10/7/1
One banker, on behalf of himself and his two absent sisters, meets with eleven other heads of state.
It has taken a while for them all to empty their schedules and find a place where they could all gather discreetly. Officially, the twelve of them are not only not meeting, they aren't even all in the same system.
But they are meeting, because what had been a nuisance, a nuisance that should have burned out by now, doesn't appear to be going anywhere, and worse, it's growing.
Much to their annoyance.
Everyone at this gathering knows everyone else's name. They know each other's systems. They know each other's balance sheets down to the credit. They all hold stock in each other's companies. They are, in many cases, bound by both marriage and treaties to each other.
They know.
They are survivors. A republic lasted a thousand years, through fussing and fights and annoying debacles and all the ups and downs of myriad political turmoil, and they weathered the storm. The Republic fell, a man proclaimed himself Emperor, and they shifted alliances, moved credits, offered the right bribes to the right people at the right times and made the right observances, and they weathered the storm. An Emperor died, a new Republic rose, civil wars raged, and they kept going.
Power is eternal and immutable. It can be moved around, it can be condensed or spread out, it can be gathered close or lost, but it doesn't go away. And they are the masters of maintaining power.
And they are concerned. It's a funny thing, just a little opportunity sprinkled around in the wrong, or maybe, right, places. Suddenly, systems that had been impervious to Republics, Empires, Republics again, and on and on, are shifting, moving, and things are getting expensive.
Of the twelve of them, only seven of them are dealing with the inconvenience of The Order, yet. The other five though… They know what's coming. The question is, how bad will it hurt, and if this is the kind of disease where one attacks it with everything one has to kill it, fast and messy, and limp away missing a limb or two, but secure in long-term survival, or let it grow and hope to adapt to it.
Amelda Long, Queen Regent of the Unified Federation of Blytheen Systems, highest ranking monarch of a court of monarchs, representing nine systems, 187 planets, and more than one hundred and seventy trillion people scattered out over a million light years of space, starts the meeting. "We know why we are here."
They all nod.
"I guess, the first and most important question is, is Starkiller and it's ilk fully out of the picture?" At least, the most important question to her. Anything smaller than Starkiller cannot take out enough of her holdings to be worth worrying about.
Myrton doesn't let the smirk show on his face; she's thinking in terms of ground, not in terms of people, or for that matter, talent.
The more he's thought of Kylo's comments about people not systems, the more he watches what The Master is doing, and the more he dwells on his own family's rise to power, the more he's seeing a pattern. The Ygrines didn't gain power because they had ground. They got ground because they had people. People with a good eye for investments. Those investments brought in capital, and they loaned it out and invested it further, and eventually began gathering ground.
The more he thinks about it, the more opportunity he sees in this model. Kylo may not know it, but he appears to be making the traditional play of the Merchant Prince. Or, perhaps, given the line of work he appears to be in, security, the Mercenary Prince. They're mostly the same. The only question is, can he, as a successful Merchant Prince must, defend his holdings as he amasses them?
Not all of his colleagues have made this mental shift. Long hasn't, and she's how old systems finally die.
Robbeth Han'Lith, not a head of state, in the traditional sense, but the CEO of a twenty-five system spanning mining corporation, the second largest in the galaxy, behind the Calrissian Corp. replies, "He's still got the plans to build one, but we know for a fact that he's not consuming enough materials to build a new one. When Snoke built his, he spiked the market for any sort of steel and condensing crystals. The market for them is up, but not enough for something that big."
"Ships. Dreadnoughts and what they're calling Citykillers," Chadwick D'Anijo, Emperor Pro-Tem of the Durlano System, main supplier of the crystals used to make Citykillers, replies. "Orders for synth Kyber are down. He's apparently decided a fleet of twenty-six thousand of them is enough. He's dropped orders to replacement rates, and since they're all new, he's not replacing too many of them."
"Or he's run out of pilots." F'rather Hurr, Vice Mogul of Consoldated Shipping replies. Like Han'Lith, he's not the head of a state per se, but of a corporation so large and expansive that it might as well be one. "We all are. Between the loss of the Hosnian system, Starkiller, most of the Supremacy, and the Resistance, we're down almost 22% on pilots, and 38% on combat pilots."
"How fast is he training them?" D'Anijo asks, and Myrton can tell he's hoping Kylo is just low on pilots. He's doing very well selling synth-kyber, and he'd like to continue doing well with it. If Kylo gets out of the Citykiller business, that means D'Anijo will be left with small militaries and mining companies, more than enough to sustain his empire, but not build it.
"No faster than anyone else. Even the Master with his Jedi magic can't wish pilots out of the ethers," Hurr, who is also scrambling for pilots, replies.
"No, he just offers better money and accommodations and woos ours away from us to him. He's pulling mercenaries from across the galaxy with that technique," Aubery Han Hanthan replies. Again, not a 'head of state' per se, but the most well-connected and well-contracted head of a mercenary guild in the mid and outer rim. Myrton knows exactly why Aubery is here. Every step the Order takes into the 'protection' business is directly stepping on their toes. They'd been willing to just take it under Snoke, but now…
"He's got to be getting low on funds," Long adds.
"He's beyond low. His liquidation of the Raclan gave him some breathing space, but he can't be that far away from the edge," Doobernie Fisk, the Supreme Chancelor of the Omeganth system, replies. They are a fairly small system, but extremely powerful. Something, no one's sure what, possibly a genetic quirk, possibly superior schooling techniques, maybe a combination of both, has blessed their system with more, and better, slicers than anywhere else in the galaxy. If you need a system secured, or cracked, ninety-three of the top hundred people for the job will be from the Omeganth system.
"He wasn't that far from the edge, cutting down on his weapons orders has brought him back. He doesn't have the income, yet, to expand, but… There are rumors." H'Rthold Corr does not sell weapons. That would be… pedestrian. Nor does he sell the parts that makes weapons. Also, boring and pedestrian. He sells the best computer simulation software for weapons designers. If you want an idea of what a weapon is going to do before you spend the money to design a prototype, you run it through a Corr simulation. Every major weapons designer in the galaxy works with Corr, and they all talk with him.
"Of…" D'Anijo asks.
"He's taking colonies," Corr replies. The Polonian military is one of his customers, and they had more than a few things to say about the 'offer' the Master hit them with.
"Silly thing to do when you've stopped buying weapons," Han Hanthan says. Myrton again smirks in his head. Spoken like a man who doesn't understand how the game is shifting under his feet.
"Not like that," Corr answers. Myrton watches him. He does understand how the game is shifting, and Myrton's sure he's ready to play. "He's pulling an end run around their parent worlds. Taking smaller ones, and gambling that if he offers, 'protection and assistance' none of them are going to be willing to go up against him."
Twelve heads of state share a look. None of them are in a position to tangle, alone, with the Order. All twelve of them together… Maybe… Except. They share that look again.
"How long would it take for us to build up a functional military force?" Long asks. That's the thing none of them have wanted to say out loud, but… Needs to be said. Unfortunately, saying it, they've given each of the others a valuable piece of intelligence with which to sell out the other eleven. Assuming the Master has enough coin or power to make throwing in with him worthwhile.
"One large enough to take on the Order?" Han Hanthan, the mercenary, says. "Six to eight years, and in six to eight years, he'll be six to eight years-worth of expansion bigger. And will still have the plans for Starkiller, which we don't."
"That's a fixable situation," Fisk, king of the slicers says.
Han Hanthan smirks. Myrton is sure why. He doesn't know, exactly, how Starkiller worked, but if The Master keeps his people on ships, with just outposts on planets, they won't be able to use something like Starkiller to destroy him. They can hurt him with it, but there's not a ship flying that's big and still enough for something like Starkiller to hit it. He does know, that if Fisk gets those plans, that the other eleven of them are going to be given an offer to 'safeguard their futures' and Long likely has the men and material to build one.
"Will he keep expanding his military?" Corr asks. As soon as he got wind of what a Citykiller was, he ran the simulations himself. And promptly came to the conclusion that he was not going to get on the wrong side of the Master. Not without a first class fleet of fighters of his own, which he not only doesn't have, he also doesn't have an interest in getting. Not with the cost of pilots where it is now.
"Good question. No one's been able to ferret out if he's scaling down weapons investments because he's changing tactics or because he can't make payroll if he doesn't, or some combination thereof," DiAnijo says.
"It's got to be a change of tactics. If it were just about credits… He'd just take them, wouldn't he?" Han Hanthan half-says and half-asks.
"Snoke certainly did," Fisk adds.
"But, since the Raclan, he hasn't. The Raclan wasn't that well-funded, was it?" Long asks.
Myrton shakes his head. "It was a rich target, but not that rich. Plus, it's been more than a year. He used most of it to pay off debts and most of the rest to keep the flow of droids moving."
Long makes a sour expression. "Fucking droids. He'd be done if he hadn't pulled that move. We'd have no problem at all getting the support we'd need to take him out if he'd been stealing slaves right and left."
"That's another issue," Myrton says, "take him down too quickly and we'll break the droid market. I don't know about you, but we've moved considerable funds into that to cover what used to be made from weapons and ships."
That gets quite a bit of nodding, too.
"With a side of, if the droid market goes soft, not only do we lose out on our holdings, but getting replacements and repairs for our current droids will be more difficult, too," Fisk adds. He doesn't have to say, but they all know, that a lot of his people make a lot of their money corrupting 'incorruptible' droids.
That gets a lot of sighs.
"It gets worse," Amalthea L-Onn of the United Federation of the Qualee System says, "In non-slave cities where he has recruiting stations, the cost of unskilled labor is up 12% in the last year. Semi-skilled labor is up 8%. That ripples through the surrounding areas, spreading to a range of as large as 5,000 kilometers. People move to where the better wages are, and right now, we've got to pay better to get people to stay with us, rather than go with him."
That gets a lot of looking at each other, too. If they are going to attempt to raise a military large and well-armed enough to go up against the Master, they're either going to have to conscript en masse, or offer a better deal than the Order does, and no matter what, the cost of labor continues to rise.
"The cost increases are an annoyance, one we can swallow by increasing prices, what of the ideas…" Corr says. Myrton watches him, and knows, he gets it.
That gets another long sigh.
"No one's come back from the Order, yet, but he's thinking ahead. His offer to the Polonians involved unlimited right of return for ten years."
That gets a collective wince. Any member of the Order who returns to their homeworld, returns as a citizen of the Order, their children will be citizens of the Order, and whenever Ren brings up his fancy elections, they'll be involved, paying attention, talking about what they're doing.
Spreading ideas.
"How did Polonia even go for that?" Long asks.
"He offered 'protection' in exchange for a colony joining the Order," Corr replies.
"And they took that deal?" L'Onn asks.
"They likely remembered the Raclan, and decided that not engaging in an act of 'involuntary patriotic exuberance' was the wiser course," Myrton replies.
Corr nods at that.
They all glance at each other again. Without a multi-system military and alliance between them… Any day, any issue, and they too could find themselves on the wrong side of the Order.
"How's it working for them?" L'Onn asks.
"He's providing adequate protection. No one's been able to raid them. The colony seems pleased by their new overlords. This citizenship thing of his apparently pleases them. The higher wages likely does, too. But they're scared. His men are moving onto their planet. He agreed not to set up a recruiting station, and he's kept to it, but the colonists can travel freely between the colony and the home worlds, and dangerous ideas are starting to flow."
Myrton sighs. That's the worst part of this. Ren's… competent. He may not be the strategist Palpatine was. But he's got enough of an idea of how to do this that he hasn't burned out, yet. His mother's son, apparently.
"You've met him, Ygrine, right?"
Myrton nods. "Face to face."
"And…" Long asks.
"He's neither Snoke nor Palpatine. He's rough. Doesn't exactly know the waters he's trying to swim in, and working to learn, fast. He reads minds, which helps quite a bit in learning, fast. You cannot lie to him, and if you've got any inkling of-"
"You mean he knew what you were doing." L-Onn says. "You've always been painfully obvious, Myrton. Let me guess, you got a few of your girls prettied up and tried to tie him into your family? And shockingly enough, he wasn't green enough to fall for it."
Myrton shrugs. He prefers having his confederates think he's significantly stupider than he is. And though he certainly would have approved if he could have caught Kylo with one of his girls, he mostly just wanted to see how he responded to them. And he learned what he needed to. In the intervening months he's hired ten exceptionally pretty and very smart girls to enlist in the Order. Given a few years, they'll rise to the Officer class, and then he'll be well positioned for his next move. The Master wants to be loved for himself, then the Master will be loved for himself. And if the Ygrines can benefit from that, they will.
He figures that by the time he's gotten to the fourth year of his non-aggression pact with Kylo, he'll have his girls ready to bait several honey-traps, and from there… He'll be ready for what comes next.
"I'd be interested in seeing how prescient he is in the presence of someone with the sense to keep her cards close to the vest, instead of played out in front, face up," L'Onn says.
"By all means, Amalthea, play your game. I'll be fascinated to see how it works," Myrton replies.
"What are you thinking?" DiAnijo asks
"We have seventeen of his recruiting stations, and they are beyond a nuisance," L'Onn says.
"What's happening with them?" Han Hanthan adds.
"Everything you don't want to happen. Labor costs are rising. Labor goes up, and everything else goes up with it. Our people aren't enlisting in droves, but enough of them are to make a difference, especially in the smaller cities." She curls her lip. "Worse, yet, it's not just unskilled labor heading off. We're losing some of our specialists. Students who didn't make it to their top programs are fleeing to him, because he's got more positions for what we do than we do."
Fisk smirks. "That happens if you only let the top twenty percent move up to the next class."
"Yes, well, we still had use and work for the ones who didn't advance." The Qualee have a very simple system. They don't waste resources training people who can't maximize their potential. At any level of their schooling, only the top twenty percent go to the next level. The ones who can't move up, stay at their current level, maximize their knowledge base of that level, and then go on to do work commiserate with that level of training. And for hundreds of years, that's worked splendidly.
Except, for now, a student at the 22% rank has options, and they're running away to take advantage of them.
"And he does, too," Myrton says with a smirk.
"Yes. It's one thing if day laborers and farmers are leaving. We can replace them with droids. It's annoying, but doable. But we're losing technicians, programmers, and researchers. The week after the program cuts were made, nineteen hundred of our better, but not best, students went to him."
"That sounds like a small number," Corr says.
L'Onn gestures elegantly with her hand. "Out of our gross population, it is, but they're the people who make sure that the systems our geniuses build keep running. We have no problem keeping our best and brightest, but they get bored easily, and don't tend to enjoy keeping the systems they invent going. We need people to do that."
"And they're leaving, because with Ren they get to be the best and brightest," Fisk says.
Almathea nods, and sighs.
"You'll be the test case, then? See what happens when someone who knows how to play the game goes up against him?" Long asks.
Almathea nods again. "It will take a little while."
"You mean to get your family out before you do it?" Fisk asks.
"Of course. I don't expect he'll be willing to go to war over seventeen recruiting stations. This should be a good opportunity to see what's involved in buying him off, but if he does, Han Hanthan, if you wanted to seed some of your own people in, so you could have an… eyewitness view of how this works?"
He smirks. "Honey, I already know how this is going to work. If you don't take the first deal he offers, if you actually try to take out his recruiting stations… He's going to hit you, and it's going to hurt. This is not a man who's going to dither about with negotiations if you go after the only thing that matters to him. The only question is how hard can he hit, and what can you take?"
"Isn't that something you want to know?" Almathea asks.
"Not first hand. It's a huge galaxy, and he can't be everywhere. I'm fine with taking what's not under his thumb. And if he's serious about working this as a business, eventually we'll sit down and set up a deal for subcontractor status. Might as well have him pay me to do what I want to do."
Myrton thinks that's a rather sane way of looking at it. He smiles slightly.
"We'll see how fast he can move, and what he'll do if we tell him to leave. He came up with an interesting counter maneuver the last time someone told him what to do. The R'Leah made out well enough with his negotiated settlement. With luck, we'll work a settlement with him where he'll only take our undesirables," L'Onn says.
"With luck," Long says. "It's well known that every system has people they could do without. If we could use him to get rid of them…"
The twelve of them can all see the value of that.
Long smirks. "You know… Perhaps we could, encourage a recruiting station or two, and then begin using it as part of our justice system. Many of our criminal types could possibly become useful members of society if they had a few years somewhere else and gained some skills before coming back to us."
"Jail or the Order… that's an idea," Fisk says.
"A way to cut costs on our… problematic subjects," Long says.
That has a susurrus of interest spreading among them. L'Onn nods. "We'll request he remove his stations. He'll offer some counter. We'll respond with a different one, ask for droids to replace our laborers. He'll turn us down, too expensive. We'll counter that he bend on his 'everyone welcome' policy. We'll let him take almost everyone, just… none of our Mid-Grade or higher grads. Everyone is happy. He gets people. We get rid of people. We'll get to see what happens when he's up against someone who can actually negotiate."
Myrton grins at her. "Everyone wins."
The rest of them look quite satisfied.
Three days later, a banker says to his sisters. "The Qualee are going to test him."
They nod, looking interested.
"And… are we going to… increase the tension of the test?" Bellie asks.
"I was thinking, we have substantial shares many of the major Qualeen corporations. Were we to sell short, say… two or so days before they have a military disaster, utterly destabilizing their system, it would certainly benefit us greatly," Myrton says.
Andromeda checks their balance sheets. "It would. How… sure are we that they'll have said disaster?"
"Well, having spoken to three of the families who stand to benefit directly if several of the Oligarch families were to… have an accident, I think we can accurately predict that said disaster will happen within hours of it."
The banker and his sisters share a smile. Power is eternal, but who holds it isn't, and they intend to take advantage of that.