21 BBY
It was the height of Winter in Harnaiden, the largest city on the planet of Muunilinst. The average Muun was too wealthy to concern themselves with menial labour, the only souls on the streets were droids or unlucky alien servants.
The Sith of old did not concern themselves with such small things. They were warrior cultures. Fierce, proud, and even with their own strange sense of honor. Some of them were adept at playing their political games, others were even brilliant researchers and scientists in their own right, but none of them could ever conceive of things like markets, chairmen, and quarterly reviews. The movements of servile people didn't concern them unless they were a spy, especially when all their focus was on their rivals and the hated jedi. They saw it as petty, beneath them, when in reality they had it completely backwards.
It was credits that made war possible, the great unseen tide rolling under the surface of the Galaxy, in and out, crushing what it willed and receding as it pleased. Ships, generals, and combat were all a product of power, not a source of it. He watched the moving tides, intervening where necessary, but mostly he would ride the wave rather than control it.
Today he was the tide.
His communicator buzzed with a simple message. First fish caught, second one got away.
It would have been disappointing, if it wasn't for the report coming over Coruscant News Network. A corpulent Neimodian, seated at what looked like the end of a hotel bed on Zyggerria was giving an interview.
"-Complete destruction, that's right. The entire Zyggerian Fleet has been captured, scuttled, or destroyed."
It seemed that Tan'ya hadn't learned the news yet, but no matter. Hego checked his short positions, and smirked to himself as they began to rise in value. The Trade Federation was the creation of a number of companies headquartered in the Corporate Sector. Those companies were publicly traded, and so by shorting those, Hego had already begun his attack on the Federation.
He sent a quick message to his broker, its contents short and to the point. "Short more Federation stocks."
Many financial matters went over the heads of the public, as they should. The exact nature of shorting a stock wasn't something the common being understood, and he didn't need to. All he needed to know was that shorting a stock meant selling it, and once enough people began selling a stock, it led to a race to the bottom. More and more investors rushed to sell their stocks while it still had value, which reduced the value of those stocks, driving more people to sell while they still could. It was like an avalanche, a layer of snow perched at a precarious point, needing only a small push to dump thousands and thousands of tons of ice on those below.
The Federation had been facing hard times for a while, but today it had received two crippling blows. The Battle at Zygerria was known about now, but it wouldn't be too long until the whole Galaxy heard about the destruction of the Hypermatter Reserves. Already, Hego was setting a trend, as dozens of magisters in the Banking Clan followed his lead, shorting Federation companies. Hego watched in real time, as Federation stock prices continually declined throughout the day, but not at the rate that he had expected. It wasn't an avalanche, it was a trickle, one that only picked up a small amount of speed as the day continued. Even when news of the Strategic Reserve broke, and the news channels were filled with howls of outrage, that decline in share prices continued to slow, until finally it stopped.
Hego stared, mind calculating, and realised that the Trade Federation wasn't the only one under attack. Shorting a stock could be risky, as you had to actively spend money to maintain your short position. The longer the short lasted, the more costly it became.
But Hego was already committed. He could pull out now and make a small profit, but he would lose the chance afterwards.
He called his broker. "Someone's buying the stocks." It wasn't a question, it was a statement.
A human voice over the other end answered. "Yes. Right after we started shorting, a team of brokers came in and started buying as many as they could. They outright bullied the people who were trying to sell, surrounding and filling their ears with warnings they would lose everything if they kept at it. They tried it on me, but I stuck to my guns, sir." He quickly corrected it. "Your guns."
"And who were those brokers affiliated with?"
"Tahm Sipas."
Ah, of course. Hego's long time rival among the Core Five, and Sidious's latest catspaw.
Hego took a long drag on his pipe, staring out the window at the clouds of food delivery droids that went about their day, not seeing the war playing out in the offices all around them.
"You want me to ditch these shorts, sir? Might not be the big return you were hoping for, but it will still be a tidy profit."
"...No." Hego answered. "Hold onto them for now."
"Alrighty. Don't worry sir, war's still young yet. Plenty of time for things to ripen." Then he hung up on his end.
Hego was under attack, and now he knew who held the dagger. "Oh, Sidious, my young friend. To imagine that I ever believed you could share anything."
...
Grib Siv was in an emergency board meeting, one that he called, but he kept checking his compad anyway. The stocks were stabilising. Slowly, but steadily, their value was beginning to recover.
He breathed out, feeling his pulse slowly returning to normal. As he did, the other members of the board all glanced at each other, hanging with baited breath for his pronouncement. "Good news. Our stock prices are stabilised, my contact was able to pull through for us."
The exhalation across the room was audible, as the various old toads all slumped in their seats, tension leaving their bodies. The whole room stank of exhaustion and old men.
"I thought the Senate wasn't going to bail us out, anymore." Neeg mumbled, rubbing at his tired eyes.
"It isn't." Grib grunted. "But my friend called in a favor."
"What kind of hold do you have on him?" Himera demanded, one of the fattest neimoidians grib had ever met.
Grib grunted, rather than answering, rising to his feet. "Alright. Now that emergency has been addressed-"
"Oh, no." Neeg groaned. "I forgot that wasn't what this meeting was even about."
Grib seethed, but he kept his temper reigned in for the moment. The emergency meeting had been called to deal with the fuel shortage crisis. He hadn't even finished explaining the problem to the other board members, when word reached them about the disastrous battle at Zygerria, and Federation stocks began to plummet. After that they each spent hours, utilising any and every contact they could trying to plug holes in the leaky life support, buying every stock they could as soon as it appeared on the market, and twisting the arms of various contacts to do the same.
Somewhere in between all that, he had managed to consolidate every warship still inside the Corporate Sector at either Olsumpex, or Cadomai. The ships at Cadomai would prevent further attacks from the Hydian, and once the fleet at Olsumpex finished consolidating their fuel reserves, they would retake Zygerria. There had been five and a half thousand war ships in the Corporate Sector before the defeat at Zygerria, but now there were just four thousand, and he doubted he had enough fuel for all of those.
One and a half thousand ships had been lost at Zygerria. Not a single one had escaped, which was almost certainly due to those strange new support ships the Alliance fleets had gotten from who knows where. Grib highly doubted that the shipyards at Botajef had innovated the technology to produce those prototypes, its ports were centuries old and quite a bit behind the times generally. Wherever they came from, they could prevent every ship in an entire system from entering or leaving Hyper Space. Retreating and regrouping became impossible. The Serenno House Fleet had used one at Cadomai to ambush the Bonadon Patrol Fleet.
Whatever they were, they had permanently changed galactic warfare. Grib wasn't a great military mind, but he recognised that much. Any hyperlane could become a death trap with those things, as any fleet could find itself ripped out of Hyperspace and surrounded by enemy ships.
Where the hell had they come from?
Ah, he had more important things to focus on.
...
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