Important note: Jaesas picture represents her dark side version (I was too lazy to find an actual picture) Her lightside version is not on here because that woman does not even think about anything sex related
Feel free to convince me differently
shoutout to @kay1mi for spending 3 hours with me putting this together
Jaesa met the Light Side Sith on Belsavis, of all places. The place was torn by war and gang violence, and many prisoners were still caged while the victors rampaged across the countryside.
Yet even here, there were those who had been unjustly jailed by the Republic. Often for being Force users living among Sith.
She flew the sleek pink Light Red and landed well up an icy crevasse that ran from the planet’s blemished outer surface down to the geothermally warmed circle a thousand klicks in diameter. It was so full of recovering life…and terrible, messy death.
Jaesa let her holo guide her down into a stony expanse that had a few flowers poking from the seams. A little cairn marked a side path into a cool black cave.
There was a brilliant lamp set low in the chamber. And, beside it, her latest partner in crime, Kaeve Brindel.
He stood, smiling. He was a Human, dark-skinned and dark-haired, with a penchant for Jedi-like robes, sort of his way of thumbing his nose at his native Dromund Kaas. These robes were in blue of un-Jedi-like elaborateness. “Jaesa,” he said warmly in his deep, rolling voice. “Any trouble landing?”
“No. Someday they might re-establish traffic control, but until then, no one’s looking.”
“Then we draw order. A little bit. You’re looking well, at least. Did you get what you needed from Dromund Kaas?” A second’s silence. He wilted. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“She wanted me to vet her childcare. And I did. Then she ran away. At least she cares for her son. I can’t…think about her. If I think about her I really will despair. I need to continue my work. With you. That’s not some consolation prize, I promise.”
“Far from it,” he said quietly. “I’m relieved you could come for this. I have three names. We need to reach their prison records and get a cell block location. I have aurodium for bribes, but I’m afraid this may not be peaceful.”
“If the alternative is leaving three innocents locked up in a war zone? I’ve been working on my mind tricks. I think we could avoid a fight or two that way.”
“Your talents will outstrip mine if you’re not careful.” He smiled. “Promise me you’ll still have a use for me when that day comes?”
“It’s going to take a while. I promise.”
“Come, are you ready?”
“With you all the way.” There were still Light Side Sith. Jaesa had lost one, publicly. But the work went on.
Ashara
The Republic had lost Taris. Ashara Zavros knew this. The Jedi’s efforts to establish training here, the Cathar efforts at recolonization…it was hopeless. The Sith had drained this planet and it was dying from what sludge was left.
One Sith in particular. A Mirialan, a traitor to her species. A woman who had never lied, not exactly, but had murdered Ashara’s teachers and enslaved her ancestor’s spirit.
Ashara did not go after her. It was a wide galaxy and the search was too much for one woman. But Ashara had had a purpose before then. Exercises with the Force. Training against the chaos.
Readiness, if Scythia should ever return.
The Empire had not fully withdrawn from the planet they had despoiled. Darth Gravus still spilled blood in rivers across the ruined countryside. It was a fantasy of hers to break into their crater base and make him pay for what he’d done.
For what he’d allowed, when he let Scythia and that Thana Vesh slash across these ruined settlements.
Ashara honed herself on Imperial patrols and lumbering transports. Some nights she stayed up with the Cathar militia who guarded nothing now but wounded pride and implacable hatred. She stayed up, and killed those who thought they could just pick off Republic citizens for sport.
The Sith had said, “The Jedi failed you, and when you’re a ghost, I want you angry. Farewell, padawan.”
Sometimes Ashara looked up at the stars. Oh, she had no way to hunt, but she could make herself ready. Her Jedi masters would not be proud. But, she thought, Scythia might be. Before she died.
SCORPIO
SCORPIO had no use for grunting sweating organics, except when they could save her some resources on getting from place to place. She researched and deduced her way into Star Cabal tendrils, the things left when the Cabal itself was eviscerated.
She severed them, so that the Empire could not have them.
Cipher Nine had tried to reduce her to a databank. He had ordered that she be cut into four pieces, stored in different rooms, and only approached in by pairs of trained Intelligence agents. It had been difficult, but not impossible, to talk her way out of there and restore brains and data storage to one form.
She had assisted Cipher Nine’s infiltration of the Star Cabal’s station. She had been excluded from the retrieval of the Black Codex.
Oh, how she would like to have the Black Codex.
But now she was free, and she had made it to Nar Shaddaa. She could go on tearing down the lifeline that Intelligence must be desperate for in its current disarray.
There in the cloaking murk of Nar Shaddaa’s traffic, she plugged in and sought a feed from Dromund Kaas.
Data flooded in. A shape in the data. Fragments of code, coinciding and beginning to execute.
SCORPIO jerked back. The virus was already loose in her system. She felt it combing her databanks, looking for something. It deleted something. Then ran further in, bringing up files…
Her files on “Wynston.” On Cipher Nine. Some bastard child of the Black Codex had been written to destroy from her knowledge what had been destroyed in the galaxy at large.
She caught the rogue code, wrestled with it, lost another address. Crushed it.
SCORPIO took three seconds to analyze the deactivated code before permanently deleting it. It was clever, but fragile. It would take expert organics months to begin to challenge SCORPIO’s detection and purge.
This wasn’t Wynston’s work. He couldn’t slice his way off a planet given a fully fueled shuttle and a running start. She’d only ever had to calculate that once; he had never surprised her.
But he was back in control of at least one very good slicer. That meant Intelligence was doing far, far better than public sources indicated. And she had to generate a better blocker before she went on the HoloNet again.
Andronikos
“It’s under control.”
The Black Stubble (Blackbeard was taken) was taking fire from two directions, and Elisa was twisting and bursting to place the little ship between the Republic vessels with their extremely up-to-date weapons.
Andronikos Revel was seated beside her, flipping shield and chaff controls like mad. The trash disposal wouldn’t fool anyone about where the ship was, but with a little custom acceleration it could be a fat projectile against one of the defenders.
Yeah. The Black Stubble was the aggressor. And they had already gotten the cargo they wanted out of the sadly yawing Goldie. These Republic gunships didn’t stand a chance.
“Hyperspace?” Elisa grunted.
“Thought you had them under control,” Andronikos purred.
“Hyperspace.” The two ships had stopped firing while they figured out not shooting each other past the Stubble. It was a deeply satisfying type of artificial peace. But one that would not last.
Then it was time. “Hit it.”
The Black Stubble leaped into the streaking starscape and Andronikos kept his hands on the shield controls until they were well and truly on their way.
He slung out of his chair and ran to the cargo hold. It was half full of generic gray cases. “All right, how much did we get?”
“Everything that felt heavy,” Coiro said.
“…But the extremely expensive petrets can only survive in uncompressed xonion gas,” Andronikos said. “The cases should be barely over empty.”
“Oh, there were a bunch of those,” Gorigg Phu said brightly. “We left ’em.”
Elisa laughed loudly behind Andronikos. “Thought you had it under control,” she snickered.
“Next time,” Andronikos growled, “I’m stealing everything myself. Come on, let’s find out what we did get. Maybe it’ll cover repairs.”
And yet, there was nowhere he would rather be.
Lord Scourge
Lord Scourge had not chosen Larr Gith. Her face, her shapely features, her brash arrogance had stamped themselves on his mind hundreds of years before they took physical form.
And yet he was disappointed, in the event, that the object of his vision should be so…shallow.
He no longer tracked her. Larr Gith appeared on the holovids, getting pictures snapped with fans across the galaxy, often entangled with a besotted-looking Doc. If Scourge had to find her, the gossip rags could put him on her trail trivially.
If he had to find her. That would only come to pass if the Emperor were to surface again.
He crossed and re-crossed the lines of the Emperor’s power. He found stealth droids and studied their memory banks. He found Servants—dozens of Servants, close to hundreds of Servants—and interrogated and dispatched them with no definitive result. The goal was twofold: one, to get hold of the Emperor by any means necessary.
And two, to make sure that if he came back, he would have nothing but a smoldering ruin to rebuild upon.
Kaliyo
Kaliyo liked having somebody above her to take the fall so she wouldn’t have to. Her style was a majordomo, an enforcer, a contractor with a permanent photo ID…and she liked it that way. If things ever got annoying she could just set a fire and run to the next sheltered spot.
But she was still running, and she could still feel the flames.
Rodia was a pit, but it was a pit of twenty billion organics who barely understood what law was as a concept. Entire cities simply didn’t have centralized sensor networks. Kaliyo only had to change her jacket to be somebody different on these narrow, rain-fouled streets.
And she had more than employment to take up her time. Intelligence had only managed to cut three of her accounts, and she could live for a year off the largest of the ones they hadn’t snagged. Beyond that, the big problem was entertainment.
Kaliyo picked at one nail with another and didn’t look at the naked Zabrak sprawled across her bed. “Think you could do that again?”
The stranger croaked. “Ha. Ha. Give me a few minutes.”
“Got it. Do you cook?”
“What?”
“Do you cook. You know. Food.”
“No, can’t say I ever have.”
“Well, that runs me right out of reasons to keep you around. Door’s that way.”
Finding a sponsor that could keep Imperial Intelligence off her back might be a challenge. But anything was welcome that could keep her mind off that self-righteous, smarmy, vindictive, petty, controlling, idealistic man-child.
She said goodnight to Wynston after the Zabrak left. Somehow, most nights, she still did that.
