XXXI: Snacks
Master Jordyan Bell stood before Nima, pacing back and forth. His body seemed made of angles, his lips flat, his eyes lidded as if squinting at something he couldn't quite see. He was certainly the most interesting thing in this small, dusty corridor. Han and the others had had time to dust in theory, but they'd been too busy.
Nima wasn't going to do the dusting either, so perhaps she had no room to judge.
"I apologize for having this conversation while you were sleeping, Nima."
"Master, you don't have to include me in everything," Nima insisted.
"I want to, though. My Master did so with me." Bell almost kept the pain out of his voice, sharp and burning. "But we also have very little time left, and quite a lot to do."
"What did you decide?"
"We won't be going to Governor Vorru, because he's a corrupt snake and any deal will give him power. Though we're also aware that by not involving him at all, he'll be able to take credit for all the good we do without having to associate with us. He'll be a neutral party, forced out and thus not covered in the tar that'll hit everyone, especially the Diktat. But his help would come at too high a price, and I don't know if we can connect him to any of this. He clearly let it happen, because Zekka arrived before the plague began, and that couldn't have happened without Vorru knowing." He explained it slowly, as if outlining the points of a lecture, and Nima nodded along, understanding the logic.
She understood the emotions behind it as well. Their job wasn't to solve every problem on Corellia. However, Master Bell had rightfully pointed out that if the Jedi weren't safe and secure and Correlia didn't maintain its neutrality, than it was all for, if not nothing, than not enough. Nima didn't know what the right thing to do was, but she agreed with Bell's objectives.
"Next, there's the matter of the protestors. We reluctantly decided that there's not enough we can do for each other so late in the plague. But it means they will be crushed. I've seen it before. There will be mass arrests, the media will discredit them. Someone will have turned over a trash can and it will turn into a mass riot which justifies decades-long prison sentences." Bell spoke slowly and inexorably, like a fire climbing a building where all the people were trapped on the top floor. "I can see it all, with and without the Force, but what good would it do for them to be associated with us? We're members of a revolution, and they might yet be viewed as innocent of that at least."
"I understand your desire to help, but I think you're right that we might have other focuses." Nima said it as formally as if she was delivering a report, or casting a verdict in a trial. Bell nodded back at her equally gravely, and for a long moment he was silent. Contemplating this.
"You understand the reasons in your head, but what about your heart? What about in the Force?" Bell tapped his forehead for a moment, then brought his hand out. "What does it feel like in the Force to say: I will abandon them to their fate because it is more convenient to both of us? Surely, if Corellia is to change, it needs people like the protestors."
"If the Diktat is discredited, though, won't they have to appoint a new one?"
"They who?"
"Well, the Senator will have an excuse to return, won't he? He loves his home, and--"
"Now we are depending on the goodwill of a single man who has plenty of reasons to object to us." Bell interrupted her softly, and she could have talked over him. He frowned, and added, "I apologize for interrupting."
"Did Master Secura already say all of this?"
"Yes. She also said we should keep away from the Green Jedi for the same reason, so that whatever we do they aren't associated with us and can more easily negotiate with Senator Bel Iblis. I brought up his wife, and she frowned and asked me what I thought would happen to their marriage when Bel Iblis, as he always has before, puts his ideals before everything else." Bell laughed at that. "And I had to admit that it did sound like him. He's a stubborn man, and not one I can always admire."
Nima took a step towards Master Bell. "So you've told me what we aren't doing, but what are we doing?"
"There are files we can access of CorSec's that will reveal some of their dirty deeds, and we also have access to their patrol schedules. We can make sure they're out of the way when this all happens. That'll force the Diktat Guards to either stop protecting certain locations or cede the city at large to us… and the communications we will be sending via the HoloNet. Combine that with a threat to the Diktat and his safety, and he'll be forced to make the same choices we have."
Nima looked at Bell, worried for a moment as he stared at the wall with an expression bordering on harsh. "Who to help? What to stand for? When the world is falling apart, what do you grab onto, what do you hold close? I believe that Thomree thinks he's about to solve all his problems in a single stroke. Does he know about Palpatine? I think he must, but does he know what that means? Can he know?"
"He should know enough." Nima frowned. "So should the gang leaders. There were three leaders besides Eunie, and at least one of them should know more."
"All of them know more than they think they do. It's the nature of such operations." Jordyan Bell pursed his lips as if he were sucking on a lemon. "You hope to maintain secrecy, but people have eyes. They can be paid not to see things, but I believe in your ability to uncover the truth. We'll also need your help in planting some listening devices, later on in the week."
"I can do that. I assume everyone's going to be very busy." Nima smiled. "We all have our tasks, and I promise I'll do my best to complete mine."
"No need to be so formal. Of course you will." Bell nodded twice. "Now, you'll need to make your way down to a backup holding facility. I can send you instructions…"
******
"Good morning!" Nima called out, as she stepped into a room with flickering lights and dark, one way transparisteel that was resistant even to blaster fire. The infertile female Selonian was dressed in a deep red skirt and long blue leggings, neither of which she needed. Her fur, especially around her head, was an overgrown mess, and her eyes were hard and empty. Nima reached out in the Force, but couldn't get a grip on her.
For a moment she suspected that the Selonian was Force-sensitive before realizing it was more that she was reticent. "Leyli the… Lavish?"
"Yes."
"I've read that you were in charge of distributing the treatment to the dealers. You and the 'Sellies.' Though, is that really your name?"
"Yes. Of course it is," Leyli spat. For a moment Nima was able to get a grip on her emotions, the sharp edges, the careful way she wielded them, and then it slipped away.
"So, did you know that there is some sort of dangerous compound in the treatment?"
Leyli didn't reply.
"We can't be sure what it is, but we have found differences between this treatment and the official one."
There was no reply.
"We are sure these are negative."
"Are you?"
Leyli sounded almost bored as she stared at Nima.
"Almost certain. Everyone we've met says that Zekka is a nasty-minded man. Do you really think he'd get involved in something like this otherwise?"
"Patches is vile," Leyli agreed.
Everyone said that Zekka was half-human. This seemed slightly absurd, but perhaps there were species where the interactions worked like that. It wasn't most species, and even those where it could be mocked up using advanced science it was more a matter of choosing one species or another.
"Then why--"
"Money isn't. And besides, stupid Jedi, we aren't as affected by this simple 'plague.'"
"I've seen reports of plenty of Selonians…"
"How many?" Leyli snorted and said. "I'm done talking to you unless you have something interesting to say."
*******
"Interesting. Are you going to keep on glaring at me?" Nima asked, frowning at the thickset, muscular human man in front of her. He had sunburnt skin, and was dressed in a baggy shirt and pants, his dark grey eyes boring a hole into her. "Are you going to say anything?"
"Why should I talk to some fucking cu--"
"Cut out the blue language," Nima said, looking at his collar as she did so. All of the three main prisoners had a collar that would knock them out on command, though there were no doubt ways around it… but probably not ways that they had access to.
"Blue language? Are you kidding me?"
"Yes. You were in charge of security, Mr. Ophina. An interesting job, though you failed pretty badly didn't you."
"Kid, alien-scum, just shut the--"
"Yet you worked with Zekka." Nima shook her head, as her lekku twitched into a sort of shrug.
"He pays. Do you?"
Nima rubbed her eyes, already tired of him, but not at all done.
*******
"Are you done asking obvious questions?" the tall, thin man--Fitzwil Fugin--asked. He was as pale as the moonlight, and erratic as the orbit of a Karladian Moon. "Of course I know everything there is to know about the treatment: of course I will not tell you any of this, how shall we say, knowledge. In fact, I'll sing a song about how stupid you are. It begins, 'Oh Jedi, Oh Jedi, Do You Have Tentacles For Brains?'"
******
"What do you think will happen, Leyli, when Palpatine moves in? He's been associated with High Human Culture, hasn't he?"
"Ah, what do I care about Selonia? What's there but my sister, going on and on about how cause she can pop out squalling little brats, she gets to be Queen and I get to be a guard. It'd serve her right, honestly, to see her brought low--"
"And the Corellian Selonians, who don't live in family groups and don't act like that?" Nima asked.
"We're survivors."
"So are Twi'leks, doesn't mean we don't suffer." Nima was aware that while she was keeping her temper, her words had gotten away with her. But she leaned forward and said, "I'm not interested in catching all of your underlings, all of your workers. I'm interested in finding out where some of the supply was that we didn't retrieve. As long as it's out there, people are being hurt. You're not making any more money off of it. What would it hurt to tell me?"
"Everything. Zekka'd make a snack of you."
******
"Zekka, that alien bas--"
Nima looked at him, eyes narrowed, and Ophina changed his words. "Zekka has your number, girl. Zekka has all your numbers, you Jedi scum."
Nima's face hid her excitement as she whispered, "Oh yeah?"
*****
"Verse the fifth: Dancing around with a glowstick and a prayer, thinking you're really a player--"
"You know, that's not a bad rhyme," Nima said, having gotten distracted at some point in this interminable interview by singing that was really not as bad as she thought. If only all of it wasn't devoted to insulting her, both personally and as a Jedi in general. "But that doesn't say anything about your skill as a chemist. It must have been something, to lead the people who created the--"
"Lead the people who created?!" Fitzwil Fugin shouted. "I am the foremost chemist in the underworld! Subject to no control except that which allows me to make greater wealth. I could whip up a drug that'd scare the blue right out of you."
"So you made it? That's very impressive," Nima said.
"Of course I did!" Fugin said.
"It will be interesting to see what it does, then. We have samples, at last, and pure ones," Nima said, very slowly.
Fugin, as unbalanced as he was, realized what she was saying and stared at her with something new and oddly welcome.
Nima wasn't a cruel person, but after four full verses, she liked to see his eyes widen. Fugin leaned back in his seat. "I…"
"Did you really create this entire formula? It would be very impressive if you had. Certainly more talent and concentration than I have," Nima said, with benign equanimity. "A meddling fool with a most senseless gaze/ unused to suffering, wasting days/ Idling in poses, practicing telling lies/ babbling nonsense about, what was it?"
Fugin did not reply. He was still silent when Nima left, but sweating, panicked, at the edge of saying something he'd regret, Nima guessed.
At the edge, but not there yet.
*******
An hour of interrogation later, and Nima's headache was starting to get worse.
"So you have no idea how they got to other cities?"
"Of course not." Leyli leaned forward. "Really, you aren't so dumb for a Jedi, but you need to see the practical facts of it. You're not going to murder me. Zekka would kill me."
"But punishment is a thing I… I have influence over," Nima said, aware of how pathetic and unconvincing she sounded, even though she was telling the closest thing she could to the truth.
"I'm done talking, kid. You should get a drink and leave me. Now."
*******
"Yeah! He has Jedi killing weapons that will… wait, wait, no, I mean."
"What weapons?" Nima asked.
"Go fuck yourself."
"Do not--"
"Go fuck yourself up your loose, flappy--"
Nima stood up, face burning. She was torn between rage and humiliation, and in neither case could she be there for even a minute longer. She turned to the door and stormed out before she said something, before she did something, that everyone would regret.
******
There were five or six CorSec members guarding the place and securing it, with access to far more than that should an attack come. One of them, Sergeant Kybin, was waiting outside when Nima stepped out. Kybin was an older woman, and looked at the shaking Nima with pity.
Nima's eyes were marred with tears, and she couldn't stop shaking, couldn't help but be glad she hadn't heard the end of that--but she didn't have to to know what he'd been about to say. She'd heard cruel things before, but she was thirteen!
"Ma'am. I heard. We've gotten good information from them today, but perhaps you could… pause for now?" Kybin's face was a blank, life-beaten piece of durasteel, but Nima could feel the fury beneath her words.
"Please don't… I don't… I don't think it'd help if he fell down any stairs." Nima was thinking of the holovids she'd seen. Wasn't that how cops punished particularly terrible suspects?
"Those kind never understand anything but power. If he's not punished for what he just said, he'll think you don't matter."
"I'll take that risk, and so will you," Nima said, though she knew her voice didn't come out convincing to anyone. She felt ill, and her headache was now pounding and brutal. Then she added, "Please."
"Of course, of course."
Nima couldn't tell if it was the truth, and by this point she couldn't care. She hadn't had lunch, and she'd barely stopped for a bathroom break. All she had to show for all of that was a headache. Nima licked her dry lips and decided that now was the time to head back to the ship while she still could. It wasn't as if she could do all that much to help anymore now. Not today. She'd said all she could, and needed to rest. Perhaps.
Or perhaps she could try one more time, though not with Ophina. She could--
Nima blinked. "What is Lark doing here?"
A moment after she said that, he turned the corner and hurried over towards her.
"Ah, Nima, there you are. This way, this way." He gestured imperiously for her to follow him, and she did. She looked him over, but there was nothing in how he moved that suggested danger, and his heart was clear and sunny as ever. "Bell, Master Secura, and I finished up our part of the message earlier than expected, and he agreed with my suggestion that you probably hadn't bothered to have lunch. So I decided to bring you something to munch."
"Please, no rhymes," Nima begged, thinking of the song she'd heard not that long ago. She winced, but smiled in gratitude. "You really didn't have to--"
"Of course I didn't. I wanted to. We're friends, Nima."
Nima smiled at that.
"And as a friend, I have this to offer." He pulled a bag out of his pocket. "Take three of these for your headache, and it should clear up."
"How did you know?" Nima asked.
"You were squinting a little, and more importantly, there's this little wrinkle on your brow, around where your lekku start. It's a tell, I think? I knew someone who was very good at reading people, and there was a weekend where he was in orbit on Coruscant. He told me about the Ryloth campaign. So, uh, I guessed right!"
Nima gave a crisp nod, as he turned. "This way," he called out, and then threw open a door.
Nima stepped into what looked like a break room, complete with a caf machine next to a sink, and a small fridge, as well as a table, upon which rested a spread of food that included several pieces of Munchfungus piled up, a great quantity of cold meat and fruit, several chocolate pastries, and what looked like a bowl of soup.
"As I said, no lunch, and so we put this together. You don't have to try the soup if you don't want to, but it was Mynock. Can you really eat silicon and get anything out of it?"
"Sort of? It's supposed to taste good, but how did you get any?"
"Spacers sell them. We found a few left over. Humans can't eat them, after all."
Nima nodded and sat down. "You can eat some of this, right? You'll eat with me?"
"Did you think all of this was for you?" Lark asked.
Nima blushed at the teasing tone of his voice, and sat down, still smiling faintly as she grabbed a piece of munch-fungus and a glass of water, taking out three headache pills and downing them. Then she enjoyed the earthy savor of the munch-fungus. It was a blend she hadn't quite tasted before, a little granier than she was used to.
"I think they cut it with barley? It's a Correllian Twi'lek thing, I think. That's what Master Secura said."
Nima nodded appreciatively, despite the guilt gnawing at her for chatting when she should--in theory at least--have been shoving down her food as fast as possible to get to another task. She pushed the guilt down instead, and said, "It's very good."
"So, what's this about Mynock? And for that matter, rocks and grass?"
"Do you have a holopad? So I can double-check what I learned? I wasn't the best student of biology."
"Ha. Would you say your biology is… beastly?" Lark waggled his eyebrows.
"No. No I wouldn't, Lark," Nima said, but her smile grew larger.
"It's good to see you so… lively."
"Stop. Please stop." Lark handed Nima a holopad, and she scrolled through the information, and confirmed that she was roughly, vaguely, right. "So, scientists still aren't sure how it works, actually."
"Huh?"
"It's known that it goes into one of our stomachs, and things that can't be processed as easy wind up in the second stomach. Which is few enough things." Nima didn't even really think about it as her 'stomachs.' It was just her stomach. "It gets turned into, uh." Nima looked up the term. "Caloric energy? Which isn't all the nutrients you need to survive healthily, but if you're eating rocks and dirt, you're probably not going to be getting a healthy diet anyways." Nima shrugged.
"So, it works well?"
"It's super efficient. Scientists apparently still haven't figured out how to replicate it that… well? It's a mystery, some element of it just doesn't line up, or only works in a Twi'lek's system. It probably has something to do with genes, I think?" She ate a little more, and then pulled the Mynock soup towards her and searched around for a spoon. Then she began to eat it. The silicon made it taste a little like rock-candy, but the spicing gave it real flavor.
"Nobody understands it?" Lark asked, a little baffled.
"No. Not really." Nima shrugged.
"So, I… the work didn't go well, did it?" Lark asked. "You looked like you'd seen a ghost."
"One of them was cursing me out. The, um, impolite words, for, uh…"
"Does he have shoelaces?" Lark asked, very calmly as he stood up.
"Um, yes?"
"I'm going to tie them together. I'll be right back."
"No, no. You don't need to do that. It's stressful. Even though I'm trying to rile them up, a part of me wants to help them… well, help two of them." Nima bit her lip. "One of them's estranged from her family--"
"Does it have anything to do with her scheming to murder thousands of people?" Lark asked. "Listen, there's a limit to these things, aren't there? I don't know. It's your right to do anything you want to do as long as it gets answers, but you're enemies, aren't you?"
"But a debate needs a rapport. It needs something to tie us together, even if it's hostile." Nima grabbed a pastry and ate it slowly. "It also needs something to distract them, so that they're paying less attention to… to." Nima sat up, grabbing another piece of munch-fungus and quickly preparing a sandwich and fruit spread on a napkin. "I got it! I have to go to CorSec. Perhaps their underlings can be made to talk?"
"Talk about what?" Lark stood up, panic on his voice. "Sit down and eat, you--"
"Talk about what their favorite foods are! Can you help me get together the food?"
"The… food?"
"A bribe, a distraction, a taunt! Food and the right words will see me through, I'm sure of it now!" Nima declared this with her biggest grin, already imagining the look on their faces when she tried to bribe them with nothing more than food… but she had other parts of the plan, and once some of them were distracted, she'd strike. This was going to be so much fun!
"Nima, but I said not to… and there she goes."
******
Nima was still in a good mood that night as she hopped from roof to roof, planting listening devices. She kept on having to stop when she felt someone nearing, but nobody had taught themselves to look up, apparently, even after all she'd done.
Nima felt like she was missing something too. It was clear now that the 'Treatment' that the Plague Rats were offering included some modified version of the plague itself, but all the synthesis and analysis in the world couldn't make it quite fit. There were parts of the plague that didn't make biological sense, and parts of the recovered documents that didn't seem to fit. It was a mess, and one that Nima was glad she wasn't having to analyze herself. As difficult as her work was, at least she could come at it from a different angle. She'd have to ask more about the plague tomorrow.
For the moment, the problem was that the Diktat wasn't making it easy to figure out where he was. Nima thought that that was a pretty bad thing if you were supposed to be in charge. Yes, being in one place made you a target, but if even the people trying to send you messages didn't know how…
She'd seen Master Bell and Secura muttering over their plan, and she suspected that things were coming together almost quickly enough. Almost.
They'd find the Diktat. They had to. And tomorrow she'd figure out the prisoners.
******
As they said in Holovids: round two, fight!
"What are those?"
The Selonian looked about the same, but she was more tired now, and her eyes darted around. She'd been stretched to a limit, but it wasn't the same as a breaking point.
"You don't know what they are?" Nima was eating her munch-fungus, but in front of her were crispy balls of dough filled with Selonian fruit. "And here I thought you liked them."
"Are you really trying to bribe me, girl, with a bunch of sweets?" Leyli asked.
"No. I'm just pointing out that there's things you can do besides close up." Nima pushed the food, which also included some meat pastries, towards Leyli. "There's something that doesn't make sense."
Actually, Nima was told later that it didn't make sense. "We can see Selonians are just as vulnerable as any other species, but why? It shouldn't be that way. Yet the people who distributed the false treatment, your people, only in one case had the plague. Meanwhile, you were distributing at least some of it to other cities, but there's no way it'd be in great enough quantity to actually do that much."
"It'd be enough. We were told it'd be enough," Leyli said, taking a bit of the pastry. "So the person t'ask, Twi'lek, would be Zekka."
"You were… told it would be enough? Just as you were told not to worry, and so you didn't worry?"
"Hey, I had reasons to--"
"What possible reasons could it be. What did Zekka tell you, that could have justified the risk to your own… family."
"How did you…"
"Are you going to answer me?"
"He said that if we kept calm, the plague wouldn't bother us."
"What?"
*******
"So, the stupid Twi'lek returns."
Nima didn't put any food in front of him. Instead, she sat down and began to eat, watching him. "I'm stupid, and yet you think a two-bit thug like Zekka could kill a Jedi."
Nima was honestly terrified of him. Everyone had been talking Thyne up, and meanwhile she'd hesitated to really fight someone who wouldn't stop when he lost, and who had to be impressive to get all that support from Palpatine. "Hah, and how exactly is a kid going to beat Zekka at vibroblade tag?"
She leaned back, still eating. When he reached for the food, she pulled it out of reach. If he'd truly been fed badly, rather than blandly, she wouldn't have done so. It would have been cruel. Of course, cruelty had come anyways. There was a darkening bruise on his cheek, and the worst part was that Nima could do nothing to keep CorSec from doing it again if he acted as he had. It wasn't right, in fact it was sickening, but Nima knew that if she reported it, or protested, nothing would happen. Bell could solve things, and she'd tell him… once all of this was done.
Now, though? She couldn't help but pity him despite how terrible he was. But she couldn't empathize with him. "I can cut through a vibroblade." Nima smirked at that.
"Not these ones. And I've seen him stick a person so bad they didn't get up. In a fucking heartbeat."
"Okay then." Nima leapt out of her chair. At the speed she moved, it was more like flying to Ophina. She landed on a far wall and looked at him. "So he tries to hit, then I get up on a wall and start throwing knives at him."
"You think that'd stop him, there's chemicals he can use, plus whatever weird poisons he has! Try to dodge gas, you stupid--"
"Ah, gas, good to know. We'll keep that in mind," Nima said, cooly, smiling down at the man. He looked at once as if he'd leapt for a gap he suddenly realized he couldn't clear. "If Zekka asks how I know how to get past all of his tricks, I'll tell him about you."
"Wait, no--you can't, you'll get me killed! Sure I was a fucking bastard, but you don't have to be a bi--"
Nima leapt down onto the ground and said. "Please, don't. I'm not going to do anything to hurt even people I hate, but try to at least… y'know, attempt not being a jerkface."
"A jerkface?"
"Rude words, but you've said worse." Nima turned to take the tray away. "You shouldn't, though. Goodbye, Ophina. I don't think I'll be seeing you again."
"Hey, hey kid, don't you--"
She left.
*******
If only the third meeting was going as smoothly as the first. They had both eaten, but Fugin hadn't said anything, even as Nima prodded him. She tried again after he'd finished the last fried Ilakan skin, covered in fatty grease.
It was an odd sort of choice for a chemist, shouldn't he know it wasn't good for him? "So, I did get to look things up, and based on what we can see of the plague and the plague treatment, I'm pretty sure you're going to be executed, sorry."
"What."
Nima hadn't quite come out and said that. "We can't quite understand it, like a part of it doesn't make sense, but it's all a very impressive crime against sentience. I mean it. I'm horrified, but… it is pretty well-made."
"I, er."
"Am about to launch into verse six?"
"You're making a joke about it?"
Nima nodded. "But the execution isn't a joke. It's quite serious."
"I didn't--I mean."
"You didn't?"
"I helped! But I couldn't have done that on my own!"
"What did you help with?"
Nima leaned back, watching him, waiting for him to close down again. She was sweating a little too much, again. The food she'd had was a bit spicy, and so unhealthy she could feel her stomach churn. She was also stressed, but she couldn't show that.
"I… there were ways to make it into a spray. For, I dunno. I did that part. It's the really difficult part, really. But someone clever named Moore apparently was working on, er, the treatment itself? I guess, copper, that means the plague too? I didn't know that for sure. I just had… suspicions."
Suspicions that, of course, even the eccentric had been too smart to want to confirm.
"Someone clever named Moore?" Nima asked, going cold.
"Well, he said that the 'sly Moore' was responsible for the bits I didn't understand. The magic."
Not the sly Moore, but Sly Moore.
Magic. The Force.
Oh. No.
Nima wasn't quite sprinting out of the room fast enough to blur, but it was a close thing.
Magic. Moore. Spray nozzles, which wasn't new but… it meant they wanted it to be sprayed. On who? For what purpose?
The end of Corellia? But then…
******
When she told Master Secura what she'd learned, the Jedi had carefully put on the closest they had to a hazard suit and gone to talk with Shrike. When she'd returned in an hour, Nima could feel her communicating mentally with Bell, who muttered several variations of 'drat' 'shoot' and 'fiddlesticks' after a glance at Nima.
Then he'd gathered all of the Jedi, the agents, and Han Solo together to meet in the common room.
"I've been very stupid, and missed a lot of very obvious signs. We all know the plague is not natural, right. But it's more than that." Bell sighed. "It uses the Force. More specifically, it's some sort of Sith Alchemy. Master Secura examined it closely."
Secura nodded. "I was able to figure out that it relied on fear, panic, doubt. Indecision. It fed on them. From what I can tell, and I am not a Healer, it was more deadly and virulent when there was fear and doubt in those infected or those exposed. In other words, as people panicked and gave into fear, they were easier to infect and died quicker. It's absurd, but it makes sense of everything. Those who had the false treatment were encouraged towards optimism and confidence, which significantly slowed down the plague that was in the 'treatment' as well, allowing them to spread the disease for a week, or even more, before they start to fall ill. And at that point… they can still take another dose of the treatment and extend their time. But they're made…"
"They're walking carriers!" Ekria shouted in shock. "And… the real treatment works, but can't cure it because it's only treating the biological half of it. The treatment is the cure! But not quite."
"Oh!" Nima realized a few things were fitting together. "That's why the Selonians running the drugs, and even the dealers, felt safer. They were told it was safe, and even if it wasn't true, it made it harder for them to get the plague, and when they did it worked slower." She stared at the far wall. "But that means…"
"The spray, it has to be that, right?" Han asked. "You mentioned something about that, Ekria? From the, er. Documents?"
"A ship?" Lark guessed. "If they were doing it on foot, we'd know. But if they were, say, spraying the entire city?"
"And if we reveal it, and that the false-treatment doesn't work and it happens anyways, we'd be making things even worse. But if we don't… we know they still have White," Bell pointed out. "He's going to be to blamed. Heck, the Jedi and the protestors have both been almost untouched by it. One of them didn't have access to a false treatment, was quarantined, and had the skill to notice the Force aspect of it if they were exposed… and the other were too poor to purchase the false treatments."
"They'll make perfect scapegoats. As will we if we fail," Secura said. "And in light of an entire city dying, the panic and fear will at least let the plague live on for a while yet in other cities, even with a limited supply of the 'treatment.' It won't destroy the planet, but hundreds and hundreds of thousands of deaths? It'd discredit the Diktat, it'd discredit the Governor for not seeing through the Diktat's failure. It'd destroy the Jedi, and Palpatine could just roll in, 'come up' with a cure that he no doubt has ready and waiting, one that deals with the Force aspect as well." By the end she was gritting her teeth, glaring at the bulkheads.
"How could the Diktat approve of… unless he doesn't know," Nima said, slowly. "He thinks that he's going to treat the plague in a single masterstroke, and then he can come up with a cure. If it actually worked, it'd be dramatic, wouldn't it? His very own ship, saving the day. If things go wrong, he can even be the worthless dupe, fooled by the Jedi."
"Could we just… not tell them about it not working, unless we succeed?" Ekria asked. "It'd be safer, it'd give us a failure state, considering the high likelihood that we'll make a mistake."
"No. I know it is all or nothing, but it was always going to be something like that." Bell shook his head and stood up, "When you're attempting regicide, you have to get it right the first time."
"Are we?" Master Secura asked.
"I'm not sure. It depends on what we want to do with the Diktat. Do we want him to know? Or do we want to try to capture him? Either way, the main part of the plan makes sense. Tie up CorSec, send out word of everything that's happening… and assault the manor to stop the ship from flying. If it does fly, then we'll need to shoot it down. Ekira glanced at the schematics, and while it falling and exploding would be a disaster for a district, it wouldn't doom the whole city. So we need to strike, and fast. If we could, we'd do it before they even planned on launching. But we don't know when that is."
"We can't help with that," Han said. "But we have the numbers, if we need to divide up for hijacking the holonet, and capturing the Diktat, holding down the fort, and stopping the ship. I can lead 'em, and I'm probably the best pilot in the--"
Secura snorted. "Really?"
"Well, I'm the best pilot that's probably not better used fighting an army of bad guys!" Han said. "That's what Jedi Masters should be doing, right?"
"Maybe so. Either way, we now have very little time to prepare for a strike, and if we run out of time to prepare we'll have to jump anyways," Master Secura said. "We also still don't know how everything fits together. But we have a picture, and it's a grim one."
Nima took a breath, took a bite of the snacks, and began a discussion that lasted late into the night.
What to do about the Diktat?
[] Focus on finding and capturing him. It'd be the option with more control, but it'd take more time and resources.
[] Just try to find him, in order to present him with certain information… but of course if he doesn't believe it, that'll have given away their tactical strike.
[] Write-in.
What about the holonet?
[] Reveal absolutely everything. Lay it all bare. Even if the details are disturbing. Tell the whole story.
[] Tell almost all of the story, but keep certain knowledge about Zekka and Sith Alchemy back. Make it seem like a *mostly* mundane threat.
[] Write-in.
How does Nima feel about all of this? It has been an absolutely terrible week. Month. Actually, the last year has been pretty mixed. So, Choose 1.
[] "This is fine.": Nima is okay. They're okay. They're going to win and stop the plague. Somehow. Even though they don't have an actual cure, and can only stop it from getting a lot worse, even though they're up against Sith Alchemy and a sociopathic criminal and most of CorSec. Everything's going to be alright. It definitely is. Nima certainly believes that.
[] "We got this fam.": Yes, Nima knows things are grim, but she believes in herself, and Bell, and Eida--on loan to them--and everyone else. They can do this. No two-bit criminal, no third-rate dark-side plague, is going to stop them! They just need to work together, fight together, and trust one another and nothing can defeat them. Stronger than one, stronger than two (Sith rule or no), is many. And the Jedi are many, and they will work together to solve this world's problems. Nobody can get in the way, and even if something goes wrong they can fix it. Perhaps it's a little optimistic, but… Nima has to believe in them, even when she doubts herself.
[] "'Save us!' and I'll look down and whisper 'Yes, but...'": Are there good people out there? Yes, plenty of people have suffered, Eida and Jix are good, and what evil do the dead children do? But everyone in power has been… heinous. Even the CorSec on their side beat up prisoners… who use vulgar language in front of children. Corellia is corrupt from the very top to the very bottom. It's impossibly greedy, unimaginably cruel, and strikingly undemocratic. She's going to save them all, but it's not, has never been, about deserving. She is a Jedi. She saves people. She protects people. It is what she does, and if she stops merely because they are terrible, where will that logic end? Yet it sickens her, all the same. Did the Sith really cause the hate?
[] "Take this! My love! My anger! And all of my sorrow!": Last night she felt a child die a few thousand feet from the ship. (They couldn't do anything, had to get ready--). The city rots as people desperately fight for scraps, passing around a fake cure that would destroy them, one approved by a callous Diktat. Eida was tearful and afraid for her people. Jix was negotiating between people struggling with trust, driven by fear and doubt. Han was desperately trying to keep together a ragtag band of children--Enough! In this plague, in everything wrong with Corellia, Nima sees the hand of Darth Sidious and the Sith! Nima has to stop it. Nima has to stop it. The thoughts, the feelings, they whirl around tighter and tighter. A hurricane is forming, and it will crash upon the shores with destructive force.
******
A/N: There's actually not a better or worse option, but which option is chosen does influence how Nima behaves in this final section.
