Aurelia was dissatisfied.<br/><br/>Not that this was uncommon - there was always something that wasn't good enough, especially if it involved her own body. But in this case, it was with her mission. Apparently an Old Sith facility had been discovered by an advance reconaissance party. This was all well and good, and Aurelia was certainly willing to serve the Academy in the pursuit of knowledge, particularly arcane, ancient, forgotten knowledge that could possibly help her in her personal quest for perfection. Considering the reputation the Old Sith had, she expected to be part of an elite force. Instead... they had given her students. She therefore could expect exactly no reliable backup in a serious situation apart from, of course, lovely Sera. Students were unpredictable creatures, having not yet settled into a developable pattern... which was why they were still students, and not apprentices.<br/><br/>There could be any number of things awaiting them when they arrived. The Old Sith could be alive and kicking, and simply biding their time in places undetectable. They could have left traps, or worse, a self-defensive or self-detonation system upon attempted tampering. The Old were an almost entirely unknown quantity, and even what history remained of them was little more than legend. They could have discovered the most intimate secrets of the Force and ascended to a higher plane... or they could have died out completely, leaving only mystery and frustration in their wake. Still... it seemed they were set to learn something on this trip, and that was important to her superiors. Whether that would be worth dealing with rash students remained to be seen. At least Sera had agreed to accompany her; the days with the students might be tedium, but the nights would make up for it, certainly.<br/><br/>The<em>Lucid Valkyrie</em>streaked through hyperspace, its sleek, dark lines shimmering in the psychedelic display of stars flashing by at impossible speed. The ship would have been recognized by any standard vessel as an unidentified craft, as the<em>Lucid Valkyrie</em>was only very vaguely related to the ship it started as. Its construction had been funded by Lia's academy allowance and the income Sera brought from her various endeavors. Once a Corellicraft military gunship, it had been gutted of everything but the frame and hyperdrive, and built up from scratch with the best parts taken from anywhere and everywhere. The result was a sleek, pearlescent deep gray gunship with the lines of an ancient Sith ceremonial dagger. Shaped like an arrowhead, its lateral rear gunports facing backwards like barbs, and matching forward gunports angled forward, as if aiding the mauling power of the vicious blade. The ship, dark as it was, would scarecely blot out a few stars as it passed through the night sky, but it contained another particularly expensive component that set it apart from other ships of its class, or indeed anything but the ships of the highest government secret agencies - a cloaking device. The requisite stygium crystals were difficult to acquire, but unknown to the rest of the galaxy, Korriban Academy had recently achieved a Force-driven process that could turn diamond into stygium. The process was... demanding to the point of murder, but students were a renewable resource, and stygium was not. The choice was clear.<br/><br/>Lia stared out the viewport of her personal quarters, or rather, those of her and Sera. The students were set up with minimalist cots in the cargo bay, while Lia shared a rather comfortable bed with Sera, the pilot and operator of this monument to Sith engineering. Were Lia capable of feeling the external Force, she would have sensed foreboding... but as she was not, she was only left with her incessant dissatisfaction.