23 BTC
Prologue
"Vitheon, as has been stated in our brief introduction, though small in size and remote, holds a great deal of potential value to both the Sith and the Empire as a whole…"
The Board of Trustees wasn't listening. Baara could tell that much from the way the Chairman's fingers were drumming listlessly against the table upon which his hand rested. His gaze remained trained on Doctor Witwar, but the glazed, unfocused expression in his eyes belied his lack of attention. Other members of the Board weren't nearly so polite, most having long since given up the pretense of paying attention to the Doctor's pitch, a desperate plea for further funding to a project long since deemed unfruitful by the University. Instead, the remainder of the twelve had engaged in various ways of passing the time, from gazing fixedly at their holopads or speaking quietly to each other, to one man who, quite unashamedly, had fallen asleep outright. His light snores occasionally punctuated the pitter patter of steadily falling rain.
In a way, Baara couldn't blame them. The Doctor, though kind and well meaning, was a bit of the stereotype of the eccentric professor (without the loveable wackiness) and, as such, had quite the tendency to ramble on at length about subjects that most individuals were neither informed on nor found remotely interesting.
Despite her personal investment in the success of the Doctor's mission, she herself found her mind beginning to stray at times. It was only with a great deal of effort that she managed to refocus her attention on the words emanating in a steady, streaming monotone from the old man's mouth. The unusual warmth of the lecture hall, coupled with the rain drumming on the building's roof, made it doubly hard to do so. However, Witwar's tendency to occasionally raise his volume rather suddenly and dramatically, startling his audience with poorly timed emphasis, provided another incentive for remaining tuned into his speech. Whether these moments of, rather loud, speaking were chosen for some obscure oratorical effect, or simply by accident, was unclear. On at least two occasions, however, his abrupt rise in volume had startled the sleeping Board member awake, only for the man to promptly fall back asleep once more.
Doctor Witwar's inability to properly deliver a speech did have one other interesting effect. One of his bouts of near shouting managed to conceal the noise of a door softly hissing open at the back of the auditorium. As her heartbeat began to return to normal from the sudden start, Baara sighed, stretching her arms slightly and rotating her head subtly as she attempted to work out the kink in her neck without being too obvious about it. This attempt at decorum meant she still had a mostly clear view of the back of the auditorium when a figure lingering in the darkness of a column, almost a shadow itself, flitted a pace or two down the side aisle lining the chamber.
Baara blinked, wondering for a split second if she'd imagined the vision. Some sort of trick of the light, perhaps. The chamber, more of a grand amphitheater really, wasn't particularly well lit in the most distant recesses…
No. There it was again. She hadn't imagined it.
Was that a person?
Well, obviously, it was a person, but who was it?
No one else seemed to notice the woman who'd quietly appeared in the lecture hall halfway through a presentation.
It was a little rude, actually, now that Baara stopped to think about it. Was this woman a student? Why would she wander in now? Did she have no concern for the noise she might have made? As if the Board needed another reason to not pay attention to their appeal.
Baara bristled slightly, the effects of tiredness and stress and hopelessness over the inevitable denial of funds making her a bit more short tempered than usual.
The native inhabitants of an entire region on Vitheon, some forty thousand people, are about to have to relocate in the name of Imperial progress unless the committee can provide some meaningful excuse to prolong an historical survey, and this student decides to wander in late for the sake of...what, salvaging a grade?
Breathe.
It won't help matters to get angry.
Lowering her gaze to the tabletop, Baara drew in a deep breath, holding it for a moment, before exhaling through her nose. A bit of the irritation (though not all of it), faded, replaced with shame and...sadness. Two years of her life...wasted. Two years worth of playing intermediary between increasingly unfriendly local leaders and impatient Imperial officials, of tedious research and frantic all nighters spent rewriting interim progress reports to suit last minute demands by the Board, the military, and other shareholders. Two years of dodging every attempt at having the rug pulled out from under them, of recovering their balance and breathing a sigh of relief at having, for however short a time it may be, some sense of stable ground to stand on. Two years of time invested and personal relationships built.
And now it was for nothing.
The woman, she noted dimly, as she regained her internal composure, was dressed plainly. Neutral colored tunic and pants. Almost certainly a student. She didn't look much older than Baara herself, though she was...markedly taller. A point against her, in Baara's book, though she'd never admit it.
Baara's fingers began to tap lightly against the table at which she was seated. In a vain attempt to distract herself from her inability to stop the slow motion speeder wreck taking place at the podium in front of her, she continued to study the latecomer. She'd made it uncomfortably simple for her, taking a seat in the right block, nearly at the front and slightly towards the central rows. Baara could easily pretend to be listening to Witwar's less than stellar speech while she surreptitiously observed the woman sitting just a few rows into the small audience.
She had watched the feat with dismay, actually, finding it incredible to believe that no one else had noticed the disturbance. Perhaps they were simply being polite.
In retrospect, that was a likely possibility. The huddle of students gathered near the front were some of the Doctor's more devoted students. From her own impressions and her conversations with the young scholars over the years, she'd gathered that Witwar was the kind of man you either adored or loathed. But even the latter was more targeted at the man's droning lectures than the personage himself. Witwar was, at his core, a simple hearted researcher not often involved in anything controversial. That fact, coupled with his old fashioned, humble sense of politeness and tact, meant he offended few.
Baara didn't realize when she'd become attached, but the thought of how the old man would take the inevitable bad news made the sadness well up inside her once more.
She tilted her head slightly, looking down at the holopadd in front of her and pretending to enter a note as she willed away the moisture prickling at the back of her eyes. Only when she could once more sense the coolness of the auditorium on her skin did she look up.
The woman was staring at her, a direct, focused gaze that couldn't have been accidental or misinterpreted.
An unexpected shiver ran down her spine as goosebumps rose on her arms. The stranger's pale, almost clear blue eyes were very striking...and equally unnerving. Something about the gaze seemed...cold, though Baara couldn't quite put her finger on it. The woman appeared relaxed. Her eyes weren't narrowed. Neither was her brow furrowed.
But Baara couldn't shake the uneasy feeling that gaze stirred up in her, especially as the woman didn't seem inclined to look away upon making eye contact.
Maybe that's it though. She caught me off guard.
The stranger's refusal to back down only doubled Baara's resolve to do the same. She wasn't about to let herself be intimidated, especially by someone who didn't have the manners to show up on time.
Baara's own brown eyes narrowed slightly and she improved her already pristine posture as she straightened up even further, holding the challenger's stare without flinching. Her expression seemed to issue a challenge.
Well? What now?
The tempo of her fingers drumming against the tabletop picked up slightly as the two stared at each other, becoming a steady beat that earned her a brief side glance from her colleague to the left.
Dargla, one of Witwar's two doctoral students she'd been seated next to, glanced at her, then out at the audience, eyes roaming across the small crowd of faces and numerous empty seats. "What?" he muttered irritably out of the side of his mouth.
Baara just shook her head slightly, neither answering him nor looking in his direction. Her fingers slowed, however, tapping more quietly so as not to draw undue attention. She hadn't missed the brief, scrutinizing glance from the Chairman. Dargla's annoyance at her refusal to explain was evident, however, from his slight 'huff' and continued restless shifting. "What is it? Who are you staring at?"
"The woman who walked in a few minutes ago," she answered shortly, a terse attempt at getting him to shut up. She regretted letting the woman get under her skin, without even saying a word, but the lot of them hadn't gotten more than a handful of hours asleep apiece over the last two and a half days. Not since they'd been abruptly summoned back to Dromund Kaas two weeks ahead of schedule.
"Woman? What woman? Point her out," he insisted.
The blonde haired one, you idiot. The one who's staring me down. How can you not notice?
"The blonde one, blue eyes, center right side, three rows back," she muttered.
"Where? I don't see her…"
"Will you two shut it?" a shrill voice hissed from her right.
God, now she'd drawn Holberi's attention. On their own, the two of them were each...tolerable. Together though…
"Baara's staring at some woman…"
"Really?" in spite of her reservations towards her colleague, Baara had secretly always admired, or at least been amused by, Holberi's ability to pack so much derision into a single, flat word.
"If you'd let me finish, you insufferable…" Dargla's hackles were up now, and he seemed itching for a fight. They both did, actually. Baara cursed whatever idiot had designated the seating arrangements. The two of them shouldn't have been in the same room, much less at the same table.
And definitely not with herself stuck in between. How they'd managed not to slit each other's throats, vying for attention from the good professor before she came along was...beyond Baara's ability to comprehend.
"Thank you, Dr. Witwar, for that rousing speech," the Chairman peered at the old doctor over the top of his holopad as he finished entering some kind of note. His voice was politely bland as he cut the elder man off mid sentence. "I'm afraid we're all out of time for today, however." His eyes flickered towards the group of three gathered at the table behind Witwar's podium. Baara felt her heart sink as his disapproving gaze fell on her. Though the Chairman made no comment, it was clear he'd noticed the disruption and, apparently, taken it as the cue he needed to cut the pointless meeting short.
He'd already made up his mind before we came here.
Certain as she was that that was true, Baara couldn't repress the guilt at having unintentionally hastened that end along. Not to mention, the despairing voice inside of her wouldn't stop shouting, "Wait! If you'll just listen for a minute…"
All she wanted to was disappear, to sink into the floor and cease existing.
"Out of time?" Witwar looked up from his notes and gaped at the Chairman, baffled and a little lost. "But I've...I've got several more points to make, Chairman," he began, with the voice of one who wholeheartedly believed he was speaking to a rational, reasonable fellow being. "Not to mention, my students," he glanced behind him and his eyes fell on Baara, "and my colleagues on the committee," he amended as his eyes met hers. The look of frustration and confusion in his gaze was almost more than she could bear. The reassuring expression he sent their way was more than her heart could handle. Witwar turned back to the front, and Baara's clenched fists tightened.
"Have several excellent points of their own to make. Now, Chairman, they've put quite a lot of work in over the past two years. We all have. It would be remiss of this Board not to hear them out."
She'd had a whole series of points prepared to follow Witwar's own presentation. A much shorter, more succinct argument that she was certain would have at least gotten the Board to pay attention during their presentation, even if they ultimately decided against them anyway.
"Be that as it may, Doctor, we have other presentations to attend," the emphasis was slight, but it stung all the same. More even.
Why don't you just come out and say what you really mean?
He doesn't have to. We just gave him the out he was looking for...Damn it…If we'd just had a few minutes more. Ten minutes. That's all I'm asking for, is ten bloody minutes!
"Come along you three. We've done our duty here," Baara nodded woodenly, ignoring the flush of heat rising in her cheeks at the way the Director was pointedly ignoring them as they moved to collect their belongings and clear out of the hall. His eyes did briefly glance up from where he was pointing something out on a holopad to another of the Board, meeting hers and glancing at Witwar before lowering once more without comment.
Shame turned to irritation once more, this time on the doctor's behalf. Only the light touch of the old man's hand on her arm got her moving again. He looked more tired than she could ever remember seeing him. Even on their worst days, there'd been a sort of light in his eyes that refused to die.
But it had finally gone out. Smothered by some grim resignation that physically weighed him down as he resolutely kept walking underneath its burden. He'd known this was coming too, Baara realized. It made the shame of having failed him worse. And it hurt something inside her to see this quietly optimistic being brought down to the point of reality. There was enough reality in the galaxy to go around already, without it being hoisted on the shoulders of a man like Gannleo Witwar
The fair haired woman's pale eyes met hers as she leaned back in her seat, crossing one leg over the other and adopting a more comfortable position as her head turned to follow the group.
Baara flipped her off and kept walking.