Obscured: In the Empire's Dis-Service

[Ysanne Isard]

Setting down the datapad with a half-satisfied frown, Ysanne Isard – the Director of the once glorious Intelligence branch of the Empire – sank back in her chair. Steepling her hands in front of her, she tried to use that exercise of perfect balance to help clear her mind of all the chaos that still remained unsolved about her plans.

The skin on her fingers itched – so, indeed, did the skin of her entire arms. The constant work had kept the sensation at bay until now, but it seemed calmness only helped to make the itching more acute. It annoyed her – a sure sign that the medics had done sloppy work; there should have been no itching, or any after-effects at all. But of course it wasn’t the medics alone who were to blame – if it had not been for her own unpardonable oversight, she might never have found herself in that same situation as she had been.

It irritated her. She should have known better than to expect a Dark Jedi to go by the rules dictated to him – she should have known he could not be trusted. Who but a Dark Jedi would have had the audacity to plant a thermal detonator right under her nose… and then announce its presence after his departure? Of course she should have expected something like that.

Then again, the man’s actions spoke of a cold brutality she could not help but be impressed by. It had indeed been this deed that had been the final argument to convince her that he was truly perfect for the task chosen.

Yes, he would kill her well – without a doubt.

The moment was not yet at hand, however – there was much to be prepared for the events that would follow. And she had yet to start approaching those that would also play a part in her plans; the plans that she had spent these last weeks carefully going over again and again.

All the easier tasks had been achieved – it needed but a little more effort, and a good bit of luck, to make the plans complete. She would need to find a convincing dupe for herself, arrange for a few last missions, and get a little more information. All in all it sounded easy enough – but the solutions she had in mind for each of those tasks, were not as easy to obtain.

The acquiring of additional information was by far the easiest of these; it went in two parts: one to follow an old set of instructions that would bring her to an old cache of data her father had put aside for meagre times, and the other…

Maybe it was time for that right now.

“Jekaan, get me Tondry up here. I don’t care what he’s doing right now – I wish to speak to him immediately. I’ll accept none of his usual excuses this time.”

As she switched off the direct line to her assistant, she leant back once more and stared at an empty patch of wood on the table in front of her. It wasn’t the table she was looking at, however – in her mind, she was going over the three occasions since her arrival from the main base that she had ordered Tondry to come to her. Each time, he had found a perfectly well-formulated excuse to worm his way out of meeting her.

It frustrated her to have to fear that her own second-in-command was involved in such shady dealings that he could not even come to her about them. But what else was she to think if not even once in the 6 months since her departure she had received a report from him? She had no idea what he had been doing; what missions he had been planning; what profit he had made.

In the past, she had had to rebuke him quite a few times for his failure in reporting to her about his comings and goings. Often, he would go off on his own missions and she would not even know what they involved until his return – and even then had she rarely gotten a report.

He had certainly been an asset to Intel, but there were some things she could simply no longer tolerate. Still, she had been unwilling to part with his services… maybe another solution for the problem would offer itself one day.

It seemed the day had come – as Tondry would soon find out.

[Pierce Tondry]

"And... begin!"

Sharp cracks began emitting as the trainees in the shooting range began firing their blasters. Although Pierce could not hear the noise from the soundproof booth he was in, he remembered the process himself and had raised his head as though by instinct. He eyed the practice for a moment, then turned his head back to the assessments he was working on. They would someday be used to determine what roles the agents training just outside his window would play.

"General Tondry, sir?"

Pierce looked up to see a young private entering the booth and saluting. "Director Isard's assistant brought a message. She requests a meeting with you at your earliest convenience."

Not again. Didn't Isard realize he was busy with performing the duties of the office she herself had put him in?

Pierce set his assessments aside and stood up. "Thank you, private," he stated. "I guess I'll have to go pay her a visit."

The private saluted and left the booth, and Pierce was all alone again.

He ran a gloved hand through his close-cut hair and sighed. It was as though she had some paranoid urge to interrupt everything he was doing- to constantly pull in his leash so she could peer over his shoulder. It was damn near impossible to get things done with her around.

Interestingly enough, it appeared that Ysanne was going to be insistent this time. Jekaan was a fawning, sniveling coward, but he was a personal link to Isard and he knew her best. If she'd sent him as a contact point, it meant something secret and unofficial was up.

Sighing, Pierce left the booth and locked it behind him. He headed down the hallway, hearing the crack of blaster fire sound off again as he went.

[Ysanne Isard]

“Let him in.”

Her voice was the first thing that greeted him as he stepped past the red-clad troopers guarding the door. The guards may have once been of Palpatine’s Elite Royal guards, but Tondry knew better than to assume that they still were. Royal guards would never have slouched like that.

Isard’s voice held nothing pleasant in it – she had never believed in disguising her annoyance when it served her purpose. In this case, she intended to make full use of it.

“I see you have decided to stop playing games with me.”

The office lay almost in darkness – a single light illuminating the room, following Tondry’s movement as he stepped closer. The strange arrangement had been her idea – it only served to emphasize on the fact that she intended this to be an interrogation rather than a formal meeting. Tondry could not see her clearly, yet she could observe every small detail of him.

She leaned forward in her chair to observe him closely, and waited for a response.

[Pierce Tondry]

"Games?!" Pierce spat the word and his face no doubt echoed his dislike. "Me, playing games? I'm not the one who just interrupted the interim training coordinator during target practice, am I?"

Only one light was on in the room. Pierce had been in rooms where there was only one light on before. The purpose of this talk was most likely for Ysanne Isard's benefit, and in Intelligence it was information that was the most beneficial.

So what information did Ysanne Isard want?

"Speaking of which," he continued, then stopped. He regarded the chair pointedly for a moment, then sat in it, noticing a change in temperature almost immediately. The air was warm and the lining of the chair held that heat. It was a marked difference from the coolness of the room outside the lamplight's radius.

"Speaking of which," Pierce began again. "You are interrupting my duties, and I want to know why."

[Ysanne Isard]

Her expression hardening into something frosty, she sat back in her chair. The heavy leather creaked loudly into the silence between them, but it did not deter her.

"Yes. Games. Or whatever you want to call your frequent excuses for not meeting my orders during the past weeks."

If he had intended to answer to that, she refused him any chance of it. Getting out of her seat and walking slowly around the desk and towards him, she continued,

"Let us be clear on one point, Tondry: you might be the one responsible for this particular branch of Intel, but it does not exempt you from taking orders from your commanding officer - which I am still. Maybe the distance between Coruscant and Krake's Planet has led you to believe you had no one but yourself to report to, yet I can assure you that you are gravely mistaken if you think you are not my subordinate. And as my subordinate officer, if I issue an order that says report to me in person and at once, then I expect you to do exactly that - no matter what duties you think you have to carry out."

She stood close enough to him now, but it was not enough. Leaning forward, she brought her face close up to his - the light shining behind her so it would shadow her face - and her fiery-cold eyes staring into his with an almost hypnotic quality.

"Whatever duty you think you have towards your men - your first and foremost duty is still to me. I trust you finally understand that?"

[Pierce Tondry]

Pierce coughed sarcastically. "That," he said, lifting a hand and gesturing randomly, "Was the most idiotic, arrogant-"

Abruptly, Pierce cut himself off, leaping to his feet. The hand that he had gestured with wrapped itself around Ysanne Isard's throat and forced her backwards onto the desk with not so much as a thud. Whether from surprise or from control, Ysanne did not struggle. Pierce did not dwell on which it was.

"As I was saying," he continued calmly through his teeth. "That was the most idiotic, arrogant statement I have ever had the displeasure of listening to."

An expression of disgust flickered across his face and his grip tightened. "My first and foremost duty is to you," he mimicked the words. "Let's get one thing straight. My first and foremost duty is to the Empire. Remember that? The ideals, the traditions, the institution that spanned galaxies? All those things you used to serve? Or did they fade from your mind when you got your first taste of power as head of Intel?"

"You know, when I first met you I didn't like you. So arrogant, so high and mighty, so very full of yourself. I just assumed it was simply the office, and that you were someone who ought to be listened to because of the institution you represented. I figured that I would be the same way in your position. Boy was I wrong. I've still been the same person I always was as Vice-Director."

Pierce was now squishing Ysanne's neck into the desk so hard his knuckles were whitening. "So allow me to help you understand something. I don't serve you. I serve the Empire. You, I work with because we happen to have the same goal. I accept your authority over me, partly because it was legitmately granted under old Imperial soverignity, but mostly because your skills as a scheming, conniving snake are of the highest caliber. You're good at what you do, and as much as I hate to admit it, there are times when your total lack of concern for others gets things done."

Pierce paused in his diatribe, gauging Ysanne's ability to breathe and the effect of his words simultaneously. "Never think of me as your servant," he whispered in her ear. "Because I would sooner blow your brains out than serve you. My loyalty is to the Empire and the people who serve it- not themselves, it. It's always been that way. Always will be."

With that, Pierce shoved her sideways onto the floor, sending some of the writing implements on the desk spilling over with her.

[Ysanne Isard]

Too proud and arrogant to concede that he had been any kind of danger to her, she got up without a word from where he had thrown her, and pointedly brushed off a speck of dirt from her shoulder. If her throat burned still with the pressure and strain that had been put on it - if her head still felt dizzy and her stomach and whole body weak from the near fatal lack of oxygen - she refused to acknowledge it.

Angry, she was; more than angry - furious, rather. But she allowed herself no outward show of it; instead, her face took on an unnatural calmness, a kind of serenity that seemed a thousand times more dangerous than had she flown into a rage.

And as she had planned (for she had planned for such a contingency - however not for its fierceness), with a casual flick of one tiny button on the wrist console she wore, the wall to one side of her office slid aside, and made way for a giant glass screen. And the light that had hitherto shone so brightly in the center of the room cut out sharply, to cast the room in a gloomy darkness that was dispelled at the first flickers of light coming to life with an orange glow in the room beyond the screen.

She had not yet uttered a single word. And she didn't need to - as the darkness gave way to increasing light, two outlines became visible inside what seemed a white chamber: outlines of men - one bound and gagged and masked, the other leading him by a simple leash connected to a collar around his neck. And if that had not been degrading enough, the bound man was forced onto his knees and plead silently for an end to this cruel game.

It had been intended as a game; at least to Isard. The prisoner would have been released, after showing his humility and betraying his fear of her. It had been intended as a show of her power over those her zealous second considered his most loyal; necessary because she had expected Tondry to react in a similar fashion.

In a similar way, yes - but not a violent one like he had. He therefore deserved to be punished.

She diverted her attention back to Tondry, who was standing before the screen looking equanimously unmoved. It held not yet any personal value to him, what he saw.

"Interesting way to subjugate a criminal, don't you think?" her voice finally came, still sounding rough and lower than usual. "But maybe not quite what you think it is."

She raised her hand up to her mouth, and uttered one single word to the person standing behind the kneeling captive. The man's brutish face lit up with a delighted smile, and one of his coarse-fingered hands settled around the throat of the man kneeling at his feet. He leaned forward and whispered something in the ear of the prisoner, then with the other hand ripped off the mask that had hitherto covered his face.

Isard thought she heard Tondry inhaling sharply.

With an expression of more terror than he had ever felt on any of the missions the veteran Tau Team member had taken part in, Derf Kohel swayed forward on his knees. His eyes frantically went from Tondry's face, to Isard's, before settling back on Tondry's with a horrified look. His mouth opened and shut twice, then words came, forced out by the iron grip that his brutish captor had on his throat.

"D-don't p-play... games with... Isard, G-general - s-she's... a lot b-better than-n... you!!!"

With that said, the man standing behind Tondry's team member decided he had been nice for long enough, and, with a grinding noise, applied his large hands to Kohel's head. The agent's eyes went wide, blood starting to run from them; his mouth opened in a soundless scream as the veins on his forehead went taut. Bloodvessels burst under his skin, then the skin itself burst; with an incredibly loud noise, his skull broke between the two hands of the brute. The scream broke off, the eyes went glassy and blood-red; a loud gurgle was emitted from the throat, then darkly crimson streams of blood came gushing out of nose, ears and mouth. The grinding of bone against bone continued, skin breaking open on the head; greyish-brown brain tissue quelled forth between the cracks in the skin. With a barbaric shout, the brute applied a final squeeze to the head, and the man between his hands went limp. Then the brute straightened up, grinned, and began licking his hands.

Isard turned to a stony-faced Tondry, and continued as if nothing had happened.

"Would you like to talk about next year's subsidies for your operations now? I've brought you a few new objects that might be of some value to mission planning, as well as extra funding for the technology you were interested in."