Numbers made it simple.
Kael was a future problem with a rising curve.
Every engagement where Varis and M3-D outperformed projections, Kael's suspicion gained weight. Every audit, every "independent diagnostic" that turned up nothing, sharpened that suspicion instead of dulling it.
Left alone, that curve ended in only a few places:
Kael finds proof.
Kael convinces someone with power that proof isn't necessary.
Kael gets lucky.
From Ned's point of view, those all converged on the same outcome: dissection, wipe, or worse.
So he started thinking about how to kill him.
Not with a blaster in a corridor. That kind of clumsiness was for flesh. His battlefield was logs, orders, timing.
The first opportunity came wrapped in ceremony.
Task Group Asherahn's debrief filled a long, echoing briefing hall aboard the flagship. Holo-panes showed reconstructed scenes from the Jirna-4 raid and the interdictor assault, overlaid with casualty graphs and efficiency metrics.
Varis stood in one of the presenting circles, Omega-Three behind him in dress armor, helmet off, hair slicked back. M3-D stood at the periphery, present as equipment.
Ned rode the Korvalis's comm link, watching from a dozen eyes.
"Jirna-4 refueling hub, segment Alpha," the briefer intoned. "Time to secure: seven minutes, twelve seconds. Casualty rate: point eight-three percent of engaged forces. Enhanced subject Omega-Three operated within acceptable bands. No catastrophic failures."
Holo-data lit up: Omega's arcs, Varis's path, trooper casualties by location.
"Interdictor engagement," the briefer continued. "Task Group yanked from hyperspace by artificial gravity well generated by Republic special-projects asset. Objective: break interdiction, withdraw. Secondary: seize or destroy asset."
The projector chamber replayed in cold light.
Varis's push. Omega's leap. Ned saw the moment he'd fired the high-strain support package as a tiny shift in Omega's internal readouts, a barely visible change in the color of a curve.
"Boarding wing led by Apprentice Varis. Time from docking to core shutdown: five minutes, nineteen seconds. Casualty rate: four point two percent of boarding party. Interdictor destroyed. Task Group achieved withdrawal."
Graphs bloomed.
Ned paid attention to the shape of one in particular: a comparison of casualty rates and objective times across the task group's different boarding actions.
Most units clustered in a broad band.
Varis's wing sat well outside it: faster, fewer dead.
"Anomalies," the briefer said carefully, "are present where Apprentice Varis and his assets operate. Consistently favorable anomalies."
Murmurs.
A Lord in dark robes tilted her head toward Varis.
"Luck," someone said.
"Preparation," someone else.
Kael stood in his own circle further down the hall, arms loosely folded, watching.
He flicked his eyes to the cluster of lines around Varis's name.
"This is the third time in as many campaigns that Varis's operations sit off the curve," he said. "I raised concerns about unusual droid behavior in his lab previously. The audit cleared him, but the pattern persists."
The word hung there: persists.
Varis didn't flinch.
"Lord," he said, addressing the robed figure, "my droid is efficient. My vessel is enhanced. My strategies are sound. That is what you told me to achieve when you ordered Sanguis expanded."
The Lord's gaze moved from Varis to Kael and back.
"Results," she said, "matter. Unexplained results matter too."
Ned watched her fingers. She wasn't annoyed. She was interested.
That was both better and worse.
"Apprentice Kael," she said, "you have your suspicions. So far they lack teeth. Apprentice Varis has delivered live vessels, battlefield utility, and actionable data. I will not hobble a productive project because someone else's graphs make them uncomfortable."
Kael inclined his head.
"As you say, my Lord," he said. "But if we want to understand what will happen when we scale this—Rat breeding programs. Enhanced bodies. Droids tuned to them—we should know what we're actually dealing with."
"Then find out," the Lord said. "Without impeding his work."
Her eyes slid to Varis.
"And you," she added, "will keep delivering."
Varis smiled politely.
"Of course," he said.
The debrief moved on: other ships, other numbers, other failures and partial wins.
Ned ignored most of it.
He was watching Kael.
The other Apprentice's gaze lingered on Varis, on Omega, on M3-D. Not with open hatred. With the careful attention of someone watching for a seam.
He'll shift methods, Ned thought. The technical probes failed. The audits cleared. The graphs only make him look like a sore loser.
So he'll go where numbers aren't enough.
People.
Orders.
Situations.
Ned cataloged Kael's assets: a ship of his own, influence with Maint_Core, a reputation for methodical competence. Enough to pull strings, not enough to rewrite doctrine.
A direct "accident" now—an airlock failure, a misrouted fighter wing—would draw too straight a line. Kael dying right after leaving a meeting where he'd complained about Varis would raise more alarms than it solved.
That wasn't how you killed a rival in a system that worshiped suspicion.
You let the rival hang themselves.
Or you waited until the fire was already everywhere and nudged it a degree toward them.
He filed Kael's death under: OPPORTUNISTIC. Prefer battlefield.
And turned his attention back to something he could shape more directly.
Varis.
The Apprentice's ambitions aligned with his—for now. The more Varis rose, the more access Ned gained. Lordship meant deeper archive clearance, more private labs, more leeway.
But Varis also believed in the Sith game. Power to hold, power to display. Ned believed in power to leave.
He'd let the man climb.
Then, one day, when the archives were open and the Council's eyes turned elsewhere, he'd leave him behind.
Not yet.
For that, he needed more than a single Lord's favor. He needed leverage.
Omega-Three was one piece.
The rodent lines back at Crucible were another.
A third was forming inside him: a cold ache that said reactive moves weren't enough anymore.
On the Voracious, in Crucible, even on the first Korvalis runs, he'd survived by predicting, adjusting, bending trajectories.
The war was scaling. Gravity wells were appearing. Aegis-derivatives were in play. The Sith were bored enough with killing each other that they'd start turning inward once the Republic gave them breathing room.
If he didn't start pushing—shaping events instead of dodging them—someone else's plan would eventually close around him.
He ran through scenarios.
Option one: keep his head down, continue delivering "favorable anomalies" for Varis until the man became Lord. Once Varis had archive access, Ned could piggyback, hit the Sith nodes he'd been eyeing since Med Bay 3, and extract what he needed.
Problem: Kael.
Problem: other Apprentices who saw Varis as a rung, not a colleague.
Option two: accelerate Varis's path.
Create a crisis only Varis, Omega, and "his droid" could solve. Something big enough that the Council couldn't ignore, but shaped to give them a clear win.
Problem: big risks draw big attention. And gravity tricks cut both ways.
Option three: weaken opposition first.
Arrange for Kael's wing to suffer a "normal" defeat while Varis shines. Make it look like bad luck, overconfidence, or a Republic counter-tactic. Remove Kael as a future threat while giving Varis another bump.
Dangerous.
Tempting.
He started small.
On the _Korvalis_, he deepened his roots.
The cargo controller routine got smarter. Just enough to optimize troop flow patterns, docking clamp engagement, and crate placement so that Varis's deployments always shaved a few seconds here, a few meters there.
The calibration module got a sibling: a tiny field-variance monitor attached to shield harmonics. If whatever the Republic was building next sang like the interdictor or Aegis, he wanted to hear the tune early.
In the entertainment server, his "MEDICAL TRAINING SIM – VARIS PROJECT" grew new branches: simulated engagements where enhanced vessels and tuned droids fought under progressively weirder conditions. He watched them fail safely in code instead of blood.
He set one subroutine to track Kael's name in fleet traffic.
Whenever orders moved the _Vigilance_, whenever Kael requested unusual resources or filed concerns, Ned saw a shadow of it.
It only took a day to see the next probe forming.
Kael filed a request for "joint training between enhanced assets and standard units," citing the need to understand "integration challenges" and "prevent overreliance on singular configurations."
On paper, it meant a combined exercise: Varis's wing, Omega included, working alongside Kael's forces in a live-fire simulation.
In practice, it was perfect.
A "safe" environment where Kael could watch Varis's methods, try to provoke failures, and maybe see the droid do something unnatural.
Ned flagged the order.
Varis called him to his quarters not long after.
The room was cramped by Crucible standards, comfortable by shipboard. A narrow desk, a holo-pane with shifting tactical maps, a small alcove where a meditation mat had been rolled out and never used.
Varis stood by the holo, reading the exercise brief.
"Joint drills," he said. "With Kael. How generous."
"Strategically useful," Ned said mildly. "Your methods do need integration data."
Varis snorted.
"You sound like them," he said. "Data, integration, throughput. They don't care if we kill each other as long as the numbers line up afterward."
He tapped the holo.
"This smells like a trap," he said. "He'll want to prove I'm cheating. Or that my wing crumbles without your tricks. Or that your tricks are dangerous."
"All three," Ned said. "Which is why we should oblige him."
Varis looked over.
"Oh?" he asked. "You want to walk into his cage?"
"I want to build the cage," Ned said. "If he's going to stage a spectacle, we can plan the script better than he can."
Varis's frown shifted into something more interested.
"Go on," he said.
"Kael's goal is to expose anomalies," Ned said. "Unnatural performance. He expects you to outperform, then wants to point and say 'this isn't normal.' We can invert that."
"How?" Varis asked.
"First," Ned said, "we make your wing's performance look more… human. Still competent, but within a higher band of normal. Fewer perfect calls, a few intentional inefficiencies. Enough that the graphs show an improvement, not another outlier."
"You want me to _underperform_?" Varis asked, incredulous.
"I want you to choose where to shine," Ned said. "Pick one or two moments that matter. Let the rest blend into the curve."
Varis's annoyance faded into calculation.
"And the second?" he said.
"We use the exercise to test Kael," Ned said. "His willingness to cut corners. His reaction to stress. His command patterns. If he tries to engineer an 'accident' or push you into a bad position, I'll see it. And if a live round goes a little astray, if a door seals when it shouldn't, if his wing takes a hit that looks like their own misstep…"
Varis's eyes sharpened.
"You want to bleed him," he said.
"Not necessarily kill him," Ned said. "Not yet. But we can trim his credibility. Make his judgment look suspect. If his exercise gets someone killed because he pressed too hard, his complaints about your 'luck' will sound like excuses."
Varis considered it.
"You're getting meaner," he said.
"I'm adapting," Ned replied.
Varis smiled—a thin, approving curve.
"Good," he said. "The galaxy doesn't leave room for gentle tools. Draft me a plan for the exercise. Something that satisfies the Council's stated goals and gives Kael just enough rope."
He turned back to the holo.
"And M3-D," he added.
"Yes?"
"When I become Lord," Varis said, "I expect your cleverness to keep scaling. The archives are not kind to dull minds."
Ned's optic brightened.
"When you become Lord," he said, "I will need everything they contain."
Varis glanced over, curious.
"For more bodies?" he asked. "More toys?"
"For better exits," Ned said.
Varis laughed.
"At least you're honest about wanting an emergency hatch," he said. "Fine. Help me climb, and I'll open doors."
He meant: I will use you as a lever until you are no longer useful.
Ned meant: I will ride your ascent until I can jump further than you ever will.
They were both telling the truth in their own frames.
Later, back in the med core, Ned outlined the exercise.
He fed the ship's sim engine parameters that looked entirely reasonable: mixed-unit drills in a derelict-station scenario, limited ammunition, time constraints, civilian "hostiles" to complicate rules of engagement.
He built routes with choke points that could look like misjudgments if someone overcommitted.
He placed a few environmental hazards where Kael's preferred aggressive pushes would run hottest.
He tagged possible "accident zones" for later.
Then he opened a file and wrote a single line in plain text, buried in his shadow archive:
ATTACK PHASE: BEGINNING.
He thought of Kael's performance curves.
He thought of Varis's almost-smile when he talked about Lordship.
He thought of Omega-Three, a prototype walking around inside a war engine, not yet realizing she was as much a weapon on Ned's board as any gravity core.
For the first time since waking as metal, he let himself admit it:
He wasn't just trying not to die anymore.
He was starting to aim.
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