The Final Judgment/Part V: The Sightless Seer

Souv Tanake imagined that Toriafas would glow in the infrared spectrum, but she did not bother to activate her cybernetic eyes or remove the silk band she wore over them. The Force painted a far more interesting picture, here on the parapets of the embassy the Exoi had deigned to give them as a base. She stood there in the faint breeze, enjoying its cool touch on her tan skin, the way her black hair swished around her.

The Force sketched out the basic structures around her and the outlines of some in the distance, but that was of little interest. Far more intriguing were the Exoi, whom she could sense in clusters and enclaves and see as individual pinpoints of light. News of their arrival seemed to have spread; where only hours before the planet had felt staid and sedate, now minds buzzed for kilometers in all directions. When she reached out with the Force, she could actually feel confusion, fear, and excitement, little firecrackers of nervous energy.

In space, the situation felt the same, and Souv thought that didn't bode nearly as well. Even in the relatively short time since she had come to the Empire to stay, she had grown to respect the Armada, and especially Sorrik, as level-headed and steady a hand on the trigger as she had ever known. But for as battle-hardened as much of the Prime Fleet was, there were always rookies and daredevils who could turn a standoff into a firestorm with a wrong move. And from what she had sensed of the Kritocracy forces, on the way down and since landing, they were unprepared for this kind of incursion and tensed to snap at the slightest provocation.

She hoped that the Queen and Corr found a diplomatic path to their goals here. A fight between the fleets would be a brutal, violent, and very short slaughter, but here on the surface, the Exoi outnumbered them millions to one.

Attuned to the fluctuations of the Force, Souv sensed the Queen coming long before she arrived, Tarzg and Cambis in tow. Souv had seen the woman only once with her real eyes before a Sith Lord's lightsaber had burned them away, but in the Force every detail of Rin Sakaros remained clear and defined, from the tastefully elegant designs on her tunic to the way her head cocked slightly to one side in curiosity. Souv knelt, but one gold-outlined hand gestured for her to rise.

"What do you see, Souv?" the Queen asked, looking out over the cityscape.

"We're shaking things up," the Arkanian replied, then looked skyward, where she could feel a concentration of the Force in one spot—the Citadel, palpable even from this distance. She thought, with great focus, she could feel her husband Elrabin, if only faintly…

"They'll be all right," the Queen said softly, and Souv could see her looking toward the stars too. She wondered what the constellations looked like from here.

"I suppose that's in your hands more than theirs," Souv observed after a moment.

The shorter woman nodded. "And I'm conscious of the weight I carry." Pausing, she added, "Come help me carry it, won't you?"

"Of course," Souv replied, but she felt her features shift into a curious expression. "What's happened?"

Starting away, Rin replied, "One of the Exoi is coming to see me. I'd like you to be with Corr and me when I receive him."

Souv followed quietly, stilling her worries into calm. She might no longer be a Jedi, but she could still profit from some of the training. Granted, she had never been the perfect Jedi—probably why the Council had "promoted" her to lead the Jedi academy so far from Coruscant, she would have had to leave the galaxy to put more distance between them—but then, for all his accomplishments and his seat on the High Council, her master had never been exactly the perfect Jedi either.

Elrabin had known Hayden Ragnos-Sakaros only slightly, and Tak Sakaros only by reputation, and more than once he had remarked that Queen Rin was something altogether other and apart. Souv didn't think that was entirely right. Her master had been a great Jedi, to be sure, a genius and a scholar and a deadly swordsman, too. But there had always been something inscrutable about him as well; he and his sister were the only two beings who had ever made Souv feel blind in the Force, as if she could only see the sketches and outlines of a broader picture that was plain to them.

As they descended the ramp—evidently built for multilegged, scuttling Exoi rather than walking humanoids—Souv reflected that there was something of Tak in the Queen too. Souv would not rush to sing the late Sith Lord's praises, and for all the times they had worked together, he had streaks of nastiness, duplicity, and cruelty even his own children didn't bother denying. But from time to time, Souv had sensed in Queen Rin flickers of her father's restless spirit, ever on the move, thrilling to a challenge. She had his temper when she was roused to rage, but his courage and conviction, too.

Cambis stopped to stand sentry at the door as their little party entered a lavishly appointed reception room; often the Force gave her the contours and edges of a room without laboring over the details, but here even Force Sight couldn't miss the large, soft cushions, the soft carpets, and the decorative lanterns suspended from the ceiling. The room was perfumed with scents Souv didn't recognize.

The Queen took a seat on a large cushion, settling in cross-legged, draping the folds of her long robe over her legs to conceal her lightsaber. Tarzg hovered at her right side, ever vigilant, and Corr Shaasa at her left. Deputy Minister Saktati was on Corr's other side, so Souv went to stand beside Tarzg. A faint whir of repulsors drew her attention to the hovering protocol droid just behind her. She sensed questions for the Queen from both the minister and her Duros brother, but before they could speak, the doors opened again.

The Exoi had brought guards of his own, though fewer than Souv expected, and most of them remained outside with Cambis. Of the five beings who entered, only two had the alert sense of bodyguards. One felt almost like an aide, and Souv wondered if he was a law clerk, and another was mostly unreadable. The last moved more slowly, and Souv could almost feel his age. But his mind was still sharp and attentive, and she felt there the wisdom of a longer lifetime than her own, though hints of great weariness as well.

Corr and Saktati rose, but the Queen didn't, waiting until the old Exoi had settled himself onto a cushion opposite her. All three pairs of hands pressed against one another as if in triple prayer.

"Welcome to Toriafas, Queen Rin," he said in Minnisiat in a soft, papery voice, the protocol droid translating a split-second behind, just loudly enough for Souv and Tarzg to hear. "I am Gooforcht Hoowh, Governing Judge of Toriafas."

"Thank you, Judge Hoowh," the Queen replied, and her conversational voice was long gone, back to the tone of regal dignity she used in public.

"It has been a long time since a foreign emissary came to Toriafas," Hoowh said, each word slow and measured, and Souv could feel him studying the Queen. "We do not get many visitors from beyond our borders."

"We know."

The Force stirred around some of the Judge's attendants; Souv could feel their confusion, discomfort, even resentment at Queen Rin's comment. But Hoowh merely nodded his double-crescent head. "Once, many came to this planet each day to appeal to the Kritocracy or present themselves before the Governing Judges, but even I am not old enough to recall those days." Souv felt his focus sharpen curiously on the Queen. "I suspect you know that as well."

The witch queen nodded, but said nothing, and after a moment the Exoi asked, "Why have you come to us now?"

This time the Queen took a moment to respond, and Corr Shaasa began, "Your Honor, the Golden Empire—"

"The great Judge did not address you, alien," one of Judge Hoowh's attendants snapped. Even as Souv felt her brothers grow restive, Hoowh held out two of his hands.

"The great Judge can speak for himself," he reproved, his voice gentle but with a ring of gravity and authority, and the Exoi who had spoken fell silent, head bowed contritely. Turning back to the Queen's party, Hoowh added, "I mean no offense to you, Corr Shaasa; a diplomat has hard work before him on the best of missions, and I'm afraid I can't promise you your time here will be that. But I would rather hear the Queen's own words."

Souv could sense Corr was slightly touched to be known by name, particularly given the reception they had experienced so far, and the Queen nodded. "We know the Exoi Kritocracy has a long and storied history," she replied. "Your people fought and spread and grew an empire when our own was but a dream of a dream. But as much as the past shapes and guides us, it is the future that concerns us, and it is of the future that we think when we come here."

Hoowh pored over that for a moment before asking, "The same future the Chiss Ascendancy has found for itself?"

One of the bodyguards flickered in the Force, and Souv turned her veiled eyes toward him instinctively; she could sense his unease at her blind gaze on him, and he turned his face away after a moment.

"War is inevitable in some cases, and sometimes it is the best of all possibilities," Queen Rin answered. "But it is never ideal. Every life lost is a future that ceases to be, and all its possibilities with it."

Hoowh leaned back slightly, all six of his hands spreading out, palms up as if in supplication, his neck arching forward. His upper arms weren't quite long enough to press his highest fingertips to his lips pensively, but Souv thought this might be an equivalent gesture; she could clearly sense that deep and penetrating intellect at work.

"And what future would you rather see?" he asked at length.

"A galaxy united," the Queen answered without hesitation, and Souv heard injected into her imperial voice the earnestness of absolute conviction. She remembered sitting across from this woman more than a decade and a half earlier, feeling the mix of awesome power and total honesty that had persuaded her that this woman, this secret Sith child of Tak Sakaros at the head of an unknown Empire, deserved her allegiance more than the Jedi who had hailed her as Master. "Every world and species, star to star, from Rim to Core. United, protected, devoted to the common improvement of all lives, guided by a single Sovereign to hold a million cultures together."

"Guided by you," Judge Hoowh said. It was not a question, but nor did it strike Souv as a condemnation; she thought the Judge was more interested in the explanation of the Queen's answer than a simple 'yes' or 'no', and she began to understand why Exoi would feel comfortable with this being sitting in judgment upon them.

"Yes," the Queen replied honestly. "So long as the burden is ours to bear. We each have our destinies, some great and some small.  There is no shame in a small life aspiring to greatness, even should it come to nothing, but there is nothing but shame in a great life cowering into smallness."

Hoowh considered that. "The Exoi aspired to greatness once," he said in his soft voice. "But greatness proved beyond our grasp."

Some of his attendants shifted, and Souv could feel that none of them were entirely comfortable with that assessment, though they dared not contradict him. They felt almost…affectionate? It wasn't quite right, but it went beyond professional respect. She thought devoted might be the word.

"Your Empire was but a dream of a dream when the Kritocracy was new," Hoowh went on. "We had risen to our height and tumbled down again before you or your Empire were even conceived. The Chiss were older still, and stronger.  And in our most ancient records, we find hints and whispers of governments beyond the Ascendancy, still more ancient, to whom the Ascendancy would seem a mere child in comparison.  All governments aspire to be great and eternal, Queen Rin.  Why will yours succeed when so many have failed before you?"

"The Force seeks balance, stability, and order," the Queen replied. "From time to time beings have been born with the abilities needed to bring that order into reality, but all of them have failed the test. But we will not fail."

The Exoi were looking at one another curiously, and Judge Hoowh's three pairs of hands clasped one another. "The Force is your belief?"

"The Force is reality," the Queen corrected him, and raised one hand. Quiet clinks accompanied the seven suspended lanterns unhooked from their chains, and they swirled around above the ten beings, shifting this way, casting different patterns on the walls as their beams of light intersected and combined.

Souv could sense surprise in all the Exoi; the bodyguards touched their weapons nervously, the Judge's aides flinched back, and even the Judge himself seemed startled. In the silence, the Queen went on, "The Force is the energy that binds all living things together, but it is far beyond mere living beings. It is power, yes, but destiny too—the lives of a daywing, born in the morning and dead by the evening, and of a star, that sees billions of years and trillions of beings touched by its light before its end.  Soldiers and pilots and guns and ships win battles and wars, Judge Hoowh, but in the Force we can see time itself, the path to tread to final and ultimate victory."

She gestured to the lamps, twitching them this way and that, making new patterns. "Look only at the light, and all you can do is react to the patterns before you, try to use them to your advantage before they change. Look at the lanterns, understand their shapes and how their rays of light interact, and you will know what will come before it arrives.  We will find the path to the fate we desire, and walk it without fear."

She hung the lanterns back on their hooks and lowered her hand. Judge Hoowh was silent for a very long time, looking down, deep in thought. The Queen said quietly, "We will have an Empire of and for all beings, Judge Hoowh. And all peoples will have a future."

The Exoi looked at her, and Souv didn't need the Force's picture of his face to know the intensity of his gaze.

"The fate of the Kritocracy is not in my hands, Queen Rin," he said. "My brother Judges are coming here, and only then can your petition be heard. We govern together and decide together.  And the God-King must be consulted."

"We do not ask you to answer for anyone else, Judge Hoowh," the Queen replied calmly. "We hope only that you will work to us for the future of both our peoples."

Judge Hoowh was silent for a moment before clambering to his seven legs; Souv sensed a faint twinge of pain in his old joints, but he did not ask for aid, and after a moment he stood tall. He nodded to the Queen, who remained seated and nodded back. The Exoi began to file out.

The old Judge paused at the door and fixed his eyes on the Queen. Again Souv felt the weight of his gaze. "I should like for the Exoi to have a future."

When he was gone, the Queen relaxed slightly, gesturing with one hand to the space before her. Corr and Saktati moved forward to sit before her, facing her, and when she felt a mental touch, Souv did as well. Only Tarzg remained standing.

"Corr?" the Queen asked.

"He was guarded in his words, but I think the fact that he came to see you spoke volumes," the Duros replied immediately.

"Rezzew?"

"I took it as a good sign that he was polite to Corr," the deputy minister noted. Souv had spoken to him on the way down to the world, and apparently he and Corr had worked together often before. "Most of them have been even less tolerant of us than they have of you, Your Majesty."

"That politeness could just be consciousness of a war fleet in orbit," Tarzg noted.

"I don't think so," Souv volunteered. "He felt older and more experienced—I think he might also be more diplomatic, more patient."

"He was noticeably older than any Exoi we've seen," Corr noted for her benefit. "Definite signs of aging, but his mind seems razor sharp."

Souv nodded in agreement. "He's wise enough to see the larger picture."

"We can hope," the Queen mused. "But he's one voice among many."

"Do we have a sense of how many?" Saktati asked of the room in general.

The answering silence lasted long enough to remind them anew how little they knew about this world, even with the information from the Chiss and the War Judge's grudging tour. Eventually, Queen Rin said calmly, "A pair or a thousand, all we can do is submit them to a single voice from our side and let them be persuaded."

In the Force, Souv saw the glowing contours of the Queen's face as she turned her eyes on Corr Shaasa.