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“Chett, priority call on line Besh.”
Chett rolled his eyes. Being the youngest technician in the Senate IT support pool Aurek sucked. In the name of gaining experience, the youngest member on duty answered customer support calls. It was shit work, and they all knew it.
Chett couldn’t wait for the next victim team member to join.
“They’re all priority calls, Nort.” Every Senator considered themselves a priority, especially in Aurek pool, which supported Core and Deep Core Senate representatives, as well as the Chancellor. But there was a ticketing system for a reason, and Chett believed in process.
And not being interrupted every thirty seconds for an idiot Senator.
“Chancellor’s office.”
“Oh, shit,” Chett choked on air, pushing away from a dissected console to race over to the comm line. Attempting to aspirate normally, he accepted the incoming call. “Senate IT support pool—”
“The Chancellor’s console is not working properly,” the Chancellor’s assistant steamrolled right over his greeting. “Your MicroTeth 360 upgrade failed and now he can’t see his messages or connect via comm. It keeps prompting a passcode.”
“MicroSith 360 strikes again,” Chett’s coworker murmured quietly behind him, prompting chuckles.
That kriffing system upgrade had been the bane of Chett’s existence for the past week. His team didn’t even handle network upgrades and software.
“I’m sorry to hear that ma’am, but actually special team Schola is handling that—“
“I already called them and verified that it’s not the system,” she interrupted. “It’s the console. You need to fix it.”
“One moment, please.” He muted the assistant, and turned to the pool who was watching with rapt attention. “Thoughts?”
“Console’s pretty new,” frowned Nort. “It’s probably not the console.”
“Did she ask him if he's tried turning it off and then back on again?” grinned another.
“I can’t ask the Chancellor that!”
“Then I guess you're making a special trip, buddy.” They laughed as Chett groaned, turning back to the comm and the executive assistant.
Chett twitched nervously under the laser-focused stare of the executive assistant escorting him, fiddling with the controls on the hover-cart he’d dragged up from the bull-pen in the bowels of the Senate Dome. If there was a chance he had to remove the console, he sure as hell wouldn’t be able to drag the thing down through 250 levels. Feeling nervous, he angled the cart between himself and the assistant, uncertain whether he felt relieved or terrified as the door to the Chancellor’s office opened and the scary assistant stood, ushering him in.
It was— an ugly office, frankly. All reds and silver and black. A grim sight; the Alderaan office suite was much nicer. Strange statues and carvings dotted the space, probably tastefully done but Chett’s main focus was on the mammoth desk of the Chancellor, directly in front of huge window. It was a nice view. Chett felt the stirrings of envy; they had no windows in support pool Aurek. Then again, Chett had never had a window in his life, as a permanent resident of the Lower Levels. He was lucky to see the sky on his commute to the Senate.
Nope. Not picking that scab today.
The Chancellor sat at the desk, a wizened old man, frowning at the console as he jabbed at it with one finger. Not unlike Chett’s grandfather with a data pad, actually. He looked up as Chett approached. “Ah, thank you for coming.” His tone aimed for appreciative, but landed somewhere closer to peevish. “This thing doesn’t seem to want to cooperate today.” He chuckled, a grating sound.
“If it’s all right with you, Chancellor, I’ll attempt to access your console in an Administrative role and see if I can diagnose the issue,” Chett replied in his best customer service voice. The Chancellor’s mouth thinned.
“What… exactly, will you be accessing in Administrative mode?”
Well, that wasn’t too shady.
“I’ll be looking at the back-end stuff only, Chancellor. System connections, software updates, firmware, the works. Any files you have won’t be accessed.”
“Ah, right. Well in that case, better get to it!” He stood up, making way for Chett to take a seat and log in, and then, just—
Loomed.
Chett didn’t scare easily— not anymore, being accidentally tackled by a Corrie Guard massif tended to make everything else look pretty tame— but the idea of the Chancellor staring over his shoulder was deeply unsettling.
Probably has war secrets on this thing.
Or porn.
As Chett continued tapping away, the Chancellor soon lost interest, wandering around the office with increasingly less patience. He had an odd habit of flexing his hands— not that Chett noticed, since he was diligently searching for the issue.
At length, the scary assistant returned. “Chancellor, your lunch appointment is in five minutes.”
“Ah.” He glanced over at Chett. “You will continue assessing the issue?”
“Yes, Chancellor,” Chett nodded, uncertain as to what else the Chancellor expected him to do.
“Good. Let us hope for a quicker fix by then.”
Well, shit. That wasn’t too ominous, or anything.
Chett swallowed thickly as the Chancellor swept out of the room, more feverishly looking for the problem, but the damn console was simply not cooperating. He tried turning it off, then back on again— nothing.
Probably malware from that porn stash he’s hiding.
Nothing for it— the damn console would have to come out. Chett pushed the chair out of the way, and began unplugging the hefty tech machinery, carefully prying it out of the desk. Losing his balance, he stumbled, slamming into the desk. His tools and a bunch of crap from the Chanceellor’s desk cascaded to the ground. He cursed; hopefully it wasn't anything valuable.
With the console on the cart, the desk looked exceptionally barren, and Chett panicked. The Chancellor would be pissed to come back to a gaping hole in the middle of his desk, and that weird hand-flexing tic kinda freaked Chett out. He scooped up the stuff he’d knocked to the floor, tossed it on the cart, made a half-assed attempt to re-set the things he’d knocked off the desk, and hauled ass out of there, not breathing easily until he was safely down in the Aurek pool bullpen.
Next time, Nort could go.
With everyone still on their lunch break, Chett could work in peace. He began unloading the cart, moving the console to his station for dismantling, and tidying up the tools that had been tossed on the cart in his panicked flight from the office. A new, silver object he’d never seen before lay amongst them: a short cylinder, made of some kind of metal, capped at one end. Where had this come from?
There was a button on one side. Chett pressed it.
A brilliant red beam of light shot out one end, and stabbed the console right in the center of the screen with an ear-splitting screech, melting the glass. He took his thumb off, and the light disappeared.
“Oh, shit,” he whispered, horror-struck. How the kark did he end up with a lightsaber?
Wasn’t red bad?
Did this qualify as a weapon? No, stupid question, the real question was whether he called security for this?
The Senate Guard?
The Coruscant Guard?
They’d accuse him of stealing. Maybe he could just sneak it back into the Chancellor’s office?
Why the hell did the Chancellor have a lightsaber?
Pretty dangerous souvenir—
Wait, wasn’t red bad?
The sound of voices jolted him out of his terror-induced freeze, and he threw the deadly weapon— what the hell, Chett— into his bag, and attempted to hide the rather damning hole in the middle of the console.
Thankfully, his coworkers didn’t notice, chatting vaguely about some bolo-ball match last night.
“How’s that console going, Chett?”
“Pretty fucked,” he chuckled shakily, wincing. Too obvious. He cleared his throat, attempting something more casual. “MicroSith 360 strikes again. Uh, I think the Jedi Temple updated their systems last week, they might have answers. Hey, how do we call the Jedi Temple?”
“We don’t call the kriffing Jedi Temple, you idiot,” his station mate rolled his eyes. “Space wizards aren’t going to help you fix that console.”
“Ha! Space wizards. That’s good,” chuckle another. “I’d like to see those lightsabers fix a network outage.”
“A little stabby-stab at a blue screen of death.”
“Can a Jedi use MicroSith 360? Or is the temptation to stab your red saber through the console too great to use it—”
“No, you idiot. The bad guys use red, haven’t you watched Corellia Red? The Jedi use green or blue. Or the cool guy who has purple.”
Oh, shit.
Chett grabbed his bag, quietly sidling from the bullpen as his coworkers continued to joke, slipped into a service corridor and took off in a flat-out run through the building to the transport zone outside. Hopefully he had enough credits on his transit pass to catch the next shuttle in the direction of the Temple.
He needed to get this saber to the Jedi as quickly as possible. Surely space wizards would know what to do with a bad-guy saber.
Chett surfaced from the depths of the Senate dome, blinking into the bright Coruscant afternoon. The sun had decided to wage war against the pervasive smog, doing its level-best to blind the tech as he wandered in the general direction of the loading bay.
What if he just… chucked it into the Sinkhole? The odds of anyone ever finding it were low. That would be problem solved; no muss, no fuss.
But… it was probably important that he found it in the Chancellor’s office. No saber, no way to explain.
What if he got arrested for theft? What if the Chancellor was allowed to have a red lightsaber?
That didn’t seem likely.
Was this worth his job, potentially? His life?
What if this discovery ended the war?
What if it got him killed?
“Whoa there,” an armored arm caught him firmly in the chest, forcing him back. “A little too far, sir.”
Chett blinked again, then paled. Of all the people to run into, he had to run into the Coruscant Guard. Oh, shiiiiit. “What?” he said stupidly.
“You almost stepped right off the platform, sir,” came the carefully blank reply.
“I’m not a sir,” Chett replied automatically, mind reeling over how closely he’d come to certain death, not at all certain he’d successfully avoided it yet. “I work in IT.”
“Ah…you on the systems upgrade?” the voice of the trooper went a little less carefully blank, and Chett grimaced instinctively.
“No, but it’s been a pain in the ass anyway. MicroSith 360 strikes again.”
“Heh, MicroSith, that’s pretty good,” another trooper chuckled.
“Do you know when the next transit shuttle headed east comes?” Chett ventured. “Sir?” he tacked on.
“Not a sir, either-- but Commander Thire and the squad are headed to the Jedi Temple, we can give you a lift,” the first trooper offered. Chett weighed the option.
On the one hand, he’d get there really fast.
On the other hand— well, he had the vaguest sense that if the Chancellor realized the saber was missing and figured out it was him, getting arrested would probably be the least of his worries.
“Yeah, sure,” Chett said, like an idiot, and followed the troopers to a transport.
He quickly regretted it.
“Do you always travel with the doors open?” he shouted over the rushing wind, clinging for dear life to the pulley ring closest to the cockpit. He chanced a glance over the edge of the open hatch of the LAAT-i, quickly closing his eyes against the dizzying drop as they soared above the standard transit lanes, hundreds of stories above Topside. The troopers just laughed, minus the Commander whose helmet gave a judgmental tilt.
The upshot was a speedy trip, and within minutes they had landed at the Temple. Chett wobbled out on unsteady legs, surrounded by chuckling troopers.
“Not too bad for a natborn,” a trooper tossed his way. Eh, he’d take it. Besides, he saw what he needed ahead. Two humanoid figures bearing staffs and wearing masks appeared to be walking on a patrol near the entrance to the Temple, and he ran towards them as quickly as his wobbly legs would allow them. They looked like Jedi, or would be able to tell him where to find a Jedi.
“Uh, excuse me, are you Jedi?” Nods. Progress. “I found something while doing a systems upgrade at the Senate Dome and I don’t know what to do with it, I need a Jedi who can help?” Chett babbled lamely. He reached into his bag and pulled out the lightsaber. Instantly, the Temple Guard recoiled.
That… was probably a bad sign.
“Where did you find that?” a Guard inquired, their voice obscured by a vocoder.
Well, if they thought the lightsaber was bad-- “The… Chancellor’s office?” he offered timidly.
“And that’s how I saved the galaxy.”
“You’re so full of shit,” a coworker shoved Chett's shoulder as the barflies gathered around them began to laugh. “Like one little paean could end a war.”
“Besides, everyone knows the Chancellor died of a heart attack, bless his soul,” added another. “Too bad he didn’t live to see the war end.”
The tech watched with dismay as the conversation turned.
“Told you,” murmured a voice in his ear. He startled to find a familiar Kiffar leaning against the bar, a smirk wrinkling the gold tattoo stretching across his face.
“I risked my life!” Chett protested. “I could have died!”
“Which is why most people just look the other way,” the Kiffar’s smile twisted. “Your consolation is that it was the right thing to do, not the accolades, kid. But,” he stood up straighter, nodding at the door, “if you think you can do better about keeping your mouth shut, I think I can offer you a job where that kind of do-gooder attitude is rewarded.”
Chett frowned. “But aren’t you guys moving off-planet?”
The Kiffar shot him a deeply amused glance. “Attached to Coruscant, are you?”
The tech paused for only half a second before following the Kiffar out the door. Kriff the Senate. Kriff Coruscant. He got a taste of doing the right thing for once, and now he wanted more.