Author - My god, I lost internet connection yesterday while writing this and didnt realise it didnt save so like 2/5 didnt save of what I already wrote, anywho. Also the image is where roughly I have Elyria, not a lot is known in that sector of space which was perfect but its also close enough to major planets etc, I was thinking of using an established planet in that general area like Cotellier or even Septra.
Other drafts for this story placed it firmly in the unkown regions/wildspace but I chose otherwise and here we are. Yipee.
*KAEL POV*
The most important and critical of the data from the package took more than an hour to work through properly, I sat on the edge of the bed with the holo projected in front of me, cycling between captured logs, decrypted manifests, interrogation summaries, and fragmentary internal communications pulled from the depot's surviving cores.
The further I went, the less this looked like a random surge of scavenger activity and the more it looked like someone had spent months turning this sector's trash into something that has a resemblance of a weapon.
According to the earliest recovered records, the process had begun almost four months ago.
At first it was soft, supply drops some gifted munitions and Easy credits.
A few struggling pirate bands and half-dead slaver crews suddenly found themselves able to repair ships, arm fighters, and eat regularly, then with the bait taken it was time to reel them in, the nice gifts have come with terms and conditions and like everyone the pirates did not bother to read them.
Those who took the gifts found more following them, along with information about 'soft targets'.
Those who refused began losing ships to "accidents," or woke up to find relatives missing.
Bribes, threats, hostages the pattern was consistent across multiple groups that had never previously cooperated, some were not even pirates or slavers to begin with, they were mercenaries or small time merchants threatened or bribed into it.
Their orders and messages never came through open channels.
They arrived through intermediaries on neutral or abandoned worlds. In most cases it was a single protocol droid descending in an unmarked shuttle, delivering a sealed crate, and leaving without conversation, most likely jumping to undisclosed location where the navi computer and memory were wiped clean before bringing them back.
Sometimes the crate contained coordinates for the next supply cache while sometimes it contained the next list of targets other times it contained both.
The drop points never repeated, the payment, when it came, was always physical untraceable hard credits and peggats, never bank transfers, never account markers, never anything that could be sliced cleanly back to a source themselves, some were credit chips from what appears to be stolen accounts.
Discipline was enforced with ruthless and merciless brutality.
If a crew ignored orders, stole a cache, or tried to disappear with the money, an unmarked shuttle would eventually land at the main depot, what came down the ramp was never a messenger.
It was a message.
Heads, more often than not the offenders, or people close enough to them that the distinction no longer mattered. A few captains who had started asking too many questions were later found dead in their own cabins with no sign of forced entry.
Othertimes screams could be heard throughout the lower levels of the depot and their mutilated bodies were found hung from the top rafters in the main warehouse, sometimes if they were too hard to get to it was their crew members or family if they had any.
After that, the survivors stopped probing, they even had a stupid sounding name for the unseen hand behind it all.
The Feeder.
That just sounds like a movie monster from a D-rank movie. Something Dead Meat would make a kill count video on.
By the time the harassment campaign against Elyria began in earnest, most of them feared whoever stood behind them far more than they feared me.
That much was ugly, but straightforward.
What interested me more was how far some of them had managed to reason past their own fear.
Several of the captured officers and quartermasters had independently reached the same conclusion: they were not the main event, they weren't even the side show but just the opening screen in a play.
Pieces on a board in an inter-sector struggle that had not yet gone fully hot.
The people running them were careful with information but utterly fucking sloppy with material. The order packages were clean, the physical supplies were not.
Some crates still carried residual scanmarks from Imperial industrial worlds inside the sector while others could be traced back to specific warehouses, transfer hubs, and mid-level logistics officers if someone had the patience and time to follow the chain.
The pirates themselves had only been able to track that trail so far before the fear of the Feeder stopped them cold.
The interrogations added another layer to it all, more than one captive insisted that certain local anti-pirate patrols had deliberately ignored their movements, only to turn suddenly efficient when a "traitor" or problem element needed removing.
In those cases the patrols behaved exactly as Imperial forces were supposed to behave, from the captured holo recordings and logs the rest of the time the enforcement had a theatrical quality to it with few warning shots, a half-hearted chase, and then convenient failure.
Flight logs backed the broader picture to it all, ships from the depot had not limited themselves to our systems. They had crossed into neighboring sectors as well, there, the local patrols generally did their jobs, which forced the raiders to focus on weaker, underdefended targets.
From the tone of some of the recovered messages, those raids were as much about venting frustration as profit. Hemmed in by an unseen controller on one side and a hardening target in Elyria on the other, they had taken their anger out wherever the defenses were thin enough to allow it.
What is concerning though is that they did not try anything with the local population, at least nothing overly much. There is no record of it but only some fragmented information about leaving them alone and not being worth it, perhaps some tried it and got disposed off? I do not know, still a few thousand were captured as slaves while some others were killed, beaten, robbed or worse.
I leaned back and stared at the full pattern hovering in the air before me.
Someone had spent months assembling disposable raiding groups under strict external control, even before I got the other systems under me, so its not about that, maybe it was sped up because of it but its not the only reason.
Someone had funneled them weapons and credits through Imperial-linked supply chains that I have a feeling if I start following will lead to myriad of bodies, burnt down warehouses and dead ends.
That someone had been careful enough that the people doing the dying still could not name them, the raid had cut only the cancer on the surface but the tumour is still festering deep underneath.
Oh I know who it is exactly, but knowing and proving it are two different things, I can go to the imperial capital show my so called proof and throw out the names but without hard proof it will go no where it will just put me on the radar of Jerjerrod and those that are colluding with him, no doubt people behind my parents assassination gave him the go ahead and political backing.
I need him to slip up or overcommit.
I sigh.
Operation rage bait is a go I guess.
By the time I finished reading the rest of the data it was already little bit past dawn and the alarm is about to set off.
Well, time to go to med bay for a stimulant dose, because a governor works 24/7.
****
A few hours later I was seated in one of the larger conference rooms with half a dozen clan elders and workshop representatives arranged around the table.
The subject should have been straightforward. Opening additional mines on clan-controlled land. Expanding local factory capacity.
Shifting from pure resource extraction into the production of small components we still had to import at inflated prices. In any other week it would have been easy and relatively quick meeting.
This was not any other week with the data package from the raid still sitting behind my eyes.
Combined with the fact that I had not slept since yesterday which resulted in the room taking on a faintly unreal quality with the edges of people's faces softening when I looked at them for too long, and I cant even take a nap later either since Reza and others want to brief me personally about
But till then I have to somehow survive however with the way the holomap of proposed mining sites occasionally doubles before snapping back into place does not fill me with much hope.
Thankfully, I have my own personal hero.
One of the older clan leaders, a broad man with deep-set eyes and a voice like gravel with possibly the darkest red skin colour I have yet seen on a native finally stopped in the middle of a point about seasonal access routes and studied me more carefully.
"Governor," he said, not unkindly, "this discussion will still matter in a few days. Perhaps more than it does this morning. We can revisit the details at a later date."
For a moment I almost argued out of sheer stubbornness, then I gave a short nod."You're right. Draft the preliminary allocations and access terms and we'll reconvene when I can give the matter proper attention."
There was a round of restrained agreement, Chairs shifted and the elders rose, offered their respects, and filed out in a low murmur of conversation.
The moment the door sealed behind the last of them, the composure I had been holding in place slipped.
I caught the edge of the table and nearly slumped forward as the room tilted, I called in for a stimulant to be delivered to me and and few minutes later my hand found the small stimulant applicator, brought it up, and pressed it hard against the side of my neck. The injector hissed. Cold fire raced under the skin and then exploded outward through my bloodstream.
My head jerked up and gripped the desk hard.
IFUCKINGLOVECOCA-
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
I can feel this shit flowing in my veins and my heartbeat just doubled.
Is this healthy? I have no fucking clue but I guess the medical droid knows whats good, the best part is that he fog shredded apart. However, it was replaced by a chemical clarity and the feeling of having ants moving through my skin.
Hopefully I am not about to hit the greatest fent lean in star wars history.
I rolled my neck to one side until it cracked and forced myself fully upright again
After a quick hydration break I was halfway through arranging a short inspection of the new timber workshops the Mandalorians had opened in the forested southern ranges when the priority chime cut across my datapad.
Secure channel.
Sector authority routing.
Origin: Office of Moff Jerjerrod.
Oh for fuck sake, what does fat boy slim triple chin want now?
I sighed, straightened up and fixed up my clothes and hair and put my best poker face.
"Connect it," I said. "Now."
The holo resolved above the table a second later.
Moff Jerjerrod looked exactly as he always did that is exceptionally well-fed, carefully composed, and wearing the mild expression of a man who believed the galaxy was improved by his existance in it.
The background behind him was all polished stone and institutional banners.
"Governor Voss," he said pleasantly. "I am glad I was able to reach you."
"Moff Jerjerrod," I returned, matching the tone with practiced ease. "This is an unexpected honor."
He smiled as if we were discussing weather."I have been informed of the recent difficulties around Elyria. Pirates, scavengers, all the usual refuse of the Outer Rim. You appear to have handled the situation admirably under the circumstances. Fortunately, you need not carry that burden further."
Don't tell me...
"I ordered a formal pirate suppression operation for the affected region," he continued. "As of yesterday, it has been successfully completed, the pirates were based on three worlds and the worlds in question have been cleansed of their infestation."
A set of images flickered through the channel smoking depot ruins, shattered landing fields, orbital footage of cratered infrastructure.
Familiar images, cleaned slightly and reframed.
Presented as the product of his authority rather than my fleet.
"Due to the extent of local collaboration with the criminals," Jerjerrod went on, "the remaining population is being processed for relocation to penal colonies. You need not concern yourself with the administrative aftermath. Higher offices have already been informed that the pirate threat in that pocket has been eliminated under sector direction."
I nodded once, slowly.
Outwardly I showed acceptance.
Inwardly I was cold with rage.
He was not merely taking credit, he was burying the operation under his own seal and removing witnesses in the same motion, the locals are as good as dead he will probably send them to the worst penal colonies or outright sell them to slavers.
"I am grateful for the sector's intervention," I said evenly. "Please accept my thanks, and my wishes for your continued good health."
Jerjerrod studied me for a long moment.
Then the polite mask shifted into something thinner and sharper.
"You are welcome, of course," he said. "That is what I am here for to keep miscreants in line."
The look he gave me with that word was deliberate, his gaze flicked, just briefly, over my face. "You should rest, Governor. The strain of these pirate troubles appears to have taken its toll. Those shadows under your eyes are not becoming. Perhaps the Rim is proving a heavier responsibility than expected. There is no shame in recognizing one's limits. Your family's apartment on Coruscant still sits empty from what I understand."
The channel held for half a second longer, filled with his faint smirk then he disconnected.
I stared at the empty air where his image had been.
"Smug, bloated, bilge sucking bastard," I muttered, the words rough and ugly in the quiet room.
For a moment I simply stood there, stimulant still buzzing under my skin, anger and calculation arranging themselves into cleaner lines.
Fine.
He wanted the credit.
He could have it, in fact, I would help him have it. The more widely his "victory" was reported through neighbouring systems, the more firmly his name would be tied to the operation, the seized assets, and the official after-action accounting.
And that accounting would matter.
I would catalogue every supposed spoil of the suppression in exacting detail and then add a little more. Not enough to look absurd but just enough that when the right moment came, the numbers would show a Moff withholding taxes, tithes, and a share of recovered Imperial property from the central government.
Maybe I will even plant some evidence that he set up these pirates to steal from the sector and the systems so that he can then destroy them and take all the spoils for himself.
There were many things a man in Jerjerrod's position could survive.
But stealing and failing to pay the Empire its due was not one of them.
Nobody fucks with intergalactic IRS.
As for how a loyal Outer Rim governor would come to possess such a thorough catalogue? Simple. I had been investigating sector-level corruption as any upstanding, law-abiding citizen of the Empire should.
When the case was solid enough, I would forward it through the proper channels.
My duty, after all, was to sni- I mean... To reveal any corruption and destabilizing influence threatening the stability of Imperial rule.
I shut off the holo display, straightened my jacket, and headed for the door.
Jerjerrod could enjoy his stolen victory for now I intend to make him choke on it later.
*2 and half months later*
I am currently in my huge bed, in my comfortable warm satin sheets but sleep eludes me like always, all I can think of is the recent events, especially those of the past two months.
Two and a half months to be exact and nothing had exploded into open war like some feared, but that almost made it worse.
What we had instead was a slow, grinding contest of pressure, paperwork, rumour, and quiet retaliation. A cold war fought through customs offices, inspection teams, warehouse fires, and carefully aimed whispers with the occasional death or two.
No fleets exchanged formal fire, and no declarations were made.
Jerjerrod's bureaucratic offensive had grown from interference into something close to strangulation.
Audits arrived almost weekly all across the Elyrian sub sector with workshops, mines, shipping offices, even convoy staging points being shut down for "compliance review" on the flimsiest pretexts or checking for any contraband or searching for imaginary fugitives. Which has throttled our revenue by more than 26%.
If someone complained, the complaint was noted and converted into a steep fine for both the individual and the place they worked in.
If someone argued too hard, they were marked as obstructive, and if anyone made the mistake of getting physical with an inspector or one of their escorts, they vanished into the machinery of Imperial process which means they were arrested on the spot and shipped off toward sector heartland courts where distance alone became a punishment.
The officials themselves made no effort to be easy to ignore.
Some were merely rigid and stiff and uncompromising even on the smallest infractions from laws that have not been cited in decades while others were openly provocative, laying hands on local workers, insulting clan representatives, or delaying clearance until tempers frayed enough to create the incident they wanted.
Sometimes they just didn't even bother hiding or waiting, openly starting brawls and arresting them afterward, it was usually the Imperial Army units that were working as escorts that did it while Stormtroopers were more rigid and more brutal once the actual fighting started with deaths always happening once they got involved.
On the other theatre of war...
The rumour campaign was as vicious with stories beginning to circulate through neighbouring systems about Elyria's instability, about my supposed youth and incompetence, about hidden dealings, unauthorized forces, and "questionable associations."
Partners and allies were painted with the same brush and goods that we had already sold and stored in warehouses on other worlds started attracting official harassment, forcing the merchants who owned them to increase security out of their own pockets.
At least two could not sustain the cost and both suffered convenient fire accidents, in each case the official finding was negligence and on top of that were slapped with fines and temporary suspensions of their trading rights.
Last we heard one of them tried to take his ship that was impounded and flee but were gunned down by the defence fleet.
However, we did not spend those months merely absorbing hits.
Quietly, after careful vetting, we reached outward to some other governors under pressure, mostly from within our own sector.
Independent merchants bleeding credits to selective enforcement and local politicians who disliked Jerjerrod more than they feared him.
A few notable figures in neighbouring sectors who had their own reasons to see him weakened. Not all of them became friends, most did not even become open partners. But enough proved reliable to form a small, hidden web of mutual interest.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend afterall.
Out of that web came a quiet trade arrangement, on paper, every shipment still suffered under the official tariffs and inspection regimes. In reality, less than half those costs were ever truly paid. Cargo was disguised, paperwork layered, routes adjusted.
With Grok shifting more capacity into scout droid production and the deployment of improvised hyperlane buoys, we managed to open two new private lanes that existed on no Imperial chart I had ever seen.
They were narrow, demanding, and imperfect and needed constant monitoring but they let us bypass the worst of the patrol screens and official choke points.
At the same time, we began building a different kind of campaign against Jerjerrod.
Nothing crude enough to collapse under scrutiny or that would tank our credibility if investigated but everything plausible enough to stick if the right people started looking.
Ineffective sector management, conditions ripe for underground resistance with corruption thick enough to breed anti-Imperial sentiment or even propagating and supporting pirate activities that touch the credits of too many powerful people.
As soon as I started spreading rumours that Jerjerrod supplied the pirates so that he can steal all the loot himself afterward netted him some curious calls from fellow Moffs all around him and I am not 100% sure but there was talk that banking clan and the Pykes were involved.
At least some of it is credible since the people we quietly send to procure materials from the Black Sun territory came back with talk that Black Suns have been having more skirmishes with Pykes and that more imperial authority is moving through their streets now.
We don't know what that is about but its starting to affect us as well, we will have to investigate it more.
Then there is the supposed quiet talk of old Republic nostalgia and anti-imperial and anti-palpatine talk at the highest echelons of sector power.
Honestly, for shits and giggles and because I fucking could we carefully spread rumours of a cloaked figure with "fire swords" and strange abilities moving through neglected systems and being hosted by close associates of Jerjerrod in return for them hiring him for certain missions.
In truth those last stories were pure slander but we did make sure to have some credible evidence by using a small but dedicated team to 'show' the cloaked figure to the masses so its not all just hearsay, it was all done with holoprojections, sleight of hand, and ordinary blades dressed in fuel and flame for witnesses who wanted to believe.
The point was not accuracy, the point was atmosphere.
A sector that looked poorly governed invited attention, a sector that looked potentially disloyal invited more.
One that had rumours of surviving jedi on top of it all? Produces interesting results.
That attention had already begun to arrive to this little corner of the galay.
Two ISB investigations had come and gone in the last two months, each time, Jerjerrod had survived by spending political capital, calling in debts, leaning on underground connections, and buying or performing his way clear.
But survival had a price from what our sources could gather, the investigators had not left empty-handed.
Talk of a third inquiry was already circulating this one broader, sector-wide, and serious enough that the idea of assigning Jerjerrod a permanent ISB liaison had entered the conversation.
That pressure had not come from nowhere, the first two audits must have found something and the flames were further flamed by my allies and others that despise him.
Pellaeon and Thrawn were a given since they dislike him greatly, are in opposing factions and are my allies, then there was also a handful of others who were not necessarily friends of mine but were certainly no friends of his or simply wished to see him fall.
They had all in their own ways, pushed the matter forward and is now being deliberated upon by Partagaz and even Yularen and other high ranking ISB officials
The enemy of my enemy may not always necessarily be a friend, but he most certainly can be useful.
Our small coalition of 'miscreants' made a point of answering the climate of suspicion with pointed openness. Publicly and repeatedly, we declared our ports, offices, and records available to any and all ISB review that wished to examine them.
It was an easy offer to make when we had spent months cleaning what needed cleaning and burying what needed burying, it also had the useful effect of making resistance look more suspicious than cooperation.
Other things had changed in the same span of time, the two mercenary companies had settled into their roles with professional efficiency, taking pressure off our overstretched patrols and making the smaller nuisance raids more expensive for whoever still bothered launching them though not many have happened in the last months, most of the time its an errant smuggler ship or two.
Sighing I turn in my luxurious bed, one arm under the pillow, from above I look like I am hitting the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic pose.
Recruitment across the four systems continued to rise, driven as much by anger at outside interference and sector authority as by any formal campaign, also some have genuinely lost their jobs because of the audits, vandalism, arson and others that military service is the only way to put food on the table for their families.
In other news the orbital dockyard advanced another stage toward real production capacity. We have also scaled up the local productions and limited our exports while increasing our imports.
Things like the timber and mining operations, local component and arms workshops, gas and blaster refining factories have almost doubled with.
That is when they are not being shut down by inspectors, we just help the owners open a new one under a new name quietly. Its as if the workers get a week off work and then just business as usual.
Even the three allied governors, once purely pragmatic and somewhat arrogant had grown more tightly aligned realising that their ship is now fully tied with mine.
None of this amounted to victory.
It amounted to better position once Jerjerrod starts the next phase, which I honestly hope he doesn't but I would rather be prepared and not need it than not be prepared and need it.
Jerjerrod still held the formal machinery of the sector and extensive contacts, wealth and power.
I looked out the bedroom window to see the clear night sky, the moon and the faint outline of the dockyard high in the sky.
I am worried.
Not in a sense Jerjerrod will have the entire sector army, navy and stromtrooper core thrown at me, he is not authorised to do that. Anything more than 3 star destroyers or an army group bearing down in an aggressive posture anywhere and the independent sector command will start asking questions.
So if he ever snaps and decides its worth to sacrifice some of his prestige, power and wealth he can at most take 2 star destroyers and couple of smaller screening ships from the defence fleet of the capital, maybe a division or two. But the more he takes the sooner people will start asking questions.
Even a single full fledged ISD-1 would dominate in a conventional battle, with a pair of them? That be almost impossible unless we employ unorthodox tactics that are not part of the training that officers and captains receive, most follow the Tarkin doctrine which is why the rebels won with their constant out of the box thinking.
Hypothetically, he takes the maximum he can without triggering immediate alarm bells, he will have a limited time window to blitz me and then with me and those closest to me dead he can spin whatever tale he wishes, provide whatever evidence he wants and get off with a stern warning and some punishment.
However should the operation not be success or if we stall them long enough everyone will see this as an act of aggression against one of Imperial governors and if he does not stand down and explain himself he will have to be dragged to palpatine to answer in person.
And my tales, rumours and evidence will be the ones that matter.
History is written by the victors and the tales of dead men are forgotten.