Recordings from the Holocron of Valerie Soung – Session 86b

Recordings from the Holocron of Valerie Soung
Session 86b

After my participation in the Council meeting was completed, the next bit of business was to meet with the head of the Grenkay Corps on the Maha Vailo Moon. Nominally, the head was the head of the Maha Vailo family I had been speaking with in the Council, but day to day operations were handed by other men. In this case I needed to speak with James Destay, whose official title was Head of Internal Affairs and Recruitment. His office was on the Maha Vailo Moon on the Southern Continent. I instructed my PDA to book an appointment with him for later that day to discuss the recent developments and my own findings on other matters. Normally even someone of my stature could expect to wait several days before getting an audience despite the fact that Destay wasn’t a Force user. Such was the respect accorded to the Force Immune head of the Vailo forces. Luckily he would be expecting me and was likely to be eager to discuss the “Therus Problem”.

I requisitioned transport from the Soung moon to the Maha Vailo moon and stepped into the transport that arrived only a few minutes later on the landing pad next to my own ship. As the ship roared into space and traversed the Varen II system to the appropriate moon, I saw the various ships shuffle back and forth between the various moons and outposts in the planet itself and the ring system. Every year the amount of traffic was increasing as the economic importance of the system grew. The traffic density wasn’t nearly like the Coruscant system, but it was certainly very high for a system this far out the rim. I idly considered the theories that the system may have been engineered long ago as the ship came in for a landing.

Paying the pilot a tip, my PDA confirmed an appointment for later that day at James Destay’s office. I passed the time waiting by dining for lunch at a sea side restaurant followed by a scenic cruise around the bay. Soon enough it became time for me to return to shore though and go to my meeting with Destay. Entering the building that once was the primary residence of the Vailo family, I could sense the moving voids in the Force and the Force users shuffling about that made up the Grenkay Corps. Four of them met me at the entrance and went through the motions of confirming my identity and confirming my appointment. It had been decades since the last of the assassinations and bombings had occurred, but old habits died hard. I still was pleased to see that lack of danger hadn’t resulted in a lax attitude though. Soon enough I was escorted to Destay’s office to see him looking at a spread of data pads with a look of frustration on his face.

(Destay) Ah, there you are. Perhaps you could tell me WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!

I was mildly annoyed with him using that tone and lack of honorifics with me, but then again, in theory his position was equal or higher than my own. He certainly had enough authority and power to make himself an annoying pest if I made an issue of it.

He was obviously referring to the fact that most everyone in the Galaxy was now under the direct influence of the Censor to kill Ben Therus despite all rational reason to the contrary. Explaining what I knew without going into any details of how this particular super weapon worked or why it was so vehemently banned by the Censor seemed to calm him down somewhat. The fact that a technology that justified this sort of response existed wasn’t pleasant for him to hear either, and I have to admit I completely agree. Still, I recommended he look into procuring some space moss for use in shielding the Council chambers and specific locations used frequently in remotely attending Council meetings.

Next I was informed how the Improved Vailo Arts training program was progressing thanks to the training materials and observations I had managed to bring back with me from the Codifier Galaxy. The lack of a real trainer was apparently causing issues, but progress was being made with a handful of Force users being on hand to help contain accidents like Virstris nearly had. I promised to send more training materials and discreetly send a trainer at the next opportunity to help move things along. The fact that his department now had a very good means of searching for Codex and Force potential among the Varen thanks to Ben Therus was dramatically improving recruitment rates.

I was also pleased to hear that my request to capture what Force user training failures occurred was being followed. The capture rate was still atrocious, but improvements in the Vailo arts was leading to an increasing success rate. That coupled with stasis fields was creating a good sized pool of Dark Side failures stashed away for safe-keeping. Destay still wasn’t sure of the point of it all, but had been going along with my request since I had given his department a major boon already. It was when he decided to press me on the point of it all when I simply slid a data pad across his desk on the results currently ongoing in the Codifier Galaxy. I watched with amusement as the realization of what those experiments meant hit him.

At first he thought I was presenting him with hypotheticals and best case scenarios. Pointing out the dates and referencing the specific case studies involved in some of the initial tests subjects hammered home to him that the data was quite real. Once the implications of those experiments started to dawn on the man, I started seeing the wheels turn in his head as he considered how it affected his own policies and plans. I was quite pleased when he began to start mumbling about increasing staffing of Internal Affairs units in more locations with more equipment specifically meant to pacify and incapacitate errant Varen as opposed to simple extermination. Then he renewed his demand for an increase priority in trainers being sent to his department to which I promised to do what I could.

Yet another member of the Varen administration wrapped around my little finger. He might pose problems much further down the line if he forgets his place, but I have my own recruitment and resource pools and those pools were only going to increase significantly as time went on. I was finally given a data pad by Destay with a listing of all the units from his department being made available for my use. That left Morrowain and Gruber as the remaining people to talk to about resources for my new assignment. Both of them I could find aboard the Super Star Destroyer Winter Moon, which was to be the meeting location to hook up with Alys and the others anyway.

Returning to the Soung Residence, I informed Darius, Gab, and Nimh to expect to leave the next morning for the rendezvous with the other party members. The next day we departed in my personal ship for the Winter Moon. Nimh spent much of the voyage reviewing news programs regarding the hunt for Ben for whatever reason. What she hoped to learn aside from the fact that the Galaxy was now hunting Ben Therus wasn’t clear at all. Attempting to learn anything not related to the hunt for Ben Therus was going to be next to impossible given how the news coverage was so singularly focused on the manhunt. I spent the time reviewing the records on the Maha and Vailo units that had been placed at my disposal and how I might best utilize them in the coming weeks.

Our arrival at the Winter Moon came a couple days later. Morrowain had positioned her fleet to give her better access to a number of trade routes and hyperspace lanes as opposed to her typically more conservative defensive postures. The number of ships coming to and from the Winter Moon and the other star destroyers in this task force was certainly mesmerizing to watch. After receiving permission to land, we docked at the appropriate shuttle bay and found that Morrowain was waiting for me to disembark. Her initial question of where I thought Ben Therus to be hiding was annoying to say the least, but I deflected that with a comment of having some educated guesses of where he might be hiding or heading right now. That neatly pushed aside that issue for the moment as Morrowain and Gruber than began to detail for me what resources were available for deployment and what reports they had incoming from the various scouts on possible skirmishes involving Ben Therus. What they told me was incredibly sobering to say the least.

Right now, it was looking like wherever Ben Therus showed up, he was ambushed immediately or within a few hours at most. Mine fields, automated hunter drones, and masses of ships were being deployed across the Galaxy in an effort to hunt down Ben Therus. Not surprisingly, this amount of response was forcing Ben to resort to a subspace jump almost immediately with no chance for mischief or scouting like we had initially planned. And now that the Censor had a good idea of what section of the Galaxy Ben was in, the forces were converging like a tsunami of firepower. This was certainly limiting the opportunities to try and profit from the chaos to say the least. My own attempts to position forces to try and maximize returns and profit weren’t going to be working nearly as well as I had advertised.

Not good for my career.

After several long minutes of staring hard at the display screen trying to think of some way to turn this to my advantage like Kira might have, I realized that Nimh was also in the room staring at the display data.

(Nimh) This isn’t good. This far exceeds any projections I had.

(Valerie) I hate to agree, but this chaos is far too…. vigorous to manipulate readily. I am beginning to think it might be better to seek high ground and simply weather the storm.

(Nimh) It’s worse than that.

(Valerie) How so?

(Nimh) Given the level of response shown thus far, and the economic data I’ve been able to glean from the media, this level of response is unsustainable.

(Valerie) What do you mean unsustainable? I don’t think the Censor is going to give up if it is this single minded about killing Ben.

(Nimh) Exactly. Right now the galactic economy is now on a crash course once the available stores of raw materials run out. Given the lack of funding going back into needed goods, services, and infrastructure, a complete collapse of the galactic economic system is not unreasonable.

Definitely not good for my career.

It also meant that we had to deal with this threat fast. That meant actually finding Ben Therus and removing him from the picture in a fashion that would satisfy the Censor. The list of options for that weren’t many and were going to be hard to pull off under these circumstances. I really would rather not have to hunt down one of Kira’s friends and then have to explain that I had no choice afterwards. But what options did I have? Doing a memory wipe was going to be impossible if Ben couldn’t be made to sit still somewhere long enough for us to do the procedure. Let alone the fact that interacting with him on anything besides hostile circumstances might draw undue attention from the Censor onto me. Reengineering the Censor to a more accommodating solution was a project for my descendants and apprentices, not something I could whip up in the next few days.

The arrival of Alys and the others didn’t help my mood much, although that formalized transfer of funds certainly was a bright spot. I was pleased to see that Alys was as much at a loss on how we might bring the situation under control as I was. The unfortunate fact of the matter was that so long as Ben was in this universe, we couldn’t hope to interact with him on any meaningful level. And without interacting with Ben directly, we couldn’t find a non-lethal way out of this mess either. That really only left two choices: hunt down Ben and kill him, or hope that Ben wises up to the scope of the problem and leaves. If he leaves, that opens to door to meeting him out in the multiverse and doing something else. But we are now under such a time limit given the looming economic crash.

I was about to decide that the Galaxy was more important than Ben, when I noticed a significant change in the Force around me. About the only way to describe it was a withdrawing of pressure on myself. Hesitantly reaching out with the Force, I was able to confirm the drive by the Censor to hunt down and exterminate Ben had lessened significantly. The fact that it had lessened, but not disappeared suggested that the Censor figured Ben was not and immediate threat but still not dead. That could only mean that Ben had left the range of the Censor. Unfortunately, any attempt I might have made regarding exploiting the new circumstances were halted when Morrowain came over the intercom and announced that Chan Naldor and a large fleet of pirates had arrived hunting for Ben.

And the pirates were led by Jacob no less.

*TWITCH*

My fist smashed a good sized hole in the main bulkhead for this section of the ship as my hand plunged through half a meter of steel like it was made of cotton candy. My mood wasn’t helped any when a ridiculously baritone voice behind me spoke.

(Chan) Not very impressive, even for a girl there.

Keeping my anger in check, and not bothering to turn to face the gorilla in the eye I spoke.

(Valerie) And what do you want?

(Chan) I am hunting the greatest threat to the Galaxy: Ben Therus! Take me to him immediately!

(Valerie) Alys, he means you.

(Alys) Me?

(Valerie) Yes, you. You are known as one of the most frequent companions of Ben Therus for years now, and since Kira is MIA, that means they are all coming to you for information.

I let Alys attempt to stammer out an explanation to Chan as Jacob and his band of pirates started showing up. I extricated myself from the conversation and considered my options given this new development. Morrowain was obviously unhappy to have Chan on her ship and I couldn’t blame her. The man was a walking disaster area even in the best of times, and if he even suspected we might be playing him and the rest of the Galaxy for our own benefit…. well fleeing to another Galaxy was certainly looking like it might be the only viable option in that case. It was also obvious that attempting to keep quiet Varen interactions with Kira’s group was no longer going to remain secret for long.

When Morrowain started demanding to know what I was going to do about this mess I gained an instant migraine and a wish to return to happier times long ago. Kira can friggin keep this damned job of his keeping these loonies in check.

(Darius) It’s all an act right?

(Valerie) What is?

(Darius) Chan Naldor. He really can’t do all those things the news shows him doing. There is just no way someone is that strong.

(Valerie) It’s possible. I’ve personally witnessed him blowing up entire floors of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant doing battle with Korda in hand to hand combat.

(Darius) That has to be a special effects team or something.

(Valerie) Careful, you don’t want Chan to hear you saying something like that else you might….

Darius hit the wall behind me with a resounding crack. I was disgusted to see that all Chan Naldor had done was simply crack a knuckle in Darius’s direction to hit him that hard. I really, really, didn’t want to admit to being impressed by such a brute’s display of physical power, but was largely failing. I much preferred the more intelligent application of power to solve problems as opposed to simply using massive physical strength and endurance to solve things. All told, I much preferred how Kira did things as opposed to Chan.

Speaking of Kira….

Darius was amazingly alive. Bruised, dazed, and more than a little embarrassed, but alive nonetheless. Apparently Chan had far more personal control over his abilities than simply annihilating the opposition. I didn’t think such a thing possible for someone as obsessively focused as Chan was. A lesson and a warning for the future I think.

Still, the longer we kept Chan, Jacob, and this many trouble magnets aboard the Mrs Beasley, the more likely disaster was going to strike. Part of me was beginning to wonder if I might be inheriting Kira’s trouble magnet status while he was in stasis. Steering Alys to propose an expedition to hunt down Ben across the multiverse got a number of volunteers. She started organizing the expedition while I carted Darius off to medical. Once that was finished, people were loading into a number of ships for departure while the technicians made modifications to the hyperdrives for departure. Once that was done, the course was laid in as best as we could decipher and the hyperdrive cycled while I led the steering process. Thankfully that was mercifully easier than I expected given so many crazed loonies with weird motives since they were all united in the urge to find Ben Therus.

The journey was an immeasurable hell as Jacob and Chan debated the finer points of trees versus muscles in the role of remaking the Galaxy. In many ways I was quite relieved when it was announced that we had suddenly crash materialized into the side of a mountain with our arrival in whatever forsaken universe this was. Clambering to a window for a look out, I was surprised to see a small village and a group of people lined up at the edge of a cliff where it looked like they were about to sacrifice Ben to some sort of ocean god or some such nonsense. The next thing I was aware of was the vague idea that Ben had fallen off the cliff and Chan Naldor had suddenly burst forth and run up the path to throw himself over the cliff in an attempt to kill Ben.

Except I didn’t actually remember any of that happening except for a vague outline in my memories.

Next thing I knew, I was at the top of the cliff wearing a ridiculous two piece bathing suit watching the pair of them continue to fall while the “judges” scored Ben on his descent. I had no memory of how I got here, how I changed clothes, or why I had decided to move up here except that damned vague outline in my head again that largely was made up of a few sentences and a blank space of time. One of the local idiots started making cat-calls and lewd gestures in my direction about the time Ben hit the water. I took the opportunity provided by Chan Naldor’s ridiculous splash wave to kick the one making the cat-calls over the edge of the cliff and into the waters below. I couldn’t help but look over the edge of the cliff and call after the dolt.

(Valerie) Oh my gosh, I am so sorry! I didn’t see you standing there.

That stopped the damned cat-calling.

Again there was a sudden blank in my memory as I found myself in front of a small wood fire with the others as some sort of voting process was going on. I had a vague outline in my memory of having dived off the edge of the cliff myself for a decent “score”, eating, and changing into more appropriate clothing. Whatever was going on with time or my memories was really beginning to get on my nerves here. The fact that this seemed like some weird holo game show production wasn’t encouraging either. Nor was the fact that we seem to have been assimilated into it.

(Host) Alright, next challenge coming up is to build a bicycle and ride it up the mountain! We begin in three days time.

(Valerie) What is a bicycle?

(Host) You’re kidding right?

(Valerie) No, explain it to me.

And he did. I really wanted to smack that condescending tone right off his face, but held my foot for the moment. Apparently a bicycle was a two wheeled version of a toy I used to play with as a little girl. Once he described it and showed pictures of it to me I suddenly recognized it as something the lower class children used once they got old enough. I had simply progressed from a tricycle to a repulser bike directly being Force sensitive and from a privileged family. I began pondering how I might even know how to build such a weird contraption when it occurred to me that they were also expecting me to ride one up a friggin mountain.

(Valerie) YOU WANT ME TO WHAT?!

I could tell this was going to be a long, hard experience. I swear, Kira can friggin keep this damned job once I let him out of stasis.

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