There was very little to be thankful for right now, but Marasiah was glad that they'd held a memorial service for Antares and Sekh-Mad-Har immediately after their bodies were turned to Coruscant. It had been a stately affair held in one of the Galactic City's largest public arenas. Dressed in white, Marasiah had lit the pyre for both their bodies. Surrounded by every remaining Imperial Knight in full scarlet armor, she'd watched her husband disappear behind a blinding veil of flame. Her heart had ached to wonder whether Antares- or any Knight or Jedi- could become one with the Force now. When her time came, she didn't want to merge with it to find all the people she'd loved absent.
Though she'd felt bitterly alone during the ceremony, the arena had been filled with dignitaries, politicians, and even ordinary citizens come to pay respects. Antares had always scoffed at ceremony, saying it was at best necessary distraction from what needed to be done. Maybe he was right, but she was still glad so many had gathered to pay him the respect he deserved. Senators from Imperial and Alliance systems had stood shoulder-to-shoulder in his honor. looking from face to face and touching them one-by-one in the Force, Marasiah had felt that earnest grief that united them all. Awful as it had been, the ceremony had given her a small speck of hope for the future.
Less than a day later, the police report from Bavinyar went public.
It was a bomb detonated at the heart of Federation politics. After discovering the assassin's body in a grimy motel on Cephalia's outskirts they'd identified him as a human named Korag Aynes. From there, her uncle Hogrum's intelligence people did the rest. They confirmed that a man with the same name had been in Admiral Gar Stazi's renegade fleet during the war, and that he'd served as a private in a platoon commanded by then-captain, now-senator Porat Derrol. Those facts alone set the news-nets afire. So, too, did leaked footage of the inside the hotel room where the killer's parting message was clearly visible: Death to All Tyrants! splashed in red beside an Alliance crest.
Tem Brighton released a recorded speech condemning acts of violence in all forms and pledged complete loyalty to the Federation and Empress Fel. He got it out fifteen minutes after Senator Eldon's speech excoriating Alliance terrorism and the anarchists in the senate who supported it. Plenty of other senators also put out recorded statements, including Senators Rey'lya and Kormesh, who still held stubbornly to the speaker's race despite dwindling attention on the news-nets. Eldon's speech claimed the most attention, both because of his fifteen-minute head start and because he promised to bring treason charges against Senators Derrol, Brighton and anyone else even loosely connected with the murder of the empress' consort. He also called for the speaker's election to be postponed, something he'd avoided doing publicly the first time around. The election was just two days away and the first attempt to delay the vote, pressed by some Imperials, had been blocked by a coalition of Alliance senators and a handful of Imperial ones.
"There's not enough time for it to gain traction," Hogrum explained as they met in her office. "If there were, it might be able to pass. The Alliance bloc is split over this. Some want to charge ahead with the election and insist they did nothing wrong. Brighton's spoken out in that position. Others want to slow things down and make sure they remove their radicals first."
Good luck with that, Marasiah thought. Bavinyar had radicalized everyone. As her uncle paced before her desk she slumped and looked through the window. Outside the sun was going down. Marasiah felt both tired and restless; she'd been like that nonstop since Antares' death.
"However," Hogrum went on, "Some Imperial senators do want to press ahead with the vote because they think public sympathy strongly favors them."
It all seemed disgustingly petty. Marasiah struggled to remember why she thought it had been a good idea to appease Stazi's people with an elected senate. Her uncle had been right; democracy was a nasty business where people wrapped knives in lofty rhetoric and when they stabbed you in the back they earnestly claimed to be doing it for your own good.
Hogrum stopped pacing and loomed before her desk. "Sia, the surest way to delay the election is to do it yourself."
She finally raised her eyes to look at his scarred, black-shrouded form. "What does Stazi think?"
"Stazi is adamant the election go ahead as scheduled." His burnt lips twisted.
"I see."
"If we're to stop it we must act now."
"We, uncle?"
He drew himself tall. "Sia, this is exactly where you need to assert authority. Even the Alliance won't dare criticize you for it."
"You mean they won't dare insult me in my grief?" she asked bitterly.
"Essentially, yes. You have that advantage. You can't afford to throw it away."
"I'd have to convince Stazi."
"Stazi," he said, "May be a bigger problem than you realize."
She sat straight in her chair. "What do you mean?"
Hogrum sighed. Regret was thick in his voice as he said, "I've been taking the liberty to monitor some of the admiral's communications. Though he's encrypted them, he's sent several over the past weeks to the personal apartment of Senator Derrol."
"You've been spying on him?"
He ignored her shock. "In addition, I know that on the evening following the senate commencement, he attended a private meeting in Derrol's apartment. This was also attended by other Alliance partisans including Senators Kaige, Nelloran, Gahan, and Brighton himself. Unfortunately, I don't know what was discussed, but his semi-regular calls to Derrol began after that meeting."
Shock at her uncle's impudence, which itself bordered treason, gave way to new hurt. For years she'd trusted Stazi's honor even as they'd locked horns in the triumvir's chamber. Her uncle's observations were proof of nothing, but they fed into a stream of rumor and implication leading to one awful conclusion.
Marasiah took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. She'd been trained- by her uncle among many others- to be rational and never jump to conclusions. She reminded herself that rumor and implication were all. Derrol was insisting he barely knew Aynes and hadn't spoken with him in years, and there was as yet no evidence to contradict him. There was also no proof that Stazi's conversations with Derrol, his former subordinate, had been political, much less nefarious.
"Sia," her uncle said, "You have to stop the election, at least until we can find everyone responsible for the attack. We must have justice for Antares."
"I don't need you to tell me that. He was my husband," she growled.
"They tried to take your life from you as well as your authority. You have both. Use it, Sia. Use it before it's too late!"
The more he pressed the more angry she became. She rose from her chair and glared at him from across the desk. "I've made an oath to uphold this new government. I won't break that oath out of grief or anger." In a lower voice she said, "I won't become my father."
Hogrum stared back; after a moment he said, "If you don't act now, you might hand victory to the people who murdered your husband."
"We don't know what any of them were involved. Unless there's proof you haven't told me about, Uncle?" When he didn't reply she pressed, "You must have more. You're my intelligence director, you're supposed to have something. Except you didn't know anything about the Ssi-ruuk going on the warpath again, did you? If you weren't my uncle I'd sack you and getting a new intel director, someone who focuses on real threats instead of spying on his own superiors."
She'd never snapped at him like that, not ever, and his one eye widened in shock. Marasiah felt a flush of shame for her outburst, but not the words themselves, and when he saw she wouldn't back down Hogrum bowed his head. "I'm sorry, Sia. I've made many mistakes. I admit that."
"Do better," she scowled. "Find out why the Ssi-ruuk have joined the fight and how their droids are working. Find out who's leading the Nagai. And if you have anything real on Antares' killer, I want that most of all. Until then you have better things to do than spread gossip."
"Of course, Sia," he bowed again. Though his face was a mask she could feel him blazing in the Force, indignant and unrepentant.
Hogrum left her office in a swirl of black robes. Instead of falling back into her chair she turned toward her window and the gathering dark. Anger still swirled inside her, anger at her uncle, at Stazi for whatever he'd done, at herself for being stupid enough to embark on this doomed unity government, at her father for revealing how darkness could claim her, even at Antares for being gone when she so badly needed him.
All his life her husband had striven to cut through conflict and find the noble purpose. She needed to find that way now but there was no one to guide her. Since childhood she'd been raised to rule and guided along that path by her parents, her uncle, her grandmother, Antares and all the Imperial Knights. They'd all abandoned her, and the only guide left was the Force.
That wasn't enough, Marasiah realized, and knowing that broke something inside her.
-{}-
Though Ganner and Azlyn had returned to Coruscant, their mission hardly felt complete. They'd tried to ascertain for certain who'd killed Antares and nearly assassinated the empress. Without their Force-powers, all they'd done was watch the admittedly-competent Bavinyari police track the killer to the room where he'd died. They'd eventually ascertained that Kagar Aynes had arrived on a passenger liner from Eriadu four days before the assassination. They'd found a return ticket in his possession, which implied the man had intended to flee Bavinyar, then panicked and killed himself after Cephalia had been put on lockdown.
There were still too many questions with answers that couldn't be found on Bavinyar. Ganner and Azlyn had convened in his quarters that evening to talk them over. A long time ago the idea of hosting Azlyn for dinner and quiet conversation would have stirred his romantic imagination. He felt too tired for any of that now and was just glad to have one friend to trust, so instead they sat at his kitchen table, discussing the case over cooling scraps of food.
"There's nothing linking Aynes to Derrol within the past three years," Azlyn told him. "Nothing specific, though we'd have to pick apart the senator's comm records to be sure, and I don't even know if that's possible. He seems to have gone through a half-dozen residences since the war ended."
"Aynes isn't much better." Ganner passed his datapad across the table.
Azlyn looked it over. Director Chalk had managed to pull together a fairly comprehensive biography of Antares' killer. The man had joined the Alliance ground forces at the very end of the Sith-Imperial War, as soon as he'd reached legal age. He'd ended up with a splinter of Admiral Slossar's fleet which had managed to join Stazi's renegades at the end of the war and he'd served for the next seven years as a sharpshooter, the last three of them in a unit commanded by Porat Derrol.
Chalk's records said nothing about the relationship between the two men, but Aynes' subsequent career looked patchy. He'd taken to wandering after the war, possibly because his family on Contruum had all been killed. Ganner wasn't familiar with any of his subsequent employers but they looked like a variety of private security firms. There was some indication he'd done a stint of bounty-hunting. It wasn't uncommon for ex-soldiers to fall into that kind of unglamorous work, and it was possible Aynes had blamed Marasiah for the dispirited direction his life had taken.
Azlyn frowned as she reached the bottom of the list. "That's not right," she said softly.
"What's not?"
She tapped the screen. "It says here Aynes spent the past ten months working for Perlemian Security Consulting, based on Vorzyd V."
He was unfamiliar with the firm. "What about it?"
"It's a front company," she said, "For Black Sun."
He frowned. "How do you know that?"
"I shouldn't say it's a front," she shrugged, "It does a good deal of legitimate business, but it's run by a vigo. What do you know about Vorzyd V?"
"It's a commerce planet in the Outer Rim, isn't it?" He'd heard it had popular gambling and pleasure zones, but he'd never been drawn to those.
"That's right. I was assigned there covertly for a few months."
Unlike most Imperial Knights, Azlyn had spent time as a freelance agent, travelling undercover through Krayt's empire and gathering intelligence. He recalled she'd done some work tracing the Sith's connections to organized crime and he felt a spike of irrational hope. He needed Antares' murder to be the work of more than some disgruntled Alliance partisan. His friend deserved grander enemies and Ganner wanted to deliver justice with his own hands. When he'd found Aynes' body on Bavinyar he'd felt cheated.
"Anyway," Azlyn continued, "Perlemian Security provides muscle at a lot of Vorzyd's casinos, and other ones in nearby sectors. Black Sun was wrestling control over most those places when I was there, and naturally that meant taking over the security teams. Most people who worked for Perlemian probably don't even know it's Black Sun, but it's their people on top."
"So it's all really tenuous." Ganner felt deflated.
"Not necessarily. I'm sure Black Sun keeps a close eye on each one of its hires, in case it can use them for something special."
"And why would Black Sun want to kill the empress?"
"I don't know. The Federation's been putting pressure on them, and they can't like that after collaborating with Krayt." Azlyn put down Ganner's datapad and tapped her own. "The Bavinyari also sent a message today. They finally found Aynes' rifle on the bottom of the channel. It was a Merr-Sonn LR-37X, which is a pretty rare model with more kick than other sniper rifles. There's not many portable laser cannons that can knock an airspeeder out of the sky from a kilometer away. It's not for sale on civilian markets, though a criminal organization could always find a way."
"So could an Alliance senator with military credentials," Ganer muttered. Azlyn let that pass without comment.
They were still missing pieces, and they wouldn't find them here. He had no doubt the empress would approve a trip to Vorzyd V to look further into this, but he wasn't sure how much they could accomplish. It would take an Imperial Knight with the greatest Force skills to sneak into a Black Sun stronghold. As they'd been reminded repeatedly over the past year, they were lowly mortals now.
Ganner asked, "Do you think Aynes really killed himself?"
"I don't know if it matters. It's safe to say he was on that bridge shooting at us. Black Sun's not sloppy. They probably sent an agent to shadow Aynes and make sure he didn't talk. He could have shot himself just as easily." She sat back in her chair. "The message came across loud and clear. Perception's what matters."
It twisted Ganner's heart to think his friend's murder had become nothing more than a blame-game between Imperial and Alliance senators. "There's a truth behind this. We have to find it."
"Agreed. I may still know people on Vorzyd, people who don't know I'm a Knight. They might help us."
"What if your cover doesn't hold?"
"Then we're probably dead," she said simply.
They held each other's eyes across the dinner table. At different times they'd both resigned themselves to death and even welcomed it. Yet despite it here they were, in the position to make some good out of lives neither was sure they should be living.
-{}-
It was shameful to be skulking in Coruscant's back alleys like conspirators and Stazi knew they'd look exactly like that if they were caught. Meeting like this was the least bad option he could think of. He couldn't risk being seen in public with Porat Derrol, not with all the accusation and rumor swirling around the news-nets and the senate hall, and he'd decided not to risk using a comm. If there was a time to be overly paranoid, it was right now.
He'd been waiting in the alley for four minutes, watching traffic lines pulse high overhead through the night, when Derrol appeared on the far end. He'd thrown a cloak over his head, but the twin peaks of his horns were hard to disguise. Stazi removed a tiny glow-lamp from his own cloak, held it out, and flashed it twice in Derrol's direction. The senator hurried to join him in that shadowed place.
"Is this really necessary?" Derrol asked, more tense than confused.
"This is the time for an abundance of caution," Stazi said. "Especially for you."
"I understand that. But I did nothing wrong. I haven't been involved with Kagar Aynes in any way since the end of the war."
Derrol had already insisted as much before the reporters, and he'd had the same righteous anger in his voice then as now. Stazi was glad of that, and to his ears the anger rang authentic. It seemed shameful to doubt one of his own soldiers, but he couldn't afford to take even Derrol on faith.
"Everything here is speculation and slander," the senator insisted. "I would prove it, but I can't prove what I didn't do."
"I'm aware of the difficulties. It sounds like Brighton is standing by you."
"And the other senators," Derrol nodded.
"You're fortunate to have stalwart allies," Stazi said, though he wondered what political calculus those allies would play. Senators from Alliance sectors had fallen in behind him just as fast as the Imperial senators had leaped to attack. The political lines in the senate had been drawn before Bavinyar, but the incident had caused everyone to jump into trenches and Stazi was afraid they would start opening fire, metaphorically or literally.
"I hope I can count on your support too, Admiral."
He looked at that face nearly hidden by shadow. "I'll do what I can, but I have my own position to be mindful of."
"Your official neutrality. I know."
Sensing faint sarcasm, Stazi said, "This isn't the only crisis I have to deal with, and frankly, all this one's amounted to so far are shouting and accusations."
"The Ssi-ruuk and the Nagai. I'm sorry. With all that's happening they slipped my mind."
Bavinyar had kicked off a storm on Coruscant and the bigger one raging in the Outer Rim was nearly forgotten. Stazi still questioned whether that was coincidence but without facts all he had was paranoia.
The Duros exhaled sharply. "Continue as normally as you can. The election is just two days away and it doesn't look like the empress is going to cancel it."
"If she tries, will you block her?"
"Yes. I won't have the senate killed in its own cradle."
"Good." Derrol seemed satisfied. "Admiral, what do you think really happened on Bavinyar?"
"I don't know," he admitted. "It seems possible that Aynes was a lone radical."
"But unlikely."
Stazi nodded in the dark. He wished he had more to tell but Hogrum Chalk had gotten very selective about the information he shared. It wasn't helping here and it was hindering the response in the Outer Rim even more.
"Maybe," the senator said, "Once we get through the vote in two days, things will settle down. At least for my situation."
Stazi doubted that, and it sounded like Derrol did too, but he nodded.
-{}-
Everything had worked out better than Darth Havok had dreamed, and he'd required a new respect for Black Sun and its agents. In selecting their assassin from one of Gar Stazi's ex-soldiers they'd automatically cast aspersions on the admiral, and in using one of Derrol's subordinates they'd had a true stroke of luck. All Coruscant was swirling with speculation, and the best part was that the assassin had died with enough unanswered questions to keep rumors going indefinitely.
As skillful as Black Sun had been in selecting, arming, and quietly disposing of its assassin, the extent of their success continued to surprise. Havok had set his agents to keep watch over the drama's key players: the empress of course, Hogrum Chalk, Gar Stazi, Porat Derrol and several other key senators. When two separate spies had commed him to report that meeting between Stazi and Derrol in a shadow-draped alley beneath the government district, Havok had hurried to be there.
Without an audio link he gained little from the conversation, but as he lay on a ledge thirty meters above the two sulking figures he recorded several images off the night-vision scanner of his macrobinoculars. The picture quality was low but he managed to grab a few frames of the two figures bent close, hoods peeled far enough back to expose half their faces.
This was proof of nothing, but in a way that worked best. If Havok chose to disseminate them, Stazi and Derrol would furiously deny the meeting. Their supporters and detractors would each see in grainy images whatever they wanted to see and battle lines would further harden. Nihl's conquests in the Outer Rim would continue to grow and Coruscant would be mired in its own squabbles. Havok had to give the Dark Lord credit; Nihl's plan of divide and conquer was working perfectly. It made the Iktotchi swell with pride to know that they were still Sith, even if the Force was silent.
When his targets split up Havok remained on the ledge. He watched Stazi exit the alley first, then watched Derrol leave and go the opposite direction. Quickly he retracted the fiberchord he's used to reach the ledge and pulled himself up to the roof, where a speeder bike was waiting.
As he started the vehicle, Havok considered. Sith spies had been watching Stazi for the past three years and they knew the admiral's habits. Derrol was a less-known quality but likely to be just as important in the days ahead. He pushed his bike to the edge of the roof, watched the Chagrian's cloaked figure take off in his own small speeder, and kicked off in pursuit.
Havok trailed the speeder from a distance, turning off all running lights on his bike to avoid detection. He hovered clear of the skylanes, reducing his odds of being spotted or of colliding with another vehicle. Derrol was no fool either; he took several sharp turns and looped around twice before finally setting course back to the senatorial residential towers.
Derrol's speeder disappeared into the landing bay in the skyscraper's lower section. Havok patched in a quick call to the agent he'd assigned to keep track of the senators and requested the location of Derrol's apartment. The response came quickly, and Havok swung his bike around to get a better look at the Chagrians' quarters. His spies said Derrol hosted occasional meetings with his political allies in the apartment, and that his young wife participated more than was usual for a senator's spouse. There might be a way to use her, Havok thought as he rode halfway up the tower's flank, then pushed away and set his bike to hover in the night sky.
When he was half a kilometer away from the tower, Havok took out his binoculars and scoured the building for Derrol's window. The one he'd been directed to was already lit from the inside, and no reflectors hid the interior from view. Slightly sloppy, Havok thought, but the senatorial tower was set well clear of skylanes or nearby buildings in order to give its denizens a sense of security.
Havok zoomed in with his binoculars and peered inside Derrol's apartment. He was just in time to see the senator walk into the room wearing a plain tunic, likely having left his cloak behind in the speeder. He saw Derrol's wife step up to greet him warmly.
They lingered in the entry room to speak, bodies angled so Havok could see them both in profile. When the saw the side of the Chagrian woman's face something stirring in memory. He tried to increase the binocular's zoom but it was already maximized.
He examined that face again and the resemblance was still there. His heart quickened.
Havok lowered the binoculars and edged his bike forward another fifty meters. He didn't want to risk getting closer. When he brought up the binoculars they were still talking to one another near the door, and the amplified image raked across the woman's face and body. When they finally turned to go to the other room her entire face was briefly visible, confirming Havok's suspicion.
After the fall of Darth Krayt, Lord Nihl had gathered all the One Sith together save for Darth Maladi, who'd hidden on Te Hasa, and Saarai, the half-trained daughter of the traitor Wyyrlok. Finding the latter had become a low priority, nearly forgotten. They'd underestimated her; in three years she'd managed to make herself wife of one of the Federations' most important politicians.
Havok had no idea what Saarai had planned or what threat she might represent. He only knew that, of all the tangled schemes playing out on Coruscant, hers had suddenly become the most important. He watched them speak without hearing their words, and when they retreated to a room out of view, Havok kicked his bike to life and rushed back to base. Lord Nihl wouldn't be happy with the news, but he had to hear it.