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Grainne was over this karking circus.
Specifically Rath Velus’ karking circus.
Her datapad chimed again, soft and polite and utterly unconcerned with the fact that she had already addressed this exact objection three times, in writing, with citations. Grainne stared at the screen with her jaw locked tight and resisted the urge to fling the thing across her office. Violence against Imperial property was, unfortunately, still frowned upon.
Request for clarification, the header read.
Clarification. As if she hadn’t been impeccably clear the first time. As if the doctrine of ideological neutrality was some arcane mystery she’d stumbled into by accident instead of a field she’d been working in since before Rath Velus had learned how to weaponize a footnote.
She scrolled.
The objection was painfully familiar. A single paragraph, phrased in that infuriatingly mild, bloodless tone that pretended this was about standards and not spite. Her assessment language was “potentially interpretive.” Her conclusions were “functionally sound, but rhetorically imprecise.” The attached citation was one she knew by heart, because she was the one who’d used it in her own training materials.
Grainne exhaled slowly through her nose and set the datapad down with exaggerated care.
This wasn’t a disagreement. This wasn’t even a professional critique. This was procedural harassment wrapped in doctrine and stamped with Loyalty Office authorization. He hadn’t challenged her conclusions (couldn’t actually, not without embarrassing himself), so instead he’d buried the case under an avalanche of requests, each one small, each one reasonable. Each one just enough to keep it from closing. And because the system loved nothing more than a neatly flagged concern, the audit queue had obediently tied itself in knots.
She was going to throttle him. With violence.
Her terminal chimed again. Another bounce. A new reference number. Same karking problem.
Grainne leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling, counting to five in Basic and then again in her head in an old field code she hadn’t used in years. When she looked back down, her reflection stared back at her from the darkened screen, tight-lipped with sharpened eyes … and thoroughly unimpressed.
“Fine,” she muttered to the empty office. “If Rath Velus wants a circus…”
She reached for her datapad again, this time not to respond, but to pull up a contact she didn’t use lightly.
Dayja Collerand.
If Sinjir was going to turn the Loyalty Office into a performance, then she was done playing fair with the paperwork.
*
“I swear,” Dayja said, staring down Grainne’s venomous green eyes, “if you Loyalty Officers spent as much time investigating actual disloyalty as you did messing with each other’s reports-”
“What?” she cut in sharply. “You think I care about what my colleagues get up to?” Grainne leaned forward, palms flat on the edge of his desk, her voice dropping into something cold and precise. “I’m trying to get work done here, Major. Not play doctrinal fencing with Rath Velus because he’s bored and armed with a citation index.”
Dayja arched a brow, unimpressed. “You’re telling me this is about efficiency?”
“I’m telling you,” she said, teeth clenched, “that he’s locked my very long and very detailed audit in a recursive review loop by claiming my language is ‘interpretive.’” She made a sharp, dismissive gesture. “Not inaccurate. Not unsound. Interpretive.”
Dayja blinked at her, then sighed, long-suffering, and leaned back in his chair. “Why not bring it to Uddra?” He asked. “You’re clearly being played here. And you could argue that he’s wasting Imperial time and resources.”
Grainne snorted softly. “Because she’ll decide we’re bored.”
“And?”
“And then I’ll be back on the Chimaera, writing another nothing-report about Thrawn’s nothing-motives.”
Dayja grimaced. “Right. Exile by futility.” He shook his head. “I’ll help, but you’ll owe me a favor for this, Cathaoir.”
Grainne went very still. “No,” she said flatly. “I won’t.”
Dayja studied her for a moment, then huffed a quiet laugh. “You Loyalty Officers really are all the same.”
“I don’t deal in favors,” Grainne said with a slight shrug. “You know that. Favors have interest. And I’m not here to mortgage my future because Rath Velus decided to mark his territory.”
“Mark his territory?” Dayja cocked an eyebrow before leaning back in his chair with a bark of laughter. “Oh my karking stars. This is because he wanted the case and you got it, isn’t it?” He shook his head, eyes bright with sudden understanding. “Of course it is.”
Grainne didn’t smile. “He requested its reassignment before it landed on my desk.”
“Twice,” Dayja said, already having turned back to his terminal and typing away. “Denied both times.”
Her gaze sharpened. “You pulled that quickly.”
“I have hobbies,” Dayja replied dryly. His fingers danced across the interface, drawing the file apart layer by layer. “All right. Let’s see what he’s actually doing to you.” Lines of text bloomed across the display, objections cross-referenced, timestamps aligning in a way that made the pattern impossible to miss. He leaned closer. Then closer. “No…” he said quietly.
Grainne glanced at him. “No what.”
Dayja didn’t answer. His fingers were moving, pulling up the access log with a sharp flick, narrowing the window, filtering for read-only interactions. He frowned, then frowned harder. “That’s not right.”
Grainne stepped around the desk. “Dayja.”
“Hold on.” He keyed in another command, jaw set. “There’s a second access vector.” He pulled another layer of the log open, drilling deeper past the standard audit access into the quieter administrative metadata most people never bothered to look at. His expression shifted from irritation to something like disbelief.
“Look at this,” he said, turning the display toward her.
A second access thread blinked into view. A ghost alongside Sinjir’s.
Grainne leaned in. “That’s not Rath Velus?”
“No,” Dayja said. “Different origin node. Internal Affairs.”
Her gaze sharpened. “IA doesn’t touch Loyalty audits…”
“Unless someone asked them to,” Dayja finished. He traced the thread with one finger. “Read-only access. No flags. No edits. Just observation.”
Grainne straightened slowly. “So someone in IA really hates me and wants this report to fail?”
“Or,” Dayja said, and then he stopped. He stared at the screen for a long moment.
Then he burst out laughing.
It wasn’t kind laughter. It wasn’t amused. It was the sharp, disbelieving bark of someone who had just realized the shape of a problem and couldn’t decide whether to be impressed or alarmed.
“Oh stars,” he exclaimed. “That’s it!”
Grainne frowned, crossing her arms and leveling a dangerous glare at her slicer. “That’s what?”
“He’s being coached!” Dayja said, still half-laughing. “It’s the only conclusion that makes sense! Emperor’s robes, you LOs are incorrigible!"
“Coached,” Grainne repeated, flatly ignoring the man’s laughter. “Explain yourself.”
Dayja wiped at his eyes, breath hitching once more as another incredulous laugh escaped him. “Look at it,” he said, gesturing sharply at the display. “It’s not Rath Velus. It’s not you. There’s another access thread running alongside Sinjir’s. It’s subtle, clean. It’s read-only.” He pulled the code forward on the monitor, isolating a line. “And it’s definitely someone in Internal Affairs. I’d recognize my own department’s locational markers anywhere.”
“And what does IA want with me?” She asked.
“I don’t think they want anything,” Dayja grinned. “This is instructional.” He leaned back, grin spreading, equal parts delighted and horrified. “Honestly, if I were training someone on how to manipulate the system, this is exactly where I’d start. Pick a live case. Pick a competent officer. Let them watch how pressure actually works.”
Her eyes flicked back to the screen. “So I’m his … practice case?”
Grainne smiled. It wasn’t wide. It wasn’t warm. No, it was sharp and knowing, the smile of someone who had just realized they were part of a lesson and found the idea flattering.“Well,” she said lightly, “if I were getting slicing exercises, I’d absolutely pick on Rath Velus.”
Dayja snorted. “Of course you would.”
Grainne’s smile didn’t fade, but it did shift from knowing to curious. Her whole demeanor went from amused to intent in an instant.
“Okay,” she said. “So.”
Dayja stiffened. “So what?”
“So, you’ve got a student,” Grainne went on lightly, coming closer around to see the data streaming across his monitor. “And you’ve got an opponent.” Her gaze slid, lazy and dangerous, to Rath Velus’s looping objections. “What do we do about this?”
Dayja opened his mouth, then stopped, watching her expression carefully. “Cathaoir…”
She turned to him fully now, eyes bright with interest rather than anger. “You just said it yourself,” she continued. “If you were teaching someone how to manipulate the system, this is where you’d start.” She tilted her head. “Which means you already know how to do it. Show me.” It wasn’t a request.
Dayja blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Show me how you’d get back at Rath Velus,” she said calmly. “Not enough to trip alarms. Not enough to make it obvious. Just… enough.”
He stared at her for a long moment. “You don’t usually ask for lessons in interference.”
“I don’t usually find myself as someone’s practical exercise,” she replied. “Consider this professional development.”
Dayja leaned back in his chair, studying her, then the screen, then her again. Slowly, a grin crept across his face. “Oh, I see,” he said. “You want to hurt him.”
“I want him to stop,” Grainne replied evenly. “If that requires discomfort, I’m prepared to be compassionate about it.” She glanced back at the screen, then tilted her head, thinking aloud. “What if I don’t touch him at all?” Her eyes flicked to Dayja. “What if I touch around him?”
Dayja’s smile faltered slightly. “Cathaoir-”
“Uddra’s schedule,” Grainne continued almost gleefully, warming to the idea. “Assignment rotations. Priority briefings. If Rath Velus suddenly finds himself reassigned, even temporarily-”
“Nope,” Dayja cut in, holding up a hand. “Absolutely not.”
She frowned. “I’m not talking about forging orders.”
“I know what you’re talking about,” Dayja said. “And I’m telling you that’s a fast way onto Uddra’s permanent memory.”
Grainne arched her brow. “I’m cleared to view certain scheduling layers.”
“Yes,” Dayja said. “View. Not nudge. And before you get clever, she’s better at this than she lets on. You think she doesn’t notice when her calendar shifts by five minutes? When an assignment gets rerouted through an unexpected channel?”
Grainne’s mouth twisted. “So she would notice.”
“She would notice,” Dayja confirmed, “and she would know exactly who did it. Maybe not immediately. But eventually. And then you’re explaining why you thought it was acceptable to treat her operational bandwidth like a dejarik board.”
Grainne exhaled through her nose. “That would be… inconvenient.”
“That would be career-limiting,” Dayja said. “For both of us, since I’m sitting here watching you think it. And while you may be alright getting on Uddra’s shit list, I wouldn’t touch that with a proton laser.”
She huffed a quiet laugh, conceding the point. “Fine. No touching Uddra. No surprise trips to the Chimaera.”
“Good,” Dayja said. “Because that’s not subtle, that’s theatrical.”
“So what is subtle?” she asked, genuine curiosity now.
Dayja turned back to the console, pulling up a different interface. Honestly, one far less glamorous than what she’d been imagining. Process flows. Dependencies. Compliance requirements that lived in the cracks between offices.
“This,” he said, highlighting a small, forgettable node. “You don’t move the people. You move the work.”
Grainne leaned in. “Explain.”
“Rath Velus is comfortable because he knows which objections are cheap,” Dayja said. “So you make them expensive. Not loudly. Just… cumulatively.”
He expanded the node. “Compliance harmonization checkpoint. Optional, unless invoked.”
Her eyes lit. “Once invoked, every objection of his has to be cross-validated against current Loyalty training language.”
“Which he hasn’t updated,” Dayja said. “Because it’s tedious and no one’s forced the issue in years.”
“And if he keeps objecting,” Grainne said slowly, already seeing it, “he has to justify every instance.”
“Individually,” Dayja added. “In writing. With citations.”
Grainne smiled, sharp and delighted. “And none of that touches Uddra.”
“Exactly,” Dayja said. “No fingerprints. No theatrics. Just doctrine doing what doctrine does best.”
She straightened, amusement sharpening into something colder and far more satisfied. “Sinjir’s going to learn from this,” she said softly. “While backing up every objection on my report with dozens of hours of datawork.”
Dayja snorted. “I don’t know what he’ll learn from this, but at the very least, he’s going to take notes.”
Grainne’s smile returned, thin and unapologetic. She tapped the highlighted checkpoint, activating it with a single, precise motion. “He’s going to regret the day he decided to use me as practice.”
Dayja glanced at the screen, then at her, a low whistle escaping him. “Remind me,” he said dryly, “never to get on your bad side.”
Grainne didn’t look away from the display. “Smart,” she replied.
*
Grainne’s caf was exactly the right temperature.
Not scalding, nor lukewarm. It was hot enough to bite and bitter enough to demand attention. She cradled the thermos in both hands and let herself enjoy the quiet of her office, the low hum of the building settling into its day-cycle rhythm. The lights were dimmed to her preference. Her aide wasn’t scheduled to get in for awhile now and everything was quiet. Her terminal scrolled patiently through a queue she wasn’t in any hurry to open.
For the moment, nothing required her.
She took another sip, eyes drifting to the chrono in the corner of her display. She had a meeting in… seven minutes. Plenty of time to finish her caf.
The chime at her door sounded. Grainne didn’t even have time to say ‘enter’ as the door slid open and Major Uddra stepped inside. Granted, Major Uddra never had to wait for permission. Not inside the halls of the ISB Loyalty Office anyway.
Grainne set the thermos down at once and rose to her feet, the movement crisp and automatic, posture snapping into regulation attention. It was a habit drilled too deep to ignore, especially when the woman who signed her evaluations was standing in her doorway.
“Major,” Grainne said, steady and respectful.
Uddra didn’t answer right away. Instead, she stepped fully into the office, the door sealing behind her with a soft hiss, her attention fixed on the datapad in her hands. She scrolled as she walked, brow faintly furrowed, as if Grainne were no more than furniture for the moment.
Grainne remained at attention, eyes forward, unmoving.
Another step. Then another. Uddra stopped near the desk, thumb flicking once more across the datapad’s surface before she finally lowered it. Only then did she look up. Her gaze was sharp, assessing, and entirely unhurried. “At ease,” Uddra said.
Grainne complied, relaxing just enough to follow the order without losing her composure.
Uddra studied her for a moment longer, then glanced briefly at the thermos still steaming faintly on the desk.
“Enjoying your caf?” she asked, tone neutral.
“Yes, Major.”
“Good,” Uddra said, as if that settled something. She shifted her weight, datapad still in hand. “You have a meeting in six minutes.”
Grainne blinked once, surprised despite herself. “Yes, Major.”
Uddra inclined her head, satisfied. “Then I’ll be brief.” She raised the datapad again, eyes skimming the display one last time before lowering it, attention fully on Grainne. “If you don’t think I know what you’ve been up to,” Uddra said calmly, “you’re wrong.”
Grainne didn’t answer immediately. She held Uddra’s gaze, weighing the tone more than the words. There was no heat in it. No accusation yet. Just a statement of fact. ‘I am aware.’ The most dangerous kind.
“Yes, Major,” Grainne said at last.
Uddra’s brow lifted a fraction. Not surprise … but an invitation to continue.
“I took action within doctrine,” Grainne continued evenly. “No schedules were altered. No assignments rerouted. No authority exceeded.”
Uddra watched her closely. “And yet you acted.”
“Yes, Major.” She wasn’t going to deny it. What would she even deny? That she had recognized a flaw and refused to let it metastasize? That she had refused to allow a bad actor to dictate the shape of the system through inertia? She knew she couldn’t blame this on Rath Velus either. Trying to throw Sinjir under the bus would just make Uddra more upset than taking responsibility for her own slicing. “I identified a procedural vulnerability,” Grainne continued calmly. “One that was being exploited to prevent case closure and risked establishing an unsound precedent. I corrected it.”
“At considerable inconvenience to another officer,” Uddra noted.
“At proportionate cost,” Grainne corrected calmly. “To the behavior, not the individual.”
Uddra’s gaze sharpened. “You’re certain of that distinction.”
“Yes, Major,” Grainne said without hesitation. “The process is neutral. Anyone engaging in the same conduct would experience the same constraints.”
Uddra watched her for a moment longer, then shifted the datapad in her hands, eyes dropping to the display.
“And you involved Internal Affairs,” she said, not quite a question.
Grainne inhaled once, slow and steady. “No, Major,” she replied. “I didn’t involve them. Not formally.”
Uddra looked up again, gaze sharpening. “You had assistance from them.”
“I had visibility,” Grainne said. “No resources were requested. No directives issued. No labor expended on my behalf.”
Uddra’s eyes searched her face. “Explain the distinction.”
“I used no tools I wasn’t already cleared to access,” Grainne said evenly. “I filed no requests outside my authority. I invoked no favors, formal or informal. I simply invoked a free professional development opportunity from a colleague.”
Uddra lowered the datapad just enough to look at Grainne over its edge. “You’re aware that most officers would have traded something for that level of tutoring.”
“I’m aware,” Grainne said. “I chose not to.”
Uddra regarded her for a long moment, then inclined her head a fraction…
“Well done,” Uddra finally said. “I may call on you for this kind of work in the future. You will put your newfound knowledge to the test”. She nodded once and turned on her heel, marching out of Grainne’s office. The door sealed behind her with a soft hiss.
Grainne let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.
Then she smiled.
It was the smile of someone who had identified a problem, solved it cleanly, and earned notice for doing so … and who knew with absolute certainty that the system (and her boss) would never quite forget it.
‘Victory’, she thought, reaching for her caf. Victory was very sweet.
*
Grainne stopped just steps outside of the meeting room. Sinjir Rath Velus stopped in front of her, his own datapad clutched lazily in his arms.
He glared at her with the usual amount of malice in his eyes. “Your revised language in your last report was … improved,” he said with a small smile. “Makes me wonder if you’re hiding any useful skills up those white sleeves of yours which haven’t been made public to the department”.
“So was yours,” she deadpanned. “And unlike you,” she went on coolly, “I didn’t need to turn in any favors to get there.”
Sinjir’s smile didn’t falter, but it did sharpen. Just a touch. “A pity,” he said lightly. “Favors can get you far around here.”
Grainne stepped past him, forcing him to pivot if he wanted to keep the conversation going. “I’m glad you found the exercise worthwhile,” she added, tone pleasant, almost congenial. “I know practice cases can be very instructive.”
Sinjir’s eyes flicked to her, assessing her every move. “Practice,” he echoed.
“Yes,” Grainne said, stopping at the meeting room doors. She turned to face him at last, meeting his gaze squarely. “You learn a great deal about leverage when you pick the wrong example.”
For a heartbeat, something like genuine amusement crossed his face. “I wouldn’t say wrong.”
“No,” Grainne agreed. “Just… expensive.”
The doors slid open, spilling light and voices into the corridor. Grainne inclined her head once in a formal and dismissive manner, then stepped inside.
Sinjir stepped in after her, datapad tucked loosely under his arm, smile thoughtful now instead of smug.
Lesson learned, perhaps.
Or at least… noted.