One week later
Inquisitoriate Command
Imperial City, Coruscant – Five Kilometers from the Palace
“ I’m going to personally keel-haul the sonuvabitch!”
Admiral Desaria smoldered with rage as he pushed open a massive pair of blue-tinted double doors innocently barring his way into the massive Imperial Citadel, home to the unanimously feared and equally loathed Inquisitoriate. The building’s façade sloped away from a tree-lined promenade for over a hundred levels, topped off not with a simple roof but four small towers growing from the center’s corners around a larger one at its heart. Few knew how many people had met a gruesome fate somewhere in the structure’s depths, the brutally efficient Inquisitoriate Registrar doubtless losing track with the thousands it prosecuted daily.
“ Admiral. Can I help you?”
The Baron did not even pay the red tuniced Inquisitoriate Senior Lieutenant the courtesy of a nod among soldiers for the former did not now consider the crimson uniformed heathen warriors of any caste. Instead as the tall yet lanky man approached and moved into the Admiral’s way with hands opened wide in a gesture of friendly greeting, the Chief of the General Staff used his powerful forearms to shove the man several meters so that he was sliding across the beautifully polished and waxed floor.
What few pairs of eyes did not glare at their fallen comrade with looks of complete bemusement reached for pistols and rifles. All of them wore an Imperial uniform but those who swore a sort of morbid oath to the Empire under the Inquisitoriate Banner were forever bound to the legacy of a past Emperor no matter what progress had been made in the decades since his death. The security forces as a whole under the Viscount del Forza simply refused to acclimate themselves to the times, easing and improving with the progression of the universe.
For that, seventeen thousand Caridan citizens lay entombed in a rock-sheathed casement brought to life by the Final Act of an old Empire. Palpatine would have been proud: Admiral Desaria and needless to say his good friend the Imperial Regent was not.
Those that had moved limbs to side arms or began pressing alarms throughout the cavernous lobby of Inquisitoriate Command soon found themselves staring down the barrels of guns and blaster wielded by a scattered mix of Army and Fleet soldiers. The entire complex seemed to have been overrun in a matter of moments.
Another officer, either unaware or arrogantly unconcerned to those troops who now held nearly every one of his fellows under guard approached the Admiral with hand on holster.
“ May I help you, Admiral?”
The look of anger and unbridled rage with had pasted itself to the Admiral’s face refused to subside; in fact it seemed to grow the deeper into the building he advanced. The single white shoulder cord he wore jostled with his motion as he briskly strode unabashed through the lobby towards several forcefully vacated lifts.
“ No you may not,” Desaria growled as he turned to face into the lobby and give each and every one of the Inquisitorate officers his most disgusted look before the lift doors slammed shut in front of him.
The lift rushed itself up the central spine of the building above the superstructure to the tallest of the five towers. Somewhere near its peak was the Grand Inquisitor’s office, idealistically located to convey some sort of power feeling. The Admiral could not bare to think of it, for every mention of that man’s name, every reminder tangible and not so plunged his heart more towards hatred. Desaria hated the New Republic and the Rebellion which preceded it, but the feelings within him were dangerously close to if not past those.
The entire two hundredth floor was in fact devoted to the work space of the Grand Inquisitor. Every transparisteel panel was shaded a dark blue to admit as little light as possible. Even the few plants which miraculously survived in the room’s dark expanse possessed an ominous air to them.
Behind a wooden desk sat the tall yet lanky Corellian aristocrat who took great pride and joy in lording over every single internal security apparatus the Empire wished to wield. His white hair stuck painfully out in the darkness, his red eyes burning bright despite the surroundings. The Grand Inquisitor’s tunic was immaculate and done up, his own shoulder bearing a cord as well, however black. He did not rise to greet his guest and the six Fleet guards who accompanied him, only placed a cryshac next to a datapad he had been toiling at.
“ Shift rotations for my staff officers in the Outer Rim. What mundane work. Do come in, Admiral.”
Desaria found his head tilted ever so slightly towards the floor to make the glimmer from his eyes the all the more wrathful. With a powerful gait he marched to the Inquisitor’s desk and slammed two clenched fists on its shined surface.
“ What the @#%$ do you think you are doing?” the Admiral asked, unable to control his rage to any degree.
The man whom he had come to see stood also though he remained eerily calm. “ Shift rotations, as I said. Would you like to look? I know how with your current posting you are so adept at paperwork.”
If the Admiral’s eyes could have grown any redder or wider, they did then. “ You are the most disgusting creature on which I have ever had the displeasure of laying my eyes on.”
With one fist unclenched the Admiral swung his hand to the Inquisitor’s chest and swiped the red-on-blank rank plaque he wore into his palm. Shortly thereafter it went flying into the chamber’s emptiness. “ You dare call yourself an Imperial officer? It is no wonder you can only be found lurking in the shadows of real warriors. You find it necessary to kill innocent civilians to give me unwanted help on an assignment I had all but completed? Did you no have enough death at Jileeak?”
The Viscount del Forza perceptibly cringed at the memory of the two-year past eighth Battle of Hoth, this time between forces of the then-powerful Jutraalian Empire and the Imperial Fleet. The Grand Inquisitor had then held both that rank as well as a naval commission as commander of the Jutraalian Navy and oversaw its withdrawal after Emperor Fearson’s superweapon destroyed itself while priming to fire. Desaria had been there as well, but the two men did not know each other, only of each other from Intelligence briefings. Neither suspected that barely any time later they would be serving the same masters.
A wave of anger flashed over the Inquisitor before he bit out,” Don’t tread too closely, Desaria. What was it you said in your Doctrinal Revision? Ah, yes. In times of war there are no civilians, and there are no innocents.”
“ That was meant in a state of real war. On the battlefield, and it certainly did not apply to our own people!”
The Grand Inquisitor regained his haughty composure and took a quick sip from a small jade glass resting visually atop some flimsiplast sheets. “ Duty is a perception of purpose, Admiral. You have yours, and I have mine. We both have the same ultimate goal: the complete restoration of the Empire. It is your destiny to expand its borders and see that all real enemies are tossed aside. Mine is to fight not a war against fleets or armies but against those who would one day be swayed away from our cause. I did what I had to do to ensure that every man woman and child living in that system bears a deep-seated hatred for anything that is not the Empire.”
“ They were the Empire! Carida! It has been the home of the central Academy for a century! I cannot think of a planet whose population I trust in more! And yet you see a need to reinforce the staunchest citizens we have as opposed to some who I would not trust within a dozen meters of me?”
Del Forza pursed his lips. “ Before they were the most loyal, yes. As I told you, they are not of a generation or era faced with threat from which we must rescue them. Loyalty is not given, it is earned. And now we have earned it. Their fear of the outside enemies which you fight has forged in every one of them a passion for the Empire they only nurtured as due course.”
Admiral Desaria smoldered, the view of the exploding palace complex burned forever into his mind’s eye. The screams of terror from around his limousine, the cries of grief stricken lookers-on who feared a relative or friend caught within would continue to echo through the Admiral’s head for many sleepless nights to come. Despite those images of horror and pure unadulterated evil that would forever play on his conscience, he could not help but acknowledge the Inquisitor’s cruelly calculating logic. He had stiffened resolve. What was a casual allegiance would now be fiery sermons from political pulpits, towering Imperial recruiting posters, and red and black banners flying high into the sky. Del Forza had done well in planting information that the blast was the work of Rebel-allied sympathizers: Carida’s population from aging monarch to lowly plebe fell for the ruse completely.
Try as he might, stray thoughts wound their way through the Chief of the General Staff’s mind. For the first time in his distinguished military career, the Kuati nobleman was at a loss for concise thought. The Grand Inquisitor had done his duty, of that there could be no question. The price at which he had purchased that very success was however too high for the Admiral of the Fleet to stomach. There were other ways to galvanize a population to war, to rally its citizenry into action against a hated foe and it was the Grand Inquisitor’s mandate to do so. His was also to ensure the general security of the Imperial populace, an aim he had curtailed to ensure their loyalty.
No man, no officer, can choose what orders to follow and which to disobey. There cannot be dissected operations lest we all fall prey to ill-prepared initiative.
Desaria took in a deep breath and stabbed a finger across the room’s darkened expanse at the young fanatic. “ This,” he bellowed, his voice low and ominous and dripping with reverberating hatred. “ Is not over.”
With that, the Admiral turned and marched from the building. Most of his men accompanied him, while many more remained at the Inquisitoriate Command to ensure the complete cooperation of their comrades with any orders passed down the rank and file. Only the Viscount Ierin del Forza knew of the Admiral’s animosity, and thus he was the only one to fear the days of his autonomy were numbered.
[size=1]Requiem en Terra Pax[/size]
