Oh hey, finally an update! And it's a monster! Whoops?

Twitches and shouts of surprise ran through the Directorate as a side door into the conference room was thrown open, roughly enough the heavy wood of the door slammed into the gleaming tile of the wall. Major Ceila Anlis stormed into the room, flanked by a pair of heavily-armed men in the ceremonial black, silver, and blue of the Imperial Guard, the rest of the section left waiting outside. He ignored the fearful tittering and angry questions from the Directorate, making straight for the centre of the table.

Nisotsa had known Ceila for a number of years now. She'd been on the ground on Duro, in talks with leadership from the local government and a number of manufacturing concerns based on the planet, when the Mandalorian surprise attack had come. The Battle of Duro had been the first time Nisotsa had directly commanded Republic soldiers in battle — and it happened to be the single most absolutely devastating engagement in the entire war. The Mandalorian fleet had attacked with no warning, ravaging the massive orbital platforms before descending toward the surface, basilisk droids and the remains of cities plummeting to the earth in a rain of fire and steel.

In a matter of hours, billions had died. The entire planet might have been murdered if Lesami, less than a day after being promoted to Supreme Commander of all Republic forces, hadn't arrived with the entirety of the First and Third Fleets, within forty hours of the attack. But still, Duro had been through a day and a half of hell — the devastation was overwhelming, recovery would take generations.

At the time, Nisotsa's escort had consisted of a small task force — a single frigate and five corvettes — carrying a single battalion composed of three, 120-person companies, one of which had gone down to the surface with her. In the Mandalorians' initial attack, all six vessels had gone down with all hands, leaving Nisotsa and her single company stranded on Duro, with only what little ground forces the locals could muster for support.

Nisotsa's first battle turned out to be her hardest. With only a bare handful of hours to prepare, she and her people had scrambled to deputise and mobilise local law enforcement, raiding weapons stockpiles to distribute the contents to the populace, forming a world-wide, makeshift militia on the spot, and dug in to defend the capital, reinforcing their position as well as they could in the little time they had. The city's defences had proven completely insufficient for the task, building-sized shrapnel from the shattered orbital platforms overwhelming the city's shields, crashing into defensive batteries and housing alike. Within an hour of the Mandalorians breaking into the atmosphere, they'd been fighting street by street, scrambling to evacuate the residents ahead of their advance, while inflicting as heavy of casualties as possible.

By the end of the battle, after a full day of constant, desperate, vicious fighting, the city had been in ruins, and Nisotsa's 120-person company had been reduced to twenty-nine. All of their unit commanders were dead — not an unfamiliar circumstance in that war, Mandalorians liked to target leadership — with the exception of a pair of corporals.

Ceila had been one of those two. In the haphazard reshuffling that had been necessary in the aftermath, Ceila had ended up with a battlefield promotion to sergeant, and only a few weeks later, due to the devastating attrition among command ranks on all fronts of the war, was summarily bumped up to lieutenant, put at the top of that same company as it was reformed. He'd been with her ever since.

She'd first gotten to know him in the aftermath of Duro — horrified by the devastation wreaked on the planet and struggling with survivor's guilt, but still pushing on, tackling his new training and responsibilities with stubborn (grieving) determination. He'd come along for several of her meetings with administrative officials, both attached to governments and corporations, his disdain for and frustration with them obvious. His increasing fury against the incompetence of the Republic leadership — running somewhat more smoothly then, with Lesami in a position of some significant power, but too many influential people had still been too often venal and self-interested, leaving the military over-strained and under-supplied, leashed by petty political obligations — culminating in disillusionment and despair he'd entirely failed to hide from her despite his best efforts. She'd seen his depression broken with a new determination as they dismantled the slave trade on Taris, embracing a new vision as the chains of the oppressed were broken and the streets were painted thick with the blood of their oppressors. (Like many former Republic soldiers, Ceila had been thoroughly radicalised by the end of the war.) They'd fought side-by-side at Onderon, Obroa-skai, Iridonia, Althir, and Vorpaya. They'd discussed at length their defection from the Republic, their alliances with the Chiss and the Mjatha, the peculiar histories of the previously unknown peoples of the West, the long, difficult reformation of the Empire, only hardly begun — as the defector fleet reorganised into the military of a legitimate government, his conflicted feelings about being shifted into a domestic security role. His marriage, the birth of his first child.

So, Nisotsa was very familiar with Ceila's face by now. She knew, without him needing to say a word, that he was coming with very, very bad news.

She still waited for him to approach, to lean around the back of her chair, to mutter low enough only she could hear, his drawling Corellian accent touched with anger. "Alek is on his way back from the front. The Inquisition has orders to prevent you from leaving the planet, by any means necessary." Even if they have to kill you, he didn't say, but he didn't need to.

Nisotsa sighed. "Send the order."

"Yes, ma'am." He retreated, sweeping out of the room as quickly as he'd entered, leaving the pair of Guards behind him, looming over the back of her chair. Once he was gone, a wave of questions poured in from the Directors all around her, mixing and overlapping into featureless noise. (It didn't help that they were in three different languages.) They all quickly fell silent as she rose to her feet, waiting for her to speak.

She still found that vaguely unnerving, this kind of deference. It was a cultural thing, there wasn't really anything to be done about it.

"Alek," she started, consciously using his name and not his stolen title, "intends to remove me from office. I suspect if I wish to live to see next month, I must leave now."

"But he can't do that!" Tshistûl cried out above the storm of muttering. Then he paused, the Sith's crimson skin shifting with a frown, visible mostly by how the lines of his angular tattoos shifted. "Or can he? I was under the impression Parliament..."

Nisotsa forced out an irritated sigh. No, the Emperor could not summarily dismiss the Minister of State. Of course, Alek also hadn't had the authority to, just, claim the throne without the support of Parliament. Nisotsa wasn't surprised by Tshistûl's uncertainty on the matter, which was exactly the problem — the Sith were very new to the idea of a constitutional government operating under an internally-consistent rule of law, having been ruled by an absolute dictatorship for generations. The civil institutions they'd formed out here were still very new, and thus very fragile. Alek's behaviour over the last months was doing serious damage to the prospects of democracy's long-term survival in the West.

Not that she expected him to realise, or even particularly care if he did. Alek had never had much interest in political theory, even back at the Temple, and had zero patience for politics. Also, he'd seemingly lost his fucking mind.

"I believe Alek is under the impression that he is in a position to do whatever he likes. I fear he has been listening too much to...certain voices. Among certain segments of our society, there are still far too many who cling to the old way of things." Unpleasant expressions flickered across the room — nobody in the Directorate had fared very well under the pre-Reformation Empire, she very much doubted any of them wished to see the nobility and the high priests retake the reins of government. "Unfortunately, it seems the Inquisition intends to side with Alek in this matter."

Nisotsa had been less than comfortable with Lesami's decision to leave the Inquisition mostly intact. She'd understood why she'd done it. The Inquisition was the only domestic law enforcement body the Empire had had — aside from the nobility's personal forces, which had all been either disbanded or conscripted — and the domestic and international situation simply did not allow them the time to rebuild a more trustworthy institution from the ground up. Lesami had planned to replace the Inquisition eventually, of course, but it would be a long-term project. In the short-term, all of the leadership had been interviewed and tested, some of them replaced, their own allies seeded throughout the organisation, laying the groundwork of developments planned for after the war.

Unfortunately, Lesami had been murdered before they could finish the job — and Alek was already hard at work reversing the progress the Reformation had made, because of course he was. Bloody idiot.

There was a minor uproar at that — many segments of Sith society had...unpleasant history with the Inquisition — Nisotsa managed to quiet the room after a few seconds. "I'm leaving the capital, but this is not a surrender. I must retreat for now, but I will be back, and our work is not finished. The Reformation only dies if you let it. Don't. Let it.

"Kâmśeh," Nisotsa said, turning to the Director of Trade and Diplomatic Affairs, "in my absence, the authority of the Minister of State falls to you, until Parliament selects a replacement. When Alek arrives, accommodate him as much as possible. He will have questions about me, I'm sure — honestly answer whatever he asks. Alek has never had much interest in politics, so I suspect he will not interfere in the selection of a new Minister, so you will likely keep the post. Try not to draw too much attention to yourself. I suspect, suspect, that you may proceed with our current domestic agenda with very little interference from Alek — so long as you do so quietly, keeping any explicit condemnation of Alek where he will not hear of it. Be careful, and we might be able to keep conditions on the ground from regressing."

A middle-aged kishai Sith — tall and slender and graceful, skin a somewhat darker red, fingers and chin just starting to blacken from age — Kâmśeh bobbed his head in a slow, dignified sort of nod. In his precise, musical Temple Sith, he said, "I shall endeavor to do so, so far as is possible. I am certain our allies will have questions — what am I to tell them of our predicament? The truth?"

Nisotsa shrugged. "Or a version of it. I'm certain the Inquisition will be monitoring your international communications, so I would be cautious how you word it. Perhaps, that we're having something of a constitutional crisis at the moment — or, a change of government, to be more politic — and we would ask their patience for the duration. I'll be in contact with them independently. Just keep goods and information flowing, we should be fine."

"As you say, Minister."

"Keep your heads down, everyone, and keep the ship going. If you have to compromise your work a little to keep Alek and his people happy..." Nisotsa let out another sigh, shaking her head. "Do keep in mind who we're dealing with here. If you oppose him openly, he might just have you killed, and replace you with someone who will likely be...less sympathetic, shall we say. I cannot decide for you how far you are willing to accede to his demands before you cannot sacrifice your principles any further. I only ask that you remember your lives have value beyond your worth to yourselves and your loved ones. Uncounted trillions depend on the work you do here. If you must take a stand on principle I understand, believe me I do — if anything, we Revanchists proved that well enough — but it will not be only your life you risk. It does not benefit our people to lose their champions for no good reason. If nothing else, if you must, make it count.

"Am I understood?" A wave of unenthusiastic but firm consent swept through the room. Nisotsa nodded, lightly slapping the table with an open hand, before turning on her heel and starting for the door.

"No, my lord, I can't." Nisotsa paused, still a couple steps from the door, and turned to find Qokshkhûńa had risen to his feet. Which was a rather impressive sight, honestly — Qokshkhûńa was masashaj, the traditional caste of warriors and manual labourers, himself tall and broad-shouldered and thickly-muscled, the protrusions extending downward from the chin all Sith had in his case particularly long, ending in two sharp, claw-like points over his collarbones. As usual, his dress was very simple, plain trousers and boots, a loose wrap over one shoulder leaving one whole arm and parts of his chest bare.

His face set with determination, standing straight, shoulders firm, might have been a reassuring sight in any other circumstance. Now, sickening dread pooled in Nisotsa's stomach.

"You are asking me to bow to that, that..." Qokshkhûńa struggled for words for a moment, lips twisting with disgust, his head slightly shaking. "...that faithless traitor, asking my people to bow to him. The man who murdered our Empress, is trying to undo all we have fought for, all my people have died for. I can't do it, my lord, I can't ask my people to do that. I'm sorry, but we won't."

Honestly, she couldn't even say she was particularly surprised.

The Revanchists' conquest of the Empire had ended very quickly, but it hadn't been quite as...smooth, as Nisotsa might have liked. Just because Lesami, Sesai, Alek, and Cariaga managed to decapitate the old order in one swift blow, killing the Emperor and his Dark Council before any could escape to lead a coordinated opposition, didn't mean the nobility and the priesthoods all surrendered. There had been pockets of resistance here and there throughout the Empire, perhaps the briefest civil war in galactic history as the Revanchists quickly asserted control from the Palace on Dromund Kaas outward.

But they hadn't been the only people fighting to dismantle the old order — even as they crushed the aristocracy from above, there were insurrections rising from below. In the chaos and confusion caused by the sudden decapitation of the government, common people all throughout the Empire had risen in revolt, miniature revolutions sprouting up on nearly every planet throughout Imperial space.

One such revolt had occurred on Tshusalmaks, one of the oldest worlds in the Empire, only a few short jumps from the capital. It was a largely agrarian world, covered with enormous plantations worked by masashaj slaves by the millions. Those slaves had organised and risen against their masters, fighting to take control of the entire planet from the nobility. It hadn't gone well, at first — their revolution had had an undeniable numbers advantage, but the nobility had the equipment, and trained warriors enough to suppress any resistance.

They might all have been killed if Sesai hadn't caught wind of their uprising only days after it had started, before the Revanchists had even quite stabilised the situation on Dromund Kaas. Without even informing the admiralty or the nascent provisional government, Sesai had recruited a handful of ships and a regiment of ground forces to his cause, and flown to Tshusalmaks. They'd fought their way to the ground, made contact with the local resistance, and struck an alliance. With the assistance of Republic arms, experience, and air support, and a couple battle-hardened Jedi to counter the nobility's own Force-users, the slave rebellion successfully overthrew their former masters, and officially took control of the entire planet.

(There were many Sith who called Sesai the Saviour of Tshusalmaks, he was considered a hero to many of the former slaves in the Empire to this day. And he was a smug little shite about it, because of course he was, this was Sesai.)

Qokshkhûńa had been one of the leaders of that rebellion on Tshusalmaks, one of the few who hadn't been killed by the aristocracy in those devastating early days. In the first round of elections in the history of the Sith Empire, Qokshkhûńa had been selected by the syndicates of former slaves on Tsusalmaks as one of their representatives, once arriving on Dromund Kaas had ended up throwing himself into the running for the Director of the newly-formed Department for Labour Development — "labour development", of course, being a euphemism for efforts to enrich and educate the former slaves across the Empire.

That election had actually been one of the more contentious among the Directorate, he almost hadn't gotten it, there had been a lot of debate over whether he was qualified. He was a freedman himself, after all, at the start of the Reformation he'd been barely literate. But Lesami herself — just coming off her coronation then, and extremely popular among the common people for her role in overthrowing the old order, especially the freedmen — had openly arranged a few private meetings with him, spoke well of him in public, implying her support without ever explicitly expressing it. (To explicitly support him for the Directorate would be inappropriately meddling in the affairs of Parliament, after all.) It'd been a narrow margin, but Qokshkhûńa had gotten the post.

And was running his office rather well, Nisotsa thought, however...unconventionally. The Department of Labour Development under Qokshkhûńa was much more decentralised than she would have done, officials in various freedmen communities, often selected by the locals, invested with rather more power to manage the enforcement of the central Department's programmes than Nisotsa was used to from her experience with the Republic. It seemed to be working for them, though, so she'd stepped back and just let them keep at it.

If she'd given herself time to think about it, Nisotsa should have anticipated Qokshkhûńa to be a problem. The people of the Empire hadn't necessarily been deprogrammed out of the attitudes instilled into them over the course of generations, but had simply transferred that loyalty to Lesami...or at least partially, it wasn't exactly the same. However, a simple, surface-level reading of that tendency toward unthinking respect for authority might have expected that loyalty to shift to Alek, but it hadn't, for the most part.

To people like Qokshkhûńa, Lesami had been more than just another emperor. And Alek had stabbed her in the back.

Nisotsa should have anticipated some of them might be motivated to do something stupid.

"Don't you die for me, Qokshkhûńa." Nisotsa drifted away from the door, closer to him, glaring up to meet his eyes — which meant looking up at a bit of an angle once she was within a few steps, he was a large man. "Don't you do it."

Qokshkhûńa's eyes widened, and for a moment he blinked silently down at her, visibly dumbfounded. "It's not like that."

"It is like that, you mad, brilliant, selfless bastard. We didn't come here — Lesami, Sesai, myself, any of us — to help you claim mastery over your own lives only to throw them away for us to no benefit. If you die here, it will be in service to nothing but your pride and your faith, and that is not worth your life, Qokshkhûńa, yours or your people's. If abiding until the opportune moment is so distasteful to you, flee the capital. Letting Alek or his sycophants kill you achieves nothing."

"My lord," one of the Imperial Guards called, "we really must be going. The Inquisition—"

She flicked a quick glare over her shoulder. "One second." Back to Qokshkhûńa she said, low and intense, the Kaasite Sith purring over her tongue, "Don't you dare die for me, Qokshkhûńa. I couldn't bear it." She'd lost quite enough people under her command back fighting the Mandalorians. She didn't need more people getting themselves killed in her name, especially for no good reason.

Qokshkhûńa was silent another moment, mouth wordlessly opening and closing a couple times, not quite meeting her eyes. Finally, "Yes, my lord. I'm sorry."

"Your heart gets the better of you, Qokshkhûńa, that's nothing to apologise for. But if you must make it up to me, you can do it by taking care of yourself and your people in my absence. Understood?"

"Yes, my lord. Thank you."

For valuing his life, he meant. Nisotsa bit down the urge to curse, clapped him on the shoulder — or, the elbow, he was a very large man. "Good man." She turned on her heel and started toward the door out. With a nod, she said, "Good luck, Kâmśeh."

Standing at his chair — all of the Directorate had risen with her, because Sith tended to do things like that — the older man dipped his head in a bow. "And to you, Your Excellency."

Nisotsa's pace hitched, only for a second. Only the emperor was addressed with Your Excellency. But she decided it was probably best to not respond to that, so continued on out of the room, sweeping down the hall flanked by Imperial Guards.

The offices of the Minister of State were a storm of activity, officials and aides darting back and forth, archiving or destroying records, packing up to be reassigned or to flee (depending on personal risk). None of them paused to speak to her, no more than frantic nods, Nisotsa made it to her private office unmolested. Ceila was already there, along with Thiqshmallu and the bloody Director-General of all people. What the hell was Grethar doing here?

The second she walked through the door, Ceila nodded at the Guards. Two of them stepped aside, taking up positions at either side of the door; the other six snapped off salutes, and left. Walking toward a nearby closet, picking at the sash about her waist, Nisotsa said, "You shouldn't be here, Grethar."

The Farghul man huffed, the sound harsh and nasal. "Don't give me that, girl, worry about your own hide. Do you even have a plan?"

Nisotsa sighed. "There's not a whole lot of planning I can do, until I can see where things fall." She yanked her dress over her head, tossed it to hang over the back of her chair. Ceila, she noticed, had averted his eyes up toward the ceiling, the two remaining guards staring resolutely at the closed door. (Even after a few years, that the Minister of State perhaps shouldn't let most people see her less than fully dressed still didn't occur to her — Jedi and soldiers both tended not to stress over such things.) Stepping into a pair of rough wool trousers, she said, "I don't suppose you have any better ideas."

"A few." Grethar reached into a pocket, pulled out a datacard. "I have contacts back in the Republic you might consider linking up with."

"You realise we're at war with the Republic at the moment. I'm not certain I do our cause any good by committing treason."

"Oh, so now we're unwilling to commit treason? Forgive me, I must not have gotten the memo." Grethar handed the card to Ceila. "They're sympathisers, mostly ex-military and activist types. I was working on them back when Lesami was still around, but they're not interested in an Empire with Alek at the top. But, if they're helping to get someone more favourable to their interests on the throne..."

"Right." Nisotsa pulled her hair out of the collar of her tunic, folded her cloak over her arm. "I'll feel them out, I suppose. We'll have the Tosha and the Mjatha with us, and the freedmen of course, but more allies couldn't hurt."

"Alek's idiots control the Forge, the Mjatha won't act against him with the heart of the Fleet on their doorstep."

"Not overtly, perhaps." Preferably, they'd be able to resolve this without a civil war breaking out, it shouldn't matter that the Mjatha were vulnerable to assault from Lehon. "Thank you, Marshal. Good look out there."

Grethar nodded. "Minister." Without another word, he turned and sauntered out the door.

A single quick command on her private terminal set certain files to mirror onto an external server, the drive to be wiped and rewritten several times over once the transfer was complete, and they were leaving again, Ceila and Thiqshmallu at her shoulders, the two Guardsmen trailing behind. Weaving through the chaos of her offices, Nisota shot her apprentice a glance. "I don't suppose you've changed your mind about coming with."

The girl, barely into adolescence by Sith standards, stared back. She probably meant to appear determined, or offended at the suggestion she hide away somewhere safe, but to Nisotsa it really looked more like a childish pout than anything. "No."

"Can't blame me for trying."

By the mulish look on the girl's face, she very much felt she could.

In the back corner of a mostly-emptied conference room, one of the Guards pounded at one of the wall panels for a moment, shortly opening up to reveal a narrow, shadowed passage. Thiqshmallu and Ceila slipped through first, Nisotsa threw on her cloak, drawing the hood over her face, before following, the pair of Guardsmen closing the entrance behind them. The passage was narrow at first, barely wider than Ceila's shoulders, turning a couple corners before coming to a shaft leading down. There had been a little bit of light in the first section, slipping through tiny seams in the walls, but the shaft was completely black, a tiny circle of light at the bottom eclipsed by Ceila and Thiqshmallu between here and there. Nisotsa hopped into the shaft and dropped a couple metres before snatching at the rungs, the stress from her sudden stop eased with the slightest tug on the Force.

The Guardsmen above her grumbled about sorcerers and damn magic making things difficult, but followed quickly enough.

The hall at the bottom of the shaft was wider, lit with harsh white glow-panels, the walls lined with pipes and vents and switchboxes and such. Thiqshmallu lead the way, following the thick fuel lines over their heads through the maze of maintenance passages, her footsteps as quiet as a whisper, hand hovering over her lightsaber at her belt. Nisotsa was close enough to see her tense slightly, turning the last corner before the exit into Ceila's private berth.

Once she caught up, she saw why: there were five figures arrayed in front of the service door ahead, all of them wearing hooded robes in the black and purple of the Inquisition, all of them with dark lightsabers in hand.

They continued on down the hall until only a bare handful of steps separated them. Ceila had his blaster in hand, though pointed at the ceiling, Thiqshmallu had drawn her lightsaber but not yet activated it, crouched to spring into action at a moment's notice. The Inquisitor standing at the front waited for them to stop before speaking. "Nisotsa Thul, by the authority of His Excellency the Emperor you are under arrest. Lay down your weapons, all of you."

Nisotsa grit her teeth. Five against two were terrible odds — she was under no illusions Ceila and the Guardsmen would fare at all well against Inquisitors. Five against one, really Thiqshmallu was talented but she was still young, inexperienced. Unless they got very lucky, they were all about to die in this bloody hallway. "You know I can't do that. If I let the Inquisition take me into custody, the only way I'm getting out of it is by summary execution."

"I'm sure I couldn't speak to the intent of my superiors." The Inquisitor actually sounded amused.

His tone of voice rather offended Thiqshmallu, she thought — the girl was the first to switch on her lightsaber. The rest responded in a blink, the light cast by Thiqshmallu's purple and Nisotsa's green mostly overwhelmed by the Inquisitors' red. She made a double-take when she noticed one of the Inquisitors carried a staff glowing a gentle gold.

Nisotsa smiled.

In the space of a single breath two of the Inquisitors had been cut down from behind. Ceila and the Guardsmen were all firing, most of the shots going wide — one was deflected right back at Ceila, but Nisotsa caught it, the shot bouncing straight into an Inquisitor's face, his lightsaber locked against Thiqshmallu's. The fourth Inquisitor fell, Nisotsa couldn't tell if Thiqshmallu or the traitor had gotten to her first. Thiqshmallu spun even as the corpse collapsed, a foot planted against the wall bringing her around behind the last Inquisitor, the lightning-fast slash blocked with almost mocking ease, shots from blasters deflected into the floor, sparks dancing.

"Stop!" The girl obeyed, freezing as still as a statue, shock and confusion radiating from her into the Force, the blasters silenced immediately. Nisotsa switched off her lightsaber, returned it to its place up her sleeve, the motion smooth and casual despite the tension still on the air. "Your timing remains excellent as always, Sesai."

He threw his hood back to reveal his face, and the others relaxed, weapons returning to holsters. "That's eight you owe me now, Nisa love. Get out of here, you have—" Sesai glanced at his wrist. "—twenty-three minutes before the city defences come back online."

Walking past him, holding in a wince at the racket coming from the hangar through the now-open door, Nisotsa muttered, "Watch your back."

His black lips twisting into an almost flirtatious smirk, Sesai drawled, "As you command, Your Excellency."

"So what you're telling me," Nisotsa said in a slow, heavy drawl, setting the datapad down and slowly pushing it away, "is that you've made no progress whatsoever."

Dodonna's stern face twisted into a glare, cutting a disdainful sniff. "There's precious little I can do, Minister, even should I wish to. The Fleet is scrambling just to hold the northern front — I got word we nearly lost Corsin only a few hours ago, casualty reports are still coming in. Even with the assistance of the Bothans, we barely have the resources to put up much more than a token resistance to the Sith chewing away at the Slice. I agree that we're fighting a losing war. Helping you knock off Alek and come to some kind of political settlement would, obviously, be the best course of action.

"But, can I convince my peers and my superiors?" Dodonna tilted her head in a shrug, before slouching back in her seat, arms crossing firmly over her chest. "To put together a force to contribute to your little conspiracy, where do you suggest we pull ships from, hmm? The Slice? If the Bothans feel we're backing out on them, they might well dissolve our alliance — and the Hapans could always decide to stab us in the backs as soon as it's convenient. Taanab? We lose Taanab, we can't keep our energy-based weapons systems supplied. Corsin? We lose Corsin, and the Sith start crawling up the Hydian toward the heart of the Republic, which means we'll inevitably lose Taanab too. We already had precious few uncommitted task forces to assign to anything, even before we lost two more at Taris."

Ceila, lounging in a chair off a corner of the table in a posture very similar to Dodonna's, scoffed. "Yes, well, that's what happens when you accept untrained children into command — they blunder into blatantly obvious traps, like the damn fools they are."

The Admiral and the Senator both straightened in clear anger, a couple of their staff openly fuming, but Nisotsa got in before anyone else could say anything. "That was uncalled for, Major."

Ceila took the hint and apologised, sounding very insincere, but at least some of the tension in the room dissipated. Though, Nisotsa did understand, completely — with the (debatable) achievements of and propaganda around Shan it wasn't surprising the Republic people might take impugning her personally, but Ceila was also entirely correct in his criticism. That stupid girl had even less business commanding a task force than Nisotsa had during the Mandalorian invasion. Nisotsa, at least, had had the good sense not to try to tell her escort how to do their job most of the time — and when she had given orders, she'd simply pointed them in the direction she wanted to go, and let them figure out the how. She wasn't a military tactician, not like Lesami or Sesai or Alek or Talvon, if she tried to play the role of the admiral she'd only get her people killed.

Shan, apparently, hadn't the self-awareness to realise the same thing.

After having the situation explained to her by people far more well-versed in these things — Grethar and Sesai and Ceila, mostly — Nisotsa felt certain Shan's (marginal) success was entirely due to her skill with battle meditation. That was an incredibly useful talent, yes, but the Republic was squandering it. If the Fleet wanted to utilise battle meditation, giving Shan (and her Jedi handlers) command of an independent task force was not the way to do it. Ideally, they would ship her from front to front, wherever her abilities were most needed at any given moment. They had been doing some of that, her task force bouncing around in the Slice, but since she moved mostly at her own discretion her efforts weren't being applied with much consideration for overall strategy.

Nisotsa was still practically a bloody amateur, and she could see this. If they really wanted to make a difference with her, they should be bouncing Shan between Corsin and Taanab, maybe then they'd actually manage to roll the northern front back a bit, honestly...

Not that she was truly surprised they were making such a mistake. She hadn't expected the Republic and the Jedi to have become any more competent during her absence, or any better at collaborating. (Her assumption was that the Council had refused to surrender authority over Shan to the military, so her unique abilities couldn't be coherently utilised.) And, given that her (adopted) people were at war with the Republic, she shouldn't be complaining — she wasn't, truly. She was just saying.

Once the room had calmed a little, Nisotsa said, "I do understand the precarious strategic situation the Republic is dealing with, Admiral. Shouldn't that make your people more open to risking an unconventional approach?"

Dodonna answered without facing her, still faintly scowling at Ceila. "Theoretically, perhaps. But just how bad things are is part of the problem — after all the men we've lost to the Sith, it's hard to find anyone willing to even discuss the possibility of maybe working with any of you. Not to mention, every time we approach someone we risk being court-martialed for sedition. If we move too fast and talk to the wrong person we could all find ourselves executed, and then where would you be?"

"And we must consider the weight of the...particular history of your organisation, shall we say." Keraw po lai Tushas, the new Senator from Alsakan, took over with a warm, blank politician's smile. (Which Nisotsa didn't believe for a second, of course — if he weren't a crafty bastard he wouldn't be at this table with her.) "It was decided by certain parties, in the immediate aftermath of the defection by you and your friends, that every effort should be made to paint you all as vile, dangerous traitors. The Republic's propaganda against you has been taken to most strongly by our boys — and girls," he added, tipping his glass of brandy at Dodonna, "—in red and gold. No, I'm afraid I'm not surprised at all that Forn has had difficulty finding allies among her peers."

"I understand you've hardly had any more luck than the Admiral has."

Keraw gave a fair imitation of a careless shrug. "No, not truly. What information we have about your activities since the end of the War is scarce, but there are rumours. Given what your so-called Reformation looked like for the sort of people who move in my circles, well, I'm certain you can understand why they might be leery to have absolutely anything to do with you at all."

With some effort, Nisotsa managed to hold in a wince — Keraw wasn't the first person she'd heard something like that from. The wealthy and powerful of the Republic weren't exactly analogous to the aristocracy of the pre-Reformation Empire, so fears that they would see a similar fate should the Empire prove victorious weren't entirely justified. Some might see themselves facing accusations of capital crimes, yes, but it would be comparatively few. After all, Lesami had already had the figures she felt were most objectionable assassinated in the early phases of the war...which the rest of their social class certainly realised Lesami was responsible for, which would only make them unwilling to trust the Empire going forward. Nisotsa had argued against that particular strategy at the time, for precisely this reason, but Lesami hadn't listened.

Nisotsa suspected she'd been aware of the obvious consequences, but simply hadn't cared. After all, if the survivors started to make a nuisance of themselves, she could simply have them assassinated as well.

(Lesami had honestly scared her, sometimes.)

"As distasteful as the sort of people who move in your circles might find it, they will need to learn to acknowledge reality at some point. We aren't going to simply go away."

Keraw's brow dipped, slightly, a barely noticeable frown. "Yes, well. Many have been operating under the delusion that our noble servicemen and -women will inevitably prevail against the Sith. Reality is starting to sink in now, finally — it is easier to find...open-minded people of influence today than it had been only months ago. Speaking of, have you changed your mind yet?"

Holding back the urge to roll her eyes at the silly ponce, Nisotsa said, "You're going to have to be more specific than that, Senator."

"At the beginning of our association, you ruled out any contact with a number of figures in the Republic — most of whom were perfectly reasonable to exclude from our mission here, I had little reason to argue — but it is House Reva in particular that concerns me."

Nisotsa closed her eyes for a moment. The blacklisting of House Reva was a hold-over from when Lesami had still had ultimate authority over the shape of their dealings with the Republic. Her father had proposed an alliance of some kind early in the invasion — Nisotsa knew nothing about what his terms might have looked like, only that Lesami had been deeply offended by them. (She could extrapolate guesses based on Lesami's reaction, but they would only be guesses.) House Reva hadn't been the only people she'd blacklisted, there were a number of other families — including the Alderaanian Houses of Panteer, Ulgo, Cortess, Alde, Organa, and Antilles (but not Thul, it was complicated) — and dozens upon dozens of individuals all across the Republic. Old noble families, wealthy investors, and corporate board members, mostly.

Keraw's own House Tusha had been an exception — which was a minor blessing, because the previous Alsakani Senator had been on the blacklist. (Three times over, in fact: from association with her birth family, her married family, and individually.) He was aware there were people she didn't want him to contact, though she hadn't told him precisely why.

She was rather knowledgeable about the affairs of House Reva, more than she was most any other Shawkenese (or Alsakani) family. Nisotsa had been one of Lesami's favourite targets to vent at, back when they'd been teenagers, and the politics of the immediate aftermath of the war with the Mandalorians had necessitated she be informed. So, she knew House Reva didn't quite fit the pattern. They were hardly saints, obviously — no wealthy family in the history of the Republic had acquired and maintained their wealth without any exploitation, and often even violence — but there were far worse examples of their social class out there. They were cleaner than Nisotsa's own family, certainly, and the Thuls hadn't been blacklisted.

She suspected Lesami's reasons for cutting out House Reva had been mostly personal. Which was understandable — Lesami's history with her family had left her with perfectly justifiable resentment. It was perfectly natural that Lesami would want to cut them out of her life.

But Lesami was gone now. Nisotsa shouldn't cripple her efforts out of respect for the wishes of a dead woman.

Nisotsa opened her eyes again. "Has Cumal reached out to you?"

Her pause must have been long enough to be noticeable, but nobody commented. "No," Keraw said, "or at least not directly. I suspect he is working on his own project, at a parallel purpose to ours. Some of my contacts have implied they are also working with him, though in words soft enough to avoid explicit confirmation — a couple have even, subtly, suggested they could be used to open a line of communication between the two of us if I so desire."

Which was completely unnecessary, of course — Alsakan and Shawken had been closely allied since the dawn of the Republic, and they were both members of influential (technically former) noble families, she was certain Keraw could simply call up Cumal on his own. Nisotsa let out a slow sigh. "I would like to feel him out myself before signing off on any cooperative efforts. If you could arrange a meeting..."

With a brilliant (slightly relieved) smile, Keraw said, "Oh, I could certainly do that. My family has an estate on Shawken — a vacation home, we rent it out most of the time — I could have it set up for you in...two weeks or so, perhaps? I'll forward your people the details..."

The meeting from there descended into minutiae, rattling off about one bit of news or another, one plot or another to expand their conspiracy and delay the progress of the war in the meanwhile. Nisotsa tried her best to mask her irritation and impatience — it had been months, and the scant progress they had made toward a viable coalition to remove Alek from power was...disheartening.

They had the Tosha and the Chiss more or less entirely on side, and the sympathies of the Mjatha (though little in the way of direct support), but their allies in the West were virtually powerless against the scale of the Fleet. The Chiss were the only ones who, technologically and tactically, could hope to stand toe-to-toe with the Sith military and come out alive, but they didn't have the numbers to resist very long if their attempted coup devolved into a drawn-out rebellion. Especially not with the Star Forge still in Sith hands, and the Mjatha not in a position to reclaim it (even if they could be convinced to in the best of circumstances, which Nisotsa doubted).

They did have people inside the Fleet, yes, but keeping lines of communication with them open was proving very difficult — the arm of the Inquisition was simply too long. Nisotsa suspected their best hope was to announce on broad-spectrum transmission what they were doing as they began their hit on Alek, relying on that to spark a mutiny. As long as Alek continued to command from Saul's ship, that actually wasn't a bad bet, but it was still risky.

Alek never went anywhere without a significant escort. Ousting him from power would require force, force Nisotsa's people simply couldn't gather without Republic assistance. But they were too hard-pressed to hold the front where it was to be much help at all, the bad blood between the Republic leadership and the former Jedi among the Sith only making it harder to put such a coalition together.

The longer this went on, Nisotsa was gradually growing more certain that Alek would need to be taken out by a revolt from below. And she didn't like the impediments against success such an endeavour would face.

Keraw was going on a tangent about using the resources of some of their more wealthy allies to purchase the assistance of "mercenary" companies out on the rim — which was a terrible idea, Keraw was seriously naïve if he thought they could trust pirates and slavers for even a second — when the door behind Nisotsa clicked open. She didn't have to look to know it was Thiqshmallu. The girl silently drifted up behind her, startling a few of Dodonna's men badly enough their hands jumped instinctively toward blasters they weren't even wearing, leaned over to mutter into Nisota's ear — a completely unnecessary precaution, none of the Republic people in the room spoke Sith. "We're getting a message recording directly into your dropbox."

Nisotsa frowned. That...shouldn't be possible. There were a few different channels people could use to contact her, yes, but she was using a couple layers of proxies to hide her location from the Inquisition — someone would record to one of those points, their message then copied to her main dropbox all at once the next time it was refreshed. A very small number of contacts held the encryption necessary to directly access her dropbox, but they still wouldn't write directly to it, the data would need to be routed through multiple other servers first. The only possible way someone could record directly to her dropbox would be...

...if they were on Coruscant.

SecInt maybe? No, Republic agents wouldn't bother politely recording a message for her, that didn't make any sense. One of their people here, perhaps...or maybe Yuthura — it was only a matter of time before she was forced off of Korriban, linking up with Nisotsa would be a rational thing for her to do in such circumstances. "Do you recognise the voice?" She assumed whoever it was wouldn't have identified themselves, anyway. Anyone who knew how to contact her directly would be intelligent enough to take basic precautions, especially while in the capital of the Republic.

"No, but we traced the message to a public terminal in a spaceport south of the capitol and got eyes on him. I think it might be Master Sesai." (The Sith never called Sesai lord, she didn't know why.)

Nisotsa twitched — Sesai? What the fuck was he doing on Coruscant? He should be at the University on Dromund Kaas, not gallivanting about the Republic! If something had gone wrong... "Bring him in, now. If he can meet with me without blowing his cover, of course."

"I'll approach him myself. I can have him at the condo in a half hour."

That was a good idea, Thiqshmallu had some training in the same stealth techniques the Inquisitors used, it would be more difficult for Sesai to slip by her. He also actually knew who she was, anyone else he might just blow off. Sesai could be difficult like that. "Go. I'll wrap up here as soon as I can." Not like they were accomplishing anything anyway...

"Yes." Nisotsa could almost feel the unspoken my lord — she'd told Thiqshmallu to quit calling her that, but the girl just made it more obvious on the tone of her voice to compensate. With the slightest whisper of breath and rustle of cloth, Thiqshmallu swished away, the door clicking shut behind her again.

"Is there a problem, Minister?"

"Nothing to worry about." Letting out a slow breath, Nisotsa forced herself to relax. Sesai shouldn't be on Coruscant, she couldn't imagine what circumstances might have brought him here, but surely he couldn't be carrying news too horrible. She could at least observe the necessary proprieties to get through the rest of this pointless meeting without offending anyone too badly — Republic allies were hard enough to come by without alienating them for no good reason. Sesai could wait, Nisota was just being paranoid.

Probably.

From orbit, the adopted homeworld of the Sith was a rather peculiar-looking planet.

The environment would seem, on the surface, perfectly ordinary to terrestrial COP-ordered life — lakes and rivers and oceans, jungles and grasslands, filled with life that, while not identical to species on other worlds, followed similar body plans and filled familiar niches. Dromund Kaas was perhaps rather wetter and warmer than most humans would be used to, the climate more analogous to that of Zeltros or Umbara, but well within acceptable tolerances for human habitability.

Nisotsa wouldn't want to spend much time outdoors around the equator, but the environment wasn't inhospitable, just uncomfortably hot and humid.

Look at the raw numbers on a data sheet, and the planet didn't seem at all out of the ordinary. One could switch in any world in the Republic with a wider tropical band and hardly notice the difference. But looking at an actual image of Dromund Kaas, that was when distinctions started to make themselves known.

The most immediately obvious was that Dromund Kaas was very...purple. This in itself was not unusual — most core-dwellers were used to the idea of plants being green, but slightly differing methods of photosynthesis also yield red and, yes, purple vegetation — Dromund Kaas was just especially purple. Looking out the viewport of the shuttle as they decelerated out of orbit, shades of purple seemed to dominate the environment. The great forests of the world were made of moody purples and blues and reds, the grasslands a lighter, more vibrant colour, not quite light enough to be called pink. The oceans even had a noticeable violet tinge to them, most obvious nearer the shore — partially due to microscopic plant life but also, she knew, a variety of exotic salts in tiny quantities that gave the water of the oceans a slight reddish-purple colour.

(Apparently these salts were even present in the "fresh" water of the lakes and rivers, though in lesser quantities. Reports from the surface suggested the water was safe for humans to drink, but it did have a...unique flavour to it.)

Even where plantlife didn't reach — that mountain range just there, for example — even those seemed to have a purple-ish cast to them, but that was probably just an effect of light scattering. The plantlife reflected purple light back into the atmosphere, the result of which was like putting a faint colour filter over the entire image. Looking at an angle, toward the horizon, Nisotsa noticed the haze of the atmosphere even appeared a pinkish-purple, presumably that was where that came from — there weren't any particularly unusual components in the planet's atmosphere, after all.

"You might want to sit down, Commander," the pilot called back to her. (Nisotsa didn't know him, Lesami had sent the shuttle for her.) "The upper winds here kick hard."

"Thank you for the warning, Sergeant, but I'll be all right."

"If you say so." The pilot muttered something to himself Nisotsa cleary wasn't supposed to catch, something to do with crazy Jedi.

Nisotsa fully faced the viewport to hide her smile.

The most interesting feature of Dromund Kaas was, of course, the constant lightning storms that swept the sky. On the periphery worlds of this new Sith Empire, it was a common assumption among the people that the storms were a consequence of the experiments in Sith magics done by the Emperor and his Dark Council, but it hadn't taken much observation — by long-distance sensors from far out-system — to determine the phenomenon was perfectly natural. Exotic, but certainly nothing to do with esoteric Sith sorcery or the like.

Dromund Kaas existed in a somewhat peculiar binary system. Its primary was a perfectly-ordinary main-sequence star, but that star shared an orbit with what must have been a large blue star billions of years ago, but was now a tiny, dim neutron star. It was far enough away it had very little influence on the system — its gravitational effect was negligible, and it was too dim to see with the naked eye — with the exception of the intense bands of radiation constantly sweeping over the entire area, light-years around.

Virtually every planet in the system showed aurorae, more or less constantly, but additional effects had been observed on the planets with substantial atmospheres. As well as they could model it, the solar wind from the neutron star penetrated through the outer atmosphere, ionising huge swaths of the sky all at once — constantly, for eons — the energy released in high-intensity bursts of electricity in a lightning storm that never ended — their models suggested the process had been ongoing for literally millions of years.

It was a rather precarious balancing act, all taken together. The upper atmosphere of Dromund Kaas was rather thicker in radiation-scattering chemicals than most inhabited worlds — the radiation exposure a person on the surface would receive on the regular was somewhat elevated compared to, say, Alderaan, but not much different from Coruscant. (Of course, the "surface" on Coruscant was really a kilometre or two off the ground, city planets were odd like that.) These chemicals existed in a natural cycle, breaking up and reforming under the energy imparted, over and over, but a disturbance to the system could easily see the surface exposed to deadly levels of radiation. Hacks leading up to their attack revealed the Empire monitored the levels of these chemicals, prepared to intervene should the storms eat away too much off their protection.

The lightning storms had also had interesting effects on the planet's ecology. The vast majority of the energy released never reached the surface, limited to a pretty light show in the upper atmosphere, but a tiny minority of it did. Even that tiny minority was a lot of lightning, and most areas of the planet got hit once a day — the storms were sparked on the side of the planet facing the not-so-distant neutron star, from the perspective of an observer on the surface the lightning swept over them once a day.

There were benefits to these storms — in their immediate wake often followed rain clouds, their models suggested that without the disturbance of and the energy imparted by the lightning Dromund Kaas would be somewhat less rainy. (Nisotsa thought this might be the first planet she'd ever heard of that didn't have a single desert anywhere on the surface.) Of course, sometimes these storms came with hurricane-force winds, especially when hitting mountain valleys at a precise wrong angle. And there was the lightning itself, obviously.

Interestingly, the trees of Kaasite jungles had an unusual high metal content, especially nearer the outside. The theory was that they'd evolved a protective shell, a means of directing lightning safely down to the ground, where it could dissipate harmlessly into the soil. Safe for them, anyway — animals and less thoroughly-protected plants could easily get fried just for being too close. They assumed the rest of the plant life must have some way to protect itself — they hadn't really had the opportunity to study such things yet — but they'd noted that the animal life of the world seemed to be disproportionately adapted for climbing. It seemed likely that, when the lightning storms came by, they perched themselves up shorter trees, where they would be safe from direct strikes, attracted to taller trees, and also from having their feet scorched as the energy dispersed into the ground. Of course, they would also have to be concerned with—

The shuttle suddenly dropped out from under Nisotsa's feet, then jumped back up against her, her head nearly slammed into the frame around the viewport before she caught herself. Her hand against the metal, she could feel the twitching vibrations carrying through the hull, most of them small, but the shuttle jerked around her a few more times. None nearly so bad as that first jolt, but it was still one of the roughest descents she'd ever experienced — normally the inertia-cancellation effects of artificial gravity filtered out these things.

"You okay back there, Commander?"

"Yes, I'm fine." Only almost brained herself on the wall like an idiot, nothing to write home about. "I thought we weren't flying anywhere near the storms." She'd been told the lightning had already passed over the capital today, some hours ago.

"Like I said, the upper winds here kick hard."

Nisotsa sighed. And the Sith had chosen to use Dromund Kaas as the heart of their relocated civilisation? She wondered if the entire species was just naturally masochistic or something.

Though, it was very pretty, she guessed.

The shaking and the rattling tapered out pretty quickly, and the shuttle dipped below the bank of clouds in the shadow of the lightning storm, the landscape of the alien planet opening up below her. The original home of the Sith had been a fertile, tropical planet as well, covered in swamps and jungles, though millennia of industrial exploitation had reduced it to the shell of a world it was now, an endless desert of rusty sand interspersed with oceans and lakes turned toxic from pollution. It was so bad that, millennia before the war with the Republic, the Sith had been forced to relocate to Ziost, which had been well along the path to a similar fate when they'd disappeared into exile. Either they simply hadn't been here long enough yet, or the Sith had learned the lesson of Korriban. There were obvious signs of civilisation — towns made of sharp angles cast from shining metal and moody wood painted strident reds and whites stuck out here and there — but the surface still seemed to be mostly covered in native vegetation, purple and black and blue, flickers of yellow and white and green providing occasional contrast. Some of the patches in the fields seemed too regular, forming obvious blocks, probably farmland, but the native biosphere had been left...relatively intact.

It sort of reminded her of Chandrila, in a way — modern civilisation coexisting with the natural ecosystem, so much as such a thing was even possible, instead of carving it to the bone and choking it with industrial byproducts as so many peoples have done over the millennia.

Though, not quite the same — this was very purple, obviously.

Before long, they came to what must be the capital. It was the largest built-up area she'd spotted thus far, though rather small for the volume of space it lay claim to. Rigid, blocky streets — most of them were too narrow to allow much vehicle traffic, probably intended for pedestrians — surrounded structures built of native wood, dark and unreflective due to adaptation against the lightning storms, and shining steel and glass, everything from tiny shops and single-family homes to towers stretching for the clouds. She noticed a contrast in architecture that she assumed must reflect class distinctions — the more modest buildings tended to be rounder, forming smooth organic lines, and darker, made mostly of local wood, while the larger more extravagant ones used much more industrial materials, and formed hard lines and sharp angles, spires like knives raised to the sky. Also odd, in most cities there would be regional contrasts — say, the fancier structures reflecting the wealth of the habitants would be clustered together, at a remove from the homes of the less fortunate — but they had been mixed together, the larger buildings dispersed across the city, more modest ones huddled against them, almost like—

Nisotsa felt her lips twitch with a rueful smile as the answer hit her — lightning rods. The larger buildings, likely the homes of the wealthy and government and educational institutions, also served as protection against the storms that swept the planet for the common people of the city. She wouldn't be surprised if the spires stretching toward the sky doubled as power generators. Clever.

Of course, the strategy probably also served as subtle cultural indoctrination to reinforce the moral authority of the ruling class — see, they protect us — but it was still clever.

Curiously, it didn't appear her pilot was bringing her to the palace. At least, she assumed that was the palace there, at the centre of the city, covering a significantly larger footprint than the rest, a four-pointed symmetrical structure of graceful wings and towering spires, huge mosaics featuring a brilliant orange sunburst covering the walls here and there — the Eye of Khalu, originally the symbol of a sun god but in early industrial times adopted to represent the Emperor, and by extension the Empire as a whole. (It was found somewhere on almost all the artefacts they had recovered from the war a thousand years ago, the only Sith cultural thing she really knew anything about.) Or, it had been symmetrical, but one of the four wings had partially collapsed, a jagged, gaping hole carved through the side and the ceiling sagging in places, debris flung into the nearby avenues and gardens, thin tendrils of smoke still rising from the wreckage.

Lesami had made a mess of the place, apparently. Nisotsa hadn't expected anything less.

But they weren't moving in that direction, drifting to the side, sinking down somewhere a few streets away. Their landing site didn't seem to be intended for the purpose, from what she could see — it looked like a public garden of some kind to her, surrounded by black-barked and purple-leaved trees, branches weighted down with greenish, fist-sized fruit, the shuttle setting down in an open patch of shimmering grass. Odd.

The pilot opened the hatch without a word, and Nisotsa stepped down the ramp, tasting the air of Dromund Kaas for the first time. It was warm and thick, heavy with water, with a hint of... Well, she wanted to say green, but on this world it should really be purple, shouldn't it? The tang on the air wasn't the same as in the forests of her homeworld, or any number of other planets she'd been on over the years, but it was similar enough she still instinctively labeled it plant and soil. Somewhat...spicier than most, she thought, more different tones combining in a mess intense enough her nose kind of tingled a little.

Not an allergic reaction, she didn't think. Just...different. Like the steam rising from one of those bracing Corellian stews, sort of.

They weren't alone in the garden. A short distance away, walking her direction through the grass (ankle high, a pleasant pale violet), was a man, tall but narrow, limbs long and thin, moving with a light, graceful air. A Sith man. Despite herself, Nisotsa couldn't help staring, just a bit. She'd seen images of Sith before — dating back a thousand years, preserved from the war against the old Empire, a variety of newer ones, intelligence gathered on the Kaasites — but she'd never actually seen one in person before. It was surreal.

He sort of reminded her of Sesai, actually. Sort of. The colour scheme was very similar — she thought the tone of red on this Sith was somewhat paler than Sesai's, but not by much, the blue-black of his lips nearly identical. The way he moved, light and smooth and almost sashaying, was very Sesai. The proportions, though, were different. In the shape of the man's body, yes — the trunk somewhat longer and rounder, hands long but wrists oddly narrow — but in the head especially. Most obviously, the ridges around the eye sockets were far more pronounced, making the eyes appear almost sunken, toward the outside curving around the brow and back over his perfectly bald head until they sunk into nothing, toward the inside sinking down to frame the nose, curving over the upper lip, until they ended in a pair of firm but fleshy tendrils that hung just barely under his weak chin. (It was assumed the pre-sapient ancestors of the Sith had had horns or antlers and tusks long ago, much as those of humans had had tails and been covered in fur, the peculiar features of their skulls a vestigial remnant.) He did look odd and alien but, compared to some of the species she'd dealt with over the course of her life, not really that alien.

Compared to more exotic species, like the Verpine, Sith were practically cousins. She'd been somewhat insulated before being sent to the Temple, but after making friends with Ac̳ika, well, most aliens hardly even seemed that strange to her anymore.

The Sith came up to within a few steps of her, sinking into a graceful bow — the way his hands moved to the side, presumably intended to display a lack of weapons, it almost looked like a curtsey. Rising again, he said, "Lord Nisotsa. In Lord Lesami, I lead."

Nisotsa's eyebrows twitched. His Basic wasn't very good, clearly. Fair enough, she supposed — she only remembered a couple words in the Sith language...as it had been spoken at the time of the old Empire, even if she pronounced them properly it was very possible they wouldn't be recognisable anymore. (She hadn't quite realised this until she'd heard Lesami go on her rants about these things enough times, but a thousand years could make a very big difference. Recordings of spoken Basic from the time of the Hundred Year Darkness, two thousand years ago, were completely incomprehensible.) It was possible this man had hardly ever even heard Basic before, having trouble with the language was perfectly understandable.

But...Lord? That was...weird. She recalled the Sith language only made gender distinctions in kinship terms, and sometimes not even then, but it was always weird when people called her lady too. She meant, she wasn't a lady, and technically never had been. Until she'd been disinherited as a consequence of being sent to the Jedi, she hadn't been nobility, but royalty — her grandfather had been a monarch, which made her a princess, not a lady. Her family had been demoted to nobility since, but she legally wasn't one of them anymore, and hadn't been for a long time, so. Everybody back in the Republic knew that, of course, but some people still used the address, even though they shouldn't. And it was always weird.

But it was especially weird now. She really didn't see why this random Sith man should give a damn about Alderaanian nobility. She'd be shocked if he had any idea who the Great Houses even were.

She debated with herself internally for a moment, before deciding to bow back to him. (A meeting-a-social-equal bow, which wasn't the same thing as the standard Jedi greeting nod — some cultures in the Republic actually considered Jedi etiquette rather rude — but she doubted the Sith would recognise the difference.) She considered speaking, before realising he probably wouldn't understand a word anyway, just gave an inviting wave.

Though, after only a few steps through the grass, the heavy, warm wind plucking at her hair, she asked, "Excuse me, what is your name?"

The man glanced at her, what might or might not be a confused frown on his face, it was hard to tell for sure. After a few more steps, his head tilted a bit to the side. "This be Śotsûqshńe, Lord."

Oh, there was no way in hell she was remembering that, she couldn't even pronounce it...

After a short walk through pale violet grass, they came to a walkpath made of blue and black tile, passing through the line of black-barked and purple-leaved plants. On the other side was a street. It was clearly intended for foot traffic alone, as in many cities built after the invention of miniaturised repulsor-based propulsion — two typical personal vehicles could probably slip past each other side-by-side, but it would be a tight squeeze. Or, they would be able to if the street were empty, but it wasn't, both sides lined here and there with public terminals and comms, a variety of what appeared to be roughly-constructed food stands.

Somewhat to her surprise, some of them were still operating — a few even had sizeable packs of people waiting their turn, sharp and earthy spices she didn't recognise tinging the air. Nisotsa had been under the impression that the assassination of all of the Empire's top leadership, and the unrest already starting to break out in response, had essentially forced the planet's government and economy to a standstill. Though, when she thought about it, these stands didn't appear to be formal businesses — things thrown together with a few tables and placards, cooking appliances hooked up to power cables slinking across the street into nearby houses. It did make sense businesses that had little to do with the overarching infrastructure would remain relatively unaffected by the sudden shock dealt to that infrastructure. Besides, people did still need to eat.

While they crossed the road, making for a nearby cross-street, Nisotsa looked around, taking in the dozens and dozens of people in all directions. Their clothing was relatively simple, plain cloth left mostly undecorated, save for more complicated bits of embroidery here and there — also rather brief, mostly shorts and skirts that cut off above the knee, most wearing wide sashes folded over shoulders in place of proper shirts, and many were completely bare-chested. (Which made sense, given the heat, she'd be sweating and miserable in her Jedi-style trousers and tunic if not for the Force.) So it was very clear the population weren't all Sith. In the sense of the species, she meant, they'd probably all call themselves Sith — sort of how the Mandalorians were surprisingly diverse, the Taung a tiny minority in the civilisation they'd founded, she assumed it was a similar concept.

At a glance, she spotted humans, Devaronians, Zeltrons, Iridonians — no, Elomin, probably — and... Was that a Draethos? Weird. There were even a couple people from species she didn't even recognise, probably locals. Oh, there were a couple Twi'leks. One Rodian over there. Hmm.

They'd been aware the old Sith Empire had been composed of multiple species, presumably descended from explorers or traders who'd stumbled into the Stygian Caldera, and were promptly captured and enslaved. The largest non-Sith species by a fair margin were humans of Tionese extraction — which made sense, Korriban was not so far away from Tion and Deservo — but some of the more wide-faring galactic species had also been spotted, particularly Devaronians and Duros, as well as a couple of Hutt slave species. (Hutt space was somewhat further away than the Tionese, but still the same general region of the galaxy.) While they'd all probably entered Sith society as slaves, it wasn't unusual to see them rise in the ranks. Human Sith Lords had been frequent enough, and one of their more successful admirals in the war against the Republic had been a Devaronian woman, which Republic Devaronians had taken as an awful shock — they had a traditionally matriarchal society, but their women virtually never left their homeworld, and the thought of a woman participating in warfare was almost sacrilegious to many. So, that there would be non-Sith people in this new Empire wasn't really a surprise.

She just hadn't realised there'd be so many of them. Among the people on this street, the Sith were only a plurality. Maybe a majority, but it couldn't be by very much...

Of course, while she took them in Nisotsa was being watched in turn, dozens and dozens of quiet, watchful eyes, a slight hush following them through the crowd as people paused to stare. She was dressed like a Jedi, lightsaber carried openly on her hip, they probably realised what she was. They would have only heard of Jedi in stories...and Lesami swooping in and killing their Emperor probably made one hell of an introduction.

(She tried not to tense — nobody was doing anything threatening, they were just curious, no reason to get paranoid.)

She was led down another street for a couple blocks, then around a corner, alien eyes silently following her all the while. Before too long, Nisotsa spotted a pair of Republic soldiers flanking the front door of one of the homes lining the street. (The round-edged, modest little thing didn't look any different from the others, seemingly chosen at random.) There were a surprising number of people in the street, seemingly not doing anything, just...lingering. Watching. Most were more random ordinary citizens, but she caught a glimpse of two figures in black and purple robes, faces hidden under hoods, one barely visible in the shadows of an alley, another perched out in the open on the edge of a roof, across the street and a few doors down, drawing wary glances from the people nearby. Nisotsa repressed a shiver, clenched her fist to stop her hand from drifting to her lightsaber.

Inquisitors.

No, she realised as she got closer, those weren't a pair of ordinary soldiers at the door — they were both in red and gold navy uniforms (missing rank insignia), armed with blaster rifles, but the one on the right had a lightsaber on her hip. Cariaga. She'd stopped wearing Jedi robes at some point during the War, Nisotsa hadn't noticed until they'd gathered at Malachor.

The black-haired woman raised a hand in greeting at their approach. "There you are, Nisotsa — late to the party, as always."

"I hadn't realised overthrowing an interplanetary government qualified as a party." Not that she approved of the system of governance in place here, that was quite beside the point. But she did expect this sort of cavalier attitude from Cariaga, it wasn't anything out of the ordinary — she'd learned by now the best response when she was like this was sarcasm, imploring her to take these things seriously was completely pointless.

"Trust me, you missed out on quite the show. You could even say we...brought down the house."

The soldier snorted. "Proud of that one, are you?"

"Bite me, Sergeant, my puns are great."

"Uh-huh."

Nisotsa bit back a sigh. Sometimes, being open to the feelings of the people around her could be quite aggravating — that Cariaga was apparently sleeping with one of her men was one of those things she just didn't need to know. "I'm told Lesami wanted to talk to me. Is she inside?"

Through the door was a little round entryway, rather unfinished, the floor dirt and the wooden walls plain and unpainted, though surprisingly busy. There were pairs of boots and shoes here and there, the walls arrayed with hanging bits of equipment, mostly basic tools and knives and the like (though she wasn't certain what the knives could be for), scarves and coats, and other things she couldn't identify at first glance. There were three doors leading out, divided with thick curtains in black and orange and speckled with blue-silver beads, but she wasn't certain...

"Oh, Nisotsa." Talvon had poked his head through the curtains to her left, turning to lean in a slouch against the door. "You're just in time, we have a dinner party of sorts in, oh, an hour or so. Lesami's in there," he finished, nodding at the door in the middle.

"Right. Dinner party?"

"Schmoozing with the locals, I think. I can't keep track of these things, can't even pronounce most of the names. Oh, take off your shoes before you go through." Pausing within a couple steps of the door Talvon had indicated, Nisotsa shot him a quick glance. "Don't look at me like that, it's some kind of weird cultural thing or something. I've just been doing what Lesami tells me and not thinking about it too hard."

In Nisotsa's opinion, Talvon would benefit from thinking through his words and actions a little better, but she doubted he would listen to her about it.

Through the curtain was what struck Nisotsa as a perfectly ordinary living room. Everything made of dark wood and gleaming metal, the furniture draped with cushions and cloth in orange and blue, a few trinkets and bits of decoration here and there, most of it in the form of organically-curving glass a gentle blue-green. The carpet was a bit longer than Nisotsa might expect, the furniture rather nearer the ground, the motifs in the artwork and the bits of writing here and there unfamiliar, but otherwise recogniseable.

Lesami was at the head of the room, sitting cross-legged in a low armchair — the armrests were wide and angled outward, giving her knees room, Nisotsa assumed it was intended to be sat in like that. Given she'd been outnumbered four to one in a battle to the death with, presumably, the most dangerous Dark Side users in the entire galaxy less than forty-eight hours ago, Lesami seemed remarkably well. It looked like her hair had been set on fire, somewhat lopsided and a bit on her left side curled and scorched, there were a switch-backing spiderweb of mostly-healed burns stitching across the fingers of her right hand, and her face seemed slightly longer than normal, tired enough it was actually noticeable, but other than that. Atop a fresh navy uniform she was wearing a loose, open robe, also in red and gold, but not quite matching — the red was rather darker, the gold looking less like dyed cloth and more like gleaming metal. It must be native, Nisotsa suspected those curving lines stitched along the hem were writing, but she didn't recognise it.

She wasn't alone: crammed into the couches across from her were seven people. Five Sith, three men and two women — the difference was very subtle, Nisotsa wouldn't be able to tell at all if she hadn't learned about the species in history class back when she was a child — a human man, and a Devaronian woman. They were chattering away in what Nisotsa assumed must be the local language, she didn't understand a word. Though, she didn't need to to know what was going on here at a glance, at least in general terms.

Lesami hadn't even been here two days yet, but it looked like she'd already managed to recruit a few disciples from among the locals. Nisotsa shouldn't be surprised — Lesami had a habit of inspiring loyalty wherever she went, even when she wasn't trying to.

Sometimes especially when she wasn't trying to.

"Nisa!" she called, with a (slightly tired) smile. "One second." Lesami turned back to her guests, rattled off something in Sith. That was, just, odd to listen to, Nisotsa didn't know how she was spitting out all those weird hissing consonant clusters so quickly and smoothly...but Lesami could speak bloody Verpine, which Nisotsa hadn't even realised was possible for a human to do. The Sith language hardly sounded that extreme, relatively speaking.

Whatever they were saying was apparently bringing the meeting to an end. Lesami and the other seven all stood, bows and handshakes going around, still chatting away incomprehensibly. Before long, her guests were trailing toward the door, shooting Nisotsa a mixture of curious and wary looks as they passed. Nisotsa would admit she maybe stared at the Devaronian a little bit — she couldn't help it, she'd literally never been in the same room with a Devaronian women before, it was slightly surreal. Before long, the curtain dividing off the room was swishing closed with a hundred light tinkling noises of glass on glass, and they were alone.

"Have a seat, Nisa." Lesami flopped down onto one of the couches, leaning against an armrest and kicking her bare feet up on the cushions. "We have a few things to talk about. You didn't have any trouble getting down here, did you?"

After a brief moment of hesitation, Nisotsa sat down next to Lesami's feet. "Not particularly. Do you mean the lightning storms, or..."

Lesami shrugged. "The Sith fleet disengaged once we announced the Emperor is dead. Our scouts have spotted some of them scattered across a dozen different systems, but they're not all accounted for at the moment. And then there's the Inquisition, they..." Her lip curling into a scowl, she muttered, "I don't know what the Inquisition is thinking..."

"You did kill their leader."

"True. We killed, I don't know, had to be over thirty of them total, on the way to the throne room and in the first few hours afterward. I keep waiting for assassination attempts, but nothing's happened so far."

...Okay, apparently they'd been outnumbered worse than four-to-one. Bloody insane. "They're watching you, you know. There are two out in the street right now."

"Five, but who's counting." Lesami, evidently. "I'm not worried about them. Between Sesai, Cara, Tal, and myself, five Inquisitors isn't a threat — they know that, and they know we know that. No, if they actually meant to harm us, they'd come in much larger numbers, or do a better job of hiding. They just want us to know they're watching."

A better job, Nistosa hadn't even spotted three of the five. Lesami and Sesai were more perceptive than she was, but she was still a Jedi, honestly. Speaking of, "Where is Sesai, anyway? I thought he was down here with you."

"Isn't he out there?" Lesami frowned for a moment, then closed her eyes. The burning weight of her presence in the Force — Nisotsa had known her so long she was used to it, she hardly even noticed how absurdly powerful she was most of the time anymore — shivered for a moment, presumably reaching for Sesai. "Huh," she grunted, opening her eyes again, "he must have slipped away at some point I wasn't paying attention. Probably off making a nuisance of himself somewhere. He'll turn up."

"Should we get someone out looking for him? With the Inquisitors around..." Sesai was very sneaky, yes, but...

"He's fine. I'd feel it if he were in trouble."

...All right. "And Alek? Was he injured in the fight?" She didn't feel him anywhere nearby...

Lesami sighed. Not worried — tired, exasperated, irritated.

"You two are still...having difficulties, then." It wasn't a question.

"You could say that," she grumbled, for an instant the exhaustion showing deep in her eyes before vanishing again. "He went back up yesterday, probably complaining about me to Saul, poor bastard."

Oh, yes, poor Saul, having to deal with Alek venting at him about their relationship problems. Nisotsa and Sesai got Lesami instead. She honestly couldn't tell which of them had the better of it.

...They did, probably — Lesami had spoken to Nisotsa about it all of twice, and both conversations had been brief and thin on details. All she knew, not long after Malachor, early in their search for Lehon, she and Alek had had some kind of disagreement, one serious enough it had put an obvious strain on their relationship. Lesami hadn't explained exactly what that disagreement was, only something vague about how they wanted very different things, she'd spoken more about how Alek was acting after their argument than the argument itself. She assumed Saul would be getting from Alek far more in the way of details, and probably more than he would ever want. In Nisotsa's experience, Lesami was rather less likely to share things about her private relationships with people not involved with them.

Private relationships that she really shouldn't be having in the first place, but Nisotsa had surrendered on that years ago. There really was no point in saying I told you so.

The important, is everybody still alive matters out of the way, Nistosa moved on. "Right. What did you want me down here for, then?"

"I have a project for you. A big project, the sort that will likely take up all of your attention for years to come. You'll probably have to leave the Fleet for good, in fact."

And what a great sacrifice that would be — Nisotsa had never been suited to the military, and everybody knew it. She'd done what she had to, in the war, but it wasn't a role she was at all comfortable in, this new "project" being entirely separate from the Fleet was more positive than negative. Which Lesami must be fully aware of. "I assume you're imagining a more diplomatic sort of role."

Just holding the Star Forge alone essentially made them a major galactice power, regardless of the fact that they didn't control a single planet — well, this one now, technically, not the point — and they had already arranged an alliance with the Mjatha. Now that they'd at least temporarily crippled the Sith, the Chiss should be far more open to coming to some sort of accord, and the Mjatha were arranging meetings with a people called the Tosha, they'd already traded a few promising messages...

The point was, despite the fact that they were little more than a vagrant fleet, they had the population, industrial output, and military power to qualify as an independent state, and were already developing diplomatic relations with other governments in the manner of one. They would need some kind of political infrastructure to manage these things, eventually.

If nothing else, the Chiss and the Tosha would probably treat more favourably with a semi-professional diplomat than they would a traitorous admiral. Less threatening.

"Not really. You're familiar with the concept of feudalism, yes?"

Nisotsa blinked. "Vaguely." Some of the trappings around the Alderaanian Great Houses were vestigial relics of the ancient political and economic system, though they'd always been aesthetic and nothing more. As far as she was aware, feudalism hadn't existed in the core for tens of thousands of years, pre-spaceflight. It was so old and distant she really only had a very rough idea of how it was supposed to have worked...

"Well, that's essentially how society is structured here. It is somewhat more complicated than descriptions I've read before," Lesami admitted with a lazy shrug, "but the organisational principles are similar.

"You have a caste system of sorts, the child inheriting the station of their parents, the different castes having different social privileges and political rights. It's not perfectly rigid — sometimes you'll see a person or a whole family be demoted or even enslaved as a consequence of some transgression or failure, and it's not unheard of for a person born a slave to ascend all the way to the nobility — but it is a very authoritarian, hierarchical culture. And rather dogmatic about it, I've noticed. Most of them, they think it's natural, that this is just how societies work. And why should they not think so, it's all they've ever known."

"You'll be getting to the point eventually, I'm certain." Lesami had always had a terrible habit of letting herself get distracted by matters only peripherally related to what the conversation was supposedly about, especially when it came to this sort of thing.

Her head dipped in a rueful nod, accepting the unspoken rebuke. "Yes, well. Sith society is on the cusp of revolution. There are revolts just beginning to break out across the Empire as we speak. The problem is, they have little real direction. They know what they are fighting against, of course, but the common people here have virtually no knowledge of politics — they have little sense of what they are fighting for. I have no doubt they will succeed in casting off the nobility who rule them now, especially with our help. But, what then? I'm afraid, not of the revolution itself, but what will come after it. This will not end well, I think."

Nisotsa nodded — she probably wasn't wrong. Historically, revolutions could often get...messy, but one of the greatest mitigating factors was a high degree of political and economic literacy among the masses. In cases of... Well, she didn't want to say primitive societies, but, when the common people were less thoroughly educated in these matters, that was when things could get especially bad.

From what little intelligence on the Empire they'd been able to gather, education was one of those privileges that varied widely by class. And, given how the particulars of education were influenced by the society in which it existed, it was likely even those who had received the best available would have little in the way of alternative organisational strategies to put forward. Forget political and economic literacy, it was altogether possible a large proportion of the slaves, representing a plurality of Sith society, were just plain illiterate.

As far as such things go, Sith society had all the indicators of a revolution about to go very, very badly.

"You're not suggesting we enforce our authority in place of the native leadership." It wasn't a question.

"No, of course not. I am suggesting we offer the Sith our guidance. That's where you come in."

For a brief moment, Nisotsa could only stare at Lesami — smiling back at her, as though she hadn't just said something completely insane. "You want me...to help articulate and coordinate...the reorganisation of a society...that I know nothing about."

"Something like that, yes."

...Had Lesami gotten hit with an insidious bit of Sith sorcery of some kind in her battle with the Emperor and the Dark Council? Because it sounded like she'd completely lost her mind.

"I'm not saying you should step in and take over the whole thing yourself," Lesami said into her dumbfounded silence. "Native leaders will emerge over the next weeks, naturally, but while they may have the intelligence, the instincts, the charisma to make it that far, I suspect their practical knowledge of how government works will be critically lacking. Your job is to help them come up with something functional. Not dictate it to them, no, but to help them formulate what will work, taking the aesthetics and preferences of the native culture into account."

"Lesami, how the hell am I supposed to take the native culture into account? I don't even speak their language!"

She shrugged, as though that rather critical point were a matter of small importance. "I can give you my understanding of their language and culture, just as I pulled it from one of the locals."

"...You can?" She was aware Lesami could pull all kinds of knowledge from people's heads — she'd been using it to instantly acquire alien languages, and all the trappings of their cultural context along with them, since before she'd been brought to the Temple — but she'd had no idea Lesami could, just, give that knowledge to other people.

"Of course I can. I've done it with Alek, Sesai, and Cara already. It might knock you out for a few minutes, and give you one hell of a migraine, but it works just fine."

Sometimes, Nisotsa wondered if she was ever going to stop being taken back by how completely absurd Lesami could be. They'd known each other for, what, over fifteen years now, and still she could surprise her. Put that aside for now. "Sami... You realise how ridiculous of an idea this is, right? You're essentially asking me to join the political leadership of a society we have nothing to do with — besides assassinating their previous leadership, of course. And what is my standing among them supposed to be, exactly? I have no stake here, why should they even listen to me?"

"You'd be standing as a representative of the Fleet, of course."

"Even so, what does the Fleet have to..." Nisotsa trailed off, as the ultimate implication of what Lesami wasn't saying finally clicked. "You plan to settle here. Permanently."

Lesami nodded.

"...Why?"

"Various reasons." For a brief moment, Lesami was silent, staring blankly at a wall, her fingers idly tapping at her hip. "Our people are tired, Nisotsa. Tired and broken-hearted. We can't go back to the Republic, none of us. We can't leave it as it is either, we can't forget, but there's also nothing we can do about it, not right now. We need time, to rest and recover, before the war can begin again. If we don't, I'm afraid too many of us will start to lose sight of why we were driven to this in the first place, all we are trying to achieve.

"But, we can't just keep floating around in space forever. As accustomed to modern life as people might have become, living too long trapped together on a ship will drive anyone mad. And, our people don't just need space to breathe — they need space to live. We need to settle somewhere, our home can't just be the Fleet. A military needs a country, Nisa, else why does it even exist?"

"I suppose you're right about that." It was a concern Nisotsa had as well — reforming the Republic was a long-term goal, one that might not be realised for a decade, or a generation. The Forge gave them the industrial capacity needed, their alliance with the Mjatha provided additional support, worlds they could visit for shore leave if they chose to. But that wasn't enough to keep them going, not for very long. Not without severe psychological consequences, at the very least. She'd been keeping an eye out for uninhabited worlds they could take over if need be...though the investment of time and resources setting up a new home would take... "Why not with the Mjatha, or the Chiss?"

"The Sith presented a unique opportunity. Not only will aiding in their revolution and the reconstruction afterward give them something to do in the meantime — helping to overthrow a slave state will also be good for them, I think, remember Taris?"

Yes, Nisotsa remembered Taris. The Mandalorians had been expelled from the system relatively easily, the true work had begun after they were already gone. Nisotsa remembered storming into their parliament with Lesami, dictating an end to the planet's authoritarian, explicitly racist policies. Demands backed up with the hilt of a lightsaber and the barrel of a gun.

Nisotsa remembered Republic soldiers and Revanchists combing through the streets, guided by local sympathisers (including a couple biker gangs, of all things) to all the locations and people important to the slave trade. She remembered tearing doors off of hinges, cages torn into scrap, slavers and their collaborators and benefactors executed in the street.

Nisotsa remembered spectators cheering, she remembered rescued slaves uncounted. She could still see some of their faces, ones she'd freed personally, shock and joy and disbelief. Nisotsa remembered one warehouse, filled with children, hundreds of them, miserable and dirty and starving, some of them clearly having been beaten, some of them clearly having been raped, she remembered killing the foreman with her bare hand, his throat crushed between her fingers, she remembered Lesami pulling her into her arms, stopping her, yanking her back from the edge of madness, she'd never cried so hard in her life—

Nisotsa remembered a Cathar girl, a child, finding them later. A desperate little thing, lost and alone, she wanted to come with them, she wanted to learn to do what they did, she wanted to fight. Because nobody should be made helpless as she had been, and Nisotsa's heart had broken all over again...

(They couldn't bring her with, Lesami had ferried Juhani off to Dantooine. How long ago was that, must be at least a year, Nisotsa wondered how she was doing now...)

They, the Fleet and the Revanchists, might have already felt disillusioned about the Republic before, abandoned and disregarded. But Taris... After that, Nisotsa suspected, their defection had been inevitable. Taris had been a Republic world. The local government had been recognised as legitimate by the Republic, the day-to-day functioning of the local economy had changed very little under Mandalorian occupation. No, the despotic regime of Taris, that was the Republic.

Their people had seen Taris, and known what it was they had dedicated their lives to serve.

For many, the Liberation of Taris had been a revelation, and a statement. And only the beginning.

Nisotsa nodded — yes, she could see how Lesami might think helping to reform the Sith, might be "good" for their people, to keep the lesson they'd learned on Taris alive. In a way, Lesami was simply suggesting they do what they'd done on Taris again, just on a much larger scale. Except, this time she intended to stay, instead of overturning their entire society and just flying off again. "You're talking about joining the Sith, not just providing them aid."

"Yes," Lesami said, bluntly.

"You realise, the Sith outnumber us, greatly. In a generation or two, the character of our people will largely vanish, and we'll just be Sith."

Her lips twitching with a badly-hidden smirk, it appeared Lesami was trying not to laugh at her. "If all goes well, in a generation or two the character of the Sith will have fundamentally changed. And the best time to act to have the greatest influence on what that character will be is now, when things are just about to get very interesting.

"There's not quite so much reason to be concerned about what we might be like a generation or two down the line — thinking that far ahead, Nisa, I'm impressed." Nisotsa shrugged, trying not to look too embarrassed. Not that she had reason to, Lesami was talking about settling here permanently, they needed to think that far ahead, she thought. "I've been talking with some people here in the city, and... It's not hopeless. There's a character to the culture of the lower classes here that...should be quite amenable, to the sort of reforms we would like. We simply have to give them the tools necessary, and help them on their way."

Nisotsa scoffed. "Simply, as though it's so easy."

"Not easy, no. There's a reason why I said you might be working at this project for years to come — maybe for the rest of your life, even. But it's noble work, that could do a lot of good for a lot of people, if we play our cards right. And don't tell me you wouldn't rather join the political leadership of an infant nation, even if only as an advisor, than stay on with the Fleet."

That was a good point. Now that Lesami had talked her around to actually thinking about it, it... Well, it was a fascinating idea, she thought, to help guide a revolution of this kind, to help rebuild the country from the ground up. Insane, but most ideas Lesami had were insane in one way or another. "All right. Let's say I'm convinced — that we should settle here, that we should directly participate in the political developments over the next months and years. Why me? If anyone should be acting as a political representative of the Fleet, it should be you, Lesami, not me."

Letting out a sigh, Lesami's head tipped back, her hair flopping over the side of the sofa, the tendons showing in her neck. "Yes, well, there are difficulties with that. Too many of the people here have been trained to respect power, rather too much. If I give them my opinion...well, they won't treat it as just an opinion."

Nisotsa bit her lip. "They're going to make you empress, aren't they."

"A lot of people I've talked to seem to be operating on the assumption I plan to claim it. Some are even confused that I haven't already."

"So, yes, is what I'm hearing."

Lesami sighed again. "Probably. Don't laugh."

"Oh, I'm not laughing."

"Not on the outside, you're not."

"I couldn't possibly. It simply wouldn't do to laugh at Darth Lesami, Dark Lord of the Sith."

"Stop that." Lesami jabbed her in the side with her toes. (Nisotsa jumped — her feet were cold.) "The Sith are accustomed to a chief executive, any form of government they will find acceptable will probably need to have one. But they are accustomed to an authoritarian executive, and until they adapt to constitutional government, it will be all too easy for the person in that position to take advantage of that. If there must be someone in such a position, I would at least prefer it to be someone who won't abuse it."

"Uh-huh."

Lesami's head tipped up again to shoot Nisotsa a sardonic sort of look. "Do you honestly think I'm likely to?"

"No, of course not." Well, when she thought about it, honestly, it depended on context — Lesami had proven that she certainly would violate the established rule of law, if it was necessary to do what she thought was right. The trick would be, Nisotsa suspected, to make certain it was never necessary. "You're not going to live forever, though. Other people in your position might not be...so enlightened."

Her face pinched into a scowl for a second, maybe assuming Nisotsa was being sarcastic with the enlightened bit. (She was, a little bit, sort of.) Then the expression cleared again, Lesami nodding with a low hum. "I was hoping we could try to shift the perception of that sort of authority somewhat. Ideally, the emperor would be seen as a military commander in war time, but nothing more than a figurehead in peace time."

"You mean, the head of state shouldn't have any legislative or executive authority at all." That would be sort of unusual for a constitutional monarchy, but also not really. For example, on Alderaan, the king technically had to approve legislation before it went into effect, and he selected certain government officers — except this was mostly symbolic, since he only very rarely refused to put his signature on something passed by Parliament, and cabinet members were always members of Parliament, elected by Parliament. So, Lesami was suggesting something similar, but without even the symbolic consent of the sovereign the Alderaanian system featured. "That could be done. Though, I think, the emperor should also be considered...sort of equivalent to the Grandmaster of the Order, having authority over the Force-sensitives among the Sith. And this should be practical as well as symbolic, in case we have to do something about some of the Dark Side users around."

"That sort of power could be easily abused."

"I'm sure we'd have some kind of organisation of Force-users that could check the emperor if necessary — sort of like the Council does the Grandmaster, if you follow — and there would be some kind of due process, of course. If you're worried about abusable authority, the executive having direct control of the military is kind of..."

"Since the emperor wouldn't have legislative or executive power, their actual control of the military should be relatively limited. Of course, that is still exploitable — it's hard to tell someone no if they have a gun to your head — so we'll have to consider some...some security agency of some kind, that can restrain the emperor's authority, if necessary. Though, their membership would have to be tightly controlled by the legislature."

Nisotsa thought that over for a moment, before nodding — the Sith even already had an organisation that could suit that purpose nicely in the form of the Inquisition, though it'd have to be heavily reformed before it could be trusted. She assumed that was on Lesami's to-do list. "Right, so, speaking of the legislature, what model are we thinking here? An adaption of the Republic system wouldn't work — the Sith haven't settled enough worlds to put together a sizeable parliament of planet-wide delegates. Divide them into districts maybe..."

"I've always had a distrust of electoral systems based on single-delegate districts. Are you familiar with syndical democracy?"

She should have expected Lesami might suggest such a thing, syndicalist politics were very popular throughout Alskani-influenced space. "Well enough. The scale of the organisation that would require... Well, I suppose the unrest of the revolution itself will produce associations that could be built upon to..." Nisotsa trailed off, blinking to herself in numb disbelief.

"What?"

Her throat unreasonably dry, Nistosa swallowed, let out a long, slow breath. "We're actually doing this, aren't we?"

Lesami, the bloody madwoman, just smiled.

Lesami's flat had stood virtually unchanged. It was surreal, in a way, like something out of a dream.

Early into her exile from Dromund Kaas, when first her path had led to Coruscant, Nisotsa hadn't quite been able to resist the urge to return to the familiar flat, high up a luxury high-rise just on the fringes of the capital district. She still had her security code saved, but she hadn't expected the door to actually open for her. It had been years since anyone had stepped foot in it, after all.

So far as Nistosa knew, the last time Lesami had set foot here had been shortly before the Senate had confirmed her as Supreme Commander — she hadn't had time to stop back home after, she'd gone straight from her acceptance speech on the Rotunda to the Vindicta, gathering every single ship she could to fly to Duro. Nisotsa had been here more recently than Lesami. She'd stayed here for a week or so, recovering from Duro, and when her work for the war effort brought her to Coruscant she'd often spend the night here. She hadn't been welcome at the Temple for some time by then, and where else was she supposed to go?

Well, she could have begged a room off any number of contacts, but that would have been awkward.

That had been years ago, now. But the door had opened at her code. And the flat had been unchanged, almost exactly as she'd remembered it. Rather dustier, and the fridge had badly needed to be cleaned out, but...

It had been like walking through a ghost.

Over these last months, Nistosa's people had been taking over the flat while they stayed in Coruscant, so it wasn't quite the same anymore. The main room especially, the table dominated with communications and surveillance equipment, the sofas near the windows usually hosting at least a couple people in conspicuously civilian dress, the windows themselves tinted an odd blue-grey with various countermeasures. (Nisotsa didn't know how they worked, nor did it particularly matter.) The kitchen was often a mess, scattered in the wake of a half-dozen people with more important things to worry about, the bathroom nearly as bad.

The guest bedroom was mostly the same, changed only by the presence of some of Nisotsa and Thiqshmallu's things. Lesami's bedroom, she'd asked everyone not touch. A request they'd respected, almost reverentially — she had told them why, after all.

Nisotsa didn't like going in there. The first time, she'd spotted a bracelet on the dresser, a cheap little thing, braided steel and little glass beads. She remembered it, how could she not? Nisotsa had made it herself, in one of the workshops in the Temple. It'd been a gift, for Lesami's thirteenth birthday, more meaningful in the act itself, for the statement it made — Jedi weren't to own things, they weren't supposed to care about birthdays, or for pretty things. Lesami had gotten the message Nisotsa had meant to send. It had signaled what Nisotsa thought was a significant shift to the character of their friendship, from something casual, just two Jedi apprentices who spent a fair bit of their time together simply due to proximity, to something real.

Nisotsa had had to leave, retreating to the armchair in the living room, where she'd spent the next minutes desperately attempting to control herself. It wouldn't do for her people to see her break down, after all. She had an image to maintain.

(She missed Lesami sometimes, so much. She tried not to think about it.)

Today, the flat was empty, quiet. Her people were watching the building, of course, but inside, she was alone. Not just because she didn't want eavesdroppers on her conversation with Sesai — they'd been preparing to move on anyway, Nisotsa had a meeting on Commenor to get to.

So nobody could see her impatiently pacing.

She hadn't been waiting long, maybe ten minutes or so, when she heard the lock click. Thiqshmallu stepped in first, her hood pulled low over her face — it didn't matter too much, most ordinary people on the street wouldn't recognise Sith and Republic Intelligence already knew they were here, but she preferred to hide her features in public just in case — a Zeltron man waltzing into the room in her wake. He didn't really look like Sesai, apparently having taken on an ordinary-young-Zeltron-on-vacation aesthetic — the brief but loose shorts, a shirt that barely counted as proper clothing, too much skin showing, a scarf draped across his shoulders that was too thin and filmy to be anything but decorative, makeup dashed here and there across his face, all in a clashing mix of bright colours.

But he still felt like Sesai. Nisotsa recognised him instantly, he wasn't trying to disguise himself in the Force at all. "Thank you, Thiqshmallu." The girl nodded, the dark cloth of her hood dipping, then retreated out of the flat, closing the door behind her. "Sesai, what the fuck are you doing here?"

Sesai didn't respond right away, taking in the equipment sitting idle, the tint to the windows, the mess in the kitchen — he wouldn't have been here for years, that would all be new to him. "Now now, Nisa love, that's hardly any way to greet an old friend. I would almost think you don't like me."

She forced out a thin sigh. "Yes, good to see you, it's been months, glad you're well. Why are you here? I thought you were staying on at the University." Teaching, yes, but mostly keeping an eye on the Inquisition.

"I'm taking a break," Sesai said, as though it were obvious, spreading his arms to indicate the ridiculous get-up he was wearing.

"And you couldn't possibly have some ulterior motive in mind, of course."

"Perish the thought! No, I'm a very simple man, Nisa love, what you see is what you get." Sesai sauntered over to one of the sofas, his arms spread wide over the backrest and ankles crossed. "Only, people aren't watching me all the time, are they?" he added, smirking. "That's hardly my fault."

"Uh-huh. So what are you up to when people aren't watching?"

"Wow, I didn't expect that from you, but I guess if you do want the salacious details, I can—"

Nisotsa cut him off with another sigh. "Stop fucking around, Sesai. What's going on? Did the Inquisition move on you?" If Sesai had been driven away, their partisans in the capital...

"No, no, nothing like that. Little Yuthura...assigned me a project, you might say."

She ticked up a single eyebrow — when had Yuthura started giving Sesai orders? She was very talented, yes, Nistosa wouldn't deny that. It had only taken her a handful of years to rise from a complete amateur to an undisputed master in the ways of the Force, both Jedi and Sith, which Nisotsa thought was seriously bloody impressive. Not unique, by any means — it wasn't unusual for certain talented individuals to develop very quickly, especially when discovered later in life — but still impressive.

But, as talented as she was, in the grand scheme of things, Yuthura was relatively unimportant. She was one of the lead instructors at the Academy on Korriban, but her influence didn't really extend beyond their walls, most people elsewhere likely hardly remembered she existed. She was one of Lesami's favourites, Lesami hadn't really taken pains to hide it, which had been an indication that she was definitely going places, but now...

Leami's sudden death had left many people without direction or support. Yuthura was just one more.

And, the assigned me a project bit was obviously a reference to Lesami's particular management style, which was weird, especially in connection to Yuthura... Nisotsa was just very confused.

"So, how are things going on your end, anyway? I haven't been hearing anything, and the kid wouldn't say."

Nisotsa bit down the urge to groan with frustration. Sesai couldn't be made to do anything, he would tell her what he liked when he liked. She might as well humour him until he decided to cooperate. Sinking into an armchair, she said, "Not well. The emergency measures taken by the Republic are making it very difficult for sympathisers on the ground to organise, so we haven't been able to get into contact with very many of them. Dodonna is the only person with any influence in command I've had any success with, but she's been having trouble making inroads with her peers, same with a few Senators I'm talking to. I've been stalled for a month or so now, I'm afraid."

Sesai was frowning a little, staring blankly at the ceiling. "Dodonna? Is that Commodore Forn Dodonna?"

"Admiral now." Dodonna had been attached to the First Fleet, part of the forces gathered by Lesami to break the Mandalorian assault on Duro, but then left behind to defend the core during their counter-attack. The attrition of the war on the rim followed by mass defections opened up plenty of command posts — Dodonna had been promoted to vice admiral in the immediate aftermath, and later bumped up to command of the reformed Fourth Fleet shortly before the Sith invasion. (Most of the Third and Fourth Fleets had defected to the Sith, Dodonna's Fourth was cobbled together from the decommissioned Fifth, commandeered civilian vessels, and new ships built in the last few years.) "She's in command of the Fourth."

"They're in the inner Slice, right? Zeltros through Gyndine?"

Nisotsa nodded. "I believe so."

"Terrible posting for her. She's too aggressive, not suited to a primarily defensive position. She should be with the Third, working with the Bothans in the south to push up from the other end."

"You'd know better than I. It would explain how frustrated she seems."

"Mm."

"I might be making some progress on the Senate angle, I suppose. I have a meeting with Cumal in a couple weeks, we'll have to see what comes of that."

Sesai shot her a look. "Cumal? You mean, Cumal po lai Revas, Lesami's father?"

"Yes." She half-expected Sesai to disapprove, say something about it, at least — Sesai had been unnervingly loyal to Lesami, and her death hadn't changed that at all.

Instead he let out a low hum, his eyes tipping back up to the ceiling. "I wonder if he knows."

She blinked. "Knows what?" There were a whole variety of things Cumal shouldn't know, but that he might anyway. Nisotsa would never cease to be surprised with how successful private intelligence-gathering efforts could be, wealthy people often turned out to have access to all kinds of information she didn't expect them to. But she couldn't think what particular thing Sesai was talking about.

"It's about my project."

...Sesai suspected Cumal might know about whatever this project of his was? Why? "And are you going to tell me what this project is, exactly?"

"Mm." Sesai hesitated, just for a moment — his face was blank enough Nisotsa might not have noticed, if he weren't broadcasting a crawling hint of nervousness all over the place. "The ship I'm traveling with right now, it's captained by a Jedi, on a mission from the Dantooine Council."

You've got to be kidding me... "Sesai, did you infiltrate the Jedi?"

He shrugged, as though he didn't see what the big deal was. Which Nisotsa didn't buy for a second, his lips twitching with a smirk and his eyes dancing. "It wouldn't be the first time. I got into the Temple itself, you know, the Dantooine Enclave was much easier."

"You snuck into the Temple disguised as maintenance staff."

"And the Dantooinian Jedi are much more open to a wanderer dropping in for a month or two, if they want."

...A month or two? Sesai had stayed at a Jedi Enclave for a month or two? "Sesai, are you completely mad?"

"People keep asking me that," he chirped, smirking. "Anyway, this ship, fun crew. The captain is a newly-discovered Force-sensitive, Cina, she was a linguistics professor at the University of Aldera before she got picked up. They've got a couple Tarisian refugees, a little Mandalorian orphan kid — who's also Force-sensitive, but Cina didn't let the Jedi keep her. Oh, and speaking of Mandalorians, Cina's got Canderous Ordo working for her."

Nisotsa almost choked on air. "Can– Canderous Ordo, the general? The Conquerer of Althir? That Canderous Ordo?"

"Yep, same guy."

"Fucking kidding me..." She'd heard of Canderous Ordo before, of course. He'd been a middling commander in Clan Ordo's forces when, during a protracted siege of an independent rim world, Canderous had taken a wild gamble — even, technically, flagrantly disobeying orders — which had ultimately resulted in the Ordos completely wiping out the defenders, who had outnumbered them ten-to-one. By the end of the war, Canderous had been one of the Mandalore's favourite commanders, trusted with roughly a tenth of their whole military — which essentially made him an admiral, in Republic terms. "What's he like?"

Sesai shrugged. "Perfectly ordinary Mando warrior clan type, far as I can tell. Got kind of a, been around forever, seen it all, old and jaded vibe to him, but. He likes pretending to be the crazy blood-thirsty Mando stereotype sometimes, but it is just pretending, I think he finds the terrified squeaking funny. Which, it is, obviously. People are stupid about Mandos.

"Oh, and, we've got Bastila Shan with us too, of course."

...Of course. Because, it's not like the Jedi currently most skilled with battle meditation should definitely be kept on the front lines at all costs, or anything. "What exactly is this mission the Dantooinians gave them?"

"You're gonna love this," Sesai said, face abruptly splitting into a grin. "We're on a mission to retrace Lesami's steps...to locate the Star Forge."

A shocked guffaw jumped out of her throat before Nisotsa could stop herself. "The Republic finally figured out it exists, have they?" It shouldn't have taken this long, really — Sith computers wiped astrogation data as a failsafe, so they wouldn't be able to get to it, but it was referenced in documents occasionally...

"The Dantooine Council knows, at least, I don't know what they've told the Republic, or even the High Council."

"You realise, I could simply hand Dodonna the astrogation necessary to get to the Forge if I really wanted to." She hadn't even told her contacts in the Republic it existed. Didn't strike her as something worth discussing.

"Yes, and I could just give it to Cina and company. Not going to. I'm going to help them on their little quest, but obviously 'finding' the Forge isn't the point. Not for me, anyway."

"Well, what is the point, then?" If Sesai wanted to get information about the Forge to the Republic, to force Alek to defend it, it wouldn't be difficult to make sure SecInt found it; if he wanted to prevent this Jedi mission from finding it, he could simply kill them, he wouldn't need to tag along...

"Let's imagine a possible scenario." Clearly, Sesai was spending too much time at the University, he was starting to talk like Lesami. "You know, at the Battle of Deralia, Alek fired on the Vindicta, taking out the bridge. Lesami was either killed in the blast, or by the Jedi strike team shortly afterward. Yes?"

Nisotsa shifted in her seat, trying to force back the unease tingling across her neck — she didn't like thinking about that. "Go on."

"Right. Let's assume, the blast didn't kill Lesami. Let's also assume, the Jedi didn't kill Lesami either. Let's assume she was injured, knocked unconscious, and that the Jedi escaped with her, in custody."

"...Okay?"

"What would they have done then?"

"Bring her to stand trial before the Senate, I assume." Lesami was guilty of treason, after all, they all were. And the Republic would want to make a big production of it, to make a statement. It would have been the trial of the millennium, it would have dominated the holonet and news broadcasts for weeks, it would have been impossible to miss. Lesami had been a far more prominent figure than Qel-Droma a generation ago, and the scandal that had been...

"Because that worked out so well for them last time."

"I highly doubt Alek would have assaulted Coruscant to rescue her." Qel-Droma's trial had been cut short when Exar Kun's fleet had arrived — Kun and Qel-Droma had ended up fighting High Council members on the Senate floor, a number of Senators killed in the cross-fire (there were surviving recordings of the event, it was a mess), millions had died in the assault on the planet. Nearly fifty years later now, and reconstruction was still on-going in some areas. Given their falling out, Alek wouldn't have done anything nearly so dramatic for Lesami.

"No, probably not," Sesai admitted with a shrug. "It would have been far more efficient for me to put together a team and bust her out, covertly. But anyway, no, go back before that. Immediately after fleeing Deralia, what would Kavar and Shan have done? Where would they have gone?"

Nisotsa frowned. From Deralia, the most efficient path would have been to go south to the Corellian Run, and take that all the way up to Coruscant. It would be the safest path to...

They'd have to pass through Hutt Space. Deralia was in space influenced by the Hutts, yes, but not under direct control of the kajidics. To get to the Run, though... If the Hutts had any idea who they were carrying... Kavar might decide it wasn't safe to travel through major hyperlanes controlled by the Hutts.

For that matter, Kavar would know the Sith had spies in the Republic. Especially on Coruscant. If needing to circle around the Hutts put him in a particularly paranoid mood...

"Dantooine." It was rather further from Deralia than Coruscant was, and getting there avoiding both Hutt and Sith space would be a pain — they'd quite nearly need to pass Coruscant on the way anyway. But, if Kavar were distracted by other concerns, felt the need to go to ground somewhere he knew he and Shan would be safe... "They might have gone to Dantooine first, before contacting the Senate. For security reasons."

Smiling, Sesai nodded. "So. Kavar and Shan hand Lesami over to the Council. The Dantooinian Council. What do they do?"

"I..." Nisotsa's mouth went dry, unpleasant tingles working up her spine. "I don't know. I doubt the Dantooinians would be satisfied handing any Jedi over to the Senate to be put through a show trial, but...what else would they have done with her?"

"Have you heard of the concept of a complete identity substitution?"

Nisotsa opened her mouth, but words failed her, so she closed it again. That... That was insane. It was barely even possible, to begin with — any alteration of a person's mind that extensive, especially a Force-sensitive as powerful as Lesami, had a limited lifespan before it inevitably collapsed. She would be surprised if it lasted more than a year or two, in the best of circumstances. Careful use of embedded compulsions might extend that time a little bit, but...

The Council on Dantooine had a reputation for making some...unconventional decisions, at times, but...that? Brainwashing Lesami? It certainly wouldn't last very long, and if they, just, released her back into the galaxy, when it inevitably failed she'd only have more reason to hate them. It was a strategy that would inevitably backfire. Catastrophically.

They couldn't have. That was... That was just mad.

(Even so, her chest ached, she could barely breathe, but they couldn't have, Lesami was...)

Nistosa licked her lips, cleared her throat. "You aren't... You're not saying they actually..."

His eyes steady on hers, sharp but warm, his voice slow and calm, Sesai said, "Cina, the Jedi leading this team? She wasn't always Cina."

She drew in a hard breath, her throat tight and hot. No, that couldn't... She could feel the sincerity on Sesai's voice, he wasn't just messing with her — and this would be a fucking awful thing to mess with her over, even Sesai wasn't that bad. But, but that simply wasn't possible. Pass over for a moment how completely insane of a thing to do that was — whatever they wanted to reprogram Lesami for, they would only have a year or so to accomplish it in, probably less — and that the Council on Dantooine was known for doing completely insane things. Hell, they'd tried to redeem Qel-Droma, and he'd actually lost himself to the Dark Side while Lesami, for all her faults, hadn't. But, they'd tried their thing with Qel-Droma well after the war was over, and he couldn't rejoin his comrades to do any further damage, but in this case—

No, set all the practical considerations aside. Lesami had died. Nobody disputed it, there'd never been any hint that—

Nisotsa hadn't felt her die.

She leaned forward, propping her elbows on her knees, rubbing at her temples.

Nisotsa hadn't been certain whether to believe the announcement of Lesami's death at first, because she hadn't felt her die — she would have expected to, before. But when it'd become more clear that Lesami was gone, she'd reasoned... Well, she had been on the opposite side of the galaxy, it wasn't easy to get further away from Dromund Kaas than Deralia. It was possible she'd simply been too far away. Sesai, who'd been in the core at the time, had theorised it was possible that they wouldn't feel it at all, if the shock of it were...spread out, or lessened somehow. Like, say, when the Vindicta had been hit, the impact had knocked her unconscious immediately, and she'd died before waking up. It was possible, if she wasn't aware of what was happening to her...

(She'd had a nightmare about that that night — the bridge torn apart, thrown into the black of space, Lesami had modded her Revan armour to survive for brief periods in vacuum, so she would have slowly frozen to death, tumbling away...)

(Sometimes she hated Sesai.)

But, of course, it was also possible that...she hadn't died. That was the simplest solution, in a way — the blithering madness of the Dantooinians actually doing such a thing aside...

"Are you certain?"

She wasn't looking, but she felt Sesai nod. "Very certain. It's her. She's alive, Nisa."

Nisotsa forced out a long breath, thick and hot and heavy. She could barely breathe but, paradoxically, felt a weight she'd hardly even recognised lift off her chest, almost dizzy with it, her fingers were shaking against her face, and...

"Nisa? Are you okay?" Sesai was projecting at her, warm and affectionate and understanding and comforting. He'd probably be all over her right now if she were on the other sofa, she'd taken the armchair for a reason — she'd never quite gotten accustomed to the Zeltron penchant for physical affection, even the innocent kind, it was too much, made her uncomfortable.

"I'm fine, Sesai. It's just..." She swallowed, took a second to firm up her voice a bit. "It's just a lot. I'll be fine." It was, just, a relief, really, she felt tears pricking at her eyes, she didn't...

(She didn't have to do this by herself.)

Nisotsa cleared her throat, dropped her hands to fold her arms over her knees. Sesai was staring at her, still projecting warm feelings at her in a steady flood, but his expression more ambiguous, concerned. "How long?"

"Until she remembers? Not sure. A few months, at the most? Certainly by the end of the year."

Again, she had to take a long, careful breath, forcing down something clawing at her throat.

"I've been keeping an eye on her and maybe...prodding, a little bit. Trying to get her to remember quicker. There's been some progress, but... Well, it could happen any day now, or it could be a few months. I can't say for certain."

Nisotsa shot Sesai a watery smile. "Oh, she's going to be so angry with you when she figures it out."

Smirking back at her, a shoulder shifting in a shrug, he admitted, "Probably, yeah. But that's okay. I'm willing to take one for the team. Besides, I'm not really pushing that hard. There's no rush — far as I can tell, there's no particular reason we need Lesami back right now. If it takes a few months for the Cina identity to crack, and it takes a few months after that for her to get her head back on straight, well, then it takes a few months. We can wait."

"I'm not certain the Republic can." And if Alek had the time to focus on domestic politics, no, that wouldn't be good for anybody.

Sesai snorted. "You realize the shit-storm Sami appearing is going to cause back home? The way I see it, the weaker the Republic is when that happens, the better. I don't want to have to deal with infighting and a Republic invasion at the same time."

Wincing, she nodded reluctantly — she didn't like it, but he might have a point. "Okay, we'll do it your way. Or, Yuthura's way — I'm assuming sitting back and waiting for her to come back to herself was her idea."

"Eh, sort of. Far as I can tell, she assumed that was what I would do, we didn't actually discuss it. She's studied these things, she must be aware putting too much stress on such a complex compulsion could have devastating side-effects if they...collapse too energetically, let's say. And she'd be aware I've read the same texts she has, so, it wasn't necessary to clarify the matter."

"Right." Nisotsa hadn't known that, actually, but she hadn't spent nearly as much time studying Sith sorcery as Sesai had — she'd been too focused on politics, and had never had the talent for sorcery Lesami and Sesai had to begin with. She might have guessed it would be emotionally stressful, which was reason enough to be cautious, but... "I suppose I shouldn't see her, then." She wasn't nearly as adept as Sesai with deception, after all, especially when it came to things as intense as this, she might not be able to get through a conversation without revealing who Lesami was.

For some reason, Sesai seemed amused. "It might be difficult to explain to the rest of the crew why Cina is having a meeting with the exiled Sith Minister of State. And, Shan knows who Cina is, she might flip a shit and run to the Temple in a panic. Just a guess here, but I think it's pretty likely the Dantooinians didn't tell the High Council what they did with Lesami."

...No, they probably didn't — the High Council had political obligations to the Senate, and were far less likely to take mad, desperate gambles than the Dantooinians were. They likely would have forbidden such a gambit. The High Council probably knew now, after it was too late to stop it, but if they had reason to believe "Cina" was reverting to her old self they'd probably shut the project down.

Shutting the project down here meant taking custody of Lesami and handing her over to the Senate for trial. As much as Nisotsa might want to see her with her own eyes, to touch her, to know, it wasn't worth it.

"Right." Swallowing down her irritation, she shook her head to herself. It'd been, what, going on nine months now. She could wait a couple more. "It can wait that long, though? I mean... How is she?"

"Good, actually." Sesai sounded slightly surprised saying it, shading the flood of warmth he was still throwing into the air around him a little — a pleased sort of surprise, but still. "Better than I had any reason to expect, honestly. I think... Her recovery from the substitution has slowed, a bit, and I suspect it's mostly because she's convinced herself she doesn't really want to remember. Because she knows she was miserable, and she's actually doing pretty well now, so she doesn't want to go back. She knows it's inevitable, she's not resisting it, just..." He shrugged. "Maybe she would have been Lesami again sooner if I hadn't talked her into getting psychiatric treatment, but I'm not sorry."

A shocked, chirp of a laugh burst past her lips before she could stop it. "You didn't!" She knew, Sesai had been concerned for Lesami for literally decades, the native Zeltron telepathy making her struggle with depression far more obvious to him than it was the rest of them. (Most of them had still noticed, though few realised how bad it was.) Sesai had actually vented to Nisotsa about how he wanted to suggest Lesami get treatment, but knew that she wouldn't admit she needed it to save her life, that she'd just get angry with him and avoid him until he dropped it. The two of them, along with Yenish and Qleśtshaj and even Yuthura, had been trying to subtly prod her about it for years now, but they hadn't been getting anywhere. "Oh you sneaky, brilliant bastard. She's going to be so angry with you. She will literally set you on fire."

"Yeah, I know." Sesai didn't sound particularly concerned about that — and he probably should be, about the fire, some of the things Lesami could do with sorcery were just plain terrifying. "Worth it, though."

"I'm not arguing, just glad I'm not taking the heat for it."

"Oh, if it's Sami, I don't mind taking a hit here and there." He winked, slow and suggestive; Nisotsa rolled her eyes, a stubborn smile ruining the gesture a bit, but she couldn't help it. "I'm not too worried, though. Maybe it's just Cina, and she'll go back to normal after — or maybe a result of the shock of kind-of-sort-of dying, even if she doesn't remember it — but she's kind of mellowed out a little. Don't get me wrong, she's still fucking terrifying when she wants to be, she's just... I don't know."

"Mellowed out how?" Because that was hard to imagine, really — Lesami was very...intense, always had been.

"Well, she can actually slow down and relax for two seconds, for one thing. But that might be because she has far fewer things demanding her attention right now, I don't know. But then there's..." Sesai frowned to himself, his lips quirking with a little hum. "It seems really weird to me, but maybe I just missed it. You spent more time around her when we were younger — did she ever give the impression she liked kids? like, at all?

Nisotsa ticked up an eyebrow. "Ah, no, not really. As soon as she graduated out, she avoided the childrens' levels whenever possible." Which she'd always thought was very silly, she'd teased Lesami over it now and again. "Not that she hated kids, exactly, she just didn't know what to do with herself around them, I think. And found them kind of boring, I guess. Why?"

"She's at the Alderaanian Consulate right now," Sesai said, pointing over his shoulder in the general direction of the core world embassies. "Oh, Cina, the fake identity, she's Alderaanian, the Jedi made it legal and everything, just in case someone goes sniffing around. Anyway, she's there right now, with one of the Tarisian refugees — a rutian Twi'lek, thirteen to fifteen or so, goes by Mission. At least, I assume 'Mission' isn't her real name, I don't actually know for sure. She grew up off the grid, it's possible if she had a different name she's forgotten it. Anyway, she's precious, the mouth on that kid, honestly, she's great, I love her."

"Focus, Sesai."

"Right, right, sorry. Going to the Consulate, with Mission and Sasha. Cina's ship, they stole it back on Taris, and in the cargo hold they found a Force-sensitive Mandalorian kid — younger than Mission, seven to ten, maybe, we're not sure. The ship used to belong to some Exchange trash, the previous owners killed Sasha's family, and she's been hiding in the ship ever since. She's very sneaky — we're talking Shadow or Inquisitor shite, more like Shadows in the feel of it, but better than most Inquisitors. Seriously, she was walking around in the Enclave on Dantooine and none of the Jedi noticed she was there. A few of them got a vague feeling there was something there a few times, but nothing concrete."

Nisotsa felt her eyes widen — that was seriously impressive. The Jedi had a small number of members trained in stealth and subterfuge, intended to investigate corporations or local governments without showing their hand, but Inquisitors tended to have an edge over the average Shadow. (Not to mention, Shadows generally weren't trained to be assassins if necessary; every single Inquisitor, on the other hand, was very, very deadly.) But for an untrained child to be able to do such a thing, at such a young age...

Well. That was seriously fucking impressive. The girl had potential, there was no doubt about that.

"I'm guessing you intend to snatch her up for an apprentice at some point." This Sasha was probably still a little too young for Sith training — though, with how seriously traumatised she must be and how developed her skills already were, that probably didn't matter — but she doubted Sesai would be able to help himself.

"Alas, I already have an adorable new apprentice. Picked her up on Dantooine."

...She probably should be surprised, but she wasn't, really. "You did such a good job impersonating a Jedi, they actually let you take a Padawan?"

"She's graduated, technically, but yes, I suppose." Sesai shrugged, as though he hadn't done anything completely absurd at all. Bloody madman. "She doesn't need much in the way of training, actually, she's very good. Could use some work on her sorcery, I suppose, but give that girl some real experience and she's going to be an absolute monster with a lightsaber. Just, Juhani decided she didn't want to do the Temple Jedi thing, but she doesn't know enough about how the real world works to support herself as a wanderer. So, most of what I'll be teaching her is dealing with normal people and getting by on your own, which isn't really Jedi stuff. Unless you're a Shadow or a Watchman, I guess."

Nisotsa had hardly heard half of those last couple sentences, perking up at the name. No, it couldn't be... "Juhani?"

"Er, yes?"

"And you found her on Dantooine."

"Yep. Poor kid, Enclaves that small everybody knows everybody, and she did not get along with most of them."

She managed to hold in a guilty wince. "Cathar, white fur, eyes yellow with flecks of orange?"

Sesai blinked. "How did you know that?"

Nisotsa let out a short huff, shaking her head to herself. Apparently, Juhani had managed to get to Dantooine, and had succeeded in her drive to become a Jedi — even if it sounded like she hadn't had the easiest time along the way. "The Force-sensitive girl we found on Taris, the one we sent on to Dantooine? She was a Cathar named Juhani."

"Oh, the one you and Lesami found in..." Sesai trailed off, delicately, clearly uncertain if he wanted to speak of that warehouse directly. It had been...not good. That was the first time Nisotsa had touched the Dark Side, and still the furthest she'd ever been pushed into it — she'd nearly lost herself entirely, for a moment. If Lesami hadn't been there, if she hadn't stopped her, Nisotsa didn't know what might have happened. "Huh. I want to say that's one hell of a coincidence, but there aren't that many Jedi on Dantooine, so."

There was no such thing as coincidence. Not for people like them.

"Anyway, what I was saying before, Cina-slash-Lesami is at the Alderaanian Consulate right now, with Mission and Sasha. She's sponsoring Mission for refugee status, under her custody. And Sasha? She's adopting Sasha."

Nisotsa stared.

Sesai stared right back, his expression open and sincere. "Really. I'm not making this up."

"Lesami..." Her voice petered out, the strangeness of what she was saying stealing the words from her. "Lesami...has a daughter."

Slowly, flatly, "Yep."

"A Mandalorian daughter."

"Mm-hmm. From a warrior clan, even, she's a Sulem."

"...Really."

"Hey, I'm as shocked as you. I've just been rolling with it."

Blankly, Nisotsa's eyes were drawn out the window, toward the core embassies, not really seeing the cityscape before her. She tried to imagine Lesami and a little Mandalorian girl, and, just... "I have absolutely no idea how to process this."

"Yeah, you're telling me."

From there, their conversation wrapped up pretty quickly. Sesai couldn't stay too long, eventually his crewmates would notice he was missing — his adorable new apprentice was probably already wondering where the hell he was, he admitted, but she could wait, it was good character-building (whatever the hell that meant). Not to mention, he'd need to clean up, sneak back into the office he'd left his Jedi clothes in and make himself presentable again. SecInt was watching Nisotsa's people while they were on Coruscant, as much as they could. An ordinary Zeltron man spending a couple hours alone with her wasn't inherently suspicious; a Jedi traveling with Bastila Shan meeting with the deposed Minister of State of the Sith Empire, though, would definitely raise eyebrows.

(Of course, the former should raise eyebrows too, but Nisotsa was almost positive SecInt didn't realise she was asexual. Very few people did.)

With a warm, lingering hug from Sesai, which Nisotsa huffed and rolled her eyes about — she didn't actually mind, it was just how they were — he was gone.

Nisotsa stared out the long windows, Republic City glittering brilliant in the early afternoon sunlight. Lesami had managed to get a flat with a pretty clear view of most of the capital, so she could actually make out the diplomatic district from here. She could even make out the wider, greener avenue that held the embassies of the Core Founders, though she couldn't pick out Alderaan's — she would recognise, she'd been there often enough, she was simply too far away. Nisotsa didn't know how long it would take to get through the exams and interviews and paperwork, it was possible Lesami was still there. She closed her eyes, reached into the Force, stretched out...

...and froze. She was certain she was capable of picking out Lesami from here, it shouldn't even be difficult. To just...know she was there. To make sure, to feel she was alive for herself. But she shouldn't. Making contact directly through the Force, she might push Lesami too hard, bring the delicate balance of false memories and compulsions the Jedi had forced on her crashing down all at once. If that passing comment from Sesai was to be believed, that could get very messy.

At the very least, they should avoid risking such a thing while she was on Coruscant. It would probably be quite dramatic, and if Shan ran to the Council... Lesami likely wouldn't be able to escape. Especially not while distracted by what would be a very confusing psychological experience.

No, she couldn't. Nisotsa had to simply trust Sesai.

Which was easier than it probably should be, given that Sesai was a bloody spy. He wouldn't lie about this. Not to Nisotsa.

Thiqshmallu found her in Lesami's bedroom a few minutes later, sitting on the bed and blankly staring at the walls. The girl hesitated at the threshold, not quite stepping through the door, awkward tension radiating from her. From the shadows of her hood, she glanced around, eyes flicking from Nisotsa, to the Jedi-style cloak discarded on the floor, to Nistosa, to the shelves stocked with datacards by the dozens, to Nisotsa, to the gloves sitting folded on the windowsill (Alek's, he must have left them here before Duro), to Nisotsa, to the dark shimmersilk dress hanging from the back of the desk chair, to Nisotsa, to the roll of gree spice sitting out on the nightstand (because of course Lesami had left it out in the open).

"Master," the girl muttered, then paused for a second — Nisotsa got the feeling she wanted to say something, but wasn't certain whether she should. Finally, "We're ready to move."

"Yes."

"Is something wrong?"

...She probably shouldn't tell Thiqshmallu. Not because she didn't trust her, just... Well, Thiqshmallu was very young, still, she might do something reckless. "No, nothing's wrong. I... I'm having a moment of nostalgia, I suppose. You know, I spent a fair bit of time here, when I was your age." She'd probably shared a bed with Lesami more nights than any of her lovers (with the possible exceptions of Alek and Sesai), in fact, she'd practically lived out of this flat for months at a time. Of course, she didn't mean she'd shared a bed with Lesami in the euphemistic sense, she just meant literally.

Although...kind of in the euphemistic sense, maybe? In all honesty, she wasn't entirely certain what the line was where something qualified as a sexual encounter. She was well aware most people would think her relationships with Lesami and a couple other friends over the years quite strange, she didn't bother trying to explain it.

"We should get going, though." She expected they'd get held up briefly passing through Axum and Brentaal, they usually were — security in many of the old core worlds was very tight these days, though still insufficient to crack military masking tech. Nisotsa slowly stood, but paused for a second, plucking something off of the dresser before making for the door. "I want you to hold on to something for me."

Her lips twisting with a Sith frown, Thiqshmallu nodded. Nisotsa took the girl's arm, slipped over her fingers a bracelet of braided steel, hugging beads of red and purple and green (the colours of House Thul and Nisotsa's eyes). When the metal first made contact with her skin, Thiqshmallu jumped, eyes widening a little — picking up a Force echo of some kind, probably — though she didn't speak until it was settled around her wrist. Shaking her head a little, as though clearing it, she asked, "Whose was this?"

"Lesami's." Nisotsa's lips pulled into a smirk at the way Thiqshmallu twitched, staring at her wide-eyed with disbelief. "I made it for her, around... We were a little younger than you are now, I suppose." Sometimes she thought Thiqshmallu was younger than she was, it was too easy to lose track of the years...

Thiqshmallu brought up her other hand, fingers running over the bracelet, almost reverentially. "It is, Her Excellency's—" The girl cut herself off, glancing up at Nisotsa almost guiltily.

For a second, Nisotsa considered asking what that was about — she had the feeling Thiqshmallu had picked up something through the Force that she hadn't expected, but wasn't comfortable speaking of. (Or even quite thinking about.) But it probably wasn't her business. Well, it probably was her business, given it'd been an echo attached to this particular object, but she doubted it was a pressing matter. Thiqshmallu would inform her, or she wouldn't. "That's not yours to keep permanently. I am going to want it back, in time." To give it to Lesami, when she returned. "I just want you to hold onto it for me for a while."

Her head dipping in a slow, cautious nod, she said, "Yes." Again, Nisotsa caught the silent my lord.

Nisotsa huffed. "Well, let's get going then. We have a lot of work to do." The Commenor meeting, and Cumal and Shawken, and now preparing for the inevitable chaos when Lesami seemingly returned from the dead...

And, she thought darkly, slipping through the halls of the apartment building, she had a message to write — a certain devious Twi'lek had clearly been holding out on her.

Poor Nisotsa. Always surrounded by idiots and crazy people.

[COP-ordered life] — An example of a basic three-letter classifying scheme for all kinds of life. What exactly this means isn't really important. Most species that are anything like humans at all will be COP.

You might have noticed that referring to the Mjatha, one of their allies outside of Republic-explored space that have been name-dropped a few times, Nisotsa called the (im)possibility of them taking the Star Forge "reclaiming" it. Yes, the dominant species of the Mjatha Cooperative is the Rakata (though they don't call themselves that anymore). The collapse of the Infinite Empire involved a devastating civil war among the Rakata-dominated colony worlds in the vicinity of Lehon, but the population wasn't entirely wiped out. They were deeply changed by the experience, though. Slowly, over the course of millenia, the survivors reorganised, and eventually stitched together into a new, and entirely different, interstellar society.

Lehon, though, is not part of the Cooperative, and the Mjatha want nothing to do with the Star Forge, seeing it as a relic of their own near self-destruction.

Also, I tweaked the Sith conlanging somewhat. The grammar is actually rather interesting, but the phonology needed work. (Honestly, whoever came up with it went out of their way to make a point about it not having labial stops, but the name of their homeworld is KorriBan! Come on, guys!) I rebalanced the vowels, and redesigned the consonant system. There are three primary stop consonants — /t/ /k/ /q/ — which can be followed with either of the two sibilants — /s/ /ʃ/ (spelled "s" and "sh") — to create two series of affricates (spelled stop plus sibilant); all four places of articulation also have a fricative, historically lenition from a following front vowel — /ç/ /x/ /χ/ /ɕ/ ("(t/k/q)h" and "ś"). There are two lateral sounds, a tap and an approximant ("l" "ll"), and three nasals (/m/ /n/ /ɲ/ ("ń")). The spelling is phonemic, though not necessarily phonetic.

As an example, Nisotsa's apprentice's name is spelled Thiqshmallu — this would be pronounced [çiʂ.ma(j).ʎu], roughly "heesh-mah-you". Nerds will notice the affricate /qʃ/ was fused to form a retroflex fricative; this does not always happen, but it is frequent when followed by another consonant.

My changes made to the language mean some canon terms would have to be changed — like Dromund Kaas and, yes, Korriban, which would be Tolmûtshkas and Kolwâ respectively — but I'll continue to use the canon spellings to prevent confusion.

I realise doing all that conlang work just to have a system to make up alien names is silly, but this is me we're talking about. I'm a nerd. You all know this.

Now I'm tempted to redo the Sith Code with my own version of the language. No, Sandra, you don't need to do that. Bad.

And, yeah, I know, took forever to get an update. Depression is a thing, and I keep getting distracted by other projects. It doesn't help that this chapter went on way longer than I thought it would, damn, Nisotsa, wordy bitch. I really hope it doesn't take another four months to finish the next one, but, we'll have to see.