King Zash was awaiting the Sith Empress, Zygeria had long been supporters of the Sith who in turn permitted them to run their slave empire unimpeded. Empress Serpeness, who he guessed to be a Togruta or some related subspecies, had told him via holo to expect a visit on this day. Not wanting to offend he had ordered his guards to keep the Togruta slaves hidden away in the kitchens for the day, they could entertain him at a later time. He had prepared a fine banquet, Sith did eat, right? He hadn't asked if her mask could be removed or not. Regardless, he kept a selection of attractive male and female slaves at the banquet to provide eye candy for his guest. Republic law "forbade" slavery, but it hardly went enforced, just made the paperwork, fees, and taxes more irritating in addition to having to go underground outside of Zygeria proper. He took out his watch, an eye on the sky for a Sith ship. What they looked like she hadn't said either but anything that landed at the palace grounds would probably be it. It was almost 1400, when she said she would arrive. He gave the hall one last inspection, his other nobles and prominent slave traffickers would also be attending the banquet, the orchestra was playing slow dance music, including a few pieces from this "Talamh" that the Empress had sent over as a request, and his own royal robes were wrinkle-free, having been pressed by a slave only an hour before. Ah! It was almost time.
Taking out his watch again, he counted the seconds "Three, two, one," and he heard the sound of a ship breaking the sound barrier as it exited hyperspace. Then another. Then another. Looking up, he watched a massive fleet of cylindrical frigates and transports, freighters and fighters, shuttles and random clunkers darken the skies around the capital. His eyes widened in concern; she had never mentioned company! He hoped that the transports were only to bring back a mass purchase. Those hopes were dashed however as soon as the weapons began firing upon the city, decimating the barracks and flak cannons in minutes. Transports landed at various points across the city, the auction houses, the temples, random apartment complexes, the hospitals. A white, somewhat disk-shaped freighter touched down in his palace courtyard as his guests ran about in a panic at the sounds of mass drivers pummeling the cityscape.
"Your Majesty!" his captain of the guard called, dragging him out of his trance, "We have to get you to safety! Now!"
Serpeness lowered the ramp to the Falcon, showing herself to the panicking nobles and slavers. Legion Plagueis was on their own mission in another city, but she had come to the capital. After all, she had promised the king a visit. Igniting her darksaber, she walked down the ramp, immediately slicing her way through the crowd. Guards attempted to blast her, but she blocked most of the bolts effortlessly, and those she didn't bother blocking with her blade she picked up Zygerian slavers to be used as living shields. Unleashing a torrent of lightning into two guards, they were almost instantly vaporized. Slicing her way through the nobility, she made her way to the palace.
Darth Desolata's assignment was to liberate the action houses, as she remembered this sector of the city intimately. Her mother was taken from her here, she was sold to a pedophile's prostitution ring here, she was whipped, beaten, starved, and abused here, she had this auction house to blame all the suffering in her life. Burning it to the ground would be her pleasure. Legion Vitiate landed around the complex, lowering their transport ramps and permitting troopers to run into formation, assembling in squares as Zygerian soldiers and refurbished battle droids fired at them. Firing in volleys, their disruptor rifles wiped out the organics against them in minutes, while the Sith deflected blaster fire towards the droids. Desolata led the charge in a blaze of fury, she didn't even need to acknowledge the Empress's order, "Have no mercy, leave no survivors," she planned to do that anyway. Her crimson dual-bladed saber eviscerated Zygerian guards without issue. Looking at her other Sith officers, she ordered "Take the warriors and massacre the clientele, I'll take a squadron to the cages down below."
"Yes Darth!" a Theelin Sith responded, forwarding the order to the men.
Desolata descended the stairs with her soldiers behind her, her ruby blade reflecting her burning yellow eyes. A pathetic barricade blocked their path, which she blasted apart with the Force before dismembering the two soldiers keeping guard at the door. Slicing the door open in an X motion she entered the cages where the slaves were kept. Hundreds of them, and this was only the first room. They were mostly her fellow Twi'leks, many of them women or children. Desolata was shaking, and not just in rage, but in fear, disappointment, disgust. Fear of her memories, disappointment that she couldn't stop this sooner, and with that knowledge she was disgusted with herself even more than she was with the Zygerian slavers. Upstairs she heard the screams of panicked customers, monsters who hoped to buy people yet only guaranteed their own deaths. The slaves she could see in the dimly lit room, what little light there was mostly provided by her weapon, were utterly terrified, of the Zygerians, of their futures as slaves, and now of the Darth before them. With her free hand, she removed her helm, and shouted "Waja neel! Waja neel!" as she slammed it onto the button, opening the cages.
The slaves were shocked, but started crying in joy, "Waja neel!" they shouted, repeating the good news, "Waja neel!" They were free! Desolata smirked and looked at her squadron, "Arm the men, get the women and children to safety. I'll deal with the rest of the cages."
"Yes, Darth Desolata!"
Chancellor Sinube had left the funeral of his third cousin a few hours ago. They were never really close given the late Sinube's role as a Jedi Master, but they were relatively well acquainted after the Chancellor entered galactic politics. Supposedly he had died of natural causes, reasonable enough given his advanced age but he still had his doubts. As his motorcade stopped at the Senate, he was greeted by four Senate Commandos running to him at full speed, "Chancellor Sinube!" the commanding officer shouted, "There's an emergency! Zygeria is under attack!"
"Under attack," Sinube repeated in shock, taken completely off-guard. Why would old Separatist holdouts attack a former Separatist planet? How active would Palpatine Loyalists be outside of Coruscant? "By who?"
Serpeness blasted through the door, having massacred the guards. King Zash sat quivering in the corner, defended by only two guards. Immediately strangling them with the Force, not even bothering to lift her hand, she was alone with the monarch. "Zash," she greeted sweetly, "Leaving so soon? I thought you wanted us to have a meeting?"
"What is this?!" Zash shouted, "Some kind of sick display?! A show of strength?! Well you win, call off your attack!"
"Oh slaver," Gràinne replied, her sweet tone quickly turning sadistic, "It's cute that you think I'm planning to spare even a single one of you disgusting parasites." She reached out and dragged him to her, gripping his throat tightly with her hand, Baskar claws digging into the flesh of his neck drawing out a trickle of blood. She walked out of the bunker, the choking former monarch in-tow, "Nothing would please me more than killing you… but that isn't my place." She slowly dragged him up the stairs, she had a special surprise for him indeed. "Your evil is precisely what I want to eradicate in this galaxy. After all, a Sith should always follow their own code, their own morality. Mine, detests slavery." Here it was, opening the door to the kitchens, she threw the Zygerian into the room. Instinctively he tried to scramble away, leading the Empress to shatter his legs with the Force. "As I said, it isn't my place to kill you… it's theirs."
Zash looked up to see a group of his palace slaves, including a few from his harem, standing about him, some with knives, a blaster, a cleaver. Terrified, shaking in fear at what he knew was about to happen, he pleaded with them, tears in his eyes, "Please! Please! No! Have mercy!" The slave girl with the cleaver, his "favorite toy" as he called her, a Togruta no older than 15 and dressed in only the barest minimum to protect her modesty, took her weapon and brought it down onto his arm, severing his hand and beginning an onslaught of vengeful murder by the group of former slaves. Gràinne stood to the side and smiled under her mask as the Zygerian shrieked in pain and terror. She would take his head as a trophy.
TWO WEEKS LATER
The Republic cruiser Avenger came out of hyperspace at the head of a large convoy of supplies. The Nautolan Jedi Skoolan and his apprentice standing at the bridge, "Padawan," he lectured, "I want to remind you that even though we may not agree with the local culture, but we have to remember that Zygeria is a Republic planet and that they have just suffered a terrorist attack. Republic laws against slavery don't apply here."
"Do we know who did it?"
Skoolan shrugged, "Maybe a band of escaped slaves, Palpatine loyalists, even what's left of Death Watch or Darth Maul's syndicates for whatever reason. We don't know and right now the 'who' isn't important. We need to get these supplies to the regions affected most."
Looking behind her master, the young Twi'lek's eyes widened. Pointing a trembling finger at the viewports her master turned to find not only her Padawan was staring in horror, but the entire bridge crew, including the fleet admiral. Then he finally saw the planet. Almost the entirety of the southern hemisphere was still in flames, fires big and hot enough to be seen from high orbit. Where once were lush jungles now lay charred wasteland, the oceans mostly boiled away save for small regions no longer blue, as the lakes left behind were now red, likely from the destroyed sky. Craters the size of metropolises pocked the surface, scarring the planet below. Whoever was responsible, was clearly far more capable than they had been led to believe.
Eventually coming to a landing near one of the red lakes, the ramps lowered and the Jedi and Republic troopers cautiously stepped out, only to be more horrified at what covered the surface. The lake was not water at all, but blood. A lake of blood formed from the streams bleeding from the forest of impaled corpses that stretched for as far as they could see. The stench of rotting flesh and blood filled their nostrils, a number of the troopers threw off their helmets and began to vomit onto the ground, and the Jedi padawan, never exposed to large-scale violence as she had been but an infant in the last days of the Clone War, fainted at the sight of such wanton brutality, being caught by an equally horrified aid worker. The Admiral contacted Skoolan, "General, we've done a complete scan of the planet…" she informed him, "And… it would appear as though you and the other relief crew are the only non-microbial life currently on the planet."
Jedi General Skoolan's eyes were wide, haunting. He nodded and closed the comms, turning back to the shuttle which had landed them in this hellscape, and made to hobble back. What stopped him was the sight of the other section of impaled bodies, the closest of which had to have been a Zygerian infant. He fell to his hands and knees, too horrified even to scream. What kind of sick monsters were capable of this kind of evil? An outright massacre of an entire planet, men, women, children, and leaving their bodies on display like this. The world spinning around him, he tried to find something to grab onto to keep conscious. Crawling to some kind of platform he grabbed onto one of the poles and hoisted himself up to his feet. Looking at what exactly he was holding onto hoping it wasn't another speared cadaver, he saw the mutilated corpse of the governor of the province, his ribcage broken and the flesh of his back spread out onto his arms like wings, with his lungs sliced open and stretched from armpits to knees, ropes holding him in place between two poles. His heart was ripped out and crammed into his own mouth. Skoolan's psyche could not handle the sight anymore, and like his padawan he too collapsed into the ground.
Waking up a few hours later in the medical bay, he immediately grabbed his commlink and contacted the High Council on Coruscant. "Master Skoolan," Oppo Rancisis greeted him cheerfully, "How is the aid distribution assignment going?" then they saw Skoolan's face. He looked as if he had just seen a ghost.
"The Senate was misinformed," Skoolan barely managed to whisper. "This was not a terror attack… this was genocide."
On Talamh, the now freedmen celebrated with the Imperial troops and Sith Lords on their astounding victory. Children saved from a life of servitude as little more than property, if they were lucky, payed ball with local kids, laughing and cheering for the first time in their memories. Sith Lords and troopers could be seen starting to get rather familiar with a people they rescued before disappearing for a while. Drink, food, and festivities flowed freely in Inverness. All the Sith but one: Gràinne poured over maps of both Talamh and the wider galaxy. She'd have to find at least temporary lodging for those former slaves who wished to stay, language classes for them in most regions of the planet, a network to try and find lost family members, if any were Force-sensitive then they would be offered the chance to train as a Sith, and that wasn't factoring her own problems with her daughter.
Why was Aislinn so stubborn?! Did she not see all the good that being a Sith could do? Was she willfully ignoring all the people they've freed? Did she want to die that badly? She had begged her daughter to at least let her use her own knowledge to treat her illness even if she didn't want to learn the Dark Arts herself, and every time she was refused. Gràinne rested her forehead into her fingers and tried to massage her aching head. Pouring herself a shot of whiskey, she tossed it back and let the woody flavor fill dance across her tongue, gulping it down to feel the burn in her chest as the alcohol made its way into her stomach. She shook her head as she slammed down the glass. She would not allow herself to fail as a mother… not like she failed as a daughter. She still had nightmares about her parents' deaths. She was powerless to stop it. Sometimes the Force decided to torment her with visions of her biological parents being slaughtered in addition to her adoptive ones. Twice she had been unable to stop her family from being destroyed. She would not allow it to happen a third time. She couldn't allow it a third time.