to Catria's presence. Yet Catria would unflinchingly be subjected to watching these mental tapes in the Force because her patient willingly opens up to her at this point.

"What is it now, Your Highness?"

"Was there truly no other way to defeat a major galaxy-wide crime syndicate than to force them to commit one big crime? I would assume alternatives would be more akin to counter-insurgency or counter-terrorism but these are usually more protracted in nature. I have no experience in counter-insurgency, however, so please bear with me"

"And neither do I"

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

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"After the debacle of Ryloth, do the Confederate population have enough trust in us to conduct another campaign similar in scope to that?"

"Why don't you just murder some senior official?"

"No matter what we do, we're the laughing stock of the galaxy. May as well be the laughing stock of the galaxy and ultimately benefit said galaxy: I was responsible for Ryloth, may my poisoned legacy actually serve some purpose. Small-time murderers are of little interest, no matter the station of the murderer. Only a killing spree or a war crime will force the BTS to come in force for a prison break"

"Have a target in mind?"

"May I suggest Christophsis? It got loads of minerals in orbit and nova crystals on the surface, plus it is close enough to Confederate space"

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"The Black Tie Syndicate? This name circulates everywhere when it comes to Your Highness"

"The Black Tie Syndicate caused two million deaths on Christophsis. Because of my plan the BTS is forced to rely on Sith to commit large-scale crimes, and forced to make do with much, much less: their main force was defeated"

What her patient describes internally as a bomb of tears ready to detonate at any moment has finally detonated. She snapped, she was almost down for the count. The weight of her conscience was bearing down on her, after all these memories about the planning of the crime resurfaced. That was pretty much the end of it, until Kham Nakgul pretty much gave her on a silver platter to the King of Christophsis, when she surrendered after Phase 1 resulted in a general Confederate retreat away from Christophsis. Yet her patient's internal memories showed that she clearly had a share of the guilt in the whole Christophsis saga. Was Jessica a monster? Or just someone that made one big bad decision and forced to claw back to Glyss because of it? Is that the price of keeping the peace in the galaxy? There was no telling where they would strike.

"I came very close to falling to the dark side because of it, I brought down the CIS with me, I authorized the killing of so many because of a foolish plan to defeat a Sith-backed crime syndicate" Jessica said, kneeling on the ground. "But was defeating the Black Tie Syndicate worth the deaths of 2 million people?"

"You fought fire with fire, that's why you came close to falling to the dark side"

"Was forcing the BTS into a direct confrontation the lesser of the two evils? Would a protracted, galaxy-wide campaign of counter-insurgency have caused more deaths over a longer period?"

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"You are now reeling in from the dilemmas that theater commanders face"

"I pretty much forced the rest of the galaxy to put the BTS on their lists of terrorist organizations and to be on high alert about it, so it can't be all that bad"

"You realize by now that successes have their costs, and that morality is one of them"

"Better intervene early before the resolution becomes a threat of that magnitude. I was just picking up the Republican slack: they defeated the BTS a few years ago, but not in full. Then again, who would have picked up that slack were it not of us?"

Jessica realizes by now that public security threats are elephants in the room. And Catria, too. Oh, of course, she begins to think of the mantle of command is something that is highly delicate and takes someone with nerves of steel to assume. And in many more ways than one. She was informed of the death count of the BTS operations on Christophsis when it appeared on the news in one of the spaceports on the way to Cato Neimoidia, and then on to Glyss. Her patient is responsible for a lot of deaths on some level, that much is true. But what she knew about the ethical dilemmas of the mantle of command faced by Jedi throughout history resurfaced. The Right of Denial was heavily invoked during the Clone Wars, even though back then it was much more systematic for even Padawans to be given mid-level commands, in ground or in space. She remembered that several Jedi weren't prepared to assume command, and when saving these people meant that others had to die, or other similar things. And how war made Jedi look like butchers.

"That we will never know. Many perceive Jedi and Sith as overlords who drag NFUs in their wars, including, unfortunately, you. It takes someone that is not afraid to make the big decisions on a dime"

"It does take someone capable of making fast decisions to handle the burden of command; Jedi aren't always the best with these things. Now I understand what cost them so dearly during the Clone Wars and why several of them invoked the Right of Denial during the Clone Wars"

"The Right of Denial?"

"The Right of Denial allowed one to protest a Jedi Council decision at a steep cost, and during the Clone Wars many felt that they couldn't, in good conscience, serve the Republican military and still follow the Jedi Code"

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"In several eras, Jedi were criticized for being too passive, especially in the centuries before the Clone Wars, while today, many blame the Jedi for causing much bloodshed. You will tell me, there are Sith that cause a lot of bloodshed, too"

"The Black Tie Syndicate. They used to terrorize Neimoidian space, Nar Shaddaa, and the rest of the galaxy. Many will hate Sith in that sector and even take up arms to hunt them down, even though generalized hatred for the Sith on a planetary scale is usually reserved to planets where the Sith conducted wholesale atrocities"

Christophsis served as a wake-up call for the rest of the galaxy, apparently. The BTS wasn't taken seriously until Christophsis happened; even Catria never paid that much attention to them after what they did on Voss. But something's not right about the Right of Denial: while in the era ranging from the Ruusan Reformations to the end of the Clone Wars, there was only one Jedi Order, today, there are so many Jedi Orders that there is no universal definition to what the Right of Denial is and isn't. But there is one point of contention that Catria hasn't approached with Jessica just yet: the reports of anarchy in and around Chaleydonia. The capital of Christophsis erupted into chaos, and the ruling Crystall Dynasty is facing a grim situation: how will order be restored to Christophsis in the face of such disasters? If there is only one thing the Sith have accomplished on Christophsis, it was to embroil the planet in chaos, Catria thought.

"What if the Sith were merely using the BTS as puppets?"

"There is a place for Sith as individuals, but as factions they are hypocritical: each incarnation of Sith factions claim to be different one another and yet they repeat the same mistakes over and over with leaderships that have significant commonality and they promote groupthink that lead them to become pure-evil"

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"While it may explain why you did the Stalgasin thing, I'm not sure how does that relate to the BTS"

With some pain in her voice, Jessica continued. "I narrowly exposed Sith involvement in the BTS on Christophsis. Then again, perhaps the Sith's objective on Christophsis wasn't to outright conquer the planet, or even to claim victory, but to just throw mayhem on the planet: my experience with Sith is that, when in groups, they tend to capitalize on every opportunity to sow chaos and destruction. That is why the BTS may as well be a de facto puppet of the Sith, whereas other criminal cartels weren't, not even the Hutt Cartel"

The Hutt Cartel, the Zann Consortium, the Black Sun, these three had no ties with the Sith (the last one even attempted to steal schematics from Kuat Drive Yards when it was still a Sith possession), at least not as far as Catria was aware. She knew the BTS was different from the other crime cartels, especially in the wake of Mimban/Gyndine. Crime cartels usually smuggled and sold drugs/weapons, robbed banks, hunted bounties, engaged in slavery or, to a lesser extent, worked as hired guns, and piracy, at least to her knowledge. One could easily imagine the discontent of the members of a crime cartel if it became obvious that the organization was becoming increasingly oriented towards terrorism rather than the other areas of crime, especially if they were hired for something other than terrorism: the organization would disintegrate due to internal infighting. Yet the uncomfortable questions remain to be asked.

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Was thwarting the Black Tie Syndicate the right thing to do, even if it came at the cost of plunging the planet into chaos and have them kill so many?"

"I believe it was during phase 2. Christophsis is to be de facto considered as Imperial Remnant property, but as threats increase in scale, it becomes inevitable at some point that tradeoffs need to be made past a certain point. But it is difficult to predict what would have happened if a certain course of action is not taken. Every major move they do is accompanied with mass casualties, however, so limiting their ability to carry out said moves is important. Then again they have no reason to be on the move without an opportunity to cause mayhem on large scales: we have seen it on Voss. With such an element, going big or going home, and not having a base, you have no choice than to provoke them to defeat it that way. In that case, it's about forcing them to commit to one all-out battle. If you didn't then they would still be a danger lurking on the galactic horizon that someone had to deal with at some point. It's a nomadic, elusive kind of enemy"

Elusiveness often worked to an enemy's advantage: any organization wanting to tackle such enemies had to force opportunities and commit it to big things before they could even think of engaging them. Yet there was one thing left to discuss between the two before the dilemma could be fully resolved. The BTS' fleet and armies were wiped out during this engagement, thus Catria realized that Jessica created a power vacuum in the galactic underworld that would be filled in with little friction.

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Was localized (and in this case, mostly confined) chaos an acceptable price to pay for increased order on a galactic scale?"

"The whole point of committing the enemy to all-out action in one place is to keep the chaos localized and confined. I understand that there is the possibility that they may never have acted again afterward. But it was more likely than not, higher still, beyond a reasonable doubt, that they would have acted somewhere else if I didn't intervene. Yet it is one of those situations where casualties ensue when you act, and other casualties if you don't. Leaving enemies like these unopposed would cause more problems down the line than to oppose them when you can. The horrors of war can't always be avoided, and I know as much. There will always be those lunatics that will declare war for some reason: because the enemy has been blockading a key resource, whereas lifting it would be for the greater good, that sort of thing. But there will always be fanatics and people who strictly adhere to dogmas. War crimes may well be crimes, yes, but sometimes such crimes can prevent greater bloodshed"

Catria was forced to examine the fact that the galaxy was always constantly at war at some point, on some level, even if war was to be conducted on small scales, or even confined to a planet. What could cause a faction to go to war, or how could war be prevented, is a topic of debate among the many people who examine the subject, in the media or in academia. Often for a particular conflict historical circumstances as well as geographical/astronomical circumstances need to be examined: there seems to be no general consensus.

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"I know, most Jedi I know about would be shortsighted; they have a very limited ability to look at the big picture. For you to even be able to engage in such analysis means, to me, that you're different. It may be emotion-laden at times, I saw you sob on multiple occasions"

"Now... these were irreplaceable losses for so many, then again, there were casualties on both BTS and civilians. What have I done? Someone had to do it at some point but still; the enemy I sought to defeat might be monsters but there were many innocent victims! Only the Force can truly be impartial in the matter"

Catria feels as if her patient could no longer endure the pain of the content of these mental tapes. It's understandable: these memories are painful to the standpoint of those who can be made to feel as if they were right into it. Now she had an idea as to what the ethics of warfare might be. But at the same time, Catria found Jessica to be a challenging patient on multiple levels: she had to endure a training session back on Geonosis where she learned Electric Judgment form Catria and where she picked up on the idea that the Force was quantized. If my patient thinks the Force is quantized, then what makes the Force impartial? Wouldn't the collapse of the Force-wavefunctions force the Force to take a stand? Does she really think that morality is, to the eyes of the Force, the same as a Force-wavefunction? With possibly a continuous spectrum? Then again, there are only very, very few people whom I know that treat the spirit ichor as some collection of, in their words, Hermitian operators, and I met both people associated with that vision of the Force as being an extension of quantum physics in person, she thought.