Chapter 182: Republic’s Struggles
Back on Csilla, Daimon was walking around one of the underground cities with Syndic-Aspirant Nuruodo and her small cadre of aides. The city itself was something that interested Daimon as he wanted to see how the Chiss were surviving and thriving.
A few of the places that Nuruodo to Daimon were to see the hydroponic towers that looped along the cavern walls. As they walked through the city, they also saw squads of young cadets marching in the tunnels and elderly engineers carrying devices to inspect the thermal regulation units embedded in the ceiling.
What intrigued him the most was the quiet discipline that the Chiss worked with. He figured that this was due to their resources being finite and how nothing could be wasted.
Nuruodo showed him the fabrication district, where new hull plating for their interplanetary transport ships was being forged with layered alloys, something they took from Imperial reactor technology and adapted it to their own.
This was one of the benefits of cross-species learning which would benefit the Chiss in the long run.
A group of apprentices in the workshop, seeing Nuruodo approach with the towering purple eyes alien, abandoned their work and bowed quickly, then darted out of the main aisle. Daimon gave them a small nod, seeing the awe in their eyes. Most likely because they had never seen an alien before which until a few months ago was considered myth.
"They’ll remember this," Nuruodo said softly, watching them walk away. "Chiss have never seen an alien in their lives. Because of that, it is now considered a mark of status, to be chosen for first-contact work."
"Status is always the real currency," he replied. Some may try to fight that fact and say that status means nothing, but those people are living in a fantasy if they can’t see how reality works.
She continued to lead him onward, providing an endless stream of commentary on the city’s organization, the culture of the major families, and the rivalries with the other ruling families.
Politics here was a game of move and countermove—the same as everywhere—but cloaked in the language of duty and honor rather than wealth and self-promotion.
There was beauty in it, Daimon thought, just as there was beauty in the old martial societies of his own Imperium—a kind of elegance to optimized struggle.
After an hour’s walk, they reached the observation ring above the communal square: a circular chamber with transparent panels. Below them, they could see the entire city.
To the east was a heated blue lake; to the west, a mile long garden of edible fungus and engineered moss leading to the residential blocks.
From this view, it was clear how the city was organized; military barracks and supply nodes in the center, educational buildings and research facilities on the perimeter, everything was built to serve a purpose and optimized for both defense and rapid response.
As they were standing there, Nuruodo asked a question she had been wanting to ask. "Your soldiers have said that you have no equal, except perhaps yourself." she said. "Do you ever miss being unknown or challenged?"
He took a minute and thought about the question. "I used to," he said. "But as time passed and as my empire grew larger, being unknown became a luxury I could no longer afford. As for being challenged..." Daimon trailed off, glancing across the city.
"Challenge is the only way you know you’re still growing. These days, most of my challenges come from people trying to prove themselves."
Nuruodo listened carefully. She found the conversations between her and Daimon to be very insightful.
"Among the Chiss, we have a word for someone who rises alone, who surpasses all others in their cohort. It’s not always viewed as a virtue. Alone, you see far, but your vision is narrow. To see truly, you need to be surrounded by strong minds—sometimes even ones that disagree with you." Daimon smiled hearing her species version of someone like him.
"That, I think, is a universal rule. The trick is finding people whose disagreement is worth listening to."
With that said, they stood in silence for a few minutes with the Empyrean Guards and Nuruodo’s aids standing behind them.
Nuruodo eventually broke the silence with a sudden laugh. "I envy you," she said. "Not your power, or your title. But your certainty. Most of what I do is second-guessing, weighing possibilities. But you seem to act without doubt."
Daimon chuckled hearing high praise from somebody who knows so little. "Certainty is a story you learn to tell yourself. Every day, I invent the reasons for what I do. The only difference is, I invent better reasons every year."
She smiled as she understood what he was saying. "I’ll remember that."
————
The Sith advances into Republic space continued as the months went on. By now, the Sith Emperor had shifted their tactics from a mad rush for the Core, to instead maximizing pain and minimizing overextension of the Sith Fleets.
The Republic on the otherhand was learning from its losses. The Republic High Command counterattacked where they could and used the Imperial volunteer forces to stage double feint attacks that drained the Sith advance of its initial initiative.
But the real cost lay in the newly occupied worlds. The Sith had adopted the Ravager platform as their signature weapon of terror. Every few weeks, another planet would be cracked open, its atmosphere set ablaze, its survivors left to cower in tunnel networks and bunkers that quickly turned into mass graves. The Sith called these acts ’strategic reminders’ designed to demonstrate neither mercy nor compromise.
On one such world, a Corellian agricultural colony named Renem, the Republic garrison and a handful of Imperial volunteers had held for nearly a month against encirclement. When the Ravager came, it erased two continents in less than an hour. The transmission of the orbital bombardment, hijacked and broadcast across every media channel in the Core, replayed on an endless loop until the next atrocity.
In the Senate, Chancellor Solen stared at the images with eyes of sadness. Corvin and Vorn had warned her, of course; the Imperium’s analysis had predicted this escalation months before it happened. But seeing it was different from knowing it.
And the Imperium was not going to get involved in the conflict, partially because Daimon wanted to monitor the situation and not escalate the already high tensions. The growing darkness was a massive concern, with both Daimon and the Balance Keepers monitoring it.
"What’s the current estimate?" she asked, barely looking up from the holofeed of Renem’s destruction.
"Two hundred eighteen million casualties, with another hundred million missing or unaccounted for. The planet is functionally dead," replied her intelligence chief. "The surviving population is refusing evacuation. They’re saying it’s better to die standing than surrender to the Sith."
Solen closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she looked at the faces of her war cabinet: the mix of tired politicians, half-broken military strategists, and a single Jedi Master who had been present for every major defeat since the war began.
"We have to call for an armistice," the Master said. "At least a temporary one. The Republic can’t withstand another one of these attacks." he was right. The morale was starting to dwindle amongst the Republic military as they were losing the war.
Solen shook her head. "We tried that. They want us to break. They want us humiliated." She paused, looked at the floor as if she might find a script to explain this madness.
The Jedi Master, an older woman sighed. "If the Imperium can be persuaded to enter the war, all of this death can be avoided. Or perhaps...."
"Or perhaps nothing," Solen said. "The Imperium has stated publicly that they will not get involved. They have already offered enough help with the Volunteer corps which is helping a lot. But forgetting about them, we don’t need outside help to beat the Sith, we just need more centralization."
Solen was referring to the aftermath of their war with the Imperium which saw the militarization of the Republic politically. Since the end of that war, the position of Chancellor remained an important one, but the power had been mostly left to the Senate and Corporations.
Almost every aspect of the government had been heavily decentralized, leaving Solen with not enough power to do anything. The Senate approved limited rearmament at the beginning of the war, and some of the Corporations refused to help them out.
Part of this was because of some of the Corporations being in the Sith’s pockets. Another part was because the war had not reached the Core worlds yet. Most saw the war never passing the Mid-Rim and saw it being over in a few years or largely remaining in the Outer Rims.
Because of all of this, the Core worlds themselves had used their planetary defense fleets to defend their own planets instead of relinquishing control to the High Command.
This limited the Republic military heavily making the war not proceed as smoothly as they thought. Solen tried her hardest to convince them, but because the war seemed so far, the Senate and Corporations decided to make assumptions instead of just using all their resources to destroy the Sith.
The remainder of the meeting was spent discussing war plans and figuring out ways to get more support. The Republic may have learned from their past, but now they’re neglecting the future.
