Chapter 8
This was astounding, just a mere glance at the holonet and most of everything she knew about history was reversed. This period of history was completely reversed to the point where her ancestor ruled the entire galaxy, the Republic was on the verge of surrendering and the Jedi were reduced to an irrelevancy that it had never experienced before. For the first time in a very long time, Satele felt completely helpless and completely at a loss for what she could do about the situation that she was in. She didn't know how the Sith Emperor had brought her to this time and to this alternate universe, and what was worse about this situation was that she didn't know how to get back.
But there was one thing that she was counting on, and that was her ancestor himself, Darth Revan. You could change history all you wanted, but you couldn't change the personality of beings and if the historical records were correct, Darth Revan had not been a complete and total, narrowed minded fool who refused to believe anything. It would be clear to him anyway that she was who she said she was when she got closer to the core, but there was one thing that she wasn't sure of. She wasn't sure if she was going to be able to survive long enough to get to him, there were probably infinite layers of defense and security and it would take a lot of precision to penetrate them correctly.
"Miss," A human female asked from behind her as she scrolled through the holonet terminal, Satele turned and smiled at her. She was a young girl, dressed in ragged robes and the Jedi Master could tell that she was a peasant.
Satele raised an eyebrow and offered the girl a kind smile, "Yes?"
"I have to say that you bare a strange resemblance to the Empress," The girl looked at her with stars in her eyes and Satele inwardly groaned, she had forgotten about that little detail, "I just thought that I should let you know."
Why she didn't think about that before, she would never know, she knew that she had inherited most of her appearance from her ancestor Bastila Shan, who in this universe was apparently called Empress. That was a huge reversal from what she knew Bastila to be, a Jedi Master, not the wife of the Dark Lord of the Sith who happened to rule most of the known galaxy with an iron fist. Satele nodded and smiled awkwardly, "Well – I've heard that before."
The girl nodded and turned away, when the girl was out of earshot, she sighed and turned back to the holonet before making sure to raise the hood on her cloak. She knew that she couldn't find real information on the holonet that her ancestor probably controlled, and she wouldn't be able to get ahold of it until she had made contact, but polished propaganda was better than nothing. She had to admit that it was quite fascinating to know how things would have turned out if her ancestor hadn't had his memory wiped by the Jedi Council and turned back to the light side of the force. It was amazing how one little misstep, one alternate angle could displace the entire face of history.
Scrolling through the latest news, she leaned back in the chair and yawned, she would need to mediate soon and she couldn't well do that on this transport frigate. Rubbing her eyes, her ears perked back at a voice that came from the public address system, "We are entering the Coruscanti System and should be arriving planet side in a half hour, however, we must inform you that due to a heightened state of alert ordered by the Coruscanti Orbital Control only a short time ago, we have been ordered to the orbital customs station for all inbound passengers to be thoroughly checked – they do apologize, but there has been some increased activity in unknown and potentially hostile landings."
Satele's eyes widened in curiosity – now she really wanted to get her hands on the straight, true information and it didn't even occur to her that she would get that chance sooner than she thought.
"I don't know why you're not positively giddy with this development? You're all Sith aren't you? You all want the same thing?" Jedi Master Vrook hissed over the table that he, his peers and Darth Revan were sitting at.
Revan sighed and rubbed his temples, for a group of beings who considered themselves the most enlightened in the Galaxy, they were awfully nearsighted and couldn't see the bigger picture. For all intents and purposes, his goals and those of the Sith Emperor were the same, but there was one crucial difference. The Sith Emperor was utterly ruthless with all life. He once sacrificed all life on a planet to make his own never ending. Revan was different, he didn't condone the death of those who were blissfully innocent or unaware and he certainly didn't want to life forever by ending all life on an entire planet, "You fool, I never understood why you were on the Jedi Council, you have your head buried in the sand, you rely on your vaunted conservative beliefs so much that you never consider other possibilities. You, my ignorant, stupid friend need to understand that I do not seek the total enslavement of all beings in this entire galaxy."
"How dare you!" Vrook rose to his feet from the table.
A crooked smirk appeared on his face, "Be careful Master Jedi that anger issue will do no good for you if you wish to preserve the Jedi Order, and by the way, I've been waiting to tell you what I think of you since I was two years old, it was grand."
"Calm yourself," Vandar instructed to the seething older man before turning his head towards Revan, "Those Sith are extinct – they have been for centuries, the ones that didn't destroy themselves were killed by the Republic."
Revan smiled at the diminutive Jedi Master and shook his head, "Like a virus, if it is not completely eradicated, it will reproduce and it will come back, this virus came back stronger than ever. You are wrong Master Vandar, a small convoy escaped the events on Korriban and they were led by the man who they now call the Emperor. They have waited a very long time to make their presence known again, and I hadn't anticipated ever revealing this little detail to you all – but have you ever wondered why the Mandalorian Wars started? Did you ever wonder why they suddenly began to terrorize the outer rim and moved inward? Did you ever wonder why Mandalore declared all-out war on the Government that hadn't done anything to his clans?"
"They're Mandalorian," Master Zhar offered as Revan stood up from his seat and began to walked around the table, "It is painfully clear why they did it – they question is what the point of this is?"
Smiling again, Revan folded his arms over his chest and continued his walk around the table, "That is incorrect Master Zhar, again, you're hiding under your ignorance, let me cure you of it."
When she spoke again, he spoke in with a combination of authority and sage-like knowledge in his voice, "When I killed Mandalore, he confessed something to me, something that took me be surprise, but that surprise was short lived when I did a little research into it. It turns out that the Sith Emperor had manipulated him, manipulated the entire Mandalorian power structure into going to war with the Republic and it had one point behind it, only one. It was to test the Republic's strength and at the same time, diminish it and weaken it for when it planned to invade. It was at the point that I set off to the Unknown Regions, under the guise of chasing the Mandalorian's back out of the known Galaxy. I found out there, with a very large Military."
"And he did something to you," Vandar added, a look of realization came across his face.
"At first," Revan smiled and continued his pace, ignoring the stunned looks on their face, "It wasn't the violence or the power that corrupted me, as much as you believed it to be. In fact I was quite pious in battle, if you had seen some of the things that I saw the Mandalorian's did. You'd be more the content with trying to stop them. As I was saying, it was like that at first, until I managed to get a grip, the Emperor didn't account on that, and when he ordered me to pursue something for him that would assist in his final conquest of the Galaxy, I commandeered it and began to use for myself. I used it and secured it, so that he couldn't use it, and I'd give him one hell of a fight if he wanted it. You all perpetrated the belief that I was a power hungry, maniacal, lunatic, but I wasn't in a position to defend myself – so I let you besmirch everything, but the point is this Master Jedi, at the heart of this issue, in a choice between myself and that man as your enemy…"
Revan sat down at the head of the table, folded his hands together and leaned on the table with a diplomatic pose, "I can assure you that you want me as your enemy, so what will it be gentleman, do we have an agreement?"
Elite Commandos with rifles that we as large as her own body, customs agents with armor that could take a blast from a rocket propelled grenade, it looked as if these men were waiting for something to happen. In their minds, she could sense a firm, straight and unbreakable devotion to their duty and to in particular to Revan himself. So it was true then, they rumors of her ancestors contagious charisma, were in fact just rumors, they were unproven, but this was giving her insight that no one had before. It was strange to feel this sort of devotion in a solider, she hadn't even felt this level of devotion in Republic Soldiers during the height of the war with the Empire. Satele's thoughts were broken, as a tall human male, in a crisply pressed gray uniform and hat stepped to the front of the crowd that had departed the frigate, "Welcome to Coruscant, normally we wouldn't have these stringent security precautions, but certain events within the past few hours have caused us to increase-…"
Satele's stomach dropped as the man's steel grey eyes feel upon her and his speech stopped, the man shook his head for a moment before waving towards two very large and very well armed elite commandos behind him towards her. As Satele began to back out of the crowd, the man continued on, "We suspect that there are Jedi infiltrators among other things and we have been tasked with stopping them, if you'll all follow Lieutenant Danscov, he'll take you all through our security screenings."
As she tried to join the crowd, she found herself blocked by two crossing rifles and the appearance of that same officer. He wore a surprised, but suspicious look on her face, "I am Vice Admiral Cayhill, and I'm the Commanding Officer of this station what is your name exactly?"
She normally wasn't like this, not like this at all, she was usually quick and calm, but she found herself drawing a blank, "…I…I-uh…"
"I can smell a Jedi from a kilometer away," Vice Admiral Cayhill raised his eyebrows, his gaze switched to the two men, "We have ourselves our first catch of the day."
It happened before she could react, which was strange, perhaps her transition had affected her force awareness because before she knew it, she was being stunned and everything went black.
