A/N: And now... our Big Bad's chapter.
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Disclaimer: Blargh.
The Antenora System was always dark.
With its only star having withered to white dwarf status centuries ago, the system was barely illuminated by a tiny stark-white candleflame at its very heart, almost lost amidst the infinite void around it. Unless you knew what you were looking for, it could easily be mistaken for a star a million light years away, and even then, its pitiful glow was easily hidden behind the shifting ranks of the asteroid belt that shrouded the outer reaches of the system. With so little light and so little warmth, all but the simplest or hardiest forms of life would have been unable to take root on any planet within reach of the puny sun's rays, but then, no planets existed in this region of space, only asteroids. Even the most basic building blocks of life could not be found in the Antenora System; all that existed was a pale, vague twilight, the gravity that held the system together, and the unceasing cold of starless space…
Then Hulas Skaryotas had ventured into the darkness on the fringe of the galaxy and saw potential. Here in Wild Space, in this lifeless nightmare of a system, there was total privacy: with no planets, there were no natives or colonists to get in the way; the asteroids were minerally worthless, so no miners would bother prospecting; best of all, the system was so obscure and so far removed from the major hyperspace lanes that nobody stood a chance of finding it even by accident. For a being with a major cloning project that not even the GenoHaradan would approve of, it was an ideal place to build a research base.
Through numerous underworld contacts and an army of mechanized labourers, a space station had slowly taken shape in the heart of the darkness; it had taken a year of construction to complete, and another year of preliminary tests and experiments to confirm that they'd had everything they needed to begin the work. Getting the first genetic samples for it hadn't been easy, and luring the first of the Khommite scientists away from their studies at home had been a trial in its own right. Obtaining the alpha sample and eliminating all rivals to the next stage of the plan had taken the most effort of all his projects.
But it was all worth it, for the groundwork had been laid, and now the real work could begin.
Now, Kosytus Station hovered in the near-infinite night of Antenora, just hidden by the asteroid belt, well beyond the reach of the dying white dwarf, a lustreless black dish with a single stalactite-like spire jutting from its underbelly. No lights glittered against its black durasteel exterior, no transparisteel windows blazed against the darkness; to all outside observers, it was as dead as the rest of the system, a featureless lump of metal floating endlessly in the lightless cold. But of course, this was a calculation to ensure that any ships that made it this far into Wild Space might mistake Kosytus for an ancient space hulk trapped in the orbit of the withered star.
But within the featureless black dish, the station was anything but lifeless. Between the scientists brought over from Khomm, the associated researchers recruited from a dozen worlds, the loyalist GenoHaradan operatives that still guarded the station's innermost sanctum, the eight hundred counter-assassins gathered with Vorn Dasaard's comm unit, the small army of war droids imported from countless different star systems, the burgeoning population of vat-grown shapeshifters slowly taking shape in their laboratories, and the hundreds upon hundreds of slaves brought to the station every day for use in their experiments… well, there was enough life here to function as a small city in its own right. From the thundering engines of the lower levels to the chthonic dry docks, from the teaming belly of the test subject housing block to the ever-churning machinery of the laboratory, Kosytus Station never slept.
Above it all, Hulas surveyed the capital of his new dominion.
From his office high in the upper levels of Kosytus Station, everything was visible, and not just through the reinforced transparisteel windows. It was a glorious place, richly decorated in lush dark green and pale ashen shades, from the carpet thick enough to lose toes in, to the ancient Rodian tapestries hanging from the walls. There was so much to treasure about this place, so much that he'd pilfered from the undeserving and uncaring: the silver chandelier studded with emeralds, the wardrobe practically overflowing with robes and travelling jackets in his favourite shades of green, the private armoury loaded down with poisoned blades and flechette launchers, and most luxurious of all, the bed with sheets of pale shimmersilk and a coverlet of rich green proteaweave. But as much joy as all this gave him, there was one he liked more than any other, and that was his desk, the horseshoe-shaped desk layered with panels of rare green Gnarltree wood – a gift from the Last Vespid upon his induction into the GenoHaradan – with a swivelling throne of cushioned albino Rancor leather. Every desktop was layered with viewscreens, each stemming back to a client, a surveillance bug, a security camera, or maybe just the latest feed from Ithorak Guldar's blackmail network.
Here and now, Hulas looked down upon his private world, knowing that it all belonged to him, knowing that there was still so much more to achieve, so much more that others had gained without earning it as he had, knowing more than anything else in the world that it had to belong to him – that he deserved it.
But all things in their time.
For now, he was waiting patiently for Darth Malak's latest demand for a progress report. He had nothing but positive results to offer, of course, but by nature, Dark Jedi were rarely easy to appease, and Malak become discontented all too readily. The Sith needed constant updates, a steady influx of reaffirming data to guarantee that their investment was justified, and even with so many failures being culled from the system and the results being regularly enhanced, it was difficult to keep pace with the demands. It would be so easy for Malak to simply erase them from the great Sith ledger and leave an organization older than the Republic to burn in its own flame.
So, fuelled by fear and resentment as much as ambition, Hulas worked his laboratories harder even than the Sith ran their own covert research facilities, shipping in hundreds of slaves to be sacrificed to the Khommites' laboratories every day and churning out almost as many failures, all for the sake of producing the few successes that could be delivered to the Sith… and the data that could be used to improve the cloning process, of course.
But it was worth it.
It was all worth it.
Without this deal, without the will to pursue what was beyond his grasp, he would have remained content with his lot: he would have been happy to be one of four masters ruling over the Republic's secret shadow. Now, if he played this game of Pazaak well, he stood to become the master of all of it.
And yet, as always, he knew that there was still so much more to achieve. The Sith would need correcting eventually, if they refused to step aside on his path to power; Darth Malak would have to be dealt with as a matter of precaution, for he'd already betrayed his master on his own ascent… but then, Hulas had already grown to resent the Sith lord. Quite apart from the pressure Malak so regularly imposed, the fact that he could command power so openly without resorting to back channels and secret communiques pricked at Hulas whenever he witnessed Sith warships move at his command. If only he could wield power so openly! If only the Star Forge was within his grasp!
But all things in their time: perhaps the Star Forge could be his one day, especially if Hulas was able to provide Malak with a shapeshifter bodyguard with an override command implanted in its brain. One word at the right time, and the Sith Empire would belong to him. And after that, who knew what else?
Time and time again, the other Overseers of the GenoHaradan had disparaged him for how he saw the world, insisting that he needed to confine himself to lesser things for the sake of the guild. As if they'd ever abided by such a rule! They'd all sought greater things in their own way: Rulan had been a sado-hedonistic glutton, Vorn a blood-junkie and a savage, and Ithorak, that oily, foul-smelling, clammy-handed little Selkath upstart, was so consumed with avarice that he'd probably have tried to buy the GenoHaradan itself if he hadn't been recruited.
None of them had understand that ambition and envy were essential to Hulas: without the heights he could aspire to, without all those things that others had achieved without earning them, he would be nothing.
After all, he had once been nothing.
Fifty-eight long years ago, Hulas Skaryotas had been born into a life in which nothing could be expected of him.
Long before his birth, his parents had been banished from Rodia by the reigning Grand Protector for their suspected involvement in a coup; in truth, they'd been patsies on that day, accused only because they'd been carrying the poison to the Protector's table at the very moment the plot had been discovered… and because the surviving conspirators were quick enough to use the two luckless servants as scapegoats. Buoso and Liviya Skaryotas protested their innocence throughout, but their accusers were better-connected, and the pair were only spared the death penalty by being distant relatives of the Grand Protector's current mistress.
The two had eventually settled on the polluted world of Duro, and there, having been mere servants on Rodia, they fell even further. Criminal refugees were not welcome within the orbital cities where most Duros dwelled, no matter how desperately Buoso and Liviya tried to explain their innocence, and so they found that the only work and shelter they were allowed was on the planet below.
By then, the surface of Duro was so extensively polluted by millennia of industrial development that most of it had been abandoned to automated systems, with only a skeleton crew of perhaps a few thousand organic employees required planetside to manage the plants, repair the machines, and keep everything running smoothly in the most cost-efficient manner possible. By the end of their first week in the Duro System, Hulas' parents had joined them, first merely as squatters left dependent on the charity of the foreman, then as workers.
From what Hulas was told years later, his mother had not been spared any of it: having been at work above the broiling lake of the nutrient vats all throughout her pregnancy, she had gone into labour and given birth right there in the heart of the factory.
His first memory was of the one glimpse he'd had of Duro's outside world, as seen through a modified rebreather mask: a putrid yellow sky opaque with toxic fumes and smog belched from a billion smokestacks, silhouetted by the gargantuan masses of neighbouring factories stretching as far as the eye could see… and somewhere just beyond the canopy of clouds, the faint glow of an orbital city – just out of reach.
And had circumstances been different, it would have remained out of reach, for he was granted no special considerations even as a child: from the moment Hulas was old enough to walk, he was polishing floors and cleaning out the guts of machines, struggling to breathe through lungs that had barely adapted to the poisons that regularly leaked onto the factory floor, often sick but never allowed a single day off. He was taught by example, and with what little educational programs his parents could scavenge from old computers on their way to the recyclers, progressing rapidly from reading and writing to computer science, for those who fell behind on the workforce rarely remained on it for long… and given that neither he nor his parents had the protection of citizenship, being fired would have meant starvation.
So, there was no time to be a child, nor was there any time for Buoso and Liviya to be parents. Any love they might have had for their son or for each other was driven out of them by their exile and enslavement, and Hulas couldn't remember a day when he'd felt real love for either of them, though if he had, it probably hadn't lasted for long, not once he realized that they had it easier than him. They were taller, stronger, healthier, and had seen more of the universe than their illness-prone runt of a son, and all they could do was bemoan their fate to anyone who was listening, never realizing how much Hulas despised them for it. Listening to his father bitch and moan, he'd have given anything in the world to swap bodies with him, just so he could be tall and strong and Buoso could be small and sickly for a change.
But there was always someone else to hate.
In those days, the Skaryotas family hadn't been the only one on Duro, and Hulas wasn't the only child to be born in the smogs of that ruined world, and as bad luck had it, all of those kids were older than him. Being bigger and healthier than the little Rodian hobbling after them, they got better jobs than him and enjoyed better privileges from the foreman, including the right to bully Hulas as much as they liked. As a reward for good behaviour, some highly placed kids even got to assign him official duties and supervise him… a point that proved to be their undoing.
Technically, he hadn't meant to kill one of them – after all, he was only five years old at the time.
He'd been mopping the catwalk high above one of the smelters, supervised by a big Klatooinian boy who'd been eager to show off the gaudy new jacket he'd bought with his birthday wages. All Hulas did was throw the bucket of water at his feet; it wasn't his fault that the idiot had slipped and brained himself. As soon as the dog-faced brat was down, Hulas had torn his precious jacket to pieces with a pair of scissors, carving the colourful jacket to multihued shreds and throwing them into the smelter below one by one, keeping only a shiny silver button or two.
Then, he'd tipped the lifeless body after them.
There, he'd thought. You liked the kriffing jacket so much, you go right in after it, mutt.
Had he felt remorse? No. Maybe years of exposure to the toxic fumes of the factory had killed the part of his brain responsible for it, or maybe he'd recognized that compassion and remorse had no such place on the surface of Duro. After all, so many other workers seemed to have realized that very fact, including his parents, so perhaps he'd just been mature for his age. In any event, none of the workers suspected he was to blame, but then again, Hulas had always been a brilliant liar.
With nobody free to take the boy's shift, the foreman had no choice but to give Hulas the victim's position, and by extension, the perks therein. Suddenly, Hulas found himself with the authority to order around children twice his age and height, to control rations to fellow junior workers, and even to recommend punishments for any workers who disobeyed. And just like that, Hulas found his sole joy in life: power, its pursuit, its presence, its ownership, and above all, its use.
Power was the one thing in life that ever had any meaning for Hulas. Pursuit of it meant survival, supremacy, purpose… but nothing guaranteed all three more than the possibility of taking power from someone who already had it – and had made the mistake of making Hulas feel weaker for the lack of it. Some would later call him overambitious, spiteful, even covetous. But in truth, it was simply that Hulas knew how to get what he wanted, and more importantly, how to punish those who got in his way.
When Hulas was six, one of the great factory owners descended from on high to review his investment. It was wonderful: Hulas had hated him on sight! Every centimetre of him reeked of smug superiority, from the unscarred dome of his big blue head to his impeccably polished shoes. But every one of the organic work crew hated him as well, including his father, and that was how little Hulas had claimed the advantage.
Buoso had somehow gotten himself involved in a union, hoping to achieve better wages and better conditions for the workers, and was planning to use the owner's visit to stage a massive strike – all while secretly doing his best to screw over the current union leader in the hopes that Buoso could take his place. Unknown to him, Liviya had found out and was planning to reveal the truth to his fellow union members, hoping that betraying her husband would earn her a plum job in the wake of a successful strike.
But foolishly, they both confided in him… and Hulas was rapidly learning that he no longer needed his parents: he had learned from his studies that the station of planetside worker was not guaranteed by birth, but decided by the employer, and since he didn't share his criminal status of his parents, he was free to go so long as the owner gave his permission. So, using his knowledge of the factory's ventilation ducts, he managed to corner the owner for a private conversation, and in exchange for a shuttle trip to the nearest orbital city, he gave the factory owner everything needed to destroy the union. By the end of the day, the union was disbanded, new workers were brought in to replace the few who'd been killed in the crackdown, and Hulas' parents were drowned in the nutrient vats – all saving the factory from a strike that would have cost billions.
The owner was grateful indeed, and Hulas earned his passage into space. As a minor, he was taken in by the authorities on Bburru Station, granted a new home at the best orphanage the owner could find, and given all the necessities a child could ask for. The station administrator even gave him the best education any could ask for once they determined that his intelligence was worth investing in, but only because they expected to collect on that investment when he came of age.
He never got that far. After all, he had ambitions beyond the station of chief engineer or factory owner; he had long ago learned that only the most powerful beings alive could be granted freedom from the hardships of the galaxy. More importantly, he knew that power was the one thing in the galaxy that could bring him joy: he never forgot the slow thrill of pleasure he'd felt as he realized that he held his parents' lives in his hands, or the roaring exhilaration as he heard their screams fading away into echoes, of the sickly afterglow as he triumphed at the sight of those he envied being brought lower than him.
But he also understood better than any of his classmates that the true avenues to power on the station would always be closed to him: after all, he wasn't a Duros, and offworlders never ascended to high office in any of the stations, and if he were to go anywhere else in search of political gain, he'd have to risk losing everything he had just so some overprivileged "legitimate" politician could defeat him in an unearned landslide of an election. So, Hulas looked elsewhere – and found it in the station's underworld. After all, the Duros were renowned as pilots and navigators throughout the galaxy, and with a ship-faring culture came freight, smuggling, piracy, and organized crime, so every city of Duros had its own subculture of gangs and syndicates, with a few questing tendrils of the Exchange and the Hutt Clans as well.
By the time he turned fifteen, Hulas was not only top of his class and a seasoned traveller in Bburru Station's underworld, but he had also amassed a sizable private fortune for himself. Some of his more distrustful guardians suspected he'd been dealing in glitterstim, but no matter how carefully they searched his room, no drugs could be found. Unknown to them, his money had all been gathered by acquiring secrets and valuables from the upper echelons of the station: some of it he'd collected in person, back when he'd been small enough to be invisible among the station's elite, and easily dismissed as too sweet and innocent to listen in on his "benefactors"; later, though, as he learned the art of building his own surveillance bugs, it had been gathered mechanically. For added fun, nobody ever happened to notice that people that Hulas personally envied and disliked all suffered devastating losses sooner or later.
But he was no blackmailer, not like that stinking Selkath bastard Ithorak; he had no truck with peddling worthless goods as disguises for microphones or poison, and he certainly wouldn't lower himself to sell the secrets that belonged to him, those precious little victories against those he despised so much. No, Hulas was pure in his methods, and more importantly, he'd been slender and flexible enough to work his way through the station's ventilation shafts at will. He infiltrated, he planted his microphones, he stole what he could, and he profited honestly.
And yes, he killed occasionally if he was ever caught in the act and needed to eliminate a witness, but it was no more than his victims deserved, pompous scum that they were. He'd seen them flaunting their wealth in the street, acting as if they were better than him, as if they couldn't see him looking on. Well, he'd proved that he was better that them and more deserving of their possessions.
Nobody ever suspected that the spindly orphan was ever to blame for any of it. And so, when he finally graduated from Bburru Station Academy three years early, there was nothing to keep him from leaving the station, not even his former benefactors within the administrator's office, all of whom had died in a series of carefully staged accidents over the course of the past decade. All he had to do was clamber aboard the ship his underworld allies had provided for him, and he was gone, leaving behind only the record of an investment that nobody had ever been able to profit from.
With the contacts he'd made and the fortune he'd built, it didn't take too much effort for Hulas to set himself up as a professional thief on Nar Shaddaa, trading in stolen goods and enriching the business through information pilfered from his targets.
Before the year was out, he'd expanded the business from a matter of personal effort to a matter of delegation: he was no longer simply planting microphones and raiding homes in person but hiring other thieves to carry out the burglaries and espionage for him. He even gathered his own dedicated workforce of spies, gathered from beggars, orphans, servants, slaves, and a whole host of other inexpensive individuals who wouldn't attract notice. By the time his second year in Nar Shaddaa was over, he was in charge of the fastest-growing intelligence-gathering agency on the smuggler's moon, and before long, everyone knew to visit him if they needed information.
There were mistakes made in those early days, of course, errors that had cost him the occasional fine and a beating from one of the captains of the underworld who thought he'd overstepped himself. Hulas took it in stride, though: he'd learned to delay his revenge… and besides, it wasn't as if he didn't despise them already for rubbing their successes in his face whenever they met on a casual basis.
Perhaps that was why he'd first gotten involved in the assassination trade. After all, if there was one thing Nar Shaddaa was never short on, it was bounties and contracts, and as luck would have it, many of those underworld potentates who had earned his hire had also found themselves the subject of a bounty or five. He was careful not to eliminate anyone he'd publicly disagreed with, at least not until he could arrange for their downfall through less suspicious means, but other than that, nothing was off the table: the blaster, the vibroblade, the bomb, the sabotaged speeder, and Hulas' personal favourite, poison. Oh, every Exchange rat in Nar Shaddaa knew to swap glasses whenever they were drinking in company, but that did them little good when Hulas started carrying misting nozzles up his sleeves.
And while he had a few occasions in which he allowed his operatives to carry out a hit, more often than not, he carried out all the work himself. How could he deny himself the thrill of it? How could he deprive himself of the joy of seeing the smug bastards choke on their own blood and die, knowing that the scrawny Rodian they'd had beaten scant weeks ago had made it possible? How could he ever give that up, when every assassination meant another chance to claim money and trophies, when every death was another chance to claim the power and status that was rightfully his, to prove that they'd been wrong to make him feel small? After all, he couldn't limit the rewards to the bounty, could he?
With every crime lord he eliminated, a little slicing funnelled their money into his accounts, and a few careful dissections of their files isolated the underlings compelled by debt and allowed him to usher them into the ranks of his own blossoming crime syndicate, from spies to bodyguards. And so, bit by bit, he seized what others had tried so hard to deny him, what others had claimed he wasn't good enough to earn: a spy network, an army, a small fortress, even his own fleet of ships… and from there, room to expand from a ring of spies and killers to an empire – small, yes, but growing every day.
The pinnacle of his success had been the assassination of a visiting Republic official, a treasurer out to make a deal with the Hutt Clans to arrange a highly illegal loan for some of the Chancellor's more ambitious projects. The man's conceit would have been hilarious if it hadn't been so insulting. Not only had Hulas burned the flabby little human alive in his own bed, but he'd stolen everything he'd brought with him to bargain with the Hutts and sent his precious diplomatic vessel ploughing into Nal Hutta.
In hindsight, he knew it was only a matter of time before someone learned the truth. Even with all the precautions he'd taken to hide his involvement in all the deaths, even with Nar Shaddaa's own spectacular death toll in play, the deaths of so many criminal overlords were sure to draw attention, especially from the biggest of the crime syndicates. After all, Hulas had assassinated several well-connected crime lords with allies bent on avenging their deaths, but even those who didn't care enough about the deceased to take revenge would still be ready to have Hulas executed simply for being a potential threat. Both the Hutt Clans and the Exchange had the resources to investigate who had posted the bounties, and once they started finding out who'd collected, a bounty on Hulas himself was soon to follow; it wasn't a matter of if, only when.
But at the very moment it looked as though an investigation was about to begin, Hulas was contacted with perhaps the most extraordinary job offer in the galaxy. Many years later, when he had a chance to look at the heavily encrypted recruitment records, he found that other GenoHaradan Overseers had mainly been recruited by hologram, or perhaps by a suitably intimidating visit.
Not so with Hulas: he was given the rudest awakening of them all.
He'd been on his way back to his safehouse with no less than five bodyguards shadowing his every step, confident that his retinue would be ready for anything in the three-minute walk down the street to his heavily defended secret offices… but when he finally reached the reinforced front door of the safehouse, he found that it had been welded shut. The same went for the secret entrance. The ventilation shaft, the only other viable entrance, had been layered with proximity-sensitive explosives. In desperation, Hulas and his bodyguards had been desperate enough to scale the building to get through a window – normally a last-ditch method of leaving the building if the safehouse was ever attacked; not only was the transparisteel pane welded shut, but a quick look through it confirmed that every single operative that Hulas had ever garrisoned there was dead, courtesy of a massive dose of toxic gas.
Next thing he knew, his bodyguards had started dropping, one by one: some had been poisoned for days in advance and had only experienced the fatal trigger scant seconds ago; some were picked off from a distance by a sniper before they could even draw their guns; one or two simply vanished off the catwalk. Then, someone had grabbed Hulas by the arms, fastened a pair of handcuffs around his wrists, then yanked a black hood over his head, and for the next hour, all he knew was darkness.
When the hood was finally removed, he'd found himself aboard an unfamiliar starship, gagged and chained to the floor of his cell. His captor had been watching him from the doorway, hidden behind a veil of holograms, to the point that only the subtlest of tells hinted that anyone was really there.
"Do you know why you're here, Hulas Skaryotas?" the figure had asked.
He shook his head.
"You're here because you show potential – great potential indeed: in assassination and espionage, you are perhaps the greatest prospect I have seen in the last ten years… but you lack perspective. You long to claim what you haven't earned. You lash out at imagined insults and soothe your ego with vengeance and theft. You think only of yourself. If you want to thrive in the wider galaxy, you need to understand how the universe truly works; you need to learn that there is more to the art of spying and killing than mere self-serving. You must master the arts of subtly and moderation, devote yourself to a cause greater than yourself… or else, you will not survive."
The stranger folded their arms grimly, hologram disguise wavering as it struggled to translate the gesture. "You are wanted by both the Hutts and the Exchange. If you refuse to accept my tutelage or fail to learn the lessons given to you, then I won't even kill you: I'll simply carve out your vocal cords and leave you for the crime syndicates to fight over. Do I make myself clear?"
Hulas nodded.
"Good. Now, pay attention: your first lesson is about to begin."
Of course, the stranger had been the Phasmid, and the cause he'd spoken in favour of had been the GenoHaradan. For a full year, Hulas had thanklessly laboured aboard the Phasmid's ship, demonstrating his skill at assassination, at managing large groups of spies remotely and anonymously, at coordinating ongoing datastreams from across the galaxy and learning how to direct the information he gathered to the purposes of a wider organization. Of course, the Phasmid hadn't told him why and certainly hadn't told him about the GenoHaradan, but Hulas wouldn't have been considered worthy of selection if he hadn't been able to discern some inkling of their existence in that torturous year.
Eventually, he'd passed with flying colours and been granted full knowledge of the cause he was to devote the rest of his life to. Only then, once he understood the power he was now the heir of, did he finally get to look past his tutor's hologram disguises and see the true face of the Phasmid – right before he killed him and took his place, as per tradition.
It was a Toydarian.
The Phasmid, his mentor, his tormentor, the being who'd learned every detail of his life, infiltrated his safehouse, killed his garrison, murdered his bodyguards with only minimal help from his own operatives, and then gone on to make his life a living hell for the next twelve months, had been a Toydarian. Not a Bothan, not a Kubaz, not even a Jenet, but a kriffing Toydarian.
Frankly, if Hulas had found himself with the chance to know the pot-bellied hummingbird bastard better, he might have hated him even more. As it was, he was satisfied enough with being legally allowed to slit the little turd's throat on the spot and take everything he'd owned, and he'd taken what little comfort he could as he'd washed the filthy Toydarian hummingbird's blood off his clothes several hours later and swiftly familiarized himself with the art of hiding himself behind holograms.
From then on, Hulas was the Phasmid, the youngest known Overseer of the GenoHaradan for his lifespan bracket at just twenty-nine standard years of age, and unofficially one of the most powerful beings in the Republic. He had a vast private fortune stemming from both his GenoHaradan victories and his days as a gang leader. He had contacts spanning the length and breadth of the galaxy, encompassing the Republic's government, the private sector, and the underworld. Anything he wanted, he could get with just a wave of his hand and an imperious look, long before he had to start offering money or flexing influence.
But had it brought him any joy?
No.
How could it? There were three other contestants to his power over the Republic and its shadow, and once he started learning more about them, all three of the hateful pride-bloated posers delighted in rubbing their superiority in his face – because, of course, they knew he was learning about them! All Phasmids were expected to unearth more secrets about the Overseers than their fellows, if not all of them, and the others knew enough to use that knowledge to hurt him, the intended beneficiary of that knowledge!
It had been bearable in the days when all he'd known about were the Araneid and the Vespid: the former was a skull-faced Givin, a mathematical genius who specialized in siphoning the accounts of her targets and had made a name for herself in the underworld by sabotaging starships from the outside so she could look her victims in the eye while they were ejected into space. The latter was a cold-blooded Whiphid harridan who had spent her younger days leading a tribe of hunters across the frozen surface of Tola and gutting prey with her bare claws; now, light-years from her homeworld, she did the same, albeit with sniper rifles and counter-assassin teams, had even managed to easily eclipse the new Phasmid's kill-count in number, skill, and audacity.
As infuriating as that had been, Hulas had almost been able to bear it, but only because the current Reduvius had been hiding his identity behind that of his predecessor's predecessor, so Hulas would mistake him for an especially long-lived Gand findsman of great renown. Having so many accomplished beings pitted against him was frustrating, but he could live with it: he could go on with his work of supplying the GenoHaradan with information, occasionally arranging for the death of an especially difficult target by his own hand or the hands of his chosen operatives, and generally enjoying all the wealth, status, and power his office afforded him. All of this was bearable.
But then Hulas had learned, against the best efforts of the other Overseers, who the reigning Reduvius really was – and knowing that he was pitted against a millennia-old shapeshifter with a more illustrious history than most Chancellors of the Republic was a blow that had left Hulas silently raging in his inner sanctum for hours on end.
How could he be so easily eclipsed? How could a glorified chameleonic beast have more power, more influence, more connections than him? What if this Rulan were to turn against Hulas and seize his power – his possessions – as its own? And most infuriating of all, how could this animal, this thing, dare to call itself an equal of Hulas when it had more power than he, more power than it could possibly deserve?
Then the Vespid had grown old and selected her replacement, a lowborn hunter with a rumoured specialty for eliminating some of the deadliest prey in the galaxy; Hulas wasn't to learn the new Vespid's hidden identity for many years yet, but the knowledge that the simplest of beings were supposedly outstripping him in capability and renown left him twitching with irritation.
The final blow had arrived when the Araneid retired and allowed Ithorak Guldar to take her place, the new treasurer's identity unveiled to Hulas from the moment he'd sliced into their files scant days after the position had changed hands; the realization that a Selkath – a scaly parvenue from a race of stinking, avaricious usurers without a single drop of honest ambition in their bodies – had managed to claw his way so far up the social ladder that he had infiltrated even the GenoHaradan had left Hulas beside himself with rage.
The shapeshifter, the savage, and the shyster, all coasting along on natural talent and undeserved good fortune while Hulas had worked with nothing but his own intellect and willpower, and all three of the loathsome pismires were slothfully eclipsing him.
By then, he'd already been dreaming of his ultimate betrayal for more than a decade, gradually making plans to ascend to even greater heights. After all, why share power over the Republic with three hatefully self-satisfied schemers when he could have all of it? The situation with the new Araneid was the catalyst, the final crack of the whip that sent his plans slowly roaring to life, because now he didn't just have ambition to spur him along; now, with these savages and usurers flaunting their undeserved successes in his face, he had the most potent weapon of all on his side, the one thing that could drive him to seize the reins of power over an entire galaxy.
Envy.
For three years, he'd been laboriously collecting samples of Rulan's DNA from handprints and the occasional wound, establishing contacts with cloning experts, extending his reach into deep space construction efforts, conducting preliminary experiments, and setting his operatives to work on unearthing all the secrets of his fellow Overseers. He'd even hired the first assassination teams he'd hoped to send after them, all from non- GenoHaradan sources.
Granted, the Sith had forced him to change his plans a little. After all, he could hardly inherit control over a Republic that was on the verge of losing everything: he wanted to claim something worthwhile for his trouble. Soon, the web of alliances he'd made behind the scenes had borne fruit, and Darth Malak himself had taken an interest in his work.
But for his plan to work, he had needed one very important element that he just couldn't find: an assassin that could bring down the Overseers and bring him the tokens that could make the GenoHaradan his own, not to mention the brimming source of pure shapeshifter DNA that was the body of Rulan Prolik.
It simply wasn't possible. Assassins had been sent after Ithorak, Vorn, and Rulan hundreds of times before, and none had succeeded: Ithorak had eluded all searchers, Vorn had hung their mutilated bodies from rafters as a warning to others, and Rulan had devoured its would-be-assassins so thoroughly that there'd been nothing left of them to bury apart from boots and teeth - the only things the beast hadn't been able to digest. And so, for months on end, Hulas had waited, his grand betrayal hidden away in his back pocket like a bomb without a detonator.
And then one day, scant weeks ago, a lone Jedi had slain one of the GenoHaradan's best recruitment prospects, and just like that, Hulas had his detonator.
It had required him to prepare for their meeting with lessons from Sith defectors and professional Jedi killers from all over the galaxy, not to mention an extremely tense meeting with an overly sarcastic torturer-turned-smuggler who'd spent all day grumbling about being stuck in "another damn force cage," but eventually, Hulas knew how to lie to a Jedi. And that investment had paid off ten thousandfold: not only had he pulled the wool over the eyes of a Jedi, but he'd done so to Darth Revan herself!
She'd even uncovered an artefact that he'd spent the last few months looking for, an item believed hidden on Korriban and well out of Hulas' reach. It was said to be a source of power and knowledge that could best even the powers of a Sith Master – and judging by the apprehensive manner that Revan had delivered the precious artefact to Tatooine, the rumours were true.
The Box was the next thing on his list to acquire and use…
…just as soon as he'd finished refining the conversion process, lulled Darth Malak into a false sense of security, and made sure that his erstwhile pawn didn't live long enough to become a nuisance – which might take some time, admittedly, for Revan had long since scoured the Ebon Hawk of his surveillance devices and hadn't shown her face anywhere within the GenoHaradan's spy network since dropping off the Box on Tatooine. But she'd turn up sooner or later, and this time, Hulas would make damn sure that the Ebon Hawk never left its dock. He had operatives ready at every safe harbour Revan could visit and had visited, ready to plant bombs, strafe the docks with missile fire, or call in an airstrike from any Sith that could be reached at short notice. He'd made a mistake in assuming that Revan wouldn't be insane enough to risk returning to Manaan, but it was one that the deluded self-glorifying bitch wouldn't live long enough to exploit.
But in the meantime, there was victory to celebrate.
Now, Hulas stood astride his world like a colossus, the Last Overseer and sole master of the GenoHaradan… and soon, with the shapeshifters on his side, so much more than that.
All he needed to do was make sure that Darth Revan was well and truly dead, that the shapeshifters were perfected, that the Box was secured, and the war ended in a decisive victory for the Sith. After that, one word to the Sith he'd given to Darth Malak, one posthypnotic command, and the galaxy would belong to him. But was that really so impossible?
He was Conquest, he whose power encompassed War, Famine, and Death.
Soon, all would be his to conquer.
After what felt like years, the Vergilius shuddered to a halt on the very edge of the Antenora System.
For a moment, Tarrah thought they'd gotten the wrong system, for all they could see from their arrival point was a permanent twilight of dying starlight and lifeless asteroids; all very impressive, and certainly a good source of material for poets with a taste for stellar nihilism, but there didn't seem to be any sign of a base visible anywhere in the system, either through the canopy or through the Ebon Hawk's sensors.
It wasn't until they followed the flight plan just beyond the asteroid belt that they finally saw it: the black dish poised above a black spindle, the featureless hulk of what could only be Hulas' secret base.
At once, Tarrah realized why they hadn't been able to detect it: the radiation of the dying white dwarf had shielded it from long range scans, and its windowless design meant that it could easily be mistaken for some long-forgotten space hulk… but Tarrah knew better: the shape was identical to the plans she'd seen in Hulas' office. This was Kosytus Station, in all its desolate glory.
Carth sighed grimly and brought the Vergilius in on a gliding flightpath towards the distant station, broadcasting the transport's ID and a request to land. A moment later, there was a crackling reply as Kosytus station granted permission to dock, and the crew breathed a sigh of relief as the transport made its way across the eternal eventide of Antenora towards the gaping maw that was Kosytus Station's main hangar bay.
Unfortunately, the relief was short-lived: within a minute of beginning their descent towards the hangar, Carth let out a bilious string of expletives, and furiously pointed at the looming station ahead, too upset to even form sentences.
Lurking in the shadow of Kosytus was the streamlined, sharklike shape of a Sith corvette.
"Now we've got them to worry about," Carth fumed. "That's at least a hundred Sith troops, and they'll probably have Dark Jedi aboard as well."
"And they're probably here to pick up Malak's shapeshifters," said Jolee.
"Even better! Mercenaries, droids, shapeshifters, Sith shock troops, Dark Jedi, and the threat of seeing the latest most dangerous things in the galaxy in Malak's pocket. What else could go wrong about today?"
Tarrah was halfway through opening her mouth to offer words of reassurance, but to her surprise, it was Canderous who stepped up instead.
"Relax," said the Mandalorian. "Tthe Sith don't know we're here: they were sent to pick up shapeshifters, not do battle with Jedi, and Hulas isn't going to tell them that his big attempt at eliminating us might have failed or even that he needed to try in the first place. After all, he'll want to be giving Malak nothing but positive news, so he won't mention that we figured out what he was up to."
"What makes you say that?"
"I've been in service to a lot of bootlicks and upstarts in the past: they all want to make sure the boss thinks the best of them right up until they feel confident enough to stage a takeover. The Sith won't be expecting us, and Hulas won't want them to know he's expecting us, so we'll be able to use his secrecy as a cover. Once we're in, all we need to do is make sure that ship doesn't leave with any shapeshifters aboard, and we can call this a success."
"Well done, Canderous," said Tarrah, mildly.
Canderous offered a wry chuckle. "What can I say? I'm working alongside Darth Revan, a Republic war hero, the son of a Wookiee chieftain, two highly exceptional Jedi, a teenage survivor of the Tarisian undercity, and some of the best-programmed droids in the galaxy. I've got to stand out somehow."
"Oh, hush. Now, does everyone know their assignments?"
There was a chorus of yesses from around the cabin.
"Alright then. Top priority is to make it as far as the nearest dataport and get a map of the place. Once we know the layout, we split up and do our jobs. Until then, be ready to look like GenoHaradan muscle: strong, silent types, no sudden moves, and remember to project confidence. As far as Hulas knows, you're counter-assassins and you're here to build a new secret society. Got it?"
Another chorus of yesses.
"Good. Now… let's be bad guys."
A/N: And here we have the logical conclusion to the Seven Deadly Sins angle - Hulas is Envy. Well done to everyone who guessed it from the massive gap left in the lineup :)
Also, you may notice that I'm bringing in another element that I thought was a tad neglected by the narrative considering its power. Anyone care to guess what role the Box will play in this?
Let me know!
