It had taken some considerable time to make the trek from the Empress Teta System to the Rimward ecumenopolis of Taris, but that time was not idly spent. When the Star Destroyer took position above the planet, her crew and troops were primed and ready for action. This time there would be no mistakes.

The communications officer forwarded a message to the bounty-seeker that stated that the Galactic Empire was ready to collect the prisoner and would hand out the reward.

HIH Princess Arya Padmé Jello

Sometimes the Empire could be amazingly efficient, supplying the minimal required equipment for a particular purpose but enough that it would function at peak efficiency. This, indeed, was the spartan militaristic part of the Empire—the side that built field bases out of metal and supplied its troops with grimey nutrient pastes that would keep all the soldiers in fighting fit without anything as unnecessarily comfortable as flavor.

In other instances, there would be an almost indulgent sense of conspicuous consumption. While the New Order preached frugality and discipline, the very Imperial æsthetic involved bold and lavish construction on the grand scale. The plenitude and prosperity wrought by the régime had to be demonstrated for all and sundry—not just the receptive audience in the Core worlds.

The flag recreation room on l’Aiglonne was an example of the latter. The floor was wrought in polished marbles of various textures and veins, while the sweeping lines created by the tall mahogany-trimmed walls and the coffered ceiling tended to make the room feel far larger than it actually was. Imperial monumentalism tended to make use of these illusionistic spaces to create a sense of smallness in the viewer—a smallness that was made all the more clear in contrast to the colossal magnitude of the Imperial edifice. That, in short, was an allegory of architecture.

The princess herself was more of an allegory in archaism. Her dark brown hair, formerly bound up in a combat braid, flowed loosely across her shoulders like shimmering silken threads, blending in with the molded leather cuirass she wore. Her cerulean eyes were fixed on her adversary, just as her marble-like face was frozen in martial concentration—as if it were sculpted by an ancient artist. Indeed, were it not for the barest motion caused by her breathing, one might have just as well assumed that she was a statue of a ferocious—yet still elegant—goddess of war.

Her opponent, then, was an expression of galactic modernity at its most exaggerated. A skeletal metallic frame housed tubes and pistons that released steam whenever the frame moved, while just a few surfaces were covered in unadorned plates of hard phrik. The figure’s souless glowing red eyes bathed the skull-like head with a sinister light. To complete the horrific image, the creature’s arms ended in a dreadful needle-like appendage and a flat protective shield.

It advanced slowly and methodically. Gears whirred and buzzed, giving the combatant a vaguely insectlike impression. By way of contrast, the princess swept forward gracefully and with a delicately measured cadence, like the steps of a courtly dance. Her blade was held out only at a slight angle from her arm, pointed just off-center from the droid’s spine.

The phase I dark trooper was the first to get into optimal combat range. Towering over the diminutive young princess, the droid swung its deadly blade downwards to bisect the human opponent. Knowing full well that the droid possessed more strength than she did, the princess stepped to her left and riposted with a cut to the droid’s exposed sword arm.

Her azure blade skipped off of the droid’s armor like a droplet of water on a hot pan, making the same sort of sizzling noise in the process. The droid swung his arm around and batted Arya across the head, momentarily blacking her out.

She recovered quickly, though her head throbbed maddeningly, and resumed her attack. She arced her blade above her head and sliced at the droid’s midsection; her blow was expectantly intercepted by the droid’s shield, so she reversed her strike and cut underneath the droid’s shield. The inertia was enough to partly cut through the material, causing the arm to sag and unbalance the droid’s attempted return stroke.

She hopped back lightly and awaited the droid’s next attack. When it jabbed its blade out towards her chest, she firmly knocked the weapon away with a flick of her wrist (as it was much easier to redirect the momentum of the attack than it was to attempt to block it). With the droid’s shield limp and the sword arm momentarily to the side, she plunged her weapon deep into the droid’s metallic innards and skewered the circuitry hiding beneath the droid’s lightsaber-proof rib cage.

Once an imposing sight, the darktrooper was now a collapsed heap on the polished rec room floor. Arya’s shoulders heaved with the exertion, but she called up the next level of training. Drayneen counseled that this may be unwise, but the princess insisted. She would brook no indolence, especially on her own part.

Hubris would be her downfall. Her next opponent towered far above her, appearing to be so much as a massive stormtrooper with much aggressively sleeker curves. As she readied her blade, the dark trooper jetted into the air and fired a series of rockets at her along with a stream of disabling electricity. She had not expected this concerted attack, as focusing the Force on the rockets would let the electricity strike her and focusing on the electricity would leave her vulnerable to the rockets. Her indecision had left her paralyzed, and as a result, her body was rendered numb by the current while the rockets detonated near her and released stun charges. As the darkness closed in over her, she belatedly came to the realization that she could have dodg—

When she awoke, she found herself in the warm confines of her bed. Her handmaidens must have made sure she was properly attended to, bless them. When she swung her legs out and sat up on her bed, her entire body protested. Clearly she was still sore from the earlier exertions. Still, being knocked out had been convenient rest enough and she could ease her ills with a luxurious spa and massage at some later point. But she had to work before she enjoyed the fruits of her high station.

She put on her robe and made her way to the small computer terminal by her reading desk. She briefly scanned through the various reports and was about the log out when something gave her pause. She scrolled back to the third report on her list and puzzled over it. A clandestine meeting between smuggler royalty? Large influxes of weaponry towards the Rim? Why hadn’t Intel followed up on this? She forwarded the information to her father, knowing he’d deal with it, but then considered if it wouldn’t hurt to keep an eye on it herself. After all, Imperial Intelligence had a lot on its mind, and since the princess had full access to the Imperial Guard and the resources that went along with it, it wouldn’t hurt to send in some of the Emperor’s eyes to keep an eye out on things. Why, that Sarcev Quest character would be just the sort of slick playboy who would slum with shady characters in order to improve his lot at the Court. It wasn’t widely known that he was an associate of the former Emperor’s and had pledged his loyalty to the Jellonic dynasty. The man’s darkside taint gave the princess the creeps, but so long as she didn’t have to meet him in person…