II: The Lonely City

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Captain Thiel ushered the three Jedi children into the space Khotta claimed soon after arriving; the Captain was shed of his plate and wore matching roughspun robes to the children. Khotta studied the contrast from the corner of his eye while he worked. Captain Thiel bore his discomfort at the alien - by definition unfamiliar - garb well, but to senses well-trained on subtlety and nuance, Khotta judged well the shifting narratives and weight about the officer. It was not his task today to speak on such things, and so he placed those observations aside. Of all the lessons learned among the wind-chasing sons of the Khagan, he bore this lesson closest and most precious: do not seek beyond one's limits. And those limits might be defined newly and readily, and with much implication beside.

Captain Thiel ferried Khotta from Eboracum to Yavin 4, well ahead of the much-slower travelling Temerity. The destroyer would ferry the Jedi away, well able to slip past the growing interdiction nets of the Yuuzhan Vong and with the firepower to cow any patrols. Without the Jedi Eryl Besa, who was guiding Samothrace, the Navigator of Temerity relied upon the newly formed and still experimental process of 'bonding' to a Force-sensitive Jedi. In this case, the Navigator, a relatively youthful man, had spent hours in meditation with a bored Captain Thiel. Khotta intended to study the claimed phenomenon, wherein the mutated third eye was said to retain a peculiar 'afterimage' which persisted and could be seen across stellar distances.

Now Temerity tested this principle, as it tumbled and tacked through the empyreal shoals toward Yavin.

The Jedi children wore expressions of open curiosity, if a little trepidation in the case of the youngest female. The chamber selected was one unused by the Order, one that had passed through the millenia undisturbed but for crawling arthropoids and a few ancient nests of simple-minded mammals. Dust had lain thick, the simple stone door grinding on forgotten hinges, but now it gleamed of hand-polished Massassi stone and liquid light cast from three braziers gaily filled the space with warmth and welcome.

These were metaphors that mattered, these were stories that Khotta pulled and wrapped about himself and his new guests, such that like good tea they steeped meaning and revealed thoughtful themes.

Incense smoked in marble bowls and the floor was roughened by carelessly cast sand, fine-grained and clean and harvested from the wide beaches of the Saecilian Sea. Tallow candles lined the walls, separated by algorithmic distances, their count and spacing defined by old Illyrian mathematica. Khotta prepared the chamber, but his guests filled it.

Anakin Solo, the boy, who was the second son and final scion of the Surviving Sailor and the Cast Aside Queen, eyed the chamber, eyed Khotta, eyed his friends and then the smoking incense.

'I've got a bad feeling about this,' he muttered and the echo of the words were as raindrops of mercury, pregnant with poignance and inherited caution.

His companion, who was Tahiri Veila, of the Sonless Sand, nudged him with her elbow.

'It totally feels different,' she rejoined, tugging on the youngest child's hand. Sannah later given Sistra, Who Flees the Waters, set her jaw and was first to sit on provided cushions. Khotta knew them to be comfortable and pleasing, stuffed with down and spun of linen thread. Their colors were faded but rich and the wear of many bodies had worked purpose into the simple seats. Tahiri Veila followed next, then Anakin Solo, and wordless Captain Thiel departed the chamber. The stone door swung shut.

'You're Alebmos,' Tahiri Veila declared. Khotta did not disagree, but neither did he offer concurrence.

'I am Khotta,' he said, 'who is Alebmos atimes.'

The blonde narrowed her eyes. She would wish to understand what he meant. Her interest would draw along Sannah and Anakin Solo. Thus: the first mark on the page.

'I am to test you and observe you. Better would be alone; together is my allowance.' He had judged the manners of the Solo child and knew that even should his Master accede, the boy could never bear to sit aside while his friends were, in his mind, interrogated. Thus: Khotta did not even raise the option. His request was easy and simple. A conversation, behind a closed but unlocked door. The Solusar waited outside, in uneasy silence with Captain Thiel.

Anakin Solo cast his focus about the chamber once more - candle flames smoothed and lengthened as his gaze passed, though the Jedi did not know. The boy's question swelled as a bubble, thinned, popped.

'What kind of testing?'

Khotta nodded, agreeable to explanation. It was, after all, why he was here. The Lexicanium carefully lowered himself to sit crosslegged opposite the youths, tokens and charms rattling against his azure plate. Mark IV, as almost all of his brothers wore, painted Ultramarine, with new violet trim about his pauldrons to mark his position. On his right shoulder he bore now a numeral IX, on his left, the Ultima. Returned was his Cowl, long-languished in sterile storage, neutered by neutrinos. The elegant torc was a gift decades old, passed from hand to hand and received gratefully by Alebmos-who-then-was-named-Khotta.

Over his armor he bore the tokens and totems his hands had carven and his mind had chosen, the knotwork and poem-form parchments and careful inked soliloquys.

Codicier Rubio held a stern disapproval of all of it. Codicier Rubio was a son of Macragge, and thus, the man's own totemic aspects were of far more orderly and categorical bent.

Codicier Rubio did not like when Alebmos informed him suchly.

'You have been informed but little of the Warp, I know. My Lord Father is circumspect and understands it poorly: that which he does not understand, he is loathe to speak of. Of Captain Thiel, his eyes are shut forever to the Sea of Storms.'

'Pretty much Aeonid just smashed up stuff and told us not to think about it.' Sannah confirmed, her tone dry. The girl shrugged with palms raised, confounded. 'I mean I can't stop thinking about it, so…'

'Tell someone not to think about something, and that pretty much makes you think about it…' Tahiri Veila appended.

'Quite,' Khotta agreed. 'Captain Thiel's advice was rudimentary, but accurate in small ways.' He met the eyes of each child in turn: blue, green, yellow. 'In a pinch, meditative focus is a salve, and avoiding memories is often the best an untrained mind can achieve.'

'What I don't get,' Anakin Solo said, 'is what's so dangerous? Aeonid made it sound like - like that old Sith spirit could do more than…I don't know, what Marka Ragnos or Exar Kun could. Those spirits were pretty dangerous, but Jacen and Jaina beat Exar Kun when they were kids. Then your Primarch told us we should've even say that Sith's name. Like he's some kind of star-story!'

They viewed the Sea of Storms no differently than their Force. Rubio suspected this would be the most difficult task set before Khotta. By writings and by experience - first with the Solo child, then with the Skywalker Master, the shape of this galaxy's beliefs were clear. The Force was, undisputedly, all things. In all things, made of all things, binding together all things. The metaphysical presence of this energy source was so ingrained into the cultural psyche of each and every species, every being. Few were ignorant of the Force, though few were truly educated in its mysteries.

Of the latter type, the Jedi were the greatest font, even if much of their lore had been lost to the predations of their ancient foes, the Sith. This surety and tradition would blinker the Jedi and indeed the Republicans at large, Rubio feared, and Khotta agreed, to the imminent and omnipresent threat of the Warp.

'Tell me of that moment, young Solo and Veila. Speak of the Man in Horns, whose name you were forbidden to speak.'

The candles about them flared as the daemon's name passed Khotta's lips. This did not pass without notice.

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Alebmos - or Khotta, as he kept calling himself - was the fifth Astartes Anakin had met. Actually met and talked to, not just seen. Each one was proving to constantly upend his assumptions. Ascratus, the Sergeant who had sacrificed his life, was cordial if stiff, serious and always focused on the task. Through the Force, the Sergeant had felt like a single cast-iron ingot, almost impenetrable, with barely any impressions of thought or feeling.

The two Neophytes, Zalthis and Solidian, were totally different. Zalthis had this little nugget of fascination that Anakin kept seeing creep out. He'd been interested in their sparring, he'd enjoyed listening to Anakin talk about…normal things, everyday things that he and Tahiri got up to, like their lessons or training or even just exploring old ruins. Zalthis had that same seriousness to him that Ascratus did, but it didn't feel like it took him over completely.

Solidian proved that Astartes still had some degree of humor. He laughed and joked with Zalthis, though never really with anyone else on the Obroa-skai team, even with Wraiths like Face there. Still, there was an informality to Solidian that contrasted with the others.

Aeonid, from the brief times Anakin ran into him during his stay in the Praxeum, seemed sort of like all of them. He'd ask pointed questions and actually listen to the answers from other Jedi, even the youngest trainees. He was always polite and he made a point not to wear his armor, but he always seemed removed and uncomfortable. That wasn't too strange and Anakin had known some other trainees at the Praxeum who'd been just as standoffish. He'd been one, because coming to the Temple was pretty overwhelming at first and if it hadn't been for Tahiri claiming him and yanking him out of his shell, he'd probably still be lurking quietly around the background.

She'd probably say he still did 'lurk around quietly' anyway.

Alebmos was the most different of them all. The armor was recognizable and made the man seem just as oversized and gigantic as any of the Astartes. Unlike Captain Aeonid's armor or Ascratus or even the Neophytes, Alebmos' armor was decorated. Not in a fancy way, like the ones that showed up at the Senate with the Exile's Primarch, but it looked decorated…out of love? Sashes covered most of the chest plate and all looked hand-woven and the colors and designs were so intricate he was pretty sure you'd need a microscope to see it all. All kinds of rattling talismans and little silver bells were tied to them with tassels and leather loops. There were fluttering pages of pale white flimsiplast covered in bold ink symbols, sometimes just one or two of them.

And it was a riot of confusing style. Some of the symbols were detailed and swoopy, some were blocky and simplistic. There were mandalas and sinuous, complicated braids woven into his sashes, and then some of them just had geometric patterns stitched in.

What was most striking was how easily Alebmos smiled. He smiled when he welcomed them into the chamber, he smiled when they all sat down, he smiled when he asked Anakin to tell him about that old Sith spirit in the forgotten temple.

It took Anakin a moment to realize he'd never seen any other of the Astartes smile before. It looked strange on Alebmos' face, sort of like the expression wasn't really meant to be there, but it didn't feel fake. Alebmos - or Khotta - just smiled. Everything about the Astartes came across as open, honest. Free. Welcoming.

So Anakin told him about Melin-Bralam. He'd told Master Ikrit, Uncle Luke, Aunt Mara, Captain Aeonid…plenty of people by now. He and Tahiri talked more about it, sometimes, both unsettled by different things. It made it an easy story to tell and just like every other time, he could dredge back up everything in crystal clarity. Like it had just happened. The exact kind of tone Melin-Bralam used, the little gestures the Sith made.

And then the Man in Horns that came after. Tahiri added on her own experience, what she saw and what that Sith had told her. She was almost tentative - probably feeling the same awkwardness around Sannah that he did. It wasn't exactly easy to say out loud that an ancient Sith had offered ways to make their friend into their slave, or worse, some kind of experiment.

That Sannah didn't believe a word of the Melodies' supposed origin didn't help. She refused to listen to it every time it came up. Master Ikrit tried to talk to her in private, but while Anakin's Kushiban Master wouldn't breach his confidence with Sannah, Anakin knew that hadn't helped.

'...the scariest thing,' Tahiri added, 'was how…how empty that 'Man' felt. Like I know Yuuzhan Vong, and they don't feel like anything at all, but when he was talking to Anakin, it felt almost like the Force…" she trailed off, and Anakin heard the unspoken words. Left us.

'Like the Force didn't want whatever that thing was at all.'

'Didn't want to be in the same room, yes,' Tahiri agreed.

Alebmos - Khotta - rubbed at his bearded chin. Another difference to the other Astartes - his facial hair. Thick and oiled, shaped like a wedge and gleaming in the candlelight, Khotta tugged at his while he mulled over that particular tidbit.

'It is the opinion of Codicier Rubio that the Warp and the Force might be described as anathematic. He has spent much time in the opened libraries of the flagship in research and has consulted with the Astropathy and Navis. Perhaps it is as oil and water, such that when one influence is in ascendance, the other recedes?' Khotta hummed in thought, then placed his bared hands, bereft of gauntlets, on his armored knees. 'A question to consider another day - though a worthy one! My next interest is in the actions of young Sannah. You broke the brass circle, child?'

Startled to be addressed, Sannah gulped and tore her eyes away from Khotta, focusing instead on her folded hands in her lap.

'I got it with the chisel I found.' She opened one hand, tracing a finger over where frostbite had marked her palm. 'I thought it wouldn't work, but it just cut right through it.'

'And the ritual was lost,' Khotta clarified.

'Well, we think it was the same time that Tahiri and I…stabbed the 'Man' with our lightsabers.'

'This was reported. Your blades could harm the apparition?'

Anakin glanced to Tahiri at the same time she looked to him. She bit her lip and he felt his uncertainty mirrored back.

'Maybe? It didn't burn him - or it - or cut it, but when we both did it, that was right when it vanished. So it had to, I think?'

Anakin nodded as Tahiri explained. Master Ikrit firmly believed it was their resolve and he commented on the similarity to how Jacen and Jaina had confronted Exar Kun's spirit years ago. It felt right, but that didn't mean it was, though.

'It may well have been all three.' Khotta gestured broadly, encompassing the chamber. 'The Sea of Storm is one of empathic meaning. Much that is done with intention will shape the Warp. Metaphor is a tool as powerful as any bolter or, indeed, blaster. The Jedi have wielded lightsabers for many millenia, I am given to believe?'

'For as long as there were Jedi,' Anakin confirmed. He could feel it, every time he took up his lightsaber. The feeling never quite went away, that feeling of weight that went beyond simple mass.

'That gives a lightsaber much potency. It has been observed by those who study the Sea of Storms that repetition and cultural memory create narratives that repeat. Knives are the most ancient tool of all beings that achieve sapience; knives remain a chief instrument in the arts of shaping and channeling the Warp.' Khotta gestured to his hip, where a sharply curved knife with an antler handle rested in a sheathe.

'I thought you guys didn't like superstition?' Tahiri said.

'Are there not those among your Republic that view the Force as mere superstition?'

Anakin snorted - that hit a little close to home, considering his father. Han didn't disbelieve in the Force and Anakin knew he respected it enough, but he never really understood it and sometimes it showed.

'The Imperium is built on a foundation of science and understanding,' Khotta continued, 'and some would demean what I say as idolatry and yes, as superstition. I consider it literary analysis. Just as the universe is bound upon the great wheels of physics, the Sea of Storms appears to be harnessed to wheels built on stories. As gravity has its fundamental laws, so too does a narrative require order and structure.'

'That's nice and everything, but aren't you supposed to tell us if we're sithspawn or something?' Sannah bit out, between clenched teeth. 'Not give us lessons.'

Anakin didn't disagree. What Khotta was talking about was interesting, kind of, but Aeonid and Primarch Guilliman made the dangers sound like life and death. Or maybe even worse than death.

Khotta smiled that warm, welcoming grin.

'I am. Not all interrogations are done in a cell of bare metal and with tools of pain, young Sannah. I have opened your mind through talk and question, and I have aligned your thoughts with mine.'

Anakin felt it, then, like a feather-light stroke across his brain. A touch that was intangible and impossibly faint, so hard to measure that no instrument ever made could quantify it. Even as he noticed it and pressed for it, it was gone already and he wondered if he even felt it at all.

'You are all three free of any warp-taint. No vestiges linger on you and no tale has grabbed hold of your souls.'

Tahiri's jaw dropped.

'It was that easy?'

Khotta laughed, then, booming and rolling like thunder on the horizon, heavy and chuffing like a ronto.

'I described this chamber in the essence of two worlds and made myself the medium. There have been little remoras nibbling at my wards from the moment we seated ourselves. No, young Veila, not so easy. This world is steeped in murder and this system is a knot of storms.' His cheer vanished and Anakin felt gooseflesh pimple his arms as the chamber's temperature suddenly plunged.

Sannah swallowed a cry of surprise, yellow eyes wide as she watched frost zag up the Massassi stone walls.

'You three are untainted and with discipline will remain so. I share a little lore of the Sea of Storms, so that you might be better armed. This is against the advice of my Codicier to do so, but it is the ways I learned and trust better. It is better to know a little and know what to put aside, than go blindly and foolishly into the dark. You have all seen the unbound Sea.' Levelly, Khotta held their attention.

'When the dark side beckons, can you turn it away?'

Anakin answered reflexively.

'Yes. Always.'

Khotta's lips thinned.

'Beyond the Path of Heaven, in the depths of the Sea, there is much that will not take no for an answer.' The chamber warmed and the frost receded. 'Please, Jedi: if ever you fear the presence of the Warp, call for me. Call for the Ultramarines. We will answer and I will treat always in fairness.'

Though the Astartes exuded sincerity, a cold knot formed in Anakin's gut.

'What would you have done if me or Tahiri or Sannah weren't untouched? What if something had happened to us?'

Khotta's gaze was measuring.

'Mercy.' He spoke the single word crisply. 'Death is fairer and purer than the ruin straying off the Path brings.'

Sannah gasped and Tahiri winced, but Master Ikrit had suspected no less. The Imperials were absolutists and didn't hide that violence was often their first choice. He didn't even find it in him to rise to the implicit threat to his friends. It wasn't even meant as a threat. Just a statement of fact.

Anakin wondered at the world they'd come from, that would make them like this. Uncle Luke had suspicions, but he kept them to himself.

'How do we know you aren't possessed or evil or - or corrupted or something!' Sannah accused, jabbing at Khotta with her finger.

It wasn't a bad question. If it all was as dangerous as the Exiles made it sound, how could anyone at all 'use' the Warp? And in fact - what did 'using' the Warp even mean? The Force was obvious and easy to understand, but all anyone really knew was that the 'Warp' was some kind of other dimension that the Exiles sent their ships through.

Khotta interlaced his fingers, tapping fingertips to his lip.

'A fair question. I am Lexicanium, which means I am learned in control of the energies of the Sea of Storms. Teachings are strict and precise. Failure means death. That I sit here to measure you is proof enough. But I would not take such word myself, if our positions were reversed.'

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

'You could tell us anything,' Anakin agreed, 'and all we can do is just believe it.'

'Verily, young Solo. Let us try, then, this: you have all three tasted the bitterness of the unfiltered Sea. Open your senses to me now, and taste instead the Path of Heaven.'

Something about how Khotta phrased it confused Anakin, even as he broadened his sense of the Force. 'Open your senses' - were those people like Khotta who could 'touch' this Warp always blocking it out, or something?

Anakin felt Tahiri's presence beside him, the less familiar but still friendly presence of Sannah as well.

He sensed Aeonid beyond the small chamber, sensed the man's constant and low-level unease, so pervasive he wasn't sure the Astartes realized it. He sensed Kam Solusar as well, leaning and relaxed against the wall of the corridor, trying to engage Aeonid in small conversation. He sensed the other initiates, several floors below, led by Tionne as she guided them through packing their things. A few other Jedi were spread out, policing up supplies and belongings that years of the Praxeum's running had spread out and into nooks and crannies.

He sensed the undercurrent of worry that underpinned everyone's actions. The sorrow at leaving the Great Temple, the anxiety that the Yuuzhan Vong might be close. The anger at having to leave their 'home', the small hope to one day see these halls again.

The same thing Anakin felt, when Uncle Luke broke the news. They'd be on Coruscant, just for a while. Just until the Yuuzhan Vong were beaten back and Yavin was safer.

Whenever that would be.

And of course beyond: the jungle, the life there in the trees and the ferns and the creatures that called it all home. Master Ikrit, tending to his garden.

He didn't sense Khotta.

The Force flowed in and through and around all things, from the tiniest fly to the oldest of star-dragons, in lifeless stone and flowing water.

Ysalamiri made holes in the Force. They made absences where the Force avoided, where it flowed around and made obvious by its avoidance the aura of the little creatures. The Yuuzhan Vong were mute. The Force seemed as if it did not even notice their presence, as if they were illusions or holograms, not beings of flesh and bone.

Anakin saw Khotta with his eyes but Khotta was not there. Tahiri exuded confusion, Sannah a bone-deep apathy, but Anakin narrowed his eyes and focused. He could see Khotta. In fact, he could sense him - had felt the wash of his emotions, left open and unguarded. Until now. The Astartes' eyes were backlit, glints of white-violet and flecks of gold. The air grew chiller once more.

Once, when visiting Dac, Anakin had peered through the windows of Heurkea City, watching a migratory school of enormous filter-feeders pass by. He could hear their song through the Force - Jacen had taught him that - and from above the waters, they were only sketches of silhouettes, just dark outlines. Sometimes they came close, so close to the surface that the water bulged and swelled, but they never quite broke through.

The memory fixed in his mind. Khotta was there, no different to Primarch Guilliman, and he had certainly been an overwhelming presence in the Force. Anakin only had to look…askance. He couldn't peer at Khotta directly. He had to tilt his head, he had to look away, he had to catch a glimpse through the corner of his eye, just beyond focus, just at the edge of sight - he had to see the way the sea bulged, the water pressed up and out of the way by something greater, far greater beneath -

Until the air froze and Tahiri's blonde hair suspended in its perpetual hazy, wavy tangle; until the smoking incense formed frozen shapes like smoked glass, until the flickering flames of candles crystallized, until the Force acceded and bowed and yoked by his will, Anakin saw expanding out beyond him, before him, around him, within him, all directions. He saw Khotta, in his sashes and his armor, in his trinkets and his baubles, in his bells and his poems, in the luminous, crouching, etched shape in lightning. Behind the man was a city, a city of walls, a city of orderly streets and laser-straight lines, a city of marble and glass and burnished, shining steel. A city in the steppes, with high walls and wide avenues.

Khotta, Anakin knew. The Lonely City.

Alebmos-named-Khotta smiled and his eyes crinkled and the flaming light went out and the city curled inwards and outwards and folded tesseract through dimensions and packed back into the too-small body of the transhuman soldier sitting cross-legged as a monk.

Anakin blinked.

The chamber warmed.

'Well, I didn't see anything,' Sannah declared.

'Me either,' Tahiri agreed, turning an eye to Anakin. 'Anakin sure did though. Boy, did he.'

Anakin found himself quite without words.

'Young Solo has a focus beyond his years,' Khotta praised. 'And imagination. I felt your Force and the flavor was strange. You are hard to see, for me. I believe Codicier Rubio to be correct.' Khotta exhaled, patting his knees. 'My fears are eased all the more. Your Force and the Warp - they peer past each other. With effort and with will, as with young Solo, there might be momentary alignment, but…I believe - believe - that Jedi such as yourselves might prove…redoubtable…in the face of the Sea of Storms.'

'Hold on, hold on.' Sannah leaned forward, scowling. 'So you're all telling me that I'm supposed to be some kind of sithspawn-'

'Sannah-' Tahiri tried, but the Melodie cut her off.

'And now you're like 'don't worry, you're a Jedi so you'll be fine.' What about my people!'

Tahiri shifted, reaching out to embrace Sannah, wrapping an arm around her slender shoulders. Khotta's face softened and when he spoke, Anakin was surprised an Astartes could sound so gentle.

'I have petitioned to study your people, young Sannah. I will not condemn out of hand those who might be innocent. Be brave and be loyal and your people may yet need you as a guide through uncertainty.'

'And if you think they're bad? You're gonna kill them all?'

'Sannah, you know Master Skywalker would never let that happen.'

She whirled on Tahiri, slapping her arm away.

'I can pay attention! I'm not a kid! I watched that speech to the Senate!'

Khotta raised both hands.

'Peace, child. Peace! I will advise Master Skywalker and your Republic, nothing more.'

Sannah folded her arms, pointedly turning her head away before anyone could catch the wetness in her eyes. Anakin felt her boiling fear nonetheless, reaching out with a tentative and gentle touch.

The Melodie rejected it.

With a gesture, Khotta extinguished all the candles. The braziers still merrily crackled and the incense smoked, but the chamber felt larger. More open, less intimate.

'Rest easily knowing that you have faced what few have and passed it unscathed,' Khotta said. The Astartes psyker took a long, deep inhale, then let out the breath in a gust. Subtly, his demeanour shifted and changed, his back straightening, his face taking on a more stoic bent. Anakin felt Khotta muster and order himself, felt the leak of emotion and feeling around the Astartes suddenly curtail and withdraw.

Khotta became Alebmos, a soldier of Ultramar.

'Do not hesitate to come to me,' Alebmos told them. Anakin nodded, Tahiri hummed in agreement. Sannah remained obstinate, turned away. 'Strange dreams, odd portents, feelings beyond logic - do not dismiss them.'

Not that different from what a Jedi was taught anyway. Self reflection was important. Jacen harped on that point plenty.

Anakin helped Tahiri to her feet, then the both of them took Sannah's hands and tugged her up from her cushion too. Alebmos went about extinguishing the braziers and collecting the bowls of incense. Kam Solusar poked his head in, cracking the door.

'Everything okay, kids?'

'Just fine, Master Solusar. It was kind of boring, really.' Tahiri looped an arm around Anakin's waist, her other caught Sannah and tugged the Melodie close. 'No evil sith spirits here!'

Kam inclined his head to Alebmos, who returned the greeting.

'Thank you for your care,' Solusar said.

'I do my duty,' Alebmos demurred. 'But you are welcome.'

'I'd like to talk with Aeonid and Alebmos alone. Go find Tionne, you three. She has some tasks for you while we're packing everything up.'

Anakin was sure he'd find out exactly what was talked about soon enough - Kam still thought of him as a kid kid, sometimes - so he left without complaint, dragging along Tahiri as she opened her mouth to do exactly that. Sannah trailed in their wake, a stormcloud practically visible over her head.

There was a lot of packing left to do. Anakin didn't have a lot, but he did have Jacen's and Jaina's rooms to clear up. Both of his siblings left a lot behind, especially Jaina when she went off to join the Rogues, so he had triple the work to do. He'd be making sure they heard exactly how much work that was next he saw them…

At least Jacen didn't have half as big a menagerie that he used to. Still had a couple, but they were pretty self-sufficient and a few of the trainees already took care of them. Jaina had a whole spread of tools and half-finished tinkering projects, not to mention way too many grease and oil stained jumpsuits.

There were going to be a lot of boxes. Tahiri kept up a running chatter to Sannah as they headed back down, talking mostly about nothing. That was a weapon she'd aimed at him plenty of times and it was sort of funny to see from the outside how well it worked. Sannah started off snarking back dry responses, barely more than a word or two, until by the time they left the turbolift in the main occupied level, Sannah seemed much calmer and was chatting right back.

The Man in Horns still lingered in some of Anakin's less pleasant dreams. Not visions - he knew the texture of a true vision through the Force, but still the grim-faced visage surfaced and sneered and lingered when he awoke. Sometimes, it even sprouted a triangular rebreather and cold, black lenses over its eyes, and that was when Anakin woke drenched in sweat and with Tahiri's concern echoing in his mind.

Alebmos' judgement eased his worries a little. There was enough to occupy his thoughts these days.

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Noskaur poured Viqi another splash of wine, followed by a healthy watering until the thick, violet liquid was pale amethyst. The Kuati Senator took the crystal in long, delicate fingers, swirling it once, twice, before taking a sip.

'Oh, that is a fine vintage,' she crooned, eyes sliding shut in pleasure. 'Very fragrant, but just the right balance to experience every flavour. I can't even place half of them.'

Airspeeders winked past, endless streams of lights forming golden rivers of light across the velvet sky. Coruscant's night was never true, never more than a warm, bright evening as the world-wide glow of civilization very literally illuminated the dark. Grid patterns of traffic stacked high into the stratosphere, where skyhooks loomed and then above, higher, were the pale blue shapes of stations and orbital plates - though not called such by the locals - and shoals of enormous, hyperspace capable intersystem craft.

Coruscant might be the heart of a perverse galaxy and the seat of a comedy of a 'government', festooned with bloat and infested by xenos, but it did bear a particular visual appeal. Noskaur could well envisage such growth across the surface of Terra, consuming the blasted, radioactive wastelands and tired barren lands until the throneworld was a pulsing, gleaming jewel of light, hung like a flawless diamond against the velvet dark of space.

The Terra he had left many decades ago was one recovering, but with the Praetorian returned and the Crusade, as some whispered, coming to a close, he could only imagine what wonders would be crafted in the centuries to come.

One day he might host Viqi Shesh in palatial apartments within the Imperial Palace, beneath the noble plates of Lemuria and Skye.

Noskaur brushed aside the day-dreaming.

'As I was saying,' Viqi continued, sipping at her wine, 'I won't forget your gift. Without it…' she trailed off, idly touching the livid scar at her temple. It was thin, just a sharp red line that ran for several inches into her hairline, where a thin patch of her silken locks were missing.

Noskaur inclined his head. The digi-las was a world's bounty, but the vaults of the Primarch and the Archmagos were deep indeed. It seemed a trifle to grant to the Senator, especially as insurance for so useful an ally.

'I fear I'm still hesitant that you chose to entrust so potent a weapon to a…droid…but I cannot deny the results. I would have grieved your death, Senator. You have proven a true friend to the Imperium.'

Viqi adjusted the myriad rings on her slender fingers - violet opals and tourmatines, set in oddly utilitarian settings of duranium and durasteel.

'A Kuati changes her jewelry and people notice, Tamirit. Everything means something. 4F can no more betray me than this table. Isn't that right, 4f?'

The protocol droid, arms askance and waiting in the wings with a tray of spiced fleek eel and the opened bottle, tilted its head awkwardly.

'Of course, mistress Shesh.'

'Besides, the best knife is the one you don't see coming.' Archly, Viqi sneered. 'Victor, or at least the ashy smear that he is now, surely didn't see it.'

'Well said.' Noskaur offered a mock toast, draining his own glass. The vintage, several hundred years old from Espandor, tingled and teased his tongue. 'On the subject of our continued and fruitful alliance, I profess a great interest in seeing the results of your shipwrights and our own.'

Viqi rose from her chaise, her robes sweeping behind her. Her private apartments encompassed the entire upper four floors of a tower, projecting tall from a prominent skyhook near the Capital complex. The view was truly breathtaking, even for one as travelled as Noskaur, with floor-to-ceiling transparisteel windows wrapping about the entire spire. He'd brought several of his attaches with him, along with Corria Nalt, much to the depressed acceptance of the Magos. Nalt had done too well during his brief stint alongside Noskaur, Thiel, Katryna and Lurense. His exposure to the 'perverse and unsanctioned technologies' of the Republic meant Magos with more sway condemned him to continue his 'banishment' among the unwashed (and lamentably unaugmented) populace of the Republic.

Business was left for Viqi's staff and his own, bogged down in far less comfortable and appointed conference rooms in the floors below while the Senator entertained him.

Wandering about the vast lounge, she traced fingertips along vases and abstract art, shaped out of wrought metal and cunning holograms.

'Kuat is the pride of the galaxy for a reason,' she began, cupping her long-stemmed glass in one hand. 'You'd have come to us in the end anyway. I just sped things along. You know; for every conflict in almost twenty-five thousand years, KDY vessels have been in the vanguard.'

There was an almost manic gleam in the woman's eyes. Behind her, like poetry, swelled the bloated mass of Malaghi Shesh, the battleship at anchor some two hundred kilometres away and yet still looming large.

'The Sith Wars? We were there. Tionese Wars? The Republic bought squadrons from us. Pius Dea? Mandalorian Crusades? Us. We aren't shipwrights, we're synonymous with war. Oh yes, oh yes, we make civilian vessels aplenty. Some of our luxury lines I'm sure would turn even the heads of your own richest. But Kuat knows war.' She grew and more animated, gesticulating and gesturing and Noskaur watched with no small interest - the contrast between the cool, sardonic and level woman he'd known and this new, fiery orator was stark.

'You should see the earliest drafts. Did you know Kuat has never stopped designs for dreadnoughts? Oh, we read the leaves and we knew that era was over for at least several decades. No one wanted star dreadnoughts. No one could afford them. Dac could launch their Viscounts all they wanted, but we saw what it was - it was MCS trying to show they could measure up to us. To us! The Rejuvenator line, that was the play and it was what the New Republic needed.'

She paused, studying her wine then taking a swallow.

'The wars were all over! The Remnant was never going to try anything major again, the warlords were stamped out and the worst anyone could imagine was something like the Ssi-ruuvi again. Some brush dustup that a single small squadron could handle. No one needed star dreadnoughts again, not for now.'

Viqi shook her head, her hair rippling about her shoulders. Noskaur adjusted himself, quite content to let her continue her rant.

'We never closed our design divisions. Do you know how many iterations beyond the Executor class we have? Past Mandator?'

'Vigilance is a virtue,' Noskaur quoted.

'Yes! You won't just be pleased by what our people are putting together, you won't believe what they're already designing.' She gestured to a slab of polished metal, gleaming and prominent on an interior wall. Flanked by artfully trimmed and maintained shrubs, the rectangle was the height of a man and polished bright as a mirror, marred by dense lines of laser-etched text.

The Treaty of Fundamental Iron. One half of the whole, detailing the obligations of the Mechanicum of Mars to the Ten Families of Kuat and Their Shipyards. The rights of Kuat to call upon, the requirements the Mechanicum must meet, the pacts and deals and exchange of knowledge and material and theory.

'We're throwing out accepted logic and each new flimsiplast design is shocking. We're making history, Tamirit. This isn't just a collaboration on warships, this is blending. Your technology and ours, your experience and ours. These will be ships like two galaxies haven't seen.'

He applauded her, placing aside his glass as she smirked and curtsied.

'I try to save my passion for the Senate, but this…Tamirit, this is what Kuat has needed. New life, new ideas, new vision.'

'The Mechanicum, for all its stiff-necked rigour, does truly value the act of creation. I am sure many Magos share your enthusiasm.' Not all, he did not say, keeping that particular fact behind his smile and his words. The followers of the 'Tenets Cautionary' seemed to grow more vocal each day, though Orichi-Mu continued to affirm that it was an internal matter to the Mechanicum, and merely one of doctrinal minutia.

'We're laying hulls already. I've never seen fire like this in our design cadres. It's infectious!' Viqi eyed the remaining mouthful or two in her glass, tossed it all back and exhaled. 'Borsk is privately furious, you know. His beloved Bothan Assault Cruisers are about to be a boondoggle.' She snorted, quite uncouth, but the touch of red in her cheeks belied minor intoxication.

It was to be a celebration, in truth, of the official ratification of the Treaty and the New Republic Senate passing the proposal that would bestow Allied Region status on the Exiled Imperium. An informal chat to go over specifics, off the record, for Noskaur to feel out Kuat's true opinion and what further, if any, moves were needed to retain the Senator solidly in their camp.

It appeared anything more was quite unnecessary.

'Tamirit, this stays between us-'

'Quite of the record, without a doubt-'

'-but with internal polling and some other off the record conversations with select individuals, we could have a new Chief of State in a year. Two at the most.'

Her vicious smile left little doubt as to precisely who that might be. Were he younger, or Shesh older, his reaction to that smile might have been something quite different. And in a less official role, as well. Ah, the perils of maturity and professionalism. Though, if his read was right, the woman had set her sights far beyond what any reasonable mortal might dream. In that, he wished her the best of luck, for no other reason than the sheerest improbability of it.

Tamirit Noskaur reached for the bottle of wine once more.

'That, I should think, calls for another toast.'