Cipher

Cipher Nine’s first thought upon seeing Lord Akeldama was: Oh no, she’s one of those Sith. Her hair certainly seemed to indicate it—a bright pink, in two bouncing pigtails. Her armor was thin and skin-tight, but it at least looked well-made. There was no hint of cybernetics, which was somewhat rare among ranking Sith, especially humans. But there was no way to tell for sure, as she could be using implants which were unseen or mostly undetectable. The Cipher herself had no visible cybernetics, but her memory and language augs weren’t to be discounted.

Still, there were, in a broad sense, three kinds of Sith. There were the ones who truly believed in the Empire, who performed their duties with an almost solemn attitude. There were the ones who were filled completely with anger, almost overflowing with it. Darth Nox immediately came to mind there. Then there were the ones who enjoyed their job altogether too much, taking glee in the pain of others. Those were the ones who worried the Cipher most, as they were often the least predictable. They were also the ones who tended to have wildly colored clothes, makeup, or in this case, hair. The Cipher knew that there was always a chance that the first appearance was deceiving, but from what she had heard about Lord Akeldama, it didn't seem particularly likely.

“Oh, are you both Ciphers? I thought there was only going to be one.”

Akeldama spoke first, grinning at both of them. Cipher Nine gave a carefully neutral smile back and said, “Lord Akeldama, I presume. Your information was correct; there is only one Cipher. I am Cipher Nine. Kaliyo is an associate of mine.”

“Gotcha,” Akeldama said. It was not a phrase Cipher Nine had ever expected to hear come out of a Sith Lord’s mouth. “You two excited? It’s my first time to Tython, after all, and I imagine it's your first as well.”

“It wasn’t exactly high on my list of vacation spots,” Kaliyo said. Cipher Nine held back her internal wince with a practiced ease, but Akeldama laughed.

“I think we’re gonna get along. Kaliyo, was it?” she asked, not bothering to wait for a response. “Glad to see I won’t be cooped up with a Cipher for the whole trip. You know how they can be—all business, no fun.”

Kaliyo grinned, gleefully taking the chance to rag on her boss with permission from above. “You don’t know the half of it. Try living with one for a couple months, see how you feel.”

“Oh, I have,” Akeldama agreed. “Left me wanting to blow holes in the airlock a couple of times just to get some excitement. But I’m sure our poor Cipher Nine would take offense to that,” she added, looking straight at the agent in question.

The Cipher smiled again, putting on a mask of pleasantries and calm, but took no lengths to hide the seams. Internally, she wasn’t truly offended, but it was easiest to look as though she was, and was hiding it out of courtesy and respect for her superior. If anything, it would win her points. Only if Akeldama noticed, of course, but the Cipher suspected that she would. “Shall we get going? There’s still quite a ways to Tython, and we wouldn’t want to miss our opening.”

“Right, right,” Akeldama said. She turned to enter the ship, cape sweeping behind her in a dramatic—and clearly intentional—fashion.

Cipher Nine noticed how she had shut down the conversation after admitting to living with a Cipher. That had been news to the agent, as she had not even heard of Akeldama until these past few months. Worth investigating at some point, but it might be no more than a criminal past. More than a handful of Sith came up through what one might call ‘questionable’ backgrounds, although they would never admit it.

Kaliyo turned to the agent and smiled. “She’s something, isn’t she? Can’t decide whether I like her or want to shove her out of an airlock myself.”

“You’ll have the whole trip to decide,” the Cipher said. “Although I would prefer if you would wait until we were planetside to stage something. I would hate to have to turn you in for the murder of a Sith Lord.”

“No you wouldn't,” Kaliyo replied.

Cipher Nine cocked an amused eyebrow. “Wouldn’t turn you in, or wouldn’t hate to do it?”

“Both.”

“Fair,” the Cipher conceded. She gestured for Kaliyo to enter the ship first, and then followed.

“You two not know how to work stairs?” Akeldama asked as they came in.

“Pre-flight inspection of the spacecraft,” the Cipher lied without a second thought. It was the kind of simple lie she could make herself believe with very little effort.

“Are you used to getting shoddy craft? Because that doesn’t fly with a Lord, you know,” Akeldama said.

“I’ve known scores of agents and more than one Sith who was assassinated with a sabotaged flight. I would prefer not to join their ranks.” Kaliyo gave her a look at that, clearly realizing that while it was cover to back a lie, it was also completely true. The Cipher gave her a reassuring smile and said to the cabin at large, “Our vessel appears to be fine.”

“Glad to hear it,” Akeldama said. “Yo, pilot! We’re all aboard, so let’s kick this thing off!”

“Yes, my lord,” the pilot said. He looked to be an ensign, although the Cipher couldn’t see the pips on his uniform to confirm, but was clearly Navy, and appeared to have experience. He handled the controls with ease, and didn’t flinch at the… peculiarities of a Sith Lord, even one as excitable as Akeldama.

Cipher Nine had been in one vessel when the pilot had accidentally angered his Sith passenger, and the Sith had been somewhat over-eager in dishing out punishment. Quite frankly, the Sith would have sealed her own death as well if the Cipher had not been aboard, as landing a shuttle on Makeb was by no means an easy feat, made even worse by the sudden death of the pilot twenty meters into the descent. The Cipher had only barely managed to keep them alive. For all that Akeldama was atypical and a potential irritation, at least the Cipher wasn’t stuck on another mission with Lord—no, Darth now—Nox.

Cipher Nine was nearly positive that she was sent to back Nox up on so many missions because she had been the only agent in Intelligence who could be in a room with the notoriously ill-tempered Sith for more than an hour and not offend her in some way. Before Intelligence had been dismantled, the Cipher had been the then-Lord’s backup so many times that she had seriously considered putting in a formal request to not be placed on missions involving Nox. However, she knew things could always be worse, and Nox seemed to at least tolerate her, which was more than she could say about almost all the people she had seen the Darth interact with. Admittedly, after Makeb, the Cipher almost had a fondness for the perpetually angry Sith, in the same way she had a fondness for the stitches that didn’t quite line up in her jacket sleeve. They were not optimal, but they did the job, and in their own way, they were a point of interest. Imperfection, much like Darth Nox, could be tolerated in small doses.

That, however, was irrelevant to the job at hand. Darth Nox had not been sent on this mission; it was Lord Akeldama. Another interesting choice, to be sure. Akeldama was a flare in Sith politics right now: She appeared to hold immense attention, from what the Cipher had been able to gleam, but she was also in danger of burning out quickly. Cipher Nine had wondered if this was intended to be a suicide mission, placed by a rival to get Akeldama out of the way, but Arkous had no known connections to Akeldama, and there were no other Darths attached to the mission. Or to Arkous himself, who tended towards solitary workings. So she was likely chosen on merit, because Arkous liked her.

Still, there was something… interesting, about Akeldama. Everything about her screamed ‘untraditional,’ and it was more than just her hair. Her accent wasn’t full-on Imperial, either, but drifted in and out, sometimes in the middle of a sentence. She clearly had a Past, one that had at one point involved her living with a Cipher agent for an unknown time and unknown reason. Cipher Nine looked forward to watching her fight.