(Omake) Operation Skyhook (Canon)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Operation Skyhook
"…you want. To steal. The Jedi Temple."
"See, anything sounds bad when you say it like that," Ciaran huffed.
Gulan snorted in return. "I'm sorry, do we live in a galaxy where we can say 'you want to steal the Jedi Temple' and it sounds like a good and reasonable thing?"
"Yes, obviously. Pay attention."
The Bothan shrugged. If nothing else, he literally was paid to do just that: pay attention, act on what he perceived, and entertain his boss' outlandish schemes…not necessarily in that order. "What the hell, I got half an hour," he sipped at his caf. "Hit me with it. Figuratively," he hastily added.
Ciaran reluctantly unrolled her papers from the makeshift baton she'd just made, quietly grumbling, "You just wanna suck the joy out of everything," before setting down something that looked less like a company directive and more like a ship blueprint. He ignored it for the moment, and fixed her with a skeptical gaze he knew perfectly well she could see.
"Look," she ticked off points on her fingers one by one, starting from a closed fist and flicking each finger out for emphasis. "We need to deal with the Force Wound. We need to evacuate the Coruscant Order. We need to prevent both things from influencing Coruscant at large. Likewise, we need prevent a certain someone who lives on Coruscant from interacting with them. And, ideally, we want to get the Order off Coruscant in such a way that they are not going to re-establish a permanent presence there after we're done."
Gulan nodded along. "Right, with you so far…"
"So," Ciaran said in her particular way that made whatever patently insane thing she was building up to sound quite reasonable in context, "we could try and accomplish these goals individually, facing pushback every time on every thing, possibly escalating to violent pushback. Or," her extended fingers slowly came together to form a cup, "we accomplish it all at once, scoop it up, and remove the temple from the planet."
Well. He had to give her that. It did sound marginally less insane when she said it like that. Marginally. Gulan chose then to look at the blueprint. It was a mess of barely-legible scribbles and crudely-drawn additions to the original print. "And…this is how?"
"I call it Operation Skyhook."
His brow furrowed. "I feel like I've heard that name before."
She brushed it aside, "Whatever, shut up. So what we do," she indicated highlighted points at the bottom of what he now realised to be an architectural layout of the Coruscant Temple, "is we infiltrate the Undercity areas beneath the Temple, at the base of its foundations. We attach these boosters," she pointed to what charitably looked like thrusters off of Venator-class Star Destroyers – ten or eleven of them, all hand-drawn, "and shore up the architecture between, to withstand the force. When the moment comes, we make the area hostile to other life forms--"
"What, by gassing them?" Gulan asked incredulously. Of all things, Ciaran wanting to gas people was certainly the most crazy thing he'd heard thus far, and he was hearing a lot.
"By noise, smell, stuff like that," she explained, and Gulan silently thanked the Force he'd kept most of that incredulity on the inside. "Then, we use shaped charges, detonate a box around the Temple in a 600-metre square, try to keep as much structural integrity as possible," she sipped at her own caf, "and we lift off before they have time to even think about evacuating the Temple."
For a moment, Gulan was silent. "…okay. Couple quick thoughts: one, is there a reason they wouldn't try to get out once it was moving? They do have a lot of ships and carriers in their possession."
"These thrusters can put down enough force—heh—that they'll be too focused on keeping their bones on the inside from the g-forces they'll be experiencing in there."
Doing his best to ignore her little pun, he tried another tack. "Two, there's the minor issue of the Temple not being spaceworthy. Unless your secret evil plan all along was to outdo the Other Guy for disposing of all the pesky Jedi at once, I think this…oh, no," he sighed as she slapped down a second drawing, this one of multiple skyhooks. There were odd shapes alongside of each, almost like puzzle pieces. More painful-to-read excuses for writing, the most legible of which was a name at the top.
"Operation Skyhook," Ciaran grinned at him.
"Ohhhkay, the name is great," he tried to appease her, "but a little on-the-nose and still not any clearer on how this doesn't end up with a bunch of dead Jedi."
"Think about this," she started.
"I feel like I am the only one doing that."
Ciaran simply ignored what he felt was one of his better cutting remarks, and Gulan pouted a little on the inside. "We get it into the air. We get it up there fast enough and hard enough that the g-forces keep the pesky Jedi under control. We get it high enough that the pesky Jedi start to lose consciousness."
"Followed shortly thereafter by dead pesky Jedi," Gulan cut in.
She wagged a finger. "Not with these," and she flipped the drawing over to show a very similar image, but the puzzle pieces were detached on this side and, if one struggled mightily to imagine these as genuine skyhooks over Coruscant, descending away from their skyhook bases to the temple below. "These come from the skyhooks – we've built these in secret and in several different pieces and places ahead of time," she added, "and they interlock together. Var Zheen has a spray-foam adhesive that will both help with structural integrity of this top half and help to spaceproof it for pressurizing. That top half descends, partly under control by these little guys," she pointed out small tug-like boats on the sides, "and uses that same spray-foam to make a hard seal over the Temple.
"Then, we get it out of the atmosphere, far enough for a quick hyperspace jump. Doesn't need to be far, just out of Coruscant's orbit and immediate reach. While that's happening, our people go in, restrain the pesky yet conveniently unconscious and/or weakened by hypoxia Jedi, get them onto shuttles that take them to medical frigates we have ready and waiting. Once everyone's out, we jump it away again, to one of our secret facilities," she rubbed her hands together, "and then we clean the place out, before we fire the hollowed-out husk into the nearest sun."
Gulan found himself distracted, of all things, by a scribbled notation. "You want to call this…?"
"I call this ship the Audacity," Ciaran beamed.
"…of course," Gulan said in a small voice.
"So," she summarised while ignoring his quiet distress, "we get the Temple and the Jedi and the Wound all off Coruscant, we pacify the Jedi as harmlessly as possible and get them away from Coruscant and the Wound and the Temple, and we dispose of the Wound and the Temple, all in one operation. Neat, simple, and effective, yes?"
He struggled, for a moment or two, before giving up any hope of eloquence or detailed rebuttal and instead replied, "…words to the effect of 'no'."
Ciaran gave no sign of hearing him. "The Audacity-class Mass Exodus Platform," she said to no one at all. "A new partnership from Sienar and the Silver Cross. I like it."
Gulan began to wonder just how he was supposed to answer all of this, when something caught his nose. It was her caf. It smelled, and now that he was focusing on it, looked nothing like ZK-711's usual product. Taking her mug from her side of the table, he took another sniff, then a hesitant taste.
"…boss?"
"Yes?" Ciaran half-focused on him.
"Where'd you get this caf?"
"ZK-711 left the caf maker in the sink and filled with water," she said with fond exasperation. "Sloppy, to just leave it there. I think he might be losing it."
"Sure. He's losing it," Gulan mumbled, his concerns and suspicions growing.
"He wasn't in sight, so I just took it out and made some myself," she said, looking very satisfied with herself.
"…uh-huh. By any chance," he asked, "did you put fresh water in the reservoir?"
She snorted. "No. There was water already in it." Shaking her head at the foolishness of her absentee caf droid and her chief slicer, Ciaran asked, "Why would I change out perfectly good water?"
"Because that perfectly good water was probably saline?" Gulan offered, "The industrial cleaner kind that ZK uses because nobody lets him clean the machines on a regular basis so whenever he gets the chance he has to go big?"
Ciaran looked at Gulan, then at her mug of probably-toxic caf in his hand. Then back at Gulan. Then back at the mug, which she took. And then took another drink from it.
"Nah," she shook her head. "This seems fine. I feel fine."
He took the definitely-not-caf from her as quick as he dared, adding "You feel delirious, I think. Drinking saltwater-caf will do that for you."
"Now that you mention it," she licked her lips, "it does taste a little brackish."
"How about that," he said dryer than a Tatooine summer.
She licked her lips again. "I think I'd like some water."
"We'll get you some," Gulan tugged at her arm. "I think Medical has plenty."
Ciaran looked thoughtful. "You know, you're not wrong."
"It's my burden to bear," he tugged again. "Let's go." As his boss, one of the most powerful people in the galaxy, stumbled to her feet and somewhat begrudgingly allowed him to guide her towards the medical facilities, he considered his options for a second. It wasn't a long second before he took her papers, against her strenuous protests.
"Hey."
"I'm going against almost every instinct I have here," Gulan informed her, "and I'm going to keep this to myself. The saltwater caf, Operation Skyhook, the whole thing. I might," he added, "bring up the idea later, with significantly less crazy of a framing and far less crazy methods, and see if you're accidentally onto something here. But I'll keep this delightfully embarrassing situation to myself."
Ciaran tipped her head to the side, and then almost tipped into the wall. "That's strangely nice of you."
"It's not strange," Gulan protested. "I'm perfectly capable of being nice without – nope," he shook his head, "nope, couldn't follow through on it. Fair enough, boss: it isn't me being nice, it's me knowing the momentary humour isn't worth the multiple people who would kill me for it. Silas and Asajj would make a contest out of who was more sadistic about it."
A fond smile crossed Ciaran's face. "They're great."
Gulan walked them faster.
"…you want. To steal. The Jedi Temple."
"See, anything sounds bad when you say it like that," Ciaran huffed.
Gulan snorted in return. "I'm sorry, do we live in a galaxy where we can say 'you want to steal the Jedi Temple' and it sounds like a good and reasonable thing?"
"Yes, obviously. Pay attention."
The Bothan shrugged. If nothing else, he literally was paid to do just that: pay attention, act on what he perceived, and entertain his boss' outlandish schemes…not necessarily in that order. "What the hell, I got half an hour," he sipped at his caf. "Hit me with it. Figuratively," he hastily added.
Ciaran reluctantly unrolled her papers from the makeshift baton she'd just made, quietly grumbling, "You just wanna suck the joy out of everything," before setting down something that looked less like a company directive and more like a ship blueprint. He ignored it for the moment, and fixed her with a skeptical gaze he knew perfectly well she could see.
"Look," she ticked off points on her fingers one by one, starting from a closed fist and flicking each finger out for emphasis. "We need to deal with the Force Wound. We need to evacuate the Coruscant Order. We need to prevent both things from influencing Coruscant at large. Likewise, we need prevent a certain someone who lives on Coruscant from interacting with them. And, ideally, we want to get the Order off Coruscant in such a way that they are not going to re-establish a permanent presence there after we're done."
Gulan nodded along. "Right, with you so far…"
"So," Ciaran said in her particular way that made whatever patently insane thing she was building up to sound quite reasonable in context, "we could try and accomplish these goals individually, facing pushback every time on every thing, possibly escalating to violent pushback. Or," her extended fingers slowly came together to form a cup, "we accomplish it all at once, scoop it up, and remove the temple from the planet."
Well. He had to give her that. It did sound marginally less insane when she said it like that. Marginally. Gulan chose then to look at the blueprint. It was a mess of barely-legible scribbles and crudely-drawn additions to the original print. "And…this is how?"
"I call it Operation Skyhook."
His brow furrowed. "I feel like I've heard that name before."
She brushed it aside, "Whatever, shut up. So what we do," she indicated highlighted points at the bottom of what he now realised to be an architectural layout of the Coruscant Temple, "is we infiltrate the Undercity areas beneath the Temple, at the base of its foundations. We attach these boosters," she pointed to what charitably looked like thrusters off of Venator-class Star Destroyers – ten or eleven of them, all hand-drawn, "and shore up the architecture between, to withstand the force. When the moment comes, we make the area hostile to other life forms--"
"What, by gassing them?" Gulan asked incredulously. Of all things, Ciaran wanting to gas people was certainly the most crazy thing he'd heard thus far, and he was hearing a lot.
"By noise, smell, stuff like that," she explained, and Gulan silently thanked the Force he'd kept most of that incredulity on the inside. "Then, we use shaped charges, detonate a box around the Temple in a 600-metre square, try to keep as much structural integrity as possible," she sipped at her own caf, "and we lift off before they have time to even think about evacuating the Temple."
For a moment, Gulan was silent. "…okay. Couple quick thoughts: one, is there a reason they wouldn't try to get out once it was moving? They do have a lot of ships and carriers in their possession."
"These thrusters can put down enough force—heh—that they'll be too focused on keeping their bones on the inside from the g-forces they'll be experiencing in there."
Doing his best to ignore her little pun, he tried another tack. "Two, there's the minor issue of the Temple not being spaceworthy. Unless your secret evil plan all along was to outdo the Other Guy for disposing of all the pesky Jedi at once, I think this…oh, no," he sighed as she slapped down a second drawing, this one of multiple skyhooks. There were odd shapes alongside of each, almost like puzzle pieces. More painful-to-read excuses for writing, the most legible of which was a name at the top.
"Operation Skyhook," Ciaran grinned at him.
"Ohhhkay, the name is great," he tried to appease her, "but a little on-the-nose and still not any clearer on how this doesn't end up with a bunch of dead Jedi."
"Think about this," she started.
"I feel like I am the only one doing that."
Ciaran simply ignored what he felt was one of his better cutting remarks, and Gulan pouted a little on the inside. "We get it into the air. We get it up there fast enough and hard enough that the g-forces keep the pesky Jedi under control. We get it high enough that the pesky Jedi start to lose consciousness."
"Followed shortly thereafter by dead pesky Jedi," Gulan cut in.
She wagged a finger. "Not with these," and she flipped the drawing over to show a very similar image, but the puzzle pieces were detached on this side and, if one struggled mightily to imagine these as genuine skyhooks over Coruscant, descending away from their skyhook bases to the temple below. "These come from the skyhooks – we've built these in secret and in several different pieces and places ahead of time," she added, "and they interlock together. Var Zheen has a spray-foam adhesive that will both help with structural integrity of this top half and help to spaceproof it for pressurizing. That top half descends, partly under control by these little guys," she pointed out small tug-like boats on the sides, "and uses that same spray-foam to make a hard seal over the Temple.
"Then, we get it out of the atmosphere, far enough for a quick hyperspace jump. Doesn't need to be far, just out of Coruscant's orbit and immediate reach. While that's happening, our people go in, restrain the pesky yet conveniently unconscious and/or weakened by hypoxia Jedi, get them onto shuttles that take them to medical frigates we have ready and waiting. Once everyone's out, we jump it away again, to one of our secret facilities," she rubbed her hands together, "and then we clean the place out, before we fire the hollowed-out husk into the nearest sun."
Gulan found himself distracted, of all things, by a scribbled notation. "You want to call this…?"
"I call this ship the Audacity," Ciaran beamed.
"…of course," Gulan said in a small voice.
"So," she summarised while ignoring his quiet distress, "we get the Temple and the Jedi and the Wound all off Coruscant, we pacify the Jedi as harmlessly as possible and get them away from Coruscant and the Wound and the Temple, and we dispose of the Wound and the Temple, all in one operation. Neat, simple, and effective, yes?"
He struggled, for a moment or two, before giving up any hope of eloquence or detailed rebuttal and instead replied, "…words to the effect of 'no'."
Ciaran gave no sign of hearing him. "The Audacity-class Mass Exodus Platform," she said to no one at all. "A new partnership from Sienar and the Silver Cross. I like it."
Gulan began to wonder just how he was supposed to answer all of this, when something caught his nose. It was her caf. It smelled, and now that he was focusing on it, looked nothing like ZK-711's usual product. Taking her mug from her side of the table, he took another sniff, then a hesitant taste.
"…boss?"
"Yes?" Ciaran half-focused on him.
"Where'd you get this caf?"
"ZK-711 left the caf maker in the sink and filled with water," she said with fond exasperation. "Sloppy, to just leave it there. I think he might be losing it."
"Sure. He's losing it," Gulan mumbled, his concerns and suspicions growing.
"He wasn't in sight, so I just took it out and made some myself," she said, looking very satisfied with herself.
"…uh-huh. By any chance," he asked, "did you put fresh water in the reservoir?"
She snorted. "No. There was water already in it." Shaking her head at the foolishness of her absentee caf droid and her chief slicer, Ciaran asked, "Why would I change out perfectly good water?"
"Because that perfectly good water was probably saline?" Gulan offered, "The industrial cleaner kind that ZK uses because nobody lets him clean the machines on a regular basis so whenever he gets the chance he has to go big?"
Ciaran looked at Gulan, then at her mug of probably-toxic caf in his hand. Then back at Gulan. Then back at the mug, which she took. And then took another drink from it.
"Nah," she shook her head. "This seems fine. I feel fine."
He took the definitely-not-caf from her as quick as he dared, adding "You feel delirious, I think. Drinking saltwater-caf will do that for you."
"Now that you mention it," she licked her lips, "it does taste a little brackish."
"How about that," he said dryer than a Tatooine summer.
She licked her lips again. "I think I'd like some water."
"We'll get you some," Gulan tugged at her arm. "I think Medical has plenty."
Ciaran looked thoughtful. "You know, you're not wrong."
"It's my burden to bear," he tugged again. "Let's go." As his boss, one of the most powerful people in the galaxy, stumbled to her feet and somewhat begrudgingly allowed him to guide her towards the medical facilities, he considered his options for a second. It wasn't a long second before he took her papers, against her strenuous protests.
"Hey."
"I'm going against almost every instinct I have here," Gulan informed her, "and I'm going to keep this to myself. The saltwater caf, Operation Skyhook, the whole thing. I might," he added, "bring up the idea later, with significantly less crazy of a framing and far less crazy methods, and see if you're accidentally onto something here. But I'll keep this delightfully embarrassing situation to myself."
Ciaran tipped her head to the side, and then almost tipped into the wall. "That's strangely nice of you."
"It's not strange," Gulan protested. "I'm perfectly capable of being nice without – nope," he shook his head, "nope, couldn't follow through on it. Fair enough, boss: it isn't me being nice, it's me knowing the momentary humour isn't worth the multiple people who would kill me for it. Silas and Asajj would make a contest out of who was more sadistic about it."
A fond smile crossed Ciaran's face. "They're great."
Gulan walked them faster.
ATTENTION ALL EMPLOYEES, ALLIES & AFFILIATES 30:8:21 PREPARATION OF CAF AND SERVICING OF THE CAF MAKERS IS THE SOLE AND EXCLUSIVE PURVIEW OF ZK-711. ABSOLUTELY NO EXCEPTIONS. Signed, Lady Ciaran |
I first tried writing this up with the intent of presenting it as a mission briefing, and I tried writing it seriously, really I did, but the more I spelled it out the more I was like "okay, even for Ciaran this is batshit." And then I imagined her trying to sell somebody on it. And what the natural reaction would be.
Last edited:
