| Reuke_Cambrist | Date: Sunday, 22 May 2016, 11:58 PM | Message # 1 |
 Ensign
Group: Users
Messages: 14
Status: Offline
| The Senate offices on Coruscant were long deserted now, the ornately decorated, one-time corridors of power now quiet but for the din of speeder traffic outside. The afternoon sun shone on gleaming marble columns and proud, red carpets. Relics, now, of another time. The fates of worlds had been decided here for more than a thousand years. But no more. Not since the Emperor had abolished the Senate only 6 months ago. It felt like a lifetime to Sir Reuke ur'Tsyne Cambrist. In a sense, it had been. Cambrist had been dead, as far as the galaxy knew. Assassinated all-too-conveniently by the Empire's favorite canard: 'Rebels.' But Cambrist knew better. The Empire had tried to murder him, of this he was certain.
And now here he was: back from the dead, and clothed in Imperial power. It was all the power he'd ever wanted, but it had come at a ghastly cost.
Cambrist's old office commanded an impressive view of the Avenue of the Core Founders—of which, suitably, Brentaal was one—and the Senate Rotunda in the distance. He'd been raised into an ancient tradition of public service, and been proud to sit in the same chair that a hundred Brentaalan statesmen had sat in before him, admiring this very view. Now, Cambrist sank into that same chair, alone, his ancestors of no comfort to him. He'd never felt so small and so heavy at the same time. His face was pale. (Even more so than usual.) As pale, perhaps, as the Emperor himself. And Cambrist should know, having just met the man personally.
No, not 'man,' he thought. 'Monster.'
... Am I any better?
Cambrist wasn't proud of what he'd done to Senator Crion and the Rebels at Far Qasqi. But Palpatine was. Fiendishly so. Try as he might, Cambrist would never forget the toothy grin on his cadaverous face, or his cackle of delight. Cambrist's betrayal of Crion—and the gift he had reluctantly made of his personal collection of ancient Jedi and Sith artifacts—had won the Emperor's trust. And he had been duly rewarded; now the master of the Imperial economy, he could finally put his economic theories into practice on a galactic-scale. He could do what he wanted. Go where he wanted. Even here, to the office he'd been locked out of 6 months ago.
(And to think, his designer shoes still carried the dirt of the far-off jungles of Praesitlyn he'd been trudging through less than a week ago!)
Cambrist, for all his wealth, all his fine taste and sophistication, and his cynical, self-assured wit, was a small man. Now, he was a small man with great power. But this is not how he wanted it. He was a public servant, not a dictator. Now he was accountable to no one but the Stenax himself, Palpatine. It had also dawned upon him that running the Imperial economy was as much a curse as it was a gift; the Empire was already slave-driving Imperial worlds to meet production quotas that couldn't possibly be met. All to build a stupid 'Death Star.' Cambrist was not as harsh a task-master as Lord Vader. How could he be expected to improve the economy with so much production going to the Imperial war machine?
The Empire had wanted to kill him once. Would it do so again if he failed to please the Emperor? Maybe he was a dead man, after all. Part of him certainly was. The tradition he'd been raised into—the tradition of all those Cambrists before him—was dead. And he had become one of the murderers.
He slouched over his desk, burying his face in his arms. And Cambrist, known for his well-trained poise and composure, wept.
Sir Reuke ur'Tsyne Cambrist
Chairman of the Imperial Trade and Commerce Authority
Seneschal of House Cambrist
Former Imperial Senator of Brentaal
|
| |
|
|
