Rhen Var Harbor

"Cold... so... damn... cold..." Jeskel had never been much for the elements, Alkor mused in somber introspection. Why he'd ever hired the boy on for this gig remained beyond comprehension. The old Separatist listening post stood a silent testament to the preservation that the ice planet had offered over the ages, though it was long since rendered useless. The captain had sent a slicer into the compound with the intention of getting some sort of connection to the HoloNet, but it had proved a fruitless effort. The report told him all he needed to know: this place was dead. It had been that way for a very long time.

"Jesk," the captain drawled, "get inside the ship. Send Orn out." Alkor sighed, annoyed at how quickly the youth obeyed the order despite the chill that had set in his bones. He knew it was less than worth the trouble. When Jefra stepped out of the ship and gave him a curt nod, he smirked at the man. "Remember when you used to curse at me for being a terrible Jedi?"

"I remember," the dark skinned man said with a hearty chuckle. "I didn't know much, back then." Alkor fumbled with something inside his robes, then fought the wind to ignite the pipe with a genuine smile. After a long breath, he let out a plume of darkness that scattered onto the icy gale, then offered it to his old friend. "I was just a Republic officer."

"We all make mistakes," Alkor offered with a wink as Ornix accepted the pipe, then took his own refreshing breath of the sweet toxin. The warmth that moved through him sent a shiver down his back that defied the cold. "Any word from our contact?"

"None," the other man grunted and indicated the skyline. "He was honest with us. No contact until the pick up."

Alkor nodded slowly. "That's good. We don't want any entanglements. Not with this stuff." Alkor inclined his head toward the ship, and to their cargo within. "I can't afford that background check just now. Not without the influence we're about to pick up."

"What's your game, Centaris?" Ornix looked genuinely interested; when Alkor had met him, he was a very upstanding man in the society that he'd become part of. Embroiled deeply in his own code of honor, Alkor had worn at him with a grim galactic view and a somber realism that had finally broken the boy. Now, there was nothing left of the child Jefra had been. He had longed to do right by his wife and child, but Alkor had found the truth of all that. A woman set on living off the salary and pension of an officer, and a child of questionable blood. Despite his initial qualms, the disgraced officer now owed his freedom to his only real friend.

"If you want to make a difference in a galaxy as broken as this one, you can't do it in a senatorial rotunda," Alkor said, eyes trained on the horizon. The hazy outline of a large object began to grow in the distance. "You have to know the real players of the game. The ones who pay the bills." He turned his violet gaze on the other man, who shivered at the sight, and then blinked. When the ship became clear, his gaze was as gentle as the sea.

"Criminals, you mean." It wasn't a question.

"A means to an end," Alkor corrected. He started forward, and as the ramp of the other ship descended, he stroked his ragged looking beard. He hated the feeling of it, but it threw people off of his identity well enough; his hair was long and unkempt, and he looked far older than the Alkor who had become despised the galaxy over. No- Captain Azzad Keldar, the scourge of the Outer Rim- was a legend in the making. "When I was young," Alkor told Ornix, "I was foolish. I saw what was shown to me, and I followed."

He approached the new ship on the ice, taking a soothing breath. "When I opened my eyes for myself, and I listened to the Force, i became plagued by visions. True or false, I can't say. It doesn't matter." Ornix fell into step beside him, nervously feeling at his blaster. "I learned something from all the time I spent dealing with Forcies, Orn," he said, offering a kind smile to the man. "It doesn't matter. It doesn't define who we are. What we do defines who we are."

"And what do you do, Captain?" Jefra looked amused.

"Me?" Alkor turned toward the newcomers, nodding his head as they descended to meet him. "I do bad things."

When the captain of the other ship extended his hand toward Alkor, Jefra sighed in visible relief. They exchanged several words that he couldn't hear, and Alkor laughed loudly. For several minutes, the exchange went on, then Centaris motioned for the cargo to be transferred. "You never confirmed the transfer of credits, Jefra hissed as he stepped toward Alkor.

"Not everything is about credits in this world, Orn," Alkor said quietly. "Do you think I was going to pay Jeskel for coming along for the ride? We needed an extra set of hands."

"You can't be serious." Jefra shot him an incredulous glance sidelong.

"I'm always serious," Alkor said as he pulled Jeskel from his work. The boy cried out in alarm. "Orn, if you please. Open up the cargo."

"Open it? Isn't it volatil-"

"Open it," Alkor repeated. Jefra did as he was bidden, then went even colder than the planet itself. He reached in and looked in disbelief at the contents. "Stims," Alkor said, "highly regulated, military issue." Ornix gulped loudly. How had he...? "The cargo I promised you. This is the batch they use for when things get really bad."

Jefra knew exactly what he was looking at. They had called the stuff "Last Stand" in prototype stages. It had only been issued for a very short period to a test group that had ended very, very badly. "Captain, if I might have a word..."

Alkor wordlessly took a syringe and plunged it into Jeskel's arm. The youth stared in horror as the neon liquid invaded his veins, and a heat like fire shot through his body. Everything screamed and turned red, and Jeskel with it. Falling to his knees, the youth clawed at his face until blood streaked down like paint, and Alkor stepped backward, his face a mask of stony calm. Jeskel reached out, searching for anyone who cared enough to help. The universe answered him with silence.

Anger broke the floodgates. He shot up like lightning, a streak of flesh toward the other captain. "Ah ah!" Alkor said with a firm hand that moved inhumanly quick onto Jeskel's shoulder. "No, no... not him."

Jeskel looked back, confused. The look in his eyes was animal, something lesser than human. He shivered in fear of some unseen presence, shrinking away from Alkor. "They closed the project down because it eats away the psyche," Alkor said softly. "At first, it attacks the basic emotions. Primal rage takes over. Then, there's nothing but violence." Soon, Alkor knew, Jeskel would regress into a pitiful head of crying flesh. A mindless warrior, he would be fit only to fight on command. "Here. As a token of my goodwill. He's yours."

"Captain-" Jefra tried to interject, but Alkor held up a hand. "Azzad, we're not human traffickers. Jeskel isn't a slave. You can't just..."

Alkor rounded on him. "Jeskel isn't there anymore. Do you see that? That's not a man. That's a beast, waiting to be thrown toward anything that it can kill." He pointed toward Jeskel, who cowered again in the face of his regard. "I had to prove the stuff was legitimate, Orn. That's all. He asked for that as a condition. I didn't want to do it to you. So I picked Jesk. He was never going to make it anyway."

"You don't know that!" Ornix shouted back angrily, but Alkor looked away in dismissal. "I do know that," Alkor said. "No one else would hire him. He was in the slums of Coruscant, drunk as a whore." He glanced back. "You were there. You saw him."

Ornix closed his mouth, a thin smile. "You're trying to justify this as humanistic?"

Alkor shook his head. "I'm just telling you why I picked him instead of you. Don't make me regret it."

The other captain pulled Jeskel up by the sleeve, looked him over, then nodded. "You wanted to know who my contact in the senate was," he said, "I can't give you that information. But I can make sure that he's on your side."

Alkor glanced back to Jefra, who gaped. The former Dark Jedi nodded. "That's good enough for me. I just want the money moving where I need it to. The stims are yours."

Ornix and Alkor walked back to the ship in silence.

Alkor noted the tension in his crew wordlessly, and he raised a hand to call for order. "You, Umbaran," he called in practiced disinterest, "come, have a drink with me."

The rest of the crew dispersed to their duties, and in rhythmic time with the engine cycle, Alkor poured his guest a glass of ale. "Just as expected, he refused to part with a name." He did not meet his compatriot's gaze, instead taking a thoughtful sip, then staring at the table. "I have to worry about the collective humanism of his benefactor in the Senate if he's interested in biological warfare."

Alkor gave no care one way or the other; the reality of war was that it was not pretty. Victory was taken by those willing to go to lengths for it, and sometimes those lengths were down dark paths. He could feel the probing gaze and thoughts of his guest, and only at that did Alkor's darkened, violet gaze meet the newcomer's. "But of course, we're not here to argue semantics, are we."

He took out the data pad his contact had exchanged to him, and he indicated several files for Brom to browse. "Everything is intact. Your position, your identity, right down to the seat you're going to sit your arse in on Coruscant. Congratulations, Senator. Your inauguration is tomorrow- the Umbaran people have voted you into office unanimously, at the coaxing of our mysterious friend in the Senate."

"Loyalty is a relative concept. Certainly you understand that, given your... profession." Alkor deflected the probing expertly, intent on not overextending with this man. Creatures of subtlety had a way of collecting what they wanted to use against you, then plunging it in your back at just the right time. Alkor knew that first hand.

"In my experience, Brom, a man who says much but means little is far less useful than a man who does much and says little. Pray you show me there are exceptions, lest your funding somehow reach an end." Alkor enjoyed less than subtle threats. While word games and dancing around meanings with veiled attacks was a perfectly suited stratagem for politics, a direct approach was best on the battlefield. "I have no personal vested interest in your affairs. We came to this agreement with the same basic intention. You want to see the Jedi suffer and systematically removed from their place of power. I have no qualms with that. I need my own enemies exposed, lest I find myself unable to..." His voice trailed off as he searched for a more delicate word.

"Suffice it to say, they are far more dangerous hidden than on the run." Why he even cared to put words to it, Alkor was unsure. His purpose here was no one's but his own. It seemed fitting that Brom be aware he had no love for users of the Force, regardless of his own affliction. The less love lost between them, the more brutally aware the Umbaran would be of Alkor's willingness to part with him.

"As for this galaxy, more than just dominoes are destined to fall." Alkor spoke with chilling precision as he tipped over his own glass and Amber fluid spilled out and ran off the side of the table. "The end of an era is coming. And at the end, there is always something new. When that time comes, where will you stand, Senator? Against the approaching tide, or riding on it?"