A/N said:
sorry about the delay, but I got sick and was too fuzzy brained to write. Still a bit muzzy brained, so this isn't my best work, but here's a 02:00 update:
Prologue: In His Imperial Majesty's Service (Part 3)
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The Butcher of Ariqa has returned to
Indefatigable's bridge. She stands at Academy Rest, waiting, staring into the void that lies off the bow of her flagship. The distant pinpricks of the stars meet her gaze along with the faded reflection of her own face, glacier-blue eyes, raven hair, and face that was a thing of sharp angles that almost marked her as kin to the warships of her squadron.
For lack of anything else productive to do while she awaited the Emperor's commands, the Admiral contemplated Chandrila. (For she was of a sort of officer that was often given to contemplation, a survival mechanism in deep space postings where the most exciting thing an officer could do was grow a beard. And she lacked the capability or desire to do
that, so… contemplating whatever comes to mind it is. (At least until inconvenient thoughts started to come unbidden, then it was time to lurk behind junior officers' shoulders and demand status reports.))
So, she contemplates Chandrila, a nice place, a bit preachy. One of those Old Republic 'democracies' that elected the teenage children of serving Governors as their Senator. (Of such things was the Old Republic composed, and the Empire ostensibly forged to prevent.)
And now, if her operational orders were correct, while her squadron isolated the system, Imperial Army General Thiromer (A brainless myrmidon if ever the Army had one) was deploying his hefty slice of the Bormea Sector Army across the system.
To be quite honest, Admiral Vaere had no idea what exactly the Emperor's plans for the system were. But she could guess.
As the kind of woman who played the various grapevines of rumour mill like a lyre, there was only one conclusion from the confluence of the battlewagon mafia's (Her faction in the Imperial Navy's endless doctrinal war) screaming about defence appropriations wasted on superweapon boondoggles, Piett and Death Squadron dropping off the radar, major warfleets deployed to box in Mon Calamari, and her own squadron's deployment to lock down Chandrila…
Chandrila, which happened to the rebel-sympathetic homeworld of the Rebellion's chief figurehead.
In her opinion something…
round slouches towards the heart of the rebellion as the galaxy waits for the final conclusion of Tarkin's thesis to play out. It all made sense, but...
The nostrils of her reflection flare and her mouth frowns fractionally. What a
fucking waste.
Shara Vaere could think of five good reasons that Chandrila shouldn't be turned into dust. And only two of them were attractive women
But it did no one good to doubt the Emperor. Vaere didn't even like doubting the man in her head. There was no reason to doubt the kindly man who'd preserved civilization through the clone wars, who'd endured the same Battle of Coruscant that she and her family had.
Hell, the Emperor'd had an even rougher time of it. She'd just felt helpless watching the lights of armageddon bloom in the sky as Grievous' mechanized battlegroups took control of the orbitals. But Palpatine had been
kidnapped by the cybernetic monster himself!
And afterwards the galaxy had become
this close to a full Jedi theocracy. The Empire might be -scratch that-
was a harsh place, but it was a place that made sense in a way that the Republic she'd been raised to serve no longer did.
So now the Admiral waits, because whatever else, following the Emperor's orders made sense.
She notices another face join that of her reflection, the deeply worried face of Captain Lessam. No, not worried, quietly
terrified in a way that she'd never seen before.
She raises a hand to bekon the man next to her, serious news deserved the moderate privacy that the very fore of
Indefatigable's bridge could provide.
"Go ahead Captain," she says, with the brief flicker of a reassuring smile (the Captain often did well with small hints of encouragement), "I can tell that whatever it is, it-"
Lessam draws himself up, drawing in a breath that is pulled right down to his diaphragm and stays there, "Ma'am, we have a flash alert from the Endor system. The Emperor is dead."
Vaere chokes on a half drawn breath and reaches out with a suddenly weak hand to slam into the hull in front of her with the dull twack of meat on metal.
As Captain Lessam launches into the body of the first message -a flash alert issued by
Chimera (Is that Horst Strage's ship? The part of her brain that tracks the intricate web that is the Navy's officer corps wonders inanely.) during their retreat as the fleet moves to regroup at Annaj, days away from Endor.
Wordlessly Vaere snatches the datapad from Lessam's hands, causing the man's words to stumble to a messy halt nearly as confusing as the cryptic messages being decrypted by
Indefatigable's communications section. A communications section that has verified these communiques as 100% genuine and coming from multiple sources.
She reads about a mess of retreat orders being issued by either (or both?) Admiral Strage on
Chimera or (and?) Vice Admiral Sloan on
Vigilance, Piett (
FUCKING PIETT? The naval icon that even Vader wouldn't kill?) dead (
DEAD?!?!),
Executor destroyed, Death Squadron in shambles, Vader dead too.
Half her brain reckons with the distraction of trying to place Admiral Strage, while the rest of it tries to process the enormity of what she's seeing. Her mind grapples with the fact that the Emperor is dead and the cream of the Imperial Navy has been routed by the rebels. It didn't make any sense.
It didn't make any fucking sense.
She read on, desperately trying to make sense out of the ripple of increasingly impossible reports from the fleet at Endor, where the Imperial Navy had utterly collapsed after
Executor was destroyed. So many proud ships and officers lost...
In this moment of shock and weakness, as pulls herself together, thankful that her back is still to the bridge crew, an emotional reaction that she can't control emerges. For a brief moment, before she can contain it under a heavy blanket of professionalism, she feels something. For brief moment Admiral Shara Vaere feels an unadulterated sense of-
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[ ] -Terror. Utter terror.
Everything was pointless. All of it, every death, every crime, every operation, had been pointless. She had a good head for this kind of thing, for kings and successions but she couldn't picture who would succeed the Emperor. The only possible replacement was Vader, a man who was also dead at rebel hands. The Chaos she'd spent decades holding back was finally here and the Imperial Navy could no longer hold it at bay.
The galaxy no longer made any sense and it terrified her.
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[ ] -Relief. Inexplicable relief.
The obligation she felt to the Emperor was gone. It is like a weight she didn't know was there had suddenly been lifted. She had no reason to continue to obey the chain of command. Hell, she had no idea what the fuck the chain of command even was anymore. Palpatine was dead. Vader was dead. No other single person could take the reins over the whole Empire and live more than a day. The Empire was going to fall apart and she didn't have any obligation to keep a doomed system intact. She had no obligation to follow any orders she didn't choose to obey.
The galaxy no longer made any sense and she didn't need to care.
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[ ] -Excitement. Invigorating excitement.
The ossifying structure of the Empire that'd she'd fought her way up was now defunct. She couldn't tell you who the fuck was in control anymore, and if she didn't know who was in control, no one else did. Everything was different now, everything was on the table. She didn't know what moves she'd make next, what she'd do now... but it was the ultimate challenge for a woman of her skills and she was sure she was more than up to the task.
The galaxy no longer made any sense... unless she forced it to make sense.
