Terenta-Tech 2

“Why are you doing this?” Satele quietly asked.

“I’d be a poor commander if I didn’t support the artistic endeavors of the men under my command,” Darth Terent said, purposely misconstruing her question as a group of soldiers performed a loud, thunderous song with drums, electric string instruments, and some sort of fog machine releasing a green colored mist around the performers feet.

“Fine. But why have me here? What purpose does it serve to have me listen to a ‘song’ about some twisted form of Sith Sorcery?”

Darth Terent took a deep breath and released it before he answered, “For starters, the song is based off of an actual battle that took place during the Great Hyperspace War. Jokin, the one singing, is something of a history enthusiast as well as a songwriter. The battle in question saw a fortress full of soldiers killed to poison gas, with a mere hundred clinging to life long enough to launch a feeble counterattack. Combined with the arrival of reinforcements, the sight of shambling corpses, coughing up blood and their own dissolved lungs, was enough to break the enemy’s resolve.

“As for why you specifically are here, two key reasons. The first is that you have yet to earn the privilege of free reign of the ship. The second is that by forcing you to be exposed to this, it aids in breaking you of the propaganda and misconceptions you have of the Empire.”

“‘Propaganda’? Clearly you have been listening to your own too much. The Jedi do not…”

“Oh they do. Whether intentionally or not, the Jedi most certainly have propaganda. Every nation or religion has propaganda. In the case of the Jedi, what comes to mind when you think of imperial soldiers? I assume either bloodthirsty monsters, only kept from becoming Sith by lack of Force Sensitivity, or jack booted soldiers who obey orders given to them without question. Either way, did you ever imagine that there’d be soldiers who look at history to inspire music?”

Satele didn’t answer. While she’d hesitate to call the performance music, the fact was that she’d never given much thought to the foot soldiers of the Empire outside of battle. When she did think of them, she’d figured that they’d be no better than the Sith they served. The context of the threats thrown about in the mess hall that Darth Terent and his apprentice had given… she’d observed the people around her, and to her surprise despite the sheer violence contained in so many casual conversations fights never broke out.

Darth Terent, for his part, suppressed a smirk. While having Satele Shan, rising star of the Jedi Order as his apprentice would no longer serve its original purpose, he still couldn’t help but take delight in slowly showing her the vast expanse of Sith culture. It was entertaining, forcing her to absorb knowledge that went against everything she’d been led to believe. Combining his love of sharing knowledge while shoving the jedi’s ignorance and false beliefs in her face? How could he not find himself having the time of his life?

That was ignoring the fact that Sergeant Jokin and the rest of his group had outdone themselves with this latest song.

[center][b]Five hours later[/b][/center]

“At ease, how are the ship’s supplies?” Darth Terent asked the quartermaster as he took the datapad from the human soldier.

“We were fully stocked when we left Alderaan, My Lord,” the human began, falling to parade rest. “Assuming that we are unable to restock, we will have food and water for two months. Longer, if we ration well. As well as ammunition and fuel sufficient to fight off any number of pirates, but without support we will be at a severe disadvantage against any dedicated military engagement.”

“We would be anyway,” the Sith Lord mused as his eyes took in the numbers on the datapad and took a pull from the mug of steaming tea. “We’re a single warship, even if we have a full compliment of fighters and bombers, there’s a hard limit to how much force we can project.”

Darth Terent threw back the contents of his mug and sighed before asking, “Do we at least have the Garden Safeguards?”

“I ran a full inventory, and I am relieved to say that the Ancients smiled on us. We possess a full compliment of the Garden and the Syn Safeguards,” the quartermaster reported with a relieved smile on his face.

Tension bled from Darth Terent’s form with a relieved breath of air, “Thank Ragnos. Dismissed, Quartermaster.”

The human saluted before leaving the office, sparing the confused Satele a brief, disdainful glance on his way out. When the door shut, and Darth Terent refilled his mug with his yellow tea, Satele asked, “What are the Garden and Syn Safeguards?”

Her captor paused, his burning orange gaze locked on her. Finally, as he moved to sit down at his desk, he said, slowly, “Do you know how far back harmful Jedi influence has influenced the Sith? It goes back to the Hundred Year Darkness, when instead of killing the Dark Jedi led by Adjunta Pall, the Jedi Council in their ‘infinite’ wisdom banished them to the Unknown Regions. It didn’t matter that they had caused a literal century of war and death, they were still Jedi, so no executing them.

“Instead of dying, they found us. We were immature, not yet ready to spread out into the galaxy. But that didn’t matter, the Dark Jedi executed the King and named themselves our rulers. But they didn’t think about what they were bringing with them. The bacteria, viruses, and other diseases they didn’t even know they carried. Within five years of the Dark Jedi’s arrival, the majority of Korriban’s ecosystem was dead.”

Satele’s eyes widened. It… it had never even occurred to her, when she’d been stationed at Korriban with Master Darach, she’d thought Korriban’s lifeless state was due to the Sith’s use of the Dark Side. If Darth Terent was telling the truth, then the cause was so much simpler.

“But, the Tsis are a hardy and resilient species. We survived, we clawed our way to space and found other worlds, such as Ziost. For two thousand years, we kept to ourselves in a golden age. But we never forgot what happened the last time people from the Republic, from the Jedi, came to our worlds. The Great Hyperspace War was sparked when Republic scouts found us, and I admit, we almost certainly overreacted. With the benefit of history, it’s obvious that you weren’t planning on attacking us, but we didn’t know that at the time. So we struck first.

“If that was it, then I wouldn’t hate the Republic or the Jedi. But no, no when the Great Hyperspace War was over, you couldn’t be satisfied with your victory. Couldn’t be satisfied by the fact that you’d broken our military, driven us to Korriban, defeated us. No, mere defeat was too good, you wanted us erased, until there was no trace we’d ever even existed. You bombarded Korriban from orbit, you hunted down every single Sith you could find and murdered them, from the most powerful sorcerer still alive to the most helpless babe. You leveled our most sacred and holy sites, you waged a war of genocide and nearly succeeded in doing what the Dark Jedi Exiles unintentionally started.

“That, Jedi Knight Shan,” Darth Terent snarled, spitting out her title like it was something particularly foul, “is why we hate you, and it is why the Garden and Syn Safeguards exist. So we never lose the flora and fauna that made the ancient tsis what they were before the Jedi got their hands on us.”