Chapter One: Spy vs Spy vs Emperor (Ziost)
She's never liked Ziost much. New Adasta sits just above the old Sith Citadel; even Force-blind, she can feel the darkness bleeding from the ruin, turning the grass ashen and the trees to twisted horrors. It feels like Korriban, and the first time she landed on Korriban she was sick in the docking bay.
Now, as she's standing over a dead Jedi, cleaning her knife on his robes while Lana mows down a squad of possessed troopers with a few swift strikes of her saber, it feels exactly like Korriban.
"Just like old times." Lana sheathes the blade, scarlet light fading as the roiling auras around the fallen troopers flicker and die. "Hello, Cipher."
She tosses the Jedi's lightsaber toward the Sith Lord, sending it spinning end over end. "Hi, Lana. I assume the bounty on these is still in effect?"
"I'll have the credits transferred," Lana snatches it out of the air, "later. For the moment, we need to focus on the larger problem."
"Normally, I'd be alarmed that there's a larger problem than the entire division of Jedi that somehow beat me here." There's a scrape she hadn't noticed somewhere on the back of her neck; her medical probe sprays a stream of kolto against it and she hisses. "But- no, fuck that. I'm very alarmed, given that the larger problem is an entire division of Jedi who are now possessed by the Emperor."
Barely perceptibly, Lana's right eyebrow twitches.
"Tell me you have a plan." There's someone coming, dodging from pillar to pillar across the courtyard. Leveling her rifle on her shoulder, she squints through the viewfinder: young, male, hair buzzed to a micron's thickness in the current Kaas City fashion, Sith Intelligence uniform. No red halo. She lowers her rifle. "We've got company."
"I have several ideas, actually, and-" Lana pauses as the man ducks through the door, coming to rest at attention behind her left shoulder- "ah, good. Agent Kovach. Tell me you have news for me."
"Yes, Minister-" (Minister? she mouths at Lana; the other woman's eyebrow twitches again), "we've found the shuttle, but no sign of Theron Shan."
Theron.
His name arcs like lightning through the dark corners of her mind, the places where she shoved her memories of Yavin IV and buried them under a dozen layers of mental conditioning. He hasn't been in the ops reports for weeks; she'd assumed the new position he'd talked about was administrative, that Satele wanted her agent (the echo of his voice curls bitterly around the words, even in reminiscence) out of the thick of things- which meant, of course, that crash-landing a shuttle on an Imperial core world was exactly the sort of half-lunatic thing he'd do...
She blinks, and returns her focus to the conversation at hand.
"He's likely gone in search of the Sixth Line's Master, then. No matter." Lana gestures and the agent steps forward. "This is Agent Rane Kovach, a very promising new recruit. Agent, I trust you're familiar with Cipher Nine."
"Commander." Kovach inclines his head. "It's an honor."
"I thought I knew all your little worker bees, Lana." She doesn't recognize him at all, actually, though clearly he's heard enough stories to at least feign proper deference- not terribly unusual, she supposes, since she's gone independent. He seems eager enough, at least. "Bring me up to speed, please. Theron's presence explains the Jedi," she looks to her, questioning, "but how did he find out what was happening in the first place?"
"I don't know. I assume you didn't-?"
(Lana figured it out almost immediately, of course.
She'd snuck back into camp with five minutes to spare and was sprinting toward the docking pad when she rounded a corner and nearly tripped over a kneeling Lana.
"There you are." Most Sith looked like coiled serpents in their meditative postures, but Lana was serene as always; she gathered herself and stood. "I wondered where you'd gone. I've taken the liberty of replenishing your ship's kolto stores- you'll need to spend some more time in the tank once you're en route, I think. That's quite a bruise on your neck." She reached out, fingertips brushing lightly over the mark.
"Here? I don't remember getting hit-" she reached up too, resting her hand next to Lana's on the hollow of her throat before the memory sprang, unbidden, to the front of her mind.
The shuttle's only mostly soundproof so they tried to be quiet, mostly unsuccessfully- she nipped his finger when he pressed it, teasingly, across her lips and he laughed and bit her neck in retort and-
Lana gasped, eyes wide, and let her hand fall away. "You didn't."
"Please get out of my head, Lana." She cringed.
"Tell me you didn't.")
"Lana." She narrows her eyes. "I may not report directly to you, but you know where my loyalties lie. More to the point, given how long these Jedi have been here, the SIS knew about the Emperor's presence here before I did."
"Your loyalty to the Empire isn't in question. Given our history with Agent Shan, however, I had to ask." Though her tone is carefully neutral, she looks exhausted. "We have a mole, then."
"So it would seem."
"One more problem to- oh, damn it!" She raises one hand to her ear. "No, no, don't... yes, alright. I'll be right there." Lana's shoulders droop- just a little, but she's never seen her look so uncertain. "The Minister of Transport's dead, and everyone else with the codes to open the spaceport's gone mad. Twenty ships are ready to evacuate and none of them can get out. I need to-"
Two steps close the distance between them; she wraps her hand around the other woman's wrist. "Breathe, Lana. Tell me what you need me to do, then go. We'll manage."
"We'll manage. Yes." Lana takes a deep breath and then she's already pulling away, already moving out the door. "Kovach, get Cipher Nine to the armory. Seal it, and get those damned turrets offline, then contact me."
"Yes, Minister." He salutes sharply. "Commander? This way."
They fight their way across the plaza to the armory, leaving a trail of dead and unconscious soldiers and Sith in their wake- a few Jedi, too, and a trio of civilians wielding impromptu flamethrowers (she simply sighs and smacks each one with the butt of her rifle as she passes behind).
Someone's following, though, leaping from ledge to ledge above them like a stalking nexu, and by the time they breach the armory doors they can see her. The woman looks Sith at first glance, her face smeared with blood, eyes yellow and her curly hair wild and matted, but her blade is blue and her armor marks her as a Jedi. She jumps, impossibly high, above the barricades, launching herself through the door; Kovach gets the forcefield up just in time. The Jedi slams headlong into it, again and again, the Emperor's voice echoing from her throat until she screams and collapses into unconsciousness.
They leave her there and run- more are coming, haunted voices howling in unison from every corner of the plaza.
So many more.
"It's good we didn't kill her." Kovach says a minute later, taking the steps up to the AA guns two at a time. "Minister Beniko thinks that every time one of his puppets dies, the Emperor grows stronger- almost as though he's siphoning their life force."
She turns to glare at him, replacing the pin in the frag grenade she'd nearly just lobbed over her shoulder. "You didn't think to mention that before, Agent? I've killed easily a dozen people in the last thirty minutes, and-" she hooks it back to her belt, pulling a stun grenade instead and tossing it down the stairs into the growing crowd behind them- "now you tell me 'try not to kill anyone'?"
"I've been trying to come up with nonlethal alternatives." He looks decidedly defensive. "But seeing as our enemies keep trying to kill us and I haven't got a good plan yet-"
"Get the guns powered down," she sighs. "I'll get the door."
He nods.
The security console's half-smashed (a few hard hits from a hydrospanner, by the look of it) and the panel flickers uselessly; she pulls the cover panel away and ducks beneath it, scanning quickly for loose connections- no good. The wiring's melted. "That's a negative on the door, actually. I can't fix this."
"Fine." The roof above them comes alive with heavy mechanical whirrs, one after another. "Guns are down. We'll go back to the armory and-"
Footsteps at the entrance, quick but uneven- someone wounded, limping. Solid heelstrikes. Probably male. She slides out from under the console, drawing her knife and crouching behind the room's central table. Whoever it is, he'll have to pass the table to get to Kovach- one quick shot to the hamstring should do it-
"Sith Intelligence. Hard at work, I see."
Even before he passes the doorway, she knows his voice.
Theron's tone is light, mocking, as he crosses the room toward Agent Kovach at the defense grid. She steels herself. He hasn't seen her yet.
"Stop where you are." She steps behind him, blade raised, willing the tremor from her hand. You knew this might happen. "I won't warn you again."
He spins around, staggering a little on what looks to be a sprained ankle; his face looks even worse, angry bruises pooling under his eyes and on his temples and char marks around his implants. His hands are empty, weapons still in their holsters. "Nine? What are you- um. Hi."
"Hi?" She sheathes her knife. "You just started an invasion and all you have to say is 'hi'? Damn it, Theron."
"You know this person, Commander?" One hand on his blaster, Kovach moves hesitantly away from the terminal toward them.
"This person?" A few seconds pass before she's sure she heard him correctly, and then her mind races as a slow chill starts to crawl its way up her spine.
(Lana knew Theron was planetside- she had agents out searching for his shuttle, even- and he'd mentioned him by name barely an hour ago. Either the quality of Intelligence briefings has gone steeply downhill in her absence, or...
We have a mole, then. Lana's voice echoes in her ears.
Only one way to find out.)
"For fuck's sake, Kovach, did you look at the dossier?" Upper lip curled delicately, she scowls past Theron with a look of carefully crafted contempt. "Minister Beniko may think highly of you, but it sounds to me as though you've been busy searching for a man you wouldn't have recognized in the first place."
"I-"
"This," she says, "is Theron Shan."