IN THE SHADOW OF THE MANDALORE
5TH CHAPTER; 4TH PART
I’m putting this up here for SCI-FI FRIDAY, in case you were wondering, because I lot of people that signed on here, actually signed on to read this. Some people want to read THE SHIELD OF LOCKSLEY. I put up links for THROWBACK THURSDAYS, because they’re stories from when I had a dozen or two people at the most. This also gets linked in to NOTES, for the 650 Followers who can’t decide if they want to subscribe or not.
Well, this story is running out soon. I only have eight chapters, so I have to start working on it when it runs down. I’m not going to stress myself out by trying to write this, Locksley, and edit my next novella, FREEDOM HOUSE (now THAT will be controversial and promises to lose me some readers who will be offended.) But hey, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Anyway, IN THE SHADOW OF THE MANDALORE last week, Alyssa P’oh and Dax go to the Jedi Hall of Records, where Dax is supposed to track down the suit of Mandalorian armour as well as the Basilisk War Droid the Sith Acolyte used in his attack on Fitt. They meet Death Sun, and old Jedi Rodian researcher. She tells Dax about Alyssa’s past history, and helps him in his search…
CHAPTER FIVE
THE TRAIL BEGINS WITH THE PAST
(PART FOUR)
“I don’t understand what you’re asking me? I know the Senate Complex employs more than half a million civilians, and workers, too; and the Jedi Academy and Towers have over a million. From sanitation to surgeons, and everything in between. I probably have a sweeper bot working the halls right now. You can probably see them if you look down,” he added, peering over the edge of the witness pod. “Nothing really runs on its own; it’s just made to look that way. It doesn’t take much more than common sense to attend to the delegates,” Gard-Amedda said plainly, sitting back in his seat. “It’s the clean-up after where the work really starts.”
The witness pod hummed in the centre of the Chambered Halls of Justice where it sat perched on a hover-deck in the centre of the Grand Hall. Five hundred pods, each representing a different planet in the Galaxy, with only a quarter of them full, watching Gard-Amedda’s image projected onto one thousand monitors that made up the orbital view screen below the hover-deck.
No one’s ever going to believe he’s capable of theft on such a grand scale, Theophastra Elan said to himself.
This case should’ve never got this far.
Chagrians might be known for their honesty, but Elan could see the witness didn’t understand the questions that were being directed at him. He wanted to think it had something to do with the light blue colouring of the man’s skin, but he knew it was something far simpler than that. The man was being honest.
I don’t like blue-skinned Chagrian males, he told himself. It’s hard to see the colour spots, unless you’re up close. At this distance the blue makes it too easy for a man to lie and get away with it.
I doubt if he even realizes he should be lying.
As well as the horns on the top of his head—lethorns—the Chagrian also had two fleshy growths on either side of his head that ended in a smaller pair of horns. The witness also had a long, black-forked tongue that made his voice come out in a subtle hiss Elan had difficulty understanding.
A soft-spoken blue man with horns, Elan thought as he looked at his client.
A victim.
How am I supposed to convince everyone to believe him, when all the evidence says otherwise? Elan smiled as he looked at the man. He told himself he had to be careful how he chose his words—he’d put too much time and effort into the case to let it unravel because of an oversight on his part—but this portly, timid, blue Chagrian could not have done any better even if he’d been re-programmed.
As a bureaucracy, there’s little that compares to the inability of the Republic.
The Galactic Senate was a weak body—half the Senators couldn’t even be bothered to appear—and it had become steadily weaker since the end of the Sith Wars, sixteen hundred years ago. The Sith Empire controlled half the Galaxy, and while the Jedi had gone into their self-imposed exile for almost the entire time, the Republic licked its wounds and tried negotiating with the Sith Empire.
That was the problem with the whole thing. Only the Jedi had the vanity to withhold their services, whereas the Sith would’ve pressed their advantage—and did.
The Galactic Military machine has never been weaker, and that’s what they’re afraid of.
“So, tell me, Gar-Addema?” Elan asked, looking at the data-pad on the corner of his desk, and waiting for the man to respond. He threw the corner of his robe over his left arm.
“That is your name, isn’t it?”
“No. For the tenth time, my name is Gard-Amedda. Why is it so hard for you to remember that?”
“Amedda?” Elan asked, looking down at the data-pad once again. “And that’s one word? Garaddema?”
“I couldn’t tell you if it’s one word, one name; or two words, one name. That’s Gard-Amedda. One count, then three beats. Can you hear how it flows?”
“But that’s not what our records show,” Elan said, hearing the voices around him. Such a simple oversight.
“Your records? Then your records say you have the wrong man. Do you think I don’t know my own name?”
“Even so, Garaddema?”
“Why are you calling me that? My name’s Gard-Amedda!”
“Because that’s what it says here on the data-pad the government’s been so kind to provide us with,” Elan said, holding the Data-pad above his head. “Everything you’ve said to this Committee about where you work, and what you do, is the truth? You do work in the Senate Complex. We know that now. You fix the little ‘bots—the sweeper bots.”
“Someone has to empty them.”
“Of course, they do! Of course. But, according to this”—he held up the data-pad once more—“the government wants to condemn the wrong man! You’re not Garaddema.”
“Chairman Goa!” It was the Anomid.
His muffled voice came out in a near whisper and it took a moment for him to re-adjust his Vocalizer. He was always talking to whoever sat near him and would have his Vocalizer set for muted conversation. He sometimes forgot to re-adjust it before trying to make his point.
A Sullustan, Chairman Goa Golum tried to make a show of his patience. “The Chair recognizes the Yablari Representative, Quor Madric-Quill. In the future, Representative Madric-Quill, if you could have your Vocalizer adjusted, it would save the Court valuable time,” Goa added as he laid his data-pad on his desk.
“Of course. An oversight on my part, Chairman, I was in deep conversation with my colleague. Please, allow me to extend a formal apology—”
“I make a motion to accept his apology!” Elan called out, jumping to his feet and holding the Red Card up.
A wave of laughter filled the room.
“Representative Elan,” the Chairman began to say.
“I second that motion if it helps to shut up Representative Madric-Quill,” a voice called out, the Representative for Dantooine, holding the Green Card in his hand.
“Seconded? You heard him, Chairman Goa! The motion has been seconded,” Elan turned around. “Chairman Goa, Representative Madric-Quill has issued a formal apology. I merely asked that the Assembly recognize it—and it has. It’s been recognized, seconded, and so adopted into the record. Once it’s been duly noted and accepted, the Representative gives up his right to use the floor, and his remaining time reverts back to me.”
“May I go on, Chairman Goa?” Representative Madric-Quill called out, his patience wearing thin and heard through the nasal tone of his Vocalizer.
The Chairman tried to suppress a smile; he cleared his throat and shuffled through a pile of papers on his desk. He put his visor on again and looked at Elan, and then nodded.
“I must protest!” Madric-Quill called out.
“You no longer have the floor,” Elan said gently. “So there’s nothing for you to protest.”
“Representative Elan holds the floor now,” Chairman Gao nodded, “and I don’t foresee him giving it up to you any time in the near future—that near future being within the next turn of the clock,” the Chairman smiled.
“But I must protest—”
“Which has been noted,” the Chairman smiled. “Continue, Representative Elan. In the future, Representative Madric-Quill, may I suggest you study the Codes of Conduct? If you can use it to your advantage, as Representative Elan has so fortuitously show us, you may actually get ahead in this game.”
“I’d like to put out that Gard-Amedda has been a civilian employee of the Senate Complex for six Standard years. Before that, he served with the Republic Forces on Nahl, sustaining grievous injuries and undergoing substantial rehabilitation, including full thoracic reconstruction and months in a batch tank. His is a simple life. He has a simple job. He is—essentially—a career man for want of a better expression. And now the Republic claims that he’s taken a single percentage point from every pay slot allotted to every employee in this esteemed government body—and I believe the number quoted earlier was in the area of half a million employees—thus enabling him to funnel off billions of credits into an account off-world. I don’t see it as being this man.”
There was an uproar in the Council chamber.
“This Committee will have to admit to the probable duplicity of another party, dismiss the charges against this man, and start its case all over again.” Elan picked up his data-pad. “May I approach the bench, Mr. Chairman?”
Gao nodded and fumbled to pick up his visor. The light of the pad was too bright for his sensitive eyes. Elan moved into position and looked at the Chairman as he passed up his data pad.
“I offer this esteemed government body a forensic audit—conducted by my staff—going back over the last five years. The evidence states that these monies total something in excess of several hundred billion credits, and have been funnelled out to support the blockade in the Outer Rim while my client was swimming in a batch tank! And still, this Committee purports Gard-Amedda to be that man! I say he’s more akin to a being a dupe. The records shows his name on all the documents, but they also show those same electronic signatures. And they read as Garademma. The forgeries are of such a bad quality, Mr. Chairman, they should never have been allowed as evidence in the first place.
“Instead of those responsible, we’ve found the beginnings of a conduit leading to a slush fund that extends from the Core Worlds to the borders of the Sith Empire!”
“And what of the charges against Garademma?” Madric-Quill asked, adjusting his Vocalizer.
“You are out of order, Representative Madric-Quill.”
“He’s not my client! He’s a fabrication; a fantasy!” Elan replied. “As I said, the man’s a dupe.”
“We need more evidence than a typo written up on a form!” Madric-Quill said, jumping to his feet. His colleagues in the Prosecution pod tried to hold him back.
“More evidence?”
Elan picked up his case and began stuffing it with flimsies, papers, and data files. There was a murmur of voices that seemed to grow in the Chamber and Chairman Goa rang the small bell beside him, trying to bring order.
“And the charges brought against the accused?” Madric-Quill called out. “What about those?”
“You have the proof. Mr. Chairman,” Elan said, turning to face the Sullustan. “You have the proof and you have the power to dismiss the charges against my client. I’ve instructed my staff to follow the money. In business, if you want to get to the bottom of anything, you simply follow the money from where you intercepted it, and trace it back to its source.”
“And where was this intercepted?” Chairman Goa asked.
“A business holding in Sith Space.”
“I thought you said it went to the borders of Sith Space?” Madric-Quill called out.
“Since that report was filed, we’ve discovered the money has gone farther than the Republic’s borders. It’s being used to finance the Mandalorian blockade in the Tingal Arm.”
“What about Mandalore? Is it possible they are somehow involved in this?” another voice called out from the Assembly pods.
“I recommend we send a delegation of Jedi to Mandalore and investigate.”
“And now they want to send delegates across the galaxy?” Madric-Quill cried out in protest.
And I know exactly who to send, Elan thought.