Je'gan Olra'en
Jul 20th, 2005, 10:32:33 PM
It had started with something simple: a search for his own face or name. When one dropped off the map, one had better do a decent job of it. Je'gan knew that much, at least. Six years of hunting Jedi had given him a very practical knowledge of how to hide from anything and everything - even an Inquisitor. He knew the tricks that had confused him and his division; he knew that the solutions to some of them had been his own brainchildren, shared with as few others as necessity required.
And those few...well, he had never been accused of having great foresight, but again, he knew how to drop off the map. Erasure of memories, at least memories that contained, was within his ability.
The former Inquisitor sat straight-backed at a secure computer terminal deep in the Citadel. The terminal wrapped around him, keeping its distance so that he was forced to will his hovering chair back and forth, up and down, as we went around the circumference of the three-quarters of a circle, slanted out, that made up the banks of computers at his disposal. At the extreme left, a slicer droid watched dispassionately, a steel-and-glass praying mantis. The droid was top of the line, a military intelligence model. Inquisitoriate paychecks were large. (He had, of course, transferred all the money in his known accounts to a completely new one.)
The droid, however, was not the slicer. No matter what it had been designed for, it paled in comparison to some of the human and humanoid slicers that Je'gan knew of. The droid, in fact, was nothing more than a way of contacting those slicers. In particular, one: Alghieri. That was the tag, at least. One of the screens near the middle of the partial ring had a brief dossier, fed from the Inquisitoriate database at Yaga Minor through fifteen comm relay stations - the droid did have its uses, other than being a simple messenger - and using someone else's code. He had three of those codes. Not all Inquisitors could use the Force. Most, in fact, couldn't. Every now and again, that came in handy.
Humming to himself, Je'gan gave the dossier a last glance and shut it down with a command to the slicer droid. Somewhere in the galaxy, a chain of relay stations, widely spaced, stopped transmission of his feed. Time-delay commands meant that, as the chain broke, each link broke the carrier signal's contact at a random time within the next five minutes.
He had what he needed. Sliding the chair over to another display, he began to enter the parameters taken from Alghieri's bio. The droid whirred to pseudolife; its nonverbal communication - queries, acknowledgements - were integrated into the flatscreen patterns, noticeable but not obscuring. After a few minutes he let it do its work. Je'gan wasn't a slicer by any means. Forcewielder, operative both covert and overt, sometimes a pilot...nope, slicing wasn't on the list of known occupations and/or hobbies. The droid was far better than he was at that.
The idea, of course, was that the droid would knock on Alghieri's door, using methods instantly recognizable to a really good slicer as computer-born. That was what Je'gan had heard, at least. Hos Alghieri would take the message was one of the few variables in his plan. He didn't like variables. As a rule, he liked to tie up everything beforehand, attending to each and every detail. Without a greater knowledge of slicing or Alghieri, though, this was one variable with which he would just have to be content.
More or less.
So the droid would knock on Alghieri's door. Alghieri, presumably, would see that a) the droid's owner wanted to talk with him, b) the droid's owner had the money to buy said droid, and c) the droid was not using the slicing methods and hallmarks of the Empire - again, something about which Je'gan was not terribly knowledgeable. Then they would talk, Je'gan and Alghieri.
It took a good hour, during which time the Sith Knight became bored. Accordingly, he resorted to the lightsabre. Curved, with a blue blade that deployed almost instantly, it was a subtle weapon, well suited to the muscle control that a decade's study of Teras Kasi had given him. Fencers were normally quite weak - relative, of course, to more mainstream lightsabre styles - but Je'gan preferred the element of surprise granted by a certain physical strength. Nobody expected a fencer to have power like that, especially in an age when the relatively small number of lightsabre combatants was shrinking farther still, and fencers were identified not by experience but by hearsay.
And those few...well, he had never been accused of having great foresight, but again, he knew how to drop off the map. Erasure of memories, at least memories that contained, was within his ability.
The former Inquisitor sat straight-backed at a secure computer terminal deep in the Citadel. The terminal wrapped around him, keeping its distance so that he was forced to will his hovering chair back and forth, up and down, as we went around the circumference of the three-quarters of a circle, slanted out, that made up the banks of computers at his disposal. At the extreme left, a slicer droid watched dispassionately, a steel-and-glass praying mantis. The droid was top of the line, a military intelligence model. Inquisitoriate paychecks were large. (He had, of course, transferred all the money in his known accounts to a completely new one.)
The droid, however, was not the slicer. No matter what it had been designed for, it paled in comparison to some of the human and humanoid slicers that Je'gan knew of. The droid, in fact, was nothing more than a way of contacting those slicers. In particular, one: Alghieri. That was the tag, at least. One of the screens near the middle of the partial ring had a brief dossier, fed from the Inquisitoriate database at Yaga Minor through fifteen comm relay stations - the droid did have its uses, other than being a simple messenger - and using someone else's code. He had three of those codes. Not all Inquisitors could use the Force. Most, in fact, couldn't. Every now and again, that came in handy.
Humming to himself, Je'gan gave the dossier a last glance and shut it down with a command to the slicer droid. Somewhere in the galaxy, a chain of relay stations, widely spaced, stopped transmission of his feed. Time-delay commands meant that, as the chain broke, each link broke the carrier signal's contact at a random time within the next five minutes.
He had what he needed. Sliding the chair over to another display, he began to enter the parameters taken from Alghieri's bio. The droid whirred to pseudolife; its nonverbal communication - queries, acknowledgements - were integrated into the flatscreen patterns, noticeable but not obscuring. After a few minutes he let it do its work. Je'gan wasn't a slicer by any means. Forcewielder, operative both covert and overt, sometimes a pilot...nope, slicing wasn't on the list of known occupations and/or hobbies. The droid was far better than he was at that.
The idea, of course, was that the droid would knock on Alghieri's door, using methods instantly recognizable to a really good slicer as computer-born. That was what Je'gan had heard, at least. Hos Alghieri would take the message was one of the few variables in his plan. He didn't like variables. As a rule, he liked to tie up everything beforehand, attending to each and every detail. Without a greater knowledge of slicing or Alghieri, though, this was one variable with which he would just have to be content.
More or less.
So the droid would knock on Alghieri's door. Alghieri, presumably, would see that a) the droid's owner wanted to talk with him, b) the droid's owner had the money to buy said droid, and c) the droid was not using the slicing methods and hallmarks of the Empire - again, something about which Je'gan was not terribly knowledgeable. Then they would talk, Je'gan and Alghieri.
It took a good hour, during which time the Sith Knight became bored. Accordingly, he resorted to the lightsabre. Curved, with a blue blade that deployed almost instantly, it was a subtle weapon, well suited to the muscle control that a decade's study of Teras Kasi had given him. Fencers were normally quite weak - relative, of course, to more mainstream lightsabre styles - but Je'gan preferred the element of surprise granted by a certain physical strength. Nobody expected a fencer to have power like that, especially in an age when the relatively small number of lightsabre combatants was shrinking farther still, and fencers were identified not by experience but by hearsay.