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calamity-writes · 7 years

Text

Summoned.

a small birthday gift for @cathuia

The Imperials hadn't given any reason for the summons, nor had they allowed any negotiations about the timeline. That's how the chiss knew that this was serious. Imperials loved bureaucracy and red tape. They'd turned it into a near-religion. Every blaster was inventoried, trooper's cost accounted for, wages taxed. The rules were Rules until you got high up into the Imperial stratosphere when bureaucrats became kings.

So when the Imperial officers didn't read the citation of summons: section 258, sub-section 4, Siff knew she was in trouble. When she asked why the officer in charge wasn't reciting the citation of summons, he didn't even look at her. That meant she was in more than just trouble, then. It meant she was in bantha shit.

Standing in front of an empty chair of rock, with Imperials flanking either side of her, Siff wondered if she should have kept quoting the rest of section 258.

"So, am I supposed to... bow to the chair?" she asked, looking at the officer on her right. He frowned, but didn't look away from the head of the throne room. Siff sighed, looking over at the empty chair. This was a new level of ridiculous formality, even for Imperials.

The air crackled over Siff's skin, creeping up into the base of her skull where the energy started to make her skin itch. Subtle at first, the intensity of the feeling increased tenfold as a man with heavy scars across his face walked into the room. With long strides he crossed the room to the empty throne and sat into it, heavy amber eyes fixing onto the chiss.

Oh. Yeah. Okay. This was some serious stuff. This was a serious man. A serious Imperial even compared to other Imperials. Siff tried to remember what laws she had recently broken. Nothing serious, not that she could remember... and she remembered almost everything. There was that one time she paid off a border agent, breaking Code 823 of the Tariff Law, or the-

"Are you Csi'iflar?" the man asked, his voice less gravelly than she'd expected. His presence still felt like sand on her skin, though. She stepped forward, unsure what to do with her hands. Did she put them into her pockets? Or should she put them behind her like the other Imperials or- shit. Too much time thinking. He was talking again.

"I asked you a question. I won’t ask it a third time. Are you the mercenary Csi'iflar?" He watched her with those creepy orange eyes, and Siff was surprised (and relieved) to see that he hadn't already shot lightning at her.

"Yes ... uh, sir? Emperor?" She looked at the imperial officer she'd asked earlier about the chair. "What am I supposed to call him? Who is this?" she hissed. The man continued to stare straight ahead, though Siff could see the colour of his neck and ears slowly grow red.

"Emperor is fine," the man on the chair said. "I apologize for the abrupt request to speak with you. I-" He stopped, leaning forward he rested a forearm on his knee and squinted at her. Siff, unsure of what this particular social cue meant, snapped to attention. Years of mediocre service in the CEDF returned with a vengeance, and Siff had to force her hand to keep from lifting in salute.

"Interesting," the man said quietly, sitting back into his chair throne. "But not what I called you here for. I have a delicate matter that needs a less than delicate resolution. I've been told you're the best in the field when it comes to causing a mess."

Siff saluted now, grinning. Thank nerf-cud that he just wanted some stuff blown up. She could absolutely do that. But why bother with the scary summons?

"That's me! Stuff explodes all the time around me and 98.5% of the time it's intentional," she said. Then added: "With an uncertainty of 1%. But I'm working on narrowing that to a half percent." He was the Emperor, he deserved to know the accurate statistics. Statistics usually impressed the imperials, though this one just lifted a corner of a single eyebrow. What did that mean?

"So," she said, relaxing and resting her hands on her hips. "What scale of mess and whom do I deliver it to?" She winced, and gestured at her own face, drawing the lines of his scar over her own blue skin. "The person that did that? I'll do it for free, if it's whoever did that."

The Emperor showed as much emotion as the stone throne he sat on, or at least in the way that Siff was familiar with reading emotions. Someone behind her gasped, and Siff glanced over her shoulder to try to figure out if it was the man with the red neck or the other one.

"No, not that person," the Emperor said, shifting to rest his hand against his lower lip and chin. That meant he was thinking, but unfortunately Siff didn't know what about. "I will take that offer into consideration, however. In the meantime my adjunct will send you the information by morning." He looked past her to the man with the red neck and nodded just once. It wasn't even a nod, it was more of tucking his chin in toward his chest.

"Come along," the red-necked man said. "And for the sake of whatever self-preservation you might have left, stop asking stupid questions."

"They're not stupid if I haven't been given enough information to extrapolate the answers," Siff muttered, reaching up to scratch at her neck. The sooner she was away from the Sith-Emperor the better. He felt like coarse-grit sandpaper being rubbed against her brain.

Ethrean watched the small group leave. The chiss was only a small pawn in a larger gambit, but how interesting to feel the flicker of force around her. Uncontrolled, unrecognized, raw.

Maybe she would survive the mission, but he was less interested in that than in seeing how the 529th division would manage against a single chiss let loose in their airspace. An unconventional wargame, but concerning reports had led him to believe this was a necessary exercise. And if the chiss died, she was unable to become an asset for the pockets of unrest within the empire.

"Call the war council," he said to the woman who waited in the corner of the throne room. "I want to make sure that we monitor this exercise closely, and record as much as we can for review later." He stood, rubbing a gloved thumb over the symbol that had been carved into his forehead years ago.

"Give her a head start by two standard days before alerting the 529th," he added. Ethrean told himself it wasn't due to her comment about killing the man who'd scarred him. He told himself that it was to more accurately assess early response among his forces.

In reality, it didn't matter why he had issued the order, it would be followed, and that felt better than petty revenge would.

#A birthday thing #cathuia #i hope this is alright #happy birthday!#swtor

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