Today, Jaina was being the Empress.
She'd put on the black uniform of a colonel in Flight Branch, along with pilot's gloves, gauntlets that reached back almost to the elbow, her favourite spike-heeled black boots for extra height, and her lightsaber and her hunting-blaster at her belt - and at her throat, the Medal of Conspicuous Galantry that Pellaeon had presented her with at the end of the Vong War.
She was sitting in the back of an armoured limousine - an angular, box-nosed Sienar that had something of the presence of an AT-AT, with an escort of speeder bikes and gravtrucks full of stormtroopers, flying on down the central axis of Ravelin's main avenue, with outriders holding the civilian repulsor traffic at the junctions, and everyone on the street below looking up at her in awe.
She could sense the rippling reaction in the Force, the shock of collective recognition.
The Empress?
She hadn't made a formal declaration. The official promotion was still tied up with the Empire-wide vote and the public inauguration. But she supposed that was part of what being the Empress was about. She'd just taken charge.
She hadn't bothered to put any clothes on while she waited for the Moffs and the security experts to arrive - her wardrobe had become part of the incident scene - but she'd smiled when Tahiri produced their flight suits from the laundry. She'd wondered briefly if she ought to move to Central Command, but she'd quickly dismissed the idea. Here, the only security loophole had been the fact that her astro-droid had let the assassin cyborgs in while her defences had been lowered, and that opening had already been shut down. Moving would introduce more variables, more risk. Her Jedi instincts - and Tahiri's - concurred with her rational analysis.
She'd led the overnight investigation personally, fuelling herself on caf laced with whatever alcohol Tahiri felt like adding in. Around daybreak, some cookies had shown up for seconds - or pastries, the Imperials called them - ordered from somewhere that was probably a gratuitous security risk. By then, she was past caring.
Answers hadn't been hard to come by, and they vindicated her decision to stand her ground in her own quarters. The trio of cyborgs had inserted in an Incom Howlrunner - an anonymous low-profile ship that was ubiquitous enough to be untraceable. The Braxant Sector Fleet and Bastion Military Command would have picked up their arrival if they hadn't dropped out of hyperspace at her personal jump coordinates, and come spiralling straight down her secure flight vector and into the private hangar. They'd been able to do that thanks to telemetry and access codes provided in real-time by her own astro-droid, which had taken the apartment's unsecured turbolift up to the pad to signal their ship using his internal short-range transmitter.
Intelligence weren't sure yet how Spanker's loyalty to her had been subverted, but now they knew exactly what he'd done, and with that part of the problem solved, she was pretty sure that the apartment was as secure as anywhere in the Empire. And as d'Ashewl had pointed out, their attackers had probably only gained limited access to the droid, as they hadn't synched the infiltration with much precision - some of the bondage the two of them had been using had been far less convenient for fighting back. Jaina decided not to ask how he knew that. Satisfied, she'd sent everyone else away, back to Military Command and the Ubiqtorate complex and wherever else they belonged, and as the last of them went out the door, she'd sent Tahiri to tool up in full armour.
She was surprised to realise she wanted time alone with one of the Moffs, and even more so when she worked out why.
At the last moment, she'd asked Sacker to stay for a moment, and while she stripped and changed into her best uniform, she'd asked for a loan of her armoured limousine and stormtrooper guards, grinning when the Moff referred to herself as a taxi service. She supposed she ought to get around to allocating herself her own official speeder, but Tagge would say that was a wasteful duplication of resources, and would also mean taking the resources away from somewhere else, like Moff Sacker's security detail. She supposed she would have to decide if she wanted to accept that argument, but for now, borrowing the local Moff's car would do. She'd maybe have to pay in bondage sex, but she couldn't say she minded.
She'd waited in the apartment for the convoy to arrive, strutting around the outer room and toying with the idea of shooting something, and she'd been pleasantly surprised when Moff Tagge had commed back, with a preliminary report on the cyborg assassin droids. There were already several different lines of forensic evidence pointing to the same conclusions about their origins, all of which reinforced her own instinctive suspicions, but she found the logistics trace he'd run on the Imperial components of their hardware the most compelling argument of all.
She smiled a little as the convoy began to circle, looking out of the window to the detention block at Military Command, where the Moffs who'd supported her ex-husband were being held.
The ones she'd once been a group-sex plaything for.
She stepped out of the limousine onto the landing pad, high-heels first, then smiled at the salute of the guards, and returned the acknowledgement with a pilot's gesture, as she strode towards the entrance blast-doors. She had ordered Moff Sacker's borrowed stormtroopers to stay with the vehicles, and she wondered if that was a disadvantage of the situation; but Moff d'Ashewl vouched personally for the Security personnel she'd be dealing with, and she had sent Tahiri ahead to check on the arrangements. A General in a black uniform greeted her inside, saluting again when she announced that she was there to see one of the prisoners - she felt a little giddy for a moment, when she realised that she could give orders to Imperial Generals like that now.
Tahiri was already waiting in the security foyer, but as they'd agreed in advance, they did little more than exchange formal nods; she marched on without breaking step - down the cell-block gantry with the General and his clamshell-helmet Security troopers. Exchanging formal pleasantries with the General seemed easy, even natural; he was honoured that she was there, she was impressed by the professionalism of his facility.
But he seemed surprised, genuinely concerned, when she stopped him and his guards, and said she wanted to go into the cell alone. That was against regulations, apparently.
But she was the Empress now.
"Am I allowed to override them, General?"
"Yes, Your Highness."
"Good." She smiled back, pleased, and gestured for the door lock.
Moff Reige looked surprised when she marched into his cell.
"Ah, Moff Solo. I hadn't expected you to come and visit."
Jaina looked at him.
"My defender keeps me informed," he said, with a brisk shrug. "I'd assumed that people like d'Ashewl, Sacker and Flennic were running things." I'd assumed you were just a dial-a-delivery whore in a fancy uniform.
"You underestimate me, Moff Reige," she said, with a steely glare. "Admittedly, you kriffed with my girlfriend, and that makes this personal, but I am very much the ruler of my Empire."
That made him stiffen in response, and he must have seen a flash in her eyes as she read his reaction in the Force, as something changed in his expression. "Oh," he said, when he realised the implications from her dark, unflinching gaze. "Oh, I see."
"Don't try and kriff with a rogue Jedi," she said, reflecting that he and his friends - Jag's friends - had kriffed with her quite a lot and she hadn't complained. "You know, at the start of this, I was all for pardoning you and appointing you to head the Public Policy Foundation or the consular mission on Coruscant." I might even have kissed your cock goodbye, for old time's sake. "I thought you'd just been a naive idiot."
"And what do you see now, Grand Moff?" he asked, unable to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, or the contempt. Clearly, Vitor Reige was not a man who thought of himself as naive, though he was still having a hard time seeing Jaina as anything other than a stupid sexual plaything.
"I see a greedy man who doesn't know when to stop." She realised that probably described half of the Moffs, and most of the other men she'd had sex with, too. "I see a man who was so desperate to gain power, or hold onto his position, or just to kriff the people he disliked, that he tried to stage a stupid coup he didn't need to."
"I guess there's no good in saying I did for the good of the Empire, Jedi Solo?" he asked, with a faint smile. He was probably trying to sound like he held the high ground, but the expression just made him look deluded.
"The irony is, if you'd called on me personally rather than just trying to comm, you might have ended up with me as your lightsaber-wielding assassin, rather than d'Ashewl's."
That took him by surprise, prompting a flash of anger as he realised just how close he'd come to victory.
"Of course, the result would have been messy, but you'd have been on top, because I'd have brought the Jedi in, and the Alliance, and I'd have been very good at behind-the-scenes negotiations to keep most of the Council together. And you'd have been able to kriff me whenever you kriffing wanted, Moff Reige. Me and Tahiri both."
"So you know about that part, too?"
"Oh yes. Imperial Security has all the holos. I don't mind being a sexual plaything for a bunch of Moffs-"
"I've noticed," he shot back.
So she slapped him, hard, across the face.
"Shut up. But I draw the line at people taking advantage of my friends. Or-"
"You might want to ask Moff d'Ashewl about your precious blonde girlfriend," he sneered.
"What's that meant to mean?" she asked, with a sharp frown.
Moff Reige gave her a look that would have probably put her fourteen-year-old self off her closet love of all things Imperial. Rubbing his chin, like being hit by a girl was some great badge of victimization, just made him look mean and ugly. "I think I'd rather speak to my lawyer, Grand Moff. Or are you starting to take after your grandfather, now?"
I could, Jaina thought, coldly, tugging her gloves back on. "I also know about the little pirate scam Moff Dorja had going, Moff Reige," she added, resuming the prepared remarks she'd rehearsed before the visit. Before the cyborg assassins had shown up. "Imperial freighter crews and innocent civilians. Smugglers, some of them, sure. Working for people I'd have thought of as our enemies a week or two ago. But I definitely take after my father."
"I don't know what you're-" Reige began, then faltered, as the door shot open. "Talking, about," he finished, weakly.
Jaina just stood there in silence, as Tahiri stomped down into the cell. She was wearing her full armour, gleaming red and tough enough to fight an AT-ST in, with a hard expression on her pretty face, and the black ribbing on the unarmoured upper legs of her breeches that made her look just a little bit like Vader. The flash of something hard and sharp and furious in her eyes made even Jaina hesitate a moment.
"Tahiri's going to interrogate you now, Moff Reige," Jaina said, standing up and putting one foot on the step, striking a bit of a poise for him. She was the hero of the Empire now. "I told her not to do any permanent damage, and made her promise not to cut your dick and balls off and cook them, but she's very good with pain."
There was genuine fear in Reige's eyes as he looked up at Tahiri, his guilty eyes flickering in a way that made clear he was a coward.
"Not all of us have the advantage of our parents' respect," he began.
Jaina turned up the stairs, and left. Even though the door had whooshed shut behind her, she could hear the sounds of something being slammed off the metal wall inside the cell. She was glad that the guards had left several empty cells between each of the ones housing the captive Moffs. That would keep the noise down for her next meeting. She didn't want to be distracted by trying to work out just what Tahiri was doing to Vitor Reige.
But what does he mean about asking d'Ashewl? she asked, frowning to herself as she stepped into the cell holding Moff Dorja.
That would have to wait.
"Moff Dorja," she said, with a look and tone that might have been mistaken for pleasant. "In case your defender didn't tell you, I'm the new Imperial head of state. I'm here to talk about your betrayal of my Empire in collusion with some low-life scum. And I don't just mean Reige and my ex-husband..."
She could still hear the sound of Tahiri playing shockball with the walls of Reige's cell.
"As you can hear, I've left Commander Veila interrogating Moff Reige," she said. "I thought I might try and practice my own skills as an inquisitor with you."