Truth & Lies

The world was barren, dead even. The sands had taken on a grey color because of the high concentration of metal but didn’t seem to reflect the light of the suns very well. The sky wasn’t blue, it was bleak and colorless. It was as if his world had been caught in a stasis. Nothing seemed to live there and personally the bounty hunter didn’t think anything ever would. On his speeder bike he left a trail in the sand which he expected would not fade for years as he headed towards his destination. On the horizon a small mountain could be seen, it was there what he had arrived to this notoriously dull sphere searching for had been placed in solitude.

The mountain, closer to a rock, grew as he approached it and before long he could spot the square entrance in the rock face. It wasn’t a glamorously decorated entrance with carvings or runes of warning, it was simply an entrance. The bike began decelerating and, stepping of the bike, he again appreciated the false solidity of the metallic sand. The extra weight of his armor sank him down into the sand and made movement cumbersome to say the least. The ground shifted back to solid as he stepped onto the smoothed rock of the entrance. The doorway didn’t lead into a chamber or large tomb as someone might expect but ended bluntly with a wall which against a large metal coffer was placed. The bounty hunter stepped forward towards it and eyed the complex locking mechanism on it. The coffer was emblazoned with the emblem of the Sith Empire. Consulting a data pad he had withdrawn from a satchel he carefully entered the various security codes on the keypad of the coffer.

A distant click was heard followed by a hiss as air escaped the secluded insides of the coffer which had probably been locked for many years. The coffer opened and revealed its contents to the man; rows upon rows of data pads were stacked neatly in the coffer, each of them numbered from one upwards. He eyed the contents and noticed a data pad appearing slightly different as well as unnumbered. He picked it up and eyed it, a thick layer of dust had settled upon the side exposed and after a brief examination of its outside he powered it up to explore its contents. The data pad could, akin to the others, store a vast amount of data but this one only contained a simple audio file which wasn’t of considerable size. It was titled ‘To an Old Friend’ and the intriguing name caused the Bounty Hunter to investigate. He pressed the button to play up the contents of the audio file and was greeted by a familiar voice.

“I have never questioned my superiors, never wondered if the men, women and aliens I kill deserve the fate that meets them. I don’t fantasize about the greater need of the Empire and how, by killing and misleading, its survival is assured. I know that what I do must be done, whether my feelings approve of it or not. I know I am not the only one of my kind and that my skills are meek in comparison to many individuals.

If it had been my own choice, I wouldn’t have sided with anyone. But it wasn’t, and that is why my allegiance lies with the Empire. Trying to change it is out of the question because such an act is an act of treason against fate. My placement in the universe is not because of my own will, but from the will of greater powers. Call it a god; call it the Force, all I know is that I do what I am tasked with not because it is my choice, but because it is a must. My pride swells at my work and its many branches. Guile, intrigue, assassination, manipulation, they are all part of my line of work and because of them my shape has differed, distorted and changed into a great many individuals. I have dealt death from up close, from far away, without using a weapon even through the use of mere words. My memory fails to project from whence I came or what my name was in the time before but it does successfully paint up a great many other things.

I remember the time before the re-emergence of the Sith, remember the war that followed, remember the uneasy truce created by the Treaty of Coruscant and the many things I saw during those years. Perhaps you are wondering who I am to claim such wisdom over the history of the galaxy. Perhaps you do not believe a word I am saying; after all my training detailed deceiving, lying and bending truth. My persona is that of an actor behind the scenes of the great play which is the galaxy, one of the select that are used by some to write the future and erase undesirable past, one of the select that take up the guise of someone they are not and pull the invisible strings of desire, truth, falsehood, anger, ecstasy and power to create events which would support a favorable outcome in the future.

You do not believe my words, I understand why. Let me then tell you of my memories, of what has been seen, done and experienced. Let me show you with words what actions have been dealt by my many faces and maybe then will you believe that my role is what it is claimed to be. My identity is someone who doesn’t exist, a ghost, a shadow, a creature of the darkness, smoke and mirrors. Come and listen, hear history retold from the eyes of a ghost.

My subject number is 36809 and if you’re hearing this, I am dead.

Long Live The Council and the Empire…”

Looking over the data pad which had revealed its contents the Bounty Hunter kneeled and withdrew the next pad labeled the first, beginning to explore its contents.