As he sat down in Hogrum Chalk's office, facing the regent across a desktop and two cups of morning caf, Treis Sinde was extremely grateful the Force had been silenced. Which, he supposed, was proof of how absurd his life had become.
He'd never thought of himself as a man adept at subterfuge, but the past week proved him to be a fast learner. When he'd passed the datacard containing traffic data and profiles of Chalk's bodyguards, he hadn't known what would come next. When Astraal had returned several days later, the sealed box she'd brought from the Jedi Temple contained a scrap of flimsy with instructions wrapped around a pair of metal chips the size of his fingernail. One for him, Ganner had written. One for the regent or his guard.
For the next day he'd prevaricated, wondering whether it was worth the risk or if he should have Astraal make yet another courier run and return the tracking device. He'd politely asked the Twi'lek to keep these runs private- that is, not to tell Chalk- and she'd agreed, though the question in her eyes bordered on suspicion. Even sending her on one more run would be a risk.
That was why, heart pounding in his chest, Treis had found pretense to make small talk to one of the guards standing outside Chalk's office just a minute ago. For a second he'd laid a hand on the man's shoulder and gently affixed the adhesive side of the tracking chip on the interior edge of the shoulder-plate, where it would be invisible except to thorough checks.
The chip would be found eventually, probably through armor maintenance, but for now Ganner's people had a window, probably of a few days. He prayed it got them what they needed.
It wasn't guilt that wracked Treis as he sat down with Hogrum and casually sipped his caf. He increasingly suspected that somewhat was, indeed, happening in the lower levels of the Department of Transit building, and if Marasiah was hidden there, he had every right and duty to find her out. What unsettled him was pure nerves; subterfuge was not his specialty but Chalk's, and he was afraid the regent might spot some mistake he hadn't known he'd made.
Hogrum, however, seemed slightly weary as he sipped caf through scarred lips. He placed the cup on his desktop and said, "I'd like to meet with Master Dare to discuss security arrangements for the trial. Sometime late this afternoon, if possible."
"I'm sure that can be arranged," Treis replied. He kept one hand tight around his cup to keep from shaking. "Do you have a clear idea of what we'll need to prepare?"
Hogrum nodded. "The Jedi's recusal has clarified things somewhat. And I believe we finally have a timetable. I'm looking to begin the trial ten standard days from now."
Ten days. That was less than a month since the bombing, a stunningly fast time to put together a criminal case. Unless, Treis thought, you manufactured most of the evidence.
"What about Senator Derrol?" he asked.
"You tell me," Hogrum said wearily. "Has Master Val made any progress?"
"No," Treis admitted.
"Neither have my agents."
"Still, putting Derrol in trial in absentia… it won't appear credible."
"Derrol lost credibility himself when he ran."
"You don't want to wait until we have him?"
"I would, in theory, but I have to be practical. We may never have Derroll. Our best chance of catching him was when we tried to arrest him with the others. Since then our odds of capture diminish by the hour. For all we know he could be hiding in Chiss space right now."
"That seems… unlikely."
"I don't mean literally. I meant he's run and probably found a secure place to hide. The galaxy is vast and full of holes a ranat can cower in. If he picks a deep one he can stay there without having to run and risk capture. If we wait until we find him, we could wait a decade. No. We have to move forward and administer justice soon."
"And you're sure you have an airtight case?"
"Yes. Even the terrorist enablers in the Senate will have to accept it."
Treis was impressed by his conviction, and also frightened. "You must have uncovered impressive evidence."
"We have. You'll see it in time. Have faith, Master Sinde. We'll make sure justice is done."
Hogrum took a long drink from his cup. Treis forced himself to do the same, then asked, "When will you make an official announcement?"
"This afternoon, fifteen hundred hours. I'd like to meet with Master Dare after that."
"I'll be sure to arrange it."
"Thank you, Master Sinde." Hogrum pivoted his chair slightly to let his natural eye wander toward the skyline. "The Imperial Knights will have a heavy presence at the trial. You should reserve at least sixty percent of your people to keep the justice center secure."
That was a large order. "Does that include our agents abroad?"
"No. Let Master Val chase Derroll… He might even get lucky."
"I understand. Is there anything else?"
Hogrum seemed to consider; then he shook his head. "That's all for now."
"Very good, sir." Treis rose finished his drink, placed his cup on the desk, and rose. "Thank you for the drink."
Hogrum nodded absently. "My recommendation to you is to make sure you get good rest the next few nights, Master Sinde. No matter the outcome, next week is going to be very… stressful."
He didn't know the half of it. Treis bowed, stepped out the door, and with effort refrained from glancing at the guard outside on whom he'd stuck the transmitter. He retreated from the regent's office with long fast strides and was pretty sure he kept his hands from shaking.
-{}-
They knew something was finally happening when the two tracking beacons they'd sent to Treis Sinde began transmitting from different locations. The first pings arrived at the exact same time from the different devices, but according to the transceiver Sauk had fixed up, those devices were now some eight hundred meters apart.
They still had precious little information to work with, but they had to get a closer look. They'd obtained a cheap airspeeder the previous day, and it had taken Sauk some six hours to successfully patch his transceiver into the speeder's navigational system. It was gross violation of the rental contract but necessary for what they had to do next.
Once it was confirmed that the trackers were separate, Marin, Sauk, and Hondo piled into the speeder and took to the air. The airspace around the government district was heavily patrolled but technically open to the public, so with Hondo behind the wheel, they took their speeder on a series of convoluted loops around the different government buildings and did absolutely nothing to attract attention from security patrols.
Exactly thirty minutes after the first distanced pings, they received two more. Hondo had made sure they were flying close to the palace complex, and when the signals came, they were mapped onto the speeder's telemetry data to give an idea of what exactly the signals were coming from.
Hunched in the speeder's back seat, peering at the portable viewscreen in his lap, Sauk reported, "Both signals came in clear again. It looks like one's coming from the Imperial Knight wing, the other from around the executive tower."
"Well, at least we know which is Chalk and which is Sinde." Hondo glanced at Marin. "Any chance you can feel the regent?"
"Do a slow loop around the palace," she told him.
"Sure thing." He twisted the wheel. "After one round I'm bugging out. Don't wanna attract attention from security. We'll come back in a half hour for another fly-by."
"I know," Marin said, and closed her eyes.
Over the past week she'd gradually acclimatized herself to Coruscant and its chaotic Force aura. She'd practiced by standing amidst crowds, picking random pedestrians with her eyes, then identifying them in the Force and using that signature alone to follow them. It required immense self-control, but in theory it should be easier sitting in a speeder instead of wandering through a crowd.
She kept her eyes shut tight, breathed in and out slowly. Time seemed to slow as well. She found two Force-auras right beside her: Sauk curious and deliberate, Hondo always edging for action. She felt them, marked them, and ignored them. Then she stretched further.
The government complex was full of activity. Thousands of beings milled through its halls and offices, performing the complex duties of state. She felt a collective tension underlying the mundanity of bureaucratic work, the same kind of tension she felt all over Coruscant: everyone was waiting for the next bomb to go off. Literal or metaphorical nobody was sure, but everyone expected something big.
Amidst such a mass of minds, it was hard to find those that stood out. She was sure Chalk's would; she'd only met the man once or twice, and that was forty years ago, but there was a weight and concentration people gained when in positions of power. She'd had it herself when leading the campaign against Yaga Auchs, and she searched for the same weary severity among all the beings in the palace.
One stood out against all the others, more wear and more severe. She concentrated on it to the exclusion of all else and felt her chest grow tight with conviction. She angled her head to face where the feeling emanated from, and when she opened her eyes she found herself looking straight at the stout executive tower that peaked the palace.
"I have him," she whispered. It came out so soft but Hondo heard, and he wrested the speeder away from the palace.
As they put distance between them and Chalk, Hondo askes, "You really got a bead on him?"
"Yes," she swallowed. Her mouth had gone dry suddenly. "I'm pretty sure."
"Good. We'll wing around in-" he glanced at the dashboard chrono- "Twenty-six minutes and try again."
Marin nodded and watched the government district move around them. Instead of heading straight out, Hondo made a turn and veered northwest.
"Figure we should check out the transit HQ while we're in the neighborhood," he said.
"Good idea," Sauk chimed from the back seat.
The Department of Transportation building was a tower standing separate from the others. It rose high and plunged deep, and Hondo cut altitude to give them a better look at the lower levels as they flew by. Marin and Sauk both took out macrobinoculars and pressed against the speeder's left-side windows. Marin spotted several angular ports in the skyscraper's gently-curving face; she figured any one of those could have been service entrances ideal for dropping off secret shipments for secret prisoners. She noted that only one of them seemed to have external sensor cameras. That portal was on the southeast side of the tower, facing the drum-shaped judicial building two kilometers away.
They did a complete loop around the transit building before Hondo increased speed and altitude. As they skirted around the edges of the government district, she and Sauk discussed what they'd seen and agreed on the most likely port of entry. Hondo put them on a return course seemingly as fast as they'd left, and Sauk prepped his computer to receive the next pings from the trackers.
As for Marin, she closed her eyes, tried to ignore the passing towers and speeders, and found the memory of Hogrum Chalk's Force-aura in her mind. It was already starting to fade to insubstantiality but she held it tight and readied herself to feel it again in a few minutes.
She only opened her eyes when Hondo said they were close to the palace. Squinting into the midday sun, Marin watched the great structure draw close. She reached out for Chalk, seeking him in that same tower, but as Hondo took them on the first loop around the building she found it empty of his presence.
"He's not there," she muttered.
"Hold on," Sauk said. "Ping's coming up in ten seconds… Make that five seconds…"
Marin closed her eyes, sealed off her senses, and searched again. She caught of whiff of him- weariness and severity- and tried to zero in. He wasn't in the executive tower, he was somewhere else, somewhere closer.
"Got him," Sauk said. "Telemetry says… he's in the air!"
"He's in a speeder," Marin said, and opened her eyes.
"Great," said Hondo. "Which one?"
Even in the security-patrolled airspace around the palace, there were dozens of ships to pick from. Marin didn't spot anything with a visible security escort. That threw her off, so much she nearly lost track of Chalk, and she forced herself to close her eyes and concentrate again.
Sauk provided what they needed. "Ping says he's north and west of the palace. Say, point-eight kilometers. Can't tell which direction he's going."
"He's going away from it," Marin whispered as knowledge came to her.
Hondo twisted the speeder and hit the accelerator. Marin felt the life-swarm of the palace recede behind them but Chalk was still ahead. He seemed to be getting neither closer nor more distant, but space was hard to measure in the Force.
Then she understood. "Wait," she said, "I know where he's going."
"You mean the transport center?" asked Hondo. "Just our shabla luck."
"Slow down," she warned, "We don't want him to know he's tailed."
"Got it," said Hondo.
Marin only opened her eyes when she'd felt they'd decelerated to a crawl. She opened them to find the transit department toward dead ahead. Hondo had plucked the binoculars from her laps and was holding them to his eyes even as his other hand gripped the control yoke.
"That's him all right," Hondo said. "An airspeeder just ducked into that landing bay."
"Southeast side?" asked Sauk.
"Yep. The one with the cameras, like you said."
"Now what?" The Mon Cal looked at Marin. So did Hondo.
She took a deep breath. They were close, damn close, but they weren't there yet. For all they knew, the regent was paying the Department of Transit bureaucrats a surprise inspection.
"Sauk," she asked, "If we get a ping from inside, can you overlay that data to the building plans Oren sliced for us?"
"I should be able to."
"Good. Hondo, fly us some nice easy loops around the building."
"Fly too many and we'll attract security," he said, but complied anyway.
"Just give it a few minutes. Then we can fly out and come back in time for the next ping."
"What are we waiting for?"
Marin didn't answer. She closed her eyes again and dipped into the Force. She pushed away Hondo's and Sauk's auras, sifted through all the thousands of workers in the office tower, and found Chalk's, faint bus distinct. The speeder swung around that aura like a planet around a sun, and with every loop she felt herself knowing the aura better.
And then, suddenly, it winked out.
Marin's eyes opened. She felt for Chalk one more time, but he simply wasn't there.
"What is it?" asked Hondo. "Can we go now?"
"We can go now. I've lost Chalk."
And found Marasiah, she thought.
-{}-
When her uncle stepped into the room Marasiah was in the middle of exercises, her only release of pent-up anger and frustration. The portal opened and Hogrum slid into the chamber, a pool of inky black against the white glow of the walls. She immediately sprung out of her push-up, palms jumping off the tile, snapped her back straight, and stared into his mismatched eyes from two meters away. Blood and adrenaline were pumping fast and he had an instant's desire to lunge for him.
Marasiah restrained herself. Still breathing heavily she clenched fists at her side and said, "What do you want, uncle?"
"Only words," he said.
"You came to ask my advice? I already told you, I'll never give it to you."
Ignoring her, he stepped over to one of the room's soft chairs and lowered himself into it. Marasiah glared down at him bit back the urge to tell him to leave. It would do no good. She stalked around and sat down in the chair opposite.
"I'm moving ahead with the trial," he told her. "Ten days from now, Stazi, Nelloran, and Kaige will be put on the docket for your murder, and the murder of your husband. Porat Derrol will be tried in absentia."
"What kind of trial?" She asked because she was curious.
"A criminal one. It will be heard by a panel of seven magistrates."
"I assume you've already guaranteed a guilty verdict."
"You assume too much. I'm not a tyrant, Siah."
She looked around her cage and laughed one bitter laugh.
"I'm not," he insisted. "The judges will make their decision of their own accord. Once they weigh the facts they'll decide they have no choice but to convict."
"Facts," she said bitterly. "Falsified evidence."
"Some will be, but I faked nothing I didn't already know."
She shook her head. "All you know is what Eshkar Niin told you before you murdered him."
"Which was the truth."
"How? Did you feel it in the Force, uncle? No. Of course you didn't. Niin was a Sith."
"I know that better than anyone. Even you," he said with a flash of anger, and aching memory of her mother.
"Even without the Force Sith are masters of deception. Niin would lie with his last breath to spite you."
"He tried." Hogrum's face darkened. "I took that breath from him."
This would get them nowhere. Marasiah leaned back in her chair and asked, "What did you come here for? Just to tell me the news?"
"I'd like to solicit your opinion."
"Ask."
"The magistrates will weigh the guilt of the parties accused, but I intend to have a hand in sentencing. What punishment would you suggest?"
She stared at him. "Are you seriously asking me?"
He nodded soberly.
"They're innocent beings. They shouldn't be punished at all."
He shook his head. "Let me rephrase the question. If senior Alliance officials colluded in your husband's murder, what punishment would you suggest?"
"They weren't. I'm certain of it."
"You're not," he said plainly, but it was a stinging accusation.
It was right, too. Just before Hogrum's coup, she'd sent Ganner Krieg and Azlyn Rae to question Senator Derrol. She'd never found out the results but all three had gone missing. She had no idea what it meant, but it had to mean something. Perhaps even that her uncle was right and she was wrong.
"If they had killed Antares… I would want them punished. Severely."
"Even if it strained the Federation?"
"Yes," she admitted.
"And what kind of punishment would you recommend? Capital?"
Her heart said yes, but her lips said, "No."
Hogrum's scarred forehead wrinkled. He didn't believe her. "What instead? Life in prison? That makes them rallying points for Alliance die-hards."
"Kill them and you make them martyrs."
"If I imprison them Alliance partisans may try to break them out. And if they escape-"
"They'll find no support, because you've painted them as criminals in the public eye and cowed the Alliance senators into admitting you were right. That is your plan, isn't it, uncle?"
He regarded her before nodding once.
"Here's another reason," she said. "By letting them live you prove yourself magnanimous in victory. It will be harder for your enemies to paint you as a pure villain. You run the risk of them getting freed, yes, but if you put them in a secure enough facility, you won't have to worry about that."
A secure facility like this one, she thought. She still had no idea where she was being held, not that it would do her any good.
Marasiah was tempted to suggest that he brutally execute Stazi and the rest, and any other Alliance loyalist who gave him trouble, just in the hope it would spark an insurrection and topple him. She didn't do it, though, because her uncle would see through the ploy and because she didn't want the blood of yet another civil war on her hands.
Which meant Hogrum understood her well, and had been wise to seek her advice after all.
"I will consider your argument." He stood up. "I'll visit again before the trial."
"You don't need to bother yourself," she said, voice brittle. "I can keep myself busy here."
"Your well-being is important me, Siah."
She had the urge to strike him as he turned but remained in her seat. As he walked for the door she called, "If the Force ever returns, uncle, your lies will be exposed. And you'll pay for them."
He stopped before the portal and looked at her. "That's quite unlikely. The research into rejuvenating midi-chlorians has been going for a year now with little progress."
"They may still discover something."
"They may, but it's unlikely. I've begun to drain staff and funding from the project. Quietly, of course."
"What?" She rose from her seat. "Why? Don't you want the Force back?"
"The Force," he said, "is the last thing the galaxy needs."
"How can you say that? You're an Imperial Knight!"
"Yes, and I've seen better than anyone how the Force can cloud one's judgment. It ruined mine for many years, and it took me too long to break from its influence and do what needed to be done." His lips tightened in a scowl. "But the Force does far worse things than that. Eshkar Niin was as honorable Knight, one all of us trusted with our lives. Then his lust for mastery corrupted him and turned him into a beast."
"Men don't need the dark side to turn traitor."
"No. But the Force amplifies their desire and the damage it can do. The Force allows men to make themselves into monsters- and very rarely saints. Either becomes an agent of chaos. The galaxy needs order, Siah. It doesn't need the Force."
"You're wrong. The Force is more than a corruptor. It gives wisdom and strength-"
"Does it, really, Siah?" He looked around her cage.
She felt hollow inside, as hollow as the words she'd said. She'd been raised from birth to believe the Force was as vital as breathing. The gifts it allowed were supposed to grant her the ability to realize any dream and surpass any obstacle.
She'd had the Force with her all along, carried in her Skywalker blood. It hadn't done a thing to save her mother, her father, or her husband. It hadn't kept her out of this prison.
"The Force is done with this galaxy," Hogrum said. "I only hope this galaxy is done with the Force."
She could have opened her mouth and reminded him that Cade Skywalker was out there, once again the Force's unlikely last hope. Instead she kept it shut and watched him step outside of the chamber. Light eclipsed black and she was alone again.