Through sheer grit and a repeating mantra of 'self-harm is bad', I managed to resist the overwhelming urge to separate the tracking stone from myself through simply cutting my hand off with my lightsaber. I was going to get this out of my arm, I already knew. But if I had to resort to self mutilation in order to do that then I felt I would be letting Yiaso win.
Did that make the most sense? No, but the galaxy isn't a rational place.
I managed to bleed a little bit of my rage out the next day through destroying a baker's dozen training droids. The data stick the Grand Inquisitor had given me had been decrypted and it did contain more advanced teachings on Soresu.
Before I departed, I made a point to snoop around the place. All the other Numbers had stones like I did in their arms. Of course, the Named did not have stones embedded in their flesh but of the few crimson robed men and women I saw, all were sporting a new piece of aurodium or electrum jewelry. Curious. Nothing I could point out to others as proof, if I was so inclined, but enough to strengthen my belief that Yiaso had decided to entrench the current hierarchy in a very permanent manner. Fucking alien..!
The stone grew hot in my flesh at the impolite thought. I grimaced at the pain. There was some magic in that pain I believed because no matter the mental technique or shielding I used, I still felt phantom molten metal pouring into my veins when I thought or spoke even the most minor of insults towards the Grand Inquisitor.
Despite my newly bolstered hatred of Grand Inquisitor Yiaso, I had to admire the ambition he had shown in this move. Now he was on top, permanently. If even the named had totems that enforced their loyalty, or at least obedience, to Yiaso's orders then the Inquisitorius could not experience a leadership change from the inside. It was the most remarkable glob of spit spat right into the eye of Palpatine's design for the Inquisitorius.
Begrudging respect for the player still didn't make this collar sit comfortably around my neck. I'd have to figure out a way to remove the Grand Inquisitor's kind gift soon and after that I would ensure, if it killed me, that his generosity was returned…with interest.
But orders are orders, and I needed to steal a fleet from the Imperial Navy so that it could serve another part of the Imperial government. I was beginning to think that the rebels didn't have to deal with this on their end.
All I had to do was keep my strength intact until the end of the year and then I'd have room to make plays of my own. That also put me on a hard timeline to get this stone out of my arm. Two months. I could do a lot in two months.
39:10:30
Enroute to Cal-Seti, Core Worlds
Imperial-I Class Star Destroyer Adamant
My fleet had handed over patrol duties in the Deep Core to a local force quickly and then made their way up the hyperlanes to Imperial Center, where I had rejoined them at the edge of the system. The defense of the base at Lettow had been turned over to security droids and automated turrets until the time was right for me to return to that planet. I certainly wasn't going back to ask for help in getting the magic rock out of my arm, pretty please. My pride wouldn't allow it.
An hour of debriefings later, we jumped back into hyperspace and began traversing the Metellos Run. Enforced checkpoints at Alland and Norkronia were our only delays on the flight towards the actual backwater of the Core Worlds: The Koornacht Cluster. Poorly mapped out and home to less than advanced civilizations that the newly born Galactic Empire had charged into during its early days.
It was also the main stomping grounds for the Black Sword Command, officially the Sixth Sector Army, and contained the majority of their shipyards. The reason for this was the mass enslavement of one of the cluster's native species, the Yevetha. These industrious reptilians(?) had proven to be good stock for the war machine and the reports I had sunken my digital hands into said that the workers taken from the planet told of their natural efficiency.
Now I knew that eventually, the enslaved masses would tire of being cogs in the war machine and would lead an uprising to purge first their homeplanet, the shipyards and then the wider cluster of all non-Yevethans in a fairly efficient purge. Then they'd meander into conflict with the future New Republic before being destroyed.
I didn't care about this.
What I did care about was the Imperial ships the Yevethans were slated to seize from the shipyards. A Super Star Destroyer and the dozens of star destroyers that were waiting to be swooped up for the taking. The only sour note of that very choice prize was the fact that I would have to turn over the ships to the command of the Grand Inquisitor rather than keeping them for myself.
While I didn't remember the name of the planet the Yeventhans hailed from, it was very simple to set search parameters into a few databases I had access to and find the shipyard that was over their world. It was named N'Zoth for the curious. The shipyard I was aiming for was Black Fifteen.
My plan for preventing the lizard people from getting my ships before I could steal them from the government was simple: I was going to kill the lizard people first. Orbital bombardment for the planet insurrection that I was fairly certain was happening and secure the shipyards with my own forces to ensure the liquidation of the insurgents.
I decided that I would join the liquidation detachments, some therapeutic stress relief would be just what the doctor ordered for keeping my boiling anger at the Grand Inquisitor, who is an exemplary member of his kind, from boiling over. Let's see those convenient targets try to steal what I am trying to steal.
When I briefed Captain Masal and General Bezenti on the plan, I coached our reasoning for coming here in simple terms. The Inquisitorius had caught wind of a planned alien insurrection in this sector, pending our forces being relocated into the Core. We were going to show up, kill anything that wasn't Imperial and escort these ships back to Core. The existing orders for Black Sword Command would be superseded by these, perhaps the one useful thing the Grand Inquisitor had given me that came without a magic stone being put in my arm. Saved me the trouble of forging a set of orders.
It was simple and appealed to the wider Imperial ethos that both men had been trained in. Aliens are our enemy, we are going to defeat them. I liked the simplicity too. The wider officer corps of the fleet liked it too as I sensed their emotions become collectively more joyful as orders were disseminated across the fleet. Maybe the months of hunting former colleagues turned traitor while the Empire fell to pieces around them had been more detrimental to morale than I had thought.
I couldn't relate to that breed of feelings, there weren't friends or allies in the Inquisitorius, not after graduation, just the competition.
Of course Commander Atten didn't need the handholding for this assignment. I told him who we were going to kill for the Empire and he doubled the number of boarding drills the regiment conducted in a week.
In my personal chambers, I sat on a mat surrounded by a circle of lit candles. I had stripped myself to the waist. In my right hand I held an athame dripping with my own blood over the stone embedded in my left forearm.
"Taral, taral, taral! Chwayat chats nuy Hadzuska koshûjontû. Itsu, itsu, itsu!" I chanted in sith, the guttural tongue making my throat ache. A human was not made to speak these words but the difficulty I overcame to speak them gave my words all the more power.
With each drop of blood that dripped from the knife onto the stone there was a flash of heat as the magicks I called up used the blood to trace the hidden glyphs carved onto the stone. I repeated the chant for each drop of blood that fell. After three more drops of blood, the glyph I was working on revealing was fully traced. I placed the athame back into the tray of blood to soak and wrote down the glyph on the flimsiplast I had on the ground next to me.
Despite the climate control of the room, I was sweating heavily. The heat produced by the magicks I believed. I picked up flimsi sheet and looked at the diagram I had written down. Twelve glyphs in an oval circle that followed the natural shape of the stone. The twelve then formed a thirteenth glyph, or was it a ritual circle to contain their energies? I would have to do further research.
I also didn't know what was on the sides or the other face of the stone. But that was why I had requisitioned a few nano cameras from the officer's medbay along with a medical droid. The procedure probably wouldn't be pleasant but I could feed more tracing magick onto the unseen parts of the stone and learn what was carved into it that way.
Now I just needed to find out what these glyphs meant. It wouldn't do me any good to just poke at the spell matrix and hope Yiaso hadn't been paranoid enough to design a failsafe into this thing. Unluckily for me, the sith primer I had liberated from Prakith several months ago did not cover things of this complexity. It had taken me a week of experimentation to get that tracing spell to work. I had run up against the knowledge barrier, clearly I wouldn't get further on my own.
I extinguished the candles with a wave of my hand and padded over to my computer terminal. I digitized the writings I had made on the flimsiplast sheets and added them to an email.
I slathered the message in five different types of high level encryption and ran it through an inquisitorial grade priority matrix to be sure. I selected the holonet address for the recipient.
'Dear Sister, this might be helpful to our current joint venture. Get back to me when possible.' I typed out the message and then the message was off to the racetrack. She should get it in about two days galactic standard.
The Grand Inquisitor had made his moves but he had overlooked the potential of us lower servants to make moves of our own and there was perhaps nothing more valuable in this world than connections. The Ninth Sister was a firebrand with the subtlety of a proton torpedo but she didn't like the new chain anymore than I did. We'd managed a meeting before I left Imperial Center. Mutual self-interest smoothed over any personal dislikes towards each other. I would do the deciphering, she would tap her own contacts for the translating. I had more freedom to find the tools we'd need to break our chains, she had less attention from the Grand Inquisitor that allowed her to test the tools' effectiveness.
Through our separate victories, our collective chains would be broken.
And after that was accomplished, I couldn't care less what she did. As for me, I had a new mission: to show the Grand Inquisitor the proper thanks for the great gift he had given to me. And I would ensure that he had the opportunity to turn his undivided attention to my thanks. So that he could take as long as needed to appreciate that thanks in its long, long entirety.
There would be stories told about the fullness of my thanks to him.
I could see my sulfur yellow eyes reflecting off the computer screen.
A/N: Flimsiplast is the Star Wars variant of paper, except its future paper and the details of how its made are not discussed.
Nanowrimo is upon us, so I'm trying to improve my writing output.