Short Summary: Shipgirls but it's Star wars. Ahsoka Tano tries to convince her new big ship-ster not to blow everything up.
Long Summary: After its destruction in the Battle of Sullust, the Republic Star Destroyer Resolute awakens as a damaged Ship Girl. What is a lone girl with only 8 heavy Turbolasers, 52 Point Defence installations, 4 heavy Proton Torpedo launchers, 228 starfighters and an entire complement of ground vehicles supposed to do in a galaxy that's at war? Oh, wait!
Short Summary: Shipgirls but it's Star wars. Ahsoka Tano tries to convince her new big ship-ster not to blow everything up.
Long Summary: After its destruction in the Battle of Sullust, the Republic Star Destroyer Resolute awakens as a damaged Ship Girl. What is a lone girl with only 8 heavy Turbolasers, 52 Point Defence installations, 4 heavy Proton Torpedo launchers, 228 starfighters and an entire complement of ground vehicles supposed to do in a galaxy that's at war? Oh, wait!
***
This is the darkest fic I've ever written. There will be hand-holding (in the dark) and cheek kissing (with the lights off, scandalous!) and all sorts of other dark things.
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The Force itself reeled. So much in so little time. For something so vast that constantly warred with itself to suddenly lose so much was like tearing a wound into its side, a gash that bled and screamed in agony that was felt across the galaxy. A wound that had yet to be struck, but as with all things, the Force did not interact with such trivialities as Time in the way most organics would be able to comprehend.
The Force searched for a solution. Other parts revelled in the dissolving and shifting tides of power and darkness.
One part, long and questing, found something in the dark. It bumped shoulders with a thing that belonged to the Abyss.
The universe twisted.
A possibility was found, a path full of potential.
***
"I think I'm going to miss that ship," Ahsoka said. She was standing at rest, arms folded at the small of her back and eyes forwards, fixed across the emptiness of space onto a lone ship slowly spinning in the void.
Admiral Yularen nodded once. He was a stoic man, a person of few words, but she felt that he could understand her loss.
It wasn't so much that the Resolute was something she was attached to, not in the way the Jedi council would frown upon, at least. It was just a ship, a tool. But it had served them well, and it was almost unfair that its end was so abrupt. A scuttling in deep space, its reactors forced to turn the vessel into a heap of scrap just to prevent the possibility of it being used against them.
She had had good moments onboard that ship, had learned important lessons and had fought against terrible odds and come out victorious. She would miss it, in her own little way.
"She was a fine flag," the Admiral said. He turned to some of the clones on the bridge of their current ship, the Negotiator. "Detonate the charges."
There was a chorus of 'Yes Sirs" from behind her. She didn't turn to look. Her attention was on the Resolute, on the battered Star Destroyer. The least she could do was watch her go out.
The Masters would have chided her for personifying a mere tool, but they were far away.
Something in the Force twinged, a sense of... not danger, not a warning, but that something big was happening.
"Charges set. And detonating," a clone said.
The Resolute winked out of existence.
Ahsoka gasped, and that alone drew the attention of the ever vigilant Admiral back to her. "What is it?" he asked before looking out of the bridge's viewscreen. His eyes narrowed. "Now that's odd. Navigation, check for hyperspace entry and exit signals," he ordered.
"Nothing sir," the man behind the nav consol called back.
Ahsoka searched, not just with her eyes, but with her senses. And... there. A speck, a tiny presence that shouldn't have been there. Or rather, a small presence where there should have been an entire Star Destroyer.
She started for the turbolifts at the far end of the bridge. "Admiral," she called. "I'm taking a shuttle."
Yularen had served with her and Skyguy long enough to know when Jedi-stuff was afoot, he wouldn't interfere.
***
She leaned over the pilot's seat to get as close to the forward viewscreen as possible. It afforded her a slightly better view of the canvas of open space. Her eyes tracked over a sea of swirling stars and distant nebula in search of something she couldn't quite spot.
"A bit slower," she said.
The clone piloting the shuttle did as she asked, easing off the throttle and adjusting the inertial dampeners to slow them down.
She pointed ahead towards what seemed, initially, like a distant star. "There," she said. The pilot dutifully drew closer. They overshot their target by a wide margin, but it was easy to turn around and coast closer. When they were only a few hundred meters out the copilot was able to open a prompt on a consol that allowed him to zoom into the target.
It was a girl.
Or, more appropriately, a young woman. Short, close-cropped hair flailing in the empty void, some of it pressed down by an admiral's cap. She had Two large objects around her middle, both shaped like the sloping wedge of a Venator with tiny turret mountings along its side. They hovered near her, connected to her back where a pair of towers rose up and ended in jagged, burnt points.
"Any life signs?" she asked.
"None, ma'am," the co-pilot said.
Ahsoka hesitated. It wasn't the first time seeing a corpse. It wasn't even the first time seeing someone jettisoned into space. She set that aside, pushing the bit of distress at the sight into the Force. "Open the bay doors. We'll bring her back with us."
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Ahsoka watched the medical droids back away from the girl. The standard medical facility onboard a Star Destroyer like the Negotiator was rather impressive, far more so than anything found on a civilian vessel. It only made sense to have a well-equipped medbay on a warship.
And yet for all their equipment and expertise, the medical staff were left scratching their heads while treating their newest patient.
Other than her uniform, they were unable to strip her of any of the equipment floating around her, let alone the mechanical parts that were integrated with her body. They couldn't get a pulse, or any vital readings that were anywhere near normal, but she was breathing and she was warm. Far too warm, but they couldn't tell if she was feverish.
The droids couldn't even stick a needle in her, all of them bending when pressed against her durasteel-hard skin.
She was, essentially, a mystery. One that Ahsoka , despite never being the sort to chase after such things, really wanted to get to the bottom of. Something told her it would be important, that it was important already.
"Any changes?" she asked one of the doctors moving by. The middle-aged woman looked up from a datapad, then through the observation screen into the patient's room.
"Ah," she said. "No. Not since you brought her in. Her breathing is even. That's the best I can say. She's not human, I don't think. She, it, might be a very advanced gynoid. You see all sorts of things nowadays. Ask Engineering? They might have equipment more appropriate than what we have."
Ahsoka thanked the doctor and let her move on. She hadn't received the sort of brusque professionalism she got from clones, but that was to be expected. The medical staff were some of the only non-clones aboard the ship, most of them serving as attaches to the Republic Navy. Most were paid volunteers, just there to do their part in the war effort.
When she turned back towards the room it was to find the bed covered in disturbed sheets, but otherwise entirely empty. "Uh," Ahsoka said.
Her training kicked in and she ran past the doctor, around the corner and barged into the room, a lightsaber leaping to her hand though it stayed unlit as she searched across a row of beds.
Her query was at the far end, looking through a cupboard filled with medical gowns. "Where is it?" she heard her mutter.
Ahsoka pressed a thumb to the coms panel next to the door and waited for the telltale sound of an open connection. "This is Commander Tano, I need security in Med Bay Three. Non-urgent."
The com crackled faintly. "Yes ma'am. Security to Medical Three. They're on their way."
The noise must have alerted the woman at the far end because she turned around on wobbly feet and blinked at Ahsoka as if taking her in for the first time. "You're smaller than I thought," she said.
Ahsoka, never one to take criticism with the same ease as some other Jedi, stood as tell as she could. "You should be in bed," she said.
The woman snorted. "I might be a bit battered but I'm not unopperable yet. A bit of time in a dock wouldn't hurt, but I'm still fighting fit." This she said while raising a fist in the air. She winced a moment later and pressed a hand against the side of her head. "Though I will admit that my bridge took a bit of damage at the end there."
"Your bridge?" Ahsoka asked. She moved into the room, sensing no hostility from the strange girl.
"Indeed, Commander Ahsoka. But some supplies and time will allow me to fix it up right as rain, just you wait." She smiled, a grin so wide it made her cheeks dimple. "Don't worry Commander, I'll be ready to serve you, and the Republic, again in no time at all."
Ahsoka looked at the girl for a while. She was standing in military readiness, but didn't show any signs of aggression. She clipped her saber back to her belt. "We were worried about you. We found you in the middle of space with no suit or environmental protection."
The girl shrugged. "My main shield array is damaged and most of my capacitors are empty, but even with a few breaches to my hull I am still space worthy."
"Okay," Ahsoka said for a lack of any idea how to respond to that. It was increasingly obvious that the girl wasn't organic. She knew droids could have their own personalities, some quite well developed, but this girl was emoting so well that it was hard to think of her as a mere droid. "Do you want to return to your bed?" she asked.
"No, not particularly. I would rather file a requisition for parts and equipment to restore my main bridge, or failing that, at least some equipment to conduct basic repairs."
"Ah, okay?" Ahsoka said. "We can do that later?" She shook her head and tried to refocus. "Right, I'm being rude. I'm Ahsoka, Ahsoka Tano."
She heard the clunk-clunk of clone boots on the floors behind the med bay walls. It had to be the security team. She hoped they would follow procedure and be discrete.
"I'm aware, Commander Tano," the girl said with a bit of a smile growing at the corner of her lips. "You've been in me long enough for me to remember you quite well."
"What?" Raised at the Jedi Temple she might be, but blind to innuendo she was not.
"I guess you wanted me to identify myself? You can't exactly see my IFF transmissions like this." She stood straighter, the large floating equipment around her shifting into a tighter formation around her body. "I am the Grand Army of the Republic's Venator class Warship Resolute. Unit number Twenty-Three. Currently tied to General Skywalker and Admiral Yularen of task force Besh-Besh-8-7. It's a pleasure to meet you in the flesh, Ahsoka."
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"She claims to be the Resolute," Ahsoka said. She didn't like having to stand in such a rigid posture, but with a good quarter of the Jedi Council hovering before her as tiny holograms, not to mention Skyguy and Obi, it was only proper that she display some decorum.
"The Star Destroyer?" Anakin asked.
Speaking out of turn earned him a few looks from the other members of the council, but they faded quickly enough. "The same, yeah. I mean, yes. She knows all the proper callsigns, and her Friend-Foe transponder is giving the right signals."
"Some sort of Confederate trap?" Saesee Tiin wondered aloud.
"I... don't sense that it's a trap, or that she's lying," Ahsoka said.
"Nonetheless, this strange droid is obviously some ploy by the Separatists," another Master said. "A strange one, even for our uncanny enemies."
"I just said that I suspect that she's not a trap," Ahsoka repeated herself.
The council went on for a while, hemming and hawing and completely overriding anything she said. Were they anywhere near her they would probably have sensed the frustration wafting off her like a bad smell.
When the alarm rang through the conference room she was standing in it was almost a relief. "I'm sorry. There seems to be an emergency here. I will have to continue my report later," she said in a rush before cutting off the connection.
She almost sighed when all the holograms of the Masters faded away. Spinning around, she walked towards the door while bringing up her com device from her belt. "This is Commander Tano, report."
It was unlikely that the Confederacy had returned to the site of a losing battle. There were too many ships in the sector on mop-up duty and while she sensed... something in the Force, shock and surprise maybe, she didn't sense the sort of fear and trepidation that an incoming fleet would inspire.
"Commander Tano," Admiral Yularen said. "We need you in the starboard hanger bay as soon as you can make it. There's a... situation."
"Oh boy," Ahsoka said. "I love situations."
***
Clones were productive. Either as part of their nature as soldiers or because of the eugenics that went into creating them. Something about the soldiers in white made it so that they got itchy if they stayed in one place doing nothing for too long.
That's why, on exiting the turbolift to the main hanger, Ahsoka was rather surprised to find a whole lot of clones just standing around and staring at something.
Worse, the clones weren't alone. Droids and commanding officers that should have been on the bridge were also milling around.
"And I'm telling you that I filed all the proper forms!" a voice called out.
Ahsoka recognized it with a sinking feeling. The girl should have been in the Med Bay, nowhere near the hanger.
She jogged a little closer and shouldered her way past the first row of clones, the men parting to let her past until she stumbled upon a scene that had her pausing mid-step.
Resolute was standing tall and proud in front of a Republic officer who was cringing back from her wiggling index finger. She had one hand bent at the wrist on her hip and was leaning way forwards to look the man in the eye. That she was wearing a too-tight clone-issue shirt didn't seem to phase her at all, but it certainly looked to be distracting some of the non-clones.
"B-but miss," the officer said. He was wearing the pips of a lieutenant and the insignia of the logistics corps. "I, I understand that you filed the right documents, but the authority on them, ah.'
"Was accepted and approved by the Negotiator. My sister wouldn't let me just waddle around ill equipped when she has a bay full of extra supplies I could better use to serve the Republic," Resolute said. "And there are provisions for requisitioning star fighters at times like these."
Ahsoka stepped up. "Can I hellll--"
Something in her mind short-circuited as a trio of little girls ran out from behind a parked V-Wing starfighter, their arms stretched out behind them and their short little legs thumping across the floor on a direct path for her. "Target acquired!" the girl in the lead said as she zeroed on on Ahsoka, then her eyes widened. "It's big sister commander Tano!" the girl said.
All three of them were strange. With metallic devices hovering around their hips, big backpacks with what looked like tiny astromechs sticking out of the top and a black, bucket-like hat with two barrels sticking out of it. They had the same sort of floating machines around them as Resolute, though theirs were white and yellow and stuck out like two long... engine nassels? Ahsoka guessed.
"Um, hello," she said. "How did you get here?" She looked around, but there were no guided tours. Not that there should have been any on an active warship, but it would have made more sense then the ideas she was coming up with.
"Big sister Resolute activated us for duty," the girl in the lead said. She, like the two behind her, had big chubby cheeks and a bit of a belly underneath her form fitting starfighter pilot's outfit. "I am BTL Y-Wing Oh One. Callsign CHU dash 88Y! I'm on guard duty for my big sister Resolute!"
The three girls saluted in with military fervour but no military discipline.
"Okay?" Ahsoka said.
"Back to work!" CHU-88Y said as she spun around, raised her hands behind her and started running again. Ahsoka listened to the faint 'Vrooo' sounds the girls were making with their mouths until they ran out of sight.
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"And as you can see," Ahsoka said, her arms were crossed under her bust and she was working hard to hold back the absolutely smug look she wanted to unleash. "There is some very concrete evidence that Resolute can, at will, transform a standard starfighter into a living being."
"This is," Master Mundi said before pausing and searching for words.
And to think that just that morning she had been hard-pressed to convince the council to listen to her at all. Now she was the only Jedi in a parsec who could handle the delicate matter of a girl that was actually a ship, and of star fighters that could transform into children and back.
It was, admittedly, a strange thing to be smug about, but she had to pick an emotion and crippling confusion would have been unacceptable.
"When the possible is eliminated," Master Yoda, "Remains, only the improbable does. No thing there is, which the Force cannot do." The other Masters all nodded, as they were wont to do when Yoda said something that sounded like it might be profound. "Bring her here you shall. Investigate, the council will. Your task this is, Padawan Tano."
"I understand, thank you, Master Yoda," Ahsoka said.
"Actually, if I may interject," Obi-Wan said. "Ahsoka, if you intend to stay aboard my flagship, then I suggest you come to Felucia first, then take a shuttle from there to Coruscant. We have a small detachment that needs retrofitting near the core and I would appreciate having my ship back, not to mention the additional support."
"Acceptable, this is," Yoda said. "Urgent this would be, were war not occuring. Now, now greater matters take priority."
The holoproject flicked off and the room, absent its blue light, suddenly felt a lot darker. Ahsoka didn't dwell on it. She moved out of the conference room, a twist of the Force all she needed to have the door open before she ran into it. She had to report to the admiral before finding Resolute and making sure that the girl... ship... person thing didn't cause any more trouble,
Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, the two people she was looking for were in the same place.
Admiral Yularen was looking decidedly warm as he stood at the head of the bridge and tried to pretend that there wasn't a Star Destroyer acting like a limpet on his arm.
"Oh, do you remember the battle of Ryloth?" Resolute asked. She hugged Yularen closer, his arm digging into the valley between her... Ahsoke looked away and coughed, but it didn't stop Resolute. "You got injured when my bridge was hit. I was so worried for you."
"Y-yes, well, it was an unfortunate turn of events, but I've since healed quite well."
"I know, I know, I was watching you float in the bacta tanks while you got better. You know, you have a very attractive body for an older gentleman."
And that was Ahsoka's cue to jump in. "Resolute, Admiral," she said.
Instead of breaking up, the ship... girl turned around and dragged the admiral with her. "Commander Tano!" she cheered. "Good to see you again. I heard that we're going to Felucia."
"Yeah, the counci-- wait, how do you know that?"
Resolute tilted her head to one side. The motion had Ahsoka noticing for the first time that the two towers above her head had changed. Where before they had looked torn and burned they now looked... torn and burned but less so. "The Negotiator told me."
The admiral couldn't be called a fool, he immediately jumped on the implications. "You can communicate with this ship well enough to intercept communications?"
"It's not an interception if you ask nicely," Resolute said.
"Nonetheless, if there are others like you, if they're on the Confederate's side," the admiral said.
Resolute snorted. "As if Negotiator would tell those Seperatist Bantha Herders anything! She's a loyal member of the Republic, just like me. I'm insulted that you would think so little of my sisters and I, admiral. Quite a few of us have died serving the Republic already. To spit on our honour as ships like that!"
The star destroyer they were in creaked, durasteel shifting subtly in a way that had all the nearby clones pausing in anticipation.
"It's very rude," Resolute finished.
"I... apologize?" Admiral Yularen said. "I am merely having a difficult time wrapping my mind around the idea of vessels being so, what is the right word?"
"Quirky?" Resolute suggested.
"Yes. Let's go with that." The admiral turned towards Ahsoka. "You mentioned a mission. To Felucia, I presume?"
"Yes, the council wants us there soon, then Resolute and I are heading back to the core."
The shipgirl frowned at that. "That would mean avoiding the best of the fighting." She shook her head and finally let go of the admiral so that she could adjust her captain's cap with both hands. Ahsoka only then realized that she had been wearing her Republic navel uniform the entire time. "Damn. That sounds just like the Jedi Council to remove useful force multipliers from the front lines just to satisfy their own curiosity."
"That's true," Ahsoka said. "But an order is an order."
There was a glint in the eyes of the shipgirl, and a vindictive, cruel smile spread across her features a moment before she grabbed at the admiral again. "Admiral Yularen, you know that you're like a father to me, right?"
"I did not know that," the admiral confessed. How he managed to look completely bored while in Resolute's grip Ahsoka would never know.
"Well, you are. And you're also my commanding officer. Technically I am marked as MIA, but I am also right here. A few forms with your signature would be more than enough to reinstate me to my previous position within the Republic Navy and would allow you, as the flag admiral of my squadron, to assign and order me to do... well, just about anything within my purview as a Star Destroyer. The Jedi might ostensibly lead this war, but we both know that the Navy owns the ships and those who win in space win on land."
"That is certainly an idea," the admiral said. "But I'm afraid I will have to consider it some more. Duty calls. Commander Tano, I hope I can trust you to watch over Miss Resolute?"
"Of course, admiral," Ahsoka said with a quick nod to the man as he walked off. She turned to see a pouting Resolute staring after the admiral.
"One day, admiral, one day," she muttered under her breath.
Ahsoka wondered if there was a way to not be the one assigned to babysitting the shipgirl.
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Ashoka found Resolute in one of the small viewing galleries situated a few levels below the bridge. It was one of those spaces linked to the rooms meant for important dignitaries and other officials the Star Destroyer might be carrying. Right now only one of those rooms was occupied and that was by Resolute herself.
How, exactly, the Negotiator had decided to assign the stateroom to her was a mystery. Ahsoka had quite clearly set the Resolute's rooms in the brig, but between pressing send and everyone else receiving the orders the shipgirl somehow ended up assigned to the nicest rooms around.
Republic Intelligence were going to tear their hair out at this rate.
"It's empty," Resolute said as Ahsoka came up behind her. Just beyond the viewscreen was a swirling mess of blues and blacks and flashes of white that passed so quickly they were little more than afterimages. "I don't know if you ever just sank back and watched it all crawl by, but hyperspace is just, nothing. No matter where you point your sensors, no matter how hard you try and see, there's just nothing, not even a distant star to guide your path. Every jump makes you wonder if it will be your last. Then you remember all the little people inside of you."
"I never went hyperspace blind," Ahsoka said. But I've heard stories of people losing themselves thinking too hard on it for too long. "I heard that It can do things to your mind."
"Yeah, and you don't have the advantage of nurturing so many people within you." Resolute turned around, then she reached one hand out and poked Ahsoka in the stomach. "When you become a mom maybe you'll understand."
Ahsoka crossed her arms and glared, but in the face of Resolute's melancholy she couldn't keep up her anger. Not that she should have been holding onto it to begin with, it wasn't proper for a Jedi. "Why are you over here anyway?" she asked instead.
Resolute shrugged one shoulder, then absently ran a hand over her own stomach. She had retrieved her Republic officer's uniform at some point, so her stomach was flat behind a thick layer of deep green cloth. "I feel empty. Quiet on the inside. It reminded me of hyperspace in all of the worst ways."
"Oh," Ahsoka said. "How is it, being a... ship?"
"How is it, being a Togruta?"
"Ah," Ahsoka said. She had been to the Obi-Wan school of rhetorical questions. "You don't know anything else," she guessed.
Resolute gave her a wan smile. "I was born to serve, to protect the interests of the Republic, and to keep my crew happy. I can still do some of those things, at least. I can still serve, and protect, and maybe if I try I will find new ways of keeping my crew happy."
Ahsoka moved a little closer to Resolute. Physical affection was frowned upon in the Jedi temple, but it was understood that in some cases it was the best way to reassure someone that things were not as bleak as they seemed.
She wasn't intending to have Resolute pick her up. The ship moved to one of the viewing benches off to the side while Ahsoka wiggled and protested and kicked at her shins, but all that did was hurt the back of her feet.
Resolute sat down and carefully placed Ahsoka down on her lap before hugging her from behind. Ahsoke tried to squeeze out of the star destroyer's grip but moving her was like pushing against a planet and expecting it to move.
"I miss having you inside me," Resolute said.
Ahsoka was infinitely glad that her race couldn't blush or had any obvious signs of embarrassment. "Do you have to say it like that?"
Resolute laughed, a low, throaty sound from right next to Ahsoka's head. "Yes, yes I did," she said before squeezing Ashoka closer. "Now stop wiggling so much, you're making this more uncomfortable than it should be. You don't need to worry, I'll keep you safe, always."
Ashoka gave up on trying to pry Resolute's arms away, they didn't budge no matter how much she forced and she was getting tired of trying. That the shipgirl's lap was nice and soft and that her backrest was... well that had nothing to do with it. "You're strange," Ahsoka said.
"I'm a one thousand one hundred meter long warship with enough firepower to turn a small moon into a boiling ball of glass stuck in a small body. Ships aren't meant to be in this shape, I know as much. I still have access to Republic comms, I can search the extranet. I'm an aboration, but I'm still happy. When I was little more than a ship I could never do anything to appreciate those that were important to me."
"Like me?" Ahsoka guessed.
"Like you, like Skyguy, like the admiral, and even the clones, especially those that stuck around for a while. But then you would all leave. Sometimes you would come back hurt and that... that powerlessness. I don't want that anymore. I want to protect my crew. My sister feels the same way."
"You mean the Negotiator?"
"I do. Even the little ones, the starfighters, form their own attachments, though pilots are switched around a lot more." Resolute shook her head, then plopped her chin atop Ahsoka's head and looked out the window into the swirling void. "Don't die, please?"
Resolute wasn't a Jedi forbidden from forming attachments, Ahsoka knew. The more she spoke, the more obvious it became that the shipgirl was just a little broken on the inside.
"We're here."
Space outside of the viewscreen snapped into focus, a sea of stars with a single blue-green ball floating in the middle distance, and between them and the planet, a Confederate fleet.
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"Please?" Resolute asked as Ahsoka ran down the corridor towards the bridge.
"There's no way the council would approve," Ahsoka said. She was glad that Jedi trained physically so much, otherwise there was no way that she would be able to keep going without needing to pause for breath. As it was, she was panting a little with a mix of excitement and anticipation. "We need to get to the bridge first."
"I could help," Rosulte said. The pout in her voice wasn't lost, not even over the wailing of the warning klaxons.
Ahsoka shook her head and jumped into a turbo lift, a slight nudge with the forde keeping the doors open long enough for her to slip in, and allow Resolute to move in after her. The lift rose with none of the slow grace it usually had. Emergencies required quick movement and comfort took a backseat to expediency.
The bridge was a hive of activity as clones and officers readied the Negotiator for combat.
"Admiral," Ahsoka said as she stepped up to the front of the bridge.
"Commander Tano," Yularen said. He never called her that when things were going well, not with that biting, nervous tone.
"What can you tell me?"
"Seven Munificent frigates, four Recusant and a damned Lucrehulk. I was hoping they had begun to run out of those," the admiral said.
A glance out the front view screens showed the Confederate fleet spreading out into a standard blockade, the frigates and destroyers forming something of an umbrella that lead to the huge doughnut of the Lucrehulk in its centre. "Damn," Resolute said as she walked towards the edge. She wasn't looking at the enemy fleet.
Ahsoka approached and winced as she saw the burning form of an Acclamator slowly falling towards the blue-green planet below. It was burning in space, trails of smoke collecting around the wreck and being sucked towards the planet.
"She's crying," Resolute said in a low, sombre voice that still carried. "Her crew is still aboard. She's doing everything she can to keep afloat so that they can get to their escape pods, but some parts of her are closed off, too much damage to the hull and she buckled. They won't all be able to leave her. So she's crying, even as she claws to stay in the skies. Because every minute that she spends in space is one more minute her friends have to get out of her."
"Oh," Ahsoka said. It was easy, far too easy, to forget that there were people in those ships. They looked so much like toys when seen from this far away.
"I believe her contingent of troops were already unloaded," the admiral said. "And the Sovereign, the other resupply ship, made it out with minimal damage. She is moving around to rejoin our formation."
"What will we do?" Ahsoka said. She knew the Negotiator wasn't alone. They had two Arquitens and a Pelta-class medical frigate with supplies. Ton by ton they were outmatched four times over. And that was without counting the Lucrehulk.
The admiral frowned for a long time. "We run. We cannot win this engagement. The engagement on the ground is too close for them to dare bomb it from orbit, not without losing their own facilities."
"They need our help down there, don't they?" Ahsoka said.
"And our help they'll receive," the admiral said. "It's time for a little bit of unorthodox planning. I think we have a fair number of lifeboats and pods aboard the Negotiator. They can be aimed with a fair degree of accuracy towards a planetary target."
It took a moment for Ahsoka to connect the dots. "You're going to drop the supplies from space."
"Exactly. We'll need time to prepare though."
"I can get you that," Resolute said. "I'm still a little damaged, but I can win you some time, no problem. I outgun everything they have. Let me launch with the first wave of lifepods and I'll use them to disguise my own movement. Then I can turn them into scrap from behind, no problem."
"I can't just let you go," Ahsoka said. "I'm supposed to be watching over you."
"You have a starfighter, don't you?" Resolute asked.
Ahsoka didn't like where the conversation was going, not one bit. She asked herself what her master would do, then after dismissing that, wondered what Obi-Wan would do.
