Entry Twenty-Two – Days after Geonosis, One Hundred Forty-One

There has been an outbreak of Nova 13. The virus is dangerous, a respiratory disease that regularly pops up around the galaxy due to the long term viability of the virus particulates in space dust. Thank the Force it is treatable. There has been a vaccine in place for over five hundred years, a triumph of one of my long ago MediCorps predecessors. Coruscant keeps a modest supply on hand to safeguard major spaceports and more can be synthesized easily. As long as we are able to control the spread of the virus and insure rapid vaccination of at risk populations the damage should be minimal.

Normally that might have presented severe challenges, especially given that the outbreak's epicenter is the notably lawless Level 1313. The initial patient was almost certainly a smuggler working for the Pyke Syndicate. The current concentration of the outbreak inside two sectors with a large Nikto population serves as implicit confirmation. For the same reason, the Underworld Police are notably hesitant move into the affected area in force in order to establish transit barricades.

The clones, by contrast, seemingly fear nothing, certainly not any notorious gangsters, and the gentleman at the Municipal Authority in charge of public health emergencies appears perfectly willing to exercise the full scope of wartime emergency powers. He also decided, less helpfully, because it says 'Jedi' in front of my name in the medical directory of underworld doctors that I am to coordinate the incident response. This is absolutely ridiculous. I have none of the sort of administrative training and experience needed to coordinate an operation of this magnitude. Unfortunately, I don't see any reasonable way to refuse the appointment. Certainly no one else has come forward to volunteer.

Thank the Force for delegation. Prefect Xeril took my com and agreed to handle the law enforcement oversight role after only a modest amount of swearing. He seems willing to coordinate fully with Captain Eights. The Captain, thankfully, has all sorts of training in area security, movement restriction, and transit monitoring, though I wish it did not all come from a course titled 'occupation methodology.' Disturbing as the name might be, a quarantine with accompanying mandatory vaccinations is an occupation of a sort. After a modicum of persuasion I was also able to convince the Vice-President of Supply and Distribution for Athakam Medtech, the company that produces the vaccine, to volunteer as vaccination coordinator. This mostly leads me troubleshooting problems and conducting community outreach.

I hate it, but it is manageable, mostly. I feel worse for Officer Morne, who has found himself pressed into the role of my communications manager. We've relocated to a miserable room in the center of the level police headquarters. Nowhere else has sufficient communication equipment available. In between endless comlink conversations and scribbling out notes in an attempt to retain perspective I've been searching for a decontamination firm large enough to scour the area and functional enough to actually do the job properly. Fruitless to this point. I may have to discard the idea of local support and pay a premium for a company from thousands of levels up. It's the government's money, which seems to be endless, but I still find the idea of frivolity galling. After all, presumably the money comes from taxpayers at some point. Truthfully, prior to the war my impression was ever that the Republic was nearly broke. Certainly the whole formation of the CIS seemed to involve endless complaints regarding taxes and insufficient security spending.

Now the fiscal resources are presented as functionally endless. I cannot complain, money spent up front to combat the virus aggressively should save money in lost work and expensive treatments though a quick resolution to the plague, but the difference is stark. The medical records clearly reveal that during the Bucket's last Nova 13 outbreak, 78 years ago, the Senate did nothing. The politicians cited high costs and many were forced to beggar themselves purchasing dubious vaccines on the black market. The death toll reached almost three hundred thousand before the outbreak burned out.

Myself I will always put lives first, no matter the cost, but this is not a sentiment I expected to find shared at the heights of government. Especially not with regard to the citizens of the Bucket.

It seems this aggressive response has upset others due to its efficacy. Specifically, the Pyke Syndicate feels undercut in their ability to sell black market vaccine when the health service is giving it away for free. A certain Imperator Marg Krim has called Morne repeatedly and demanded a meeting with me. Morne says that agreeing would be a bad idea. I disagree only partly. The syndicates have significant influence here, and if they felt it necessary to make contact directly rather than feed me a message through Takul this has become a serious matter. However, I am not able to conduct binding diplomacy on my own, nor would I dare meet with this Krim personage on his terms.

Thankfully, I've met at least one diplomat, and I think Major Kayi will be happy to serve as a neutral host. At least these incident coordinator powers are useful for something.

Notes

Nova 13 is an actual disease in Legends canon, appearing as a minor item in the Smuggler plotline for SWTOR.

The establishment of an inter-agency leader to manage large-scale crisis events is a common government protocol (in the US it is used heavily by FEMA and other disaster response agencies). This incident coordinator position is the role into which Nema has been pressed.

Athakam Medtech is a canon company.

How did Palpatine bankroll the Clone Wars is one of the more interesting questions that has not been entirely answered in either version of canon to my knowledge. The Darth Plagueis novel suggests that the Rule of Two Sith simply commanded a vast financial empire and made use of that, but even if the resources were available it's never been clear how he managed to hide such massive outlays. The financial clueless aspect of the Jedi Order probably helped a lot. A few forensic accountants probably could have pegged Palps as a Sith Lord way before Anakin did.

Marg Krim is of course a canon character. His appearance here predates his canon appearances in Dark Disciple and TCW and, critically, at this point in time Lom Pyke is still alive and Krim is his subordinate. That's why I've placed him on Coruscant and not Oba Diah.