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The Sith looked at you.
“It’s almost thirty summers since I graduated from my academy. I must look young to you, don’t I? Imperial engineers like to keep me frozen in a tub until they need me back in the war. Like fruit! That’s how I got to live so long.”
It’s unknown whether the lady Sith was angry, morose, or merely joking.
“I am human, just like you, if that is what you are wondering,” She answered in a colourfully scornful tone. You shook your head. It’s not like you thought of her as an alien. She said: “I am the last Sith here. Let us leave it at that.”
“You look young yourself. You must have still been a student the day we caught the last star of the galaxy.”
She referred to that period of near-total hegemony during which the Empire ruled the galaxy with no opposition. A brief few years, which many fondly looked back upon like a religious dream. When every imperial capital was importing everything, basking in riches and spoils, receiving gifts and tributes from the conquered, from cream to Huttese bridges.
Sith Bocchi sighed darkly. “But ever since the Battlestation catastrophe… You know what happened, sergeant. That one error that turned the galaxy against us. If our Empire hadn’t been weakened by the civil war, the insurrection of the other fleets, and this murderous Coalition the Council had organised, it would be different. But our enemies are too numerous and our fleet is the last one.”
In any case, Sith Bocchi looked pleased with your answer. Secretly she thought of you as an intelligent, reserved man. A good trooper. She held your shoulder.
“That’s the spirit, sergeant. Remember the word of the Ancients: He who is afraid is half-beaten.”
You hear an electronic beep. The Sith takes something from the module on her chest. Out of a small square transponder, a hologram appeared. A face with a voice radioed in:
[Your Grace! This is Messieur-Premier, Squadron Invader - over! . . . ]
Delighted, the Sith exclaimed. “Périgord!”
Baron Alekhine de Périgord and the full might of the premiere Air Cavalry Squadron was right behind the Servitude’s attack. Over thirty TIE-K Supremacy fighters were awaiting the signal to surge forward.
[I’m sending the data to your transponder, Commander. ]
“Excellent!”
[Enemy contact in exactly fifty-eight seconds. ]
Bocchi held the blue hologram between you and herself. It displayed a three-dimensional feed of the engagement. The Servitude was about to meet the enemy brigade head on, with her fighter wing already in the air and deployed on her flanks. The Rosenberg cruisers meanwhile were flying in an arrowhead formation. They were desperately scrambling all of their fighters as fast as possible. They weren’t expecting the outnumbered imperials to attack. They were also unaware that the Sith Commander of the Seventh Legion herself was aboard Servitude.
