Using Your Initiative

[Crotalus Viridis]

It was a strange thing, seeing his world from space. There wasn't a Sluissi alive who didn't know the stories: didn't know how in ancient times, the Sluis Van Shipyards (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Sluis_Van_Shipyards) had encircled the world like a great ring as the Kuat Drive Yards (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kuat) now did on a world half a galaxy away. They knew how in the distant past, the Sluissi and Rendili Hyperworks (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Rendili_Hyperworks) had crafted warships of grace and beauty for the Old Republic. They knew how neglect, and change, and war had fractured the Great Ring, sections destroyed and dismantled until only a few drifting fragments remained, still in use. The shipwrights of Sluis Van had been proud, skilled, and renowned: slow, perhaps, but they elevated astrospace engineering to an art form the likes of which were unmatched in all the galaxy.

His nostrils flared in disgust as his gaze settled on a Victory-class Star Destroyer being attended to in one of the surviving docks. Today, it was the stark and ruthless daggers of Kuat that dominated the imaginations of starcraft designers everywhere. It was the disjointed and bulbous hulks from Mon Calamari that formed the backbone of the Alliance Navy. There was no beauty there: only stark brutality.

The Admiral's flagship was little better. The Reliance was a Lucrehulk, more battle station than battleship to his eyes, but the old beast had served him well, and there was something pleasant about standing on the bridge of a ship that could dwarf an Imperial Star Destroyer: something that seemed to give his enemies pause.

He abandoned the viewport and turned. His guests were waiting, and he would make them wait. On Bothawui perhaps they would be given the respect they deserved, but aboard the Reliance they would receive only the respect they had earned; and Viridis had seen nothing as yet that suggested any was due. He had no patience for politics, and none for those who practised it. Senators they were, but he was an Admiral; a warrior; a status earned, not one arbitrarily given.

A nod was given to a familiar Lieutenant as he past, calmly following the curving path of the corridor as it progressed around the Reliance's central orb. It was not a great distance, but he prolonged it as much as possible, the calloused scales of his tail inching across the burnished deck plates, the thrum of the ship's gravity field reverberating through his hide. He reached the conference room - less than a radian further around the control orb's circumference than where he had began - and halted, collecting himself before he slid effortlessly into the room.

His tongue emerged from between his scaled lips. He tasted the scent of his guests from the air, felt the heat of them in his cheeks even before his gaze settled on them in turn. Sekaj L'vehl he knew of course: the Senator of his homeworld; the only man herein who could empathise with his frustration at the dire engineering state of affairs, and the one who had helped him arrange this gathering. There was Niev Minetii, President of SoroSuub and Senator of Sullust: a world so invested in industry and engineering that it's greatest corporation owned the planetary government. Bils Kir'nir of Clak'dor was a Bith: a race whose love of science, mathematics, music, and art was so interwoven that they scarcely saw a distinction between them. Those three he was confident would understand what he had to say; would understand why it mattered.

And then there was Torrsk Oruo'rel. The Bothan. The one whose very presence left a bitter taste in the air. His presence was a mandatory, necessary evil: there were two men in the Alliance with the sway necessary to allow his plans to happen, and the Minister of Defense was less objectionable than the Mon Calamari serving as Minister of Supply. Yet, before becoming a Senator, the Bothan had been a General: he was a creature of the ground, an architect of destruction, not construction. The subtlety of what Viridis wanted, what he strove for would be lost on such a man. We would have to be swayed by other, more practical, tangible means.

The Admiral's hands clasped behind his back as he snaked his way to the head of the table, coiling his way around the stool that had been left there for his convenience. He let the silence linger a few moments longer before he finally spoke.

"Thhank you, Ssenatorss," he hissed, tongue dragging out the syllables into a sultry croon, "Ffor your attendancce. I apprecciate being loaned your vvaluable time."

[Torrsk Oruo'rel]

Senator Oruo'rel fought the urge to growl as the Admiral entered. Perhaps it was some primitive instinct stirring in the back of his mind, but there had always been something about the serpentine Sluissi that he found deeply unnerving, and now he was sealed in a room with two of them, with only a Sullustan and a Bith as reinforcement. Those were not favourable odds, and it took a great deal of self control to smooth down his hackles and his bristling fur.

"So kind of you to keep us waiting," his barbed tongue offered.

Things had changed since circumstances had spurred him to hang up his uniform and embrace politics as his sole pursuit. It had been a lengthy campaign, each battle on behalf of his people's prestige and status had been hard-fought, and expensively won. It was he that had ensured that Bothawui be declared the Alliance's capital, rather than the Mon Calamari homeworld. It was he who had ensured that his world be granted the same prestige as Hapes, Carshoulis, and Dac: the same dual representation in the Senate. All that he had fought for as part of the Advisory Council; when it had become clear that his people's representation would wane under the Alliance Senate, when it became clear that they would lose their influence over the military after the Mon Calamari, Reshmar, had been declared Supreme Commander, it was he who had fought tooth and nail to be declared Minister of Defense, to ensure that the Bothan's contributions to the Rebellion, to the Alliance, were never forgotten; and always respected.

And yet here he was, these months on, staring that disrespect plain in the face. With the way the borders had been drawn, and the way the military had been reshaped into the Alliance Defense Forces, the Sluissi had come into a windfall of political capital. Their shipyards were, outside of Mon Calamari space, one of the key facilities in all of the Alliance: one of the few places equipped to repair and refurbish the Imperial vessels that the Alliance had commandeered or appropriated by various means over the years; and the extended hand they had offered to SoroSuub after the Imperial attacks on their world had made them a major part of the Alliance's industrial infrastructure. They were quietly powerful: no bolt moves, no great expenditure of the wealth of good will and influence that they had gained. That made Oruo'rel nervous. To him, politics was war, and the Sluissi were a potential enemy with a vast armada of superweapons that they had yet to use.

Perhaps this was their first strike. He felt a surge of adrenaline as anticipation gripped him. Perhaps his next battle was about to begin.