SithLore

It would not be uncharitable to call much of recorded galactic history a pissing contest between two groups of religious cultists to determine who would rule the galaxy. Despite their varied forms, it always settled into light and dark, Sith and Jedi, Republic and Empire. Even now, things hung in the balance waiting for the right moment to topple one way or the other.

This view ignored the simple truth that the galaxy was a massive place. Singularly huge, in fact. For all the fighting, there were countless planets and peoples that had heard of next to none of it. For their part, the galaxy spanning organizations that considered themselves rulers of all space didn’t much care for them either- whether it was lack of resources or inopportune locations, these systems were all but ignored.

But those places did not simply stop existing from the lack of attention. They had their own stories, their own histories, and their own futures. Like a microcosm of the galaxy at large, one could find the same injustices, the same stories written like a footnote across the page of galactic history.

Chryse was one such story. Far out enough into the outer rim to have remained distant from the Republic over the millenia, they developed separate from the galaxy at large, over time growing from one mislaid colony ship into a thriving system. They forged their own history, mixed in darkness and light, and began their expansion out into all corners of their solar system.

Their history had led to a time of great strife. Their world had come by the power to expand in a manner all too common in the galaxy- by forcing those who held little power to labor on behalf of those who held the might to enforce their rules. Building satellite stations for the impoverished underclass of their world to live and work off of, they bustled them off world into easily managed prisons in the image of cities.

It was a masterstroke, in a way. Once they were in the city-stations, the laborers had nowhere they could go outside of it, and their resources were entirely limited by their surroundings and what they could get from their home planet. Any station that resisted could be ‘sanctioned’ and starved into compliance. In this way, the Chyrse world government could sap the mineral rich asteroids in the system dry for minimal cost and continue to live their extravagant lives on planet.

It was a system crying out for freedom. A people crying out… for a Rebellion.


~ ~ ~ ~ ~


“You see that, WC6? Is it close enough to be a concern?”

“Telemetry shows it’s path should move right past us, control. No need for weapons free.”

“Copy that. Hey, you up for drinks after shift?”

“Sorry, they got me covering Soren’s shift after this- some sort of flu.”

Zasabi let loose a sigh of relief as he turned off the signal receiver. This operation had taken far too long to set up with the limited resources he had, and even then it relied on the weapons stations that ringed the satellite city not shooting down his insertion device. Even with all the best laid plans in the world, it all came down to luck, and once again his luck had held.

It wasn’t much. The asteroid he had hollowed out into his home for the last ten weeks had been fitted with what sensor baffles and equipment they could afford in the short time they had access to it, but it still was barely the size of a Coruscant undercity apartment. He had just enough space to stretch out his limbs and just enough life support to keep breathing and eating, but not much more. No gravity, no temperature control beyond his own bodysuit, and no diversions other than the mission documents and a lot of meditating.

And now, it had come down to this. Months of planning and preparation, analysis of signal traffic from the edge of the system and discreet communication with sources from within the colony had led to this.

He checked and double checked his body suit, making sure all of his equipment was accounted for. Once he left the asteroid, he’d have no way to return to it before it’s path took it on an inevitable decaying orbit into the planet itself, where it would disintegrate if not destroyed beforehand.

Grabbing hold of the exit latch firmly, he took a deep breath before activating the vents. All remaining oxygen slowly slipped into the void, equalizing the pressure within and without. His bodysuit’s oxygen indicator lit to life, counting down the remainder of his life should he miss his jump. Gripping tightly to the simple lever, he felt the asteroid shudder as the last barrier between him and open space fell away.

It was all as planned. The station, looming huge before him, and the vastness of the void beyond that. Glittering even further beyond was Chryse itself, the only inhabited planet in the system. It seemed alien to him, despite having seen many worlds like it. Was it truly worth it to take this sort of risk, all to help these people that the galaxy at large cared little for, if at all?

He felt a mad sort of smile bubble up across his face. He had decided the answer long ago, of course. When they first met those refugees who had somehow managed to survive the journey outside of their system, his mind had boggled at the sheer improbability of it. Five of them, all said, who had cobbled together a working hyperdrive from a mixture of stolen parts and impossibly old blueprints. They had flung themselves into space out of desperation and been picked up just before their live support had run out. It was the sort of oddity that had barely made it up the chain in Alliance command, but it was exactly the sort of odd story that had spread across the rank and file. Zasabi had taken it upon to get the story from them firsthand, and what he had heard intrigued him.

Maybe it was misguided idealism, or some sort of instrumentalized ennui, but from that set of interviews he had begun to conceive of the plan that had led him to this moment. He knew the Alliance wouldn’t give him any resources, at the very least because they had little to spare, but he had enough to make the plan work.

Because it couldn’t just be chance, right? Five people put together an impossible project, escaping to pass along a distress message in the hopes of reaching even one person who would care? It couldn’t be coincidence that their message had found him, could it?

It was fate. He had joined the Alliance for just such an occasion, and now it had presented itself to him on a silver platter. It was time to finally do some good for those who had no other recourse.

And for that he was willing to risk it all.

Tensing his legs, he pushed off of the asteroid into the dark.

Time passed. Infiltrating the station was easy enough- he was already close in appearance to baseline human and non-natural hairstyles weren't uncommon. Making contact had been harder. The information given to him had been detailed in places and barebones in others in the way that those without intelligence training often remembered things.

The station had a few powers that had consolidated under the watchful aegis of Chryse system authorities. Companies that had banded together quietly to resist economic control, delinquents and criminals who had been keeping up a baseline level of resistance the entire time, that sort of thing. As odd as it seemed, the basic realities of rebellion still applied in a closed system- the tighter the planetary authorities gripped, the more slipped through their fingers.

Gaining the trust of those delinquents took some doing. He helped a few out of a jam by introducing some of the local police to Ray family martial arts, but that was only enough to get him invited to an underground club. It took longer to talk to someone with actual clout. He was patient, however, and was rewarded with where he stood now.

The hydroponics facility was positioned closest to the solar reactors that powered the station. From here it could leech off of both the heat of the generators as well as the water used as coolant, making it relatively simple to maintain crops as well as segregating it from the rest of the civilian held station. The station authorities maintained their grip on the core supplies of the station with a minimum of effort and rebellion was forestalled.

If that water could be diverted, however, it could accomplish a number of aims. For one, the enterprising students of the local ecological college could power their own illegal hydroponics operation, providing a separate flow of foodstuffs for the station. On the more questionable end there were also the potential to affect the reactors themselves, which could create power shortages throughout the station. One more source of discontent was a win-win as far as Zasabi was concerned, even if it made things difficult for a time.

He lowered the electrobinoculars, having memorized the guard routes and locations of the cameras. Turning to the others in his team, he gave them a smile.

"Your intel was on the money. Looks like the guard on this side is running short on manpower. We've got a five minute gap to get in without a person seeing us, but we've still got to patch into the cameras. Any suggestions?"

As the young rebels eagerly offered up their hard-won expertise, Zasabi's smile only grew.

The man inside the small office was unassuming to behold. Slender, with a build that suggested he had never performed much manual labor outside of hefting heavy tomes, Tercius Zhan wore a tidy, well worn white center-clasped long sleeved shirt that contrasted his salt-and-pepper mane. He often wore it tied back when out and about, but in the late evening hours after teaching and grading so long his eyes stung, Tercius decided he could afford to relax a little.

Rubbing at the bridge of his nose, Tercius slid his reading glasses back on. Although there were procedures to correct those sorts of disabilities on his world, he could never afford them on a teacher's salary.

Especially on the satellite stations, he thought sadly. As a professor, he inhabited a strange position where he held sufficient status to interact with anyone in the academic world in nearly equivalent footing. As a satellite citizen, however, his rights were significantly limited. Satellite citizens were limited to their satellite of origin, and were explicitly prohibited from setting foot on Chryse proper. In addition, while they could own businesses, they were under significantly tighter control by the Chryse Solar Federation than equivalent businesses owned by terrestial counterparts. With the CSF maintaining full control over the governance of the stations, their inhabitants were held firmly in a lower class that no amount of honest work could dig them out of.

This was not new to them, Tercius knew. The CSF formed generations ago out of the superpowers of the world, forcing the poorer or less accepted regions of the world to accept terms of surrender that carried on to the present day. Even now few of the satellite citizens knew the degree to which their oppression was a legacy carried forward from their terrestrial days, but they could feel the injustice of it. Rebellious intent had formented over the years despite the CSF's attempts at containment.

He sighed and returned to his papers. What could he do? He was just an academic. He had lambasted the CSF in many a paper, and spoken at conferences to crowds of well meaning but ultimately moderate and passive listeners. He had begun to accept that he would end his life in a world entirely too similar to how it was when it had begun, and there was not much to be done about it.

A knock at the door startled him out of his revelry. A visitor? At this hour? The adminstration was often long gone by now, and he rarely played host to visitors in his closet space of an office.

The door, an old piece of bulkhead that had been painted over long ago to hide it's origins, slid open to reveal a lanky, tall fellow Tercius had never seen before. A barely contained mop of green hair and a pair of sunshades obscured most of his face, save for a quirked smile that suggest amusement at what he saw here.

"Professor Zhan," he began. "I hope I'm not intruding."

"Have we met?" Tercius asked as he began to rise from his chair.

"We haven't," the man replied as he entered, the door closing behind him. "But I'm a fan of your work."

Moving quickly, the newcomer withdrew a small device from his plain, well fitted coat. He swept it over the room, startling Tercius who began to sputter before the man put a finger to his lips. The device emitted a small green light that blinked once, twice, then stayed lit as he moved it toward a nearby light fixture. With his other hand, the green-haired man reached to his sunshades, pulled them down and looked Tercius in the eyes. "I was hoping we could discuss your latest paper, perhaps somewhere a little more... comfortable?"

Within moments, the man's meaning was clear. His tool had to be some sort of sniffer for surveillance devices. Clearly he wasn't a government agent, as no one else had much reason to bug his office. He must want to discuss something he didn't want the CSF to hear.
His heart quavered. Stepping away with this man could put his life at risk, even if he wasn't a lackey of the CSF. I'm just a professor he thought as panic rose in his chest.

"How about just a drink," the man suggested as he put away the sniffer. "I don't want to impose too much on your time, after all."

Something about the man's manner stilled his fears. If it was just a drink, then... what harm could that do?