HoloNet News Is This Your Empire?

[Alexandria Voran]

The visage of the Grandmaster was broadcast across the galaxy. She stood in the hangar of the Auora with hundreds of Anselmi clustered around her. The news of Ansion had just reached the Council. The combined efforts of the Order, Consortium and GHO had managed to evacuate around 600,000 Anselmi before the slaughter began. Millions were dying. Her heart broken for the lost, but Loz had been right. This was the only way.

The hard eyes of Alexandria Voran looked into the recorder. “Is this your Empire?” Her voice was steel. “The Anselmi called Glee Anselm home for millennia. They called Glee Anselm home as long as the Nautolan people. It is their home.” Slowly she shook her head. “The Empire supports a group that compares them to loth-wolves…to filthy animals…and slaughters them without remorse.” The holorecorder panned out to show the refugees. “Do they look like animals to you?" She paused. "They put free people in camps and refuse the ISCRA entry. A million or more are unaccounted for. Has any world ever refused the ISCRA? They are perhaps the most devoted galactic organization to their mission. Why do you think they have been turned away? Why do you think they shut the galaxy out?” Alex took a step forward. “No matter your allegiance...Imperial, Free Worlds, Consortium, Republic…you cannot want this. A free people eradicated…purged. We must stand together and stop this horror.”

Quickly, images of Ansion appeared. Sith landing out for blood. The Imperials forces indiscriminately gunned down security forces, civilians…anyone in their way. “Is this your Empire? Ansion was free. Unaffiliated with any government…home to no Jedi. The Empire offered them no choice of surrender. No chance to join willingly as they offered Kril’dor. They came with the sword. They killed without second thought. Ansion survived because of the will of her people and the Jedi who fought with them.” She took another small step forward. “So, I will ask again. Is this your Empire? You do not all feel this way...I know it…is this who you wish to be? Savaging free worlds and letting bigotry run free? I don’t think it is...but for now...this is your Empire.” The feed cut off.

 

[Laeonas Tannaras]

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Rattatak, as backwards and barely hospitable as it was, still had a half decent connection to the holonet that most commercial grade devices could pick up on. In between all that went on, he had regularly retreated to his ship for bathing, exercise and continued news updates. Plenty had happened-- the attack on Ansion had been repelled, Dantooine had devolved into a complete warzone. The galaxy continued to unravel, and Laeonas was trapped on this miserable rock for the foreseeable future.

The Jedi continued their war as the FWA, that oh so incompetent and cripplingly weak government he'd come to feel nothing but contempt for-- collapsed. The ISC continued to provide humanitarian aid to a galaxy that increasingly required it, the republic was openly discussing peace talks with the Sith, and the Jedi were desperately reorganizing to try and effectively fight off the Sith after their only astropolitical ally had completely balkanized. All the while, he sat on this world, waiting for a fuel ship that might take a full year to arrive to reach him. To say he was bothered would be an understatement; to say he felt powerless was another. His failure had only felt more magnified, now unable to even fight against the enemy he still loathed.

Then came the news of Glee Anselm's voluntary and democratic vote to join the Sith. It had struck the man like a speeder, the breathe knocked out of him as aquamarines shown with a level of stunned shock that most might experience after hearing a partner had become pregnant, or that a relative had been murdered. His thoughts had flashed back to the news that Felucia-- a world the FWA had liberated, chose to voluntarily rejoin the empire. Moreover, he remembered how the FWA had simply allowed it to happen, because it was the people's will.

He'd watched the Nautolan diplomat rant with a passion that made him tremble, and his mind once again drifted back to the old men in the cantinas he used to drink in, ranting about xenos and barbarians, about Twi'lek's and their filthy head tails, Rodians and their bulging eyes. They held a contempt that surpassed even what he felt for the Sith, and he saw it twisted in the black eyes of the Nautolan as she proudly declared that they would wipe away the past. The happiness and joy at the thought of being allowed to wipe all she hated from her world filled the human's heart with genuine horror.

And days later, he'd watched as the grandmaster, that woman who exiled him, spoke out. Surrounded by those lucky enough to escape from an evil that felt more vile than even what Laeonas had experienced on Firrerre. He'd listened to the woman's words, and his heart burned. It burned with a level of anger that he hadn't felt in years. She appealed to the people-- the people who served the empire that was now butchering not just indiscriminately, but deliberately targeting the innocent. The people who had chosen time and time again to serve that institution which had burned world's and promised to bring death and ruin to the galaxy.

How many times had the people of the galaxy been allowed to choose, and those choices had manifested in the deaths of trillions? How many times had the people of the galaxy turned away from the fight against evil, and allowed the innocent to pay the price? From the election of the Emperor Palpatine, to the Chancellor's choice to break bread with the Empress, to Felucia and Glee Anselm's choice to join the empire?

It didn't matter how many Sith Laeonas personally killed, how many blaster bolts or scars were left on him in battle after battle against them. Evil persisted on a level that no one man could fight, because the people, time and time again, had either let it grow, or openly supported it. The Jedi seemed to be of the delusion that the people ought to be allowed to choose again-- to choose to fight and reject the empire, even though time and time again they'd shown that they were either apathetic to it's atrocities, or complicit.

There would be no peace while the Sith continued to exist. World's would burn, peoples would be exterminated, and the Jedi would fight and die as the people they fought to protect turned on them. It had happened during the clone wars, and now, it was happening again, right before his eyes. The Empire didn't care about what it's people thought-- it didn't care how many died, as long as it's power expanded. It could only be fought against when those with the power to stop them took power into their own hands-- and if they refused, than someone ought to take power from them, and use it.

And if the people were delusional enough to think that it wasn't in their best interest to stop the Sith, than they didn't deserve to choose any longer.

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