Checking in on two critical players:
Deep in the bowels of the Imperial Palace, once the Jedi Temple, a quartet of Royal Guards stand outside a room which had marinated in the light side of the Force for a thousand years. Where masters meditated and younglings learned their first forms, now desecrated by sigils of the Sith, carved into the stone, or dabbed on it in fluids which didn't bear close examination.
The Guards smiled under their helmets, for inside they could hear the sounds of laughter, lightning, screams and pleading. All was well, their master was happy and therefore they were happy. Their minds had been twisted, bent and broken by Darth Sidious until they were willing slaves, eager to sacrifice their very lives for the comfort of their master.
Sidious delighted in having them attend him when meeting with their families (for most of the guards came from important families within the Empire) and tasting the ignorant reactions of those families. The pride of the loyalists who didn't know what he had done to their sons, the shame of the traitorous, who thought themselves betrayed in turn, never knowing that it had not been a choice for their sons to serve him. It was so delicious to know more than others and Darth Sidious always did. But it was even more delicious when others thought they knew and were wrong. Throw in a soupcon of torture, mind control and body alteration and such meetings could keep him smiling for minutes after they were over.
Of course, there was a practical reason for what he did to create his Guards. His amusement. As a man who had discovered that 'having won' was far more boring than 'winning' amusement was a very practical thing to Sidious. But there was also another reason, the Guards were practice projects for the far more elaborate work needed to create Hands.
But at the moment, Sidious was ecstatic. Not because of the Force Lightning which lashed out from his fingers, racing over the naked form of Ex-General Gideon, hanging from the ceiling above the boiling cauldron which Sidious was working on. Not because of the elaborate work he was doing in that cauldron, merging old techniques of the Sith with stolen techniques of the Nightsisters into something truly terrible for if his Hand failed to kill Cain. But because there was finally a challenge again!
In the background, he heard Gideon pleading, something about how if he was given another chance, his agents definitely could force Captain Pallaeon out of his neutrality and coerce the Seventh Fleet into joining the forces mustering to deal with this mutiny. It was the man's third guess as to why he was being tortured in this basement. They were all wrong, of course. Gideon was being tortured because he was a loyal, if arrogant servant of the Emperor. His betrayal, pain and life were mere ingredients in the working Sidious was preparing.
Sidious really hoped his Hand would fail. There was only so much joy to be had in stomping through the universe like a Zilo Beast, with nothing able to touch you. A Sith, any real person (unlike the mundane masses who were mere livestock to be used and abused) needed challenges and it had been far too long since he faced a real one. He would be bitterly disappointed if Cain fell at the first hurdle.
Especially since he hadn't seen this coming. Oh, he'd met Cain before, at some celebration after the Liberation of Perlia. The man had been an interesting mass of contradictions to the Force, but Sidious had been certain that self-preservation was the key element of his personality, which made rebellion quite unlikely. Perhaps his insinuations in their last conversation had been too unsubtle and the man had realized he was doomed if he returned? Of course he had been, the knowledge that the great hero of the Imperial military had destroyed a world and then been tossed to the mob would have had delightfully amusing effects on the sheep and those who imagined themselves to be wolves.
Cain himself had been amusing as well. The contrast between his emotions and his affect, was genuinely amusing and Sidious had greatly enjoyed gently planting the suggestion that the Jedi might be able to tell. A few whispers about never feeling comfortable around them himself, due to his inability (HA!) to hide things from them and the silly little man was doing his best to hide from the Jedi. That had helped make quite a boring celebration bearable.
He zapped Gideon again and the man shifted to begging for another chance to deal with the Mandalorians. Honestly, how many failures did this meat have on his conscience? Ah, well, the man's pride would extend his suffering as it slowly turned to despair, feeding the working below. He'd need to wait for the right moment before explaining that this was all for his own amusement. That would complete the silly little man's destruction in an amusingly dishonest way.
Sidious reached a hand into the boiling liquid, casually keeping it from his flesh with a minor use of telekinesis, fishing around inside it like he was trying to find something. He wasn't. He knew exactly where it was, but it was fun to watch Gideon pause and stare down in confusion, then blanch when Sidious pulled a human skull from the mixture and tossed it way, letting it shatter on the marble floor, before starting to gather more ingredients from the covered cart by the cauldron. Unusually, he found himself literally whistling as he worked. Life was good for Darth Sidious, for he was no longer the unchallenged ruler of the galaxy, but rather the challenged ruler of the galaxy.
Deep in the bowels of the Battle Station, once known as the Death Star, outside, well, exactly the same quarters as he'd previously had, as changing them wouldn't look good, half a squad of stormtroopers guarded Ciaphas Cain's quarters, while the other half played cards in the room down the hall.
Inside, I was drinking amasec in a caf mug. I doubt I was fooling Jurgen, but as he was walking through the schedule for tomorrow, I felt the need for something stiffer than caf and I definitely didn't need a stimulant before I went to bed. I was having a hard enough time sleeping. Apparently I had another duel scheduled. We were now doing one every two days, which was just absurd. Fortunately, the commissar program was young and most of the others focused on their role as disciplinarians, so didn't spend much time on the battlefield. I wish I could have managed that, but one benefit of having to constantly fight for your life is that you do, eventually, learn a few tricks, which they hadn't.
I really thought humiliating and deriding the biggest and best of them would dissuade the rest, but instead everyone had somehow taken the drubbing and insults I'd given him as merciful instruction intended to break through their conditioning, while the commissars had focused on the fact that they were given an opportunity to kill me and serve Palpatine. At least it meant that the lunatics were only trying to kill me inside the dueling circle, but it was only a matter of time before my luck ran out.
Which was why we had to get a move on. Duels weren't allowed in combat zones.
Oh, sure, there were other reasons too. The Perlia system was a breadbasket of the Outer Rim, so we were fine for food, even with the addition of more than a million mouths to feed, just from the Battle Station (it had taken me literally hours to talk people out of renaming it Cain's Beacon, but I won in the end). But other places wouldn't be, with Perlia's stocks being redirected. And, unfortunately, fuel and replacement parts didn't grow in the fertile soil of Perlia and the industry in the system definitely couldn't maintain this massive fleet. Even with the inflows from systems which had declared for us, we simply couldn't match the industry of the Core and Mid-Rim.
Fortunately, the Core was a giant mass of confusion and conflict as fleets and ships moved at quasi-random (quasi-random because some rebel intelligence analyst had pointed out that if you looked, ships were heading towards the home worlds of their senior officers, as commanders sought to protect their own interests, except the Coruscant fleet, which stayed exactly in place, presumably scared out of their mind because Vader had made it back. The Mid-Rim was more of a problem, as the officers were mostly from the Core and determined to keep us out, rather than running around trying to get fleet elements to defend their home planets. But we would have to move soon.
Which meant we had to get our command structure sorted out. Obviously, we needed two parallel lines of command as there was no way Rebels would take orders from Loyalists, or vice versa. Moff Zyvan was the obvious commander for the Imperial forces. Everyone knew he'd only been denied the promotion to Grand Admiral because of Core chauvinism. But the Rebel side was a disaster and I wasn't at all familiar with the personalities. They were trying to run things by committee, run by a freaking pacifist. It was insane!
Fortunately, we'd managed to distract the politicians by suggesting that perhaps the Senate should be reformed to figure out what would come after the Emp-Palpatine's fall. Premature? Absolutely, but it kept them busy and out of the way. Mostly. I kept tripping over Senator Organa, every time I turned around. I couldn't tell if she was spying on me, or trying to manipulate me, but either way, it was getting frustrating.
Worst of all, I had to let Jedi onto the station. There was no way around it, not with the Rebels such fanatical worshippers of the Force and given my reputation I could hardly admit that they scared the pants off me. Not without fatally undermining my own reputation. At least I managed to get Kasteen to say that only one could come on at a time, as she couldn't spare two squads to play babysitter. Not with the 597th still stretched so thin. No one objected to that, not with their reputation. It wasn't their combat capabilities that scared me, much, the universe was full of people who could defeat me in combat (though the cortosis weave in my blade should come as a surprise to them and might give me a chance, once). No, their ability to alter the mind of the weak-willed (such as myself) was terrifying and the hints that I'd heard somewhere that they could read emotions or even thoughts was even worse. Sure, I could deny whatever they claimed about me, but better to avoid them altogether, if at all possible.
Less than half of the Battle Station crew had remained loyal, the rest were interred downside, working on the farms of Perlia, while hundreds of thousands of Perlians were being trained to replace them (not all on the Battle Station, of course, we pulled Loyalists from many crews, but mostly you didn't want to mess with teams which were working). And the stormtroopers, with their more thorough indoctrination had remained loyal in even smaller numbers. The 597th was running training drills for thousands of raw recruits and veterans who'd come back to the military at my call.
Did I feel guilty about calling them back to arms so I could hide behind them? Of course not! That's what soldiers are for. For me to hide behind them! But I had to put on a big show of reluctance, which also meant that part of the day tomorrow was going to be spent on an extremely boring tour of the training facilities on station. Then a briefing from our new security chief about who he suspected had lied about their loyalties. Then an incredibly delicate meeting where I had to deal with a bunch of rebels who wanted me to hand over Wulf Yularen for execution, as apparently he'd had several of their comrades tortured for information, before executing them.
If I did that, the Loyalists would abandon me, for fear they'd be the next on the block. If I didn't, the Rebels would. Damnit, I hate politics. I wished I could have just challenged Yularen to a duel and chopped his old head off, that would have solved a lot of problems and maybe my fellow commissars would have taken the bloody hint then.
Could Yularen have an 'accident'? If it was linked to me it would be a disaster. What about suicide? He was an ISB colonel, he probably could kill himself, even in custody, but why would he? And the cells were monitored at all times, by my orders. There was no way to effect that. Maybe I could dodge or delay? We might need him for something, he was by far the most senior ISB officer we had, either as a loyalist, or a prisoner. No...wait, I was thinking about this all wrong. If we really were going to be a government, then there would be a trial. And I had a bunch of politicians who needed distraction and were technically Imperial Senators. This would give them something else to do besides try to get their fellow senators to come running to Perlia with a bunch more useless hangers-on.
With that settled, I began to smile as Jurgen ran through the rest of the day. So many meetings. Even over meals. At least he made sure that one of those meals per day was with someone I didn't want to strangle every time they spoke and the hour of weapons practice every day was sacrosanct. As we finished, the comlink chimed. Apparently the Force was having some fun with me again. The new Senate had discovered that one of their number was under siege by Palpatine's forces in a nearby system and would very much like us to go rescue them.
Well, would very much like me to do it, as they were apparently about to grant me the title 'Defender of the Senate'. So, to gain a title I didn't want and maintain the reputation I did, they wanted me to go and rescue some idiot noblewoman from a literal army of stormtroopers. I was so tempted to just take the battle station, but that might leave the Perlia system vulnerable and taking the Senate (which was operating out of this silly station, as they'd taken Palpatine's mistake in leaving it in someone else's hands to heart) to rescue a senator was probably not what was expected of the 'Defender of the Senate.
But perhaps I should make use of this...seeing how the Rebels operated might be useful and if nothing else, they had a lot of practice fighting stormtroopers. I'd bring along a squad or two from the 597th, but no other commissars. A few days without a duel wouldn't go amiss. If I did this right, the Rebels would be trying so hard to impress me and show up the 597th that I wouldn't have to do anything but sit back and make a few critiques. This could all still work out...