A/N: Minor spoilers for Chapter One of the Imperial Agent story.
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Suspicions
Only the most skilled and talented field agents, the most loyal, the most willing to subsume all of their own hopes and dreams into serving the Sith Empire, the cream of Imperial Intelligence, entered the additional grueling training to become Cipher Agents.
At least that was how it was supposed to work. For the past two years, possibly longer, there had been anomalies: unexceptional agents who had received instant promotions, their Cipher training postponed indefinitely.
Pheodra knew she couldn't be the only one to notice the anomalies. A field agent's only hope of promotion came with a vacant Cipher number, making Cipher agents a subject of intense, and morbid, interest. Field agents became attuned to every crumb of gossip at HQ, practiced their upside down reading skills at Keeper's desk and in Medical, and studied every official communication and whatever records their clearances allowed them for anything pertaining to – or possibly pertaining to – Cipher Agents.
As much as Intelligence officially discouraged these efforts, Pheodra suspected that only field agents aware of a Cipher opening were considered to fill that opening. Or had been until the anomalies began.
She stared down at her datapad, seeing not the briefing on the screen but her mental list of anomalies, living and dead. It was said that the average career of a Cipher agent lasted five years, before ending in a medical transfer or death. Half of the anomalies hadn't made it a year.
They could have been a cross section of Intelligence, except for their unremarkable records and inexplicable promotions. Men and women, humans and aliens, chosen during urgent circumstances as if Intelligence had no one better for the task. They were not the only agents who had been promoted to their Cipher rank before the training, but they were the only agents who still had not received that training.
Because they would fail? Pheodra wondered. She had worked with the latest anomaly twice, while he was still a field agent. Both times he had jeopardized their mission, improvising alternatives to their orders and showing nearly treasonous concern for non-Imperial lives. He had enough skill (and charm) that she could almost believe he looked the part on file, but he lacked the ruthlessness, ambition, and utter dedication the training required.
Intelligence is being sabotaged from within.
Pheodra considered the evidence again. The anomalies were marginally effective, died quickly, and took important ops with them. No experiment into alternative tactics would continue after the first few failures. Not in the Empire.
Darth Jadus had exerted direct control over Imperial Intelligence, taking an unusually close personal interest in field and Cipher agents. Sith were inscrutable and given to sadistic and messy entertainment. If the anomalies had ended with him, perhaps they were nothing more than a Sith's method of weeding out the unfit. And a reminder that the Empire would not exist without Sith power.
Instead, his death had provided the opportunity for the latest anomaly.
If the Minister of Intelligence is a traitor, that would explain how terrorists reached the Dominator. Pheodra felt treasonous herself for considering the idea. Why?There was nothing he could gain from sabotaging his own Ministry.
Pheodra considered Keeper, feeling even more a traitor. He was in a better position than the Minister to identify poor candidates and to see that they were promoted. But he was also in a position to do far more damage than the anomalies had. For either man, sabotaging Intelligence was suicide. They had no connections to the Republic, no reason she could think of to damage the Empire in an act of revenge.
Pheodra keyed a message address into her datapad. Still valid. She contemplated the faintly glowing letters. Whatever she discovered, she had no power to act on it. It's my duty to protect the Empire.
Her message was one sentence: "Who had you promoted?"
His reply came that evening, confused and friendly, irrelevantly asking how she was and expressing his confidence that she would be a Cipher Agent soon (possibly very soon). His answer to her question was simple: "Darth Jadus recommended it. I can't think why."
Pheodra closed the message. Either Keeper had lied to him or Darth Jadus was manipulating Intelligence from beyond the grave.