For a moment, Hellanix Quinn thought she was going to fall, fall right through the floor of her ship, the Astral Blight, and straight into the nothingness of hard vacuum beyond. Through the Force tore a shockwave unlike any she'd ever experienced, at once indefinable and perfectly clear.
Emperor Vitiate's latest Voice had been struck down.
The sudden severance of the Emperor from life left a strange emptiness in the Force so vast it seemed more like a black hole than the usual popped bubble. Cold sweat stood out clammy on her skin as the echoes died away, a scream of rage mingling with the psychotic laugh of someone who has once again had confirmation that being beaten was a temporary condition. Someone who successfully cheated death…
Her lungs constricted as she listened to that chill sound, devoid of any human feeling, gleeful in a way she couldn't quite wrap her mind around. She'd known from the day she met the former Voice on Voss that her master was unnatural, an aberration, but she hadn't had opportunity enough to surreptitiously study him and decide what that meant in the grand scheme of things.
After all, she would say Nox with her ghost-binding was unnatural, an aberration. But at least Nox had predictable triggers and responses, was comprehensible. At the moment, Hella found that echo of the Emperor to be anything but.
"Hella?" Steady hands appeared beneath her elbows, her husband ready to take her weight if she collapsed. "Hella, are you alright?"
"The Emperor is… gone…" she said softly, fighting to remember how to use her tongue, aware of how disconnected her words seemed as her brain began to reel from the shock of the sudden absence of the Emperor's presence. She hadn't realized how vast he was until she could no longer sense that brooding darkness. He was like a gas giant, barely-there particles until eventually one reached the crushing depths and wondered 'when did that happen?' "Someone struck him down."
"Sit down." Gently, with all the competence of a practiced medic and someone accustomed to working with a Force-user, whose problems and difficulties might or might not be comprehensible, Malavai helped her to the nearest chair.
The sheen of sweat, the tension around his eyes, told the tale: Force-deaf, his undeveloped faculty sensed the seismic cataclysm within the Force that would tell every Sith, Jedi, and pseudo-Order that Vitiate—or someone extremely powerful—was dead.
"Please set course for Dromund Kaas immediately," she said, breathing slowly, deeply. "I'll be alright."
Malavai departed briskly, leaving Hella alone in the lounge. A moment later, the ship's holocom went off. "Hello, Jaesa."
Jaesa, rendered in blue, looked shell-shocked, her big eyes strangely huge. She'd only taken enough time to wrap a sheet around herself before opening the channel—which could only mean she was with Rathari.
Idly, in a vein of return to normalcy, Hella couldn't help but marvel at the awkward timing. Hopefully Jaesa and Rathari hadn't gotten too far; she wouldn't wish a ruined assignation on either of them. "…should I…?" Jaesa began uncertainly.
"Put Rathari on."
Even rendered in blue, Jaesa's blush was visible. Clearly she thought she and Rathari's dalliance of convenience was a secret. Well, there had been no point in destroying that illusion, and it wasn't as though Hella intended to police Jaesa's liaisons unless the girl experienced complications. But Jaesa was smarter than that.
A moment later, Rathari, sweating and bare-chested, looking more than a little nauseous, appeared. "My lord?"
"I'm leaving for Dromund Kaas immediately. You will put my network on alert. Such an event is not a sign of gentle times. My apprentice will remain with you until I return to collect her."
"Yes, my lord," Rathari answered.
Hella hung up as the ship dropped into hyperspace, shimmying a little.
"My lord, Imperial comm channels are buzzing," Malavai announced when he appeared a few moments later, with a mug of tea and a datapad.
She took the mug he offered her, aware of how cold her fingers were from the lingering shock.
Malavai's intensely blue eyes, like the ring of darkness around a bright moon, fixed on her, but the distress she read in his face remained imperceptible behind the walls of the mental bunker she had coached him through creating. "Is there anything I can do?"
She put aside the personal indulgence that would be. "I need information. What are Imperial channels buzzing about?"
More importantly, why hadn't the death of the Voice created such havoc in the Force when she struck down the one on Voss? That was the perplexing thing. It was as if he wanted the galaxy to think him gone. If so… why? The unanswered, unanswerable question burned in her mind like a star.
Well, she'd probably hear from the Hand with information soon; she couldn't see them leaving her without information. Perhaps she might even hear from the Imperial Guard, as they seemed amenable to following her orders as long as those orders supported the Emperor's position.
"Apparently, Dromund Kaas has been blockaded, hence the drop and then influx of comm traffic," Malavai began briskly. "From what I can tell, the Republic Fleets dropped out of hyperspace right on top of us, and several raiding parties then made planetfall, fighting through the city and then into the jungles." His tone suggested he hoped most of them found a grisly end between the teeth of one of Dromund Kaas' many big predators, or an unpleasant one from lightning strike.
Into the jungles? That meant the Dark Temple. Why would the Emperor be there, when she happened to know he maintained a station orbiting Dromund Kaas from which the Voice rarely ventured? More than that, what kind of strike team could cut through the security the Emperor ought to have had? Normally, she would say he didn't need security, per se, but like all people of status kept it for the benefit of everyone else.
Something was off.