Sorry, that's probably her fault.  With the Emperor now gone, nothing's really stopping her from giving the Hutts a really bad month until the Jedi (and their new Sith-disappearing tricks) manage to catch up with her.

(Unfortunately, she is pretty sure it's going to be more of a when than an if; there's too many traceable things she still has to be seen doing to keep other things from blowing up, and she's pretty sure someone else beat her to backstabbing the Emperor and that that someone will be able to find her.  There is a notably not-yet-known-missing Dark Councilor.)

It does occur to Pradnakt to wonder, briefly, what's happening with the Council. It doesn't occur to her to actually try to find out, though; any information she could get without putting herself at risk would be too unreliable to bother with.

The house gets packed up into a new spaceship; the goat goes to a family in town that Daisy is fond of, and the chickens to the feed store to be resold to whoever might want them. Marisel gets a grant big enough to keep the library running for a few years, hopefully long enough for the town to figure out how to support it themselves. Pradnakt and Daisy write up a guide to the art they've constructed out in the desert. Nine spends a long weekend completing an acidwashing piece he's been wanting to try; there won't be space for it offplanet. The Force tolerates all of this, unsettled but not alarmed; it's not even a week, all told, until the three of them agree that they've done everything they need to here.

It's been a few decades since Pradnakt has had anything to do with the Hutts, but they aren't hard to find, even if the Force wasn't opinionated about their route.

There's a Sith in this spaceport.

Great. Lovely. Perfect.

They don't actually need to go offship; they can pay extra to have the supplies they need delivered.

There is, however begrudgingly of the Force as it insists that she reach out here, also a note in with those supplies - handwritten, and clearly in a rush at that.

The Force is insistent that my plans for the ~month I have before the Hutts figure out that the thing that's trying to bring down the foundations of their empire-in-all-but-name is the last charge of a Sith trying to do something positive before they get vanished and convince/coerce the Jedi to do something about it should include you in some capacity.

I've a schedule to keep, and nothing telling me to stay longer than was already necessary, so I assume the Force is going to arrange another coincidence whether either of us like that or not if we don't meet now.  I leave that question up to you; I wouldn't be sending this at all if the Force wasn't positively giving me a migraine the minute I try to commit to doing otherwise.

-- Kalbetis

Also attached are the docking bay codes for two ships; by their manifests they are the Defiant Purpose and the Forgotten Hope, a medical ship and an - allegedly - decommissioned troop transport turned freight and passenger transport, respectively.

...yeah, that's a thing that could happen.

How many biologicals are on that troop transport, while it's right here docked at the same station?

It's at approximately two-thirds of its nominal complement at the moment, assuming that everyone aboard is a soldier - quite a few of the signatures are muffled in a way that's characteristic of Mandalorians in full armor, but many others are not.  The Sith is amongst them, and if Pradnakt listens closely she might be able to pick up a struggle-resignation-dread in their presence, lurking beneath more prosaic surface feelings.

She doesn't really want to walk into all that. It does seem maybe worth looking into, though; she's not sure what the Force is up to but she's never regretted just finding out.

She leaves Daisy with the ship, and has Nine take an only implicitly threatening posture behind her when she goes to inquire at the Forgotten Hope's dock.

There is a moment, as Pradnakt approaches with Nine, where the most visible guard tenses, but that passes before she gets to the ship.  "Please wait a moment, someone will be here shortly."

...She'll just be out in a minute, assuming that that doesn't cause her guest to bolt.

She doesn't run; she knew what she was getting into.

"Kalbetis," she acknowledges when the other Sith arrives. "Lord Pradnakt. Do you have any ideas about what this all might be about?"

"No, but perhaps I have more no idea than you do.  But as much as I want nothing more than to get the Force to stop breathing down my neck about this, I can't have that conversation out here."

"There are conference rooms available to rent on level three and five, if that'll be sufficient for you." This isn't going quite well enough for her to invite her home, yet.

"...I suppose they're the best available option for neutral ground, but that doesn't make them a good one.  Too visible in all the wrong ways, especially if the bugs go dead.  Encrypted comm?"

She signs possible? to Nine, who rumbles an affirmative after a moment and produces a datachip with the relevant codes, which she floats from his hand to Kalbetis's.

She accepts them gracefully, and returns the information Pradnakt will need to comm her on a similar chip.

(Technically, it is Kalbetis' protocol droid who holds the encryption keys, but she is perfectly happy to blend in this situation.)

"I'll await your comm, then."

"I won't be long." And indeed the call comes before she's even quite back to her ship, so that she's just settling into the seat when the initial confirmation is done and the camera comes on.

"Right.  Hello again."

"I have some information on the state of the galaxy," she says, "that I doubt many in our position would, with the Empire going to pieces - but precious little clue on what exactly the Force could possibly mean to accomplish with this.  I'm on a doomed crusade against the Hutts with what resources I can spare from enacting continuity of governance plans and winding up things that will do no-one any good without me helming them, for the inevitable point when I get removed from the board by a strike team of teleporting Jedi; I don't know why the Force is pushing us together when there's -"  She winces.

"When, if there's a way to avoid our exile, I do not yet see it.  The best plan I have is fleeing the galaxy, and that's just not right at all.  It's the same exile in a funny hat."

"I'd take fleeing the galaxy over some of the other possibilities here," she shrugs. "It's possible the Force just wants me to have the information I need to do that - teleporting Jedi?"

There is a protocol droid in view behind Kalbetis, and it takes the very uncharacteristic action (for the class, though seemingly not this particular droid given Kalbetis' exasperated non-reaction) of speaking up unprompted at this point.

"Would you like to review the strategic briefing you ordered with our guest, Mistress?"

"...At this time it would be quite inappropriate to share operational details."

"However, it would," she regrets letting come out of her mouth, "be appropriate to share at least the threat profile."

Huh. She doesn't let it show on her face but she's definitely noticed the unusual relationship between the other Sith and her droid. Kalbetis must be really slipping, to let it show. (Daisy herself is offscreen altogether, the better to keep their situation secret.)

It'd be weird of her to express appreciation for the information, so she doesn't.

There is a moment that Kalbetis takes, to retrieve a datapad, that lasts perhaps longer than is strictly necessary to retrieve and navigate a datapad to the appropriate section.  She seems rather frayed.

"Let us begin with the timeline so far.

"The problem begins one-hundred and sixty-five days ago, when there is a disturbance.  It is a small disturbance, compared to the current state of the Force, visible to but a select few precognitives - but it is a disturbance nonetheless, and I believe it is directly the cause of our current trouble.  Information was introduced to the universe from an outside source.

"Interestingly, it is my considered belief that the first beneficiary of this is the Dark Councillor responsible for the Pyramid of Ancient Knowledge, and not the Jedi Order.  There was a mobilization of their favored archaeologists in a relative hurry.

"It seems, however, that this source of extrauniversal knowledge - and power - quite rapidly figured out that they would rather work with the Jedi, instead.

"...Considering what has since been unleashed, I would not have trusted the Sith Empire with it either.  The galaxy may not have survived.  But it seems that their Sith contact, whoever they were, kept this to themself - and considering that they may have just successfully backstabbed the Emperor, may he rest in peace, I can't blame them.

"The next things we observe from the Jedi Order are the following: An offplanet construction contract - sourced from Coruscant - that does not have any transport offplanet associated therewith, and a crash-tempo cycling of Knights and Masters to the Jedi temple at Tython for very short periods of time before they redeployed.

"I believe that certain battlefield objectives the Jedi undertook during that timeframe are related to the overarching project, but in truth I don't know what they would have wanted a live-captured Sith for when that Sith had almost nothing to do with anything in particular, even as that's why I'm almost sure it was related.  Possibly analysis, given the extrauniversal powers, but I'm speculating.  No evidence is available, given that they were likely one of the first people to have...  Whatever happens after you're disappeared by this teleportation effect...  To happen to them.

"The battlefield disappearances start picking up after that.  Field reports and records show that it is but a matter of contact with an affected Jedi, including their lightsabers - including contact that a Sith initiates - that disappears people.  As yet we do not know if there is a way to distinguish affected Jedi from not.

"Command elements of the Empire's forces did not want to believe that this was happening.  This did not stop it from continuing anyway.

"There is also an influx of refugees at Coruscant that occurs too quickly for them to have been transported by a normal ship when they were rescued from Hutt captivity.  There are a couple mentions of teleportation, in various media, as those few who had lives to go back to resumed them.  ...The act is admirable, but as of yet not likely to be effective in toppling the cartels; the Hutts can buy more than our interloper is stealing in a given timeframe, and I think they're going to, as a power play.

"That said, I do not believe they are going to be the only sapient with the capacity to teleport arbitrarily forever, and it's entirely possible that it's the receiving logistics that are the bottleneck of that operation.

"The escalation of Sith disappearances, meanwhile, continues straight up the chain of command.  Most of the Dark Council disappears.  The Emperor, as well; I'm sure you felt that.  The Archives on Dromund Kaas are the only thing that is not severely disrupted in normal function by the loss of their Councilor, and the resulting power scramble, which leads me to believe that they may in fact have not lost that Councilor - but the Archives have always been quite hard to get information out of to begin with, under their present head, so I can't say for sure either way, and I doubt I'd like the result of coming to their attention at the moment - which is itself indicative, I suppose.

"I went over this in the middle of things, but I shall take a moment to specifically reiterate that you will be teleported somewhere else if you and a Jedi make contact.  I don't know how they're making that happen, because it only happens for Sith, but it very definitely does happen.

"This concludes the briefing."