Pa treon - Deluxee - 9 chapters ahead boyos, also can someone loan me a million so I can write fanfictions 24/7? I will write whatever the fuck you want.
****
I woke to a day the sector insisted on treating as symbolic and I would have preferred to treat as ordinary.
Birthdays, as Moff, no longer belonged only to me. By the time I finished dressing, Harlan already had a sorted intake of congratulations waiting: genuine notes from people who had bled, worked, or stayed through the worst of the last years, and a much taller stack of perfume-scented loyalty notes written by a chatgpt equivilent droid in star wars on behalf of others who wanted to kiss ass.
The private celebration came first along with letters and gifts.
Atii gave me a pair of reinforced bracers along with a myriad of sweets and secretly a bottle of Mandalorian Krayt Fire, or just whiskey. There was a note attached to it saying "dont drink it without me :P."
She then gave me a hug and almost screamed in my ears saying "Happy 17th birthday Kael."
Lira produced a compact diagnostic tool with a few modifications that would let me scan and help me solve problems. Mira had wrapped a handwritten list of every non-urgent festival invitation she had successfully rejected on my behalf over three months, which made me laugh out loud, in addition she was the one to bake the cake and bought me a rather fancy looking outfit, totally my taste as well.
Elara's gift was a length of plains-woven cloth in deep colours, practical enough to use and formal enough to hang along with an ornamental short wicked dagger with serrated edges and is that bone for a handle? All of it dyed red, purple and gold, god damn.
Torv meanwhile the bum gave me nothing wrapped, he only nodded and said his gift is still being made which from him it meant its either a super customised blaster even he couldn't make with all of his tinkering or something outrageous like a container of alcohol and women, for that I doubt Atii would be happy about it though...
Reza who was off world had someone bring his gift which was a miniature navy set, almost like star wars Lego but its customised to have Elyrian colours and he pulled some strings with his old buddies in the Imperial Naval Academy to smuggle us schematics for the interdictor machine, which if we somehow make it work we can tear ships out of hyperspace or preventing pirates and others running away, how in the fuck he did that I dont know but this is probably the best gift so far.
Those gifts were better than the ones from last year, however all good things come to an end, now to see what the ass kissers have sent over.
Subordinate governors sent crystalware, rare teas, ceremonial... things? And enough polished flattery and inquiries about my relationship status to pave a road to Vordax and back. Merchant houses offered exotic goods and "friendship rates." One mining consortium shipped a literal plaque so heavy Thorn had to assign six men to move it out of the receiving hall before it became a structural hazard. A rich system prefect sent a recorded speech calling me the stabilizing hand of the outer rim. I watched twenty seconds of it of the twenty minutes and had Rusty archive it without watching the rest.
"How many of these want something before nightfall?" I asked Harlan.
"All of them," he said. "Some are simply more patient than others."
I shook the required hands, recorded the required thanks, and refused three attempts to turn the day into an open reception with gift displays. A Moff's birthday, if left unsupervised, became a marketplace with cake.
The only official event I allowed was short: a quiet toast in the civil wing with senior staff, unit representatives, and a handful of clan guests.
I thanked the people who had kept the sector standing, named no favourites, and ended the gathering before anyone could decide that yet another speech was necessary.
Afterward, Reza's priority channel cut through the residual social noise with something that actually mattered.
"They're in," he said. "Eridau completed final certification at first shift. Both ISD-I frames have cleared repair and are on their way to us."
I stood at the office window and let the implication arrive in full.
The two second hand Imperial Star Destroyers were no longer damaged and under work-lights, these babies were live now. Together with the one star destroyer we already have under Reza's active command, the Elyrian sector now fielded three star destroyer-class ships.
Now that I think about it, its time to announce it as our pride of the fleet and rename it from what Orlen had. What was it again, unwriten will? Unwiling writ? No clue, maybe I will call it Forward Unto Dawn or Infinity.
Wait.
Should I make my own Spartan program? Food for thought later, but now...
"Crewing status?" I asked.
"Staged and incomplete," Reza said. "They can move, show, and deter though not much more than that I have them under separate work-up schedules and only the most loyal are aboard along with contingents of droids ."
"Keep them that way then, I trust you."
The rest of the day bled between necessity and performance. I signed acknowledgments. I redirected gifts into medical stores, dock funds, and settlement accounts whenever the objects could be converted without creating diplomatic insult.
I read a sincere note from a Durak's Hold head administrator twice, man is genuinely a good and loyal guy, I sent him back a note and a small gift for him and his wife and newborn.
Immediately after I had to read a request for "birthday trade exemptions" from governor then sent for a discrete audit. By evening the receiving hall finally emptied of climbers and the holo finally quietened.
I also received congratulations from various others like my allies and their governors, nearby Moffs and some under their sway along with Thrawn and Pellaeon.
In my rooms, with the private gifts set aside from the expensive noise, I poured a modest drink, not from the fancy wine but just a regular Elyrian one that honestly is starting to become my favourite. Its like apple and strawberry had a child and made it into wine.
17 already, two years in here and I have already achieved more here than in the entirety of my past life, not like there was much. I was like I dont know twenty? Everything is starting to get more fuzzy. I should write everything I know in code just in case.
Rusty spoke from the corner. "Do you want the remaining congratulatory intake summarized?"
"Only the ones from those who fought for me, who are loyal or too influential to ignore otherwise." I said. "The rest can wait until morning."
I finished the drink, set the cup down and let the birthday end without giving the sector another speech.
****
The incident waited less than a day after the birthday, as if the sector had only been holding its breath for the gifts to clear.
I got the report in the late morning while Orlen was already in the outer military offices under Reza's schedule. He had grown quieter over the months, not softer. Withdrawn, whispers following him no mater where he went. He might have switched sides and surrendered but he still led the invasion that cost thousands of lives.
Pair that with the scorn he is no doubt receiving from any surviving family members or their supporters must also weigh on him. Go forward and the Elyrians who lost something are there, go back and the house he helped destroy is there.
His wife remained on Elyria with him with their children, though they did not attend the open schools, or even the more prestigious private ones. Instead private hired tutors came to a secured residential block near the military quarter, a compromise that kept the children educated and out of the eyes of people who might hold a grudge against their father.
Well, it was bound to fail.
A Mandalorian youngling from Clan Beviin called Orlen's oldest boy a traitor's bastard in public in view of a rather sizable group of civilians, administrators and military officials, then repeated it when the boy tried to move past him to his destination.
Words became a shove.
The shove became an interested crowd.
By the time guards reached the commotion, two Beviin adults and one of Orlen's household retainers were already one insult away from drawing. No blasters had cleared thankfully. That was the only reason the report was still a management problem rather than a funeral schedule or a skirmish.
I had both sides brought to the civil-military annex before the street could invent a larger story.
Clan Beviin's new leader came in person. Vera Beviin was older than me by a decade, short-cropped hair gone iron at the temples, a technician's hands and a commander's stare. She had taken over the clan after Mira's death, I didn't have a close relationship with her like with Mira and to be fair I think she was always sceptical of me which didn't help this situation one bit.
Under her, Beviin had remained what it was good at: ships, repair bays, practical engineering, and a memory for grudges that worked like residual heat in metal. She nodded but that was it, no smile or even a friendly posture, hand on blaster and scanning the room like she is about to start shooting.
Out of all the Bevins, it had to be her that was elected.
Orlen stood opposite with his wife seated behind him and the oldest boy held rigid at her side, face hot with humiliation he was trying to hide. The younger children had been kept away, that, at least, someone had handled correctly.
"Your foundling insulted a child under my protection in public," I said to Vera.
"Your protected child wears a name that killed people, our people." Vera answered.
I so wanted to point out that more Mandalorians died to infighting, poisoning and assassination because of other Mandalorians in the last 100 years than because of outsiders in the last 500 yet they never really had the tendency to attack children even of their most bitter rivals, something about the code and culture of not harming children and sins of father, whatever.
Clearly she doesn't really care.
Jaster, present by necessity as the defacto leader of all Mandalorians under me he was already irritated by the whole thing, he just clicked his tongue. "Bevin your ad'ika started trouble with a child of one of the captains of the fleet who helped bring down the house that attacked us, he was set up to also die. Remember that. There is also stupidity in testing a Moff's public order over a market insult and rowdiness of children."
The expansion of Elyria had complicated all of this. With more work, more orphans of raids, more broken households from the old wars and the newer integrations, the Mandalorian clans on-world had taken in quite a few more foundlings than their original arrival numbers suggested. Beviin especially had swollen with practical children of the docks and repair lines, raised on clan pride and a running oral history of the clan, including recent ones, children are easy to sway and impress and most consider themselves Mandalorians of clan Bevin.
I looked at Orlen. "Can your household keep the boys out of open market lanes without tutors for a week?"
"Yes," he said. His voice had no emotion in it what so ever "They were only out because the youngest tutor fell ill. That is on me."
I hummed but did not say anything else, I then turned back to Vera. "Your foundling will apologize for starting unnecessary problems, I will not let children or others drag this sector into disorder or even a skirmish. After the apology, Beviin discipline your own, immediately."
Vera's jaw worked. "And the Jerjerrod retainer who put hands near one of mine?"
"Is suspended from public escort duty and fined," I said. "If I find he sought the escalation, he loses more than pay, same with the other two Bevin adults."
That forced both sides to swallow something unpleasant, which was usually the only stable end to these things. The foundling was brought in, red-faced and still half-convinced of his own righteousness, and made to apologize under Vera's stare until the words lost their swagger. Orlen's son did not say anything in return, I did not ask him to.
The retainer accepted suspension without any problems and Vera accepted the ruling because the alternative was open defiance on a day when the Moff had three star destroyers and no patience for feuds, worse she and her people are already used to the luxuries of Elyria and my rather lax stance on Mandalorian culture if I decide its not worth having Bevin around they will have to pack up everything and leave either going Nomad again looking for work or settling somewhere where it might be worse.
Afterward, when the room had cleared, Vera paused at the door. "Beviin will not hunt his children in the streets. We also will not sing them lullabies. Keep them out of our paths and I will keep my young ones from turning your capital into a proving ground."
At that I flicked my wrist to Rusty who was behind the door and he locked it, all I heard was a cry of surprise and startled faces as the blast door shut.
"Vera" I said in a voice emotionless even to my own ears.
"If your young ones, or the old ones. It does not matter. If they turn my home into some sick arena for bloodsport and fight they will be dealt with accordingly by imperial law."
I can see her going red with rage, hand going for her blaster but Rusty just pick her up by her nape and throws her to the ground.
"Let me make something clear to you. You start problems I will get rid of you, and if Clan Bevin doesn't like it they can go Nomad again and try your luck in the galaxy again, I will remind you that clan Bevin arrived bruised and battered half starved."
She stands up and looks back at Rusty who is almost a head and half taller than her.
"If you want to go, but remember you can't take the houses, can't take unlimited supplies and not every clan member would wish to leave, choose wisely."
She then left after Rusty unlocked the door, I can hear a myriad of voices from outside but then Orlen came in again with his family, they looked less like inter galactic aristocracy and more like a family buying safety from someone else who will get rid of them if they uses dry up.
"This will happen again," Orlen said quietly.
"Probably," I said. "Which is why your household stays disciplined and visible only where necessary. You wanted survival. Survival includes teaching your boys not to wander around, remember you still caused thousands of deaths and they will not forget it soon."
He nodded once, withdrawn again already, and took his family out under guard.
Rusty waited until the door sealed. "Beviin's swollen with foundlings. Lots of eager new blood trying to show their worth and dedication to the clan. Vera can hold them, but she won't make them soft and back down."
"I don't need them soft," I said. "I need them following the law."
I had Harlan write the incident as a closed public-order matter, then I sent a private note to Reza: Orlen's office, retainers and others were to avoid Beviin work sections unless escorted and necessary.
By afternoon the market was ordinary again. By evening the apology was already being retold in three self-serving versions.
If I could not make Orlen beloved, I could still prevent one insult from becoming the spark that forced me to choose between a Mandalorian clan and a useful Man who's wife had deep pockets and deeper connections.
****
Correspondence had increased, that is one of the downsides of climbing high, can't imagine what it would be if I had accepted the full sector. I would not touch grass for months.
I took an evening break in the upper study after the Beviin matter had been forced into a conclusion.
Pellaeon's note came first, short and clean as always. Congratulations on the birthday along with well wishes and some small talk, a question about the two ISD-I work-ups and whether crewing quality was keeping pace with hull recovery. A line of quiet warning about surrounding offices.
I answered in kind asking how he was, how is work and all, mentioning casual bits and pieces just like he wanted me to, so that not every exchange between us is not filled with crisis or work.
Thrawn's correspondence was more detached, like always but it was more interesting.
He acknowledged the star destroyer recovery and staffing, then moved directly into technical and strategic threads: fighter screen deficiencies in outer-rim sectors, the cost of treating TIEs as disposable even when their pilots are one of the best fielded with hundreds of hours in simulation and the problem of manufacturing that is optimized for quantity while not caring for pilot survavibility even when they are so called elite.
Not to mention that for what the TIE fighter was, the cost was grossly exaggerated and did not match the specs.
Buried in that discussion, not as a formal requisition but as a controlled exchange, was his interest in a secret TIE development effort. Not really public but a Navy program. A quieter design push aimed at correcting structural stupidity that is the standard TIE fighter.
Candidate worlds surfaced in the analysis attached to his note.
Ryloth, with its hardened labour histories and difficult surface conditions ideal for on site production and repairs along with good enough training field for pilots, he says that downside of it being that Ryloth freedom fighters are prevalent even to this day and are one of the most difficult insurgents to root out.
Geonosis, with old industrial bones and a manufacturing culture that understood swarm production whether or not it should be trusted with it. At least it would be if Tarkin did not sterilise the planet during the middle of 9BBY, Thrawn knew about it, but probably not about the Deathstar, maybe. I am not sure? He definitely doesn't know about the bugs involvement with building it and why Tarkin had it sterilised the planet and wiped out an entire race. Even if they were in CIS other races were not similarly wiped out like them.
Thrawn frowned as he explained that even with the planet sterilised his push to open the planet to make a special lab and testing grounds have been refused and the planet is officially quarantined even to high officials like Thrawn, only select few like Tarkin, Krenic, heads of ISB and emperors appointed individuals can go there.
Then there was Lothal, industrialised with a somewhat loyal population but still vast open grasslands and key resources and proximity to vital hyperspace routes but still away from main population centres.
He also gave an offhand comment about Elyria being a potential zone but its rather lower on scale, because of the 'natives' who are spread around the world and Elyria is not near any major hyperspace routes and recent events put it in too much spotlight.
We also talked some more about naval logistics and that he will be going to the north western inner rim territories to squash some local discontent and noise.
Which brings me to the the three allied Moffs who themselves were a bit noisy all the time, but it comes with being allied while each of us hold hundreds of planets and millions of lives.
Sera Quill sent a corridor annotated chart, she wanted Elyrian recognition of a seasonal traffic swing that favoured her shipping houses during her local dry-cycle peak. In exchange she offered reciprocal priority for my ore chain during our own surplus windows.
At the end she sent a coupon that I could use for her 'other' services as a birthday gift, I decided to give it to Reza when I get the chance, my man is going to grow roots at the command chair in the new star destroyer I swear, maybe a bit of a feminine touch will finally get him off the chair... or he will just do it on the chair. I need him to go outside and touch grass.
Juno Praxx's sent a quick line about congratulation then it was straight to business, the message was almost entirely military related, it seems the manufacturer Moff as some started calling it is having a tought time with pirates and smugglers he proposes and outlines joint response times, cross-border raider pursuit, and a request for observer slots on one of my mixed-unit ground exercises to get some of his people up to speed, because as he put it my ground forces are best trained in probably all the surrounding sectors. I granted the slots and asked for current fighter-loss tables in return. If we were going to keep coordinating, I wanted her failures as clearly as her strengths.
There is something worse than a strong enemy, an incompetent, lying, cowardly ally, which for now Juno is only a bit cowardly and incompetent regarding matters of military and is trying to improve so that is a start.
Brask Luthen wrote least and implied the most. Birthday formalities in one line. A bonded-warehouse proposal in the next. A quiet question about whether Elyria would continue treating certain inter-sector debt claims as enforceable after the Jerjerrod map died. I answered yes, with limits, and marked his file for continued close reading. Brask is straight to the point no-nonsense guy, and I like that about him he is so much easier to deal with.
Harlan entered near the end of my reading the summary of lesser congratulations still dribbling in from subordinates and others that had said their late well wishes.
"Any of the external letters need personal follow-up beyond what you wrote?" he asked.
"Pellaeon and Thrawn are handled. Quill, Praxx, and Luthen too. If Indress sends another syrup-and-theft hybrid send an asteroid his way and if that Rodian spice merchant tries to once again set up an audience have him arrested for trespassing next time he shows up here.
He nodded and left.
I just sighed and look at the still trickling messages.
****
Roughly two weeks is how long it took for Luthen Rael's ship to come down on the civilian prestige pad in the late morning under clean landing lights.
It was a mid-sized independent transport with the lines of a vessel that had been rebuilt more than once by people who cared about both function and beauty: dark hull plating in layered, non-uniform panels; an expanded cargo bay; sensor vanes that looked civilian until you counted them twice; and a boarding ramp that lowered with the smooth confidence of a ship used to customs inspection.
At least its not the ship he used to shit out small missiles to hit the imperial ship in season 1.
I waited at the edge of the pad with Torv, Elara, and a minimal honour line from Thorn's guard. Formal enough to show rank. Light enough not to look frightened of an antiques dealer.
Rusty, on my private channel, remained unimpressed. "Biographical surface data still supports commercial identity. No weapons alert, nor any restricted cargo markers. Your elevated caution is noted and, on present evidence, excessive."
"Keep noting it I trust a core worlder as far as I can throw them which is to say none, most coreworlders even those so called normal ones are purely driven to profit for themselves by any means necessary." I said under my breath.
The first figure down the ramp was Luthen Rael.
He looked older than the administrative file photograph showed, and that look did not come from desk work alone. Lean, composed, dressed in layered colourful flowing yet tight robes, his hair was greying in uneven control, swept back from a sharp face marked by deep lines around the mouth and eyes.
Under his friendly face there I can tell he is used to measuring rooms, and when he smiled, it looked genuine at least for a merchant but I know the truth and that mans default face is the resting bitch face. His eyes moved quickly without obvious scanning: pad security, sightlines to the palace approaches, the number of guards, my age, Elara's native bearing, Torv's stance.
His voice, when he spoke, was low and cultivated, with a dry grain and a positive beat under the courtesy. "Moff Voss. An honor, Luthen Rael. Thank you for receiving a humble dealer so directly."
"Elyria benefits from cultural exchange," I answered, playing the young host with open hands. "Welcome."
Behind him came his assistant.
Kleya.
Younger, precise, dark-haired, and carried with a stillness that made the pad noise around her seem poorly organized by comparison. She wore practical travel clothing under a short coat, no ostentatious jewelry, boots broken in by real use. Her face was cleanly cut, attractive in a severe way, expression controlled to the point of professional blankness until politeness required a shift into a small customer service style smile.
Though it is clear her default face is likewise, resting bitch face. Which honestly works for her instead of this forced smile she got going on. She held a compact slate and a thin case against her side, fingers neat, no wasted motion.
I bet that slate is chock full of various spy shit ready to ruin my day.
"My assistant, Kleya," Luthen said.
"Moff Voss," Kleya said. Her tone was cooler than his and more business professional.
Rusty murmured, "Assistant profile also commercial. Still no cause for alarm."
I ignored him and led them from the pad.
The tour began in the outer palace galleries, where native Elyrian work had been brought inward after the old ceremonial displays. Elara walked on Luthen's other side and became the bridge I needed, explaining materials and meanings without turning the visit into a lecture.
Plains-woven hangings in deep colors, beadwork patterns that marked clan routes and drought years. Mountain crystal sets under sealed glass, cloudy-white and pale amber, the kind that caught light and held it like trapped weather. A reconstructed hearth-arch from a southern clan hall, its carved knotwork cleaned of soot but not of age.
Luthen stopped often. Not the frantic stopping of a tourist the selective pauses of a man who knew his stuff often asking pointed questions or being generally spot on with his conclusions.
"These patterns," he said near one textile, fingers hovering without touching, "are not purely decorative."
"No," Elara answered. "Record and belonging. A person who can read them can tell where a weaving family ranged in a bad season."
Kleya made a short note on her slate. Her eyes, I noticed, spent as much time on palace sightlines and guard rotations as on the objects, her eyes more than once strayed to a small alcove, most likely to hide in but my guards behind and up front prevent that.
In addition to 'showcase' our goods and the city I ordered more lights so that no spot is darkened for our guest, after all he is well connected in the core he might bring good business if he spreads a good word.
We moved through a second gallery of reconstructed tools and ritual pieces: curved knives that were more harvest and craft than battlefield, bone-bead registers, a set of old road-markers recovered from plains dig sites. Luthen's interest deepened without becoming greedy on the surface.
He asked about dye sources, about whether certain motifs travelled between clans or remained exclusive, about the age at which children learned the knot sequences. Elara answered and when he asked me directly on my stance I said I uphold and protect the cultural and historical significance of the Elyrians.
She also explained about the city underneath Heavenridge but that much history of what it was and what happened to it was lost.
Then, as expected, the war entered the conversation through the side door of politeness.
"Your sector's recent instability reached even quiet dealers on Coruscant," Luthen said as we crossed an open colonnade toward the inner wing. The smile returned, careful. "A Moff so young. Surviving assassination, holding his own through open campaign and succession. There are many versions of the story in the lanes."
"Most of them are wrong," I said lightly. "The true version is mostly logistics, bad sleep, and people who fought and died believing what is right at least to them, no matter which side they were on."
"And the former Moff?"
"Declared traitor, removed. The sector was then divided so one person could not again treat this many lives as personal inventory." I kept my voice tired and practical, the young administrator over his depth and determined not to show it. "I serve the Empire by keeping routes open and local populations alive and loyal, while paying taxes."
Kleya's eyes flicked to me at that, a brief assessment, then away.
Elara took them past a final display of mountain crystals and older hearth tablets before the route bent toward the administrative wing. Luthen slowed again there, hands clasped behind his back, studying a cracked tablet whose markings sat just near enough to other antiquity markets to make a dealer's mind work.
"You preserve a great deal," he said.
"Preservation is a form of maintenance."
That earned the first look from him that felt less like performance. Whether approval or recalibration, I could not tell.
At the office threshold I paused, host smile still in place. Behind it my pulse was steady only by force of habit. Luthen Rael was in my house, under my lights, asking about cloth and war and duty in a voice that could have sold a vase or moved a rebellion.
"Elara," I said, "would you show Kleya the secondary archive samples and the local provenance lists? Master Rael and I can handle the direct acquisition discussion more efficiently in private."
Elara nodded. Kleya glanced at Luthen. He gave the smallest of permissions with two fingers, and she went without argument.
Then the office door sealed, and the antiques dealer was alone with the Moff he had come to measure.
I gestured him toward a chair as I kept the façade of a tired young official.
Damn I am getting good.
****
The office felt smaller once the door sealed.
Luthen did not sit immediately. He took in the room first: the practical desk, the native cloth Elara had given me hanging behind it, the lack of triumphal banners, the inactive holo-rail, the window over Havenridge's working districts rather than a parade avenue and a small dataslate and a plant along with one huge imperial flag. Only after that inventory did he take the chair opposite mine, coat settling around him in controlled folds.
"You keep a lean office for a Moff," he said.
"A fat office wastes time and doesn't add to anything," I answered, letting fatigue thin my voice. "And time is the one thing this rank never has in surplus."
That made his mouth tip slightly. "A practical doctrine. Older cultures have killed for less elegant philosophies."
He began with acquisition formalities, then abandoned them almost at once for the real conversation.
Culture, handled the way a certain kind of mind handled force inventories: by comparison, pressure, and pattern.
"Elyrian knotwork," Luthen said, glancing back toward the closed door and the galleries beyond it, "is closer to a memory system than to decoration. That puts it nearer to the historical record-weaving of the Togruta enclave houses on Shili than to ordinary textile markets. But your plains motifs mark drought and movement rather than lineage priesthood. Functional memory, not temple memory not that rare in the grand scheme of things."
"Elara would say the plains do not have time for temples that cannot hold water," I said.
"Exactly." He steepled his fingers. "Compare that to Kuati formal carving, where every motif exists to announce ownership and continuity of wealth. Or to Naboo civic art, which performs harmony until the harmony becomes a political weapon or a form of expression under opression. Elyria does not perform abundance it mostly records survival of the fittest."
He spoke of the Digazzi city-states next, whose mosaic histories had become so ornate that later generations could no longer tell which panels were fact and which were civic wish tying to the fact that quite a few origins for the Elyrian culture have been lost.
Then of the Aki-Aki festival masks, publicly joyful and privately used to manage scarce water rights through ceremony. Then of old Corellian dock-charms, dismissed as superstition by officers and treated as route insurance by the crews who actually kept ships alive. He set each against Elyrian hearth-tablets and road-markers.
"You preserve objects that still work as identity under pressure," Luthen said. "Many worlds only begin caring about culture after they have been robbed of it or forgoten it. Your administration appears to have learned that lesson early."
"I learned that if I let local meaning get stripped out, I get riots and rioters who will continue to riot for years because they forget why they even riot and do it because thats what they have been doing. Same with with culture and history, it helps people remember who they are and why they are doing it" I said. Tired. Practical. Loyal in the administrative sense. "The Empire needs stable output. Stable output needs people who do not feel erased every time a new clerk arrives from somewhere else."
His eyes sharpened a fraction at that.
"And yet you are Moff. Imperial centre. Sky people, in local terms."
"I am also the Moff that helped preserve their culture and history while giving them safety, jobs and wealth. I stopped their people from being sold to slavery and from being taxed to oblivion, happy populace is a good and loyal populace and that in turn keeps my head on my neck and makes both them and me rich for it."
I poured water for both of us, more to keep my hands occupied than from hospitality. "Service to the Empire, in practice, is route security, food movement, tax continuity, and not allowing men like Darnis Jerjerrod to confuse personal pride with law."
Luthen drank, unhurried. "A young man's answer with an old problem inside it."
He shifted to history then, and the comparisons grew less flattering in their implications without ever becoming open accusation. He spoke of the fall of the The high priests of Nokturn as a caution about civilizations that left beautiful instruments and empty continuity. Of Zygerrian aftermarkets, where culture was reduced to proof of conquest. Of Chandrilan archival purity, so exact it sometimes preserved lies with the same reverence as fact because the lie had been filed correctly by the right people and of Rylothi oral stories and routes that outlived occupational maps because no official map could map it yet the pass was still there.
"Elyria sits oddly among them," he said. "Visible native continuity with a visible and stable Imperial administration that does not stifle the local history or customs, the recent war that should have hardened every local against outsider rule, and yet they speak of you with more nuance than hostility. That balance is difficult. Difficult things are either carefully made or temporarily lucky."
"Carefully made, mostly," I said. "Lucky where I had no other option."
He asked about loyalties then, as polity as he could. Clearly trying to gauge my true loyalties.
"I do what needs to be done so that the largest number of people stay alive under Imperial law without handing the sector back to pirates, private houses, or famine. I serve the Empire best by not needing emergency fleets every season to clean up preventable collapse. We all live for the glory of the Empire, some do it through extracting resources no matter what, while I do it by cultivating the people and the land and caring for them."
"You collect very little yourself," he observed, nodding at the sparse room.
I shrug "Was not really much of a collector, if I start filling shelves with trophies, and start spending millions on unneeded luxuries I become the kind of man like Jerjerrod."
That earned a genuine, small breath of amusement.
We talked further: on the difference between Chiss tactical preservation and outer-rim cultural preservation; on why Geonosian production culture, or what it was. On the way Mandalorian warrior and family oriented culture where orphans are almost unheard of since there is always a clan willing to take them in or parent's whos children already grew up and want to fill that void that void with another child.
I gave him enough intelligent engagement to remain a serious host and enough bureaucratic tiredness to remain, I hoped, uninteresting as a co-conspirator or at least make his threat assessment of me low.
At last he set his cup down.
"I expected either a provincial fanatic or a center-trained climber," he said. "You appear to be a third type. Those are often more dangerous to predict."
"I'm a fourth type," I said. "Overworked."
The smile returned, though I can tell its still not genuine. "Then I will not take more of your time than necessary. Your archive mistress is capable and the local history and culture is intriguing, that alone makes the visit worthwhile."
I stood when he did. "Elyria will remain open to lawful cultural trade out here in the Outer Rim."
I watched Luthen rejoin his assistant and thought, not for the first time. Klaya's face was carefully blank, probably frustrated she could not get away to bug the entire palace or break into the systems.
****
I had them watched from the moment the private meeting ended.
Not with obvious guard pairs, that would only have taught Luthen I was nervous or suspicious. Rusty put droid assets into the gaps instead: service frames in the guest wing, a maintenance unit on the pad circuit, courier shells in ordinary traffic patterns, and a cleaner in the archive annex that remained powered through the night. Continuous coverage.
"This remains disproportionate for a dealer," Rusty said after the first day.
"Continue anyway."
On the surface, the week was almost dull enough to vindicate him.
Luthen kept his appointments, asked clean cultural questions, and bought like a man with real knowledge rather than tourist appetite. He wanted drought calendars, clan movement histories, provenance rules for mountain crystals, the difference between ritual blades and work knives, the conditions under which hearth-tablets could leave family custody.
Elara handled most sessions directly or with Elyrian clan guides and clan historians. Where local speakers came in, they were cleared and recorded.
Their ship took on textiles, bead registers, licensed crystal samples, authenticated tool replicas, and documentation. No proven weapons movement or obvious dead-letter drops. No lower-city meetings our net could pin not even discreet messages.
Luthen asked, lightly, how tax reform had landed in the clans. Which settlements still preferred old route-law to the Moff ones. Whether the war had left people proud, exhausted, or resentful. Whether "sky people" was used as a term or an insult, he asked junior archivists, a weaver, a road-crew foreman, a Hold shift-leader, a heritage speaker.
The answers were mostly positive, and that mostly mattered.
A western weaver praised grain routes and still spat aside at outsider officers on their ancestral lands, while a young archive aide said I protected native rights, then hesitated when asked if native rights and Imperial law were the same thing.
A Durak's Hold shift-leader called me necessary and somewhat beloved, one minor-clan elder declined to even meet with him, barring him from the complex.
But non the less most natives had a rather positve view of me and my administration, yes not everything is perfect but they are loyal and know I have their wellbeing in mind most of the time.
Rusty compiled a list in high detail while sending out additional probes to those that showed to be more resentful.
On the fourth night Kleya walked the outer gallery alone, stopped at sightlines toward the administrative wing and the service road behind the archive, then returned to quarters once she spotted the camera that was tracking her.
On the fifth day Luthen declined a plains excursion with perfect politeness and stayed in his quarters all day, while on the sixth he closed acquisitions and asked for departure clearance on the seventh.
By the final morning even Rusty sounded faintly satisfied. "No hostile action detected. Cultural acquisition remains dominant. Local native sentiment regarding your administration and offworld presence is 46% highly positive, 24% positive 18% neutral, 10% distrustful and 2% highly distrustful. Meanwhile general non Elyrian population is 59% highly positive, 18% positive, 11% neutral, 11% distrustful and 1% highly distrustful."
Not bad honestly, the first numbers from the first 3 months when I arrived was looking around 17% positive... yeah.
The farewell for Luthen was staged in the upper gallery near the native displays, with multiple people attending like Elara, handful of archive staff two plains, 2 forrest, 1 mountain and 1 river representatives who had helped authenticate pieces during the week.
Morning light held on crystal cases and old hearth-tablets. Luthen's coat was already set for travel. Kleya stood a pace behind him with the final inventory sealed and the ship prepping on the pad below.
"You have been a generous host," Luthen said. "And your archive is better kept than most official rooms twice the size."
Some small talk, back and forth.
A fake smile here and then, when I was about to turn around and bid him farewell he produced some parting gifts.
The first object was something that took me back, it was Zefo, or Zeffonian, the aliens from the Jedi Survivor game.
He explained it is a worn relic of a civilization that left instruments and riddles more readily than living continuity. Valuable and strange and highly advanced civilization that vanished millenia ago.
The second gift was smaller, easier to miss, something I do not recognise it, but something about it is reminding me of something but I am not quite sure what. It is a metal medallion kind of thing that is carved with care but also... aggression? Plenty of jagged and smooth lines, patterns which remind me of Elyrian style but not quite right.
"Recently recovered," Luthen said mildly. "From the frozen wastes of Ziost. Millennia down or more, some called it just low tier or even junk. I call it interesting. A gift for a Moff who actually looks at the things in his own house."
I thanked him with official warmth and accepted both with both hands.
Internally my head is fucking spinning like a hamster in a ball after it snorted enough cocaine to send it to the 4th dimension. The name.
THE FUCKING NAME
Ziost
It was an old Sith capital filled with Pureblood Messassi warrior castes, the Kissai preist caste and their engineering caste the Zuguruk. It is one of the five holy Sith worlds on par with Korriban. It is a frozen wasteland.
And this motherfucker just casually hands it to me.
I kept my face still with a small smile as I looked down as if examining the carving, then with a quick glance at Elara and other natives I realised something.
Red-hued skin in the Elyrian native bloodlines.
Eyes mostly in yellow, orange, or deep red.
Occasional facial tendril traces dismissed as local variation.
A people with old memory systems, stubborn continuity, and a quiet refusal to vanish with a strong warrior sense and distinctive caste system.
Related.
Or descended.
Diluted through millennia of interbreeding between themselves and any outsiders that came here into Elyrians as they were now, still carrying the trace.
My eyes lifted just enough to catch two native archive aides at the edge of the gallery, both with that familiar warm rust undertone to the skin, one with irises too amber for ordinary human range.
Of course. Why had I needed a Ziost carving to make the obvious connect? Because the Republic and now the Empire who didn't bother changing it taught Sith species as history and monster story, non even considered offshoots or that some enclaves went into hiding or endured till this day.
Worse if that small residue of the past became official interest under the wrong eyes like Palpatine's above all Elyria would not remain a culture to preserve. It would become material.
Experiments and slavery, whole people dragged under the thumb of a regime that already knew how to strip children into weapons and was willing to blow up entire planets and end entire species.
I could not let that trail deepen.
"Safe travel," I told Luthen.
"Of course. And thank you, Moff Voss."
This old grey rat doesn't have a clue does he? Well that is a plus for me at least. Hopefully.
Kleya inclined her head, from the gallery window I watched the transport rise off the prestige pad and angle toward the upper lanes and disappear.
Rusty spoke from the private channel. "Gifts logged. No active electronics in either object, do you want deeper material analysis?"
"Yes," I said normally.
"Understood."
I stood alone with the Zeffo relic and the smaller Ziost Sith Pureblood carving, from what I can tell there are swords on this so probably the warrior caste medallion.
God fucking damn it, at least the Elyrians are not all mostly force sensitive like old Sith so thank god for that, whatever happened in the past must have cut their connection to the force, and good riddance for that. Who needs space magic anyway, that shit is overrated, especially if you govern a people who can use the dark side of it.