p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; border: none; padding: 0cm; line-height: 150%; widows: 2; orphans: 2;"span style="color: #000000;"(during the events from 'Breaking Ranks')/span/p
p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; border: none; padding: 0cm; line-height: 150%; widows: 2; orphans: 2;" /p
p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; border: none; padding: 0cm; line-height: 150%; widows: 2; orphans: 2;"span style="color: #000000;""span style="font-family: inherit;"span style="font-size: medium;"span style="font-style: normal;"span style="font-weight: normal;"And what exactly are you doing here young man?" Ezra Bridger froze as he heard the voice of a woman behind him. The false cadet slowly turned around to find himself standing in front of Maketh Tua, minister and acting governor of Lothal. And hanging around Agent Kallus´s office was probably not the thing she expected from a good cadet./span/span/span/span/span/p
p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; border: none; padding: 0cm; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 150%; widows: 2; orphans: 2;"span style="color: #000000;"span style="font-family: inherit;"span style="font-size: medium;"So Ezra quickly straightened his posture. The minister looked at him with a saturnine look on her face, arms crossed and clearly displeased by something that could easily be a problem with the discipline of a cadet. Ezra was glad that these dumb helmets hid their faces, in case he needed to run he still had a chance that his cover was not blown. But best would be to get the minister´s mind busy with something else./span/span/span/p
p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; border: none; padding: 0cm; line-height: 150%; widows: 2; orphans: 2;"span style="color: #000000;""span style="font-family: inherit;"span style="font-size: medium;"span style="font-style: normal;"span style="font-weight: normal;"I...I just wanted to know...if Agent Kallus investigates the commandant." Now the minister frowned. "And why, if I may ask, should he do so?" she asked, her voice dangerously low and she even made a step closer to the young rebel. He suddenly noticed that the woman was quite tall and surprisingly managed to make him nervous...not as much as a real cadet, but Ezra felt that he really was in trouble, if he could not convince her of his story. Luckily he had seen the sadistic officer and his brute friend in action, at the day he met the Ghost crew. So while he did spin some lies, the foundation was built on truth. /span/span/span/span/span/p
p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; border: none; padding: 0cm; line-height: 150%; widows: 2; orphans: 2;"span style="color: #000000;""span style="font-family: inherit;"span style="font-size: medium;"span style="font-style: normal;"span style="font-weight: normal;"About the complaints...and how he manages to get away with what he´s doing." Ezra said, trying to sound both confidant and shy at the same time, probably not the best combination. The minister shook her head. "What complaints? If an officer such position was accused of misbehavior I´d know. Is this really your excuse for leaving your duty behind?" /span/span/span/span/span/p
p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; border: none; padding: 0cm; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 150%; widows: 2; orphans: 2;"span style="color: #000000;"span style="font-family: inherit;"span style="font-size: medium;"Ezra now started to sweat. "If you don´t know...can he you know...hide complaints about himself?" The expression on the minister´s face changed. "The complaints would be processed by...commandant Aresko...he is the one you mean?" she asked Ezra, who nodded as he didn´t trust his voice to hide the relief he felt as the minister now looked doubtful, but her eyes were no longer staring down at Ezra. "How do you know about this?" she suddenly asked and Ezra cursed himself, as he had congratulated himself a bit too early./span/span/span/p
p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; border: none; padding: 0cm; line-height: 150%; widows: 2; orphans: 2;"span style="color: #000000;""span style="font-family: inherit;"span style="font-size: medium;"span style="font-style: normal;"span style="font-weight: normal;"I am a transfer cadet, minister, but the boys from around tell stories about the commandant and the taskmaster. Nobody went into detail...but the two are pretty infamous around town...at least that´s what I heard." he explained. With all the trouble brewing in the last time, Ezra being a large part of it, the minister seemed to take the bait. Under his helmet he allowed himself a thin smile, remembering how Aresko and Grint had tried to arrest a simple merchant for treason. If the minister really didn´t know about this...then Ezra might cause some trouble in Lothal´s upper echelons. And it gave him at least a glimmer of hope, if someone in the position of the minister cared for such things enough that she might even do something about it. Ezra would love to hear how Aresko and Glint got taken out by the Empire...that would save them the work to do so later down the road...and if Kallus got distracted with internal problems, that would make it just easier to get his decoder. /span/span/span/span/span/p
p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; border: none; padding: 0cm; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 150%; widows: 2; orphans: 2;"span style="color: #000000;"span style="font-family: inherit;"span style="font-size: medium;"Minister Tua seemed a bit lost in thought and didn´t complain when Ezra quietly made his way out. She would look into the commandant and see if that cadet had just handed her a plate full of shit...or if members of the imperial military abused their position for personal gain and by that probably created the unrest that haunted Lothal in the first place./span/span/span/p
p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"(After the events from 'span style="color: #000000;"Breaking Ranks/span')/p
p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; border: none; padding: 0cm; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 150%; widows: 2; orphans: 2;"span style="color: #000000;"span style="font-family: inherit;"span style="font-size: medium;"In her office, Maketh Tua rubbed her temples as she tried to sort her mind. This day had been a quite unpleasant one. At least two cadets of the academy had defected, one probably had been a spy from the beginning on and during a shooting two walkers had been destroyed and the damage in terms of intelligence could not even be estimated./span/span/span/p
p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; border: none; padding: 0cm; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 150%; widows: 2; orphans: 2;"span style="color: #000000;"span style="font-family: inherit;"span style="font-size: medium;"The minister had originally planned to look into the affairs of commandant Aresko, but with the cadet who had brought the theme up being the rebel spy who started it all she probably should just forget this./span/span/span/p
p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; border: none; padding: 0cm; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 150%; widows: 2; orphans: 2;"span style="color: #000000;"span style="font-family: inherit;"span style="font-size: medium;"As she opened her eyes she meet the innocent gaze of Ezra Bridger...who had come to the academy as Dev Morgan. She felt strangely conflicted about all of this. She knew that the boy was an enemy of the Empire, pretty much a terrorist and criminal. Yet when she looked at his picture she just saw a young boy, who should not be involved in any of this. /span/span/span/p
p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; border: none; padding: 0cm; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 150%; widows: 2; orphans: 2;"span style="color: #000000;"span style="font-family: inherit;"span style="font-size: medium;"But he was...so what to make out of his allegations against Aresko? She disliked the man for sure and as she opened his files and the smug, cold smiling man appeared on her screen she could not help it...she could not push Bridger´s words aside. Maybe it was just her own bias...but then again his files confirmed what minister Tua already knew...that he was not a nice person. That didn´t mean he had ever gone over regulations...but it clearly sounded plausible. Now did Bridger or someone behind the boy access to information about the commandant? Tua closed her eyes and sighed. Doubt filled like never before. She probably should close the files and just forget this rebel propaganda. But the little voice at the back of her head would never be silenced then...she had to check, if only to confirm that the false cadet had been feeding her lies./span/span/span/p
p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; border: none; padding: 0cm; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 150%; widows: 2; orphans: 2;"span style="color: #000000;"span style="font-family: inherit;"span style="font-size: medium;"With more determination the minister opened a different window on her screen, punched in her access code, to use her administrator access to commandant Aresko´s terminal. Minutes passed as she scrolled through his information. His terminal was clearly in disorder. Several unanswered messages waited for him, some even unread and there was a general lack of clear order in his notes and files. But apart from that, no sign of problems. Tua was about to log out when she froze. She had not checked his deleted messages yet...sure it would not mean anything if she found nothing in there, but Aresko probably had no reason to suspect someone else reading his messages and with his files in a state of disorder he probably had never cared to empty the trash. Tua opened the files and sank back in her seat./span/span/span/p
p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; border: none; padding: 0cm; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 150%; widows: 2; orphans: 2;"span style="color: #000000;"span style="font-family: inherit;"span style="font-size: medium;"A large mass of deleted messages awaited her, most of them unread. And even by just skimming through she could tell that a lot of complaints from several officials on Lothal had been send to the commandant´s mail entry. He had ignored them all and with just a few more moments of reading through the message titles Tua could tell that it did not only apply to Aresko or even his underling...Grint was the name, but many many more members of the imperial military here on Lothal. Nothing had ever been reported to Tua...she felt a shiver as she logged out and sat in front of her terminal for minutes, trying to figure out what to do now./span/span/span/p
p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; border: none; padding: 0cm; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 150%; widows: 2; orphans: 2;"span style="color: #000000;"span style="font-family: inherit;"span style="font-size: medium;"Bridger had not necessarily told her the truth. His forged academy files and the 'Dev Morgan' ID were proof, that the rebels could access imperial documents and forge their own. All could just be clever ruse to get into Tua´s head, to cause a distraction or even undermine her loyalty. So she started to write a message for Agent Kallus, asking him to look into the situation, but as she explained the whole mess she got doubts again. What if Kallus was part of it? What if he knew about widespread abuse of power on Lothal and covered it, maybe even enjoyed the power of his own position for his own benefit? He did not seem to be such a slimy scumbag as Aresko...but Tua did not trust her own opinion on the officers surrounding her anymore./span/span/span/p
p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; border: none; padding: 0cm; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 150%; widows: 2; orphans: 2;"span style="color: #000000;"span style="font-family: inherit;"span style="font-size: medium;"She deleted what she ad written so far and turned her terminal off. She left early this afternoon and drove home, where only the droids waited for her in her home. The minister approached the large stone house, made out of the natural rock from Lothal, a nice building in a nice part of the capital. Today she felt weird for the first time, as she wondered what other people saw when they looked at it. Did they see a corrupt imperial official in her? Another one?br /She had never taken money from someone or embezzled any, yet the Empire had been paying her handsomely since she took over the office of minister...but if other people had been corrupt here on Lothal they had done it under her nose. Without her even suspecting anything was up till this child pushed her in nose first. A shameful feeling for sure./span/span/span/p
p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; border: none; padding: 0cm; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 150%; widows: 2; orphans: 2;" /p
p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; border: none; padding: 0cm; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 150%; widows: 2; orphans: 2;"span style="color: #000000;"span style="font-family: inherit;"span style="font-size: medium;"Tua unlocked the front door and a butler droid took the large hat she wore in her official position and she untied the knot of her hair and let it flow freely as she walked in and went to her private study. Tua wandered through the room for a few moments, still hesitant. Then she opened a cabinet and took a bottle with a dark, brown liquid out. Whiskey from Alderaan, one she had bought when she had been appointed minister. So far she had not opened it, but not she pulled the antiquated cork and poured herself a small shot and emptied the glass down into her throat. The whiskey burned on its way down and she coughed and grimaced. Now she regretted the credits she had paid for that bottle./span/span/span/p
p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; border: none; padding: 0cm; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 150%; widows: 2; orphans: 2;"span style="color: #000000;"span style="font-family: inherit;"span style="font-size: medium;"And then she could not stall any longer and called a number she had not used in a while. Then she waited, while the Lothal holonet company symbol hovered above her desk. Maybe he did not use the number anymore, or did not want to talk to her? Tua sighed...considered to end the call, when suddenly the company logo was replaced with the slightly flickering holo of a dark haired slender man in his mid thirties./span/span/span/p
p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; border: none; padding: 0cm; line-height: 150%; widows: 2; orphans: 2;"span style="color: #000000;""span style="font-family: inherit;"span style="font-size: medium;"span style="font-style: normal;"span style="font-weight: normal;"Oh my...the minister herself calls me, what an honor." he said sarcastically and Tua felt a pang of guilt. "Actually I am her double and need to tell you about a wonderful piece of land at the northern coast, inspection only at low tide." she tried to break the ice and the man on her desk shook his head and took off his glasses. "Your humor has seen better days, Mak." he said and looked at her again. "So...what do you want from me?" he asked her right away./span/span/span/span/span/p
p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; border: none; padding: 0cm; line-height: 150%; widows: 2; orphans: 2;"span style="color: #000000;""span style="font-family: inherit;"span style="font-size: medium;"span style="font-style: normal;"span style="font-weight: normal;"I´m sorry and you are absolutely right that I never called you in...well since I got the job?" she said with an apologizing smile. "And I´m also sorry that this is not a call to talk about old times, Tam. I need your services. Tamra Duhil arched an eyebrow. "Really? You need me? What for and why can´t your glorious imperials take care of that business?" he asked, clearly still angry that she had not spoken to her old school friend in years and now just called because she wanted something./span/span/span/span/span/p
p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; border: none; padding: 0cm; line-height: 150%; widows: 2; orphans: 2;"span style="color: #000000;""span style="font-family: inherit;"span style="font-size: medium;"span style="font-style: normal;"span style="font-weight: normal;"They are part of the problem...well maybe. I need you to check our files and make sure they were not tampered...because I don´t know if I can trust our own security." she explained. Now Tam looked quite skeptically. /span/span/span/span/span/p
p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; border: none; padding: 0cm; line-height: 150%; widows: 2; orphans: 2;"span style="color: #000000;""span style="font-family: inherit;"span style="font-size: medium;"span style="font-style: normal;"span style="font-weight: normal;"I´ll get you and official order to do so, just in case someone catches you, don´t worry." she hurried to say and hoped that this would really be enough to shield Tam from any fallout, should things go south. "Damn it Mak...allright I´ll come over and have a look. But don´t expect me to go easy on your wallet!" he said. Relieved she smiled at Tam. "Thank you...could you come over today already? I´ll take care of the bills." Tua added and the man at the other end nodded. "Alright fine...if you pay for a first class ticket and a suite in the best hotel in the capital...then you can prepare this official order you mentioned, because I won´t lift a finger without that." Tua nodded. "Don´t worry." she said and wondered how she could say this, when she was deeply worried herself?/span/span/span/span/span/p