Star Wars: The Force Wills (SW SI)
- Thread starter Keiran Halcyon
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Is Admiral Trench the Illusive General?
Chapter 21 has been published on the Patreon.
Expect chapter 20 to be released on the 23rd July, coming Saturday.
Chapter 20
A/N: Here's the next chapter. Thank you patrons for your support, which lets me keep writing full steam. *Raises glass of Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster in salute*
Chapter 20
Standing in the circular Jedi High Council chamber surrounded on every side by the Masters was generally seen by almost everyone in the rank and file of the Jedi Order as a time to be quite nervous. It generally meant you had done something to merit taking up a slot of the precious time allocated to High Council sessions, which often, in this day and age, did not bode well. In pre-war times, an average Jedi could expect to find themselves in front of the Council on only a handful of occasions during their lifetime. I had long since made my peace that as an apprentice to Anakin, I would probably find myself facing the Council in full session dozens of times before I even reached knighthood… if I reached knighthood.
Making this appearance most memorable was that we were being figuratively raked over the coals for our failure. A failure that wasn't even real. There was also the minor detail that I felt rather naked without my full armor at the moment. I was dressed in a new light brown top, with brown pants, my combat boots, lower leg armor and completing the outfit was the more traditional outer brown Jedi robes.
"It is most unfortunate that Bane managed to escape," Obi-Wan declared from the seat to the right of Yoda. "Knight Skywalker, can you enlighten this Council on how a bounty hunter managed to remain undetected aboard the Thunderbolt for so long?"
I could tell immediately that Anakin despised every second of the charade but he kept his outward composure very well.
"Simply put, he kept his helmet on, spoke only when spoken to and kept his answers brief. The speech distortion of the helmet did the rest. The injury he sustained was also used as an excuse for any odd behavior. Bane also clearly has a high degree of technical prowess, which is how he affected his escape. He rewired and reprogrammed an aft escape pod in the engineering spaces. Then he timed it perfectly to launch just before the jump onward from the Hosnian Prime waypoint. Sensor records delivered from Hosnian, confirms he piloted the escape pod to rendezvous with a Rogue-class starfighter, which proceeded to disappear from sensors in a way that in my opinion can only mean it's equipped with a cloaking device."
I could feel how that little fact rippled through the Council, even as every master kept their supremely perfect poker faces. The implications that the CIS could build a starfighter with a cloaking device was staggering. It meant either the CIS could produce a compact reactor strong enough to power the more common hibridium cloaking device or something entirely new was in the picture. I knew of the more rare stygium crystal cloaking device, which was an insanely expensive form of cloaking that was used on the personal ship of Darth Sidious, the Scimitar.
The idea that the dark lord would give Cad Bane a stygium cloaking device was hard to fathom. It really showed the level of attachment to material wealth that Sidius had, that he was willing to throw that much money at Cad Bane.
Yoda glanced at Obi-Wan and then Mace Windu.
Windu closed his eyes for a moment, then said, "Send me the data, I will look it over myself. We must now decide on how to proceed. Bane now has access to the names and locations of the most Force sensitive children in the Republic. Determining how he will use the information will be crucial in potentially stopping him."
"Inflict devastating damage on the future Jedi Order, he could."
"Everything seems to suggest that Bane's employers are the Separatists," Anakin declared carefully.
"There are thousands of children on that list and to determine which he would go after first is problematic to say the least," Obi-Wan mused.
"Small chance there is, through the Force, the Council may detect them." Yoda pointedly looked at all the Masters physically present, who in turn nodded their assent. This was so typical of Yoda's style of 'command'. You could almost never say he issued an actual 'order'. For centuries he led by usually trying to generate a consensus. He was so experienced that he could generally lead most of the shorter lived and younger masters by the nose and where he wanted them. Rarely did he put his 'foot' down in his authority as Grand Master. The Clone War, however, was seeing him rather strained to maintain his typical approach. Also unspoken but understood by all of them was that this would involve trying to delve into the future through the Shroud. "Knight Skywalker, you joining the Council in this effort, essential it is. You who know the feeling of Bane in the Force."
"Understood, Master Yoda."
Clearly the Grandmaster was hoping Anakin's unprecedented strength in the Force, combined with his own and the other masters would be enough to hopefully succeed in the endeavor.
"Council, recess for one hour to prepare, meet in private mediation hall we will."
The assembled masters bowed in their chairs and stood to leave.
"Padawan," Anakin softly prompted me, with intent.
I spoke out of the corner of my mouth, "Yes, master, I'll keep working on the armor and make sure HK isn't plotting some extravagant assassination of the council or the senate."
"Please do so," he said dryly, rolling his eyes.
Yoda, feeling most of his over eight centuries of life, retired to his own quarters as he always did after the morning session of the Council was over. It wasn't far from the central spire and while he could easily walk through the halls of the Temple all day with the aid of his gimer stick, he knew his old body would find many ways to punish him afterwards for it.
His current quarters were not special in any way. Most would think the grandmaster of the Jedi Order merited at least a significant amount of personal space to enjoy, but the truth was there had never existed such special quarters in the Temple for the leader of the Jedi. He had no more and no less than any Master, slightly less than fifty square meters.
He had inhabited this particular space for the last sixty years and the time would soon come when he would move to another side of the Temple, just to keep things fresh. It was also to clean the myriad of momentos that accumulated as the decades passed. Nothing fancy or valuable in a monetary sense, but just small keepsakes that served as a touchstone for a memory. Also unique was some of the furniture that was resized to accommodate his small stature, though very little in the place was really inconvenient with the Force as your ally.
He settled on his meditation cushion, putting the gimer stick to one side before reaching into a pocket of his robes.
His holocron didn't wait at all for any prodding before rising into the air out his grasp and hovering at eye level.
Yoda gave the device a gimlet eyed stare.
A small holographic version of himself quickly appeared standing on the holocron and just made a beckoning gesture before vanishing.
He closed his eyes and with centuries of practice behind him, embraced the Force and pushed his awareness directly into the holocron.
When Yoda opened his eyes next it was to regard a very different place.
Many masters over the millenia had written and published into the Jedi Archives on the mysteries of the holocron. Each one having a different theory or unique perspective on the tiny marvels that represented the most commonly known example of Force based technology in the galaxy. The major theory that most gravitated to was that the holocron was a 'Force-empowered' copy of the mind of the Jedi who had created the device. Others went so far as to say it was an infusion of the very soul of a Jedi into a material structure that would persist beyond death.
Just as unique was the experiences of the Jedi who had created a holocron. None of them reported the exact same thing during the process. There was always an element of uniqueness during the construction, something which Yoda believed was a direct provenance of the Force itself. Just as an adept's Trial of the Mirror on Illum was unique to find their first kyber crystal, so was the journey to create a holocron.
To Yoda's knowledge, very few of those old masters had ever reported that their holocrons could pull their creator into an entirely different 'world', a world composed out of the mind alone.
This 'world' was a seemingly infinite dimension of black stone floor that radiated in every direction, with an equally black starless sky. It was not a place of darkness, however, as a soft white light seemed to radiate from the floor and its many small cracks.
His 'mirror-self' didn't seem to be in a playful mood today as he was seated merely a few meters away staring up at the infinite black sky.
Yoda immediately spotted what his holocron-self was looking at.
Up in the distance, seemingly in orbit of the infinite black floor, was the homeworld.
"Homesick, are we?" Yoda chuckled as he sat down next to the embodiment of the holocron personality.
"I think we can dispense with the Basic in here," holo-Yoda spoke in their native tongue.
"If you wish," Yoda replied in the same language, easily slipping into it.
"No, I am not homesick, I'm just thinking about the message we received from the homeworld. The request to send another young one for training."
"You are having second thoughts about it?"
Holo-Yoda gave his flesh and blood counterpart a flat stare, "After what I have learned on my journey with young Ahsoka… yes. The Clone War alone should've given us pause."
"You discovered something?"
Unraveling the mystery that the young togruta represented was a prospect that had been gnawing at his mind for nearly a decade. In all his time alive and for all his talents in the Force, his ability to perceive the history of a soul was perhaps the one he relied on most and treasured.
Ahsoka had stood out from the moment she had stepped foot into the Temple as a youngling. Shining like a beacon of insatiable curiosity and eager to study the ways of the Force, but where most young ones eventually lose that drive and fall into the typical paths, she kept going and never where you would expect. She had her childish foibles as most did, but always at some point would a mote of light shine through, one that spoke to Yoda - that said that this was not some mere youngling.
Her accomplishments as initiate and adept quickly began to bring her to the attention of many masters. Rare was the Jedi Master who invented a new technique in the Force, almost unheard of for an adept to bring three such discoveries to the Order, now with a fourth as a padawan.
Many masters had petitioned to take her on as a padawan, but always it had felt in the Force that the correct match for her had not yet arrived.
Then the Clone War fell on the galaxy and the name of the Chosen One was submitted by young Kenobi for taking an apprentice.
The match seemed like a cog in the wheel of the Force, everything had just come together perfectly. Quite a few masters of the Council objected, stating that Skywalker was too new to his own knighthood to be expected to also manage the critical training of a padawan, especially one so gifted as Ahsoka.
Yoda used his rarely exercised authority as grandmaster to push it through though.
"Something? Yes, but no true answers, only more questions," his holo-self replied with frustrating vagueness. "Firstly, she knows the true enemy we face."
Very few things in the galaxy could truly shock Yoda at this point, after so much life experience behind him. This came very close. That the small bundle of potential and joy that had entered the Temple twelve years ago, carried this burden on her shoulders… it was just utterly wrong.
"How?"
"I don't know and I did ask, her answer in itself was revealing, 'That's too dangerous to answer,' she said."
Yoda nodded, his mind racing with the implications. "So her requesting the holocron, she needed help in fighting Sidious?"
"Yes, secret help, something I will not elaborate on, even to you."
"My own holocron keeping secrets from me," Yoda scoffed in annoyance.
"Yes, you of all people know that fighting young Dooku's master is not a straightforward exercise. It's best this information is… compartmentalized."
"The ways of deceit and shadow are not the Jedi way," Yoda tapped his cane to emphasize every word as he spoke sternly.
His holo-self had the gall to suddenly laugh! Had Ahsoka managed to somehow corrupt the thing? "Oh, sorry, I said the exact same thing to her. Suffice it to say, she convinced me otherwise soon enough."
"What could she possibly have said that would…" Yoda cut himself off in frustration as he recognized the words about to spill out of his mouth.
His mirror laughed again, "A bit of arrogance there, careful. After all, what could such a youngling possibly say or possess that could shake the foundations and change the mind of the old, powerful and wise, Master Yoda?"
Yoda harrumphed, "Should scrap you and start over."
Holo-Yoda shook a clawed finger at him, "A bit late for that, you know you're only a few decades away from becoming one with the Force. Building me is not something done in an afternoon. Suffice it to say, you know that power comes in many varied forms and she is powerful in ways that I think even she doesn't know yet. I will say this, my flesh and blood self, the Sith have evolved. Their blades in the dark are many. The battle must not just be fought in the light but in the darkness as well." The holocron sighed heavily, "The Sith knows us too well. Long have they studied us and prepared. They embraced their strength in secrecy and know in the process of clinging so hard to our dogma, that we would never even dream of meeting them in the darkness with our own blades."
"The Jedi Shadows?" Yoda asked with realization on where his mirror was going.
"Yes, if we are to truly defeat the enemy, the Shadow's way we must embrace. Which is why, you need to maintain a shield of ignorance, so to speak."
"You…"
"Yes, I'm telling you to act in contradiction to the Jedi Code."
"How can you possibly justify…"
"The code has become chains that are weighing the Jedi Order down, causing us to stagnate," Holo-Yoda poked his own gimer stick into the ground to emphasize his points. "Something the enemy has already been taking advantage of for hundreds of years. Already you see the living Force itself beginning a movement for reformation among the young of the Order with the revised code. Now… you must act as the enemy expects. This will give me and others the breathing room and time to move against him in ways he does not expect."
Yoda recognized his own immense anger in that moment and with the ages of experience behind him, cast it off and began tracing its source. Only his own holocron was still able to bring these kinds of emotions out, which was why he preferred to only rarely interact with the thing.
The sheer idea of casting the code aside that had served the Order so well for hundreds of years, through the horrors of the old Sith Wars, was ridiculous, an anathema. Master Billaba's revision was generally seen as misguided by the older masters, a reflexive knee-jerk response due to the trying times of the Clone War. The idea that everything he had done for the past hundreds of years was a mistake, that it had been playing directly into the old enemy's hands was… difficult to even contemplate.
Yet, even the standard Jedi Code railed against that. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. Refusing to see, to even think about your own possible error or arrogance when pointed out to you.
Never had he imagined that he would be fighting a battle like this on this morning. That he would be facing a Trail of the Mirror like an adept, but only a hundred times monstrously worse. The mirror challenged you in ways you never expected, it exposed you and removed masks painstakingly built to reveal the full naked truth that you wished to hide from even yourself. Amazing, that even at almost 900 years old, Yoda could still be made to feel like a youngling learning at the slithery tail of Master Del Gormo.
Finally, Yoda looked to his artificial Force counterpart, the anger understood and banished, "I assume there is a plan in the works with the youngling list then?"
"You may safely assume just that," holo-Yoda nodded.
"What else is needed?"
"Simply continue the path you've set already, find the children that Bane has targeted with the Council, retrieve the holocron, fight in the light and when young Ahsoka asks for me again, deliver me secretly without hesitation. The time will come when all things inevitably come into knowledge. The Shroud of the Dark Side will fall, just as surely as a sun rises."
"Knows this, she does?" Yoda grinned, teasingly falling into Basic.
"That, my counterpart, you may speculate on in the deepest corner of your mind only and never speak of."
"Understood," Yoda nodded and with a twist of will, the world of the holocron vanished.
He was back in his quarters and the holocron slowly lowered itself, its brightness faded into dormancy.
"Begin, we will."
A few twists with the hydrospanner and the Force for the more delicate work, "How's that?"
"Diagnostic: Knee joint articulation has been improved by four percent and back into acceptable parameters, master."
I stood up and regarded HK with an appraising eye, "Good."
Any further conversation was interrupted by Anakin entering through the door to his own quarters with a figurative cloud of worry over his head.
"Oh, Skyguy, how'd things go with the council?"
"Well, we were successful, somewhat. Get your gear and I'll explain."
This was done very quickly, given that most of my stuff could fit in a large duffle bag and a single chest. Anakin was an even lighter traveler and we were all heading down to the main Temple hangars within ten minutes.
"The Council determined four children were being targeted. One was on Mon Cal, Obi-wan is heading there. The others are on Kashyyyk, Chironia and lastly our target, Hapes."
I nearly stumbled in surprise at the list of planets and only just stopped myself from asking a very stupid question, given our location.
Down in the hangars I immediately spotted the craft we were intending to take for the journey. The Twilight looked quite ugly compared to all the other sleek and newer vessels being worked on around her. In fact, it didn't even look like she'd gotten any sort of exterior cleaning in quite a while. The rugged look was something of a camouflage all on its own, I suppose.
The interior was a different story, and I immediately spotted that the cargo space of the light freighter was distinctly lessened. Now occupied by machinery and what looked to be a supplementary reactor for the ship.
The reason for that was apparent as I sat down at the co-pilot station and brought up a ship diagnostic.
"Master, are you kidding me?" I asked Anakin with astonishment as he sat down next to me and began the pre-flight.
"About what, Snips?"
"You managed to get the Twilight's hyperdrive to a 1.0 rating."
"Yes, after a full overhaul with the extra power plant installed, which also neatly gives our shields much more staying power when we're not in hyperspace."
"This has been tested?"
Anakin just kept pushing buttons and flicking switches, "Of course… in the simulator."
I stared at him for a moment before just focusing on my part of the pre-flight checklist and began tapping buttons and switches, "Fine, let's just go."
"Commentary: Master, your master's technical prowess is quite significant. Query: However, should his potentially ill-advised tinkering result in us being stranded in another dimension, can I wring his meatbag neck?"
I gave Anakin a brilliant mischievous smile, "Certainly, HK."
He rolled his eyes and keyed the radio, "Temple Control, this is Twilight, requesting departure vectors and hyperspace exit corridor to the Perlimian Trade Route."
"Temple Control to Twilight, clearance granted for takeoff, transmitting vectors for hyperspace departure, ETE, forty three minutes."
"Thank you, Control. Twilight out."
A few seconds later my main MFD screen chirped and flickered. "Got our course, Master, uploading."
"Got it," he pulled back on the control yoke and Twilight smoothly lifted into the air, moving forward slightly and twisting to bring the nose to bear on the hangar exit. Anakin pushed the throttle and the ship smoothly emerged into the open space around the Jedi Temple.
As usual, the estimate for our hyperspace transit was wildly optimistic. It took nearly double the estimated time to navigate to the appropriate point in space before Anakin pulled back on the hyperdrive motivator control and the ship shot off into hyperspace.
It would take three days in hyperspace to travel to the Taanab system along the Perlimian hyper lane. Taanab was one of only two known gateway systems into the Hapes Cluster and was the closest entrance from Coruscant.
The journey was mostly spent getting ourselves up to speed on the Hapan worlds and its society. Not to mention pondering just what Anakin's holocron was thinking in giving Bane these specific targets to go after.
Mon Cal and Kashyyyk were easy to understand, as both worlds would give Bane a very tough time easily moving around. The former being an ocean world and the latter, the homeworld of the wookiees. If Bane was caught snooping around a wookiee nursery, his death would be extremely unpleasant to say the least and using a holosheathe to impersonate a wookiee would require stilts. Learning to walk like the hairy giants was problematic at best and even if you could, your smell would give you away too.
Chironia was a mystery though. It required a database search for me to even have a clue on the planet at all. Chironians were the closest thing you could see in the Corusca galaxy to the old Earth legend of the centaur. A being with six limbs, arranged in a rough humanoid form for the upper part and a smooth transition to a lower body for the remaining four limbs, which was generally used for locomotion. About the only reason really we could see here was that it would be impossible for Bane to use a holosheathe to blend in.
There was also the exercise of reasoning Bane's potential movements simply by looking at the travel times between the four locations, the routes available, the speed of his transport and how long it would take to arrange and plan the kidnappings at each location. Also ideally, we would've sent Jedi to Kashyyyk and Chironia, but the Temple bombing in combination with the galaxy spanning war was straining things considerably as the list of available and capable people that could be sent was quite small now.
"I see no other way around this," Anakin chucked a datapad onto the small dinner table in the Twilight's equally small galley section. "You're going to have to take the lead on this, Snips. I'll be lucky if the Hapans even speak to me."
I could only nod as I studied the Jedi Archives' notes on interacting with the Hapans.
This was due to the fact that Hapan society, congregated in the dense cluster of 63 inhabited worlds, were strictly matriarchal.
The Hapans were descendants of an ancient pirate group, known as the Lorell Raiders, that had used the isolated nature of the Hapan Cluster as an easily defensible base to raid out into the galaxy with. As with most pirates, they raided and plundered, including finding the most beautiful women to forcibly take from the worlds they raided. The women were all brought back to the cluster, where they became concubines to the pirate lords. They would stay on Hapes itself to raise the children they gave birth to, whilst their pirate 'husbands' would go out again and again to bring new plunder and capture more women.
This all changed though, roughly 4000 years ago when the Jedi of the time ambushed and were forced to kill the Lorell Raiders to the last man when they tried to extend their raids into Republic space.
The women left behind, now suddenly free, took control of the Hapan Cluster and totally forgotten about by the greater galaxy, they vowed that men would never rule over them again. This would eventually give birth to the Hapan Consortium, which ruled over the cluster in the form a hereditary monarchy always passed down to the next daughter in line to the throne.
The first queen mother ordered that their borders be closed and for many thousands of years that was the status quo, until a few decades after the Ruusan Reformation. Then the Hapan society reopened themselves to the galaxy and it wasn't long until they joined the Republic in the most loose fashion possible. Sending only a representative to Coruscant and not even bothering to begin the centuries long process of petitioning for a senate seat.
The opening of the cluster was brought about by what was seen as a very liberal queen mother, who wanted to bring the wonders of the cluster to the galaxy and engage in very limited trade of goods and knowledge. The most significant of which was their exotic starship technology, genetic technology and hapan gems.
The Jedi Order's relationship with the Hapans though was generally positive.
The majority of Hapans viewed the Order with favor, seeing as the Jedi were responsible for their ancestral mother's freedom and their society being able to develop in the first place. The unfortunate minority opinion that existed, stemming most likely from the ancient concubines who still wanted to see their pirate husbands return, was that the Jedi were child-stealing butchers. Hardly something that had any foundations in logic, but that was sentient nature for you.
The queen mother by tradition also allowed a number of Jedi foundling missions to occur every generation. Any Hapan Jedi successfully trained to knighthood would see them spend ten years in the greater galaxy, after which they were obliged to return to the Hapan Cluster to serve there for another ten years. The Hapan Jedi were under the direct authority of the queen mother during this time and it was generally known that they were employed as bodyguards and truthsayers, occasionally being empowered as law enforcement in the greater cluster.
"We're also going to need support from the Hapan authorities, master, no way we can do this quietly given who our youngling is."
Anakin nodded, "Just our luck that the potential kidnap victim is the daughter of a senior executive in the consortium."
"What would be the best approach? Try and get an audience with the queen mother or try for a lower hanging fruit?"
"We don't have time to wade through bureaucracy, Snips. We go straight for the queen, even if she doesn't have time for us, we'll get passed down until someone can see us. Master Yoda's diplomatic note can hopefully open the way far enough."
"Our contingency plan if the diplomatic approach doesn't work?"
"We'll go straight to the parents and work from there."
A warning chime echoed through the small galley, giving a two minute warning on the approaching hyperspace destination.
We were ready and strapped in behind our stations in the cockpit before Anakin pulled back on the hyperdrive lever.
The tunnel of hyperspace seemed to shatter and resolve into streaks of stars as we emerged from the dimension and settled into the typical pinpricks of a starfield around us. The main difference now, was that ahead of us was the distant agglomeration of stars packed together in a distinct clump - the Hapan Cluster. It was just a visual illusion of distance - the cluster was still over 2000 light years away from the Taanab system and the Hapans laid claim to 500 light years of space as their sovereign territory in that cluster.
Protecting the main hyperspace lane entry to Hapes was something that most people would be forgiven for thinking was a space station.
It had elegant curving lines that began as a circle from above then tapered to five distinct points, with a very aesthetic hull that reflected the light of the Taanab star in a manner that just made you feel you could stare at the thing all day and not get bored. Along each of the five spines, was featured prominently the Hapan royal family crest, a circle surrounding a sixteen point radiant star.
A very cursory passive scan also revealed that far from being a customs station, this was a fully fledged starship, with twenty four sublight engines hidden cunningly from view along the interior ring of the ship, with a hyperspace engine in each of the spines. Similarly hidden behind almost seamless panels all along the hull spines were banks of laser, turbolaser, ion cannons and tractor beam projectors. It also featured a series of hangar bays in the lower central hull that had a constant flow of traffic, mostly custom patrol boats and the occasional fighter escort.
This was the Hapan Star Home class, that was a dreadnought in all but name.
No one really knew just how many of these the Hapans had. Only four had been independently verified and which they admitted to. Two of which stood guard over the entrances of the cluster, with the third being the Hapan royal family's personal ship and the fourth being a backup.
"Freighter Twilight, this is Eternity control, we have you on our scopes now. Please state your intentions and business."
The female voice over the radio was both pleasant to hear, stern and bored.
Anakin didn't answer via voice and sent through authorizations of the Jedi Council and a text only diplomatic message from Yoda appended to it.
"Received Twilight, stand by. Proceed to holding pattern, one tau, nine, eight. Transmitting."
He flew the ship as instructed and we waited. We were trying to enter as quietly as we could without appearing as smugglers to the authorities. Bane with his cloaked fighter could enter the cluster without the Hapans really knowing. He'd only have to drop his cloak right before he entered hyperspace and there would be no time for the Hapans to react. Hopefully, this meant that Bane wouldn't bother to go through the motions of trying to suss out local intelligence, such as whether the Jedi were already waiting for him at his target.
"Wonder how far this alone will get us up the food chain?" I wondered.
"High enough that we can do our job, hopefully," Anakin answered. "We have 21 waypoints in the cluster before we even reach Hapes itself."
The wait continued for nearly forty-two minutes before the reply came back.
"Apologies for the delay, Twilight. You're cleared to proceed into the cluster and a course to Hapes is being transmitted to you. Do not deviate from this flight plan."
Anakin gestured to me, then to the radio, pointedly.
"Understood, Eternity. Thank you. Twilight out."
"Safe journey," the traffic controller said before breaking the connection.
Anakin turned the Twilight away from the holding pattern and smoothly entered the onward lane.
"Jump one of twenty-one, coming up," he declared with mock enthusiasm and pushed on the hyperdrive lever.
The bureaucracy thankfully lessened considerably the deeper we got in the cluster, with only two delays hitting us at the Febrini and Carlania waypoints, where inspection craft stopped and scanned us very thoroughly. If we had not been logged as a Jedi craft in their systems, that would've included a boarding inspection. As it was, it took nearly another day of stop starts to finally reach orbit of Hapes itself.
Hapes was a typical temperate garden world. The standout feature of the system itself was a very strange trinary sun pair with orbital mechanics that gave me a headache to even contemplate and was distinctly unnatural. The end result being that Hapes never had night.
How the locals had adapted to that was quite interesting. They by now lacked the natural night vision of standard humans and had genengineered a second set of internal eyelids that acted as natural 'sunglasses' to cut out the extreme glare of certain times during the eternal day. Anakin and I had to make do with contact lenses that served the same function.
We already had landing coordinates on the planet and it was barely eight minutes from the hyperspace emergence till we broke into the atmosphere and headed directly towards an equatorial continent where the capital city of Ta'a Chume Dan was located on a coast.
It was only when we finally got into seeing the city with the naked eye that we realized our coordinates were not just to some nondescript landing bay at the starport.
We were being directed to land in the hangar bays of the Royal Star Home dreadnought, which was impressively landed directly in the coastal waters off the capital city.
"Okay, that I did not expect, and really makes me curious just what Master Yoda said in that note."
"I thought it would at least get us in the cluster, the Hapans are very stingy about who they let in their space," Anakin nodded.
"Twilight, this is Royal Star, come to a stop at ten kilometers and prepare for tractor beam capture."
"Understood Royal Star, will comply," I replied, after keying the radio.
Anakin followed the directions to the letter and the Twilight had barely begun hovering before the small freighter jolted and resonated with the on board dampeners enough to shake us in our seats.
"Powering down engines," Anakin announced, but I noticed he kept the repulsors hot. Clearly he wasn't in a trusting mood with regard to the tractor beam operator.
"Statement: These Hapans are very paranoid, master. Admiration: I approve."
HK was looking distinctly underarmed without his cannons, but he did have small hidden blasters built into his arms, along with his lightsabers secreted in foldout compartments in his legs.
"Have you brushed up on your protocol droid functions, HK?"
"Answer: Of course, master. As much as I wish to delete anything that could potentially facilitate the end of hostilities between parties, they are simply too useful in opening doors and even escalating hostilities… if used correctly."
It occasionally made me wonder just how many wars HK had started in the galaxy during his active periods. I knew better than to ask, thankfully.
Finally, Twilight was pulled into the maw of one of the Royal Star's hangar bays. Anakin switched the ship into its landing configuration and lowered the landing struts at just the right time, making it look like the ship was still being actively piloted under power.
The ramp lowered and I led the way off the ship, with Anakin behind me to my left, with HK on my right.
We were met by four women, three of which were very tall and strong, clad in the light-blue uniform of the Hapan Royal Guard. They were just a tad short of being the textbook definition of the old Earth legend of 'amazonian'. The fourth woman, in the lead, was much more 'feminine', shorter but her lithe, dancer's figure was no less physically toned. She was also in the figure flattering Guard outfit, but this was more in a bodysuit style. The lightsaber at her hip and her presence in the Force meant we were being met by a Hapan Jedi.
We exchanged Temple perfect bows of greeting. Anakin remained stoic and silent behind me.
"Welcome to Hapes, Jedi Tano," the Hapan greeted. "I am Royal Guard Commander Khal. It is a pleasure to receive visitors from the Jedi Council."
"It's a pleasure to be here Commander," I said pleasantly. "I am accompanied by my own master, Anakin Skywalker and my escort protocol droid, HK."
To my suprise, Khal turned to face Anakin and acknowledged him with only a nod. "We appreciate you adhering to our customs, Knight Skywalker, but it is really only necessary should you leave the Royal Home and venture into the capital city. Her majesty runs a household that is not strictly traditional and understands the ways of the greater galaxy."
"Oh, thanks for that, it'll make things easier I suppose," Anakin answered.
"Scan," Khal prompted one of her escorts. One of the large women stepped forward slightly and brandished a scanner towards HK briefly and showed the results to her commander. Her eyebrows shot into her short hairstyle in surprise. "Interesting, are you sure this isn't an assassin droid, Jedi Tano?"
"He can be many things," I shrugged, not bothering any denial.
"I see," Khal nodded. "It is to always remain by your side. If found alone anywhere on board it will be destroyed."
"Understood."
"Now, in brief, can you please explain why you are here?"
The news that we were there to stop the kidnapping of one of the potential Jedi younglings was not well received, which naturally led to the revelation that the entire list had been compromised. The news was dire enough that Commander Khal pushed herself into an emergency audience with the queen mother. Thankfully, we didn't have to appear before her as well. Khal knew her regent well enough to guess her reaction and would rather not expose foreign guests to that. Apparently the current queen had a bit of a temper and was not afraid to let loose that vitriol, no matter who was in front of her.
We were deposited in a waiting room adjoining Khal's office to wait and it took a few hours before she returned from her audience.
Khal's composure when she walked in had a distinct edginess to it that I could just barely spot.
"What's the news, Commander?" I asked with a slight knowing smile.
"The news is that you're to be assisted in any way possible to prevent the kidnapping and detain this bounty hunter. Custody will depend on any crimes he commits. If any Hapan citizen is harmed or killed by him, then he will remain in the cluster either in prison or get the death sentence. If nothing like that happens, he'll be released to the Jedi Council's custody as the queen understands full well that they'll want to know who his actual client is." Khal produced a code cylinder from a pocket and handed it over to me. "This contains an electronic writ from the queen, which essentially allows you to act as deputized law enforcement in the Hapan Cluster for the duration."
"Thank you. We'll use this only as necessary, on my word and honor as Jedi," I declared formally.
Khal nodded. "Good. Speaking as a Jedi, I hope you bring this bounty hunter to justice. Speaking as a Hapan… this alien better hope you succeed in catching him with no loss of life." Her green eyes shone with a deadly serious intent, which coming from a beautiful woman like that made it even worse.
Back in the Twilight, we left the Royal Star and parked the ship in a more convenient docking bay in the starport of the city. We used a bay usually reserved for law enforcement craft, to at least give some measure of privacy and separation from the common masses. I expected the dockmistress to throw some measure of fuss at us to prove everything, but the moment the code cylinder was read by her systems, it was as if an electric prod had been shoved up her spine. We were hurriedly cleared and sent on our way.
We walked into the city streets with me leading the way, as was custom. For this trip we made some further modifications to our wardrobe. The only armor I wore were my gauntlets and lower leg greaves, with combat boots and open Jedi robe. The rest was an outfit that had me feeling very exposed, so to speak. Brown skin tight leggings and a midriff baring top that looked more like a very brief 'wrap', that was keeping my chest supported and covered, but was somewhat thin and left very little to imagination. It was something that Aayla Secura would approve of and quite happily wear.
The point being was to emphasize and display my femininity despite being an 'alien'. It was also to make sure that Anakin didn't get any clearly unwanted advances. A Hapan man could generally walk around perfectly freely, no escort or chaperone necessary, but they would usually wear some visible token (an armband in this case) to indicate they were already married and not single. An unclaimed single man walking about without family in his presence, in Hapan society, that was like an antelope walking up to bunch of lionesses and asking if they were hungry.
Anakin, for his part, also had to make a few changes. He had to get rid of the armor on his shoulders and not wear his lightsaber. An armed man was also a distinct taboo in Hapan culture. His lightsaber was secured with a strap on my utility belt, in the small of my back. It would be easy enough for him to simply summon it to him with the Force in an emergency.
It seemed though, that despite our precautions, my exotic togruta looks were drawing eyes and attention. 'Aliens' were just not common enough a sight otherwise. The capital did have a foreign population of about just under five percent and the majority of those were human. My Jedi robe and openly carried lightsabers on my outer thighs was enough to make things click in most people's heads.
Walking through the crowds of pedestrians, I was starting to feel like I'd been dumped on the planet of the supermodels. I was not generally a vain person or interested at all in my looks or personal beauty. Only Togrutan city dwellers really had any notion of it and even among those the 'beauty industry' only existed for those who wanted to touch up or change their facial markings. The Jedi, naturally, didn't ascribe any value to superficial beauty either, as it was transitory and faded with time.
But damn, you didn't even have to spend ten minutes on this planet before you started feeling like you were a backwards hick with pimples and blotchy skin, even if you were notionally attractive or pretty according to everyone around you. Those old pirates sure did have an eye for the women when they went on their raids. It was also further reinforced by Hapan culture itself. If anyone was born deformed or blemished in any way, it was considered a fate worse than death. Which was why genetic tech was so rampant among them.
It was again just our luck though that we were 'accosted' in the street leading up to our destination.
These days, I was about 1,65 meters tall. The woman who now stood blocking my way had my height beat by her chest and head and was looking down on me with a sneering expression that had no right still looking so good on her face. Her outfit, a bodysuit with a flaring partial skirt that almost reminded me of Quorra's outfit from Tron Legacy, showed off every bit of her perfect figure.
I was pushing into my presience for the results of this little confrontation. Trying to figure out what had prompted it. In this case, I didn't even need to try to delve into her mind.
She tried to speak but…
"Let me stop you right there." I spoke my words with the power of Force suggestion behind it. Then raised the code cylinder and turned it to show the Royal Seal.
The Force had put enough of a pause into her stride for her to see it and recognize it. It was rather amusing to see someone so imposing wilt and retreat so quickly.
"Humble apologies," the woman muttered and hurried off.
The Hapans who had witnessed the aborted confrontation were rather amused.
"Snips?" Anakin whispered.
"She wanted to challenge me for… a fling with you, so to speak. I'm visibly not old enough for you and alien, so despite me being in an 'ownership' position of you, she assumed she could bully her way through me. I also suspect she's part of the In-sa subculture."
Which was a minority Hapan subculture where women engaged in 'walking marriages'. Men were generally second class citizens on Hapes, but they were still well treated and had their general sentient rights as guaranteed under overarching Republic law. The In-sa, however, treated men as accessories on two legs at best. They brought their sexual partners home, had their fling and the man was sent on his way, any children that resulted was raised in the mother's house with the help of her brothers and the rest of the community.
Finally, we arrived at our destination. A rather palatial estate belonging to Ta'a Gray, senior member of the executive board of the Hapan Shipbuilding Consortium.
The visible security I saw alone was going to be a tough nut to crack for Bane; imposing guards, high walls, sensors and what definitely had to be automated turrets, though they weren't firing anything lethal that I could sense, it was definitely something exotic that I had no basis for comparison to.
The guard in the booth next to the main gate, a woman of over two meters in height that somehow combined being hot and utterly imposing in one package, didn't blink an eye at our approach, not even when we showed her our credentials. She had the poker face of a bouncer down pat.
We were soon escorted in with another pair of guards into the mansion itself, before being directed to sit in a lounge that was overflowing with so much wealth in its furnishings that it made me feel like a pauper playing with loose change on the galactic stock market.
The sofa I put my butt into, intelligently molded to my body. It felt like a little slice of heaven and clouds had just embraced me. Anakin and HK for their part, stayed standing behind me and he wouldn't sit down until the mistress of the house allowed it.
A man wearing the household armband of the Gray family entered, with a tray of refreshments and snacks. Anyone looking at him wouldn't consider him 'weak' at all. He stood at 1.9 meters tall, impressively muscled and showing it off, as he was only wearing very tight shorts that looked like he could jump into a swimming pool at any moment.
"Please, enjoy at your leisure," he said easily with a smile at me, putting the tray down and promptly left. I tried very hard not to stare at his posterior and muscled back as he went. Grief, these Hapans were crazy. Even the men looked like they could be at home on any of those cheesy romance novels of old Earth or Playgirl. As strong as that guy had been, the ancient Hapan women had made sure their daughters were stronger through genetic tinkering.
I really wasn't hungry at the moment, so just made do with the glass of water. Though some of the sweet confections were incredibly tempting.
'I guess we can see why my holocron self chose this place,' Anakin thought to me. 'I wish Bane luck getting through this security.'
'Nothing is perfect, Skyguy. The Hapans do have a criminal underworld, which he can get help from and he can use a holosheathe to pass himself off as female.'
A woman entered at this point, who I immediately recognized as our main contact. She had long blonde hair and was wearing a long flowing white, slightly sheer dress that clinged to her generous curves in just that perfect enticing way. The only hint of her actual advanced age of just over sixty years old was around her eyes, which showed that she did a lot of frowning in her life.
I stood immediately and bowed. "Greetings Mistress Gray, I'm Jedi Padawan Ahsoka Tano, my master, Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker and our droid HK."
She acknowledged me with just a slight bow of her own head, "Welcome to my home, Padawan Tano. Given a woman of my position, I have little time and many demands on it. We'll get straight to the point. My youngest was identified as Force sensitive and potentially promised to your Order, I can assume you're here about her?"
"Correct, mistress. Your daughter is still too young, but there's been a security breach in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant."
Gray narrowed her eyes in thought. "The bombing?"
"Yes, the galactic media is playing it off as a terrorist attack by the CIS, and it does look that way, but it was simply a distraction to hide the theft of certain information."
It didn't take a woman of Gray's caliber long to connect the dots. "They have the fact that my Tenel is Force-sensitive, don't they?"
"Yes, mistress. The Jedi Council has divined and combined with hard evidence, come to the conclusion that your daughter is being targeted by a duros bounty hunter, Cad Bane, for kidnapping."
Her eyes narrowed at me severely. "That you made the journey all the way here in person… and carry the blessing of the queen mother… You and the Jedi don't think that my own security or Hapan security in general can stop Bane?"
"Not with the resources he has at his disposal," I nodded. "The CIS lost a fleet of six Munificents to secure this information from the Jedi protecting it and has given Bane a newly developed rogue-class heavy fighter with full cloaking abilities."
"Cloak on something as small as a heavy fighter?" Gray barely stopped herself from losing her composure and gaping at me. "I'm sorry, Padawan. But if it wasn't for the Jedi reputation of truthfulness and the Hapan Royal seal on your person, I'd say this was a practical joke."
"I wish it was a joke, mistress. The Jedi Council is investigating the possibility on whether we will be seeing cloaked fighters in greater numbers from the CIS, but the fact remains that Bane will be able to penetrate Hapan space easily. The Hapan Navy will try to intercept, but the difficulties are just too great."
Gray waved me off. "Yes, I understand full well, padawan." She sighed and stared off into the distance, looking troubled and deep in thought, before finally nodding. "Very well. I see your intent. You wish to use my home as a trap for this duros beast?"
"That is the humble request of myself and the Jedi Council, mistress."
"I shall grant this, in the interest of my daughter's security and every other child who is on that list. I trust that the Jedi will take the appropriate steps for the others too?"
"Every resource that can be spared," I confirmed.
She scoffed, "Which can't be much, given the war."
"Everything that can be done, is being done, mistress."
Gray nodded, then promptly asked, "Where are you staying?"
"We intend to retire to our ship and remain out of sight as much as possible. Our open approach to you was done in the interest of speed. Word of our presence to your local enemies and the criminal underworld is not… ideal if we want Bane to fall into our trap."
She walked in the upper classes of Hapan society, where deniable assassination and struggles for power was a common thing.
Again she waved me off, "I'm an old hand at the game, padawan. You let me worry about my backyard. I offer you the hospitality of my home. I'll not have anyone who has come so far to protect my daughter be sleeping in whatever garbage scow you arrived in."
In a burst of my first proper bout of feminine intuition as I stared at this woman, taking in her eyes, posture and body language, I knew it would not be wise to deny her. A quick check with my prescience also confirmed… I immediately answered with a bow of my head, "Thank you, Mistress. We would be honored."
Gray clapped her hands twice and the man in the speedo was back within barely a few seconds, "Yes, dear?"
"Subro, go and prepare two guest rooms in the south wing."
"At once, my heart."
Her husband left just as promptly. It was a struggle once again not to stare.
Gray immediately noticed and smirked at me knowingly. "Now, I'll go call in a few favors with the Navy. My chief bodyguard will call on you within the hour and you can begin coordinating to set this little trap."
Four days staying in a Hapan mansion of opulence might seem like most people's idea of a vacation. It most decidedly wasn't when you knew that your mere presence was most likely being used in scheming power plays. Far from upsetting her own plans of high-society and murder, Mistress Gray slotted us into them with masterful ease. My prescience only allowed me to catch the edges and periphery of those plans, but it was enough for me to conclude that if only she were Force sensitive, she would be able to give even Palpatine a run for his money.
Thankfully, we did receive word from the Hapan Navy on the second day of our stay that Bane's fighter had been briefly detected in a transition of hyperspace at the border, so we had a timeline for when we'd have to be ready.
HK had been moaning my montrals off about finding something productive to do, so in what was probably a very unwise move, I put the droid at Mistress Gray's disposal temporarily. She immediately found a use for its singular talents, which I definitely didn't want to know about and HK was practically gleeful.
Her plan was to leave a gap in her security that Bane would walk right through. The trick was in not making it too obvious and yet at the same time helping him along.
It was clear that she didn't get to her position and age without being a master manipulator and schemer. It left me feeling like I could most definitely try to establish a secure method of contact… just so I could learn from her. I was flying by the seat of my pants against Palpatine and any help in this department I couldn't afford to say no to.
At last though, I took my place in a hidden safe room that looked like it could survive everything short of a direct strike of a nuke. Its primary and only entrance was through the baby room. It definitely spoke volumes about how much Mistress Gray valued her daughter.
The daughter in question, Tenel Gray, was barely three years old and a cute precious handful to her parents. It was rather amazing how after a few days, Mistress Gray even let me play with and entertain the little tyke, which I mostly did with a few displays of telekinesis with the infant's toys.
Bane began his infiltration of the mansion by waylaying one of the guards, killing her and taking on her form via holosheathe.
The amazing thing was, that the guard in question was someone Mistress Gray had been planning to carefully dispose of for months anyway, as she was a spy for a rival. The mechanics of that manipulation was tough to wrap my head around. She would've had to arrange for that one guard to somehow catch Bane's eye as a weak link in the security force.
From there it was rather straightforward for the bounty hunter. His every movement was carefully watched as he did his own recon of the mansion. Here I had to give him credit as he never let his body language show any unfamiliarity with where he was going. Seemingly going on a patrol route through the mansion.
This eventually led him to identify the baby room and he never let it show, keeping in character and walking straight on.
His patience did wear out eventually, he wasn't a Jedi, and soon the baby room door opened and the disguised bounty hunter snuck in.
I took that as my cue and waited until the moment when Bane lowered his head to look down into the crib.
The baby room's furniture had been carefully adjusted to lure him to a corner and he had his back to the safe room door.
This let me easily emerge without being spotted and cloaking my footsteps with the Force, I silently moved forward.
Bane seemed to rummage around in the crib for a bit, then was visibly surprised when all he came back with was a baby doll.
My lightsabers bursting into life behind him was clearly not what he wanted to hear. He turned his head around slowly.
"Ah, I guess it was inevitable that you Jedi would sense where I was going, after the near miss on Mon Cal," he mused. It was really weird to hear the deep duros voice coming from the form of the female spy. "Such a shame about that poor little child. I really don't envy what's going to happen to them…"
In a blur of movement he shot two darts from his gauntlets that were targeted right at my hands. They had to be some form of smart munition, because I don't care how good a gunslinger you were; two small targets at different angles with a launcher from each gauntlet and you shot from the hip and still hit your targets perfectly. The darts stabbed into my fingers even as I tried to move my hands out of the way and let loose their charge.
Bane had drawn his blasters in the same movement and shot straight at my chest as fast as his fingers could squeeze and his blasters could cycle.
He was now very surprised to see me able to deflect every shot despite the electric shock and I was feeling a bit annoyed by all the trouble and expense this bounty hunter had caused.
Which probably explained why I angled two deflections to hit him right in his knees.
He screamed in pain and collapsed onto the floor, spilling his guns to slide across the smooth wooden floor as he tried to arrest his own fall.
I carefully walked forward, keeping my blades ready, just in case he was playing possum.
Naturally, he tried something.
Impressively burying his pain, he whirled on the ground from his prone position and tried to shoot me point blank with an integrated flamethrower from his gauntlet.
I twisted and whirled, using TK and discarding my Jedi robe to absorb and redirect the flames away from me.
"Enough!"
Bane was abruptly in the air, his arms and legs spread eagled and straining.
He screamed in pain as his knee wounds were aggravated and I proceeded to sense and crush every bit of technology the duros had on his person.
The holosheathe was the first to go, and his true form was revealed. The gauntlets and his jet boots were ripped off… his own utility belt snapped and was flung away.
I wasn't in the mood for more fancy hidden tricks and so even went further, stripping the duros to his underwear.
"Really, padawan?"
Anakin stood at the door to the baby room with a pained look on his face.
"Yes master?"
"A little excessive, don't you think?"
"Not when it comes to this bachu*," I shook my head.
Anakin raised his hand and shot Bane with a tranquilizer gun, specifically formulated for a duros of his rough weight. It didn't take long for the hunter's pained eyes to droop and fall closed.
"You can let him down, Snips. I've received word that the Resolute is waiting for us at Taanab."
I dropped the bounty hunter unceremoniously to the floor, extinguishing and holstering my lightsabers. This allowed me to pick at the electro-darts in my hands only to stop. "Bastard barbed the prongs."
"We'll have a doctor look at that right away, my dear," Mistress Gray entered the room with her daughter on her hip.
My mood was instantly lifted at seeing the little girl and I tickled her cheek. "Sorry, little one, can't play now. Ahsoka has an ouchy."
She pouted cutely at me in response.
In the end, I suppose, seeing her safe made it all worth it.
*bachu - roughly translates to 'shit/fart' in Togruti
A/N PS: Hope you enjoyed. If you'd like to see me my first attempt at all digital art - of the poster in Ahsoka's quarters on board the Resolute - consider giving the Patreon a visit.
Chapter 20
Standing in the circular Jedi High Council chamber surrounded on every side by the Masters was generally seen by almost everyone in the rank and file of the Jedi Order as a time to be quite nervous. It generally meant you had done something to merit taking up a slot of the precious time allocated to High Council sessions, which often, in this day and age, did not bode well. In pre-war times, an average Jedi could expect to find themselves in front of the Council on only a handful of occasions during their lifetime. I had long since made my peace that as an apprentice to Anakin, I would probably find myself facing the Council in full session dozens of times before I even reached knighthood… if I reached knighthood.
Making this appearance most memorable was that we were being figuratively raked over the coals for our failure. A failure that wasn't even real. There was also the minor detail that I felt rather naked without my full armor at the moment. I was dressed in a new light brown top, with brown pants, my combat boots, lower leg armor and completing the outfit was the more traditional outer brown Jedi robes.
"It is most unfortunate that Bane managed to escape," Obi-Wan declared from the seat to the right of Yoda. "Knight Skywalker, can you enlighten this Council on how a bounty hunter managed to remain undetected aboard the Thunderbolt for so long?"
I could tell immediately that Anakin despised every second of the charade but he kept his outward composure very well.
"Simply put, he kept his helmet on, spoke only when spoken to and kept his answers brief. The speech distortion of the helmet did the rest. The injury he sustained was also used as an excuse for any odd behavior. Bane also clearly has a high degree of technical prowess, which is how he affected his escape. He rewired and reprogrammed an aft escape pod in the engineering spaces. Then he timed it perfectly to launch just before the jump onward from the Hosnian Prime waypoint. Sensor records delivered from Hosnian, confirms he piloted the escape pod to rendezvous with a Rogue-class starfighter, which proceeded to disappear from sensors in a way that in my opinion can only mean it's equipped with a cloaking device."
I could feel how that little fact rippled through the Council, even as every master kept their supremely perfect poker faces. The implications that the CIS could build a starfighter with a cloaking device was staggering. It meant either the CIS could produce a compact reactor strong enough to power the more common hibridium cloaking device or something entirely new was in the picture. I knew of the more rare stygium crystal cloaking device, which was an insanely expensive form of cloaking that was used on the personal ship of Darth Sidious, the Scimitar.
The idea that the dark lord would give Cad Bane a stygium cloaking device was hard to fathom. It really showed the level of attachment to material wealth that Sidius had, that he was willing to throw that much money at Cad Bane.
Yoda glanced at Obi-Wan and then Mace Windu.
Windu closed his eyes for a moment, then said, "Send me the data, I will look it over myself. We must now decide on how to proceed. Bane now has access to the names and locations of the most Force sensitive children in the Republic. Determining how he will use the information will be crucial in potentially stopping him."
"Inflict devastating damage on the future Jedi Order, he could."
"Everything seems to suggest that Bane's employers are the Separatists," Anakin declared carefully.
"There are thousands of children on that list and to determine which he would go after first is problematic to say the least," Obi-Wan mused.
"Small chance there is, through the Force, the Council may detect them." Yoda pointedly looked at all the Masters physically present, who in turn nodded their assent. This was so typical of Yoda's style of 'command'. You could almost never say he issued an actual 'order'. For centuries he led by usually trying to generate a consensus. He was so experienced that he could generally lead most of the shorter lived and younger masters by the nose and where he wanted them. Rarely did he put his 'foot' down in his authority as Grand Master. The Clone War, however, was seeing him rather strained to maintain his typical approach. Also unspoken but understood by all of them was that this would involve trying to delve into the future through the Shroud. "Knight Skywalker, you joining the Council in this effort, essential it is. You who know the feeling of Bane in the Force."
"Understood, Master Yoda."
Clearly the Grandmaster was hoping Anakin's unprecedented strength in the Force, combined with his own and the other masters would be enough to hopefully succeed in the endeavor.
"Council, recess for one hour to prepare, meet in private mediation hall we will."
The assembled masters bowed in their chairs and stood to leave.
"Padawan," Anakin softly prompted me, with intent.
I spoke out of the corner of my mouth, "Yes, master, I'll keep working on the armor and make sure HK isn't plotting some extravagant assassination of the council or the senate."
"Please do so," he said dryly, rolling his eyes.
Yoda, feeling most of his over eight centuries of life, retired to his own quarters as he always did after the morning session of the Council was over. It wasn't far from the central spire and while he could easily walk through the halls of the Temple all day with the aid of his gimer stick, he knew his old body would find many ways to punish him afterwards for it.
His current quarters were not special in any way. Most would think the grandmaster of the Jedi Order merited at least a significant amount of personal space to enjoy, but the truth was there had never existed such special quarters in the Temple for the leader of the Jedi. He had no more and no less than any Master, slightly less than fifty square meters.
He had inhabited this particular space for the last sixty years and the time would soon come when he would move to another side of the Temple, just to keep things fresh. It was also to clean the myriad of momentos that accumulated as the decades passed. Nothing fancy or valuable in a monetary sense, but just small keepsakes that served as a touchstone for a memory. Also unique was some of the furniture that was resized to accommodate his small stature, though very little in the place was really inconvenient with the Force as your ally.
He settled on his meditation cushion, putting the gimer stick to one side before reaching into a pocket of his robes.
His holocron didn't wait at all for any prodding before rising into the air out his grasp and hovering at eye level.
Yoda gave the device a gimlet eyed stare.
A small holographic version of himself quickly appeared standing on the holocron and just made a beckoning gesture before vanishing.
He closed his eyes and with centuries of practice behind him, embraced the Force and pushed his awareness directly into the holocron.
When Yoda opened his eyes next it was to regard a very different place.
Many masters over the millenia had written and published into the Jedi Archives on the mysteries of the holocron. Each one having a different theory or unique perspective on the tiny marvels that represented the most commonly known example of Force based technology in the galaxy. The major theory that most gravitated to was that the holocron was a 'Force-empowered' copy of the mind of the Jedi who had created the device. Others went so far as to say it was an infusion of the very soul of a Jedi into a material structure that would persist beyond death.
Just as unique was the experiences of the Jedi who had created a holocron. None of them reported the exact same thing during the process. There was always an element of uniqueness during the construction, something which Yoda believed was a direct provenance of the Force itself. Just as an adept's Trial of the Mirror on Illum was unique to find their first kyber crystal, so was the journey to create a holocron.
To Yoda's knowledge, very few of those old masters had ever reported that their holocrons could pull their creator into an entirely different 'world', a world composed out of the mind alone.
This 'world' was a seemingly infinite dimension of black stone floor that radiated in every direction, with an equally black starless sky. It was not a place of darkness, however, as a soft white light seemed to radiate from the floor and its many small cracks.
His 'mirror-self' didn't seem to be in a playful mood today as he was seated merely a few meters away staring up at the infinite black sky.
Yoda immediately spotted what his holocron-self was looking at.
Up in the distance, seemingly in orbit of the infinite black floor, was the homeworld.
"Homesick, are we?" Yoda chuckled as he sat down next to the embodiment of the holocron personality.
"I think we can dispense with the Basic in here," holo-Yoda spoke in their native tongue.
"If you wish," Yoda replied in the same language, easily slipping into it.
"No, I am not homesick, I'm just thinking about the message we received from the homeworld. The request to send another young one for training."
"You are having second thoughts about it?"
Holo-Yoda gave his flesh and blood counterpart a flat stare, "After what I have learned on my journey with young Ahsoka… yes. The Clone War alone should've given us pause."
"You discovered something?"
Unraveling the mystery that the young togruta represented was a prospect that had been gnawing at his mind for nearly a decade. In all his time alive and for all his talents in the Force, his ability to perceive the history of a soul was perhaps the one he relied on most and treasured.
Ahsoka had stood out from the moment she had stepped foot into the Temple as a youngling. Shining like a beacon of insatiable curiosity and eager to study the ways of the Force, but where most young ones eventually lose that drive and fall into the typical paths, she kept going and never where you would expect. She had her childish foibles as most did, but always at some point would a mote of light shine through, one that spoke to Yoda - that said that this was not some mere youngling.
Her accomplishments as initiate and adept quickly began to bring her to the attention of many masters. Rare was the Jedi Master who invented a new technique in the Force, almost unheard of for an adept to bring three such discoveries to the Order, now with a fourth as a padawan.
Many masters had petitioned to take her on as a padawan, but always it had felt in the Force that the correct match for her had not yet arrived.
Then the Clone War fell on the galaxy and the name of the Chosen One was submitted by young Kenobi for taking an apprentice.
The match seemed like a cog in the wheel of the Force, everything had just come together perfectly. Quite a few masters of the Council objected, stating that Skywalker was too new to his own knighthood to be expected to also manage the critical training of a padawan, especially one so gifted as Ahsoka.
Yoda used his rarely exercised authority as grandmaster to push it through though.
"Something? Yes, but no true answers, only more questions," his holo-self replied with frustrating vagueness. "Firstly, she knows the true enemy we face."
Very few things in the galaxy could truly shock Yoda at this point, after so much life experience behind him. This came very close. That the small bundle of potential and joy that had entered the Temple twelve years ago, carried this burden on her shoulders… it was just utterly wrong.
"How?"
"I don't know and I did ask, her answer in itself was revealing, 'That's too dangerous to answer,' she said."
Yoda nodded, his mind racing with the implications. "So her requesting the holocron, she needed help in fighting Sidious?"
"Yes, secret help, something I will not elaborate on, even to you."
"My own holocron keeping secrets from me," Yoda scoffed in annoyance.
"Yes, you of all people know that fighting young Dooku's master is not a straightforward exercise. It's best this information is… compartmentalized."
"The ways of deceit and shadow are not the Jedi way," Yoda tapped his cane to emphasize every word as he spoke sternly.
His holo-self had the gall to suddenly laugh! Had Ahsoka managed to somehow corrupt the thing? "Oh, sorry, I said the exact same thing to her. Suffice it to say, she convinced me otherwise soon enough."
"What could she possibly have said that would…" Yoda cut himself off in frustration as he recognized the words about to spill out of his mouth.
His mirror laughed again, "A bit of arrogance there, careful. After all, what could such a youngling possibly say or possess that could shake the foundations and change the mind of the old, powerful and wise, Master Yoda?"
Yoda harrumphed, "Should scrap you and start over."
Holo-Yoda shook a clawed finger at him, "A bit late for that, you know you're only a few decades away from becoming one with the Force. Building me is not something done in an afternoon. Suffice it to say, you know that power comes in many varied forms and she is powerful in ways that I think even she doesn't know yet. I will say this, my flesh and blood self, the Sith have evolved. Their blades in the dark are many. The battle must not just be fought in the light but in the darkness as well." The holocron sighed heavily, "The Sith knows us too well. Long have they studied us and prepared. They embraced their strength in secrecy and know in the process of clinging so hard to our dogma, that we would never even dream of meeting them in the darkness with our own blades."
"The Jedi Shadows?" Yoda asked with realization on where his mirror was going.
"Yes, if we are to truly defeat the enemy, the Shadow's way we must embrace. Which is why, you need to maintain a shield of ignorance, so to speak."
"You…"
"Yes, I'm telling you to act in contradiction to the Jedi Code."
"How can you possibly justify…"
"The code has become chains that are weighing the Jedi Order down, causing us to stagnate," Holo-Yoda poked his own gimer stick into the ground to emphasize his points. "Something the enemy has already been taking advantage of for hundreds of years. Already you see the living Force itself beginning a movement for reformation among the young of the Order with the revised code. Now… you must act as the enemy expects. This will give me and others the breathing room and time to move against him in ways he does not expect."
Yoda recognized his own immense anger in that moment and with the ages of experience behind him, cast it off and began tracing its source. Only his own holocron was still able to bring these kinds of emotions out, which was why he preferred to only rarely interact with the thing.
The sheer idea of casting the code aside that had served the Order so well for hundreds of years, through the horrors of the old Sith Wars, was ridiculous, an anathema. Master Billaba's revision was generally seen as misguided by the older masters, a reflexive knee-jerk response due to the trying times of the Clone War. The idea that everything he had done for the past hundreds of years was a mistake, that it had been playing directly into the old enemy's hands was… difficult to even contemplate.
Yet, even the standard Jedi Code railed against that. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. Refusing to see, to even think about your own possible error or arrogance when pointed out to you.
Never had he imagined that he would be fighting a battle like this on this morning. That he would be facing a Trail of the Mirror like an adept, but only a hundred times monstrously worse. The mirror challenged you in ways you never expected, it exposed you and removed masks painstakingly built to reveal the full naked truth that you wished to hide from even yourself. Amazing, that even at almost 900 years old, Yoda could still be made to feel like a youngling learning at the slithery tail of Master Del Gormo.
Finally, Yoda looked to his artificial Force counterpart, the anger understood and banished, "I assume there is a plan in the works with the youngling list then?"
"You may safely assume just that," holo-Yoda nodded.
"What else is needed?"
"Simply continue the path you've set already, find the children that Bane has targeted with the Council, retrieve the holocron, fight in the light and when young Ahsoka asks for me again, deliver me secretly without hesitation. The time will come when all things inevitably come into knowledge. The Shroud of the Dark Side will fall, just as surely as a sun rises."
"Knows this, she does?" Yoda grinned, teasingly falling into Basic.
"That, my counterpart, you may speculate on in the deepest corner of your mind only and never speak of."
"Understood," Yoda nodded and with a twist of will, the world of the holocron vanished.
He was back in his quarters and the holocron slowly lowered itself, its brightness faded into dormancy.
"Begin, we will."
A few twists with the hydrospanner and the Force for the more delicate work, "How's that?"
"Diagnostic: Knee joint articulation has been improved by four percent and back into acceptable parameters, master."
I stood up and regarded HK with an appraising eye, "Good."
Any further conversation was interrupted by Anakin entering through the door to his own quarters with a figurative cloud of worry over his head.
"Oh, Skyguy, how'd things go with the council?"
"Well, we were successful, somewhat. Get your gear and I'll explain."
This was done very quickly, given that most of my stuff could fit in a large duffle bag and a single chest. Anakin was an even lighter traveler and we were all heading down to the main Temple hangars within ten minutes.
"The Council determined four children were being targeted. One was on Mon Cal, Obi-wan is heading there. The others are on Kashyyyk, Chironia and lastly our target, Hapes."
I nearly stumbled in surprise at the list of planets and only just stopped myself from asking a very stupid question, given our location.
Down in the hangars I immediately spotted the craft we were intending to take for the journey. The Twilight looked quite ugly compared to all the other sleek and newer vessels being worked on around her. In fact, it didn't even look like she'd gotten any sort of exterior cleaning in quite a while. The rugged look was something of a camouflage all on its own, I suppose.
The interior was a different story, and I immediately spotted that the cargo space of the light freighter was distinctly lessened. Now occupied by machinery and what looked to be a supplementary reactor for the ship.
The reason for that was apparent as I sat down at the co-pilot station and brought up a ship diagnostic.
"Master, are you kidding me?" I asked Anakin with astonishment as he sat down next to me and began the pre-flight.
"About what, Snips?"
"You managed to get the Twilight's hyperdrive to a 1.0 rating."
"Yes, after a full overhaul with the extra power plant installed, which also neatly gives our shields much more staying power when we're not in hyperspace."
"This has been tested?"
Anakin just kept pushing buttons and flicking switches, "Of course… in the simulator."
I stared at him for a moment before just focusing on my part of the pre-flight checklist and began tapping buttons and switches, "Fine, let's just go."
"Commentary: Master, your master's technical prowess is quite significant. Query: However, should his potentially ill-advised tinkering result in us being stranded in another dimension, can I wring his meatbag neck?"
I gave Anakin a brilliant mischievous smile, "Certainly, HK."
He rolled his eyes and keyed the radio, "Temple Control, this is Twilight, requesting departure vectors and hyperspace exit corridor to the Perlimian Trade Route."
"Temple Control to Twilight, clearance granted for takeoff, transmitting vectors for hyperspace departure, ETE, forty three minutes."
"Thank you, Control. Twilight out."
A few seconds later my main MFD screen chirped and flickered. "Got our course, Master, uploading."
"Got it," he pulled back on the control yoke and Twilight smoothly lifted into the air, moving forward slightly and twisting to bring the nose to bear on the hangar exit. Anakin pushed the throttle and the ship smoothly emerged into the open space around the Jedi Temple.
As usual, the estimate for our hyperspace transit was wildly optimistic. It took nearly double the estimated time to navigate to the appropriate point in space before Anakin pulled back on the hyperdrive motivator control and the ship shot off into hyperspace.
It would take three days in hyperspace to travel to the Taanab system along the Perlimian hyper lane. Taanab was one of only two known gateway systems into the Hapes Cluster and was the closest entrance from Coruscant.
The journey was mostly spent getting ourselves up to speed on the Hapan worlds and its society. Not to mention pondering just what Anakin's holocron was thinking in giving Bane these specific targets to go after.
Mon Cal and Kashyyyk were easy to understand, as both worlds would give Bane a very tough time easily moving around. The former being an ocean world and the latter, the homeworld of the wookiees. If Bane was caught snooping around a wookiee nursery, his death would be extremely unpleasant to say the least and using a holosheathe to impersonate a wookiee would require stilts. Learning to walk like the hairy giants was problematic at best and even if you could, your smell would give you away too.
Chironia was a mystery though. It required a database search for me to even have a clue on the planet at all. Chironians were the closest thing you could see in the Corusca galaxy to the old Earth legend of the centaur. A being with six limbs, arranged in a rough humanoid form for the upper part and a smooth transition to a lower body for the remaining four limbs, which was generally used for locomotion. About the only reason really we could see here was that it would be impossible for Bane to use a holosheathe to blend in.
There was also the exercise of reasoning Bane's potential movements simply by looking at the travel times between the four locations, the routes available, the speed of his transport and how long it would take to arrange and plan the kidnappings at each location. Also ideally, we would've sent Jedi to Kashyyyk and Chironia, but the Temple bombing in combination with the galaxy spanning war was straining things considerably as the list of available and capable people that could be sent was quite small now.
"I see no other way around this," Anakin chucked a datapad onto the small dinner table in the Twilight's equally small galley section. "You're going to have to take the lead on this, Snips. I'll be lucky if the Hapans even speak to me."
I could only nod as I studied the Jedi Archives' notes on interacting with the Hapans.
This was due to the fact that Hapan society, congregated in the dense cluster of 63 inhabited worlds, were strictly matriarchal.
The Hapans were descendants of an ancient pirate group, known as the Lorell Raiders, that had used the isolated nature of the Hapan Cluster as an easily defensible base to raid out into the galaxy with. As with most pirates, they raided and plundered, including finding the most beautiful women to forcibly take from the worlds they raided. The women were all brought back to the cluster, where they became concubines to the pirate lords. They would stay on Hapes itself to raise the children they gave birth to, whilst their pirate 'husbands' would go out again and again to bring new plunder and capture more women.
This all changed though, roughly 4000 years ago when the Jedi of the time ambushed and were forced to kill the Lorell Raiders to the last man when they tried to extend their raids into Republic space.
The women left behind, now suddenly free, took control of the Hapan Cluster and totally forgotten about by the greater galaxy, they vowed that men would never rule over them again. This would eventually give birth to the Hapan Consortium, which ruled over the cluster in the form a hereditary monarchy always passed down to the next daughter in line to the throne.
The first queen mother ordered that their borders be closed and for many thousands of years that was the status quo, until a few decades after the Ruusan Reformation. Then the Hapan society reopened themselves to the galaxy and it wasn't long until they joined the Republic in the most loose fashion possible. Sending only a representative to Coruscant and not even bothering to begin the centuries long process of petitioning for a senate seat.
The opening of the cluster was brought about by what was seen as a very liberal queen mother, who wanted to bring the wonders of the cluster to the galaxy and engage in very limited trade of goods and knowledge. The most significant of which was their exotic starship technology, genetic technology and hapan gems.
The Jedi Order's relationship with the Hapans though was generally positive.
The majority of Hapans viewed the Order with favor, seeing as the Jedi were responsible for their ancestral mother's freedom and their society being able to develop in the first place. The unfortunate minority opinion that existed, stemming most likely from the ancient concubines who still wanted to see their pirate husbands return, was that the Jedi were child-stealing butchers. Hardly something that had any foundations in logic, but that was sentient nature for you.
The queen mother by tradition also allowed a number of Jedi foundling missions to occur every generation. Any Hapan Jedi successfully trained to knighthood would see them spend ten years in the greater galaxy, after which they were obliged to return to the Hapan Cluster to serve there for another ten years. The Hapan Jedi were under the direct authority of the queen mother during this time and it was generally known that they were employed as bodyguards and truthsayers, occasionally being empowered as law enforcement in the greater cluster.
"We're also going to need support from the Hapan authorities, master, no way we can do this quietly given who our youngling is."
Anakin nodded, "Just our luck that the potential kidnap victim is the daughter of a senior executive in the consortium."
"What would be the best approach? Try and get an audience with the queen mother or try for a lower hanging fruit?"
"We don't have time to wade through bureaucracy, Snips. We go straight for the queen, even if she doesn't have time for us, we'll get passed down until someone can see us. Master Yoda's diplomatic note can hopefully open the way far enough."
"Our contingency plan if the diplomatic approach doesn't work?"
"We'll go straight to the parents and work from there."
A warning chime echoed through the small galley, giving a two minute warning on the approaching hyperspace destination.
We were ready and strapped in behind our stations in the cockpit before Anakin pulled back on the hyperdrive lever.
The tunnel of hyperspace seemed to shatter and resolve into streaks of stars as we emerged from the dimension and settled into the typical pinpricks of a starfield around us. The main difference now, was that ahead of us was the distant agglomeration of stars packed together in a distinct clump - the Hapan Cluster. It was just a visual illusion of distance - the cluster was still over 2000 light years away from the Taanab system and the Hapans laid claim to 500 light years of space as their sovereign territory in that cluster.
Protecting the main hyperspace lane entry to Hapes was something that most people would be forgiven for thinking was a space station.
It had elegant curving lines that began as a circle from above then tapered to five distinct points, with a very aesthetic hull that reflected the light of the Taanab star in a manner that just made you feel you could stare at the thing all day and not get bored. Along each of the five spines, was featured prominently the Hapan royal family crest, a circle surrounding a sixteen point radiant star.
A very cursory passive scan also revealed that far from being a customs station, this was a fully fledged starship, with twenty four sublight engines hidden cunningly from view along the interior ring of the ship, with a hyperspace engine in each of the spines. Similarly hidden behind almost seamless panels all along the hull spines were banks of laser, turbolaser, ion cannons and tractor beam projectors. It also featured a series of hangar bays in the lower central hull that had a constant flow of traffic, mostly custom patrol boats and the occasional fighter escort.
This was the Hapan Star Home class, that was a dreadnought in all but name.
No one really knew just how many of these the Hapans had. Only four had been independently verified and which they admitted to. Two of which stood guard over the entrances of the cluster, with the third being the Hapan royal family's personal ship and the fourth being a backup.
"Freighter Twilight, this is Eternity control, we have you on our scopes now. Please state your intentions and business."
The female voice over the radio was both pleasant to hear, stern and bored.
Anakin didn't answer via voice and sent through authorizations of the Jedi Council and a text only diplomatic message from Yoda appended to it.
"Received Twilight, stand by. Proceed to holding pattern, one tau, nine, eight. Transmitting."
He flew the ship as instructed and we waited. We were trying to enter as quietly as we could without appearing as smugglers to the authorities. Bane with his cloaked fighter could enter the cluster without the Hapans really knowing. He'd only have to drop his cloak right before he entered hyperspace and there would be no time for the Hapans to react. Hopefully, this meant that Bane wouldn't bother to go through the motions of trying to suss out local intelligence, such as whether the Jedi were already waiting for him at his target.
"Wonder how far this alone will get us up the food chain?" I wondered.
"High enough that we can do our job, hopefully," Anakin answered. "We have 21 waypoints in the cluster before we even reach Hapes itself."
The wait continued for nearly forty-two minutes before the reply came back.
"Apologies for the delay, Twilight. You're cleared to proceed into the cluster and a course to Hapes is being transmitted to you. Do not deviate from this flight plan."
Anakin gestured to me, then to the radio, pointedly.
"Understood, Eternity. Thank you. Twilight out."
"Safe journey," the traffic controller said before breaking the connection.
Anakin turned the Twilight away from the holding pattern and smoothly entered the onward lane.
"Jump one of twenty-one, coming up," he declared with mock enthusiasm and pushed on the hyperdrive lever.
The bureaucracy thankfully lessened considerably the deeper we got in the cluster, with only two delays hitting us at the Febrini and Carlania waypoints, where inspection craft stopped and scanned us very thoroughly. If we had not been logged as a Jedi craft in their systems, that would've included a boarding inspection. As it was, it took nearly another day of stop starts to finally reach orbit of Hapes itself.
Hapes was a typical temperate garden world. The standout feature of the system itself was a very strange trinary sun pair with orbital mechanics that gave me a headache to even contemplate and was distinctly unnatural. The end result being that Hapes never had night.
How the locals had adapted to that was quite interesting. They by now lacked the natural night vision of standard humans and had genengineered a second set of internal eyelids that acted as natural 'sunglasses' to cut out the extreme glare of certain times during the eternal day. Anakin and I had to make do with contact lenses that served the same function.
We already had landing coordinates on the planet and it was barely eight minutes from the hyperspace emergence till we broke into the atmosphere and headed directly towards an equatorial continent where the capital city of Ta'a Chume Dan was located on a coast.
It was only when we finally got into seeing the city with the naked eye that we realized our coordinates were not just to some nondescript landing bay at the starport.
We were being directed to land in the hangar bays of the Royal Star Home dreadnought, which was impressively landed directly in the coastal waters off the capital city.
"Okay, that I did not expect, and really makes me curious just what Master Yoda said in that note."
"I thought it would at least get us in the cluster, the Hapans are very stingy about who they let in their space," Anakin nodded.
"Twilight, this is Royal Star, come to a stop at ten kilometers and prepare for tractor beam capture."
"Understood Royal Star, will comply," I replied, after keying the radio.
Anakin followed the directions to the letter and the Twilight had barely begun hovering before the small freighter jolted and resonated with the on board dampeners enough to shake us in our seats.
"Powering down engines," Anakin announced, but I noticed he kept the repulsors hot. Clearly he wasn't in a trusting mood with regard to the tractor beam operator.
"Statement: These Hapans are very paranoid, master. Admiration: I approve."
HK was looking distinctly underarmed without his cannons, but he did have small hidden blasters built into his arms, along with his lightsabers secreted in foldout compartments in his legs.
"Have you brushed up on your protocol droid functions, HK?"
"Answer: Of course, master. As much as I wish to delete anything that could potentially facilitate the end of hostilities between parties, they are simply too useful in opening doors and even escalating hostilities… if used correctly."
It occasionally made me wonder just how many wars HK had started in the galaxy during his active periods. I knew better than to ask, thankfully.
Finally, Twilight was pulled into the maw of one of the Royal Star's hangar bays. Anakin switched the ship into its landing configuration and lowered the landing struts at just the right time, making it look like the ship was still being actively piloted under power.
The ramp lowered and I led the way off the ship, with Anakin behind me to my left, with HK on my right.
We were met by four women, three of which were very tall and strong, clad in the light-blue uniform of the Hapan Royal Guard. They were just a tad short of being the textbook definition of the old Earth legend of 'amazonian'. The fourth woman, in the lead, was much more 'feminine', shorter but her lithe, dancer's figure was no less physically toned. She was also in the figure flattering Guard outfit, but this was more in a bodysuit style. The lightsaber at her hip and her presence in the Force meant we were being met by a Hapan Jedi.
We exchanged Temple perfect bows of greeting. Anakin remained stoic and silent behind me.
"Welcome to Hapes, Jedi Tano," the Hapan greeted. "I am Royal Guard Commander Khal. It is a pleasure to receive visitors from the Jedi Council."
"It's a pleasure to be here Commander," I said pleasantly. "I am accompanied by my own master, Anakin Skywalker and my escort protocol droid, HK."
To my suprise, Khal turned to face Anakin and acknowledged him with only a nod. "We appreciate you adhering to our customs, Knight Skywalker, but it is really only necessary should you leave the Royal Home and venture into the capital city. Her majesty runs a household that is not strictly traditional and understands the ways of the greater galaxy."
"Oh, thanks for that, it'll make things easier I suppose," Anakin answered.
"Scan," Khal prompted one of her escorts. One of the large women stepped forward slightly and brandished a scanner towards HK briefly and showed the results to her commander. Her eyebrows shot into her short hairstyle in surprise. "Interesting, are you sure this isn't an assassin droid, Jedi Tano?"
"He can be many things," I shrugged, not bothering any denial.
"I see," Khal nodded. "It is to always remain by your side. If found alone anywhere on board it will be destroyed."
"Understood."
"Now, in brief, can you please explain why you are here?"
The news that we were there to stop the kidnapping of one of the potential Jedi younglings was not well received, which naturally led to the revelation that the entire list had been compromised. The news was dire enough that Commander Khal pushed herself into an emergency audience with the queen mother. Thankfully, we didn't have to appear before her as well. Khal knew her regent well enough to guess her reaction and would rather not expose foreign guests to that. Apparently the current queen had a bit of a temper and was not afraid to let loose that vitriol, no matter who was in front of her.
We were deposited in a waiting room adjoining Khal's office to wait and it took a few hours before she returned from her audience.
Khal's composure when she walked in had a distinct edginess to it that I could just barely spot.
"What's the news, Commander?" I asked with a slight knowing smile.
"The news is that you're to be assisted in any way possible to prevent the kidnapping and detain this bounty hunter. Custody will depend on any crimes he commits. If any Hapan citizen is harmed or killed by him, then he will remain in the cluster either in prison or get the death sentence. If nothing like that happens, he'll be released to the Jedi Council's custody as the queen understands full well that they'll want to know who his actual client is." Khal produced a code cylinder from a pocket and handed it over to me. "This contains an electronic writ from the queen, which essentially allows you to act as deputized law enforcement in the Hapan Cluster for the duration."
"Thank you. We'll use this only as necessary, on my word and honor as Jedi," I declared formally.
Khal nodded. "Good. Speaking as a Jedi, I hope you bring this bounty hunter to justice. Speaking as a Hapan… this alien better hope you succeed in catching him with no loss of life." Her green eyes shone with a deadly serious intent, which coming from a beautiful woman like that made it even worse.
Back in the Twilight, we left the Royal Star and parked the ship in a more convenient docking bay in the starport of the city. We used a bay usually reserved for law enforcement craft, to at least give some measure of privacy and separation from the common masses. I expected the dockmistress to throw some measure of fuss at us to prove everything, but the moment the code cylinder was read by her systems, it was as if an electric prod had been shoved up her spine. We were hurriedly cleared and sent on our way.
We walked into the city streets with me leading the way, as was custom. For this trip we made some further modifications to our wardrobe. The only armor I wore were my gauntlets and lower leg greaves, with combat boots and open Jedi robe. The rest was an outfit that had me feeling very exposed, so to speak. Brown skin tight leggings and a midriff baring top that looked more like a very brief 'wrap', that was keeping my chest supported and covered, but was somewhat thin and left very little to imagination. It was something that Aayla Secura would approve of and quite happily wear.
The point being was to emphasize and display my femininity despite being an 'alien'. It was also to make sure that Anakin didn't get any clearly unwanted advances. A Hapan man could generally walk around perfectly freely, no escort or chaperone necessary, but they would usually wear some visible token (an armband in this case) to indicate they were already married and not single. An unclaimed single man walking about without family in his presence, in Hapan society, that was like an antelope walking up to bunch of lionesses and asking if they were hungry.
Anakin, for his part, also had to make a few changes. He had to get rid of the armor on his shoulders and not wear his lightsaber. An armed man was also a distinct taboo in Hapan culture. His lightsaber was secured with a strap on my utility belt, in the small of my back. It would be easy enough for him to simply summon it to him with the Force in an emergency.
It seemed though, that despite our precautions, my exotic togruta looks were drawing eyes and attention. 'Aliens' were just not common enough a sight otherwise. The capital did have a foreign population of about just under five percent and the majority of those were human. My Jedi robe and openly carried lightsabers on my outer thighs was enough to make things click in most people's heads.
Walking through the crowds of pedestrians, I was starting to feel like I'd been dumped on the planet of the supermodels. I was not generally a vain person or interested at all in my looks or personal beauty. Only Togrutan city dwellers really had any notion of it and even among those the 'beauty industry' only existed for those who wanted to touch up or change their facial markings. The Jedi, naturally, didn't ascribe any value to superficial beauty either, as it was transitory and faded with time.
But damn, you didn't even have to spend ten minutes on this planet before you started feeling like you were a backwards hick with pimples and blotchy skin, even if you were notionally attractive or pretty according to everyone around you. Those old pirates sure did have an eye for the women when they went on their raids. It was also further reinforced by Hapan culture itself. If anyone was born deformed or blemished in any way, it was considered a fate worse than death. Which was why genetic tech was so rampant among them.
It was again just our luck though that we were 'accosted' in the street leading up to our destination.
These days, I was about 1,65 meters tall. The woman who now stood blocking my way had my height beat by her chest and head and was looking down on me with a sneering expression that had no right still looking so good on her face. Her outfit, a bodysuit with a flaring partial skirt that almost reminded me of Quorra's outfit from Tron Legacy, showed off every bit of her perfect figure.
I was pushing into my presience for the results of this little confrontation. Trying to figure out what had prompted it. In this case, I didn't even need to try to delve into her mind.
She tried to speak but…
"Let me stop you right there." I spoke my words with the power of Force suggestion behind it. Then raised the code cylinder and turned it to show the Royal Seal.
The Force had put enough of a pause into her stride for her to see it and recognize it. It was rather amusing to see someone so imposing wilt and retreat so quickly.
"Humble apologies," the woman muttered and hurried off.
The Hapans who had witnessed the aborted confrontation were rather amused.
"Snips?" Anakin whispered.
"She wanted to challenge me for… a fling with you, so to speak. I'm visibly not old enough for you and alien, so despite me being in an 'ownership' position of you, she assumed she could bully her way through me. I also suspect she's part of the In-sa subculture."
Which was a minority Hapan subculture where women engaged in 'walking marriages'. Men were generally second class citizens on Hapes, but they were still well treated and had their general sentient rights as guaranteed under overarching Republic law. The In-sa, however, treated men as accessories on two legs at best. They brought their sexual partners home, had their fling and the man was sent on his way, any children that resulted was raised in the mother's house with the help of her brothers and the rest of the community.
Finally, we arrived at our destination. A rather palatial estate belonging to Ta'a Gray, senior member of the executive board of the Hapan Shipbuilding Consortium.
The visible security I saw alone was going to be a tough nut to crack for Bane; imposing guards, high walls, sensors and what definitely had to be automated turrets, though they weren't firing anything lethal that I could sense, it was definitely something exotic that I had no basis for comparison to.
The guard in the booth next to the main gate, a woman of over two meters in height that somehow combined being hot and utterly imposing in one package, didn't blink an eye at our approach, not even when we showed her our credentials. She had the poker face of a bouncer down pat.
We were soon escorted in with another pair of guards into the mansion itself, before being directed to sit in a lounge that was overflowing with so much wealth in its furnishings that it made me feel like a pauper playing with loose change on the galactic stock market.
The sofa I put my butt into, intelligently molded to my body. It felt like a little slice of heaven and clouds had just embraced me. Anakin and HK for their part, stayed standing behind me and he wouldn't sit down until the mistress of the house allowed it.
A man wearing the household armband of the Gray family entered, with a tray of refreshments and snacks. Anyone looking at him wouldn't consider him 'weak' at all. He stood at 1.9 meters tall, impressively muscled and showing it off, as he was only wearing very tight shorts that looked like he could jump into a swimming pool at any moment.
"Please, enjoy at your leisure," he said easily with a smile at me, putting the tray down and promptly left. I tried very hard not to stare at his posterior and muscled back as he went. Grief, these Hapans were crazy. Even the men looked like they could be at home on any of those cheesy romance novels of old Earth or Playgirl. As strong as that guy had been, the ancient Hapan women had made sure their daughters were stronger through genetic tinkering.
I really wasn't hungry at the moment, so just made do with the glass of water. Though some of the sweet confections were incredibly tempting.
'I guess we can see why my holocron self chose this place,' Anakin thought to me. 'I wish Bane luck getting through this security.'
'Nothing is perfect, Skyguy. The Hapans do have a criminal underworld, which he can get help from and he can use a holosheathe to pass himself off as female.'
A woman entered at this point, who I immediately recognized as our main contact. She had long blonde hair and was wearing a long flowing white, slightly sheer dress that clinged to her generous curves in just that perfect enticing way. The only hint of her actual advanced age of just over sixty years old was around her eyes, which showed that she did a lot of frowning in her life.
I stood immediately and bowed. "Greetings Mistress Gray, I'm Jedi Padawan Ahsoka Tano, my master, Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker and our droid HK."
She acknowledged me with just a slight bow of her own head, "Welcome to my home, Padawan Tano. Given a woman of my position, I have little time and many demands on it. We'll get straight to the point. My youngest was identified as Force sensitive and potentially promised to your Order, I can assume you're here about her?"
"Correct, mistress. Your daughter is still too young, but there's been a security breach in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant."
Gray narrowed her eyes in thought. "The bombing?"
"Yes, the galactic media is playing it off as a terrorist attack by the CIS, and it does look that way, but it was simply a distraction to hide the theft of certain information."
It didn't take a woman of Gray's caliber long to connect the dots. "They have the fact that my Tenel is Force-sensitive, don't they?"
"Yes, mistress. The Jedi Council has divined and combined with hard evidence, come to the conclusion that your daughter is being targeted by a duros bounty hunter, Cad Bane, for kidnapping."
Her eyes narrowed at me severely. "That you made the journey all the way here in person… and carry the blessing of the queen mother… You and the Jedi don't think that my own security or Hapan security in general can stop Bane?"
"Not with the resources he has at his disposal," I nodded. "The CIS lost a fleet of six Munificents to secure this information from the Jedi protecting it and has given Bane a newly developed rogue-class heavy fighter with full cloaking abilities."
"Cloak on something as small as a heavy fighter?" Gray barely stopped herself from losing her composure and gaping at me. "I'm sorry, Padawan. But if it wasn't for the Jedi reputation of truthfulness and the Hapan Royal seal on your person, I'd say this was a practical joke."
"I wish it was a joke, mistress. The Jedi Council is investigating the possibility on whether we will be seeing cloaked fighters in greater numbers from the CIS, but the fact remains that Bane will be able to penetrate Hapan space easily. The Hapan Navy will try to intercept, but the difficulties are just too great."
Gray waved me off. "Yes, I understand full well, padawan." She sighed and stared off into the distance, looking troubled and deep in thought, before finally nodding. "Very well. I see your intent. You wish to use my home as a trap for this duros beast?"
"That is the humble request of myself and the Jedi Council, mistress."
"I shall grant this, in the interest of my daughter's security and every other child who is on that list. I trust that the Jedi will take the appropriate steps for the others too?"
"Every resource that can be spared," I confirmed.
She scoffed, "Which can't be much, given the war."
"Everything that can be done, is being done, mistress."
Gray nodded, then promptly asked, "Where are you staying?"
"We intend to retire to our ship and remain out of sight as much as possible. Our open approach to you was done in the interest of speed. Word of our presence to your local enemies and the criminal underworld is not… ideal if we want Bane to fall into our trap."
She walked in the upper classes of Hapan society, where deniable assassination and struggles for power was a common thing.
Again she waved me off, "I'm an old hand at the game, padawan. You let me worry about my backyard. I offer you the hospitality of my home. I'll not have anyone who has come so far to protect my daughter be sleeping in whatever garbage scow you arrived in."
In a burst of my first proper bout of feminine intuition as I stared at this woman, taking in her eyes, posture and body language, I knew it would not be wise to deny her. A quick check with my prescience also confirmed… I immediately answered with a bow of my head, "Thank you, Mistress. We would be honored."
Gray clapped her hands twice and the man in the speedo was back within barely a few seconds, "Yes, dear?"
"Subro, go and prepare two guest rooms in the south wing."
"At once, my heart."
Her husband left just as promptly. It was a struggle once again not to stare.
Gray immediately noticed and smirked at me knowingly. "Now, I'll go call in a few favors with the Navy. My chief bodyguard will call on you within the hour and you can begin coordinating to set this little trap."
Four days staying in a Hapan mansion of opulence might seem like most people's idea of a vacation. It most decidedly wasn't when you knew that your mere presence was most likely being used in scheming power plays. Far from upsetting her own plans of high-society and murder, Mistress Gray slotted us into them with masterful ease. My prescience only allowed me to catch the edges and periphery of those plans, but it was enough for me to conclude that if only she were Force sensitive, she would be able to give even Palpatine a run for his money.
Thankfully, we did receive word from the Hapan Navy on the second day of our stay that Bane's fighter had been briefly detected in a transition of hyperspace at the border, so we had a timeline for when we'd have to be ready.
HK had been moaning my montrals off about finding something productive to do, so in what was probably a very unwise move, I put the droid at Mistress Gray's disposal temporarily. She immediately found a use for its singular talents, which I definitely didn't want to know about and HK was practically gleeful.
Her plan was to leave a gap in her security that Bane would walk right through. The trick was in not making it too obvious and yet at the same time helping him along.
It was clear that she didn't get to her position and age without being a master manipulator and schemer. It left me feeling like I could most definitely try to establish a secure method of contact… just so I could learn from her. I was flying by the seat of my pants against Palpatine and any help in this department I couldn't afford to say no to.
At last though, I took my place in a hidden safe room that looked like it could survive everything short of a direct strike of a nuke. Its primary and only entrance was through the baby room. It definitely spoke volumes about how much Mistress Gray valued her daughter.
The daughter in question, Tenel Gray, was barely three years old and a cute precious handful to her parents. It was rather amazing how after a few days, Mistress Gray even let me play with and entertain the little tyke, which I mostly did with a few displays of telekinesis with the infant's toys.
Bane began his infiltration of the mansion by waylaying one of the guards, killing her and taking on her form via holosheathe.
The amazing thing was, that the guard in question was someone Mistress Gray had been planning to carefully dispose of for months anyway, as she was a spy for a rival. The mechanics of that manipulation was tough to wrap my head around. She would've had to arrange for that one guard to somehow catch Bane's eye as a weak link in the security force.
From there it was rather straightforward for the bounty hunter. His every movement was carefully watched as he did his own recon of the mansion. Here I had to give him credit as he never let his body language show any unfamiliarity with where he was going. Seemingly going on a patrol route through the mansion.
This eventually led him to identify the baby room and he never let it show, keeping in character and walking straight on.
His patience did wear out eventually, he wasn't a Jedi, and soon the baby room door opened and the disguised bounty hunter snuck in.
I took that as my cue and waited until the moment when Bane lowered his head to look down into the crib.
The baby room's furniture had been carefully adjusted to lure him to a corner and he had his back to the safe room door.
This let me easily emerge without being spotted and cloaking my footsteps with the Force, I silently moved forward.
Bane seemed to rummage around in the crib for a bit, then was visibly surprised when all he came back with was a baby doll.
My lightsabers bursting into life behind him was clearly not what he wanted to hear. He turned his head around slowly.
"Ah, I guess it was inevitable that you Jedi would sense where I was going, after the near miss on Mon Cal," he mused. It was really weird to hear the deep duros voice coming from the form of the female spy. "Such a shame about that poor little child. I really don't envy what's going to happen to them…"
In a blur of movement he shot two darts from his gauntlets that were targeted right at my hands. They had to be some form of smart munition, because I don't care how good a gunslinger you were; two small targets at different angles with a launcher from each gauntlet and you shot from the hip and still hit your targets perfectly. The darts stabbed into my fingers even as I tried to move my hands out of the way and let loose their charge.
Bane had drawn his blasters in the same movement and shot straight at my chest as fast as his fingers could squeeze and his blasters could cycle.
He was now very surprised to see me able to deflect every shot despite the electric shock and I was feeling a bit annoyed by all the trouble and expense this bounty hunter had caused.
Which probably explained why I angled two deflections to hit him right in his knees.
He screamed in pain and collapsed onto the floor, spilling his guns to slide across the smooth wooden floor as he tried to arrest his own fall.
I carefully walked forward, keeping my blades ready, just in case he was playing possum.
Naturally, he tried something.
Impressively burying his pain, he whirled on the ground from his prone position and tried to shoot me point blank with an integrated flamethrower from his gauntlet.
I twisted and whirled, using TK and discarding my Jedi robe to absorb and redirect the flames away from me.
"Enough!"
Bane was abruptly in the air, his arms and legs spread eagled and straining.
He screamed in pain as his knee wounds were aggravated and I proceeded to sense and crush every bit of technology the duros had on his person.
The holosheathe was the first to go, and his true form was revealed. The gauntlets and his jet boots were ripped off… his own utility belt snapped and was flung away.
I wasn't in the mood for more fancy hidden tricks and so even went further, stripping the duros to his underwear.
"Really, padawan?"
Anakin stood at the door to the baby room with a pained look on his face.
"Yes master?"
"A little excessive, don't you think?"
"Not when it comes to this bachu*," I shook my head.
Anakin raised his hand and shot Bane with a tranquilizer gun, specifically formulated for a duros of his rough weight. It didn't take long for the hunter's pained eyes to droop and fall closed.
"You can let him down, Snips. I've received word that the Resolute is waiting for us at Taanab."
I dropped the bounty hunter unceremoniously to the floor, extinguishing and holstering my lightsabers. This allowed me to pick at the electro-darts in my hands only to stop. "Bastard barbed the prongs."
"We'll have a doctor look at that right away, my dear," Mistress Gray entered the room with her daughter on her hip.
My mood was instantly lifted at seeing the little girl and I tickled her cheek. "Sorry, little one, can't play now. Ahsoka has an ouchy."
She pouted cutely at me in response.
In the end, I suppose, seeing her safe made it all worth it.
*bachu - roughly translates to 'shit/fart' in Togruti
A/N PS: Hope you enjoyed. If you'd like to see me my first attempt at all digital art - of the poster in Ahsoka's quarters on board the Resolute - consider giving the Patreon a visit.
How ignorant is Ahsoka on how she is viewed by the rest of the Order?
- Location
- State of Confusion
I believe it was to allow the modified holocron to fall into Palpatine's hands. If they had simply captured Bane, and denied Palpatine the real holocron, then more attempts to steal it would have been made. Ones with a higher chance to succeed.
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What about that battle on Felucia that Ahsoka was a part of right before Bane infiltrated the Temple? Was that butterflied away?
Essentially yes. By now, the Yularen-Tano doctrine has started to filter pretty much fleet wide across the Navy. It's keeping the CIS much more bottled up and contained along the major hyperspace lanes and preventing them from reaching certain worlds with significant forces. They could try with flanks along the minor hyperspace routes, where those exist, but you can't push big fleets/hammer blows through those.
There are other reasons, story structure, me obeying my own rule of 'as little plot hyperdrive speed as possible', time and space matter and I use multiple SW galaxy maps/cartography as reference
Could you describe in detail what the Yularen-Tano doctrine entails? I got that it involves launching starfighters before exiting hyperspace, but not much other than that.
Also what about when Aurra Sing tries to assassinate Padme? Has that been butterflied away too or is it still to come? I mean Zero attempted that before the Senate Hostage Situation, but he has already been rescued.
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Chapter 21
A/N: Here we have the conclusion to the arc. Enjoy. Thanks to my patrons for their continued support, which goes double for my first super patron.
Chapter 21
"Hyperthreader and scanner."
The tools in question were in hand and passed to Anakin, which promptly disappeared into the guts of one of the engine nacelles of Bane's heavy starfighter.
The fighter in question was now safely ensconced in a secure hangar bay aboard the Royal Star. We were far from the only interested party working on the highly modified Rogue-class. A group of four Hapan engineers were also burying themselves in various aspects of the ship.
My own time was spent being Anakin's assistant and keeping a sharp watch on those engineers. All four women were constantly giving Anakin looks like he was a particularly tasty piece of beef and giggling, while they were working. It was distinctly unprofessional but I could see that these women were nevertheless getting their own jobs done.
The first thing we naturally confirmed within the first few minutes was that the holocron wasn't hidden on board anywhere. It would've been a rookie mistake for Bane to leave it there anyway. If Sidious had briefed him properly on a holocron's properties, and it definitely seemed like he had, then the bounty hunter would know Jedi could sense an active holocron.
"Ah ha!"
"Find something, master?"
"Well, we've definitely got a hibridium cloaking device here."
"The power plant?"
"Definitely got something new here." He pulled his torso out of the nacelle, picked up a datapad, tapped it a few times and handed it over to me.
It took me a few moments to get my head into the right technical mindset to make sense of what I was seeing. Okay, fuel flow there… energizers there… fusion plant… what?
"You see it, Snips?"
"They're compressing the hypermatter and fuel before it reaches the reactors?"
"Yes and?"
"These circular feeds are shielded and almost encase the entire reactor… it's certainly one way to save on space."
"Which has the added benefit of?"
It took me a moment before I really felt like facepalming, "Acting as another integral heat sink, meaning they can cut down on further external heat management equipment."
He smiled and patted me on the shoulder, "Nicely reasoned, there's a lot more going on, but you managed to see the highlights. The Baktoid Workshop have really outdone themselves with this one."
"These power figures though…" I scrolled down the list, doing a bit of mental math. "Even with this super compact reactor, it doesn't look like you could keep everything powered up under cloak."
Anakin nodded, "You'd have maybe sixty or seventy percent thrust available to your engines, the rest goes into life support and particle shielding. The two laser cannons are dead weight under the cloak. They really should've gone with a few concussion missile launchers, but I suppose they reasoned the targeting emissions would've compromised the cloak."
"I'm imagining what I could do with a squadron of cloaked, hyper capable, heavy fighters with astromechs steering the launched missiles passively," I grinned widely, feeling an evil giddiness.
He laughed, "That would be a sight to see, or rather not see, given how the whole squadron is invisible."
"Let's see what our Hapan friends have to say about the computers though."
The lead engineer looked up at my approach from her datapad. All of them were wearing a very utilitarian overall outfit in a dark blue, but like all things Hapan, managed to make even something you're meant to get dirty in, look attractive.
"Miss Agmena?"
"Padawan Tano," she nodded at me, giving a brief sideways look at Anakin who was busy packing away the borrowed tooling.
"Anything from the navicomputer?"
"Unfortunately not," her long red hair tied up in a bun and had an eager energetic demeanor was almost painful to endure and see. "The bounty hunter had numerous failsafes that kicked in. One of which was tied to a biometric sensor on his body. The instant he was unconscious the navicomputer wiped itself of all data."
"Even the hyperdrive backups?"
"Even those," she confirmed. "This guy is very paranoid. If he'd been killed there was even a program set to self-destruct the fighter and not in a nice way."
"How big would the explosion have been?"
"Maybe half the yield of an anti-capital proton torpedo, roughly. It would've wiped out a nice chunk of the city in the process."
"Ouch," I winced at the thought. It was strange though. Going out with a bang and a final 'fuck you' like that, potentially killing hundreds of thousands, wasn't really Bane's style. The duros was many things; murderer, kidnapper, bounty hunter, and so on, but it was all just in service to his goals and getting paid. Sidious on the other hand…
No, even the Sith Lord himself wouldn't be so… blatantly destructive. Sure, in the future, Emperor Palpatine would sentence quite a few worlds to Base Delta Zero - orbital bombardment to the point of glassing the planet, nevermind the Death Star. In the here and now though, Darth Sidious wasn't so… banally evil. Bane could've died in numerous other ways than enemy action and when his heart flatlined… boom! It just didn't feel right for him.
The CIS's Illusive General…? Maybe. If it was him, then it would definitely be a datapoint and clue to his identity.
At this point I felt a beckoning ping from Anakin along our bond.
"Thanks, Miss Agmena."
"You're welcome, Padawan Tano," she gave me a big smile and was all eyes for Anakin again.
The relief Anakin and I felt at leaving the hangar was palpable.
A few hours later, I was standing behind Anakin in a very lavish and modern meeting room. With us now, was Mace Windu and Obi-Wan at one side of the table, on the other was Commander Khal, and another woman who was dressed in a very clingy, white one piece bodysuit with numerous pockets. Her hair was short and graying, but her face in contrast was still quite firm and good looking.
"Doctor Gallia, what is the condition of the duros?" Khal enquired of her fellow Hapan.
"He has responded well to treatment, we removed him from the bacta tank this morning and he's in recovery."
"How long till he can be questioned?" Mace enquired politely.
"Ideally, two days to be on the safe side. We had to do quite a bit of reconstructive work on his knees and legs beforehand. If time is of the essence, then the earliest I'd let you see him is in twelve hours, not a minute earlier."
"Understood, Doctor. Thank you," Khal said firmly, closing the matter. "Now the question turns to what is to be done about Bane himself. He has murdered a Hapan citizen and our laws are clear."
"He is also responsible for the death of two Jedi," Mace retorted.
The first being the Jedi Knight Ord Enisence. The initial form that the clawdite changeling had assumed to infiltrate the temple. She had helpfully given up the safehouse Bane had used on Coruscant to plan the operation and as such Enisence's body had been retrieved for burial.
"So clearly you think that your jurisdiction supersedes Hapes authority?" Khal, was hardly phased at all in the face of someone as forbidding and intimidating as Windu. Nevermind that he was technically her 'superior' in the Jedi Order, but only in theory. Technically, the Jedi Council had full right and backing of the Republic to take custody of Bane right out from under the Hapans, but the Jedi would be putting a lot of strain on the cordial relations the two sides enjoyed. In the same way, the Hapans could invoke quite a few local laws and complicated terms in their alliance to the Republic to keep Bane in their custody.
In other words, the potential to spark a diplomatic tit for tat neither side wanted.
"Is there some compromise that we can come to?" Obi-Wan enquired mildly. "The main thing we are after is the location of the stolen holocron."
"Bane is unlikely to just willingly reveal that," she pointed out. "It would require extensive interrogation or using the Force but that would require Alter Mind skills that risk destroying the information, unless one of you is a specialist mindwalker."
"Are there any Hapan Jedi practiced in that?"
"I'm the closest you'd get to that in the cluster, it's why I was chosen as the commander of the queen's personal security, but info retrieval is specialist work," Khal explained.
"I recently spent quite some time working with a Jedi mindwalker on another case," Obi-Wan explained. "If it comes down to it, I'm prepared to interrogate Bane."
Windu gave a brief glance to his fellow Jedi Master, but otherwise held his peace. However, to the Jedi in the room it spoke volumes. "Are you certain, Master Kenobi?"
"Yes," Obi-Wan answered firmly.
"Very well," Windu nodded. "Bane will remain in Hapan custody after all this is over. Now let's talk about his fighter."
"Naturally, the Consortium is very interested in the technology," Khal smiled dryly. "It was captured on Hapes, by our forces. However, given this is CIS tech we recognize it's in the greater interest of the Republic that it be researched and possibly widely adopted, given the enemy will likely soon be fielding it in larger numbers. The Consortium will propose a joint research initiative with Republic scientists."
"That seems reasonable," Windu allowed. Of course it meant that Consortium would seek to rake in the profits hand over fist and I could just imagine the Baktoid Workshop executives screaming in anger that all their R&D expenses and the expected return on investment had just been flushed down the toilet.
The wait for Obi-Wan to conclude his mindwalk of Bane was a rather agonizing affair. Made all the more so by my need to speak to Mistress Gray with as much privacy as possible. I thankfully got my chance because I had to return to her estate anyway to gather our few belongings.
Anakin had resumed burying himself in studying the Xanadu Blood - the name Bane had given to his fighter and I returned to the Gray mansion.
Mistress Gray had clearly seen or even sensed the bee in my bonnet, when I asked for a free hour of her time.
"Do you have any casual swimming attire, dear?"
"No, mistress," I blinked in surprise at the question.
She smiled at me and made a few calls.
Barely a few minutes later I was introduced to a male Hapan who had a very 'distinguished' air about him. He was Mistress Gray's tailor and looked after every aspect of her clothing and even made new outfits on the spot for her. How he could do this was a combination of a body scanner, computer, fabric fabbing, manual tailoring by hand and sheer inherent talent.
An hour later, I was basking in a deck chair near the estate swimming pool, wearing the Hapan idea of a bikini. It was an outfit which I could hardly imagine ever wearing outside of Hapes with any confidence. Nevermind micro… this was the equivalent of a nano-string sling bikini. It was amazing that the stuff was strong enough to do the job at their thickness - but they did, flexing and stretching enough that I could probably do any Ataru moves and not have to worry about the thing snapping off.
I also doubted I could even wear this in the long term, given how precisely it was tailored to my still growing body.
Mistress Gray was next to me in a swimming outfit that was slightly more conservative, though that didn't mean much when her sling bikini was only a thumb width wide. Her tan showed though that she actually rarely wore anything outdoors around the pool.
"So my dear, stop dithering and slay the akul," she stated with a small smile. The surprise at her using a Torgruta expression broke through my anxiousness but I couldn't afford to relax completely as the concentration needed to keep up my probability shield just didn't allow for it.
"I have an enemy, Mistress Gray. One that I cannot fight openly. He's powerful in so many ways that I can't even begin to describe to you. If I tried, you'd probably not even believe half of it and I'd paint you as a target."
She nodded, her eyes flickering with brief surprise before it was hidden behind her own politely attentive mask.
"Is it a pointless question to ask how one so young could be involved in any way with such a person?"
"It's not pointless, just one that I cannot answer. He has maneuvered himself into a seemingly unassailable position, he is extremely strong with the Force, blessed with gifts that lets him anticipate his foes, to see the future."
"Then how have you remained undetected, dear?"
"Through a primary means I will never speak of, and others I have developed over the years."
Gray leaned back and just seemed to relax even further, for a moment I thought she was going to take a cat nap, but this was just another deception.
"Sit back, relax, look up at the sky," she instructed.
I did so as best I could.
"When under enemy surveillance, you must wear a mask, with the understanding that the mask is what you want the enemy to believe, underneath the mask, adopt another with yet more deception for the enemy. So if he penetrates the first, he will find the second and in victory look no further. Right now, we are two women at a pool, enjoying the suns, relaxing. Beneath that, you are simply speaking to the mother of the child you rescued, who requested you to be here for a chat in gratitude." Gray took a deep breath in and out, "A mother who will stop at nothing to repay an essentially unpayable debt for that which you have given. Tenel is my third daughter, the one which we in Hapan society actually consider the most important.
"So speak, Ahsoka Tano of Shilli, ask what you would have of a grateful mother."
"I was able to identify where Bane is keeping the holocron," Obi-Wan addressed the meeting. He pressed a few buttons on the table and a holo appeared of a system called Antar, somewhere in the north eastern outer rim. It zoomed further to an asteroid field between the fifth and sixth planets, until it highlighted a specific coordinate. "Here is a small, self-sufficient space station, that Bane calls Black Stall. It's a combination of a safe house and storage for his most valuable possessions."
"Nice hideout," Anakin remarked. "I assume it's filled with traps and other lethal tricks that would deter unwanted visitors."
"You assume correctly," Obi-Wan nodded. "The station will scan any approaching ship and if it doesn't detect that Bane is on board, it will self-destruct."
"So let me guess, Bane is using it as leverage for us to escort him there, where there are some other means which he can use to attack, distract us and allow him a chance to escape."
"Since you seem to have foreseen what I was going to say, perhaps you should take over the meeting, Anakin," Obi-Wan smiled crookedly at this former student.
"No thanks, master. Please, do continue."
"The problem is that Hapes refuses to let him leave, even under guard."
"I know his type, Master Kenobi," Commander Khal thumped a finger on the desk. "Walking into a prepared safehouse of his own design, we might as well give him his freedom now."
"Then perhaps Hapes can spare us an entire team of slicers?"
"Certainly," Khal declared with a shrug, surprising everyone in the room. "How many do you need? Hapes won't balk at the expense in labor and credit to see this done."
"I'll get back to you, commander," Obi-Wan scratched his beard in thought. "The uncertainty we face is that I'm not sure that the missing children are there. If I was a fully trained mindwalker, I might have had an answer, but as it was, I had to stop at this point because Bane was a few seconds away from a brain aneurysm."
"I might be able to help with that," Anakin announced. "I've been working the last day with the Hapan engineers in further picking apart Bane's fighter. One of them noticed a lot of volcanic ash had collected in the landing gear. I then remembered the old fuel management system trick."
Everyone in the room nodded in understanding. No matter how thoroughly Bane sanitized the computers of his fighter, erasing the computer for fuel management would thoroughly ground the fighter and require a qualified tech to fix. Jedi used this fact to their advantage a lot in combating smuggling. Using the fuel usage data, combined with what destinations you knew the smuggler had taken, you could generally reconstruct the distance traveled in both hyperspace and real space.
"We had to make some adjustments to the normal math based on this new type of reactor," he explained further, taking out a datapad and working on it, before interfacing it with the room's holoprojector.
A galactic map was presented, with all known hyperspace routes, which swiftly began to flash with strobing as Anakin's program got to work trying to match and triangulate within the parameters he was setting.
I stared at the galactic map, my eyes turning south and sure enough, the possible routes were steadily being whittled down towards…
"Mustafar," I pointed at the map just as it resolved that particular destination.
"It's a possibility, padawan," Anakin agreed. "What makes you sure?"
"Besides the fact that it's a six day detour for Bane to have taken, it's deep in CIS territory," I stepped up to the hologram and with a few commands it zoomed in to display the world in question, "Look, held by the Techno-Union as a mining world. The planet is also entirely dominated by volcanic activity. Why go all the way to the galactic south? Unless he was meeting whoever hired him or perhaps his actual employer has a facility there."
He eventually nodded in agreement, "Makes sense, Snips."
"Nicely done," Obi-Wan smiled. "We now have two destinations to investigate. Master Windu and I will head to Antar with the Hapan slicers. You will have to figure out a way to smuggle yourselves into and out of Seperarist space."
"Oh, is that all?" Anakin shrugged. "No problem, we'll just have to sneak through the most heavily militarized space in the galaxy, most of the CIS Navy not to mention a bunch of neutral worlds that would just love to sell us out to the Seppies."
"Um, Master, I have an idea about that," I grinned at him.
"Go ahead, Snips."
"How hard do you think it will be to modify the Xanadu Blood to carry at least five people?"
Ordinarly, the answer to that would be extremely difficult.
It was simplified considerably when you had the backing of the Hapes Consortium. Within less than a day, Anakin was somehow leading a team of eight scientists, engineers, dozens of engineering focused droids and an almost blank check with the efforts to convert and modify the fighter. It definitely proved one thing, the Hapans could put aside their usual prejudices when motivated enough.
The main obstacle wasn't space as such, as a larger spherical habitation cabin and cockpit could be almost bolted onto the nose of the fighter. The problem was life support would have to be upgraded to accommodate the larger space and crew, which had the knock on effect of a higher power requirement.
The fighter's power was already on a knife's edge of performance, testing showed that we'd have to forego any hope of having weapons at all if these modifications were performed. The increased weight meant an even further reduction in speed and maneuverability.
Anakin's efforts were further interrupted when he received a communication request.
"The Chancellor wants a report on our progress," Windu watched the scurrying activity of all the engineers with interest as the Xanadu Blood was steadily being rebuilt.
"Tell him this is not Republic business, it's an internal Jedi affair," Obi-Wan pointed out.
"I have to disagree with that," Anakin awkwardly removed a pretty large tool belt he had taken to wearing with a wince, and was looking rather greasy. "As long as the Jedi are acting within the structure of the GAR as its commanders, we should report to the chancellor. Even on an internal matter such as this."
"Well, then I guess you have a call to make, after a shower and change of clothes," his former master smiled knowingly. "The unmarked ship for our own part of the mission has arrived."
"Well, good luck, master."
Both senior Jedi bowed slightly in greeting to Anakin and took their leave. I followed Anakin out the hangar and cleared my throat pointedly.
"Snips?"
"Before you call the chancellor," I smiled and made a few subtle handsigns casually at my leg.
He frowned at me, pinging our bond, but I kept the door closed for thoughtspeak, instead continuing my hand signals. We were both proficient enough now to have a rough level of communication.
'Treat your call as if the enemy is listening,' I signed.
He didn't react, but I felt his astonishment and even a slight hint of fear. 'Chancellor… compromised?'
'Enemy walks the Senate freely, remember.'
Anakin sighed, 'What suggest?'
'Speak normally, speak nothing of changing ship or destination. Enemy will kill children instantly if he knows we know.'
He nodded, "Keep watch over those engineers, snips. Pay attention, you'll learn a lot."
"I will, Master."
A week of work, testing and simulation passed. My time was mostly spent doing the boring work as an extra pair of hands for Anakin to boss around. The shift would end and I'd shuttle to the Gray estate to spend time there in receiving instruction on how to be a sneaky mastermind. I was hardly up to Mistress Gray's demanding standard by the time the work on the fighter was done, but she had my personal encrypted com codes and we would continue a distance learning arrangement.
The Xanadu Blood was now barely recognizable from the sleek Rogue-class heavy fighter. The Millenium Falcon would be called in the future 'a piece of junk' by Luke Skywalker. That freighter was a masterclass in design compared to the Xanadu, which was just plain ugly to look at now. Most of the Hapan engineers almost couldn't stand to look at it for more than a few seconds and most were rather embarrassed and even insulted that this was the work of their hands.
The Xanadu now looked like someone had taken a rather enlarged central sphere of the future TIE fighter and rammed it straight onto the nose of the previous fighter.
It was with some trepidation that dressed in my flight suit, I boarded the thing to sit in the 'co-pilot' seat. There was no real co-pilot in this setup, but I did have controls and monitors for the cloaking device and sensors.
At least the Hapans had the interior rather cozy and in some cases quite luxurious. It was as if they compensated for the ugliness of the exterior by at least doing some aesthetically pleasing work inside. I almost felt like I was in a rather nice winnebago or camper van.
"Statement: HK-47 ready to serve, Master."
The sadistic droid had to twist slightly to enter the narrow entry door on the starboard side of the Xanadu.
"HK, had fun?" I asked absently while studying the engineering notes compiled by the Hapans on the cloaking device.
"Answer: Most certainly, master. Many a meatbag existence was satisfactorily ended in the most humorous ways… that naturally can't be traced at all to me or the Gray meatbag."
"Well, I'm glad Mistress Gray found some productive use of your talents. You can go ahead and slot in at the back, there should be a charging port."
"Statement: Thank you, Master."
R2 arrived next, having to use a brief burst of his leg jets to make the jump.
"Hello R2."
The astromech gave a burst of happy binary greeting and had to switch himself to waddling mode to maneuver through the cramped confines. On spying HK, R2 gave a burst of binary that sounded to most human ears like someone snorting and blurting out a raspberry.
"Salutation: Greetings, tin can."
HK did not have the most positive opinion of R2-D2 but did 'respect' the droid for his long list of accomplishments and for actually managing to go for so long without a memory wipe. R2 blurted a string of binary back.
"Explanation: I will cease calling you a tin can, when you install a blaster into your chassis. Until you do, you are no more than an ambulatory target who also happens to be an expert slicer and mechanic."
R2's binary response was telling HK where he could shove that suggestion, in droid terms at least.
"Indignation: Why you…"
"HK," I glared at the homicidal droid.
"Statement: Very well, master." HK actually sighed very convincingly. "I will not argue with the ambulatory tin can."
Anakin appeared at the Xanadu's entrance, also dressed in a flight suit and hopped in, sealing the cabin behind him. "Everybody set?"
"Yes, master. All present."
He hopped into the pilot station and began flicking switches for the pre-flight. "R2, interface and begin our hyperspace plots."
The astromech blurted a happy compliance before his logic probe shot out of his chassis and interfaced with a port specifically placed for him in the rear of the cabin.
"You getting to grips with that stuff, Snips?"
"Mostly, Skyguy," I replied, putting the datapad down as the ship began humming and whining into life. The screen showing the cloaking device status and diagnostics flickered on and everything looked good so far.
"Royal Star, this is Xanadu Blood, requesting departure clearance."
"Xanadu, you're cleared for departure 259, vectors transmitting, safe journey."
"Thank you, Royal Star, Xanadu out."
The engines whined into full power and pitch, Anakin twisted on the control stick and the ship rose into the air a little wobbly.
"Urgh, this is awful," he grimaced.
The Xanadu stabilized before a smoother power transition had us emerging from the hangar tentatively, before Anakin pushed forward on the throttle with more confidence.
Our speed ticked up all the way to about 800 kph and a steady but rather anemic climb was begun out of the atmosphere. A normal Rogue-class could easily hit 1200 in an atmosphere, but the Xanadu was going to get nowhere near that.
The course was very conservative at first, just because it was giving us the most time to do testing and evaluation to even make the decision to go ahead with the journey. The Hapans had installed a bunch of extra engineering sensors and links that were beaming data back to the design group that had worked on the Xanadu. Data that Anakin was also looking over.
"So what's the word, Skyguy? We going or bailing out?"
Anakin stared into the readouts for another intense minute before finally declaring, "I think we're going."
Despite his confidence though, he reached down to put on his vacuum helmet. Something I hurriedly imitated.
He promptly pulled back on the stick and the Xanadu broke the final parts of the atmosphere before pushing us officially into the blackness of orbital space around Hapes. It was another eighteen minutes of acceleration getting us out of Hapes' mass shadow before he spoke up.
"R2, how are things at your end?"
The droid bleeped worriedly but also returned a positive binary signal.
"Okay, here we go."
He pushed forward on the hyperdrive controls.
The hyperdrive whined with a strain and pitch that was not at all comforting, but the stars around us streaked and soon we were punching through the fabric of space, surrounded by the endless blue foggy tunnel of another dimension.
We would exit the Hapes Cluster from its southern tip via the Andalia system, then thread a very narrow hyperspace lane known as the Lorell Route for a day before emerging into the Zeltros system and rejoining the greater galaxy along the Trellen Trade Route.
Heading south, passing Commenor and Cato Neimoida, we finally intercepted the Hydian Way at Exodeen twelve hours later before settling in for the longest leg of our voyage.
This was a three day hop to reach the front line battlespace along the Hydian in the Pax system.
"Three… two… one…"
Anakin pulled back on the hyperdrive controls.
My own sole focus was on the power curve readout, my finger hovering over the touchscreen button…
I did not want to look up and see the mass numbers of CIS ships or think about how much potential firepower could be sent our way.
The instant I had enough power I practically punched my finger through the screen.
"Cloaking!" A number of readouts began to flash a happy green. "We're stable."
Anakin's grip on the controls visibly relaxed and the tension in his arms faded. "See, I told you, Snips."
"Yes, yes, I don't doubt your engineering skills, Skyguy. It's the little things that someone may have overlooked that just wait for the worst possible time to go wrong that worry me."
My attention was captured though at the Seperatist blockade armada guarding the hyper point.
"Get those passive scanners going, Snips."
I nodded trying to put out my mind the sight of dozens of Munificent wolfpacks, hundreds of cruisers, all arrayed around clusters of Lucrehulks. The amount of Vulture and Hyena droids in space was truly stupendous. It almost seemed like the Separatists wanted to create a true wall of steel for the Republic Navy to smash themselves onto here.
Anakin was having to do quite a bit of precognitive flying to just avoid us colliding with something.
If that wasn't bad enough, I was picking up that the fleet around the hyper point was just the tip of the iceberg of CIS strength in the system.
Even should this fleet be smashed to pieces, there were reinforcements waiting mere minutes away.
Ten minutes of flying in real space later, we left the blockade behind and accelerated for another two hours to reach the onward hyper point. There were only perfunctory patrols here, along with a Recusant-class light destroyer.
"R2, stand by. Snips, decloak in three… two… one…"
The Xanadu appeared in space for a brief second. I saw the sensors pick up scanning emissions and targeting scans for a moment… before Anakin pulled on the hyperdrive lever.
The high whine of the hyperdrive ramped up to full power, plunging us into safety.
We were through.
"Whew, that was fun," Anakin smiled cheekily. "Only seven more jumps to go."
I purposefully did not think of anything in response and just continued watching the cloak readouts like a hawk and read the engineering notes. I would not use the h-word or any of the phrases that Lady Fate just loved to pounce on.
The Xanadu emerged from hyperspace at the emergence point and I could instantly feel that, yes, this was Mustafar.
From space it was an orb of black and red, with the occasional sprinkling of white that was ash clouds. It was not an inviting place to look at or visit and it was not fun to sense in the Force.
This was once a garden world and at some point during the Old Republic era was decimated when a selfish, yet heart sick noblewoman used a some sort of Force-empowered crystal artifact of the native people to try to resurrect her dead husband. Using it in a device remarkably similar to a hyperdrive that tried to reach into the realm of the Force itself and pull her dead husband's spirit from unity with the cosmic Force.
Whether it was the Force reacting negatively to the attempt or simply a miscalculation on her part or both, the massive disturbance was enough to alter the orbits of the nearby gas giants significantly. The competing gravity sources turned the once green and lush Mustafar into a hellscape. A testament to what happens when someone reaches into realms of knowledge they were not ready for.
The native people of Mustafar, was nearly rendered extinct, and even today there were barely thirty thousand of them, still eeking out a living by helping offworlders mine the lava flows. That massive amount of death had turned Mustafar into a Dark Side Nexus.
A nexus that in another time would attract Darth Vader to build his fortress home here. The place of his 'birth' in the Dark Side due to the blade of Obi-Wan Kenobi. A place where captured surviving Jedi were sent by the Empire to meet their deaths.
I could feel Anakin was as disturbed by the sense of the place as I was.
He shook his head to clear it of the awful feelings Mustafar inspired.
"Should I cloak the ship, master?"
"No, at this point Bane wouldn't cloak either. Our deception will hold up until they do a more thorough scan."
My console beeped a warning, "Our transponder's been pinged."
"R2, any activity?"
The droid blurted a negative, though did pinpoint where the ping had come from.
"Good work, buddy, we'll head there nice and easy. No need to appear in a hurry."
The Xanadu began to experience turbulence as it inserted itself into the hot atmosphere.
"Master, I don't think we should pull our helmets off in this place."
"Charts say it's still breathable," he pointed out.
"Yes, but with the amount of fine ash and sulfates in the air, your lungs won't be happy with you in the long run."
"Good point," he commented as he saw the ash clouds pass near us.
A slow flight later through the gloom of ash and low light conditions, a distant hovering facility came into view.
It was awkwardly straddling a large mountain that was actually a large, very recent agglomeration of lava flow that had solidified, leaving ugly red veins of inner lava exposed to the surface. The entire structure was roughly 800 meters in length and looked rather fragile. Most of it was composed on either side of tall, large emitters that housed anti-gravity units that kept the structure out of the lava, hovering at a height of just over fifty meters above the broiling surface.
The center of the structure housed a single square complex building that stood nearly twenty two meters tall. It was utilitarian in the extreme and in the harsh environment made it look perfectly ominous. Maybe it was just my own bias and expectations playing on my perceptions, but it looked like just the place where you'd expect an evil overlord to be sitting in a chair and petting his cat.
A warning from my panel broke my train of thought, "Master, we've just been scanned rather thoroughly."
"So much for our little charade," he muttered and gunned the throttle somewhat. "Any targeting emissions?"
"None, the facility seems completely unarmed, I'm not even detecting any shielding."
"Power load to keep everything in the air and shields, the entire building would need to be a reactor to achieve that. Life signs?"
"Nothing conclusive, master. The large anti-gravity units are making a mess of things."
The hasty landing was quite energetic. If anyone had been asleep, we'd have woken them with the flaring repulsors, engines and the ringing noise the struts made on the decking.
The first to leave was HK, with his personal shield flaring the instant he was on the deck and both cannons out and tracking for targets.
"Report: Scanning. No hostiles, master."
Anakin emerged next, lightsaber in hand but not lit, whilst in the interest of speed I levitated R2 out and was the last to leave.
My senses were straining to pick up anything threatening. I was expecting automated turrets to pop up and mow us down with repeater fire, but my technometry was coming up empty.
HK led the way to the main entrance from the landing pad, whilst Anakin and I flanked the droid as we moved forward, our eyes and senses constantly searching for threats.
The door was naturally locked, but R2 rolled up and solved that with a quick hack of the controls.
Inside, the lighting was subdued, operating on minimal power and the long heptagonal shaped corridor was seemingly deserted. The Darkness I sensed peaked to new heights as we moved further inside. Every Jedi had a unique take on their experience with the Dark Side. Just as no person's Trial of the Mirror was the same. My own experience with the Dark Side was quite simple, yet from another point of view, complex. If I could give one word to it… it would be utter, pure apathy. Where I ceased to care about… anything.
Just thinking about that Darkness and sensing it, somehow manifested to make me feel like my spine wanted to crawl out of my back, combined with an awful vile taste in my mouth.
The Force practically screamed at me.
'Master!' I warned him through our bond.
The warning was pointless.
Anakin's lightsaber was already lit as my own two blades sprang into life.
HK blasted two repeater turrets that dropped from the ceiling before they could even fold out to open fire.
I was defending myself from a commando droid that popped out of a wall panel. My left blade stopped a sparking vibrosword from trying to bisect me, whilst my right had to deflect the point blank blaster pistol shot from the other hand of the droid. The hasty nature of the deflection meant it uselessly pinged into the ceiling.
The next instant my right blade twirled in the same movement, economically and with speed slashing through the left shoulder of the droid and coming out its right hip.
HK almost contemptuously blasted three commando droids trying to stab him through the shield with their own vibroswords, whilst Anakin had Force Pushed his own attackers into scrap against the walls.
No further opponents presented themselves.
"Derisive commentary: Pathetic."
"That would've killed anyone else handily," Anakin shook his head. "We have to move."
We hurried further down the corridor and came to an intersection. There was no signage at all in the facility, which meant we wouldn't likely be facing any organic opposition.
"Ahsoka, anything?"
I refined my concentration further. It was a mess to sort out anything with the miasma of the Dark Side, but… there… two faint points of life, defiantly shining their light but the darkness was steadily overwhelming them.
"Left, run."
Our speed wasn't the fastest it could be, not when we had to guard against more possible traps.
We turned another corridor to the right and ran into a locked door.
There was no time to waste with hacking or more subtler methods at this point. My lightsabers shot forward under the control of TK, stabbing through the door together, then separated and sliced down.
I recalled my blades, whilst Anakin pulled on the slice of door to get it out of the way.
HK breached first and we followed.
Beyond was a darkened room that seemed like a medical bay out of someone's nightmares. Six beds that were also designed to keep the occupant restrained, with all manner of medical devices and surgical instruments mounted overhead. The computers lining the walls were all on low power mode.
HK's active shield cast everything in an eerie blue glow… and if the nanny droids out of hell thought that darkness and using the two younglings as shields would protect them from us, then they were sloppily programmed.
HK's cannon blasted on single shot mode as accurate as a sniper shot and smashed the head of the nanny droid to scrap and the next shot did the same with the other.
Anakin and I reached out with the Force, catching both rather unhappy and wailing infants from falling out of the lifeless pincers of the dead droids and guided them through the air.
He caught a Mon Cal infant in his arm, easily cradling the little guy and I had to contend awkwardly with a six-limbed Chironian.
It forced me to holster my left lightsaber and cradle the infant on that arm.
"Nice shot, HK," Anakin smirked.
"Statement: Your praise is accepted, meatbag."
Then it felt like the world had shifted underneath our feet, combined with an earthquake. My senses and the Force were screaming with another warning. The computer displays flashed red with emergency warnings.
"The antigravity generators were turned off, RUN!"
All caution was thrown to the wind as we rushed out of the medical bay.
HK dropped his shield and barely managed to keep up with our Force Speed enhanced sprints. R2 resorted to his leg jets to fly and keep up.
The facility's death throes threatened to upset our footing, but precognition allowed us to jump and push off the sides of the walls when that happened.
We turned a corner to the entrance corridor just as a large section tore itself off behind us and fell into the smoldering lava below, eagerly gobbling up the facility into the fiery depths.
Emerging into the open, the next trick was to get into the Xanadu quickly.
Anakin vaulted inside first to begin the ship's startup sequence. I was next and relieved him of the Mon Cal youngling and strapped both infants into the co-pilot seat.
I turned my attention to HK and R2, levitating them inside.
"Complaint: That is so humiliating, master."
The landing platform groaned and buckled under the new stresses.
"R2, crash start!" Anakin ordered.
The droid screeched and wobbled over to its interface port.
Another shudder of the landing pad, upset my balance and dumped me into a rear seat.
The reason for it became clear as I saw the world outside the forward viewport change.
We were looking up into the sky.
"R2!"
The Xanadu's engines practically exploded into life and pushed me flat against my seat as it overwhelmed the inertial compensators briefly.
My briefly frightened mind calmed and I could only hold on as the Xanadu shot into the air like a bullet.
"R2, equalize and engage the repulsorlifts, we need control!"
The droid blared in acknowledgement and Anakin pushed forward on the control stick.
The rumbling died down and the Xanadu transitioned into a smooth flight once again… cruising at four hundred meters above the lava flows.
I glanced back at the astromech with some astonishment, "R2, did you just do what I think you did?"
The droid chirped positively in an almost smug manner. He had essentially thrown out even the emergency startup checklist, and effectively turned the Xanadu into imitating a liquid rocket booster, to get the necessary acceleration to prevent the ship from falling into the lava.
Anakin flicked a few switches as he said, "An old trick I learned and taught R2 from my pod racing days as a youngster. We're going to have to stop for some repairs at Tosste though, it's not a trick that is conducive to engines staying in good shape. I'm already getting some warnings from the computer."
"Will we even make it to Tosste? It's 90 lightyears away."
"The engines are still technically fine, Snips. Baktoid builds rugged stuff, but I'll just feel more confident about getting back to Republic space by giving the engines a look over. Tosste's technically enemy territory, but with our cloaking device we can land somewhere out of the way with no one the wiser."
The cabin was abruptly filled with the wails of two screaming infants.
"Knew I was forgetting something. Uh, Snips, mind giving them a check," Anakin winced at the pitch of the noise and even looked rather warily at the two younglings.
I rolled my eyes in exasperation, unstrapped and cradled them both in my arms.
The infants calmed down instantly when I began projecting feelings of safety, warmth, comfort and even a few select memories of my own mother I only vaguely recalled from Shili.
That done, I pushed with my senses into their little minds and bodies.
"They've definitely been injected with something foreign," I frowned in worry. "HK, pass me the scanner from the medkit back there."
"Confirmation: Here you go, Master. Question: Are the tiny meatbags in danger of ceasing function?"
"Not that I can tell," I answered as I passed the scanner over the infants and looked at the results. "It seems they were injected with non-harmful resonance substances."
"To aid in scanning and analyzing their biology?" Anakin queried.
"Yes, there's also something else, but this hand scanner doesn't have the resolution to determine. My senses are picking up something… something very, very small in them, a lot of things… and it's technological."
"Snips, are you saying…"
"They've been injected with nano-droids, Master. We need to bring these two back to the Temple's Halls of Healing, fast."
Mace Windu had seen and experienced many disturbing things in his time as Jedi. Thrown his way by the scum and criminal elements of the galaxy. The Clone Wars, however, were proving to provide a constant supply of new lows for him to experience. The deaths of fellow Jedi was never easy to accept, but something he had made peace with as an inevitability, especially now. It was a risk every knight and master accepted, when they took the oath, that it might be necessary to give their lives in service to the galaxy and the Republic.
Now the war had hit the most innocent that you could possibly imagine.
His eyes looked up from his seat in the Jedi Council chamber as the holograms of Anakin Skywalker and his padawan appeared in the center of the room.
Both were looking distinctly… grungy, their pilot suits frumpled and half-unbuckled.
"Skywalker, report you have?" Yoda opened the meeting.
"Yes, Master. We were successful in retrieving the missing younglings. We must urgently request that any available Acclamator race to rendezvous with us at Denon. The younglings need medical attention that can only be provided at the Temple and I'm not sure how much longer I can keep the Xanadu flying. I won't speak of it further via holo."
Mace felt his stomach churn at the implications of Skywalker's request.
"It will be done," Yoda declared and glanced to Kenobi, who began immediately tapping on a datapad. "Continue."
"I'm forwarding our scans of the base but we were barely there before automated security began attacking and eventually deactivated the gravity generators. We barely got out with the children, before the entire base fell apart and was swallowed by Mustafar's lava. Destroying any possible concrete evidence or clues on who was behind this."
"Most unfortunate that is," Yoda hummed in thought.
"Has Bane revealed anything more?"
"We were unable to get a mindwalker to the Hapes Cluster in time," Kenobi revealed. "Hapan justice ran its swift course and Bane has been executed."
"The chances that Bane actually knew the true identity of his client is highly unlikely," Mace spoke up.
"That is true, unfortunately. The important thing is that the children are safe and we've retrieved the holocron."
"The list…" Mace began but stopped when he felt Yoda's metaphysical presence pulse at him in warning.
"... safely back it is," Yoda continued. "New security arrangements, discussed it will be, later. This entire affair, a trial it has been. The future of the Jedi, uncertain it is. Move forward cautiously, we must."
Mace spotted Yoda giving young Ahsoka a very subtle, yet significant look. Mace had sat on the council for more than fourteen years and had known Yoda since he was a youngling - training under Yoda's guidance after he had reached his own knighthood to swiftly rise to the rank of master. There was definitely something going on between the padawan and the Grand master. Something that Yoda in the past had always shrugged or joked away, but this felt like something different.
The Togrutan padawan didn't react at all, merely staring at Yoda as she was bowing with her master as their holograms faded.
'Interesting,' he mused inwardly to himself.
Chapter 21
"Hyperthreader and scanner."
The tools in question were in hand and passed to Anakin, which promptly disappeared into the guts of one of the engine nacelles of Bane's heavy starfighter.
The fighter in question was now safely ensconced in a secure hangar bay aboard the Royal Star. We were far from the only interested party working on the highly modified Rogue-class. A group of four Hapan engineers were also burying themselves in various aspects of the ship.
My own time was spent being Anakin's assistant and keeping a sharp watch on those engineers. All four women were constantly giving Anakin looks like he was a particularly tasty piece of beef and giggling, while they were working. It was distinctly unprofessional but I could see that these women were nevertheless getting their own jobs done.
The first thing we naturally confirmed within the first few minutes was that the holocron wasn't hidden on board anywhere. It would've been a rookie mistake for Bane to leave it there anyway. If Sidious had briefed him properly on a holocron's properties, and it definitely seemed like he had, then the bounty hunter would know Jedi could sense an active holocron.
"Ah ha!"
"Find something, master?"
"Well, we've definitely got a hibridium cloaking device here."
"The power plant?"
"Definitely got something new here." He pulled his torso out of the nacelle, picked up a datapad, tapped it a few times and handed it over to me.
It took me a few moments to get my head into the right technical mindset to make sense of what I was seeing. Okay, fuel flow there… energizers there… fusion plant… what?
"You see it, Snips?"
"They're compressing the hypermatter and fuel before it reaches the reactors?"
"Yes and?"
"These circular feeds are shielded and almost encase the entire reactor… it's certainly one way to save on space."
"Which has the added benefit of?"
It took me a moment before I really felt like facepalming, "Acting as another integral heat sink, meaning they can cut down on further external heat management equipment."
He smiled and patted me on the shoulder, "Nicely reasoned, there's a lot more going on, but you managed to see the highlights. The Baktoid Workshop have really outdone themselves with this one."
"These power figures though…" I scrolled down the list, doing a bit of mental math. "Even with this super compact reactor, it doesn't look like you could keep everything powered up under cloak."
Anakin nodded, "You'd have maybe sixty or seventy percent thrust available to your engines, the rest goes into life support and particle shielding. The two laser cannons are dead weight under the cloak. They really should've gone with a few concussion missile launchers, but I suppose they reasoned the targeting emissions would've compromised the cloak."
"I'm imagining what I could do with a squadron of cloaked, hyper capable, heavy fighters with astromechs steering the launched missiles passively," I grinned widely, feeling an evil giddiness.
He laughed, "That would be a sight to see, or rather not see, given how the whole squadron is invisible."
"Let's see what our Hapan friends have to say about the computers though."
The lead engineer looked up at my approach from her datapad. All of them were wearing a very utilitarian overall outfit in a dark blue, but like all things Hapan, managed to make even something you're meant to get dirty in, look attractive.
"Miss Agmena?"
"Padawan Tano," she nodded at me, giving a brief sideways look at Anakin who was busy packing away the borrowed tooling.
"Anything from the navicomputer?"
"Unfortunately not," her long red hair tied up in a bun and had an eager energetic demeanor was almost painful to endure and see. "The bounty hunter had numerous failsafes that kicked in. One of which was tied to a biometric sensor on his body. The instant he was unconscious the navicomputer wiped itself of all data."
"Even the hyperdrive backups?"
"Even those," she confirmed. "This guy is very paranoid. If he'd been killed there was even a program set to self-destruct the fighter and not in a nice way."
"How big would the explosion have been?"
"Maybe half the yield of an anti-capital proton torpedo, roughly. It would've wiped out a nice chunk of the city in the process."
"Ouch," I winced at the thought. It was strange though. Going out with a bang and a final 'fuck you' like that, potentially killing hundreds of thousands, wasn't really Bane's style. The duros was many things; murderer, kidnapper, bounty hunter, and so on, but it was all just in service to his goals and getting paid. Sidious on the other hand…
No, even the Sith Lord himself wouldn't be so… blatantly destructive. Sure, in the future, Emperor Palpatine would sentence quite a few worlds to Base Delta Zero - orbital bombardment to the point of glassing the planet, nevermind the Death Star. In the here and now though, Darth Sidious wasn't so… banally evil. Bane could've died in numerous other ways than enemy action and when his heart flatlined… boom! It just didn't feel right for him.
The CIS's Illusive General…? Maybe. If it was him, then it would definitely be a datapoint and clue to his identity.
At this point I felt a beckoning ping from Anakin along our bond.
"Thanks, Miss Agmena."
"You're welcome, Padawan Tano," she gave me a big smile and was all eyes for Anakin again.
The relief Anakin and I felt at leaving the hangar was palpable.
A few hours later, I was standing behind Anakin in a very lavish and modern meeting room. With us now, was Mace Windu and Obi-Wan at one side of the table, on the other was Commander Khal, and another woman who was dressed in a very clingy, white one piece bodysuit with numerous pockets. Her hair was short and graying, but her face in contrast was still quite firm and good looking.
"Doctor Gallia, what is the condition of the duros?" Khal enquired of her fellow Hapan.
"He has responded well to treatment, we removed him from the bacta tank this morning and he's in recovery."
"How long till he can be questioned?" Mace enquired politely.
"Ideally, two days to be on the safe side. We had to do quite a bit of reconstructive work on his knees and legs beforehand. If time is of the essence, then the earliest I'd let you see him is in twelve hours, not a minute earlier."
"Understood, Doctor. Thank you," Khal said firmly, closing the matter. "Now the question turns to what is to be done about Bane himself. He has murdered a Hapan citizen and our laws are clear."
"He is also responsible for the death of two Jedi," Mace retorted.
The first being the Jedi Knight Ord Enisence. The initial form that the clawdite changeling had assumed to infiltrate the temple. She had helpfully given up the safehouse Bane had used on Coruscant to plan the operation and as such Enisence's body had been retrieved for burial.
"So clearly you think that your jurisdiction supersedes Hapes authority?" Khal, was hardly phased at all in the face of someone as forbidding and intimidating as Windu. Nevermind that he was technically her 'superior' in the Jedi Order, but only in theory. Technically, the Jedi Council had full right and backing of the Republic to take custody of Bane right out from under the Hapans, but the Jedi would be putting a lot of strain on the cordial relations the two sides enjoyed. In the same way, the Hapans could invoke quite a few local laws and complicated terms in their alliance to the Republic to keep Bane in their custody.
In other words, the potential to spark a diplomatic tit for tat neither side wanted.
"Is there some compromise that we can come to?" Obi-Wan enquired mildly. "The main thing we are after is the location of the stolen holocron."
"Bane is unlikely to just willingly reveal that," she pointed out. "It would require extensive interrogation or using the Force but that would require Alter Mind skills that risk destroying the information, unless one of you is a specialist mindwalker."
"Are there any Hapan Jedi practiced in that?"
"I'm the closest you'd get to that in the cluster, it's why I was chosen as the commander of the queen's personal security, but info retrieval is specialist work," Khal explained.
"I recently spent quite some time working with a Jedi mindwalker on another case," Obi-Wan explained. "If it comes down to it, I'm prepared to interrogate Bane."
Windu gave a brief glance to his fellow Jedi Master, but otherwise held his peace. However, to the Jedi in the room it spoke volumes. "Are you certain, Master Kenobi?"
"Yes," Obi-Wan answered firmly.
"Very well," Windu nodded. "Bane will remain in Hapan custody after all this is over. Now let's talk about his fighter."
"Naturally, the Consortium is very interested in the technology," Khal smiled dryly. "It was captured on Hapes, by our forces. However, given this is CIS tech we recognize it's in the greater interest of the Republic that it be researched and possibly widely adopted, given the enemy will likely soon be fielding it in larger numbers. The Consortium will propose a joint research initiative with Republic scientists."
"That seems reasonable," Windu allowed. Of course it meant that Consortium would seek to rake in the profits hand over fist and I could just imagine the Baktoid Workshop executives screaming in anger that all their R&D expenses and the expected return on investment had just been flushed down the toilet.
The wait for Obi-Wan to conclude his mindwalk of Bane was a rather agonizing affair. Made all the more so by my need to speak to Mistress Gray with as much privacy as possible. I thankfully got my chance because I had to return to her estate anyway to gather our few belongings.
Anakin had resumed burying himself in studying the Xanadu Blood - the name Bane had given to his fighter and I returned to the Gray mansion.
Mistress Gray had clearly seen or even sensed the bee in my bonnet, when I asked for a free hour of her time.
"Do you have any casual swimming attire, dear?"
"No, mistress," I blinked in surprise at the question.
She smiled at me and made a few calls.
Barely a few minutes later I was introduced to a male Hapan who had a very 'distinguished' air about him. He was Mistress Gray's tailor and looked after every aspect of her clothing and even made new outfits on the spot for her. How he could do this was a combination of a body scanner, computer, fabric fabbing, manual tailoring by hand and sheer inherent talent.
An hour later, I was basking in a deck chair near the estate swimming pool, wearing the Hapan idea of a bikini. It was an outfit which I could hardly imagine ever wearing outside of Hapes with any confidence. Nevermind micro… this was the equivalent of a nano-string sling bikini. It was amazing that the stuff was strong enough to do the job at their thickness - but they did, flexing and stretching enough that I could probably do any Ataru moves and not have to worry about the thing snapping off.
I also doubted I could even wear this in the long term, given how precisely it was tailored to my still growing body.
Mistress Gray was next to me in a swimming outfit that was slightly more conservative, though that didn't mean much when her sling bikini was only a thumb width wide. Her tan showed though that she actually rarely wore anything outdoors around the pool.
"So my dear, stop dithering and slay the akul," she stated with a small smile. The surprise at her using a Torgruta expression broke through my anxiousness but I couldn't afford to relax completely as the concentration needed to keep up my probability shield just didn't allow for it.
"I have an enemy, Mistress Gray. One that I cannot fight openly. He's powerful in so many ways that I can't even begin to describe to you. If I tried, you'd probably not even believe half of it and I'd paint you as a target."
She nodded, her eyes flickering with brief surprise before it was hidden behind her own politely attentive mask.
"Is it a pointless question to ask how one so young could be involved in any way with such a person?"
"It's not pointless, just one that I cannot answer. He has maneuvered himself into a seemingly unassailable position, he is extremely strong with the Force, blessed with gifts that lets him anticipate his foes, to see the future."
"Then how have you remained undetected, dear?"
"Through a primary means I will never speak of, and others I have developed over the years."
Gray leaned back and just seemed to relax even further, for a moment I thought she was going to take a cat nap, but this was just another deception.
"Sit back, relax, look up at the sky," she instructed.
I did so as best I could.
"When under enemy surveillance, you must wear a mask, with the understanding that the mask is what you want the enemy to believe, underneath the mask, adopt another with yet more deception for the enemy. So if he penetrates the first, he will find the second and in victory look no further. Right now, we are two women at a pool, enjoying the suns, relaxing. Beneath that, you are simply speaking to the mother of the child you rescued, who requested you to be here for a chat in gratitude." Gray took a deep breath in and out, "A mother who will stop at nothing to repay an essentially unpayable debt for that which you have given. Tenel is my third daughter, the one which we in Hapan society actually consider the most important.
"So speak, Ahsoka Tano of Shilli, ask what you would have of a grateful mother."
"I was able to identify where Bane is keeping the holocron," Obi-Wan addressed the meeting. He pressed a few buttons on the table and a holo appeared of a system called Antar, somewhere in the north eastern outer rim. It zoomed further to an asteroid field between the fifth and sixth planets, until it highlighted a specific coordinate. "Here is a small, self-sufficient space station, that Bane calls Black Stall. It's a combination of a safe house and storage for his most valuable possessions."
"Nice hideout," Anakin remarked. "I assume it's filled with traps and other lethal tricks that would deter unwanted visitors."
"You assume correctly," Obi-Wan nodded. "The station will scan any approaching ship and if it doesn't detect that Bane is on board, it will self-destruct."
"So let me guess, Bane is using it as leverage for us to escort him there, where there are some other means which he can use to attack, distract us and allow him a chance to escape."
"Since you seem to have foreseen what I was going to say, perhaps you should take over the meeting, Anakin," Obi-Wan smiled crookedly at this former student.
"No thanks, master. Please, do continue."
"The problem is that Hapes refuses to let him leave, even under guard."
"I know his type, Master Kenobi," Commander Khal thumped a finger on the desk. "Walking into a prepared safehouse of his own design, we might as well give him his freedom now."
"Then perhaps Hapes can spare us an entire team of slicers?"
"Certainly," Khal declared with a shrug, surprising everyone in the room. "How many do you need? Hapes won't balk at the expense in labor and credit to see this done."
"I'll get back to you, commander," Obi-Wan scratched his beard in thought. "The uncertainty we face is that I'm not sure that the missing children are there. If I was a fully trained mindwalker, I might have had an answer, but as it was, I had to stop at this point because Bane was a few seconds away from a brain aneurysm."
"I might be able to help with that," Anakin announced. "I've been working the last day with the Hapan engineers in further picking apart Bane's fighter. One of them noticed a lot of volcanic ash had collected in the landing gear. I then remembered the old fuel management system trick."
Everyone in the room nodded in understanding. No matter how thoroughly Bane sanitized the computers of his fighter, erasing the computer for fuel management would thoroughly ground the fighter and require a qualified tech to fix. Jedi used this fact to their advantage a lot in combating smuggling. Using the fuel usage data, combined with what destinations you knew the smuggler had taken, you could generally reconstruct the distance traveled in both hyperspace and real space.
"We had to make some adjustments to the normal math based on this new type of reactor," he explained further, taking out a datapad and working on it, before interfacing it with the room's holoprojector.
A galactic map was presented, with all known hyperspace routes, which swiftly began to flash with strobing as Anakin's program got to work trying to match and triangulate within the parameters he was setting.
I stared at the galactic map, my eyes turning south and sure enough, the possible routes were steadily being whittled down towards…
"Mustafar," I pointed at the map just as it resolved that particular destination.
"It's a possibility, padawan," Anakin agreed. "What makes you sure?"
"Besides the fact that it's a six day detour for Bane to have taken, it's deep in CIS territory," I stepped up to the hologram and with a few commands it zoomed in to display the world in question, "Look, held by the Techno-Union as a mining world. The planet is also entirely dominated by volcanic activity. Why go all the way to the galactic south? Unless he was meeting whoever hired him or perhaps his actual employer has a facility there."
He eventually nodded in agreement, "Makes sense, Snips."
"Nicely done," Obi-Wan smiled. "We now have two destinations to investigate. Master Windu and I will head to Antar with the Hapan slicers. You will have to figure out a way to smuggle yourselves into and out of Seperarist space."
"Oh, is that all?" Anakin shrugged. "No problem, we'll just have to sneak through the most heavily militarized space in the galaxy, most of the CIS Navy not to mention a bunch of neutral worlds that would just love to sell us out to the Seppies."
"Um, Master, I have an idea about that," I grinned at him.
"Go ahead, Snips."
"How hard do you think it will be to modify the Xanadu Blood to carry at least five people?"
Ordinarly, the answer to that would be extremely difficult.
It was simplified considerably when you had the backing of the Hapes Consortium. Within less than a day, Anakin was somehow leading a team of eight scientists, engineers, dozens of engineering focused droids and an almost blank check with the efforts to convert and modify the fighter. It definitely proved one thing, the Hapans could put aside their usual prejudices when motivated enough.
The main obstacle wasn't space as such, as a larger spherical habitation cabin and cockpit could be almost bolted onto the nose of the fighter. The problem was life support would have to be upgraded to accommodate the larger space and crew, which had the knock on effect of a higher power requirement.
The fighter's power was already on a knife's edge of performance, testing showed that we'd have to forego any hope of having weapons at all if these modifications were performed. The increased weight meant an even further reduction in speed and maneuverability.
Anakin's efforts were further interrupted when he received a communication request.
"The Chancellor wants a report on our progress," Windu watched the scurrying activity of all the engineers with interest as the Xanadu Blood was steadily being rebuilt.
"Tell him this is not Republic business, it's an internal Jedi affair," Obi-Wan pointed out.
"I have to disagree with that," Anakin awkwardly removed a pretty large tool belt he had taken to wearing with a wince, and was looking rather greasy. "As long as the Jedi are acting within the structure of the GAR as its commanders, we should report to the chancellor. Even on an internal matter such as this."
"Well, then I guess you have a call to make, after a shower and change of clothes," his former master smiled knowingly. "The unmarked ship for our own part of the mission has arrived."
"Well, good luck, master."
Both senior Jedi bowed slightly in greeting to Anakin and took their leave. I followed Anakin out the hangar and cleared my throat pointedly.
"Snips?"
"Before you call the chancellor," I smiled and made a few subtle handsigns casually at my leg.
He frowned at me, pinging our bond, but I kept the door closed for thoughtspeak, instead continuing my hand signals. We were both proficient enough now to have a rough level of communication.
'Treat your call as if the enemy is listening,' I signed.
He didn't react, but I felt his astonishment and even a slight hint of fear. 'Chancellor… compromised?'
'Enemy walks the Senate freely, remember.'
Anakin sighed, 'What suggest?'
'Speak normally, speak nothing of changing ship or destination. Enemy will kill children instantly if he knows we know.'
He nodded, "Keep watch over those engineers, snips. Pay attention, you'll learn a lot."
"I will, Master."
A week of work, testing and simulation passed. My time was mostly spent doing the boring work as an extra pair of hands for Anakin to boss around. The shift would end and I'd shuttle to the Gray estate to spend time there in receiving instruction on how to be a sneaky mastermind. I was hardly up to Mistress Gray's demanding standard by the time the work on the fighter was done, but she had my personal encrypted com codes and we would continue a distance learning arrangement.
The Xanadu Blood was now barely recognizable from the sleek Rogue-class heavy fighter. The Millenium Falcon would be called in the future 'a piece of junk' by Luke Skywalker. That freighter was a masterclass in design compared to the Xanadu, which was just plain ugly to look at now. Most of the Hapan engineers almost couldn't stand to look at it for more than a few seconds and most were rather embarrassed and even insulted that this was the work of their hands.
The Xanadu now looked like someone had taken a rather enlarged central sphere of the future TIE fighter and rammed it straight onto the nose of the previous fighter.
It was with some trepidation that dressed in my flight suit, I boarded the thing to sit in the 'co-pilot' seat. There was no real co-pilot in this setup, but I did have controls and monitors for the cloaking device and sensors.
At least the Hapans had the interior rather cozy and in some cases quite luxurious. It was as if they compensated for the ugliness of the exterior by at least doing some aesthetically pleasing work inside. I almost felt like I was in a rather nice winnebago or camper van.
"Statement: HK-47 ready to serve, Master."
The sadistic droid had to twist slightly to enter the narrow entry door on the starboard side of the Xanadu.
"HK, had fun?" I asked absently while studying the engineering notes compiled by the Hapans on the cloaking device.
"Answer: Most certainly, master. Many a meatbag existence was satisfactorily ended in the most humorous ways… that naturally can't be traced at all to me or the Gray meatbag."
"Well, I'm glad Mistress Gray found some productive use of your talents. You can go ahead and slot in at the back, there should be a charging port."
"Statement: Thank you, Master."
R2 arrived next, having to use a brief burst of his leg jets to make the jump.
"Hello R2."
The astromech gave a burst of happy binary greeting and had to switch himself to waddling mode to maneuver through the cramped confines. On spying HK, R2 gave a burst of binary that sounded to most human ears like someone snorting and blurting out a raspberry.
"Salutation: Greetings, tin can."
HK did not have the most positive opinion of R2-D2 but did 'respect' the droid for his long list of accomplishments and for actually managing to go for so long without a memory wipe. R2 blurted a string of binary back.
"Explanation: I will cease calling you a tin can, when you install a blaster into your chassis. Until you do, you are no more than an ambulatory target who also happens to be an expert slicer and mechanic."
R2's binary response was telling HK where he could shove that suggestion, in droid terms at least.
"Indignation: Why you…"
"HK," I glared at the homicidal droid.
"Statement: Very well, master." HK actually sighed very convincingly. "I will not argue with the ambulatory tin can."
Anakin appeared at the Xanadu's entrance, also dressed in a flight suit and hopped in, sealing the cabin behind him. "Everybody set?"
"Yes, master. All present."
He hopped into the pilot station and began flicking switches for the pre-flight. "R2, interface and begin our hyperspace plots."
The astromech blurted a happy compliance before his logic probe shot out of his chassis and interfaced with a port specifically placed for him in the rear of the cabin.
"You getting to grips with that stuff, Snips?"
"Mostly, Skyguy," I replied, putting the datapad down as the ship began humming and whining into life. The screen showing the cloaking device status and diagnostics flickered on and everything looked good so far.
"Royal Star, this is Xanadu Blood, requesting departure clearance."
"Xanadu, you're cleared for departure 259, vectors transmitting, safe journey."
"Thank you, Royal Star, Xanadu out."
The engines whined into full power and pitch, Anakin twisted on the control stick and the ship rose into the air a little wobbly.
"Urgh, this is awful," he grimaced.
The Xanadu stabilized before a smoother power transition had us emerging from the hangar tentatively, before Anakin pushed forward on the throttle with more confidence.
Our speed ticked up all the way to about 800 kph and a steady but rather anemic climb was begun out of the atmosphere. A normal Rogue-class could easily hit 1200 in an atmosphere, but the Xanadu was going to get nowhere near that.
The course was very conservative at first, just because it was giving us the most time to do testing and evaluation to even make the decision to go ahead with the journey. The Hapans had installed a bunch of extra engineering sensors and links that were beaming data back to the design group that had worked on the Xanadu. Data that Anakin was also looking over.
"So what's the word, Skyguy? We going or bailing out?"
Anakin stared into the readouts for another intense minute before finally declaring, "I think we're going."
Despite his confidence though, he reached down to put on his vacuum helmet. Something I hurriedly imitated.
He promptly pulled back on the stick and the Xanadu broke the final parts of the atmosphere before pushing us officially into the blackness of orbital space around Hapes. It was another eighteen minutes of acceleration getting us out of Hapes' mass shadow before he spoke up.
"R2, how are things at your end?"
The droid bleeped worriedly but also returned a positive binary signal.
"Okay, here we go."
He pushed forward on the hyperdrive controls.
The hyperdrive whined with a strain and pitch that was not at all comforting, but the stars around us streaked and soon we were punching through the fabric of space, surrounded by the endless blue foggy tunnel of another dimension.
We would exit the Hapes Cluster from its southern tip via the Andalia system, then thread a very narrow hyperspace lane known as the Lorell Route for a day before emerging into the Zeltros system and rejoining the greater galaxy along the Trellen Trade Route.
Heading south, passing Commenor and Cato Neimoida, we finally intercepted the Hydian Way at Exodeen twelve hours later before settling in for the longest leg of our voyage.
This was a three day hop to reach the front line battlespace along the Hydian in the Pax system.
"Three… two… one…"
Anakin pulled back on the hyperdrive controls.
My own sole focus was on the power curve readout, my finger hovering over the touchscreen button…
I did not want to look up and see the mass numbers of CIS ships or think about how much potential firepower could be sent our way.
The instant I had enough power I practically punched my finger through the screen.
"Cloaking!" A number of readouts began to flash a happy green. "We're stable."
Anakin's grip on the controls visibly relaxed and the tension in his arms faded. "See, I told you, Snips."
"Yes, yes, I don't doubt your engineering skills, Skyguy. It's the little things that someone may have overlooked that just wait for the worst possible time to go wrong that worry me."
My attention was captured though at the Seperatist blockade armada guarding the hyper point.
"Get those passive scanners going, Snips."
I nodded trying to put out my mind the sight of dozens of Munificent wolfpacks, hundreds of cruisers, all arrayed around clusters of Lucrehulks. The amount of Vulture and Hyena droids in space was truly stupendous. It almost seemed like the Separatists wanted to create a true wall of steel for the Republic Navy to smash themselves onto here.
Anakin was having to do quite a bit of precognitive flying to just avoid us colliding with something.
If that wasn't bad enough, I was picking up that the fleet around the hyper point was just the tip of the iceberg of CIS strength in the system.
Even should this fleet be smashed to pieces, there were reinforcements waiting mere minutes away.
Ten minutes of flying in real space later, we left the blockade behind and accelerated for another two hours to reach the onward hyper point. There were only perfunctory patrols here, along with a Recusant-class light destroyer.
"R2, stand by. Snips, decloak in three… two… one…"
The Xanadu appeared in space for a brief second. I saw the sensors pick up scanning emissions and targeting scans for a moment… before Anakin pulled on the hyperdrive lever.
The high whine of the hyperdrive ramped up to full power, plunging us into safety.
We were through.
"Whew, that was fun," Anakin smiled cheekily. "Only seven more jumps to go."
I purposefully did not think of anything in response and just continued watching the cloak readouts like a hawk and read the engineering notes. I would not use the h-word or any of the phrases that Lady Fate just loved to pounce on.
The Xanadu emerged from hyperspace at the emergence point and I could instantly feel that, yes, this was Mustafar.
From space it was an orb of black and red, with the occasional sprinkling of white that was ash clouds. It was not an inviting place to look at or visit and it was not fun to sense in the Force.
This was once a garden world and at some point during the Old Republic era was decimated when a selfish, yet heart sick noblewoman used a some sort of Force-empowered crystal artifact of the native people to try to resurrect her dead husband. Using it in a device remarkably similar to a hyperdrive that tried to reach into the realm of the Force itself and pull her dead husband's spirit from unity with the cosmic Force.
Whether it was the Force reacting negatively to the attempt or simply a miscalculation on her part or both, the massive disturbance was enough to alter the orbits of the nearby gas giants significantly. The competing gravity sources turned the once green and lush Mustafar into a hellscape. A testament to what happens when someone reaches into realms of knowledge they were not ready for.
The native people of Mustafar, was nearly rendered extinct, and even today there were barely thirty thousand of them, still eeking out a living by helping offworlders mine the lava flows. That massive amount of death had turned Mustafar into a Dark Side Nexus.
A nexus that in another time would attract Darth Vader to build his fortress home here. The place of his 'birth' in the Dark Side due to the blade of Obi-Wan Kenobi. A place where captured surviving Jedi were sent by the Empire to meet their deaths.
I could feel Anakin was as disturbed by the sense of the place as I was.
He shook his head to clear it of the awful feelings Mustafar inspired.
"Should I cloak the ship, master?"
"No, at this point Bane wouldn't cloak either. Our deception will hold up until they do a more thorough scan."
My console beeped a warning, "Our transponder's been pinged."
"R2, any activity?"
The droid blurted a negative, though did pinpoint where the ping had come from.
"Good work, buddy, we'll head there nice and easy. No need to appear in a hurry."
The Xanadu began to experience turbulence as it inserted itself into the hot atmosphere.
"Master, I don't think we should pull our helmets off in this place."
"Charts say it's still breathable," he pointed out.
"Yes, but with the amount of fine ash and sulfates in the air, your lungs won't be happy with you in the long run."
"Good point," he commented as he saw the ash clouds pass near us.
A slow flight later through the gloom of ash and low light conditions, a distant hovering facility came into view.
It was awkwardly straddling a large mountain that was actually a large, very recent agglomeration of lava flow that had solidified, leaving ugly red veins of inner lava exposed to the surface. The entire structure was roughly 800 meters in length and looked rather fragile. Most of it was composed on either side of tall, large emitters that housed anti-gravity units that kept the structure out of the lava, hovering at a height of just over fifty meters above the broiling surface.
The center of the structure housed a single square complex building that stood nearly twenty two meters tall. It was utilitarian in the extreme and in the harsh environment made it look perfectly ominous. Maybe it was just my own bias and expectations playing on my perceptions, but it looked like just the place where you'd expect an evil overlord to be sitting in a chair and petting his cat.
A warning from my panel broke my train of thought, "Master, we've just been scanned rather thoroughly."
"So much for our little charade," he muttered and gunned the throttle somewhat. "Any targeting emissions?"
"None, the facility seems completely unarmed, I'm not even detecting any shielding."
"Power load to keep everything in the air and shields, the entire building would need to be a reactor to achieve that. Life signs?"
"Nothing conclusive, master. The large anti-gravity units are making a mess of things."
The hasty landing was quite energetic. If anyone had been asleep, we'd have woken them with the flaring repulsors, engines and the ringing noise the struts made on the decking.
The first to leave was HK, with his personal shield flaring the instant he was on the deck and both cannons out and tracking for targets.
"Report: Scanning. No hostiles, master."
Anakin emerged next, lightsaber in hand but not lit, whilst in the interest of speed I levitated R2 out and was the last to leave.
My senses were straining to pick up anything threatening. I was expecting automated turrets to pop up and mow us down with repeater fire, but my technometry was coming up empty.
HK led the way to the main entrance from the landing pad, whilst Anakin and I flanked the droid as we moved forward, our eyes and senses constantly searching for threats.
The door was naturally locked, but R2 rolled up and solved that with a quick hack of the controls.
Inside, the lighting was subdued, operating on minimal power and the long heptagonal shaped corridor was seemingly deserted. The Darkness I sensed peaked to new heights as we moved further inside. Every Jedi had a unique take on their experience with the Dark Side. Just as no person's Trial of the Mirror was the same. My own experience with the Dark Side was quite simple, yet from another point of view, complex. If I could give one word to it… it would be utter, pure apathy. Where I ceased to care about… anything.
Just thinking about that Darkness and sensing it, somehow manifested to make me feel like my spine wanted to crawl out of my back, combined with an awful vile taste in my mouth.
The Force practically screamed at me.
'Master!' I warned him through our bond.
The warning was pointless.
Anakin's lightsaber was already lit as my own two blades sprang into life.
HK blasted two repeater turrets that dropped from the ceiling before they could even fold out to open fire.
I was defending myself from a commando droid that popped out of a wall panel. My left blade stopped a sparking vibrosword from trying to bisect me, whilst my right had to deflect the point blank blaster pistol shot from the other hand of the droid. The hasty nature of the deflection meant it uselessly pinged into the ceiling.
The next instant my right blade twirled in the same movement, economically and with speed slashing through the left shoulder of the droid and coming out its right hip.
HK almost contemptuously blasted three commando droids trying to stab him through the shield with their own vibroswords, whilst Anakin had Force Pushed his own attackers into scrap against the walls.
No further opponents presented themselves.
"Derisive commentary: Pathetic."
"That would've killed anyone else handily," Anakin shook his head. "We have to move."
We hurried further down the corridor and came to an intersection. There was no signage at all in the facility, which meant we wouldn't likely be facing any organic opposition.
"Ahsoka, anything?"
I refined my concentration further. It was a mess to sort out anything with the miasma of the Dark Side, but… there… two faint points of life, defiantly shining their light but the darkness was steadily overwhelming them.
"Left, run."
Our speed wasn't the fastest it could be, not when we had to guard against more possible traps.
We turned another corridor to the right and ran into a locked door.
There was no time to waste with hacking or more subtler methods at this point. My lightsabers shot forward under the control of TK, stabbing through the door together, then separated and sliced down.
I recalled my blades, whilst Anakin pulled on the slice of door to get it out of the way.
HK breached first and we followed.
Beyond was a darkened room that seemed like a medical bay out of someone's nightmares. Six beds that were also designed to keep the occupant restrained, with all manner of medical devices and surgical instruments mounted overhead. The computers lining the walls were all on low power mode.
HK's active shield cast everything in an eerie blue glow… and if the nanny droids out of hell thought that darkness and using the two younglings as shields would protect them from us, then they were sloppily programmed.
HK's cannon blasted on single shot mode as accurate as a sniper shot and smashed the head of the nanny droid to scrap and the next shot did the same with the other.
Anakin and I reached out with the Force, catching both rather unhappy and wailing infants from falling out of the lifeless pincers of the dead droids and guided them through the air.
He caught a Mon Cal infant in his arm, easily cradling the little guy and I had to contend awkwardly with a six-limbed Chironian.
It forced me to holster my left lightsaber and cradle the infant on that arm.
"Nice shot, HK," Anakin smirked.
"Statement: Your praise is accepted, meatbag."
Then it felt like the world had shifted underneath our feet, combined with an earthquake. My senses and the Force were screaming with another warning. The computer displays flashed red with emergency warnings.
"The antigravity generators were turned off, RUN!"
All caution was thrown to the wind as we rushed out of the medical bay.
HK dropped his shield and barely managed to keep up with our Force Speed enhanced sprints. R2 resorted to his leg jets to fly and keep up.
The facility's death throes threatened to upset our footing, but precognition allowed us to jump and push off the sides of the walls when that happened.
We turned a corner to the entrance corridor just as a large section tore itself off behind us and fell into the smoldering lava below, eagerly gobbling up the facility into the fiery depths.
Emerging into the open, the next trick was to get into the Xanadu quickly.
Anakin vaulted inside first to begin the ship's startup sequence. I was next and relieved him of the Mon Cal youngling and strapped both infants into the co-pilot seat.
I turned my attention to HK and R2, levitating them inside.
"Complaint: That is so humiliating, master."
The landing platform groaned and buckled under the new stresses.
"R2, crash start!" Anakin ordered.
The droid screeched and wobbled over to its interface port.
Another shudder of the landing pad, upset my balance and dumped me into a rear seat.
The reason for it became clear as I saw the world outside the forward viewport change.
We were looking up into the sky.
"R2!"
The Xanadu's engines practically exploded into life and pushed me flat against my seat as it overwhelmed the inertial compensators briefly.
My briefly frightened mind calmed and I could only hold on as the Xanadu shot into the air like a bullet.
"R2, equalize and engage the repulsorlifts, we need control!"
The droid blared in acknowledgement and Anakin pushed forward on the control stick.
The rumbling died down and the Xanadu transitioned into a smooth flight once again… cruising at four hundred meters above the lava flows.
I glanced back at the astromech with some astonishment, "R2, did you just do what I think you did?"
The droid chirped positively in an almost smug manner. He had essentially thrown out even the emergency startup checklist, and effectively turned the Xanadu into imitating a liquid rocket booster, to get the necessary acceleration to prevent the ship from falling into the lava.
Anakin flicked a few switches as he said, "An old trick I learned and taught R2 from my pod racing days as a youngster. We're going to have to stop for some repairs at Tosste though, it's not a trick that is conducive to engines staying in good shape. I'm already getting some warnings from the computer."
"Will we even make it to Tosste? It's 90 lightyears away."
"The engines are still technically fine, Snips. Baktoid builds rugged stuff, but I'll just feel more confident about getting back to Republic space by giving the engines a look over. Tosste's technically enemy territory, but with our cloaking device we can land somewhere out of the way with no one the wiser."
The cabin was abruptly filled with the wails of two screaming infants.
"Knew I was forgetting something. Uh, Snips, mind giving them a check," Anakin winced at the pitch of the noise and even looked rather warily at the two younglings.
I rolled my eyes in exasperation, unstrapped and cradled them both in my arms.
The infants calmed down instantly when I began projecting feelings of safety, warmth, comfort and even a few select memories of my own mother I only vaguely recalled from Shili.
That done, I pushed with my senses into their little minds and bodies.
"They've definitely been injected with something foreign," I frowned in worry. "HK, pass me the scanner from the medkit back there."
"Confirmation: Here you go, Master. Question: Are the tiny meatbags in danger of ceasing function?"
"Not that I can tell," I answered as I passed the scanner over the infants and looked at the results. "It seems they were injected with non-harmful resonance substances."
"To aid in scanning and analyzing their biology?" Anakin queried.
"Yes, there's also something else, but this hand scanner doesn't have the resolution to determine. My senses are picking up something… something very, very small in them, a lot of things… and it's technological."
"Snips, are you saying…"
"They've been injected with nano-droids, Master. We need to bring these two back to the Temple's Halls of Healing, fast."
Mace Windu had seen and experienced many disturbing things in his time as Jedi. Thrown his way by the scum and criminal elements of the galaxy. The Clone Wars, however, were proving to provide a constant supply of new lows for him to experience. The deaths of fellow Jedi was never easy to accept, but something he had made peace with as an inevitability, especially now. It was a risk every knight and master accepted, when they took the oath, that it might be necessary to give their lives in service to the galaxy and the Republic.
Now the war had hit the most innocent that you could possibly imagine.
His eyes looked up from his seat in the Jedi Council chamber as the holograms of Anakin Skywalker and his padawan appeared in the center of the room.
Both were looking distinctly… grungy, their pilot suits frumpled and half-unbuckled.
"Skywalker, report you have?" Yoda opened the meeting.
"Yes, Master. We were successful in retrieving the missing younglings. We must urgently request that any available Acclamator race to rendezvous with us at Denon. The younglings need medical attention that can only be provided at the Temple and I'm not sure how much longer I can keep the Xanadu flying. I won't speak of it further via holo."
Mace felt his stomach churn at the implications of Skywalker's request.
"It will be done," Yoda declared and glanced to Kenobi, who began immediately tapping on a datapad. "Continue."
"I'm forwarding our scans of the base but we were barely there before automated security began attacking and eventually deactivated the gravity generators. We barely got out with the children, before the entire base fell apart and was swallowed by Mustafar's lava. Destroying any possible concrete evidence or clues on who was behind this."
"Most unfortunate that is," Yoda hummed in thought.
"Has Bane revealed anything more?"
"We were unable to get a mindwalker to the Hapes Cluster in time," Kenobi revealed. "Hapan justice ran its swift course and Bane has been executed."
"The chances that Bane actually knew the true identity of his client is highly unlikely," Mace spoke up.
"That is true, unfortunately. The important thing is that the children are safe and we've retrieved the holocron."
"The list…" Mace began but stopped when he felt Yoda's metaphysical presence pulse at him in warning.
"... safely back it is," Yoda continued. "New security arrangements, discussed it will be, later. This entire affair, a trial it has been. The future of the Jedi, uncertain it is. Move forward cautiously, we must."
Mace spotted Yoda giving young Ahsoka a very subtle, yet significant look. Mace had sat on the council for more than fourteen years and had known Yoda since he was a youngling - training under Yoda's guidance after he had reached his own knighthood to swiftly rise to the rank of master. There was definitely something going on between the padawan and the Grand master. Something that Yoda in the past had always shrugged or joked away, but this felt like something different.
The Togrutan padawan didn't react at all, merely staring at Yoda as she was bowing with her master as their holograms faded.
'Interesting,' he mused inwardly to himself.
Chapter 23 is now available on the Patreon.
Chapter 22 goes onto the Holonet on the 13th August.
Fellow Human
Verified Roado Rolla
Why not arrange mercenaries with hammerheads and Z-95s in separate but secretlly united companies with that corusca online money, as a contingency for the war ending and what comes after.
Chapter 22
A/N: Thank you Patrons and Super Patron for making this happen and supporting me. Have a good weekend and enjoy.
Chapter 22
It was heaven to be under a shower which I could just stay in until I got wrinkly skin. Not that I did that often, but it was more accurate to say, it was just amazing to be unhurried in the shower. The best we could do to clean ourselves on the long trip on the Xanadu Blood had been standing sponge baths in the tiny WC. The remaining trip back to Coruscant on the Acclamator didn't count, even though it was amazing to be able to stretch the legs. No relaxation was possible when you had two infants to care for, especially of two entirely different species.
Anakin and I had to do our best guesses and even used the Force for guidance on what was wrong every time the little tykes threw a new tantrum. When it was safe to do so, we got on the Holonet and began to consult on just what to do. The whole experience made me question how any species managed to procreate when you had to deal with a bundle of unending wailing and demands that kept you out of proper sleep for months or even years. It had also done a number on any lingering thoughts I had on the possibility of having children of my own in the future. Future Ahsoka would probably… maybe have the issue, but right now it would take seeing flying pigs over the Jedi Temple before I'd believe in the possibility.
I switched off the shower, toweled off and dressed.
My 'Hapan Jedi' outfit as I termed it in my head was just too comfortable to pass up wearing again. My experience in the cluster had done a lot to make me more at ease in my own skin.
I emerged from the bathroom to find that Anakin was back to his own customary almost black Jedi 'half-armor' outfit, scrutinizing his own appearance in a mirror and combing his hair. Normally, he wasn't vain at all, but he was going on a long overdue visit to his wife.
"Keeping the new look, Snips?"
"When I'm not on a battlefield or on a ship about to head into battle, sure."
He glanced at his chrono, "Well, I have to be going. You know what to do."
Yes, cover for him while he had dinner and passionate negotiations with his wife.
I smirked, tapping the comlink on my gauntlet, "Of course, Skyguy." Every call that would go to him normally would be routed to me.
His head was in the clouds as he left his quarters but my purposeful 'eh-hem' and pointing at the table reminded him that he had to take the dinner he had obtained at considerable effort.
The stasis box was filled with a cooked meal that was straight from a freighter inbound to Coruscant from Naboo. Anakin, with his eye for ships, spotted the sleek Nubian freighter during one of the layover stops along the Hydian Way. It was but a few minutes of negotiation with the freighter captain, a relatively minor credit transfer and fifty minutes in the galley of the freighter and Anakin had Padme's favorite dinner in hand.
"Ah, thanks, Snips."
He practically swooped down on the box and power walked away.
I got some breakfast into my belly though before setting out into the expansive halls of the Jedi Temple.
The sense of the Temple was much improved, the peaceful serenity had returned, replacing the awful tenseness that had lingered after the bombing.
The one place though that still bore the sense of the event, was the Halls of Healing and my destination.
Its name was rather misleading.
Far from being a collection of 'halls', it was the most modern, capable and high tech medical facility in the galaxy. This was only augmented by the Jedi who served here as healers, bringing the healing powers of the Force to bear on the ailments and injuries of the Jedi who served across the galaxy. It would also occasionally have non-Jedi as patients, but those were exceptional cases where a new disease or malady had been discovered, which traditional medical science struggled with.
These days the halls were mostly filled with injured from the Clone War, now with the addition of those Jedi who had been victims of Cad Bane's bombing.
It was as I was asking some of the healers where I could find their chief that I began to get a weird sense from some of them. I should've been just another padawan to them, maybe even an intruder in their domain, interrupting their important work. Instead, I was met with wide eyes and often eager assistance.
I was directed to a ward which held four patients out of the eight beds that were in here. Two patients were recovering from blaster wounds, whilst the other two were recovering from the bomb blast. Master Vokare Che, stubborn Chief Healer of the Jedi Order, was in an adjoining room and from the sounds of it, chewing out a junior healer for some reason or other.
My eyes found one of the patients and it was a struggle not to visibly wince and feel sympathy at the sight of him.
He was a mess of bacta bandages and a triple amputee, having only his left arm intact, whilst his other limbs were stumps of differing lengths. It was hard to even see what his age was or even if he was human.
My feet carried me towards the foot of his bed and I picked up the datapad slotted there.
His name was Trec Thiddex, human, 14 years old, an adept that had been due to be pushed to padawan rank. The amputations were not the only problems here. He had burst his left eardrum, the inner ear there was also a mess - his sense of balance was shot. A punctured and reinflated left lung, blood loss treatment… the list went on.
"P-p-padawan?"
I was rather startled that he was awake, so absorbed had I been in reading his medical chart. His startling cerulean blue eyes were weary, filled with pain but there was an active, coherent mind there.
"Adept Thiddex," I slotted the pad back and bowed, "Sorry, if I disturbed you."
"Sick of sleeping anyway, even if it's the only useful thing I really can do these days," he grumbled. He reached with his remaining arm upward. The Force fluxed and the handle mounted above his head was pulled down into his reach. He helped himself into a seated position, as he used more TK to arrange his pillows behind his back. It was hard not to sense the despair that this adept was wrestling with.
It would be so easy to throw the usual encouragement, sympathies and platitudes.
Those wouldn't help.
Maybe it was the Force that had brought me here or even its guidance that prompted my next action, but it felt right.
I stepped forward to his bedside and offered him my open hand, pushing my intentions forward through the Force, a slight temporary bond formed.
He wasn't certain at first what to make of it, "Padawan?"
"Not for revenge, anger or despair, but for closure, acceptance and healing. This will not return what you lost, but will set you on the path. Take my hand."
His eyes narrowed in suspicion briefly. He had probably been lectured, psychologized and 'healed' for the emotional damage and trauma, but there was one thing that all that couldn't fix.
Eventually he raised his hand and I gripped it evenly. The connection made I began pushing select memories to him.
It didn't take more than three seconds, until I let go and dissolved the brief bond. His eyes now had a faraway look as he stared out into the simulated natural scenes of the 'windows' of the ward.
Eventually he blinked, seemingly remembering where he actually was.
"You… the one who did it… Cad Bane… he's… not going to ever hurt anyone like me again or the others. He's… dead. I feel… no, that's wrong but…" He looked up at me.
"Justice was served, adept. It might not be pretty, but it is what it is."
He closed his eyes and sat back, tears leaking from them that he wiped away almost absentmindedly. "You spoke of a path… how can I have any path? Which master would choose me as I am now?"
As if it had been waiting for his question, my prescience flared.
"You'll be surprised," I smiled at him. "Give yourself some credit, adept. If you can persevere through all this, I'm quite sure you'd have to start beating masters off you with a stick. Your physical therapy and prosthetics will be a long arduous road. Walk that road, overcome the challenges and you'll be a padawan."
"That's crazy," he shook his head, unable to see it.
"I'd suggest you pay heed to her words, Adept Thiddex," Chief Healer Che suddenly spoke up sternly from his right side. The poor guy almost jumped out of his bandages, he had been so absorbed in my words and looking at me.
"Healer Vokare, I'm…"
"If you're about to apologize for not sleeping as much as instructed, don't. I'll drag you by your ear into a healing trance if that's what it takes. Understood?"
"Yes, healer."
She addressed me next, looking me up and down, "Padawan Tano, you look in good health… had a bit of sun lately. Good. Reconsidering the paths of healing are you? My offer is always open. Your talents would do so much good in these halls."
"My path is set, Healer Vokare," I said firmly. It was best to match the stubborn twi'lek healer's demeanor with the same stubbornness in kind. It was often joked that Vokare Che could talk the ears off an ortolan.
"Pity," Vokare smiled sadly. "Therefore, you're here about the younglings you brought in. Very well. Follow me."
I gave a smile and wave to Thaddex before following in the healer's fast paced walk out of the ward.
We followed a twisting route, walking through the Healing complex and it was rather hilarious watching the various reactions to Vokare walking through the halls with purpose. Most politely got out of the way, others seemed to stiffen their spine and suddenly looked much more involved with whatever task they were doing.
Finally, we arrived at an access controlled door that required the use of the Force to unlock. Though as Bane's intrusion had demonstrated that was not really an impediment to anyone who was prepared. There was already a thorough review of Temple security procedures underway and I wouldn't be surprised if these Force locks were soon going to be augmented with more traditional high-tech and even low-tech measures; DNA scans, physical keys, verbal passphrases, numbered combinations, to name a few.
Beyond was an observation room that looked down on a sterile, clean room environment. It was usually an operating theater, but had now been converted into a ward with two small beds and various playthings, that the attending healers could use to keep the younglings amused and occupied.
Currently both were fast asleep and the healers, dressed in cleanroom isolation suits, were taking the opportunity to run some scans and tests on the infants.
"I take it all this is just precautionary?"
"Of course, nanodroids are not infectious, usually. We are dealing with machines though and there's no telling when something in their programming could trigger and turn their function into something much more sinister."
I would've normally been worried about such a thing possibly infecting me or Anakin, given how long we had to stay in close quarters with the infants and deal with their biological foibles. Thankfully, I had technometry to sense them and the nanodroids were content to stay in their primary hosts and those that left involuntarily via secretions, died and disintegrated promptly.
Nanodroids had to be designed to live in their specific hosts and any large change in conditions usually killed the extremely fragile things.
"So what do you think their actual function is?"
Vokare gave me a mild smile, before walking over to a wall mounted computer and after tapping a few buttons caused a large holo to appear in the middle of the room. "Here's a magnified mapping of the nanodroid. What do you think their function is?"
There was another of the minor reasons why I didn't choose the path of the Jedi Healer… Vokare Che loved applying a bastardized version of the Socratic teaching method to everyone around her. I restrained my weary sigh and focused on the ugly looking, multi-limbed nano-droid.
It wasn't easy at first making heads or tails of the thing, it was a nanometer scale machine, where classical physics didn't work the same. You had to adjust your perspective, but eventually I began to see the components for what they were, the hows and the whys.
"Not intended for cellular surgery or alteration, unless the tools are hidden away in the droid's body," I reasoned, walking around the hologram slowly. Naturally, Vokare didn't give any positive or negative reaction to my statement. "The tools they do have on their limbs though… electron charge conduction and manipulation… that has to be a chemical probe."
Was this just an extremely fancy on-demand, remote torture device? A torture that could never be escaped, perhaps even preventing the eventual unconsciousness. A way for Palpatine to always ensure his future agents would be very motivated to never betray him, lest they be consigned to never ending torture, no matter where they were in the galaxy.
It seemed to fit.
Yet, slave implants, though much larger, could perform those same functions much more efficiently and cheaply. Why go through the expense and time to engineer custom nano-droids for each potential future agent?
I was clearly missing something.
"Can I see the scan of both infants with nano-droid concentrations?"
Vokare simply nodded and with a few buttons pressed, the holo changed to show the scans in question.
The droids were all over but… they all seemed to prefer congregating to the brain.
The implications for that was… horrific.
Brain technology interfacing had been in its infancy on old Earth, yet the devices had already existed where neurologists could make you see fantastic shapes and colors without even having to go invasively into the brain. Here and now in the Corusca galaxy, such interfacing was lightyears ahead, with near perfect neural interfaces for prosthetics. Extending that into the realm of the brain was perfectly doable, as was even a full-body prosthesis for the brain.
It was not a common thing though, being limited to the extreme technophile fringes of the high-tech core worlds and hellishly expensive.
Could…
I turned to Vokare, unable to keep the grim troubled look off my face, "Forceful simulated experience?"
"Well done, padawan, you're the third to come to that conclusion," Vokare nodded. "What you are looking at is what we believe to be highly sophisticated indoctrination tool. Whoever is in command of nano-droids such as these can subject their victim to any stimulus they want; whether that be a sunny day on Alderaan or the brutal conditions of a spice mine on Kessel. It doesn't even have to be done consciously to the victim, working only on a subconscious level during sleep, inducing dreams as it were and even emotional manipulation."
"That's…" I struggled to find the right words. It was somehow worse than just plain evil. People injected with this kind of nano-droid could literally be convinced they were doing the right, virtuous and noble thing, yet be perpetrating horror in reality. The fact that this technology even existed made you question your own experience and reality.
"Utter and barbaric scientific perversion," Vokare declared with distaste. "Made even worse by the fact that we found evidence that the younglings were also being prepared for slave implants."
Somehow, just plain killing Palpatine didn't feel good enough anymore. It was a stupid feeling and I firmly reminded myself that when the time and opportunity came, I wouldn't hesitate to fillet the bastard into cauterized meaty chunks. "Is there any way to remove the nano-droids?"
"Yes, but it's a long, delicate process and the younglings will need to return yearly for checkups to make sure there aren't relapses. Until we can crack the droid's encryption and programming, which is a project outside of my expertise and I understand can take years."
It was also probably an effort that while useful for these two younglings wouldn't help in the long run. Palpatine could just switch any future nano-droids to new encryptions anyway. This was a weapon not easily and simply countered.
"What of the parents or…? " Did Mon Cal even have pair bond procreation?
"Contact has been established, padawan. The school mother of young Canna," she gestured to the Mon Cal infant, "is on her way, as is Abric's father," the Chironian.
"Oh good…" Any further conversation was interrupted when my com link went off. A quick glance confirmed that yes, it was actually for Anakin. "Excuse me, Healer. Thank you for your time."
"Yes, yes. It was good to see you again, Ahsoka. Off you go."
Acting as Anakin's secretary, made me wish I had a plausible excuse generator handy on my pad. It was Master Kenobi calling about something and it was really annoying.
Especially considering I had spent the first six hours in the Jedi Archives doing research for my military studies and the work Mistress Gray had sent me.
She had come up with a curriculum that involved various political scenarios that I had to solve, by any means necessary. Problems usually based on events in Hapan history or even from the greater galaxy. Each problem had a bunch of caveats and restrictions, that seemed like they were purposefully designed to frustrate anything as easy as simply assassinating the troublesome politician or enemy.
It had me eventually thinking in circles, so I decided to go and relieve my frustration by heading to the training arenas.
Most of these were a large rectangular space with an overhead observation and control booth. The floors and walls were made up of blocks that could dynamically position themselves to simulate all manner of terrain situations.
It had always bugged me how in the classic duel between Obi-Wan and the recently fallen Anakin, they could possibly fight and continue their duel in the crazy positions depicted, such as hanging from a tall array tower floating in the lava rivers of Mustafar. The answer was the training done in these 'danger' rooms.
Due to the odd hours my body clock was still on, thanks to taking care of the infants all the way to Coruscant, it was now well into the local evening, meaning that I had a room all to myself.
I was rather curious as to how I was rated now.
The room had twelve settings, with setting one being what you'd put young initiates in and was about as challenging as a light obstacle course for someone who had no Force inspired movement abilities. Setting Twelve on the other hand was something that Master Yoda would've found challenging and had been barely capable of doing 200 years ago. These days he could do Setting Ten, but it really taxed his old body quite fiercely so he didn't bother.
It was generally accepted that most Masters could do settings eight through eleven, though it greatly depended on their age, species and body flexibility.
Anakin could do level seven, but he hadn't bothered trying to go higher since his knighthood trials.
I had left the Temple to go to war having achieved Level Five.
So that is where I set the room.
Soon I found myself in the starting position of the center, limbering up and stretching.
Warm enough I welcomed the Force as my ally and began channeling, lighting both my lightsabers.
"Begin."
"Statement: As you command, Master!" HK's voice was entirely too cheerful from the control booth.
Stun bolts from different angles immediately assaulted me.
I blocked and redirected them straight back, offlining two of the remote drones that were now emerging to attack. More emerged and I was forced into beginning to dodge and move, as well as bringing my blades up in defense.
This assault endured for a full minute before the first arena changes began to occur.
Platforms emerging and flying around, creating both obstacles for the remotes to hide behind and places I could jump to and parkour to get new angles.
Soon enough the score of disabled remotes ticked up and within three minutes I had already beaten my previous record of 'dead' remotes. As the clock reached ten minutes of this level I realized…
It was fun but…
"HK, stop and reset. Go to level six."
"Acknowledgment: Yes, master. Statement: That looked rather easy for you."
"Yeah, it was."
Level six upped the difficulty by increasing the aggressiveness of the remotes, the platforms moved faster, they were also of different sizes now, some of which you couldn't really stand on. The platforms themselves were also now 'weapons', that would occasionally seek to purposefully bump you.
Beginning this level I could immediately feel it.
This was my current difficulty 'ceiling'.
It was much more difficult to disable the remotes now, their dynamic attack profiles not allowing me to generate reflections. Instead being reduced to only barely being able to defend myself and that was with occasionally controlling my lightsabers with TK, to hover around me and deflect the shots coming in at awkward angles.
My Force 'Parkour' was also challenged now, as there was no more easy regaining of my balance on a new floating platform. Especially when that platform decided to act as a bludger straight out of a Harry Potter quidditch match.
The further challenge now was to be able to use precognition to determine which platform was 'safe' to use at the same time using it to anticipate the incoming blaster shots.
Suffice it to say, I barely lasted three minutes before a stun shot nailed me when I misjudged a platform that turned out to be a bludger.
My Tutaminis was thankfully up to the task of dissipating the stun that would've sent me into la-la land.
I immediately turned the Force towards slowing my fall, somersaulted and landed on my feet.
Yeah, the other aspect of Level Six, you had to be able to tank and deal with falls. None of the tractor or grav systems would catch you or slow your fall anymore.
I instructed HK to reset the room and I tried again.
My times fluctuated from then on, including one rather embarrassing moment where I only managed 50 seconds.
It was at this moment that naturally the comlink went off again.
"HK, stop the room!"
"Acknowledgement: Yes master."
I looked at the beeping link on my wrist and the time.
Had I really spent almost two hours doing this?
It really said something about the endurance work I had been doing in my general physical training.
Well, you've had enough lovey-dovey time, Skyguy, I grumbled in my mind and promptly overrided the signal forwarding to allow the signal to actually go through to him.
"Okay HK, reset, let's go again."
"Statement: Master, as fun as it is watching you torture yourself. Question: When can I join in on this?"
"You? With not a single lethal blaster in sight?"
"Statement: I will naturally use my lightsabers, Master."
"Fine, but on the condition that those sabers are on their training setting. I'd rather not explain to the Battlemaster why one of his arenas was slashed to pieces in the morning."
"Mock Offense: Why master, it's as if you don't think I'm capable of finesse."
"Whatever, get your metal ass down here and bring the arena remote control with you."
After nearly two hours of beating my skull against Level 6 and HK, I called it quits.
The line between endurance training and torturing yourself started to seem mighty thin when you were doing this stuff. I had to spend twenty minutes in a rejuvenative meditation just to be certain my legs were recovered enough that I could walk and not breathe like I had just run a bloody marathon.
Throwing myself into the common showers to get all the dried sweat off me and let hot water soothe my body was utter bliss. Thankfully there were also droids here that could handle quick cleaning of clothes, so I emerged from the training arenas feeling somewhat tired and hungry, but at least not looking like a sweaty mess.
"Ahsoka?"
The voice of my interlocutor was not one I had expected to hear now. My blissful after exercise, non-thinking mindstate had not really been conducive to paying attention to my surroundings, nor my senses through the Force. I really had to work on that.
I bowed slightly to my peer, "Barriss, it's good to see you. How's life been in the Halls of Healing?"
The mirialan padawan, with her yellow skin and diamond pattern tattoos across her face looked the same as ever. In stark contrast to me, her outfit was a full black dress, with a dark blue cloaked hood and cape.
"Fine, fine, just… what are you wearing?"
"A new style I picked up from Hapes," I shrugged.
The inevitable consequences of me being… me, was that my journey through the Jedi Academy was different from the OT Ahsoka. I had walked different social circles and cliques. In my old class of adepts, I had just somehow naturally fallen into what could be called the 'overachievers'.
There had been five of us and Barriss was one of them.
I had been very wary and standoffish of her at first. This was the person who would go on to betray the Jedi, kill a large number of people and frame the OT Ahsoka for the bombing using nano-droids to construct a hidden bomb out of a person. That was the distant future then, not so distant anymore. I had eventually made peace with the fact that this Barriss was not that Barriss and that perhaps my butterflies would set her on a different path.
In the meantime, we had become academic rivals and even friends of a sort. Though not to the extent that we kept in constant touch with each other. The events of the Clone War had propelled a lot of Jedi in different unexpected directions.
Barriss and her Master, Luminara Unduli, had been part of the 212 strong Jedi strike team sent to rescue Padme, Anakin and Obi-Wan from imprisonment on Geonosis. The event that had sparked the entire Clone War.
Her experience there had led to her declining to go with her master into the war, instead electing to serve in the Halls of Healing.
"Well," Barriss coughed a bit uncomfortably, "It's certainly… unique."
"Statement: Master, my charge levels are uncomfortably low. Request: May I be excused while you seek to refuel your own inefficient meatbag metabolism?"
I sighed wearily as Barriss regarded HK with astonishment. The blasted droid definitely had another ten hours left in his power cells. He was just using it as an occasion to rib me and leave me with the figurative hot potato in explaining his presence and manner.
"HK, go recharge," I snapped shortly.
"Statement: As you command, master. Signing you off."
The droid stomped off into the distance down the hall.
"A police droid?" Barriss queried with bafflement written plain on her face.
"HK is an old pre-Ruusan combat droid intelligence I rescued from the Seppies in the Outer Rim. The GU-chassis is just his current body. Rather than have him fall into their clutches to reverse engineer and copy, I brought him over to fight for us."
"Fascinating," she declared with a mild smile. "Anyway, I'm glad I finally caught you in person. Can we talk while you eat?"
"Sure," I nodded and led the way to the common mess hall.
This late in the evening there was barely anyone in the cavernous hall, except for the occasional night owl or other Jedi who were in my boat or species who had dietary cycles that didn't follow a traditional diurnal pattern.
The result being that the common's kitchens were a perpetually active space, with civilian and even Jedi cooks working in shifts round the clock. The Jedi working in the kitchen were generally recruited from the Agri-corps, though there were exceptions to that. Given I knew of one Jedi Master who occasionally took turns wearing a cook's apron.
I loaded my tray with meat and minimal Togruta-safe veggies. Barriss raised an enquiring eyebrow at the amount.
"After the workouts I do, this is very much necessary," I explained, as I cut the meat and placed a generous piece into my mouth. After a chew and swallow, I asked, "So what did you want to talk about?"
"Master Unduli spoke of your mission with her on the eastern rim and I read the reports… I wanted to express my thanks to you personally for saving her life." She bowed her head deeply.
I returned the bow as best I could in my seated position. "It was my duty and a pleasure to serve with her."
She nodded, suddenly keeping a poker face, but I could sense her disquiet and the conflict happening in her heart. "I… I should've been there."
It said quite a lot that she was even admitting this. The Barriss Offee I knew from before the Battle of Geonosis would've never opened herself to this extent to me. We had both clearly done a bit of growing up.
"Perhaps you should've," I could see my words had hurt, but I wasn't going to sugarcoat it. It was the raw truth. A padawan had a duty to their master, just as the master had a duty to the padawan. Strictly speaking, she should've been there right alongside me, fighting Ventress. Her work in the Healing halls with her strength in the Force turned towards healing, however, had been seen as valuable enough to grant her request of not following her master into the war. A minority of Jedi had objected to the Order's involvement in the GAR. They had generally been shuffled into rear echelon roles and the various peacetime roles and initiatives that the Order couldn't afford to stop doing.
"Then again, if you'd done that, I've read quite a number of Jedi would not be alive today."
"I try to console myself with that fact, yet I can't help but feel…" she trailed off, unable to find further words.
I calmly ate another few mouthfuls, trying to gather my thoughts and push my prescience. Naturally the bloody Shroud screwed things up the further I tried to look.
"Barriss, you chose a path that felt correct to you, with everything you knew at the time. If you now look back with the eyes of memory, was it all a mistake? Were you wrong?"
She sat back in her seat, clearly thinking hard, "No. I would make the same choice."
"Therefore you were true to yourself and I think Master Unduli understands and respects that. Many Jedi, I think, are not suited to go to war. It's just natural. You just have to research the old records of the draft conscription that occurred in the old Republic's Army of Light and see their performance to know that."
"We swore to defend the Republic though," she pointed out.
"That does not have to be done just on the battlefield waving a lightsaber about," I waved my fork in mock imitation and then poked it at her. "The medical branch is just as valid a place to act in the defense of the Republic, as it is when I stand on the bridge of a starship or run around the battlefield." I now gave her a teasing, crooked smile. "If I'm ever injured or near-death, how content shall I feel, knowing that the great Barriss Offee, healer extraordinaire, is there to rescue me from death's clutches."
"Stop that," she swatted at my shoulder, smiling slightly despite her dour mood.
"In the end, it's your decision, Barriss. Do you think you can return to the battlefield? Return to Master Unduli?"
"I- I really don't know. It just feels, staying here, tending to the wounded and the dying, day in, day out, for nearly nine months now… that I'm trying to stop a river with my bare hands. When what I should be doing is going to its source and damming it up."
"Then do that, make the choice but be sure that it's what you want. Just remember, that it won't be easy to back out again. Eventually you'll be in command of men, who'll be looking to you to make decisions that will achieve an objective, which will probably cost quite a few of them their lives."
I could see that the notion of that responsibility was quite daunting to her.
"How… how many have you lost? If you don't mind me asking."
"It's not a number that I can easily be sure about." I reached into the collar of the Hapan wrap around my chest and pulled out the necklace of clone pilot ID tags. "So much happens during a battle and sometimes you're only left with estimates of the number of ground pounders that died. But in terms of pilots under my command… twenty-two. I encode every name on these tags."
She looked rather baffled, "Why? Jedi do not mourn for those who pass into the Force."
"As a strict interpretation of the Code, no. It's not something that can be easily explained. If you decide to join the war, ask me the question again and I will answer. You need context and experience to understand that answer." She clearly didn't understand or wasn't happy with my non-answer. "Let's talk about an easier topic, what have the others been up to? With the amount of time I've had to be without general data access and all the other demands on my time, I've been remiss in keeping up to date."
"Well, as far as I know, Gahyic is doing well in the explorer corps. He's been gushing non-stop about all the discoveries they've made with the newfound access they have to Hutt space."
"That sullustan always did have his head in the stars," I chuckled.
"Aliura is with Master Grainer in the northern battlespaces. Her last letter indicated somewhere near Mygeeto."
"The north isn't looking too good at the moment," I explained. "Still, she was the best at bladework in our class, so we must trust she'll make it."
"Andan had to return to Alderaan though," Barriss looked rather annoyed. "Some troubles in the affairs of his family house that he had to attend to."
Andan, of House Alde of Alderaan. He was someone who could trace his ancestry back all the way to the original human colonists of that famous core world. A family that had united all the original warring houses and founded the first dynasty which ruled that world. Although in the subsequent turmoil and events of all the wars over thousands of years throughout the Old Republic, saw House Organa rising to take over rule of the planet. House Alde remained and their alliance with Organa was the primary reason internal peace had reigned over that world for more than two millennia now.
Though the ancient battles against the Sith had been an ever present specter that disturbed that peace.
Andan was the scientist of our little group, who could do math on a level that usually baffled me and would like no better than for the Jedi Order to give him a lab somewhere in the Temple complex and just leave him in peace to do research as a technologist. His near royal lineage, though, meant that the usual distancing from his birth family was not a viable option.
He was also quite handsome and I suspected that Barriss had a crush on him.
My plate of food was three-quarters done when my own comlink started beeping for attention.
I was sincerely tempted to just ignore it, just for a bit of petty payback, but I sensed that would not be a good idea.
My fist bumped the button and I continued eating, "Yes, Master?"
"Got a mission, sn- padawan," Anakin's voice emerged from my wrist.
"I'll be with you presently, master."
"Good," he said simply and cut the link.
I calmly continued eating.
"Aren't you going to go, Ahsoka?"
"It's not urgent, I'd know if it was."
Barriss nodded in understanding, "You know each other well."
"The bond between master and padawan," I shrugged.
She eventually stood and bowed at peer level, "Thanks for your time and advice, Ahsoka."
"May the Force be with you, Barriss Offee. I hope you come to the right decision."
"So do I."
My fingers were massaging my forehead, trying in vain to soothe the slight headache I was developing trying to juggle and parse what Anakin had told me.
"So now you have to convince Senator Amidala to spy on another senator, who's highly likely according to the Jedi Council, a traitor and working for the Seppies?"
"Correct," he confirmed, leaning against the kitchen counter of his quarters in the Temple.
"Not only that, but this 'potential traitor' is Senator Rush Clovis of Scipio and the Intergalactic Banking Clan and if this is proven, will put the stated neutrality of the banks in serious doubt."
It was one thing that continued to baffle my sensibilities about the Republic Senate, even though I knew the history that led to it. The idea that any commercial interest had representatives in a legislative governing body was utterly bonkers. Sure, on old Earth, there had been the bloody lobbyists, but at least they weren't given a front row seat and speaking time. You didn't see that Amazon or JPMorgan had a seat in the U.S. Senate, for example.
It made a wonderful argument for just dissolving the current Senate and asking all member worlds to elect and send someone new, kick the commercial interests out, and wipe the slate clean, though I didn't need prescience to tell me what a terrible idea that was at this stage.
"And to put the final layer on this cake, Clovis and… Padme had been in a relationship before," Anakin said with false cheer, which swiftly morphed to an unhappy scowl.
"So if she was to do this, she'd have to leverage that."
It didn't need to be said that this would make both of them very unhappy. Anakin looked at me and he didn't even need to thoughtspeak the question.
I brought my hands to rest in my lap casually and began to sign.
'Council is high probability correct. Clovis traitor. Intelligence critical and possibly time sensitive. Padme necessary.' Anakin looked even more unhappy as he understood the signs. If agree, she needs to prepare. Poison, weapon of choice in upper elite circles.
She knows that, has training, he returned.
I was about to continue arguing but the shifting probability lines had me freeze my hands. Though the Shroud, limited me to only seeing the ever flowing ends of the lines that reached towards me… this wasn't a good sign.
"Well, hopefully this entire exercise is pointless and I won't be able to convince her. Then it's just fact-finding for briefing the spy they eventually do choose to send. In any case, I didn't just call you here to tell you what I'm going to be doing tomorrow. You're going to report to the Resolute."
"Doing what?"
"There are indications of a Seppie offensive towards Dorin." It doesn't rain, it pours. That was the homeworld of the Kel Dor. "I need you to begin getting the ship ready in all respects while I deal with this spy business. Depending on how long it goes, you might even need to lead the counter-offensive yourself. I'll join you as soon as I can."
"Very well, master," I bowed and turned to leave.
I needed to send HK on a shopping trip to the lower levels and perhaps it was finally time to activate my undercover droid.
The next day I was sitting in my command chair on the Resolute's bridge. It was currently docked in the sprawling shipyard complexes on Coruscant's upper surface and taking on the final and minor bits of resupply that was necessary before it could head into battle.
I felt like my thumb was going to break off from all the digital requisition forms I had to sign with my biometrics.
"Commander, incoming communication from General Skywalker," a clone tech called from the port crew pit.
"Thanks Comms."
The holo Anakin that appeared hovering above my armrest was distinctly odd. He was wearing a RNSF uniform, specifically a pilot uniform.
"Master, given your appearance, I assume I am going it alone on this one?"
"Afraid so, Yularen will be there to back you up as usual. I'll be heading to Cato Neimoida within the hour. Make best speed for Dorin as soon as you are able."
"Understood, may the Force be with you, master."
"And you, padawan."
The holo vanished and I tented my hands under my chin as my mind wrestled with the probabilities. It was a three day journey to Cato, whilst it would only take me two days to reach Dorin. That meant it was highly likely that I'd be in the middle of a battle when Padme, Clovis and Anakin arrived.
I couldn't wait to leave the blasted miasma of the Shroud behind me.
Well, I couldn't be physically present, but from a certain point of view, my methods would be there to keep an eye on things.
"Comms, how long?"
"Commander, dockmaster reports at least another two hours before loading is complete and that is going as fast as he dares."
I had probably been sending one too many status requests. Even if they finished in the next second, Admiral Yularen still needed to make it here from wherever he was when off-duty on Coruscant.
"Very well, send him my thanks for his hard work."
"Roger, Commander.
Padme Amidala felt as if she was in a special form of purgatory that Shiraya sent those who had insulted the moon goddess's honor or defaced any of her statues. It was the only explanation she could really come up with.
It took every ounce of comportment training she had received since she was a young girl being trained for the queenship, to keep herself from flinching or shuddering as she strung Rush Clovis along. Keeping him both interested and deflecting things from going too far for her liking was a delicate balance. One that she had managed to keep going for the entire journey to Cato Neimoida so far. Rush was far from an ugly man and had her heart not been captured by Anakin, she could easily see herself pursuing a relationship once again with the Scipian senator.
She counted her blessings that she had thought to use her personal yacht for the trip, allowing her to attain very welcome periods of privacy thanks to the ship's size.
Her current 'hiding' place was the ship's hyperdrive engineering space. The hum of its operation was a soothing sound that never failed to relax her.
The small door to the bay opened and she swiftly donned her polite mask of normality.
The golden body of C3P0 awkwardly bent itself to waddle into the engineering bay, "Ah, Mistress Padme, there you are. There is an urgent communique from the Naboo Health Ministry for your attention."
She sighed and glanced at the chrono on her wrist.
It was about time to drop out of hyperspace anyway and a goddess sent further excuse to waste time.
C3P0 led the way into the small secure comm room and Padme used her personal code to seal and secure it physically and electronically.
The droid began to work the controls on the holotable and flat holo-images with documented scripts bearing the Royal seal of Naboo resolved themselves.
'That's odd,' she thought, frowning at the contents. "3P0, these aren't marked as urgent."
"That is correct, mistress Padme. I was instructed to bring you to a secure location to deliver a different message covertly."
"By whom?" C3P0 was her protocol droid. She knew Anakin also had mastery permissions, was this his doing?
"By Master Anakin's apprentice."
Ahsoka?
The protocol droid brought forth a small flat, rather ornate case and placed it on the holotable, opened it and presented it to her. Inside was what looked like an entire perfume kit; a number of small spray bottles, even a few old-fashioned capped bottles. All made of glass and decorated beautifully. It was worth quite a bit of credits and she had no idea how the young Jedi would have afforded it.
"What's the message?" she asked almost breathlessly. Any message that Ahsoka wanted to convey in such a clandestine manner had to be related to her current endeavor to spy on Rush, especially considering her talents in foresight. Why it wasn't being relayed through Anakin was also curious.
"Padawan Tano bids that the mistress uses this during her time on Cato Neimoida. It is a disguised poison resistance kit, updated to current day standards. Usage instructions are hidden underneath the placeholders for the bottles and a few other necessities."
Padme delicately worked a finger into the gap and lifted the inner placeholder and sure enough a very fine printed fibrous sheet was there, that had instructions and identification for what each bottle did. The kit was seemingly designed to work in preventing poisoning in the first place. Spraying every bit of exposed skin with the bottles created a membrane that stopped contact absorption. There were also lip shaped covers which could be tailored and easily hidden with lipstick.
One of the bottles was also something that you had to drink an hour or two before eating or drinking anything that would be potentially poisoned. It wasn't foolproof protection but would delay onset of symptoms until help or antidote could be procured.
She recalled her own training in socially seamless ways to make sure that you weren't being poisoned. Never being the first to eat, making sure that all portions were being served in sight of all the guests, keeping hold of your own cup, always keeping it sight from the corner of your eye and so on. This training was more than a decade old though, and she was ashamed to admit that keeping it current had totally escaped her mind.
The lip shielding was very worrying to see. Was Ahsoka foreseeing that Rush was going to try to poison her with a kiss?
"Anything else 3P0?"
"There are two more specific messages that I am to relay to you, mistress. Padawan Tano says, 'You are his weakness, use it,' and 'Copy, don't transfer.'"
Padme was baffled for a moment, turning the words around in her head.
Who's weakness? She could see that she was Anakin's weakness… if their marriage ever came out, but he had very little involvement in the spy mission besides being her pilot and hidden bodyguard if things went very wrong.
She was Rush's weakness though. Had she not used their prior relationship to get them this far? It obviously had more meaning that she was not seeing… yet.
The same applied for the second message. Those were terms usually used in information tech. She would need evidence of any treason and the high density data holocube she had acquired for the mission to download anything she found…
Copy… don't transfer…
This is maddening, she thought to herself. Ahsoka clearly had some end goal that she couldn't see and most likely wouldn't see completely until she talked with the Jedi herself.
"Thanks 3P0. Out of curiosity, when did she contact you?"
"It was a number of hours before we left Coruscant, my lady. She also had a very rude and annoying droid deliver the poison kit."
That had to be HK-47. She closed the 'perfume' case and felt the slight shudder through the ship as it exited hyperspace.
"Come, 3P0, we have a mission to do."
"Launch fighters."
My order was prompt, crisp and like any other. Keeping the frustration out of my voice was becoming harder though.
Once again, roughly two hundred thousand kilometers from Dorin, was a Recusant-class light destroyer at the primary emergence point for the planet.
The Vulture and Hyena droids, clinging like ticks to the surface of the CIS ship, promptly reconfigured and launched themselves at us.
This was the fourth such attack launched against the Kel Dor homeworld within less than a standard day.
I took in the astrographic map of the system, pushing forward with my prescience. Right, time to change things up a bit. Tracing my hand through the projected holo, I highlighted four points, including one near one of the Dorin moons. It would allow for the squadron sent there to have a nice bit of gravity assist in their speed.
"Resolute command to all squadrons, target courses transmitting, engage at will."
I received acknowledgement from every Republic squadron, then with a slight delay, the fighters of the Kel Dor Unified Clan Defense Force also acknowledged my orders.
Thankfully for the homeworld of my close friend, Master Plo Koon, their people had a high technology base and their presence in the Expansion Region of the galaxy, meant they were well versed in looking after themselves from the predations of pirates and criminals. Dorin was also one of the rare worlds which wasn't scrambling to upgrade and modernize defenses. They even had a planetary defense grid, ostensibly for keeping the homeworld safe from asteroids.
It was even a perfectly legitimate system even in a post-Ruusan Republic, given that Dorin was a very large world and its gravitational influence seemed to enjoy giving the Kel Dor a potential extinction level event nearly every generation.
That they even survived to this day was thanks to the Baran Do Sages. A very obscure native order of Force sensitives among the Kel Dor. The sages were near mythical, and to see one was very rare even among Kel Dor. Their major affinity was right up my alley, prediction of events, mostly weather and neatly included incoming asteroids seeking to end all life on the planet.
When they had advanced to the point of being space capable enough to deflect these asteroids, the sages had turned to preventing other dangerous events, preventing other disasters and averting wars.
Joining the Republic had not been kind to the sages though, as the Force sensitive younglings were most often sent to the Jedi Order, instead of the more limited sages. They still enjoyed a shadowy and reverential power among the more traditional Kel Dor clans.
As demonstrated when a number of generals among the KUDF questioned why they should follow the orders of a togrutan teenager.
Seeing the looks on those general's faces when a Sage revealed themselves and essentially told them, "Shut the fuck up and listen… or else…" was hilarious. It was especially interesting given that the generals had been unmasked at the time.
My musings were interrupted by catching Admiral Yularen in the corner of my eye visibly struggling to not take a catnap on his feet and possibly falling over. He reached into his pocket where I knew a stim was waiting.
"Admiral, go to bed. I really don't want to have to make it an order."
The chain of command was thankfully clear here, though it was still odd as hell to my sensibilities that I was 'technically' his superior, just because I was a Jedi. It was a power I vowed never to exercise, unless a situation exactly like this cropped up.
The whole tactical situation was only surprising to me in that it had taken this long for the CIS to try it. Droids didn't need to obey a conventional sleep cycle, they merely needed a recharge. In the case of a B1, it was about 30 hours, which would be reduced to 18 hours under combat conditions - if the droid even lasted that long. On a ship, with handy recharge stations, there were no such limits.
By attacking in six hour intervals in penny pinch packets, with just enough force that required a significant response from the Republic defenders - it was disrupting the sleep cycles of the clones. Even keeping things going in shifts wasn't really helping, because of the alert alarms and the activity of those on-shift was disturbing those trying to get rest.
The only thing mitigating this was the presence of the KUDF and their aerospace bases on the planet below.
"I'm fine, Commander," Yularen replied primly, his hands snapping away from his pockets with the stim unused.
"You are a human in your middle ages," I retorted firmly. "The days where you could go 48 hours with no sleep are long behind you."
To further emphasize my point, I turned my chair to face him fully, giving my best stern command face.
Yularen thinned his lips and I could see him wrestle with the decision in his mind. Thankfully, wisdom and practicality won the day over pride.
"Very well, Commander. I shall call for Captain Sal to relieve me."
"Excellent, at least five hours Admiral, I'll be able to sense if you cheat."
That Yularen even mumbled, "Bloody Jedi," under his breath as he gave a salute and left the bridge, showed the extent of the usually perfectly composed admiral's exhaustion. He seemed to have even forgotten that my hearing was an order of magnitude more sensitive than a human.
The fighter squadrons inched closer and closer on the holo map.
Finally, the angry red pings of missiles being launched from both sides, sprang into existence.
"Once more, unto the breach, dear friends, once more."
for making this happen and supporting me. Have a good weekend and enjoy.Chapter 22
It was heaven to be under a shower which I could just stay in until I got wrinkly skin. Not that I did that often, but it was more accurate to say, it was just amazing to be unhurried in the shower. The best we could do to clean ourselves on the long trip on the Xanadu Blood had been standing sponge baths in the tiny WC. The remaining trip back to Coruscant on the Acclamator didn't count, even though it was amazing to be able to stretch the legs. No relaxation was possible when you had two infants to care for, especially of two entirely different species.
Anakin and I had to do our best guesses and even used the Force for guidance on what was wrong every time the little tykes threw a new tantrum. When it was safe to do so, we got on the Holonet and began to consult on just what to do. The whole experience made me question how any species managed to procreate when you had to deal with a bundle of unending wailing and demands that kept you out of proper sleep for months or even years. It had also done a number on any lingering thoughts I had on the possibility of having children of my own in the future. Future Ahsoka would probably… maybe have the issue, but right now it would take seeing flying pigs over the Jedi Temple before I'd believe in the possibility.
I switched off the shower, toweled off and dressed.
My 'Hapan Jedi' outfit as I termed it in my head was just too comfortable to pass up wearing again. My experience in the cluster had done a lot to make me more at ease in my own skin.
I emerged from the bathroom to find that Anakin was back to his own customary almost black Jedi 'half-armor' outfit, scrutinizing his own appearance in a mirror and combing his hair. Normally, he wasn't vain at all, but he was going on a long overdue visit to his wife.
"Keeping the new look, Snips?"
"When I'm not on a battlefield or on a ship about to head into battle, sure."
He glanced at his chrono, "Well, I have to be going. You know what to do."
Yes, cover for him while he had dinner and passionate negotiations with his wife.
I smirked, tapping the comlink on my gauntlet, "Of course, Skyguy." Every call that would go to him normally would be routed to me.
His head was in the clouds as he left his quarters but my purposeful 'eh-hem' and pointing at the table reminded him that he had to take the dinner he had obtained at considerable effort.
The stasis box was filled with a cooked meal that was straight from a freighter inbound to Coruscant from Naboo. Anakin, with his eye for ships, spotted the sleek Nubian freighter during one of the layover stops along the Hydian Way. It was but a few minutes of negotiation with the freighter captain, a relatively minor credit transfer and fifty minutes in the galley of the freighter and Anakin had Padme's favorite dinner in hand.
"Ah, thanks, Snips."
He practically swooped down on the box and power walked away.
I got some breakfast into my belly though before setting out into the expansive halls of the Jedi Temple.
The sense of the Temple was much improved, the peaceful serenity had returned, replacing the awful tenseness that had lingered after the bombing.
The one place though that still bore the sense of the event, was the Halls of Healing and my destination.
Its name was rather misleading.
Far from being a collection of 'halls', it was the most modern, capable and high tech medical facility in the galaxy. This was only augmented by the Jedi who served here as healers, bringing the healing powers of the Force to bear on the ailments and injuries of the Jedi who served across the galaxy. It would also occasionally have non-Jedi as patients, but those were exceptional cases where a new disease or malady had been discovered, which traditional medical science struggled with.
These days the halls were mostly filled with injured from the Clone War, now with the addition of those Jedi who had been victims of Cad Bane's bombing.
It was as I was asking some of the healers where I could find their chief that I began to get a weird sense from some of them. I should've been just another padawan to them, maybe even an intruder in their domain, interrupting their important work. Instead, I was met with wide eyes and often eager assistance.
I was directed to a ward which held four patients out of the eight beds that were in here. Two patients were recovering from blaster wounds, whilst the other two were recovering from the bomb blast. Master Vokare Che, stubborn Chief Healer of the Jedi Order, was in an adjoining room and from the sounds of it, chewing out a junior healer for some reason or other.
My eyes found one of the patients and it was a struggle not to visibly wince and feel sympathy at the sight of him.
He was a mess of bacta bandages and a triple amputee, having only his left arm intact, whilst his other limbs were stumps of differing lengths. It was hard to even see what his age was or even if he was human.
My feet carried me towards the foot of his bed and I picked up the datapad slotted there.
His name was Trec Thiddex, human, 14 years old, an adept that had been due to be pushed to padawan rank. The amputations were not the only problems here. He had burst his left eardrum, the inner ear there was also a mess - his sense of balance was shot. A punctured and reinflated left lung, blood loss treatment… the list went on.
"P-p-padawan?"
I was rather startled that he was awake, so absorbed had I been in reading his medical chart. His startling cerulean blue eyes were weary, filled with pain but there was an active, coherent mind there.
"Adept Thiddex," I slotted the pad back and bowed, "Sorry, if I disturbed you."
"Sick of sleeping anyway, even if it's the only useful thing I really can do these days," he grumbled. He reached with his remaining arm upward. The Force fluxed and the handle mounted above his head was pulled down into his reach. He helped himself into a seated position, as he used more TK to arrange his pillows behind his back. It was hard not to sense the despair that this adept was wrestling with.
It would be so easy to throw the usual encouragement, sympathies and platitudes.
Those wouldn't help.
Maybe it was the Force that had brought me here or even its guidance that prompted my next action, but it felt right.
I stepped forward to his bedside and offered him my open hand, pushing my intentions forward through the Force, a slight temporary bond formed.
He wasn't certain at first what to make of it, "Padawan?"
"Not for revenge, anger or despair, but for closure, acceptance and healing. This will not return what you lost, but will set you on the path. Take my hand."
His eyes narrowed in suspicion briefly. He had probably been lectured, psychologized and 'healed' for the emotional damage and trauma, but there was one thing that all that couldn't fix.
Eventually he raised his hand and I gripped it evenly. The connection made I began pushing select memories to him.
It didn't take more than three seconds, until I let go and dissolved the brief bond. His eyes now had a faraway look as he stared out into the simulated natural scenes of the 'windows' of the ward.
Eventually he blinked, seemingly remembering where he actually was.
"You… the one who did it… Cad Bane… he's… not going to ever hurt anyone like me again or the others. He's… dead. I feel… no, that's wrong but…" He looked up at me.
"Justice was served, adept. It might not be pretty, but it is what it is."
He closed his eyes and sat back, tears leaking from them that he wiped away almost absentmindedly. "You spoke of a path… how can I have any path? Which master would choose me as I am now?"
As if it had been waiting for his question, my prescience flared.
"You'll be surprised," I smiled at him. "Give yourself some credit, adept. If you can persevere through all this, I'm quite sure you'd have to start beating masters off you with a stick. Your physical therapy and prosthetics will be a long arduous road. Walk that road, overcome the challenges and you'll be a padawan."
"That's crazy," he shook his head, unable to see it.
"I'd suggest you pay heed to her words, Adept Thiddex," Chief Healer Che suddenly spoke up sternly from his right side. The poor guy almost jumped out of his bandages, he had been so absorbed in my words and looking at me.
"Healer Vokare, I'm…"
"If you're about to apologize for not sleeping as much as instructed, don't. I'll drag you by your ear into a healing trance if that's what it takes. Understood?"
"Yes, healer."
She addressed me next, looking me up and down, "Padawan Tano, you look in good health… had a bit of sun lately. Good. Reconsidering the paths of healing are you? My offer is always open. Your talents would do so much good in these halls."
"My path is set, Healer Vokare," I said firmly. It was best to match the stubborn twi'lek healer's demeanor with the same stubbornness in kind. It was often joked that Vokare Che could talk the ears off an ortolan.
"Pity," Vokare smiled sadly. "Therefore, you're here about the younglings you brought in. Very well. Follow me."
I gave a smile and wave to Thaddex before following in the healer's fast paced walk out of the ward.
We followed a twisting route, walking through the Healing complex and it was rather hilarious watching the various reactions to Vokare walking through the halls with purpose. Most politely got out of the way, others seemed to stiffen their spine and suddenly looked much more involved with whatever task they were doing.
Finally, we arrived at an access controlled door that required the use of the Force to unlock. Though as Bane's intrusion had demonstrated that was not really an impediment to anyone who was prepared. There was already a thorough review of Temple security procedures underway and I wouldn't be surprised if these Force locks were soon going to be augmented with more traditional high-tech and even low-tech measures; DNA scans, physical keys, verbal passphrases, numbered combinations, to name a few.
Beyond was an observation room that looked down on a sterile, clean room environment. It was usually an operating theater, but had now been converted into a ward with two small beds and various playthings, that the attending healers could use to keep the younglings amused and occupied.
Currently both were fast asleep and the healers, dressed in cleanroom isolation suits, were taking the opportunity to run some scans and tests on the infants.
"I take it all this is just precautionary?"
"Of course, nanodroids are not infectious, usually. We are dealing with machines though and there's no telling when something in their programming could trigger and turn their function into something much more sinister."
I would've normally been worried about such a thing possibly infecting me or Anakin, given how long we had to stay in close quarters with the infants and deal with their biological foibles. Thankfully, I had technometry to sense them and the nanodroids were content to stay in their primary hosts and those that left involuntarily via secretions, died and disintegrated promptly.
Nanodroids had to be designed to live in their specific hosts and any large change in conditions usually killed the extremely fragile things.
"So what do you think their actual function is?"
Vokare gave me a mild smile, before walking over to a wall mounted computer and after tapping a few buttons caused a large holo to appear in the middle of the room. "Here's a magnified mapping of the nanodroid. What do you think their function is?"
There was another of the minor reasons why I didn't choose the path of the Jedi Healer… Vokare Che loved applying a bastardized version of the Socratic teaching method to everyone around her. I restrained my weary sigh and focused on the ugly looking, multi-limbed nano-droid.
It wasn't easy at first making heads or tails of the thing, it was a nanometer scale machine, where classical physics didn't work the same. You had to adjust your perspective, but eventually I began to see the components for what they were, the hows and the whys.
"Not intended for cellular surgery or alteration, unless the tools are hidden away in the droid's body," I reasoned, walking around the hologram slowly. Naturally, Vokare didn't give any positive or negative reaction to my statement. "The tools they do have on their limbs though… electron charge conduction and manipulation… that has to be a chemical probe."
Was this just an extremely fancy on-demand, remote torture device? A torture that could never be escaped, perhaps even preventing the eventual unconsciousness. A way for Palpatine to always ensure his future agents would be very motivated to never betray him, lest they be consigned to never ending torture, no matter where they were in the galaxy.
It seemed to fit.
Yet, slave implants, though much larger, could perform those same functions much more efficiently and cheaply. Why go through the expense and time to engineer custom nano-droids for each potential future agent?
I was clearly missing something.
"Can I see the scan of both infants with nano-droid concentrations?"
Vokare simply nodded and with a few buttons pressed, the holo changed to show the scans in question.
The droids were all over but… they all seemed to prefer congregating to the brain.
The implications for that was… horrific.
Brain technology interfacing had been in its infancy on old Earth, yet the devices had already existed where neurologists could make you see fantastic shapes and colors without even having to go invasively into the brain. Here and now in the Corusca galaxy, such interfacing was lightyears ahead, with near perfect neural interfaces for prosthetics. Extending that into the realm of the brain was perfectly doable, as was even a full-body prosthesis for the brain.
It was not a common thing though, being limited to the extreme technophile fringes of the high-tech core worlds and hellishly expensive.
Could…
I turned to Vokare, unable to keep the grim troubled look off my face, "Forceful simulated experience?"
"Well done, padawan, you're the third to come to that conclusion," Vokare nodded. "What you are looking at is what we believe to be highly sophisticated indoctrination tool. Whoever is in command of nano-droids such as these can subject their victim to any stimulus they want; whether that be a sunny day on Alderaan or the brutal conditions of a spice mine on Kessel. It doesn't even have to be done consciously to the victim, working only on a subconscious level during sleep, inducing dreams as it were and even emotional manipulation."
"That's…" I struggled to find the right words. It was somehow worse than just plain evil. People injected with this kind of nano-droid could literally be convinced they were doing the right, virtuous and noble thing, yet be perpetrating horror in reality. The fact that this technology even existed made you question your own experience and reality.
"Utter and barbaric scientific perversion," Vokare declared with distaste. "Made even worse by the fact that we found evidence that the younglings were also being prepared for slave implants."
Somehow, just plain killing Palpatine didn't feel good enough anymore. It was a stupid feeling and I firmly reminded myself that when the time and opportunity came, I wouldn't hesitate to fillet the bastard into cauterized meaty chunks. "Is there any way to remove the nano-droids?"
"Yes, but it's a long, delicate process and the younglings will need to return yearly for checkups to make sure there aren't relapses. Until we can crack the droid's encryption and programming, which is a project outside of my expertise and I understand can take years."
It was also probably an effort that while useful for these two younglings wouldn't help in the long run. Palpatine could just switch any future nano-droids to new encryptions anyway. This was a weapon not easily and simply countered.
"What of the parents or…? " Did Mon Cal even have pair bond procreation?
"Contact has been established, padawan. The school mother of young Canna," she gestured to the Mon Cal infant, "is on her way, as is Abric's father," the Chironian.
"Oh good…" Any further conversation was interrupted when my com link went off. A quick glance confirmed that yes, it was actually for Anakin. "Excuse me, Healer. Thank you for your time."
"Yes, yes. It was good to see you again, Ahsoka. Off you go."
Acting as Anakin's secretary, made me wish I had a plausible excuse generator handy on my pad. It was Master Kenobi calling about something and it was really annoying.
Especially considering I had spent the first six hours in the Jedi Archives doing research for my military studies and the work Mistress Gray had sent me.
She had come up with a curriculum that involved various political scenarios that I had to solve, by any means necessary. Problems usually based on events in Hapan history or even from the greater galaxy. Each problem had a bunch of caveats and restrictions, that seemed like they were purposefully designed to frustrate anything as easy as simply assassinating the troublesome politician or enemy.
It had me eventually thinking in circles, so I decided to go and relieve my frustration by heading to the training arenas.
Most of these were a large rectangular space with an overhead observation and control booth. The floors and walls were made up of blocks that could dynamically position themselves to simulate all manner of terrain situations.
It had always bugged me how in the classic duel between Obi-Wan and the recently fallen Anakin, they could possibly fight and continue their duel in the crazy positions depicted, such as hanging from a tall array tower floating in the lava rivers of Mustafar. The answer was the training done in these 'danger' rooms.
Due to the odd hours my body clock was still on, thanks to taking care of the infants all the way to Coruscant, it was now well into the local evening, meaning that I had a room all to myself.
I was rather curious as to how I was rated now.
The room had twelve settings, with setting one being what you'd put young initiates in and was about as challenging as a light obstacle course for someone who had no Force inspired movement abilities. Setting Twelve on the other hand was something that Master Yoda would've found challenging and had been barely capable of doing 200 years ago. These days he could do Setting Ten, but it really taxed his old body quite fiercely so he didn't bother.
It was generally accepted that most Masters could do settings eight through eleven, though it greatly depended on their age, species and body flexibility.
Anakin could do level seven, but he hadn't bothered trying to go higher since his knighthood trials.
I had left the Temple to go to war having achieved Level Five.
So that is where I set the room.
Soon I found myself in the starting position of the center, limbering up and stretching.
Warm enough I welcomed the Force as my ally and began channeling, lighting both my lightsabers.
"Begin."
"Statement: As you command, Master!" HK's voice was entirely too cheerful from the control booth.
Stun bolts from different angles immediately assaulted me.
I blocked and redirected them straight back, offlining two of the remote drones that were now emerging to attack. More emerged and I was forced into beginning to dodge and move, as well as bringing my blades up in defense.
This assault endured for a full minute before the first arena changes began to occur.
Platforms emerging and flying around, creating both obstacles for the remotes to hide behind and places I could jump to and parkour to get new angles.
Soon enough the score of disabled remotes ticked up and within three minutes I had already beaten my previous record of 'dead' remotes. As the clock reached ten minutes of this level I realized…
It was fun but…
"HK, stop and reset. Go to level six."
"Acknowledgment: Yes, master. Statement: That looked rather easy for you."
"Yeah, it was."
Level six upped the difficulty by increasing the aggressiveness of the remotes, the platforms moved faster, they were also of different sizes now, some of which you couldn't really stand on. The platforms themselves were also now 'weapons', that would occasionally seek to purposefully bump you.
Beginning this level I could immediately feel it.
This was my current difficulty 'ceiling'.
It was much more difficult to disable the remotes now, their dynamic attack profiles not allowing me to generate reflections. Instead being reduced to only barely being able to defend myself and that was with occasionally controlling my lightsabers with TK, to hover around me and deflect the shots coming in at awkward angles.
My Force 'Parkour' was also challenged now, as there was no more easy regaining of my balance on a new floating platform. Especially when that platform decided to act as a bludger straight out of a Harry Potter quidditch match.
The further challenge now was to be able to use precognition to determine which platform was 'safe' to use at the same time using it to anticipate the incoming blaster shots.
Suffice it to say, I barely lasted three minutes before a stun shot nailed me when I misjudged a platform that turned out to be a bludger.
My Tutaminis was thankfully up to the task of dissipating the stun that would've sent me into la-la land.
I immediately turned the Force towards slowing my fall, somersaulted and landed on my feet.
Yeah, the other aspect of Level Six, you had to be able to tank and deal with falls. None of the tractor or grav systems would catch you or slow your fall anymore.
I instructed HK to reset the room and I tried again.
My times fluctuated from then on, including one rather embarrassing moment where I only managed 50 seconds.
It was at this moment that naturally the comlink went off again.
"HK, stop the room!"
"Acknowledgement: Yes master."
I looked at the beeping link on my wrist and the time.
Had I really spent almost two hours doing this?
It really said something about the endurance work I had been doing in my general physical training.
Well, you've had enough lovey-dovey time, Skyguy, I grumbled in my mind and promptly overrided the signal forwarding to allow the signal to actually go through to him.
"Okay HK, reset, let's go again."
"Statement: Master, as fun as it is watching you torture yourself. Question: When can I join in on this?"
"You? With not a single lethal blaster in sight?"
"Statement: I will naturally use my lightsabers, Master."
"Fine, but on the condition that those sabers are on their training setting. I'd rather not explain to the Battlemaster why one of his arenas was slashed to pieces in the morning."
"Mock Offense: Why master, it's as if you don't think I'm capable of finesse."
"Whatever, get your metal ass down here and bring the arena remote control with you."
After nearly two hours of beating my skull against Level 6 and HK, I called it quits.
The line between endurance training and torturing yourself started to seem mighty thin when you were doing this stuff. I had to spend twenty minutes in a rejuvenative meditation just to be certain my legs were recovered enough that I could walk and not breathe like I had just run a bloody marathon.
Throwing myself into the common showers to get all the dried sweat off me and let hot water soothe my body was utter bliss. Thankfully there were also droids here that could handle quick cleaning of clothes, so I emerged from the training arenas feeling somewhat tired and hungry, but at least not looking like a sweaty mess.
"Ahsoka?"
The voice of my interlocutor was not one I had expected to hear now. My blissful after exercise, non-thinking mindstate had not really been conducive to paying attention to my surroundings, nor my senses through the Force. I really had to work on that.
I bowed slightly to my peer, "Barriss, it's good to see you. How's life been in the Halls of Healing?"
The mirialan padawan, with her yellow skin and diamond pattern tattoos across her face looked the same as ever. In stark contrast to me, her outfit was a full black dress, with a dark blue cloaked hood and cape.
"Fine, fine, just… what are you wearing?"
"A new style I picked up from Hapes," I shrugged.
The inevitable consequences of me being… me, was that my journey through the Jedi Academy was different from the OT Ahsoka. I had walked different social circles and cliques. In my old class of adepts, I had just somehow naturally fallen into what could be called the 'overachievers'.
There had been five of us and Barriss was one of them.
I had been very wary and standoffish of her at first. This was the person who would go on to betray the Jedi, kill a large number of people and frame the OT Ahsoka for the bombing using nano-droids to construct a hidden bomb out of a person. That was the distant future then, not so distant anymore. I had eventually made peace with the fact that this Barriss was not that Barriss and that perhaps my butterflies would set her on a different path.
In the meantime, we had become academic rivals and even friends of a sort. Though not to the extent that we kept in constant touch with each other. The events of the Clone War had propelled a lot of Jedi in different unexpected directions.
Barriss and her Master, Luminara Unduli, had been part of the 212 strong Jedi strike team sent to rescue Padme, Anakin and Obi-Wan from imprisonment on Geonosis. The event that had sparked the entire Clone War.
Her experience there had led to her declining to go with her master into the war, instead electing to serve in the Halls of Healing.
"Well," Barriss coughed a bit uncomfortably, "It's certainly… unique."
"Statement: Master, my charge levels are uncomfortably low. Request: May I be excused while you seek to refuel your own inefficient meatbag metabolism?"
I sighed wearily as Barriss regarded HK with astonishment. The blasted droid definitely had another ten hours left in his power cells. He was just using it as an occasion to rib me and leave me with the figurative hot potato in explaining his presence and manner.
"HK, go recharge," I snapped shortly.
"Statement: As you command, master. Signing you off."
The droid stomped off into the distance down the hall.
"A police droid?" Barriss queried with bafflement written plain on her face.
"HK is an old pre-Ruusan combat droid intelligence I rescued from the Seppies in the Outer Rim. The GU-chassis is just his current body. Rather than have him fall into their clutches to reverse engineer and copy, I brought him over to fight for us."
"Fascinating," she declared with a mild smile. "Anyway, I'm glad I finally caught you in person. Can we talk while you eat?"
"Sure," I nodded and led the way to the common mess hall.
This late in the evening there was barely anyone in the cavernous hall, except for the occasional night owl or other Jedi who were in my boat or species who had dietary cycles that didn't follow a traditional diurnal pattern.
The result being that the common's kitchens were a perpetually active space, with civilian and even Jedi cooks working in shifts round the clock. The Jedi working in the kitchen were generally recruited from the Agri-corps, though there were exceptions to that. Given I knew of one Jedi Master who occasionally took turns wearing a cook's apron.
I loaded my tray with meat and minimal Togruta-safe veggies. Barriss raised an enquiring eyebrow at the amount.
"After the workouts I do, this is very much necessary," I explained, as I cut the meat and placed a generous piece into my mouth. After a chew and swallow, I asked, "So what did you want to talk about?"
"Master Unduli spoke of your mission with her on the eastern rim and I read the reports… I wanted to express my thanks to you personally for saving her life." She bowed her head deeply.
I returned the bow as best I could in my seated position. "It was my duty and a pleasure to serve with her."
She nodded, suddenly keeping a poker face, but I could sense her disquiet and the conflict happening in her heart. "I… I should've been there."
It said quite a lot that she was even admitting this. The Barriss Offee I knew from before the Battle of Geonosis would've never opened herself to this extent to me. We had both clearly done a bit of growing up.
"Perhaps you should've," I could see my words had hurt, but I wasn't going to sugarcoat it. It was the raw truth. A padawan had a duty to their master, just as the master had a duty to the padawan. Strictly speaking, she should've been there right alongside me, fighting Ventress. Her work in the Healing halls with her strength in the Force turned towards healing, however, had been seen as valuable enough to grant her request of not following her master into the war. A minority of Jedi had objected to the Order's involvement in the GAR. They had generally been shuffled into rear echelon roles and the various peacetime roles and initiatives that the Order couldn't afford to stop doing.
"Then again, if you'd done that, I've read quite a number of Jedi would not be alive today."
"I try to console myself with that fact, yet I can't help but feel…" she trailed off, unable to find further words.
I calmly ate another few mouthfuls, trying to gather my thoughts and push my prescience. Naturally the bloody Shroud screwed things up the further I tried to look.
"Barriss, you chose a path that felt correct to you, with everything you knew at the time. If you now look back with the eyes of memory, was it all a mistake? Were you wrong?"
She sat back in her seat, clearly thinking hard, "No. I would make the same choice."
"Therefore you were true to yourself and I think Master Unduli understands and respects that. Many Jedi, I think, are not suited to go to war. It's just natural. You just have to research the old records of the draft conscription that occurred in the old Republic's Army of Light and see their performance to know that."
"We swore to defend the Republic though," she pointed out.
"That does not have to be done just on the battlefield waving a lightsaber about," I waved my fork in mock imitation and then poked it at her. "The medical branch is just as valid a place to act in the defense of the Republic, as it is when I stand on the bridge of a starship or run around the battlefield." I now gave her a teasing, crooked smile. "If I'm ever injured or near-death, how content shall I feel, knowing that the great Barriss Offee, healer extraordinaire, is there to rescue me from death's clutches."
"Stop that," she swatted at my shoulder, smiling slightly despite her dour mood.
"In the end, it's your decision, Barriss. Do you think you can return to the battlefield? Return to Master Unduli?"
"I- I really don't know. It just feels, staying here, tending to the wounded and the dying, day in, day out, for nearly nine months now… that I'm trying to stop a river with my bare hands. When what I should be doing is going to its source and damming it up."
"Then do that, make the choice but be sure that it's what you want. Just remember, that it won't be easy to back out again. Eventually you'll be in command of men, who'll be looking to you to make decisions that will achieve an objective, which will probably cost quite a few of them their lives."
I could see that the notion of that responsibility was quite daunting to her.
"How… how many have you lost? If you don't mind me asking."
"It's not a number that I can easily be sure about." I reached into the collar of the Hapan wrap around my chest and pulled out the necklace of clone pilot ID tags. "So much happens during a battle and sometimes you're only left with estimates of the number of ground pounders that died. But in terms of pilots under my command… twenty-two. I encode every name on these tags."
She looked rather baffled, "Why? Jedi do not mourn for those who pass into the Force."
"As a strict interpretation of the Code, no. It's not something that can be easily explained. If you decide to join the war, ask me the question again and I will answer. You need context and experience to understand that answer." She clearly didn't understand or wasn't happy with my non-answer. "Let's talk about an easier topic, what have the others been up to? With the amount of time I've had to be without general data access and all the other demands on my time, I've been remiss in keeping up to date."
"Well, as far as I know, Gahyic is doing well in the explorer corps. He's been gushing non-stop about all the discoveries they've made with the newfound access they have to Hutt space."
"That sullustan always did have his head in the stars," I chuckled.
"Aliura is with Master Grainer in the northern battlespaces. Her last letter indicated somewhere near Mygeeto."
"The north isn't looking too good at the moment," I explained. "Still, she was the best at bladework in our class, so we must trust she'll make it."
"Andan had to return to Alderaan though," Barriss looked rather annoyed. "Some troubles in the affairs of his family house that he had to attend to."
Andan, of House Alde of Alderaan. He was someone who could trace his ancestry back all the way to the original human colonists of that famous core world. A family that had united all the original warring houses and founded the first dynasty which ruled that world. Although in the subsequent turmoil and events of all the wars over thousands of years throughout the Old Republic, saw House Organa rising to take over rule of the planet. House Alde remained and their alliance with Organa was the primary reason internal peace had reigned over that world for more than two millennia now.
Though the ancient battles against the Sith had been an ever present specter that disturbed that peace.
Andan was the scientist of our little group, who could do math on a level that usually baffled me and would like no better than for the Jedi Order to give him a lab somewhere in the Temple complex and just leave him in peace to do research as a technologist. His near royal lineage, though, meant that the usual distancing from his birth family was not a viable option.
He was also quite handsome and I suspected that Barriss had a crush on him.
My plate of food was three-quarters done when my own comlink started beeping for attention.
I was sincerely tempted to just ignore it, just for a bit of petty payback, but I sensed that would not be a good idea.
My fist bumped the button and I continued eating, "Yes, Master?"
"Got a mission, sn- padawan," Anakin's voice emerged from my wrist.
"I'll be with you presently, master."
"Good," he said simply and cut the link.
I calmly continued eating.
"Aren't you going to go, Ahsoka?"
"It's not urgent, I'd know if it was."
Barriss nodded in understanding, "You know each other well."
"The bond between master and padawan," I shrugged.
She eventually stood and bowed at peer level, "Thanks for your time and advice, Ahsoka."
"May the Force be with you, Barriss Offee. I hope you come to the right decision."
"So do I."
My fingers were massaging my forehead, trying in vain to soothe the slight headache I was developing trying to juggle and parse what Anakin had told me.
"So now you have to convince Senator Amidala to spy on another senator, who's highly likely according to the Jedi Council, a traitor and working for the Seppies?"
"Correct," he confirmed, leaning against the kitchen counter of his quarters in the Temple.
"Not only that, but this 'potential traitor' is Senator Rush Clovis of Scipio and the Intergalactic Banking Clan and if this is proven, will put the stated neutrality of the banks in serious doubt."
It was one thing that continued to baffle my sensibilities about the Republic Senate, even though I knew the history that led to it. The idea that any commercial interest had representatives in a legislative governing body was utterly bonkers. Sure, on old Earth, there had been the bloody lobbyists, but at least they weren't given a front row seat and speaking time. You didn't see that Amazon or JPMorgan had a seat in the U.S. Senate, for example.
It made a wonderful argument for just dissolving the current Senate and asking all member worlds to elect and send someone new, kick the commercial interests out, and wipe the slate clean, though I didn't need prescience to tell me what a terrible idea that was at this stage.
"And to put the final layer on this cake, Clovis and… Padme had been in a relationship before," Anakin said with false cheer, which swiftly morphed to an unhappy scowl.
"So if she was to do this, she'd have to leverage that."
It didn't need to be said that this would make both of them very unhappy. Anakin looked at me and he didn't even need to thoughtspeak the question.
I brought my hands to rest in my lap casually and began to sign.
'Council is high probability correct. Clovis traitor. Intelligence critical and possibly time sensitive. Padme necessary.' Anakin looked even more unhappy as he understood the signs. If agree, she needs to prepare. Poison, weapon of choice in upper elite circles.
She knows that, has training, he returned.
I was about to continue arguing but the shifting probability lines had me freeze my hands. Though the Shroud, limited me to only seeing the ever flowing ends of the lines that reached towards me… this wasn't a good sign.
"Well, hopefully this entire exercise is pointless and I won't be able to convince her. Then it's just fact-finding for briefing the spy they eventually do choose to send. In any case, I didn't just call you here to tell you what I'm going to be doing tomorrow. You're going to report to the Resolute."
"Doing what?"
"There are indications of a Seppie offensive towards Dorin." It doesn't rain, it pours. That was the homeworld of the Kel Dor. "I need you to begin getting the ship ready in all respects while I deal with this spy business. Depending on how long it goes, you might even need to lead the counter-offensive yourself. I'll join you as soon as I can."
"Very well, master," I bowed and turned to leave.
I needed to send HK on a shopping trip to the lower levels and perhaps it was finally time to activate my undercover droid.
The next day I was sitting in my command chair on the Resolute's bridge. It was currently docked in the sprawling shipyard complexes on Coruscant's upper surface and taking on the final and minor bits of resupply that was necessary before it could head into battle.
I felt like my thumb was going to break off from all the digital requisition forms I had to sign with my biometrics.
"Commander, incoming communication from General Skywalker," a clone tech called from the port crew pit.
"Thanks Comms."
The holo Anakin that appeared hovering above my armrest was distinctly odd. He was wearing a RNSF uniform, specifically a pilot uniform.
"Master, given your appearance, I assume I am going it alone on this one?"
"Afraid so, Yularen will be there to back you up as usual. I'll be heading to Cato Neimoida within the hour. Make best speed for Dorin as soon as you are able."
"Understood, may the Force be with you, master."
"And you, padawan."
The holo vanished and I tented my hands under my chin as my mind wrestled with the probabilities. It was a three day journey to Cato, whilst it would only take me two days to reach Dorin. That meant it was highly likely that I'd be in the middle of a battle when Padme, Clovis and Anakin arrived.
I couldn't wait to leave the blasted miasma of the Shroud behind me.
Well, I couldn't be physically present, but from a certain point of view, my methods would be there to keep an eye on things.
"Comms, how long?"
"Commander, dockmaster reports at least another two hours before loading is complete and that is going as fast as he dares."
I had probably been sending one too many status requests. Even if they finished in the next second, Admiral Yularen still needed to make it here from wherever he was when off-duty on Coruscant.
"Very well, send him my thanks for his hard work."
"Roger, Commander.
Padme Amidala felt as if she was in a special form of purgatory that Shiraya sent those who had insulted the moon goddess's honor or defaced any of her statues. It was the only explanation she could really come up with.
It took every ounce of comportment training she had received since she was a young girl being trained for the queenship, to keep herself from flinching or shuddering as she strung Rush Clovis along. Keeping him both interested and deflecting things from going too far for her liking was a delicate balance. One that she had managed to keep going for the entire journey to Cato Neimoida so far. Rush was far from an ugly man and had her heart not been captured by Anakin, she could easily see herself pursuing a relationship once again with the Scipian senator.
She counted her blessings that she had thought to use her personal yacht for the trip, allowing her to attain very welcome periods of privacy thanks to the ship's size.
Her current 'hiding' place was the ship's hyperdrive engineering space. The hum of its operation was a soothing sound that never failed to relax her.
The small door to the bay opened and she swiftly donned her polite mask of normality.
The golden body of C3P0 awkwardly bent itself to waddle into the engineering bay, "Ah, Mistress Padme, there you are. There is an urgent communique from the Naboo Health Ministry for your attention."
She sighed and glanced at the chrono on her wrist.
It was about time to drop out of hyperspace anyway and a goddess sent further excuse to waste time.
C3P0 led the way into the small secure comm room and Padme used her personal code to seal and secure it physically and electronically.
The droid began to work the controls on the holotable and flat holo-images with documented scripts bearing the Royal seal of Naboo resolved themselves.
'That's odd,' she thought, frowning at the contents. "3P0, these aren't marked as urgent."
"That is correct, mistress Padme. I was instructed to bring you to a secure location to deliver a different message covertly."
"By whom?" C3P0 was her protocol droid. She knew Anakin also had mastery permissions, was this his doing?
"By Master Anakin's apprentice."
Ahsoka?
The protocol droid brought forth a small flat, rather ornate case and placed it on the holotable, opened it and presented it to her. Inside was what looked like an entire perfume kit; a number of small spray bottles, even a few old-fashioned capped bottles. All made of glass and decorated beautifully. It was worth quite a bit of credits and she had no idea how the young Jedi would have afforded it.
"What's the message?" she asked almost breathlessly. Any message that Ahsoka wanted to convey in such a clandestine manner had to be related to her current endeavor to spy on Rush, especially considering her talents in foresight. Why it wasn't being relayed through Anakin was also curious.
"Padawan Tano bids that the mistress uses this during her time on Cato Neimoida. It is a disguised poison resistance kit, updated to current day standards. Usage instructions are hidden underneath the placeholders for the bottles and a few other necessities."
Padme delicately worked a finger into the gap and lifted the inner placeholder and sure enough a very fine printed fibrous sheet was there, that had instructions and identification for what each bottle did. The kit was seemingly designed to work in preventing poisoning in the first place. Spraying every bit of exposed skin with the bottles created a membrane that stopped contact absorption. There were also lip shaped covers which could be tailored and easily hidden with lipstick.
One of the bottles was also something that you had to drink an hour or two before eating or drinking anything that would be potentially poisoned. It wasn't foolproof protection but would delay onset of symptoms until help or antidote could be procured.
She recalled her own training in socially seamless ways to make sure that you weren't being poisoned. Never being the first to eat, making sure that all portions were being served in sight of all the guests, keeping hold of your own cup, always keeping it sight from the corner of your eye and so on. This training was more than a decade old though, and she was ashamed to admit that keeping it current had totally escaped her mind.
The lip shielding was very worrying to see. Was Ahsoka foreseeing that Rush was going to try to poison her with a kiss?
"Anything else 3P0?"
"There are two more specific messages that I am to relay to you, mistress. Padawan Tano says, 'You are his weakness, use it,' and 'Copy, don't transfer.'"
Padme was baffled for a moment, turning the words around in her head.
Who's weakness? She could see that she was Anakin's weakness… if their marriage ever came out, but he had very little involvement in the spy mission besides being her pilot and hidden bodyguard if things went very wrong.
She was Rush's weakness though. Had she not used their prior relationship to get them this far? It obviously had more meaning that she was not seeing… yet.
The same applied for the second message. Those were terms usually used in information tech. She would need evidence of any treason and the high density data holocube she had acquired for the mission to download anything she found…
Copy… don't transfer…
This is maddening, she thought to herself. Ahsoka clearly had some end goal that she couldn't see and most likely wouldn't see completely until she talked with the Jedi herself.
"Thanks 3P0. Out of curiosity, when did she contact you?"
"It was a number of hours before we left Coruscant, my lady. She also had a very rude and annoying droid deliver the poison kit."
That had to be HK-47. She closed the 'perfume' case and felt the slight shudder through the ship as it exited hyperspace.
"Come, 3P0, we have a mission to do."
"Launch fighters."
My order was prompt, crisp and like any other. Keeping the frustration out of my voice was becoming harder though.
Once again, roughly two hundred thousand kilometers from Dorin, was a Recusant-class light destroyer at the primary emergence point for the planet.
The Vulture and Hyena droids, clinging like ticks to the surface of the CIS ship, promptly reconfigured and launched themselves at us.
This was the fourth such attack launched against the Kel Dor homeworld within less than a standard day.
I took in the astrographic map of the system, pushing forward with my prescience. Right, time to change things up a bit. Tracing my hand through the projected holo, I highlighted four points, including one near one of the Dorin moons. It would allow for the squadron sent there to have a nice bit of gravity assist in their speed.
"Resolute command to all squadrons, target courses transmitting, engage at will."
I received acknowledgement from every Republic squadron, then with a slight delay, the fighters of the Kel Dor Unified Clan Defense Force also acknowledged my orders.
Thankfully for the homeworld of my close friend, Master Plo Koon, their people had a high technology base and their presence in the Expansion Region of the galaxy, meant they were well versed in looking after themselves from the predations of pirates and criminals. Dorin was also one of the rare worlds which wasn't scrambling to upgrade and modernize defenses. They even had a planetary defense grid, ostensibly for keeping the homeworld safe from asteroids.
It was even a perfectly legitimate system even in a post-Ruusan Republic, given that Dorin was a very large world and its gravitational influence seemed to enjoy giving the Kel Dor a potential extinction level event nearly every generation.
That they even survived to this day was thanks to the Baran Do Sages. A very obscure native order of Force sensitives among the Kel Dor. The sages were near mythical, and to see one was very rare even among Kel Dor. Their major affinity was right up my alley, prediction of events, mostly weather and neatly included incoming asteroids seeking to end all life on the planet.
When they had advanced to the point of being space capable enough to deflect these asteroids, the sages had turned to preventing other dangerous events, preventing other disasters and averting wars.
Joining the Republic had not been kind to the sages though, as the Force sensitive younglings were most often sent to the Jedi Order, instead of the more limited sages. They still enjoyed a shadowy and reverential power among the more traditional Kel Dor clans.
As demonstrated when a number of generals among the KUDF questioned why they should follow the orders of a togrutan teenager.
Seeing the looks on those general's faces when a Sage revealed themselves and essentially told them, "Shut the fuck up and listen… or else…" was hilarious. It was especially interesting given that the generals had been unmasked at the time.
My musings were interrupted by catching Admiral Yularen in the corner of my eye visibly struggling to not take a catnap on his feet and possibly falling over. He reached into his pocket where I knew a stim was waiting.
"Admiral, go to bed. I really don't want to have to make it an order."
The chain of command was thankfully clear here, though it was still odd as hell to my sensibilities that I was 'technically' his superior, just because I was a Jedi. It was a power I vowed never to exercise, unless a situation exactly like this cropped up.
The whole tactical situation was only surprising to me in that it had taken this long for the CIS to try it. Droids didn't need to obey a conventional sleep cycle, they merely needed a recharge. In the case of a B1, it was about 30 hours, which would be reduced to 18 hours under combat conditions - if the droid even lasted that long. On a ship, with handy recharge stations, there were no such limits.
By attacking in six hour intervals in penny pinch packets, with just enough force that required a significant response from the Republic defenders - it was disrupting the sleep cycles of the clones. Even keeping things going in shifts wasn't really helping, because of the alert alarms and the activity of those on-shift was disturbing those trying to get rest.
The only thing mitigating this was the presence of the KUDF and their aerospace bases on the planet below.
"I'm fine, Commander," Yularen replied primly, his hands snapping away from his pockets with the stim unused.
"You are a human in your middle ages," I retorted firmly. "The days where you could go 48 hours with no sleep are long behind you."
To further emphasize my point, I turned my chair to face him fully, giving my best stern command face.
Yularen thinned his lips and I could see him wrestle with the decision in his mind. Thankfully, wisdom and practicality won the day over pride.
"Very well, Commander. I shall call for Captain Sal to relieve me."
"Excellent, at least five hours Admiral, I'll be able to sense if you cheat."
That Yularen even mumbled, "Bloody Jedi," under his breath as he gave a salute and left the bridge, showed the extent of the usually perfectly composed admiral's exhaustion. He seemed to have even forgotten that my hearing was an order of magnitude more sensitive than a human.
The fighter squadrons inched closer and closer on the holo map.
Finally, the angry red pings of missiles being launched from both sides, sprang into existence.
"Once more, unto the breach, dear friends, once more."
- Location
- State of Confusion
Good grief. Ahsoka is getting a massive head start on the 'Mysterious Master' speaking in riddles thing, isn't she?
- Location
- United States of America
Kinda makes sense though. The less information you drag from the future and send with your agent, the less the timeline can diverge
Fellow Human
Verified Roado Rolla
Why is the shroud only on Corruscant, in that case why wouldn't the Jedi simply leave even just for a short trip to use precognition, or build another temple.
Wouldn't they notice all of a suddden precogniton no longer works but only on Corruscant and investigate?
Why does this Ashoka have precognition on top of foreknowldge?
Wouldn't they notice all of a suddden precogniton no longer works but only on Corruscant and investigate?
Why does this Ashoka have precognition on top of foreknowldge?
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- Location
- Software
AFAIK the shroud protected Palpy from precognition, so it's logical is the most strongest in the planet he lives...
Chapter 23
A/N: [Yoda voice] Next chapter, delivered to you, it is. [/Yoda voice] To Patrons and SuperPatrons, thanks for letting me devote more time to this and letting me slowly turn writing into a primary profession. *Raises glass* Cheers.
Chapter 23
My eyes stared at the astrographic galaxy map and it seemed to be mocking me. Throwing me a puzzle that whoever was my opposite number on the CIS side had crafted. I fiddled with the holotable controls and scrolled the map slowly, up, down, left, right, all the while trying to put myself in the enemy's shoes and their thinking.
"Ah, there you are, commander."
Yularen walked into the primary pilot briefing room, looking much more like his usual stoic self. All shipshape and Bristol fashion, so to speak.
"Admiral," I acknowledged him absently, my mind a bit too preoccupied to give him my full attention.
"Dare I ask if you managed to get any rest?"
"Jedi can generally get by with an hour of sleep and an hour of meditation for quite a while, it varies depending on talent. Legend has it that during the pre-Ruusan era, there were some Jedi Lords who had managed to do away with the need for sleep completely. Though that is probably just some ancient hyperbole and propaganda meant to keep their people's spirits and hope up."
"Fascinating, but I noticed you didn't actually answer the question."
I smiled. "I managed to sneak in two hours of sleep with an hour of mediation."
He nodded in approval and stared at the map, "Trying to find the enemy staging point?"
"Yes, staying on the defensive like this is not an option. Sooner or later, our combat effectiveness is going to fall to a point where we make a fatal mistake."
"True enough," he conceded. "Any progress?"
"Logically speaking, nothing should be getting through the Yout and Ord Mantell battlefronts, which locks down the Entrella Route and Celanon Spur, the major hyperspace routes to the north. Yet somehow, the CIS are pricking us with these light destroyers emerging from the Myomar emergence point in Dorin, as if they are coming down the Celanon Spur anyway."
"And since there's been no word of any breakthrough from Yout and our major lines are still holding, they're somehow still getting through. Perhaps they're using minor, small capacity routes that branch off from the Spur, it takes them longer and is extremely fuel inefficient but… there are no such routes that you could take. You can't, for example, go from Tyan on the Etralla directly to Baltizaar to hop, skip and jump your way through all these minor systems along the Spur. Even for a Recusant that's pushing it."
"Unless they managed to map a new hyperspace route or rediscover an old one that's missing from modern charts."
Yularen nodded in agreement, "That is also possible, but we can't be sure."
"Which is why I enacted a plan to find out during the last skirmish."
Yularen raised a questioning eyebrow, "Oh?"
"I ordered a number of Wraith squadron pilots in their brand new Z95s to use their ion cannons only."
"We have captured Vulture droids on board?"
"Four of them," I smiled mildly. "R3 and a small team from our ELINT division are going over them now."
"Surely, their memories are encrypted, not to mention the ion cannon fire would've had a good chance of corrupting them as well."
"Yes, it's a gamble, but one I hope will pay dividends. These droids were clamped active onto the hull as the Recusant emerged from hyper, that means they have to have visual memories of the starfields of the waypoints of their hyperspace route."
"I see, let's say you do find them, what is your offensive plan? We only have the Resolute here."
"That entirely depends on what the Seppies have waiting for us at their staging. This entire thing could be just a diversionary tactic that intends to make us call for reinforcements, that most efficiently and realistically can only be pulled from Ord Mantell."
"Which then gives them the opportunity to try and deliver a hammerblow that will try to collapse that battlefront."
"Precisely," I agreed with a nod. "Admiral, I want you also to look into what it would take to accommodate using and launching KUDF fighters from Resolute."
"I can already hear the scream of the quartermaster in my ear," he quirked a rare smile.
"Thanks, Admiral," I chuckled.
The door to the briefing room swished open and the minor whine of R3's motor preceded his entrance as he trundled in on his wheels.
"R3, I thought you'd be busy for hours yet?"
'Mistress, you are too used to R2 units,' it burbled in binary.
"I suppose I am, what have you got?"
In response, my astromech drove forward and plugged into the logic port of the briefing room computer.
'We managed to salvage enough data from three of the Vulture droids to reconstruct a flight path, the fourth's systems were too badly damaged.'
The holo of the galaxy vanished to show reconstructed images of starfields, which was then superimposed by hundreds of analysis patterns that flashed on it. This continued until a new image appeared, of a much more zoomed in astrographic galaxy map. Showing the derived course that the last Recusant had to have taken.
"What the…" Yularen's composure broke briefly. "That's ridiculous, why would they do that?"
His perplexion was understandable. The CIS had to have discovered this route somehow from ancient maps.
A route right from Ord Cantrell, 500 light years inside their own space, that crossed the Entralla Route and linked to Iridonia. From there, there were nearly 8 minor, mapped systems in that sector which they could pick and choose a direction from, until they hit Glee Anselm in the Namaadii Corridor. A system that was technically on our left flank. Only this cunning CIS commander didn't attack us from that direction, as it would immediately betray the fact that they had new hyperspace route up their sleeve. Instead they kept bouncing around sector J7 until they hit Myomar - creating the illusion of coming down the Celanon Spur.
This was a route I could see some ancient explorer or astrocartographer striking off their maps. The entire first day of using it was through essentially barren space, no inhabited systems and with a number of major nasty astronomical phenomena, some of which was a number of neutron stars, black holes and a cyclical pulsar or two. The only advantage it gave you was a time and distance saving if you wanted to travel to Iridonia specifically from the north. It was also entirely possible the hyperspace route was cyclical - meaning it was only safe when certain interstellar conditions were met.
"Well, it's one way to disguise their use of a new route from us. R3, can you chart a course for the Resolute from this data to Ord Cantrell?"
'Yes, but it would be risky to use without at least a smaller scout verifying the route first.'
I helpfully translated the binary for the Admiral.
"Naturally," he agreed. "Did you manage to reconstruct any images of their staging in Ord Cantrell?"
In answer, an image appeared in the holo that was rather badly fragmented and showed interpolation artifacts, but it was clear that there was at least one Lucrehulk battleship there, with three Munificents in frame, and one Recusant.
"We can't base a decision to go on the offensive just from that," I declared with a sigh of frustration.
"No matter what is there, we need the element of surprise on our side as well. I can see the enemy putting scouts or even sensor drones along this new route of theirs to guard against this."
"Then isn't it amazing we have just the ship we need parked in one of our smaller hangar bays," I gave the admiral a big knowing smile.
"You don't mean… the Xanadu? I heard that awful thing was barely spaceworthy."
"I've had engineering teams work on it since I took command on Coruscant. I mean really, when will a cloaked ship ever not come in handy?"
"So now you just have to find two pilots crazy enough to fly an untested hyperspace route."
"I can name two from Wraith and a bunch from Shadow squadron who would jump at the chance."
Yularen's shoulders slumped ever so slightly and I could feel his relief. "Good, for a moment I thought you were going to suggest you go yourself or some other Jedi craziness."
"The commander's place is in the rear," I declared firmly. "Yes, necessity does sometimes put us Jedi in the thick of things, but that can't be helped. R3, what's the time to target for the Xanadu to Ord Cantrell using this route?"
'Best estimate of arrival in 30 hours.'
"In other words, five more attacks to defeat if the Separatists keep this schedule," Yularen didn't look happy at the thought of that. "Do they have the patience or the ships to keep this going that long?"
"The ships, yes. This CIS commander's patience when we just keep sitting here and take his punches against all odds will not be infinite though. Their goal is to eventually gain a foothold in Dorin, turn these pinpricks into a knife in our back. We have no choice but to weather this storm until the Xanadu can confirm the hyper route and then I hope I can convince the KUDF to work in support of a surprise offensive deep strike."
"They're not going to like that," he predicted immediately. "It'd mean relying too much on the orbital defense grid."
"It's what it's kriffing there for in the first place. I've also got a few ideas on shoring up the defenses further."
"Well, I hope they listen."
I was not looking forward to this meeting, "So do I."
Donning my brand spanking new armor for a meeting of all things was not how I intended to debut the suit. I'd always imagined it'd be some distant battlefield or even with the upcoming deep strike mission. The unfortunate necessity of it curtailed those imaginings.
The armor that Anakin and I had designed, in the end, was striking to the eye and if any gamer stats could be assigned to it, it'd have a plus 2 to charisma or intimidation.
Its basis, like the previous one, was the mechanical pressure suit that clone troopers had, but going over that was where things got much better. It was a more complete armor kit than my previous one, considering I had no problems with the weight anymore. The boots and greaves were linked and equally armored, flexing with a powered rotator, with the knee armor getting the same treatment. The first slight gap appeared above the knees, which was a necessity due to the flexibility needed for Ataru.
The thigh armor or cuisse, to use the old Earth term, was nice and beefy and stopped just below my hips. Next my stomach and crotch was covered with an abdomen plate, which again needed a slight gap before moving up to a breastplate that while not completely 'boob armor', had a curved mold that left no doubt that a female was wearing this. The whole system had also been designed to be more modular than the old armor, to accommodate future growth.
For my arms, there was a full set of gardbrace, couter, vambrace and gauntlets adorning them. The interface, comlink and other tech wizardry of the armor was controlled by buttons on the vambrace and gauntlets.
As a final touch, I had integrated an open brown Jedi Robe into the armor that was held in place by a utility belt. It even had a detachable hood for that extra bit of Jedi-ness. The armor as a whole also had the fractal camo color scheme but with whites, grays and browns.
The helmet design was especially inspired and trust Anakin Skywalker to come up with a solution to the problem of a togruta's montrals and lekku being uncomfortable to stuff into a confining helmet.
Thankfully, I really didn't need to wear it now. It was still a chore to get into. The material of the armor itself was Anakin's own spin on the Katarn armor that was currently given to Clone Commandos, which was a mix of metallo-ceramic composites.
I glanced at my armor's chrono and struggled to keep my expression neutral. Even in this day and age, you'd think scheduling a conference holocall would be much easier to do. When you had to do it with a bunch of local military brass, that was not the case.
As it was, the meeting couldn't run for long, we were cutting it pretty close to the next projected attack time.
Then, the standing holograms of four KUDF generals began appearing around me on the Resolute bridge. They were each in charge of the aerospace, ground forces, medical and what passed for a Kel Dor Navy - which was a collection of thirteen frigates, only eight of which were armed to modern standards. The rest were still in drydock being stripped of their old post Ruusan-era mandated weaponry. It was a testament to the Kel Dor technical expertise that they had managed to refit so many of these frigates to combat readiness in the little time since the war began.
They would be needed.
"Commander Tano, you wished to speak to us?" General Di Soszhain of the aerospace force began.
"Yes, thank you for taking the time and as it is not on any of our sides at the moment, I'm going to be blunt." I gestured to a comm tech in the crew pit. "You should now all be receiving a file package with data and conclusions for your review. I need at least six KUDF squadrons to embark on Resolute within the next twenty-five hours."
The generals looked at each other and I could sense that they were barely containing themselves from exploding in protest and other objections. Instead their own aides handed them datapads which they began reading.
"Are you certain of this, Commander?" Soszhain questioned, his four mandible teeth twitching. Their lowered articulation surrounding the maw of their mouth, was rather disconcerting to the average person who was unused to seeing unmasked Kel Dor. It didn't phase me at all.
"As certain as anything can be in war, general."
"Have you considered that embarking on this deep strike, is precisely what the enemy is trying to goad you into, commander?" General Wa Kusekac asked. She was the only female kel dor among the four, and the general in charge of the navy.
There was something viscerally wrong with calling anyone in charge of a navy a general, but this was a problem with Basic and the Kel Dor language coming to the fore.
"Yes," I admitted. "The problem is that keeping defensive posture and these continuous timed attacks is having a deleterious effect on my command. If the CIS keeps this up, I'll eventually be forced to order my crews and people to stim up. That is also only a stop gap and at most extends our combat readiness for another two days. I don't need to tell you the effect of prolonged stim use on judgment, reaction time and other mental faculties. Not to mention having to deal with an entire starship full of people going through withdrawal symptoms after the fact. The conclusion is that eventually, I'll be forced to retreat from the system. So I'll rather strike while I still have a functioning crew."
"An understandable position with the predicament the enemy has forced us into," General Hass Kirramm, in charge of the Kel Dor medical service branch, stated.
"I've run some numbers, commander," Soszhain explained, looking up from the pad he had been working on. "Our starfighter corps can spare you four squadrons, no more. We'd be compromising our effective aerospace coverage to loan you more."
I turned my head to look at Kusekac. She made a wurbling noise that was the Kel Dor equivalent of a humanoid scoff. "Commander, I don't know what you expect my frigates to be really able to do. They've got half the tonnage of these blasted Recusants."
"But they've got sharp teeth, nevertheless. Have you seen how the CIS use their Munificents?"
"I've done my research, yes. The problem is my captains and crews haven't trained for that kind of close coordination. They're likely to crash into each other trying to pull those maneuvers. The CIS have linked droids that are able to avoid any issues of miscommunication and improper coordination."
"Then imitate that," I pointed out. "Network a bunch of astromechs on each of your ships, link them all in an encrypted com net and there you go."
"I'm not sure my captains will like the idea of entrusting their helms to even loyal astromechs, commander."
"They'll like it soon enough when it lets them punch above their weight class and kill a CIS capital ship," I declared, throwing a bit of anger in my voice. "Get it done, general."
"Very well, commander."
"What is the status of the orbital grid?"
"96 percent functional satellites are ready and awaiting command the instant anything comes into range," Soszhain reported.
"What happened to the four percent?"
"Routine downtime for maintenance, it's rare that we have a hundred percent functioning grid at any time."
"What do simulations for their performance reveal?"
"Anything that comes in effective range will be destroyed in short order."
I frowned at that, "Even a Lucrehulk?"
"Commander, these mass drivers are designed to deflect asteroids, even moon sized ones. They synchronize and fire for time on target hits for every defense satellite that can orient for a bearing. No shield system in existence can resist dozens of 80 kilo slugs traveling at fractional velocities of light."
"My concern is that all it would take for the CIS to take out the grid, is to stay out of effective range and suicide ram, hoards of Vulture droids into the defense satellites. Do they have any close-in self defense guns?"
I could visibly see I had taken the wind out of Soszhain's sails. "No, commander."
"I would kindly suggest your technicians and designers get to work on fixing that issue. General Aguu, I realize we've not been speaking about your areas of responsibility, but should the worst come to pass and CIS forces land on Dorin…"
Pla Aguu, was the oldest general in the KUDF high command and merely nodded at my implied question, "We're ready to send them into oblivion, commander. Divisions and reserves are mobilized, equipped and pre-positioned near most likely and high value targets."
"I hope you won't mind, but I've got some desperately bored 501st clone legion troopers who want to pound some dirt. I suggest you make use of them as advisors and learn how to best use your troops against an enemy that doesn't need food, sleep and is not hampered at all by the atmosphere of Dorin."
Aguu gave me a Kel Dor smile and I struggled not to shudder. "They've certainly got some experience and lessons to teach I suppose. Our own fighting days date back to the last clan wars and the professional ground military we have train based on those hard experiences."
My chrono beeped a warning at me. "We have twenty minutes, generals. Good luck to you all."
They bowed briefly before their holo's faded.
I sat down as my prescience flared and my hands balled into fists, straining the fresh gloves of my gauntlets.
"Oh baka bachu," I muttered under my breath.
Fighters launched and their attending technicians scrambled to safe their equipment. Clone troopers loaded up and readied themselves for anti-boarding ops, while yet others detailed to damage control reported to their stations. Naval clones went through their checklists and readied systems. Those manning computer controlled gunnery stations ran their systems checklists and double checked everything was working. Proton Torpedo handlers manned their stations and readied their weapons for firing.
Such was the pre-battle readiness procedure for the Resolute.
'Two minutes until mark, all personnel two minutes.'
I sat in my command chair and adopted the typical posture and pose - one that was both relaxed, confident and attentive, even occasionally indulging in a little tenting of my hands and affecting a deeply thoughtful expression - as if I was devising some cunning stratagem.
'One minute, final battle readiness checks, all personnel.'
The announcements were shipwide and also being beamed to the KUDF. Integrating them into our tactical nets was one of the first things I did. There was to be no miscommunication incidents leading to accidents under my watch.
'Thirty seconds.'
Admiral Yularen took his typical position next to me. I'd even had engineers build a command station for him, so he didn't have to go running around the bridge if he wanted to personally input commands to the systems.
'Fifteen seconds.'
'Ten seconds.'
'Five seconds… mark!'
Every eye and sensor turned to the hyperspace emergence point.
Nothing.
I tapped a button on my chair and began a timer.
"Negative sensor contacts, so far. Stand by," Yularen ordered, his voice snapping like a whip.
'Plus twenty seconds. No enemy contacts.'
I gave a brief glance at the Admiral. His face was grim and his eyes asked a silent question.
'Plus one minute. No enemy contacts.'
The tension on the ship was building and I cursed the tightrope I was being forced to walk. I could even feel it from the KUDF fighters in space.
'Plus five minutes. No enemy contacts.'
I pushed a button on my chair, "Comms, if no enemy contacts are present by fifteen minutes, signal secure systems to condition two."
"Roger, commander."
"Are you certain about that, commander?" Yularen spoke softly, ensuring that only I could hear. "The enemy could've been delayed for any number of reasons."
"That is true," I acknowledged. "However, we can't keep to battle stations indefinitely."
His lips thinned and his eyes showed understanding. This was the dilemma of the defender.
Eventually, the timer ticked to fifteen minutes and condition two was announced.
It kept systems ready, kept men at their posts, kept weapons charged and fighters out on patrol but they could somewhat relax and sit down if able.
A further thirty minutes passed and I declared condition three, which was the start of getting everything back to normal. Fighters began landing, damage control crews stood down, but gunnery crews remained hot and on stand-by.
"What is going on? What is the enemy thinking?" Yularen wondered.
I stood out of my chair and walked forward to the transparisteel bulkhead and gazed into the black.
"He's fighting us psychologically and attacking our morale. He got us into a pattern of expectation, of action, and now that he's broken the pattern, we're left coming down from the adrenaline high and assumption of another attack. We're feeling disgruntled, angry and though most of the clones won't admit it, disappointed even."
"That's… rather brilliant," Yularen commented, feeling a bit of wonder. "We studied the idea of fighting on that level at Prefsbelt, it just was too problematic. What might work if your opponent is one type of species, won't work on another."
I turned around and continued the line of thinking, "A problem neatly overcome by the fact that the GAR are all human clones. There might be some variation in the commanders and generals, but in the end we're all Jedi and the way we think can also be studied and inferred. Our only advantage here is the Kel Dor."
Of course, I couldn't mention that my own thinking and psychology was essentially an Outside Context Problem to anyone in this galaxy attempting to throw psy-ops at me.
"I must admit, I'm not familiar with them enough to judge how they could be of benefit in psychological warfare," he said.
"If there is one word that you would associate with Kel Dor, Admiral, then it's patience. Their civilization endured despite the awful Sabacc hand that nature dealt them. There were a number of times they've had to rebuild almost from scratch thanks to the asteroid impacts. They evolved from ambush hunters in their pre-history… so this tactic doesn't phase them at all. Their version of an adrenal response lets them come down from it without any of the typical effects as seen in humans and other similar species. They make very good Jedi too, which is why the Order has a chapter house down on Dorin."
"Fascinating, so the question is now, will the enemy resume the pattern or break it entirely?"
"That is the question and one I will need to think very carefully about." I delved down the probability lines of prescience. The further I went, the more motion and uncertainty there was, but one thing was clear. "Admiral, order condition green at the one hour mark. I want everyone who can in their bunks and getting rest. I'm authorizing medical to issue sleeping pills if necessary."
"Yes, commander."
It was at this point I really wished I either had Bastila Shan on hand or had her Battle Meditation. That utterly broken Force ability had seen the old Republic Navy through events that would've otherwise shattered it under the hammer blows of Revan and the Star Forge.
There was only one thing I could really do in answer to this.
"Comms, get me a fleetwide channel, I want every ear on this ship."
"Roger commander."
I sat down on my chair and after a few seconds a prompt popped up in its small holo projector.
The button was pushed and a loud double chime echoed throughout the ship.
"This is Commander Tano."
I could literally feel as the attention of thousands was metaphysically directed towards me.
"We are being attacked. Not by a turbolaser, not by a gun, not a missile nor droid. No, the enemy is attacking our minds. He is playing us. We expect him to come and he does not. He wants us to think a certain way. He wants to trap us. So that when his true strike comes, we will fall to it all the easier.
"Do not let this happen. We will endure. He can play his little mind games all he wants! But we will stand Resolute! This ship is our home and we will defend it. The enemy is now living in your minds, expel him! To fight him now, we must do everything in our power to remain vigilant. If you struggle to sleep, sleep! The enemy is trying to deny it to you. Do not let him.
"Soon, we will go on the offensive and then we will tell him what we think of his little games. Do you agree, Resolute?"
The bridge erupted in a shout of 'Yes, we do!' that was echoed throughout the ship. Building the concept of 'esprit-de-corps' was something emphasized even in the naval manuals of the Corusca galaxy. It was nice to not have to build the idea from scratch.
"Good! I will test that mettle, Resolute. Rest assured the enemy will too. Commander Tano, out."
CP-7607 or as his brothers preferred to call him, Blot, blearily opened his eyes to greet the small interior cabin of the Xanadu. He went through a mental checklist of everything his senses reported and found nothing wrong, odd or about to explode. He threw his legs out of the small bunk bed and marveled at the ability to properly stretch his limbs while on a flight.
His eyes found the form of his co-pilot, CP-3609, callsign 'Click' and found that the rookie clone pilot was properly doing his job of flying, even though the computer and the droid was doing most of the work in hyperspace. Click was halfway through a standard checklist of the hyperdrive by the looks of things.
"Oh, you're awake, LT. Everything's nominal."
"Good to hear, Click," he grunted and stood, stretching his back in the process. Bloody pilot armor's always chafing at that back spot, he thought in annoyance.
Click vacated his chair for the co-pilot spot and Blot dumped himself in the pilot seat, beginning to drink his liquid breakfast from a bottle absently, while he smoothly continued the checklist where the rookie left off.
As usual, nothing was wrong, but the routine was welcome as was the blessed uninterrupted sleep.
"So…" Click began leadingly and Blot really wished he had his helmet on at this moment.
"What is it, Click? Spit it out." The rookie wasn't really a true fresh tank, he had clankers painted on his fighter, but he was a new pilot in Wraith Squadron.
"I'm just wondering why I was chosen for the mission by the commander…"
"It's not your job to wonder why," Blot retorted.
"I know, it's just… I was looking forward to flying those new Z95s and now here we are, stuck in a Seppie ship that's held together by engineer spit and prayers."
"Click, there's more to flying and fighting than just bagging clankers. We're the eyes of our ship. If we don't do our job, no one is going to know where the enemy is."
"The job should've gone to one of the Recon boys then."
"The commander doesn't want the ARC boys anywhere near the Xanadu."
"Why not?"
"The commander places a high value on training and learning in this squadron. She thinks the ARC pilots need a retraining course and she doesn't like the ARC itself. The Xanadu is an entirely different approach to recon than what they are used to and have trained for. She trained me on a manual she wrote from scratch with General Skywalker on how to best fly this bucket. Any ARC pilot would need to, in her words, 'unlearn too much'."
"Why didn't I get this manual?"
Blot glared openly at his co-pilot, "You've been reading from it the whole time, the cloaking device manual is only part of it."
Click looked down at his datapad, fiddled with it briefly, swiping on the screen, "Oh, yeah."
The senior pilot finished his breakfast and dumped the bottle in the disposal bin. "And the light of sunrise dawns. With that level of attention to detail, Click, how they let you off the homeworld as a pilot is a miracle."
"Hey!"
Blot laughed at the insulted look on the rookie's face, then patted him on the shoulder. "Just teasing, rook."
"I'm not a rook."
"Click, until you get ten kills as a member of Wraith, you're a rook."
"What? There's no reg like that."
Blot rolled his eyes, "It's not a reg, it's a commander's rule, there's a difference."
"Wait, the commander has her own regs?"
"Another thing you'll learn in this squadron," Blot grinned.
"Is this written down somewhere or what?"
"Yes, I'll transfer it to your pad later. It's not something the commander has done officially."
"Uh, speaking of things the commander's done… has… I heard a weird rumor…"
Blot gave his fellow clone a gimlet eyed stare. "Oh?"
"Yeah, in mess, I think it was a Shadow squadron guy. He said that… uh she walked straight into the common fresher where Wraith… I mean our squadron was busy showering and pretty much beat down one of the guys for disobeying an order. I also heard other versions but there's no way those could've happened…"
Blot didn't react at first to hearing this, but swiftly reached over and slapped his fellow clone upside the head.
"Ow! Why…"
"Do you see that astromech?" He jerked his thumb to the oddly painted astromech in the back, that had been managing the hyper jumps and route. The droid in question had turned its upper dome and main optical sensor to face them. "Take one guess to whom it belongs."
Click blinked for a few moments then seemed to choke on his own saliva. "That's the commander's astromech?"
"Yes. What? You think she'd really trust a ship as tactically valuable as the Xanadu to the likes of you and me. Don't be ridiculous. And for the record, she didn't beat down Crosser, just gave him a dressing down that left his ego suitably humbled. Oh and R3, can you confirm our ETA?"
The droid was silent for a very awkward few seconds before it replied in binary. 'Fifteen minutes to Iridonia.'
"Thanks R3," Blot nodded and began a hyperspace transition checklist without pause. He slapped Click on the shoulder to snap him out of his embarrased funk. "You get that cloaking device ready."
"Yes, LT."
Things were mercifully quiet besides the sounds of the rhythmic operation of the ship for the remaining time in hyperspace.
"Dropping us out in three… two… one… now!"
The hyperspace tunnel seemed to stall and burst into streaks of light that resolved into the starfield of normal space.
"Cloaking now," Click worked his controls… a few anxious seconds passed. "Cloak nominal."
Bolt let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. He should've been used to it by now, but there was just no getting over the fact that the cloak might as well be the only shield the ship had. If that didn't work, it was game over. Dead.
"Begin passive scans," Blot ordered automatically.
"Uh, LT… we've got problems."
A holo-readout blossomed above the console, showing a diagram of the star system and what the computer resolved into clear enemy ship profiles…
"R3, contact the Resolute."
"Three Lucrehulks and five Munificents have occupied the Iridonian system, commander."
The transmission was audio only to save on bandwidth and give the highest possible encryption. My scouts were also using directional links to further minimize the chance of detection.
"Why in the blazes did the zabraks not call for help?" Yularen frowned severely.
"They tried Admiral, but it seems that one of the first things the Seppies did when they opened this new route, was send in droid commandos to sabotage the system's interstellar communications. By the time they realized they were under invasion it was already too late."
"What's the disposition of the CIS fleet, lieutenant?" I asked, my brain struggling to square this problem that was being presented to me.
"One Lucrehulk is in orbit of Iridonia, acting as a staging point for their groundside occupation and blockading the planet. There's already a substantial debris field that tells me the zabrak have tried to run the gauntlet and clearly failed. All the usual satellites that the database indicates they should have are no longer there. The remaining CIS ships are clustered around the emergence point from Ord Cantrell, which is near the sixth planet of the system, a gas giant with a substantial moon system."
"Send me all the data you can, we're going to need your eyes there all the way, Blot."
"Understood, commander."
The channel closed and I gave a glance at Yularen, "Bit of a problem this is."
"Understatement of the age, commander," he chuckled.
"So not only do we have to somehow keep a defense on Dorin, we have to liberate Iridonia and destroy this fleet - which is one order away from being launched to unleash destruction on…" I gave a quick glance at the sector map… "sixteen different star systems and all the Iridonian colonies on our left flank."
"We have to call for reinforcements."
"Agreed, but even if they could be launched this instant…"
"It's a three day journey from Coruscant and four from Kuat. That movement of ships will definitely be picked up by CIS Intel, which will cause them to go on the offensive."
Of course, that didn't count the other problem of Palpatine himself instructing Dooku to launch the attack, the moment I reported this to the High Council.
There was only one solution now that I could see. It was a card that I really didn't want to use now, but the scale of the stakes didn't really leave much choice. Letting the CIS do this would force a thinning of the north's defenses as the GAR scrambled to deal with this flanking offense, which in turn could lead to a defensive collapse of the north.
"Admiral, I want every astromech tied into our navicomputer. Then I want you to contact the KUDF and get them working with every spare computer they have that can work out a hyperspace course linked to us."
"Commander, the doctrine requires at least three Venators. You should know, you helped write it," he objected.
"I'm not going to use the doctrine. We're going to do something different, it's based on it, but something which allows it to be carried out by a single carrier ship."
"All right, consider my curiosity piqued, you're not one for suicide tactics, what did you have in mind?"
It was an eighteen hour trip to Iridonia from Dorin.
The Resolute's departure was delayed further when we had to see off another probing attack from a Recusant destroyer. We had gotten advanced warning of its arrival thankfully due to the Xanadu's scouting. This meant that the Separatists only saw what we wanted them to see - that we were just sitting there and taking the punches.
The instant we were sure everything that could possibly have a working verbobrain and a com system was destroyed, the Resolute powered out of the Dorin gravity well and jumped to hyperspace.
In my wake, I left a time-delayed request for reinforcements. I was therefore fulfilling my duty, but delayed enough that even should Palpatine pull his shenanigans, it would be too late.
My next order was for everyone who could, to get six hours of sleep, after which the remainder who were required for Resolute to operate, would hot-bunk their own six hours.
Most of my own time was spent practically living in the squadron briefing room, getting the pilots up to speed on what we were going to attempt and even trying it in the simulators.
The results were mixed enough that I had no choice but to take a risk I really didn't want to.
"We need real-time telemetry from the Xanadu," I shook my head in frustration as I watched the holo-replays of the various squadrons doing their simulated attacks.
"I agree, there's just too much error introduced in the hyperspace calculations otherwise," Yularen absently combed his mustache with his thumb and forefinger.
"Something the matter, Admiral?"
"Yes… if… no, when we do this. It'll make Yularen-Tano a picnic in comparison. We might even be seeing the end of an entire era of space warfare with this."
"Perhaps," I admitted. "But you can't hold territory with this tactic."
"Yes, but it'll put a blaster to the big-gun and ship fanatics. They're going to be screaming bloody murder and can you imagine Kuat and all the big shipping houses frothing at the mouth that their giant monstrosities which have been only getting bigger and bigger over the decades, have been reduced to nothing more than target practice."
"They can bahko d'bhem nina," I sneered. Yularen gave me a confused stare. "Sorry, slip of the tongue and I'd rather not translate. It's not usually said amongst polite togrutans."
"I'll take your word for it, commander, though now I'll really have to look into my own personal security going forward, a bodyguard droid perhaps?"
I laughed, "HK won't consent to being copied but he can help in the programming of the droid."
"I'll get back to you on that."
"Five, four, three, two… we are in hyperspatial orbit of the Iridonia system, commander."
"Thank you helm, good work."
I took a deep breath and rubbed my hands together, helping the gloves to get rid of the sweaty palms that just loved to annoy me when I was feeling particularly tense.
"Commander," Yularen politely cleared his throat, seeing that I was dithering somewhat.
"Flight Ops, open our bays and begin launching fighters."
"Roger, commander."
I looked up into the abnormally slow roiling tunnel of hyperspace as very carefully two squadrons of ARC-170s began syncing their own native hyperdrives and slowly coasted upward into a general V-formation hovering about 130 meters above the upper dorsal decks of the Resolute. That gave us a 20 meter safety margin if a desync happened, so only a fighter was lost and not the entire ship. The theoretical simulations of what would happen was not pretty to look at.
Finally, joining them was a squadron of KUDF fighters. Their general shape roughly reminded me of a Peregrine-class from another universe I knew and considered a 'heavy fighter'. Not surprising, since the Dochu-class could trace its lineage to the earliest space craft the Kel Dor sent into the void of space to carry out asteroid deflection missions. They only had Class 5 hyperdrives, but that was more than enough speed, since the Dochu was never intended to go on interstellar excursions. It was another little bit of wiggle-room they had in arming the things with regard to the Ruusan Reforms.
"Commander, all fighters are in position and linked. We're ready to begin," reported Flight Ops.
I keyed the com controls in my chair, "Resolute to Xanadu, we're ready."
"We read you, Resolute. Engaging telemetry uplink."
A few tense seconds passed.
"Cloak is holding for now, but if anyone is looking we'll be quickly triangulated."
"Thank you, LT. Cut the link the instant you start seeing the fireworks."
"Roger."
There was no going back now.
"Strike One, begin your run."
The first ARC squadron began to maneuver, slipping to the side of the Resolute and quickly vanished from sight as they transitioned into their own hyperspace slipstream.
"Strike Two, begin."
The second did the same maneuver and mirrored their fellows precisely.
"Strike Three, begin and may the Force be with you all."
The KUDF fighters slipped from view to the starboard side of Resolute and vanished.
I brought up a real-time holo of the targets, a system diagram, and my eyes were fixed on it as the clock ticked down.
The delta shaped representations of my squadrons were steadily sweeping across the star system in hyper.
10.
9.
8.
The Xanadu's computer reported a routine scan sweep from one of the Lucrehulk's had hit them.
7.
6.
It didn't take long for the enemy fleet to begin showing signs of reacting. Already their computers were probably making sense of the transmissions.
5.
4.
A flight of Vulture droids were launched towards the Xanadu's position.
3.
2.
"Hyperspace emergence!"
I saw my fighters burst into real space. The resultant coasting velocity carrying them to within spitting distance of their Lucrehulk targets, barely 10 kilometers.
The entire board lit up as 72 capital class, high yield proton torpedoes, the kind that was normally launched from Resolute's ventral mass launcher, dropped from the bellies of the fighters and redlined their repulsor engines.
In the same instant, the KUDF fighters dropped from hyper, just outside the mass shadow of Iridonia and lobbed their capital torpedoes at the blockading Lucrehulk. They followed that up with a standard salvo from their torpedo launchers, managing to throw 48 of them at the enemy before they were forced to turn tail and within three seconds vanished back into hyperspace.
The ARC fighters didn't even wait to see what their torpedoes achieved, as they too accelerated on the pre-prepared hyper course, maneuvering just a few degrees upward and streaking away into hyper.
The droids had barely two seconds to react.
Which was an eternity to a computer, but these droids were commanded by a very small biological crew. Even if there were tactical droids who could react, the only guns that were ready to fire in an instant were the kinetic based flak guns.
Space was briefly filled with flak, but the hasty fire only managed to take out nine of the torpedoes targeting Lucrehulk alpha.
It died as eleven torpedoes popped its starboard side shields like a soap bubble and the sixteen remaining spent themselves slamming against the hull and detonating. The focused high velocity proton particles tore through everything in their way.
It wasn't more than a few further milliseconds before something explosive cooked off, whether that was fuel, hypermatter or an ordinance storage… it didn't matter. The entire starboard side ring blew up in a spectacular energy release, that sent the remaining port side of the ship's ring spinning wildly in the other direction, taking the central spheroid core of the ship with it. This crashed into a nearby Munificent frigate sitting in close formation.
The result somewhat reminded me of those old videos I used to watch on the Internet in another life, where cars tried to tempt fate with train crossings and lost badly.
The frigate was smashed and deformed until it was barely recognizable, until another inevitable munition cookoff occurred.
It was like a brief new sun was born.
The second Lucrehulk sitting at the Ord Cantrell emergence point fared slightly better, firing its flak so it only took 22 torpedoes.
The relative angles for this one meant that its central dorsal area was targeted and soon we were treated to the sight of a Lucrehulk reduced to three large pieces coasting off into space on the acceleration imparted from the explosions. Then reduced to two pieces as the port wing reactors gave up the ghost and exploded.
The third Lucrehulk in orbit of Iridonia had much more time to react, due to the longer travel times of the torpedoes.
Only eight capital torpedoes made it through to impact on its forward shields.
That didn't seem to be enough to drop them.
The fighter torpedoes following in their wake to act as distractions did that job.
Ten made it through in the first salvo, popping the forward shields.
Only eight torpedoes made it through to contact detonate with the hull.
It wasn't a kill, at best a mission-kill, judging by the damage to the forward arcs of the hull. No fighter was launching from those bays anytime soon.
"Helm, plot us an emergence for Iridonia, let's finish that thing off."
When I didn't hear a response, I turned my chair and saw that most of the bridge crew had been brought to stupefaction and astonishment at seeing what was one of the most feared battleships in the galaxy, so easily reduced to scrap. It had been so extreme to their worldviews that not even their clone conditioning could shield them from it.
Admiral Yularen simply stared with wide eyes into the holo, his face was blank and if I didn't know better I'd say he was about to faint.
Now that wouldn't do.
I reached out with the Force to every mind on the bridge and clapped my hands hard and sharply.
The very basic mass mind trick worked in getting everyone somewhat back in gear.
"Helm?"
"Uh, yes, yes commander. Plotting now."
The view of hyperspace began to slowly 'speed up' and the tunnel began its typical effect.
The Resolute emerged from hyper as close to the mass shadow as it dared. It didn't take more than a further ten seconds of hard acceleration to reach extreme gun range.
"Open fire!"
The first turbolaser salvo speared right through the central gap in the outer ring to impact the central command spheroid. It was the heaviest armored part of the Lucrehulk, as these could detach themselves to land on planets and deploy legions of droids in a pinch.
The enemy response was to return fire from twelve of their forward quad turbolasers.
"Shields holding for the moment, commander."
"Let's not give them a chance to bring more of those guns to bear. Time on target, triple salvo."
All eight of the Resolute's dual heavy turbolasers and the two mediums spoke at once, then with a two second pause, fired en masse twice.
It did the trick and fire punched through the unshielded central spheroid, wrecking it and brief fires began flick out into space before the void smothered them.
"Give me another, try and see if you can't hit those aft reactors."
More fire was still hitting the Resolute's shields as droids probably went to local control, with no more orders and commands coming from the bridge.
"Guns, give me a torpedo salvo from the ventral launcher."
"How many, commander?"
"Twenty four. Steer them straight through the gap."
It took another ten seconds before the lower doors opened and barely two seconds later, torpedoes raced forward.
Only sporadic AA fire met them and 19 made it through.
I looked away as the Lucrehulk died in a more subdued explosion in an almost anti-climactic fashion.
"Comms, get me the Xanadu."
"Blot here, commander."
My relief was palpable, "Good, you made it."
"Had a few close calls with Vultures trying to ram us, but we turned off our links and left them in our dust, commander."
"What's the status of the emergence point?"
"Only one Munificent left here, commander. The other three retreated through the hyper point to Ord Cantrell."
"We'll be there soon to either send it to the scrap heap or chase them off."
"They don't seem to be in a very fighting mood, commander. All their fighters are recalled and they're burning to keep themselves oriented for a hyper out."
"Well, that simplifies things. We'll be there in a few minutes, the moment they're gone I want you decloaked and landing on the Resolute. Good work."
"Just doing our job, commander. Blot out."
"In the meantime, I'll see if I can't make contact with the Iridonians planet side, see what's their situation," Yularen said.
"We wouldn't want another Ryloth situation, would we?" I asked wryly.
"No," the Admiral said shortly and walked off.
888888888888888888888888
Chapter 23
My eyes stared at the astrographic galaxy map and it seemed to be mocking me. Throwing me a puzzle that whoever was my opposite number on the CIS side had crafted. I fiddled with the holotable controls and scrolled the map slowly, up, down, left, right, all the while trying to put myself in the enemy's shoes and their thinking.
"Ah, there you are, commander."
Yularen walked into the primary pilot briefing room, looking much more like his usual stoic self. All shipshape and Bristol fashion, so to speak.
"Admiral," I acknowledged him absently, my mind a bit too preoccupied to give him my full attention.
"Dare I ask if you managed to get any rest?"
"Jedi can generally get by with an hour of sleep and an hour of meditation for quite a while, it varies depending on talent. Legend has it that during the pre-Ruusan era, there were some Jedi Lords who had managed to do away with the need for sleep completely. Though that is probably just some ancient hyperbole and propaganda meant to keep their people's spirits and hope up."
"Fascinating, but I noticed you didn't actually answer the question."
I smiled. "I managed to sneak in two hours of sleep with an hour of mediation."
He nodded in approval and stared at the map, "Trying to find the enemy staging point?"
"Yes, staying on the defensive like this is not an option. Sooner or later, our combat effectiveness is going to fall to a point where we make a fatal mistake."
"True enough," he conceded. "Any progress?"
"Logically speaking, nothing should be getting through the Yout and Ord Mantell battlefronts, which locks down the Entrella Route and Celanon Spur, the major hyperspace routes to the north. Yet somehow, the CIS are pricking us with these light destroyers emerging from the Myomar emergence point in Dorin, as if they are coming down the Celanon Spur anyway."
"And since there's been no word of any breakthrough from Yout and our major lines are still holding, they're somehow still getting through. Perhaps they're using minor, small capacity routes that branch off from the Spur, it takes them longer and is extremely fuel inefficient but… there are no such routes that you could take. You can't, for example, go from Tyan on the Etralla directly to Baltizaar to hop, skip and jump your way through all these minor systems along the Spur. Even for a Recusant that's pushing it."
"Unless they managed to map a new hyperspace route or rediscover an old one that's missing from modern charts."
Yularen nodded in agreement, "That is also possible, but we can't be sure."
"Which is why I enacted a plan to find out during the last skirmish."
Yularen raised a questioning eyebrow, "Oh?"
"I ordered a number of Wraith squadron pilots in their brand new Z95s to use their ion cannons only."
"We have captured Vulture droids on board?"
"Four of them," I smiled mildly. "R3 and a small team from our ELINT division are going over them now."
"Surely, their memories are encrypted, not to mention the ion cannon fire would've had a good chance of corrupting them as well."
"Yes, it's a gamble, but one I hope will pay dividends. These droids were clamped active onto the hull as the Recusant emerged from hyper, that means they have to have visual memories of the starfields of the waypoints of their hyperspace route."
"I see, let's say you do find them, what is your offensive plan? We only have the Resolute here."
"That entirely depends on what the Seppies have waiting for us at their staging. This entire thing could be just a diversionary tactic that intends to make us call for reinforcements, that most efficiently and realistically can only be pulled from Ord Mantell."
"Which then gives them the opportunity to try and deliver a hammerblow that will try to collapse that battlefront."
"Precisely," I agreed with a nod. "Admiral, I want you also to look into what it would take to accommodate using and launching KUDF fighters from Resolute."
"I can already hear the scream of the quartermaster in my ear," he quirked a rare smile.
"Thanks, Admiral," I chuckled.
The door to the briefing room swished open and the minor whine of R3's motor preceded his entrance as he trundled in on his wheels.
"R3, I thought you'd be busy for hours yet?"
'Mistress, you are too used to R2 units,' it burbled in binary.
"I suppose I am, what have you got?"
In response, my astromech drove forward and plugged into the logic port of the briefing room computer.
'We managed to salvage enough data from three of the Vulture droids to reconstruct a flight path, the fourth's systems were too badly damaged.'
The holo of the galaxy vanished to show reconstructed images of starfields, which was then superimposed by hundreds of analysis patterns that flashed on it. This continued until a new image appeared, of a much more zoomed in astrographic galaxy map. Showing the derived course that the last Recusant had to have taken.
"What the…" Yularen's composure broke briefly. "That's ridiculous, why would they do that?"
His perplexion was understandable. The CIS had to have discovered this route somehow from ancient maps.
A route right from Ord Cantrell, 500 light years inside their own space, that crossed the Entralla Route and linked to Iridonia. From there, there were nearly 8 minor, mapped systems in that sector which they could pick and choose a direction from, until they hit Glee Anselm in the Namaadii Corridor. A system that was technically on our left flank. Only this cunning CIS commander didn't attack us from that direction, as it would immediately betray the fact that they had new hyperspace route up their sleeve. Instead they kept bouncing around sector J7 until they hit Myomar - creating the illusion of coming down the Celanon Spur.
This was a route I could see some ancient explorer or astrocartographer striking off their maps. The entire first day of using it was through essentially barren space, no inhabited systems and with a number of major nasty astronomical phenomena, some of which was a number of neutron stars, black holes and a cyclical pulsar or two. The only advantage it gave you was a time and distance saving if you wanted to travel to Iridonia specifically from the north. It was also entirely possible the hyperspace route was cyclical - meaning it was only safe when certain interstellar conditions were met.
"Well, it's one way to disguise their use of a new route from us. R3, can you chart a course for the Resolute from this data to Ord Cantrell?"
'Yes, but it would be risky to use without at least a smaller scout verifying the route first.'
I helpfully translated the binary for the Admiral.
"Naturally," he agreed. "Did you manage to reconstruct any images of their staging in Ord Cantrell?"
In answer, an image appeared in the holo that was rather badly fragmented and showed interpolation artifacts, but it was clear that there was at least one Lucrehulk battleship there, with three Munificents in frame, and one Recusant.
"We can't base a decision to go on the offensive just from that," I declared with a sigh of frustration.
"No matter what is there, we need the element of surprise on our side as well. I can see the enemy putting scouts or even sensor drones along this new route of theirs to guard against this."
"Then isn't it amazing we have just the ship we need parked in one of our smaller hangar bays," I gave the admiral a big knowing smile.
"You don't mean… the Xanadu? I heard that awful thing was barely spaceworthy."
"I've had engineering teams work on it since I took command on Coruscant. I mean really, when will a cloaked ship ever not come in handy?"
"So now you just have to find two pilots crazy enough to fly an untested hyperspace route."
"I can name two from Wraith and a bunch from Shadow squadron who would jump at the chance."
Yularen's shoulders slumped ever so slightly and I could feel his relief. "Good, for a moment I thought you were going to suggest you go yourself or some other Jedi craziness."
"The commander's place is in the rear," I declared firmly. "Yes, necessity does sometimes put us Jedi in the thick of things, but that can't be helped. R3, what's the time to target for the Xanadu to Ord Cantrell using this route?"
'Best estimate of arrival in 30 hours.'
"In other words, five more attacks to defeat if the Separatists keep this schedule," Yularen didn't look happy at the thought of that. "Do they have the patience or the ships to keep this going that long?"
"The ships, yes. This CIS commander's patience when we just keep sitting here and take his punches against all odds will not be infinite though. Their goal is to eventually gain a foothold in Dorin, turn these pinpricks into a knife in our back. We have no choice but to weather this storm until the Xanadu can confirm the hyper route and then I hope I can convince the KUDF to work in support of a surprise offensive deep strike."
"They're not going to like that," he predicted immediately. "It'd mean relying too much on the orbital defense grid."
"It's what it's kriffing there for in the first place. I've also got a few ideas on shoring up the defenses further."
"Well, I hope they listen."
I was not looking forward to this meeting, "So do I."
Donning my brand spanking new armor for a meeting of all things was not how I intended to debut the suit. I'd always imagined it'd be some distant battlefield or even with the upcoming deep strike mission. The unfortunate necessity of it curtailed those imaginings.
The armor that Anakin and I had designed, in the end, was striking to the eye and if any gamer stats could be assigned to it, it'd have a plus 2 to charisma or intimidation.
Its basis, like the previous one, was the mechanical pressure suit that clone troopers had, but going over that was where things got much better. It was a more complete armor kit than my previous one, considering I had no problems with the weight anymore. The boots and greaves were linked and equally armored, flexing with a powered rotator, with the knee armor getting the same treatment. The first slight gap appeared above the knees, which was a necessity due to the flexibility needed for Ataru.
The thigh armor or cuisse, to use the old Earth term, was nice and beefy and stopped just below my hips. Next my stomach and crotch was covered with an abdomen plate, which again needed a slight gap before moving up to a breastplate that while not completely 'boob armor', had a curved mold that left no doubt that a female was wearing this. The whole system had also been designed to be more modular than the old armor, to accommodate future growth.
For my arms, there was a full set of gardbrace, couter, vambrace and gauntlets adorning them. The interface, comlink and other tech wizardry of the armor was controlled by buttons on the vambrace and gauntlets.
As a final touch, I had integrated an open brown Jedi Robe into the armor that was held in place by a utility belt. It even had a detachable hood for that extra bit of Jedi-ness. The armor as a whole also had the fractal camo color scheme but with whites, grays and browns.
The helmet design was especially inspired and trust Anakin Skywalker to come up with a solution to the problem of a togruta's montrals and lekku being uncomfortable to stuff into a confining helmet.
Thankfully, I really didn't need to wear it now. It was still a chore to get into. The material of the armor itself was Anakin's own spin on the Katarn armor that was currently given to Clone Commandos, which was a mix of metallo-ceramic composites.
I glanced at my armor's chrono and struggled to keep my expression neutral. Even in this day and age, you'd think scheduling a conference holocall would be much easier to do. When you had to do it with a bunch of local military brass, that was not the case.
As it was, the meeting couldn't run for long, we were cutting it pretty close to the next projected attack time.
Then, the standing holograms of four KUDF generals began appearing around me on the Resolute bridge. They were each in charge of the aerospace, ground forces, medical and what passed for a Kel Dor Navy - which was a collection of thirteen frigates, only eight of which were armed to modern standards. The rest were still in drydock being stripped of their old post Ruusan-era mandated weaponry. It was a testament to the Kel Dor technical expertise that they had managed to refit so many of these frigates to combat readiness in the little time since the war began.
They would be needed.
"Commander Tano, you wished to speak to us?" General Di Soszhain of the aerospace force began.
"Yes, thank you for taking the time and as it is not on any of our sides at the moment, I'm going to be blunt." I gestured to a comm tech in the crew pit. "You should now all be receiving a file package with data and conclusions for your review. I need at least six KUDF squadrons to embark on Resolute within the next twenty-five hours."
The generals looked at each other and I could sense that they were barely containing themselves from exploding in protest and other objections. Instead their own aides handed them datapads which they began reading.
"Are you certain of this, Commander?" Soszhain questioned, his four mandible teeth twitching. Their lowered articulation surrounding the maw of their mouth, was rather disconcerting to the average person who was unused to seeing unmasked Kel Dor. It didn't phase me at all.
"As certain as anything can be in war, general."
"Have you considered that embarking on this deep strike, is precisely what the enemy is trying to goad you into, commander?" General Wa Kusekac asked. She was the only female kel dor among the four, and the general in charge of the navy.
There was something viscerally wrong with calling anyone in charge of a navy a general, but this was a problem with Basic and the Kel Dor language coming to the fore.
"Yes," I admitted. "The problem is that keeping defensive posture and these continuous timed attacks is having a deleterious effect on my command. If the CIS keeps this up, I'll eventually be forced to order my crews and people to stim up. That is also only a stop gap and at most extends our combat readiness for another two days. I don't need to tell you the effect of prolonged stim use on judgment, reaction time and other mental faculties. Not to mention having to deal with an entire starship full of people going through withdrawal symptoms after the fact. The conclusion is that eventually, I'll be forced to retreat from the system. So I'll rather strike while I still have a functioning crew."
"An understandable position with the predicament the enemy has forced us into," General Hass Kirramm, in charge of the Kel Dor medical service branch, stated.
"I've run some numbers, commander," Soszhain explained, looking up from the pad he had been working on. "Our starfighter corps can spare you four squadrons, no more. We'd be compromising our effective aerospace coverage to loan you more."
I turned my head to look at Kusekac. She made a wurbling noise that was the Kel Dor equivalent of a humanoid scoff. "Commander, I don't know what you expect my frigates to be really able to do. They've got half the tonnage of these blasted Recusants."
"But they've got sharp teeth, nevertheless. Have you seen how the CIS use their Munificents?"
"I've done my research, yes. The problem is my captains and crews haven't trained for that kind of close coordination. They're likely to crash into each other trying to pull those maneuvers. The CIS have linked droids that are able to avoid any issues of miscommunication and improper coordination."
"Then imitate that," I pointed out. "Network a bunch of astromechs on each of your ships, link them all in an encrypted com net and there you go."
"I'm not sure my captains will like the idea of entrusting their helms to even loyal astromechs, commander."
"They'll like it soon enough when it lets them punch above their weight class and kill a CIS capital ship," I declared, throwing a bit of anger in my voice. "Get it done, general."
"Very well, commander."
"What is the status of the orbital grid?"
"96 percent functional satellites are ready and awaiting command the instant anything comes into range," Soszhain reported.
"What happened to the four percent?"
"Routine downtime for maintenance, it's rare that we have a hundred percent functioning grid at any time."
"What do simulations for their performance reveal?"
"Anything that comes in effective range will be destroyed in short order."
I frowned at that, "Even a Lucrehulk?"
"Commander, these mass drivers are designed to deflect asteroids, even moon sized ones. They synchronize and fire for time on target hits for every defense satellite that can orient for a bearing. No shield system in existence can resist dozens of 80 kilo slugs traveling at fractional velocities of light."
"My concern is that all it would take for the CIS to take out the grid, is to stay out of effective range and suicide ram, hoards of Vulture droids into the defense satellites. Do they have any close-in self defense guns?"
I could visibly see I had taken the wind out of Soszhain's sails. "No, commander."
"I would kindly suggest your technicians and designers get to work on fixing that issue. General Aguu, I realize we've not been speaking about your areas of responsibility, but should the worst come to pass and CIS forces land on Dorin…"
Pla Aguu, was the oldest general in the KUDF high command and merely nodded at my implied question, "We're ready to send them into oblivion, commander. Divisions and reserves are mobilized, equipped and pre-positioned near most likely and high value targets."
"I hope you won't mind, but I've got some desperately bored 501st clone legion troopers who want to pound some dirt. I suggest you make use of them as advisors and learn how to best use your troops against an enemy that doesn't need food, sleep and is not hampered at all by the atmosphere of Dorin."
Aguu gave me a Kel Dor smile and I struggled not to shudder. "They've certainly got some experience and lessons to teach I suppose. Our own fighting days date back to the last clan wars and the professional ground military we have train based on those hard experiences."
My chrono beeped a warning at me. "We have twenty minutes, generals. Good luck to you all."
They bowed briefly before their holo's faded.
I sat down as my prescience flared and my hands balled into fists, straining the fresh gloves of my gauntlets.
"Oh baka bachu," I muttered under my breath.
Fighters launched and their attending technicians scrambled to safe their equipment. Clone troopers loaded up and readied themselves for anti-boarding ops, while yet others detailed to damage control reported to their stations. Naval clones went through their checklists and readied systems. Those manning computer controlled gunnery stations ran their systems checklists and double checked everything was working. Proton Torpedo handlers manned their stations and readied their weapons for firing.
Such was the pre-battle readiness procedure for the Resolute.
'Two minutes until mark, all personnel two minutes.'
I sat in my command chair and adopted the typical posture and pose - one that was both relaxed, confident and attentive, even occasionally indulging in a little tenting of my hands and affecting a deeply thoughtful expression - as if I was devising some cunning stratagem.
'One minute, final battle readiness checks, all personnel.'
The announcements were shipwide and also being beamed to the KUDF. Integrating them into our tactical nets was one of the first things I did. There was to be no miscommunication incidents leading to accidents under my watch.
'Thirty seconds.'
Admiral Yularen took his typical position next to me. I'd even had engineers build a command station for him, so he didn't have to go running around the bridge if he wanted to personally input commands to the systems.
'Fifteen seconds.'
'Ten seconds.'
'Five seconds… mark!'
Every eye and sensor turned to the hyperspace emergence point.
Nothing.
I tapped a button on my chair and began a timer.
"Negative sensor contacts, so far. Stand by," Yularen ordered, his voice snapping like a whip.
'Plus twenty seconds. No enemy contacts.'
I gave a brief glance at the Admiral. His face was grim and his eyes asked a silent question.
'Plus one minute. No enemy contacts.'
The tension on the ship was building and I cursed the tightrope I was being forced to walk. I could even feel it from the KUDF fighters in space.
'Plus five minutes. No enemy contacts.'
I pushed a button on my chair, "Comms, if no enemy contacts are present by fifteen minutes, signal secure systems to condition two."
"Roger, commander."
"Are you certain about that, commander?" Yularen spoke softly, ensuring that only I could hear. "The enemy could've been delayed for any number of reasons."
"That is true," I acknowledged. "However, we can't keep to battle stations indefinitely."
His lips thinned and his eyes showed understanding. This was the dilemma of the defender.
Eventually, the timer ticked to fifteen minutes and condition two was announced.
It kept systems ready, kept men at their posts, kept weapons charged and fighters out on patrol but they could somewhat relax and sit down if able.
A further thirty minutes passed and I declared condition three, which was the start of getting everything back to normal. Fighters began landing, damage control crews stood down, but gunnery crews remained hot and on stand-by.
"What is going on? What is the enemy thinking?" Yularen wondered.
I stood out of my chair and walked forward to the transparisteel bulkhead and gazed into the black.
"He's fighting us psychologically and attacking our morale. He got us into a pattern of expectation, of action, and now that he's broken the pattern, we're left coming down from the adrenaline high and assumption of another attack. We're feeling disgruntled, angry and though most of the clones won't admit it, disappointed even."
"That's… rather brilliant," Yularen commented, feeling a bit of wonder. "We studied the idea of fighting on that level at Prefsbelt, it just was too problematic. What might work if your opponent is one type of species, won't work on another."
I turned around and continued the line of thinking, "A problem neatly overcome by the fact that the GAR are all human clones. There might be some variation in the commanders and generals, but in the end we're all Jedi and the way we think can also be studied and inferred. Our only advantage here is the Kel Dor."
Of course, I couldn't mention that my own thinking and psychology was essentially an Outside Context Problem to anyone in this galaxy attempting to throw psy-ops at me.
"I must admit, I'm not familiar with them enough to judge how they could be of benefit in psychological warfare," he said.
"If there is one word that you would associate with Kel Dor, Admiral, then it's patience. Their civilization endured despite the awful Sabacc hand that nature dealt them. There were a number of times they've had to rebuild almost from scratch thanks to the asteroid impacts. They evolved from ambush hunters in their pre-history… so this tactic doesn't phase them at all. Their version of an adrenal response lets them come down from it without any of the typical effects as seen in humans and other similar species. They make very good Jedi too, which is why the Order has a chapter house down on Dorin."
"Fascinating, so the question is now, will the enemy resume the pattern or break it entirely?"
"That is the question and one I will need to think very carefully about." I delved down the probability lines of prescience. The further I went, the more motion and uncertainty there was, but one thing was clear. "Admiral, order condition green at the one hour mark. I want everyone who can in their bunks and getting rest. I'm authorizing medical to issue sleeping pills if necessary."
"Yes, commander."
It was at this point I really wished I either had Bastila Shan on hand or had her Battle Meditation. That utterly broken Force ability had seen the old Republic Navy through events that would've otherwise shattered it under the hammer blows of Revan and the Star Forge.
There was only one thing I could really do in answer to this.
"Comms, get me a fleetwide channel, I want every ear on this ship."
"Roger commander."
I sat down on my chair and after a few seconds a prompt popped up in its small holo projector.
The button was pushed and a loud double chime echoed throughout the ship.
"This is Commander Tano."
I could literally feel as the attention of thousands was metaphysically directed towards me.
"We are being attacked. Not by a turbolaser, not by a gun, not a missile nor droid. No, the enemy is attacking our minds. He is playing us. We expect him to come and he does not. He wants us to think a certain way. He wants to trap us. So that when his true strike comes, we will fall to it all the easier.
"Do not let this happen. We will endure. He can play his little mind games all he wants! But we will stand Resolute! This ship is our home and we will defend it. The enemy is now living in your minds, expel him! To fight him now, we must do everything in our power to remain vigilant. If you struggle to sleep, sleep! The enemy is trying to deny it to you. Do not let him.
"Soon, we will go on the offensive and then we will tell him what we think of his little games. Do you agree, Resolute?"
The bridge erupted in a shout of 'Yes, we do!' that was echoed throughout the ship. Building the concept of 'esprit-de-corps' was something emphasized even in the naval manuals of the Corusca galaxy. It was nice to not have to build the idea from scratch.
"Good! I will test that mettle, Resolute. Rest assured the enemy will too. Commander Tano, out."
CP-7607 or as his brothers preferred to call him, Blot, blearily opened his eyes to greet the small interior cabin of the Xanadu. He went through a mental checklist of everything his senses reported and found nothing wrong, odd or about to explode. He threw his legs out of the small bunk bed and marveled at the ability to properly stretch his limbs while on a flight.
His eyes found the form of his co-pilot, CP-3609, callsign 'Click' and found that the rookie clone pilot was properly doing his job of flying, even though the computer and the droid was doing most of the work in hyperspace. Click was halfway through a standard checklist of the hyperdrive by the looks of things.
"Oh, you're awake, LT. Everything's nominal."
"Good to hear, Click," he grunted and stood, stretching his back in the process. Bloody pilot armor's always chafing at that back spot, he thought in annoyance.
Click vacated his chair for the co-pilot spot and Blot dumped himself in the pilot seat, beginning to drink his liquid breakfast from a bottle absently, while he smoothly continued the checklist where the rookie left off.
As usual, nothing was wrong, but the routine was welcome as was the blessed uninterrupted sleep.
"So…" Click began leadingly and Blot really wished he had his helmet on at this moment.
"What is it, Click? Spit it out." The rookie wasn't really a true fresh tank, he had clankers painted on his fighter, but he was a new pilot in Wraith Squadron.
"I'm just wondering why I was chosen for the mission by the commander…"
"It's not your job to wonder why," Blot retorted.
"I know, it's just… I was looking forward to flying those new Z95s and now here we are, stuck in a Seppie ship that's held together by engineer spit and prayers."
"Click, there's more to flying and fighting than just bagging clankers. We're the eyes of our ship. If we don't do our job, no one is going to know where the enemy is."
"The job should've gone to one of the Recon boys then."
"The commander doesn't want the ARC boys anywhere near the Xanadu."
"Why not?"
"The commander places a high value on training and learning in this squadron. She thinks the ARC pilots need a retraining course and she doesn't like the ARC itself. The Xanadu is an entirely different approach to recon than what they are used to and have trained for. She trained me on a manual she wrote from scratch with General Skywalker on how to best fly this bucket. Any ARC pilot would need to, in her words, 'unlearn too much'."
"Why didn't I get this manual?"
Blot glared openly at his co-pilot, "You've been reading from it the whole time, the cloaking device manual is only part of it."
Click looked down at his datapad, fiddled with it briefly, swiping on the screen, "Oh, yeah."
The senior pilot finished his breakfast and dumped the bottle in the disposal bin. "And the light of sunrise dawns. With that level of attention to detail, Click, how they let you off the homeworld as a pilot is a miracle."
"Hey!"
Blot laughed at the insulted look on the rookie's face, then patted him on the shoulder. "Just teasing, rook."
"I'm not a rook."
"Click, until you get ten kills as a member of Wraith, you're a rook."
"What? There's no reg like that."
Blot rolled his eyes, "It's not a reg, it's a commander's rule, there's a difference."
"Wait, the commander has her own regs?"
"Another thing you'll learn in this squadron," Blot grinned.
"Is this written down somewhere or what?"
"Yes, I'll transfer it to your pad later. It's not something the commander has done officially."
"Uh, speaking of things the commander's done… has… I heard a weird rumor…"
Blot gave his fellow clone a gimlet eyed stare. "Oh?"
"Yeah, in mess, I think it was a Shadow squadron guy. He said that… uh she walked straight into the common fresher where Wraith… I mean our squadron was busy showering and pretty much beat down one of the guys for disobeying an order. I also heard other versions but there's no way those could've happened…"
Blot didn't react at first to hearing this, but swiftly reached over and slapped his fellow clone upside the head.
"Ow! Why…"
"Do you see that astromech?" He jerked his thumb to the oddly painted astromech in the back, that had been managing the hyper jumps and route. The droid in question had turned its upper dome and main optical sensor to face them. "Take one guess to whom it belongs."
Click blinked for a few moments then seemed to choke on his own saliva. "That's the commander's astromech?"
"Yes. What? You think she'd really trust a ship as tactically valuable as the Xanadu to the likes of you and me. Don't be ridiculous. And for the record, she didn't beat down Crosser, just gave him a dressing down that left his ego suitably humbled. Oh and R3, can you confirm our ETA?"
The droid was silent for a very awkward few seconds before it replied in binary. 'Fifteen minutes to Iridonia.'
"Thanks R3," Blot nodded and began a hyperspace transition checklist without pause. He slapped Click on the shoulder to snap him out of his embarrased funk. "You get that cloaking device ready."
"Yes, LT."
Things were mercifully quiet besides the sounds of the rhythmic operation of the ship for the remaining time in hyperspace.
"Dropping us out in three… two… one… now!"
The hyperspace tunnel seemed to stall and burst into streaks of light that resolved into the starfield of normal space.
"Cloaking now," Click worked his controls… a few anxious seconds passed. "Cloak nominal."
Bolt let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. He should've been used to it by now, but there was just no getting over the fact that the cloak might as well be the only shield the ship had. If that didn't work, it was game over. Dead.
"Begin passive scans," Blot ordered automatically.
"Uh, LT… we've got problems."
A holo-readout blossomed above the console, showing a diagram of the star system and what the computer resolved into clear enemy ship profiles…
"R3, contact the Resolute."
"Three Lucrehulks and five Munificents have occupied the Iridonian system, commander."
The transmission was audio only to save on bandwidth and give the highest possible encryption. My scouts were also using directional links to further minimize the chance of detection.
"Why in the blazes did the zabraks not call for help?" Yularen frowned severely.
"They tried Admiral, but it seems that one of the first things the Seppies did when they opened this new route, was send in droid commandos to sabotage the system's interstellar communications. By the time they realized they were under invasion it was already too late."
"What's the disposition of the CIS fleet, lieutenant?" I asked, my brain struggling to square this problem that was being presented to me.
"One Lucrehulk is in orbit of Iridonia, acting as a staging point for their groundside occupation and blockading the planet. There's already a substantial debris field that tells me the zabrak have tried to run the gauntlet and clearly failed. All the usual satellites that the database indicates they should have are no longer there. The remaining CIS ships are clustered around the emergence point from Ord Cantrell, which is near the sixth planet of the system, a gas giant with a substantial moon system."
"Send me all the data you can, we're going to need your eyes there all the way, Blot."
"Understood, commander."
The channel closed and I gave a glance at Yularen, "Bit of a problem this is."
"Understatement of the age, commander," he chuckled.
"So not only do we have to somehow keep a defense on Dorin, we have to liberate Iridonia and destroy this fleet - which is one order away from being launched to unleash destruction on…" I gave a quick glance at the sector map… "sixteen different star systems and all the Iridonian colonies on our left flank."
"We have to call for reinforcements."
"Agreed, but even if they could be launched this instant…"
"It's a three day journey from Coruscant and four from Kuat. That movement of ships will definitely be picked up by CIS Intel, which will cause them to go on the offensive."
Of course, that didn't count the other problem of Palpatine himself instructing Dooku to launch the attack, the moment I reported this to the High Council.
There was only one solution now that I could see. It was a card that I really didn't want to use now, but the scale of the stakes didn't really leave much choice. Letting the CIS do this would force a thinning of the north's defenses as the GAR scrambled to deal with this flanking offense, which in turn could lead to a defensive collapse of the north.
"Admiral, I want every astromech tied into our navicomputer. Then I want you to contact the KUDF and get them working with every spare computer they have that can work out a hyperspace course linked to us."
"Commander, the doctrine requires at least three Venators. You should know, you helped write it," he objected.
"I'm not going to use the doctrine. We're going to do something different, it's based on it, but something which allows it to be carried out by a single carrier ship."
"All right, consider my curiosity piqued, you're not one for suicide tactics, what did you have in mind?"
It was an eighteen hour trip to Iridonia from Dorin.
The Resolute's departure was delayed further when we had to see off another probing attack from a Recusant destroyer. We had gotten advanced warning of its arrival thankfully due to the Xanadu's scouting. This meant that the Separatists only saw what we wanted them to see - that we were just sitting there and taking the punches.
The instant we were sure everything that could possibly have a working verbobrain and a com system was destroyed, the Resolute powered out of the Dorin gravity well and jumped to hyperspace.
In my wake, I left a time-delayed request for reinforcements. I was therefore fulfilling my duty, but delayed enough that even should Palpatine pull his shenanigans, it would be too late.
My next order was for everyone who could, to get six hours of sleep, after which the remainder who were required for Resolute to operate, would hot-bunk their own six hours.
Most of my own time was spent practically living in the squadron briefing room, getting the pilots up to speed on what we were going to attempt and even trying it in the simulators.
The results were mixed enough that I had no choice but to take a risk I really didn't want to.
"We need real-time telemetry from the Xanadu," I shook my head in frustration as I watched the holo-replays of the various squadrons doing their simulated attacks.
"I agree, there's just too much error introduced in the hyperspace calculations otherwise," Yularen absently combed his mustache with his thumb and forefinger.
"Something the matter, Admiral?"
"Yes… if… no, when we do this. It'll make Yularen-Tano a picnic in comparison. We might even be seeing the end of an entire era of space warfare with this."
"Perhaps," I admitted. "But you can't hold territory with this tactic."
"Yes, but it'll put a blaster to the big-gun and ship fanatics. They're going to be screaming bloody murder and can you imagine Kuat and all the big shipping houses frothing at the mouth that their giant monstrosities which have been only getting bigger and bigger over the decades, have been reduced to nothing more than target practice."
"They can bahko d'bhem nina," I sneered. Yularen gave me a confused stare. "Sorry, slip of the tongue and I'd rather not translate. It's not usually said amongst polite togrutans."
"I'll take your word for it, commander, though now I'll really have to look into my own personal security going forward, a bodyguard droid perhaps?"
I laughed, "HK won't consent to being copied but he can help in the programming of the droid."
"I'll get back to you on that."
"Five, four, three, two… we are in hyperspatial orbit of the Iridonia system, commander."
"Thank you helm, good work."
I took a deep breath and rubbed my hands together, helping the gloves to get rid of the sweaty palms that just loved to annoy me when I was feeling particularly tense.
"Commander," Yularen politely cleared his throat, seeing that I was dithering somewhat.
"Flight Ops, open our bays and begin launching fighters."
"Roger, commander."
I looked up into the abnormally slow roiling tunnel of hyperspace as very carefully two squadrons of ARC-170s began syncing their own native hyperdrives and slowly coasted upward into a general V-formation hovering about 130 meters above the upper dorsal decks of the Resolute. That gave us a 20 meter safety margin if a desync happened, so only a fighter was lost and not the entire ship. The theoretical simulations of what would happen was not pretty to look at.
Finally, joining them was a squadron of KUDF fighters. Their general shape roughly reminded me of a Peregrine-class from another universe I knew and considered a 'heavy fighter'. Not surprising, since the Dochu-class could trace its lineage to the earliest space craft the Kel Dor sent into the void of space to carry out asteroid deflection missions. They only had Class 5 hyperdrives, but that was more than enough speed, since the Dochu was never intended to go on interstellar excursions. It was another little bit of wiggle-room they had in arming the things with regard to the Ruusan Reforms.
"Commander, all fighters are in position and linked. We're ready to begin," reported Flight Ops.
I keyed the com controls in my chair, "Resolute to Xanadu, we're ready."
"We read you, Resolute. Engaging telemetry uplink."
A few tense seconds passed.
"Cloak is holding for now, but if anyone is looking we'll be quickly triangulated."
"Thank you, LT. Cut the link the instant you start seeing the fireworks."
"Roger."
There was no going back now.
"Strike One, begin your run."
The first ARC squadron began to maneuver, slipping to the side of the Resolute and quickly vanished from sight as they transitioned into their own hyperspace slipstream.
"Strike Two, begin."
The second did the same maneuver and mirrored their fellows precisely.
"Strike Three, begin and may the Force be with you all."
The KUDF fighters slipped from view to the starboard side of Resolute and vanished.
I brought up a real-time holo of the targets, a system diagram, and my eyes were fixed on it as the clock ticked down.
The delta shaped representations of my squadrons were steadily sweeping across the star system in hyper.
10.
9.
8.
The Xanadu's computer reported a routine scan sweep from one of the Lucrehulk's had hit them.
7.
6.
It didn't take long for the enemy fleet to begin showing signs of reacting. Already their computers were probably making sense of the transmissions.
5.
4.
A flight of Vulture droids were launched towards the Xanadu's position.
3.
2.
"Hyperspace emergence!"
I saw my fighters burst into real space. The resultant coasting velocity carrying them to within spitting distance of their Lucrehulk targets, barely 10 kilometers.
The entire board lit up as 72 capital class, high yield proton torpedoes, the kind that was normally launched from Resolute's ventral mass launcher, dropped from the bellies of the fighters and redlined their repulsor engines.
In the same instant, the KUDF fighters dropped from hyper, just outside the mass shadow of Iridonia and lobbed their capital torpedoes at the blockading Lucrehulk. They followed that up with a standard salvo from their torpedo launchers, managing to throw 48 of them at the enemy before they were forced to turn tail and within three seconds vanished back into hyperspace.
The ARC fighters didn't even wait to see what their torpedoes achieved, as they too accelerated on the pre-prepared hyper course, maneuvering just a few degrees upward and streaking away into hyper.
The droids had barely two seconds to react.
Which was an eternity to a computer, but these droids were commanded by a very small biological crew. Even if there were tactical droids who could react, the only guns that were ready to fire in an instant were the kinetic based flak guns.
Space was briefly filled with flak, but the hasty fire only managed to take out nine of the torpedoes targeting Lucrehulk alpha.
It died as eleven torpedoes popped its starboard side shields like a soap bubble and the sixteen remaining spent themselves slamming against the hull and detonating. The focused high velocity proton particles tore through everything in their way.
It wasn't more than a few further milliseconds before something explosive cooked off, whether that was fuel, hypermatter or an ordinance storage… it didn't matter. The entire starboard side ring blew up in a spectacular energy release, that sent the remaining port side of the ship's ring spinning wildly in the other direction, taking the central spheroid core of the ship with it. This crashed into a nearby Munificent frigate sitting in close formation.
The result somewhat reminded me of those old videos I used to watch on the Internet in another life, where cars tried to tempt fate with train crossings and lost badly.
The frigate was smashed and deformed until it was barely recognizable, until another inevitable munition cookoff occurred.
It was like a brief new sun was born.
The second Lucrehulk sitting at the Ord Cantrell emergence point fared slightly better, firing its flak so it only took 22 torpedoes.
The relative angles for this one meant that its central dorsal area was targeted and soon we were treated to the sight of a Lucrehulk reduced to three large pieces coasting off into space on the acceleration imparted from the explosions. Then reduced to two pieces as the port wing reactors gave up the ghost and exploded.
The third Lucrehulk in orbit of Iridonia had much more time to react, due to the longer travel times of the torpedoes.
Only eight capital torpedoes made it through to impact on its forward shields.
That didn't seem to be enough to drop them.
The fighter torpedoes following in their wake to act as distractions did that job.
Ten made it through in the first salvo, popping the forward shields.
Only eight torpedoes made it through to contact detonate with the hull.
It wasn't a kill, at best a mission-kill, judging by the damage to the forward arcs of the hull. No fighter was launching from those bays anytime soon.
"Helm, plot us an emergence for Iridonia, let's finish that thing off."
When I didn't hear a response, I turned my chair and saw that most of the bridge crew had been brought to stupefaction and astonishment at seeing what was one of the most feared battleships in the galaxy, so easily reduced to scrap. It had been so extreme to their worldviews that not even their clone conditioning could shield them from it.
Admiral Yularen simply stared with wide eyes into the holo, his face was blank and if I didn't know better I'd say he was about to faint.
Now that wouldn't do.
I reached out with the Force to every mind on the bridge and clapped my hands hard and sharply.
The very basic mass mind trick worked in getting everyone somewhat back in gear.
"Helm?"
"Uh, yes, yes commander. Plotting now."
The view of hyperspace began to slowly 'speed up' and the tunnel began its typical effect.
The Resolute emerged from hyper as close to the mass shadow as it dared. It didn't take more than a further ten seconds of hard acceleration to reach extreme gun range.
"Open fire!"
The first turbolaser salvo speared right through the central gap in the outer ring to impact the central command spheroid. It was the heaviest armored part of the Lucrehulk, as these could detach themselves to land on planets and deploy legions of droids in a pinch.
The enemy response was to return fire from twelve of their forward quad turbolasers.
"Shields holding for the moment, commander."
"Let's not give them a chance to bring more of those guns to bear. Time on target, triple salvo."
All eight of the Resolute's dual heavy turbolasers and the two mediums spoke at once, then with a two second pause, fired en masse twice.
It did the trick and fire punched through the unshielded central spheroid, wrecking it and brief fires began flick out into space before the void smothered them.
"Give me another, try and see if you can't hit those aft reactors."
More fire was still hitting the Resolute's shields as droids probably went to local control, with no more orders and commands coming from the bridge.
"Guns, give me a torpedo salvo from the ventral launcher."
"How many, commander?"
"Twenty four. Steer them straight through the gap."
It took another ten seconds before the lower doors opened and barely two seconds later, torpedoes raced forward.
Only sporadic AA fire met them and 19 made it through.
I looked away as the Lucrehulk died in a more subdued explosion in an almost anti-climactic fashion.
"Comms, get me the Xanadu."
"Blot here, commander."
My relief was palpable, "Good, you made it."
"Had a few close calls with Vultures trying to ram us, but we turned off our links and left them in our dust, commander."
"What's the status of the emergence point?"
"Only one Munificent left here, commander. The other three retreated through the hyper point to Ord Cantrell."
"We'll be there soon to either send it to the scrap heap or chase them off."
"They don't seem to be in a very fighting mood, commander. All their fighters are recalled and they're burning to keep themselves oriented for a hyper out."
"Well, that simplifies things. We'll be there in a few minutes, the moment they're gone I want you decloaked and landing on the Resolute. Good work."
"Just doing our job, commander. Blot out."
"In the meantime, I'll see if I can't make contact with the Iridonians planet side, see what's their situation," Yularen said.
"We wouldn't want another Ryloth situation, would we?" I asked wryly.
"No," the Admiral said shortly and walked off.
888888888888888888888888
Damn, you can't really counter that with the current paradigm, you simply need smaller numerous ships and/or much more automation to the extent of making crew superfluous.
The age of the carrier is well and truly here.
The age of the carrier is well and truly here.
dhasenan
always lowercase
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It's not Wraith Squadron without Voort saBinring.