The last time Amberley had seen the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, it had been a smoking ruin.
Like hundreds of her contemporaries, she had returned to the Republic's capital in the wake of the Sacking to find the planet reeling from the Sith's cowardly assault, and nearly passed out from all the pain and death suffusing the world-city, her mind overwhelmed by the dark emotions echoing in the Force. Only the fact that there were so many people needing help had kept her on her feet.
The Imperial bombing had only lasted for a handful of hours before the planet had surrendered and the Sith had stopped the slaughter, holding their ships threateningly in orbit as their diplomats extracted concessions from the Republic at the 'peace talks' of Alderaan. But such was Coruscant's population density, that brief period of open slaughter had been enough to kill hundreds of thousands.
And those had merely been the direct casualties of the bombardment. In the years that had followed, many times that number again had perished as a result of the damage to the planet's infrastructure, despite the best efforts of many people to repair the most vital networks. It was only the intervention of the mysterious Gree, years later, which had brought the planet back to its pre-Sacking levels of stability – right in time for the Treaty to end and a new Great Galactic War to begin.
Searching through the rubble of the Temple for survivors, and then to extract the corpses for proper burning and the relics which had later served to rebuild the Order's heart on Tython, had been among the worst days of Amberley's life. When the decision to leave Coruscant and move the Order's headquarters to the Jedi's ancient homeworld had come down from the Council, she couldn't have left Coruscant's ghosts behind her quickly enough. She had then spent many days on Tython meditating, trying to get the images out of her head. In the end, she hadn't been any more successful than most other Jedi, and it wasn't until meeting Ciaphas that she'd slowly managed to get over the trauma.
To see the Temple now, rebuilt larger than ever, was a bittersweet joy. It told her that the Order had endured, despite everything; that the ideals to which she'd dedicated her life, of doing good and serving the people of the galaxy, had survived the millennia. And while there was still darkness on Coruscant (an inevitable consequence of so many people living on one world, to say nothing of all the galaxy-shaping politics which took place here), it was nothing compared to the pall of dread, despair and suffering that had hung over the planet during the Great Galactic Wars, even as countless souls strove to rebuild, each one a candle shining through the dark.
The Temple hadn't been rebuilt exactly like she remembered it from before the Sacking. There were small and not-so-small variations in the architecture, but the biggest difference was in the aura she could feel emanating from it.
Before the Sacking, the Jedi Temple of Coruscant had been a beacon of light and harmony, letting all who beheld it take heart from the mere fact that such a place existed. After the Sith attack led by Darth Malgus, it had been turned into a large pile of broken pieces, avoided by the rest of the population, with even the looters staying far away. The violence of the attack had been imprinted into the Force, and anyone with even the most tenuous connection to it had been able to sense it and instinctively recoiled from it – a fact she knew Imperial spies had taken advantage of to hide within the ruins more than once, until the Hero of Tython had wiped them out in one of her career's early exploits.
Now … now, it seemed diminished somehow. It was still great, still mighty, but slowly crushed by the weight of the world around it. As if, in their efforts to fit in with the rest of the Republic and what it expected of them, the heart of the Order had lost an important part of itself.
Or maybe it was just nostalgia coloring her memories. Amberley was self-aware enough to know she was not without her own foibles, and while she would never be the equal of the Order's great champions from her time, her own talents had still greatly increased since she'd last been here.
As the anti-gravitic stretchers carrying Varan's victims were brought up the steps, she stayed at the bottom for several minutes, allowing herself to grieve for all that she had lost. Her sorrow passed through her, and then into the Force, where it didn't disappear but didn't hurt as much.
"Death, yet the Force," she whispered the last line of the Code to herself, before climbing the steps to the main entrance of the Jedi's galactic headquarters.
The guardians of the Temple let her enter without comment, though she felt the weight of their gazes on her as she passed. Good. If they'd been willing to completely trust someone with as suspicious a backstory as hers, she would have needed to teach them why that was a bad idea, and that would have made her upcoming meeting awkward to say the least.
A member of the same species as Master Oteg (a Jedi Master who'd served as a Fleet Admiral for the Republic, and been instrumental in the liberation of the legendary Revan from the clutches of the Empire) waited for her inside, accompanied by a dark-skinned Human man who was tall in his own right, but looked even taller by comparison.
"Knight Vail," the Human greeted her with a slight bow. "I am Mace Windu, Master of the Order. This is Grand Master Yoda," he continued, gesturing to the diminutive being at his side.
Amberley had already known both their identities, of course. The names of the Jedi on the Council were a matter of public record, and she had done her research since arriving in this strange, peaceful era. Yoda and Windu were famous, and seeing them up close, she could well understand how they'd reached their prestigious positions : the two Jedi Masters radiated strength in the Force.
"Greetings, Masters," said Amberley, her own bow deeper than Windu's, showing the proper respect for their higher ranks. "As you already know, I am Amberley Vail, Knight of the Jedi Order."
"Good it is, to see you returned to us after so long," said Yoda with a smile. "Lost to the Order forever, our distant forebears thought you to be. Come, now. Much to discuss, there is."
They escorted her through the Temple and up to the chamber where the rest of the Jedi Council awaited. On the way, Yoda made small talk, asking general questions about her health : he had been informed of her injuries, and asked whether she'd like to visit the Healers after her debriefing.
"I would appreciate it," she replied. "Cain's medics did their best, but from what I've learned, medical technology has advanced a lot since my time."
"The Perlians didn't offer to help ?" asked Windu, raising an eyebrow.
"Perlia's healthcare system is still working far beyond capacity handling the wounded from the pirate raid, Master Windu," Amberley replied, letting just the smallest bit of edge creep into her voice. "While those in critical condition have long since been handled, there is still a large number of injured who need special care, and I wasn't going to take the bacta tank of someone who needed it more. Even the Invincible's infirmary was used to take off some of the most gravely injured patients from the overflowing hospitals when we arrived."
"Ah, yes," nodded the Jedi Master. "The Sith are still using kolto, aren't they ?"
"They are." There was no point in trying to conceal that fact. "Kolto can do some pretty impressive things, but there's no denying bacta is better, at least when it's high-quality. Commodore Kasteen is already working on upgrading the infirmary with the newer stuff, though : Darth Cain has always insisted on using only the best medical equipment available on his flagship."
Which was one of the reasons she had survived her injuries on Molech in the first place. Ciaphas may have carried her to safety in his arms, but without the top-of-the-line facilities aboard the Invincible, she'd still have died.
On the way to the elevator at the center of the Temple, they passed Jedi Knights who glanced at her curiously, and groups of younglings who openly stared at the unknown Human woman accompanying the two Masters. The children's age was slightly disturbing to Amberley, as she was used to Jedi students being much older. The last time she'd seen someone as young in Jedi clothing, she'd been pulling their burned corpse from the Temple's ruins, tears running down her face as she dug into the rubble with her bare hands –
Yoda appeared to sense her distress, as he gently reached up to squeeze her hand, sending a wave of calm through the Force, which she accepted gracefully. Her emotions were all over the place, but she needed to be focused for her meeting with the Council : there was too much at stake for her to mess up.
The elevator brought the three of them all the way to the top of the Temple's main spire. The windows gave a breathtaking view of the surrounding area, with the cityscape of Coruscant stretching all the way to the horizon.
The chamber where the Jedi Council gathered was smaller than the one Amberley remembered visiting many times on Tython. As the Order's designated point of contact with Darth Cain, she had been summoned by the Council more often than most to give her thoughts on various events, be given special assignments, and, far too often for her tastes, convince one or more of the Masters that no, the Lord of Terror wasn't secretly plotting some grand scheme to end the Republic and crown himself Galactic Emperor.
The thought of Ciaphas, who went through so much trouble to delegate as much of his responsibilities and duties as he could, pursuing such a position was ludicrous, but in this as in so many other things, her companion suffered from the reputation of his people (which, to be fair, was entirely deserved).
And now, here she was again, to reassure the Council that the events of Perlia and Tatooine weren't the start of a Sith resurgence. Despite herself, Amberley smiled slightly : the more things changed, the more they stayed the same, it seemed.
Yoda and Windu took their seats, and everyone else followed suit. Every seat of the Council was filled, either by someone physically present or, like in Plo Koon's case, by a holographic projection. It was another subtle reminder of how different things were now : back in her days, the casualties of war meant that there had always been empty seats on the Jedi Council, even if the turnover had never been as bad as the Dark Council's. This Council, however, knew very little of war.
Not nothing : she knew Plo Koon himself had participated in the 'Stark Hyperspace War', which had been only a minor skirmish by her standards, but had still been an actual conflict. And there was no doubt in her mind that the longer-lived members of the Council had also faced their lot of challenges before being inducted into its ranks.
Windu introduced each of the other Masters, then they got to the reason for the meeting.
"We have confirmed your identity in the records beyond all reasonable doubts," said the Master of the Order. "There is no questioning the fact that you're indeed Knight Amberley Vail, believed to have perished in the same accident which killed Darth Cain and most of his followers. Now, however, we all know that's not what happened, and we must discuss how the Order's to react to recent events."
"Starting with Cain himself," said a male Vurk named Master Coleman Trebor.
"Of all of the Empire's Sith Lords, Darth Cain was among the most dangerous," she admitted. "But his desire for peace with the Republic is genuine, I assure you."
"This is not the first time the Order has heard words to that effect. In the early days of the original schism, during the Hundred-Year Darkness, thousands of years before even your era, many attempts at peace were made between the followers of the Light and those of the Dark," pointed out Windu. "More recently, during the New Sith Wars, Jedi and Republican diplomats tried numerous times to sue for peace. Anytime the Sith accepted, it turned out to be a trap, whether to bring some important Jedi to a vulnerable position or to buy time while the Darksiders gathered their strength before striking again. In fact, the same was true in your time, wasn't it ? With the Treaty of Coruscant ?"
"It was," Amberley nodded. "And, truth be told, we all knew it before the terms of the Treaty were even made public, apart from a few optimistic or hopelessly naive souls within the Republic who didn't understand the evil at the core of the Sith Empire. But despite the price the galaxy paid, there wasn't any choice. The Sith had a blaster aimed at the head of the Republic, and their diplomats were very careful to keep their demands just unacceptable enough that refusing them was still the worst option."
That bastard Baras, the head negotiator for the Empire, had been very cunning. Word of his death at the hands of the new Emperor's Wrath had been the one silver lining to the otherwise worrying news that the Emperor had found a new pet executioner (even though he'd ended up turning against Vitiate in the end).
"But this is different," she continued. "Cain is different. He is a Sith, yes, and a master of the Dark Side whose Force powers have few equals. But he is unique among them," unfortunately, she added silently. In her opinion, the galaxy would be much better off if more Sith were like Ciaphas.
"Difficult it is, to understand Cain," mused Yoda. "For the well-being of their followers, Sith care not. Pain and suffering, the way of the Dark Side, is it not ?"
"Oh, it absolutely is," said Amberley. With this Darth Sidious still out in the galaxy somewhere (she wished she could tell the Jedi about him, but right now, this would look like her trying to distract her from Perlia), she didn't want the Order to start thinking all Sith were like Ciaphas. That way led to catastrophe. "But Cain has always had a … unique perspective on the Force compared to his peers. Back in the Empire, most Sith Lords were focused on short-term gains and immediate gratification, whereas he always considers the long-term consequences of his choices."
"One might say that makes him more dangerous, no less," Windu pointed out.
"Only to his enemies," replied Amberley. "And in all the years I've known him, the only times he's struck first was when someone did something truly, unevoqually awful – I suspect because it reminded him of Darth Erebus."
Even here, even now, speaking the bastard's name aloud still sent a shiver down Amberley's spine. She was fortunate enough to never have met the degenerate Sith Lord in person : by the time she'd received her Knighthood, he'd already been dead, and no Padawan had been allowed within the same Sector as the Vile One under any circumstance. But she knew what he'd done, both to Republic and Imperial civilians, and she had an idea of what he'd done to Ciaphas and his fellow Apprentices in his efforts to shape them into more instruments of evil.
It was not pleasant knowledge, and she took a deep breath, drawing on the Temple's serenity to fortify herself against it. It had happened, and there was nothing she could do about it – there had never been anything she could do about it. She had still been a Padawan when Erebus had died, after all, and while she was confident in her own abilities, she wasn't arrogant enough to believe her younger self could somehow have succeeded when so many Republic operatives and Jedi Knights had failed.
"Yes, we've all been told about that particular Sith Lord," said Master Mundi. "I think I speak for all of us when I say we're fortunate it was his apprentice who arrived from the distant past rather than him."
Once again, Amberley's calm was tested, as she nearly threw up at the thought of Darth Erebus being unleashed upon the current galaxy.. She had faith that the Order would have defeated him in the end, if only because the Vile One's sheer, maniacal evil would've united the entire galaxy against him, but the suffering he could've caused before being put down … it didn't bear thinking about.
So she didn't.
"There is, however, the question of how objective you are about Cain," said Windu, looking slightly uncomfortable. "Based on the records you sent us, you have spent a long time working with him against various threats to both the Republic and the Empire."
"If you are trying to dance around the question of whether he seduced me to the Dark Side, Master, please stop worrying about embarrassing me," replied Amberley bluntly. "You aren't the first Master to ask the question."
"And the answer is ?"
Amberley couldn't tell them the true nature of her relationship with Ciaphas. They wouldn't understand – even the Jedi of her era wouldn't. But she couldn't lie either : they would sense it, of that there was no doubt.
Fortunately, tying the truth into knots for the greater good was one of the skills she had most developed during her time as one of the Jedi Knights most frequently deployed alongside Sith.
"That while Cain might have tried to draw me away from the Order, I tried the same with bringing him into the Light, and we both had equal success. I am a Jedi, a servant of the Light. And while I do believe that Cain would have been a great Knight of the Republic had he been born within its borders, the time for that has long since passed." Even if he didn't believe it himself, the scars of Erebus' 'teaching' running too deep in his soul, she was certain of it. "And he can still be an ally to the people of the galaxy. I promise you, whatever dark scheme you think Cain is plotting right now, he isn't. His war against the Hutts was started by his apprentice after he sent her to free people from slavery, and Vaylin killed Jabba not because it'd set the stage for Cain's takeover of the Outer Rim, but because she simply couldn't abide his crimes anymore."
Amberley had ambivalent feelings toward Vaylin, but she knew Ciaphas' apprentice's thoughts when it came to anything which reminded her of her father's treatment of her. Ciaphas hadn't intended to start a slave rebellion on Tatooine when he'd sent her there, but he really should've seen it coming. If Amberley hadn't still been recovering at the time, spending most of her days going in and out of consciousness, she'd have warned him about it in advance.
"You may be right," admitted Master Mundi. "But Darth Cain isn't the only ancient Sith we need to worry about. Let us assume that he has no hostile intentions toward the Republic and the Jedi Order. What about the Sith who came through time with him ? We know very little about them. Do they share his perspective ?"
"That's … a complicated question," Amberley grimaced. This was the part of this discussion she'd dreaded, because it was a very good point. "The Sith acolytes aboard the Invincible were all loyal to Cain, and Vaylin, his apprentice is almost fanatically devoted to him. She, at least, wouldn't do anything she thought he wouldn't approve of. But there is a chance that the acolytes might misinterpret Cain's instructions, yes. It hasn't happened yet, though, even when they participated in the liberation of Tatooine, so I think we owe Cain the benefit of the doubt."
"Tatooine is sparsely populated," said Master Windu. "Even in the confusion following Jabba's death, there was little chance any … indiscretion, wouldn't have been noticed. If it had been on a world with a more traditional population density …"
"Not to punish someone for what they might do, the Jedi way is," cut in Yoda, but the Grand Master still looked concerned. "Know the acolytes better than any of us, you do, Knight Vail. A history of violence against civilians, do any of them possess ?"
"No. It isn't that Cain wouldn't have accepted them in his service otherwise," that would have been much too suspicious, "but the ones he brought with him to Molech were all young, and spent their entire career under him. They all fled Korriban together when the Academy collapsed into civil war," Amberley explained. "I have no doubt they did things that would be considered crimes by the Republic back there, but, well. It was the Academy."
"I think we need more context for that statement, Knight Vail," said Plo Koon.
Right. This wasn't a Jedi Council that had spent decades fighting against the Sith Empire, with all the incredibly dangerous spying and infiltration business that had most definitely not existed officially. Anything they knew of Sith training methods came from ancient, half-forgotten legends, no doubt filtered through several layers of fear and rumors.
Unfortunately, in this case, Amberley had little doubt that the reality had been much worse than their imagination.
"Over the course of the Great Galactic Wars," she began, "there were several defectors from the Sith who joined the Jedi after rejecting the Dark Side for one reason or another." Not nearly as many as Jedi who had fallen, but the very nature of war favored the darkness, and the Emperor's habit of kidnapping and mind-raping Jedi who caught his interest into his puppets hadn't helped. "While returning to that period of their lives was painful for them, they gave us a lot of information about the ways in which the Empire trained its Sith to ensure they embraced the Dark Side before being selected by a Sith Lord as an apprentice to complete their training."
Amberley spent the next five minutes listing the methods employed by the Academy's 'teachers' to instill proper Sith behavior into their students. Slaves and random civilians brought in for the students to torture and execute, with the penalty being inflicted on the student if they refused or didn't show proper enthusiasm. Teachers spying on students, students spying on teachers, searching for the slightest hint of weakness. Draconian rules of behavior which were all subordinate to the cardinal principle of 'don't get caught', including the ones prohibiting straight-up murdering rivals.
All of that on a planet haunted by the ghosts of thousands of years' worth of tombs, all of which were being thrown open by what passed for the Empire's archaeology department in a race to find anything which might be of interest to their wealthy and sadistic patrons.
As she spoke, Amberley did her best not to think about how Ciaphas' own tutelage at the hands of Erebus had been worse than what she was describing. It really was a miracle he had come out of it as well-balanced as he had – one the entire galaxy should be thankful for. After meeting Darth Cain and seeing through his mask for the first time, she'd wondered why the Vile One had even kept him as an apprentice, given his character : it seemed unlikely someone of Darth Erebus' power wouldn't have seen through Ciaphas' pretences as well.
Then Ciaphas would do something insane, like talking back to the entire Dark Council and making it stick, or break the back of an entire invasion force single-handedly, or convince the insane daughter of the Sith Emperor to leave him alone, before giving up all her power and influence to become his apprentice. Then Amberley would be reminded of the most likely reason behind Erebus' choice. Oh, there was no doubt the Vile One had delighted in tormenting Ciaphas as well, but he must have seen Ciaphas' potential, and how great an instrument of evil he could become if successfully broken.
She took a deep breath as she finished her brief summary of the Korriban Academy's training regimen. Realizing she'd closed her eyes at some point, she opened them to find the Council staring at her, those of whom with human-adjacent biology pale-faced. Master Yoda felt like he was on the verge of breaking into tears, or perhaps commandeering a ship and going straight to Perlia to give hugs to every Sith acolyte, Amberley wasn't sure.
"This is the experience all of Cain's Sith acolytes went through before joining him," she concluded. "To put it bluntly, from what I've seen during my time with them, they're all traumatized to various degrees, and are coping with it more or less well."
A grim silence followed her words. If nothing else, she reflected, she had managed to remind the Council that Sith didn't come into existence straight out of the Dark Side, ready to laugh maniacally as they tortured a bunch of children with Force Lightning. They were people, and most of them had never had a choice in what they had become (not that it meant they weren't dangerous or shouldn't be fought, obviously, but rejecting the idea that one's enemies were sentient beings was a path guaranteed to lead to ruin sooner or later).
"Alright," Master Windu was the first to break the silence. "We understand your point, Knight Vail. I personally would prefer if every Darksider on Perlia and Tatooine came to the Temple to receive psychological help, but I understand why that might not be practical. However, we still need to keep a clear eye on the situation. While Darth Cain and his followers aren't as bad as the rest of the Sith, and most likely better than the Hutt Cartels, that's all from the perspective of the Order. The Republic might have a different opinion, and if the Republic decides to go to war against Cain, we will have no choice but to join, if only to minimize casualties."
Amberley frowned. That didn't sound right to her, but then, she had joined the Order in a time when the shadow of the Revanchist Mouvement still colored many people's perceptions of the Jedi Order. There had even been a few long-lived Jedi who had lived to remember it (very few, what with the near-complete extinction of the Order at the hands of the Sith Triumvirate in the years following Revan's redemption, his destruction of the Star Forge, and departure to the Unknown Regions).
Back then, the Jedi Order had outright forbidden its members from joining the war against the Mandalorians, and they'd done a lot worse than anything she could imagine Ciaphas doing. The Republic had asked for the Order's help in the war many times, only to be rebuffed at every turn, all while more and more atrocities were committed on the frontline of the war.
But, Amberley reminded herself, times had changed. In the wake of the New Sith Wars and the Ruusan Reformation, the Jedi Order had become much more tightly bound to the Republic. The idea of this Order departing Coruscant and resettling on Tython was much harder to imagine.
"I understand, Master Windu," she assured the dark-skinned Human. "I am certain Darth Cain is aware of how delicately balanced the whole situation is, and will do all he can not to upset the equilibrium."
Sitting alone in my office, nursing a cup of caf in my left hand (perfectly prepared to my tastes by JURG-N, as always – I didn't know what I'd done to deserve him), I looked at the galactic map in front of me and tried to decide which world to invade – sorry, 'liberate' – next.
Now that Vaylin had returned to Perlia with most of the forces I'd sent to Tatooine with her, I needed to do something to show that I was taking this whole war against slavery she'd started in my name seriously. As tempting as the idea of merely staying on Perlia and enjoying the perks of being its planetary sovereign, I knew that would be seen as showing weakness, and would get me killed in the long run, either by the Hutts or my own people.
Obviously, if I absolutely had to go to war, I'd much rather wait until the Invincible's hyperdrive repairs were complete, because few things made going into battle less worrying than having a ten-kilometers long battleship on your side (not not worrying, of course, because only a suicidal moron would be unworried about being in a situation where a lot of people tried to kill you).
But I had read through the latest reports from the engineers carefully, and it was clear that simply wasn't a viable option. Even with the spare parts brought back from Tatooine, their best estimate was that it would take months before my flagship could enter hyperspace again, and that was with cutting the safety checks and tests far more than I was comfortable with (especially given the origin of these parts).
However, the lunatics I was saddled with would grow bored long before then, and the prospect of being on the same planet as a bunch of bored Sith while being nominally in charge was marginally more terrifying than charging headlong into Hutt Space in my underpants. So, much as it galled me, I needed to find a new target for the warmongers who looked up to me, one which could be taken without having what seemed to be, at least for now, the mightiest warship in the galaxy with me. And since Vaylin had been the one who had led the campaign on Tatooine, I needed to lead the next one in person, lest they start thinking I was losing my touch and getting complacent. My undeserved reputation was a very useful tool, but it required maintenance.
Of course, that didn't mean I couldn't be smart about how to approach the issue. I could use the excuse that, with two worlds needing protection, only a limited number of seized ships could be spared to strike at another world, meaning we needed to choose the target carefully. A typical Sith Lord might have thrown themself at the most heavily fortified enemy stronghold and trust in the power of the Dark Side to carry them to victory, but in my experience, such individuals didn't tend to live long past their initial successes, and I hadn't survived through three Galactic Wars and far more assassination attempts than I was comfortable remembering to get killed by the karking Hutts.
I looked again at the holographic map of the Outer Rim gently rotating in the air before me, my eyes moving up and down the highlighted hyperlanes of the nearby Sectors. There were far too many possible choices to check them all properly, not without spending more time than I felt comfortable on the matter, so I drew on the Force for guidance.
I wasn't anywhere close to the oracle my late and unlamented Master had been, and I wasn't going to reproduce the methods he had used to boost his predictive powers (basic decency aside, the Jedi Council would hunt me down in a heartbeat if I went down that road – and, more worryingly, Amberley would definitely break up with me in a most violent fashion).
But I could still use meditation to guide my actions. Slowly, I sank into a half-conscious, half-asleep state, my eyes moving across lists of names, until – there.
Savareen. A system only a single, short hyperspace jump away from Tatooine, which would keep our sphere of influence close together.
With the press of a button, I brought up the available information on the system. One inhabitable planet, mostly desert, with the latest census data available showing a population slightly larger than Tatooine's, despite not being so advantageously placed on the hyperlanes. And, based on the intel the spooks had been compiling since our arrival in this era, the planet had spent the last hundred years under the control of one criminal group or another, with no formal Republic presence in over a millennia. Its latest overlords were the Ravagers, a gang of bloodthirsty maniacs loosely affiliated to the Hutt Cartels, who kept a large slave population in various mines and other industries.
Also, according to a brief Holonet search, the planet was famous for its brandy, with connoisseurs of alcoholic beverages over the entire galaxy purchasing it, even if it meant having to deal with whatever group of criminals was currently in charge. That was convenient, because I was certain that, even if everything went perfectly, I would need a strong drink by the time this new campaign was over.
With a chuckle at my own jest, I began pulling every bit of data available on the system to my display, while thinking about how to present this in a way that my subordinates would accept – and which wouldn't make the Republic panic about the returned remnant of the Sith Empire expanding even further. I felt relatively confident I could convince the Republican emissaries that this wasn't an escalation they needed to worry about too much – it wasn't as if Savareen was really important, after all.
Had I known what awaited me on that planet, however, I would have chosen a more reasonable target – like, say, Nal Hutta.
Marlo the Hutt smiled as he read through the latest report his people had compiled for him, displayed on a holo-screen hovering in front of him as he laid spread out on his couch, surrounded by comfortable cushions.
Everything was going well. Now that he had convinced the other members of the Hutt Council to let him deal with Cain, letting him shoulder all the risks and costs in exchange for taking the greater share of Jabba's territory once the Sith Lord was defeated and business returned to normal, things were progressing well.
He was still in the process of gathering his forces, sending messages to the various gangs which paid him tribute and envoys to mercenary groups with which he'd done business in the past. But judging by the numbers he was seeing, it wouldn't take much longer for the first phase to be ready : already, several scores of warships were gathered, carrying thousands of some of the Outer Rim's most experienced killers. Discipline was an issue, but the bounty hunter he'd hired to serve as his enforcer in the fleet, Durge, was well worth the exorbitant price he'd asked for.
More importantly, Marlo had recently received confirmation of what he'd long suspected : the Invincible's hyperdrive had been destroyed by its trip through time, leaving the vessel stranded in Perlia. The information had come from a Human petty thief named Hanar, who had somehow managed to get her hands on extracts from the communications between Coruscant and the Republican envoys to Darth Cain.
According to Marlo's sources, Hanar had been active for a few years, stealing valuables from rich people in the Core and Mid-Rim, all while carefully avoiding doing anything which might get her on the Cartels' bad side. That meant she was smart, and unlikely to lie to Marlo. Of course, the Hutt had still ordered the recordings she'd passed on to be checked by his best slicers to ensure they weren't fabrications. It'd taken a few days, but all of them were in agreement : while the data didn't contain the whole of the discussion between the Jedi Council, the Supreme Chancellor and the Republican envoys, it wasn't a fake, nor had it been stitched together to present false information.
Marlo was curious how someone like Hanar had managed to acquire such information. A thief like her was unlikely to have sources at the very heart of the Republic : even if she knew some low-lives on Coruscant, that couldn't be enough to spy on the Supreme Chancellor. His best guess was that someone else was using her to pass the information to him while staying anonymous – likely someone who disliked Darth Cain and wanted him humbled for their own reasons.
The Hutt crime lord chuckled at the thought that he might be receiving assistance from some firebrand Republican, willing to perform what amounted to treason in order to ensure the resurgent threat of the Sith was dealt with. Once again, the Hutts' long-running strategy of never being the greatest threat to the dominant galactic powers had paid off.
For the time being, the Invincible was confined to Cain's new (or old, depending on how you thought about it) throneworld. That was excellent news : at the moment, the fleet Marlo was gathering couldn't face the superdreadnought with any guarantee of victory. Based on the intelligence recovered from the pirate ships which had fled the slaughter of Varan's armada, Marlo's space warfare experts (who ran the gamut from disgraced military officers to pirate lords in their own right) were in agreement that they couldn't face the Sith flagship without heavy casualties.
Destroying the Sith flagship might be possible if they were ready to sacrifice every ship available in a mass suicide attack, but the odds of successfully pulling that off were very low – even someone with Marlo's reputation and resources couldn't openly send people to their death without mutiny becoming inevitable.
Admittedly, getting the experts to admit that had been a chore, but Marlo had managed to convince them they had more to lose by lying to him about their chances of success than by giving him bad news. Sometimes – not often, but sometimes – the Hutt regretted some aspects of the reputation his race had cultivated across the galaxy.
And so, regardless of how this irked Marlo, Perlia would be spared his wrath for now. Instead, Tatooine would pay the price of defying the Cartels. Its new 'independent government' would be crushed, and the entire population either enslaved or slaughtered, with the raiders allowed to rampage as they pleased. It would show the rest of the Outer Rim the cost of challenging the Hutts, and prove that Cain couldn't protect those he claimed to want to save. With that, Marlo's own influence would grow, and more would rally to his banner, until he'd enough forces at his disposal to challenge the Invincible itself and end the threat of Darth Cain once and for all.
Of course, Cain would be prepared for an attack on Tatooine. The journals of Marlo's forebears were clear on the fact that the Lord of Terror was a more than competent strategist, who rarely needed to return to the worlds he'd conquered because he always made sure to leave strong foundations behind. His apprentice was a different story (under the so-called Eternal Empire, Vaylin had left a trail of devastation in her wake wherever she went), but prudence demanded Marlo assume the Sith soldiers who had helped her taking over Tatooine knew what they were doing.
His attempts to get intel on the desert planet's situation hadn't borne much fruit. The locals were well-used to the Cartels' tricks, and they were very suspicious of any off-worlders who journeyed beyond the spaceports' immediate surroundings. Between that and the Sith still present on the planet, he'd lost about a dozen operatives, and those who'd survived didn't have much to tell. About the only important piece of information they'd managed to provide was that the former (and future, if Marlo had anything to say about it, which he always did) slaves were working to repair and refit a whole bunch of ships they'd dredged out of the junk yards to build their own navy.
Marlo didn't think they would manage to get anything really dangerous up in the void, but he also couldn't afford to underestimate them : a defeat against an enemy who didn't have the Invincible, even a minor one, would do enormous damage to his credibility.
So he needed to make sure that the force he gathered was powerful enough to overwhelm whatever defenses had been built around Tatooine before striking. Which was why he was pouring a lot of his accumulated wealth into building up the fleet mustering at Savareen, close to Tatooine. Despite owning a number of casinos and gambling rings, Marlo himself didn't believe in making gambles : when he made a move, he always made sure the odds were rigged in his favor as much as possible beforehand.
AN : And with that, you now know where the next arc of this story will take place.
Yes, I know, I said I was going to finish AYGWM before returning to this story. What can I say, the Muse is capricious.
Amberley's POV went a bit dark on me there. I blame Erebus, which as any Warhammer fan will know, is always a reasonable course of action in any story he is involved with, regardless of setting. Also, while writing this chapter, I realized there's no way someone like Marlo wouldn't realize Hanar was being used as someone's proxy - this isn't exactly his first rodeo, after all.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and look forward to what you think will happen on Savareen, and how much brandy Cain will need to get through it.
Zahariel out.