How does Mass Shadows work in this verse? And can you use one to shield against this type of attack? Force a re-emergence from hyperspace before it hits long enough for them to be shot down? Because that might work as a defence.
This was interesting, but worth noting that it required an onsite telemetry link. The result is a need for both cloaked/low observable ships, good syncing of operations, and perfect timing.
On the flip, it seems like it can be countered by an aggressive scanning campaign and constant recon in the local area. Now, this incurs a higher Mx budget, but if the other option is death...
This was interesting, but worth noting that it required an onsite telemetry link. The result is a need for both cloaked/low observable ships, good syncing of operations, and perfect timing.
Is the cloaked ship actually required, though? I see no reason you couldn't use conventional recon boats. Have each one keep watch for a couple minutes then enter hyperspace to a different randomly selected observation point before the target can get fighters there; use a team of 3 boats so that one of them is in realspace at all times. It'll be less effective since the targets will know the attack is coming and be at battle-stations, but it should still work.
Is the cloaked ship actually required, though? I see no reason you couldn't use conventional recon boats. Have each one keep watch for a couple minutes then enter hyperspace to a different randomly selected observation point before the target can get fighters there; use a team of 3 boats so that one of them is in realspace at all times. It'll be less effective since the targets will know the attack is coming and be at battle-stations, but it should still work.
It isn't required, but if you are using something the enemy can see, they will know you are coming and can start taking action.
I guess the big question is: How long does the observer need to develop their targettting solution they pass, and how long does that solution need the Real time telemetry update to be effective. We know that the real time piece is fairly small, but what about the rest of it?
Awesome story! Love reading Star Wars SIs. My favorite part is probably the incorporation of prescience, which is a core Force ability, especially in lightsaber work, but so often underutilized. Any chance of her developing/rediscovering Destroy-Droid now that she has access to HK and his knowledge of Revan and The Exile? That Force power would be crazy useful in the current war.
Any chance of her developing/rediscovering Destroy-Droid now that she has access to HK and his knowledge of Revan and The Exile? That Force power would be crazy useful in the current war.
The beginnings of Destroy Droid is actually what she uses during infiltration missions to briefly disable scanners/visual sensors. Whether to use it is a matter of circumstance and opportunity. Sure she'll develop it to that point, it'd be stupid not to, its another tool in the kitbox. Using it to that level is somewhat taxing when potentially facing hundreds of droids during a long battle.
Chapter 26 has exploded onto the Patreon. Thank you to all patrons who keep me going strong.
Enjoy the next chapter.
Chapter 24
"Thank you for breaking the blockade and for the offer, commander, but it's not necessary."
I stared at the holo of Iridonian Prime Chief Marag and struggled to push away the brush of Darth Maul coloring my perceptions of the zabrak species. Marag, like most of the zabrak, had a crown of vestigial and very sharp horns, but his skin in contrast to Maul was brown and quite human-like, with even a full head of black hair on his scalp. His face was an intricate mesh of artistic tattoos that was applied during their coming of age rituals, and added on as the individual gained new achievements throughout their life. Most humans didn't react well to the visage of zabraks, due to the lack of eyebrows and other facial hair when combined with the horns.
"Are you certain?"
"Yes," Marag said firmly. "Every adult Iridonian male and female has at least a year of compulsory militia service. We've already raised an army of two hundred thousand to deal with these droids. In addition, every household has multiple firearms and the training to use it. We've already cut the droids down by a quarter of their number since the invasion began."
"There must be something I can do to aid you?"
This was the problem with the zabrak species as a whole. Three words came to mind to explain their general temperament; proud, strong and confident, the Iridonian zabrak especially. The planet was littered with extremely difficult terrain and conditions to survive and live in. Even in the modern era, where those problems had been solved by technology, they continued to educate their youth to the old standards in survival and martial arts. It reminded me of the traditional togruta taken to the extreme.
Marag kept an excellent politician's poker face, but I could sense through the connection that he was irritated with me and even angry at my suggestion that they needed aid at all. His practicality, though, won out over his pride.
"There are two things where you can contribute that would save some time," he admitted grudgingly. "We're working on restoring interstellar communications, but the droid commandos did a very thorough job. We almost have the main com tower for the capital rebuilt and a number of holonet satellites ready for launch. Any engineers you can send to hasten the job would be welcomed."
"Consider it done, what's the other?"
"There are a number of droid formations we've had to avoid engaging due to their size and composition. Normally, we'd have used starfighters, but the invasion managed to catch all of ours on the ground. If you could begin an aerospace campaign from your ship to bomb them into scrap, it would greatly reduce the duration of this conflict."
"We can begin sorties within the hour."
"Really?" That finally managed to get the taciturn Iridonian leader to finally show some emotion.
"I've got quite a lot of squadrons on board, Chief Marag. Many are itching to fly and get clankers painted on their fighters."
"Very well, I shall communicate their coming to all of our forces. We've managed to keep the tactical droids from using their Vultures and Hyena bombers so far by using PADS in combination with the terrain."
"Understood, thank you. Be aware to expect quite a lot of scanning emissions from the Resolute."
Marag waved me off, "Understandable Commander. Our own scanner systems have been considerably reduced due to the CIS destroying our sattelites, but our ground based ones are still there. If your ship can fill in the gaps, it would be appreciated."
"I'll get my ELINT division in contact with your militia to coordinate."
"Excellent, is there anything else you wish to address, commander?"
"No, I think that is all, Chief Marag. Thank you for your time. May the Force be with you."
He nodded and bowed slightly before cutting the connection.
"I'll begin making the arrangements, Commander," Yularen declared.
"Thank you. Oh, before you go." I turned my chair around and handed him a datapad.
He tapped it, "Ah, astronavigation report on the Ord Cantrell Corridor."
"Yes, as it turns out, we'll thankfully not need a strong presence here in Iridonia to lock it down. The biggest ship they can squeeze through is a Lucrehulk and only one at a time."
The corridor had been struck from charts due to a pulsar that had pulled in a significant extra mass at some point. This had changed its mass shadow and the EM radiation it was shooting out of its poles to essentially shut the door on the route.
It was only in the last few hundred years that the pulsar had begun to stabilize in a new emission pattern that was predictable.
It practically meant that the door to the corridor would open again, but only if you timed your approach precisely. Mistime it and you'd be yanked out of hyperspace into an electromagnetic hell of radiation that would overwhelm your shields in short order and a magnetic field strong enough to dissociate any matter.
"One has to wonder how many ships the Separatists lost to determine the timing of this corridor."
"Many, but it's something they can easily afford to do."
Yularen nodded, gave me a salute and left the bridge.
Two days later, a three Venator strong task force emerged from hyper into the Iridonia system to plug the Ord Cantrell Corridor and would make the system their new primary base of operations.
It was two rather busy days where I could honestly say I had essentially played 'Command and Conquer' on Iridonia from the Resolute, with the caveat that I was only in charge of any air units. Even the Kel Dor fighters would be returning to Dorin with kills painted on their hulls.
Casualties and losses had thankfully been fairly light, as the squadrons with Z95s would always be in close formation with the Y-Wing bombers. The Iridionian militia's man portable missile launchers would also assist. I had been worried initially that there would be friendly fire incidents, but the PADS were sophisticated enough that they could easily distinguish the scan profiles of droid fighters.
Two days of fighting and bombing had reduced the CIS droids to a third of their former strength, with no significant mass formations remaining. It was now up to the Iridonians themselves to root out those who remained. The most conservative estimates indicated it would take a month or more and would eventually become small unit actions and guerilla warfare. It all just depended, like on Ryloth, how quickly the Iridonians could knock out the droid's mobile power sources and keep their own power plants secure.
"Incoming transmission from the lead ship, commander."
"Thank you Comm, put them through."
The holo forms of Master Plo Koon and Anakin Skywalker appeared in front of me.
"Masters, welcome to Iridonia," I bowed to them, speaking with mock pompous formality.
"Greetings little Soka, thank you for your hospitality," the big Kel Dor smiled in amusement through his rebreather mask at me. "I also just want to extend my personal thanks for your achievement here and at Dorin. It's good to see the homeworld safe and the Sages would like to see you at your earliest convenience."
"That could be a while," I said worriedly.
"It was an open invitation with no specified time and date, coming from them, it just means that there's nothing critical about the visit."
Any group of Force prophets wanting to see me was not my idea of a good time to visit on holiday, even if I was intrigued as to what they could tell me.
"I'll make a note of it. Master Skywalker, I trust your mission went well?"
Anakin just nodded but I sensed he had a distinct bee in his bonnet. "Good to see you, Snips. You've done great work here. I'll be shuttling over to the Resolute in a few minutes. I'll brief you personally on our new orders."
"I look forward to it, Master. Master Plo, I'll transmit all relevant tactical and strategic data to you. There's still fighting on Iridonia and while they will be very stubborn about requesting it, you might need to have a few squadrons on standby for ground support sorties in support of the militia."
"Understood, Ahsoka. Thank you. Force be with you."
"And you, Master."
I was idly fiddling with my computer terminal in my quarters, reading C3P0-Echelon's report for the sixth time in hard copy flimsi format with my other hand, when Anakin pinged our bond and the door chime for entry.
He entered with a disgruntled and restless energy about him.
Anything he could say I interrupted by standing up and holding a single finger to my lips, with a significant look into his eyes.
'Let me speak first, Master,' I thought to him.
I pressed a button on my computer, then picked up another handheld device that looked to all external appearances like a tiny datapad. A few taps there and everything was working.
"Sorry about that, Master. It's safe to speak now."
Anakin looked alarmed, "What?"
"Republic Intelligence installed an audio listening device in my quarters on the last layover from Coruscant. I just activated a program and device that's giving the bug a wonderful yet very boring rendition of me excitedly giving you a report of the last few days of the air campaign on Iridonia."
"Those paranoid stupas," he grumbled in annoyance.
"Incidentally, they gave the same treatment to your quarters and the admiral's." I picked up another device and handed it over to him.
"What's this?"
"A little something I made with HK's help. It'll suborn the bug in your quarters and allows you to create entire conversations by typing them out on there. It's essentially a vocal emulator."
"You mean you can fake my voice using this?"
"Pretty much, it does require a fair bit of sampling first for the program to work, but that was easy enough to do. With yours you can even fake Padme's voice in the future, should you need to."
"Why would I ever need to do that, Snips?" he asked, giving me a mild glare.
"If you ever want to speak to Padme candidly in a relatively non-secure space, that device will also detect and alert you to listening devices."
"I have half a mind to just destroy any bugs I find with this," he declared, tapping on it and exploring its user interface.
"Then they will just get more creative and use methods even harder to detect," I explained with a bit of frustration. "The key with counter-intelligence is to give the enemy what they expect, while keeping them interested just enough that they feel like they're achieving something. You can also give them outright false information or misinformation, but only as part of a greater plan. If they investigate and find out they've been duped, then they know we know and then the bugs here will be considered compromised and useless. That's a general rule of using this device and why the vocal emulator exists."
"Where do they get off doing this? What's the point?"
"It's entirely in Republic Intelligence's remit to do this, Skyguy. From their point of view, they see it as protecting us."
"How does spying on us equal protecting us?"
"If one of the senior leadership of the GAR was compromised by the enemy, then these bugs would let them know. For example, if one of Yularen's family was kidnapped and the CIS blackmails him, to force him to pass on information or even outright sabotage military operations."
Anakin gave me a probing stare, "Do you foresee that happening?"
"Not as yet, the probability is there. Though the threat would most likely not come from the CIS. In any event, we Jedi are not likely to have such weaknesses to exploit, but I think many of us forget that there are some who know their history. There could be some paranoid high level leadership in RI, that wants to spy on us to see if we have a hankering for the bad old days of Jedi Lords and maybe even taking over the whole shop again. We are in a prime position to do so, after all."
He shook his head in disbelief, "That's insane."
"Yes, and dances nicely to the tune of the true enemy. Who will also have access to that intelligence."
"Fine, Snips, you've made your case well. I'll use it."
"Excellent," I clapped my hands together, "Cheer up, you now have a nice tool to spend some more quality time with Padme, so how was your mission?"
"Seeing those two together… urgh, I didn't know it was possible to feel so…"
"Jealous, angry, embittered?" I suggested with a sympathetic look. "But Skyguy, you must ask yourself, do you really think she actually enjoyed it?"
"No, she made that very clear on the way back, when she managed to keep Typho busy enough for us to… sneak away to the cargo hold of her ship," he had a little pink in his cheeks as he said that.
I couldn't help the giggle that escaped my mouth, "So what's the problem?"
"I don't think I realized how good an actor she was until this mission. She had Clovis eating out of her hand. Led him by the nose and was able to steal the data with him not even realizing it."
Ah, light dawns. "Skyguy, she was trained from a very young age to be queen. Naturally, what comes with that is acting skills that lets her seem perfectly happy even if she's utterly disgusted by some politician schmoozing her. You're worried she could be applying the same to you."
He shrugged and nodded.
"Do you not sense her feelings and mood when she's with you?"
"Yes, but… lately it's been difficult."
I slapped my own forehead and groaned, "Of course, Master. She's starting to apply the techniques I taught her to survive standing in the same room with the enemy."
"Well, can't she stop when…"
"At some point, yes, but it has to be second nature eventually. So until she masters it… I'm going to have to consult the Jedi Archives, maybe even seek an audience with one of the holocrons."
"What for?"
"See if there's anything about creating a Force bond between a sensitive and non-sensitive."
His eyes widened, "You think that's possible?"
Knowing how bloody Sidious kept the critically injured and dying Anakin from death on Mustafar, by using his bond with Padme to suck the life out of her, keeping him alive until they could get back to Coruscant… it definitely was possible.
"Yes, but the lore and knowledge required to do it safely is deep in the past, among the memories of those holocrons. Now to just find a suitable excuse to ask for one."
"Hold your speeder, Snips, we can talk and worry about that later. For now I need to brief you on our next mission."
He pulled out a data chit from his belt and slotted it into my desk terminal.
An angry red hologram appeared that depicted a giant building complex, with architecture that seemed very insectoid in construction. The building promptly split apart holographically and began to fill in the details - foundries, assembly lines, programming stations…
I swore in Togruti and Huttese, "How did they possibly build an entire droid factory complex on kriffing Geonosis again?!"
"That's the question of the hour," he gestured wryly at the holo. "All the monitoring satellites placed in orbit of Geonosis showed no major building activity of this scale on the surface for months. Even now, those satellites are showing this building doesn't exist. Yet this taken from Clovis' database, has been verified as well. There are none of the typical mistakes and programming artifacts you'd see in a fake scan and holo."
"Either way, it seems we're dealing with a group of slicers in the employ of the CIS that are very good."
"Yes, an independent spy mission has in the meantime confirmed that this factory complex does indeed exist and it's ramping up its operations."
"A factory on this scale coming online in the south is very bad news for any future ground battles in the battlefronts there."
Anakin nodded in agreement, "In response, the Jedi Council has ordered an invasion to take care of this threat." He tapped a few buttons on my terminal and a flat holograph of the projected order of battle appeared.
I stared at the numbers and could only shake my head in response, "Six Venators, ten Acclamators, four cruisers, four legions of clones; the 41st, the 212th, the 301st and the 501st. Four Jedi Generals commanding it all. This is a major hammerblow, master… all we need now is a dreadnought from one of the core world home fleets and we could maybe smash open the south."
"Good luck convincing any of them to put those oversized slabs of metal in harm's way," he commented derisively.
"What of the enemy? This is the Geonosian homeworld and they've had many months to re-arm and rebuild."
"That we are less sure about, the spy mission couldn't really do a full survey and scan without giving themselves away. It's one of the reasons for the amount of firepower we're bringing. Snips, what can you foresee?"
I pushed my perception along the probability lines and into the future. My memories were of little help here for exact numbers, but those would be different anyway… prescience was telling me however…
"There will be Lucrehulk core ships, grounded. We can expect a sizable aerospace defense force of the Nantex-class fighters that the Geonosians only had a few squadrons of during the first battle. The J-1 proton cannons will be defending this factory as well as sonic cannons. There will also be a theater shield preventing direct bombardment either from orbit or by Y-Wings. The amount of droids will be about three or four months of construction output - so roughly eleven garrisons. Every Geonosian in the battlefront will be a combatant, either armed with standard CIS blaster weaponry or their sonic weaponry."
"That's just great," he wearily rubbed his face.
"There's more. This factory has not just been pumping out the standard CIS fare, it's also involved in prototype construction and testing."
Anakin groaned in annoyance, "What have they built now?"
"Baktoid is in development of a new tank, built with the lessons learned so far in the war. I can't tell you specifics naturally, but I foresee nothing we have in our own arsenal on the ground capable of penetrating its ray shielding or the heavy armor beneath. It'd require a direct strike from a ground attack proton torpedo to do the job."
"You are not painting a good picture of our chances, Snips."
"No, I'm not and all that won't even be our biggest problem."
"Then what will be?"
I didn't relish saying this, but began laying out the probability line of events.
Such was the priority and urgency of the coming campaign that when Resolute emerged in the Coruscant system, the ship was over a few light minutes away from the planet itself. Waiting for it at this interplanetary rendezvous point was a single large bulk freighter. It was of a unique design, in that it had a T-shaped hull in forward profile, and if any Venator opened all its dorsal hangar doors, the freighter could literally use specialized lifts and openings in its ventral facing hull, to directly put supplies into the spine of the Resolute.
It required quite a bit of piloting finesse to get the two ships into such a configuration, but it was done very slowly and carefully.
Thankfully, Resolute didn't require as much resupply, as it had needed before the Dorin campaign, so it was mostly an exercise of topping up all the tanks and munitions after the extensive use of starfighters.
The moment resupply was complete, the fleet tender pulled its lifts back into itself, closed its hull doors and carefully fired its thrusters to push itself in the positive Z-axis away from Resolute.
The Star Destroyer turned on its axis, angling for the Correllian Run hyperspace lane, got itself up to speed and with a flare of its engines shot itself into hyperspace.
It would take a further six days to reach the Geonosis task force staging point in Mon Gazza.
It was six days spent with me and Anakin bashing our heads against the problem of assaulting the droid factory complex, that didn't involve having to stick the army into a meat grinder.
Archduke Poggle the Lesser, the nominal 'leader' of the Geonosian forces and a member of the CIS Council, had chosen the location of this new foundry very well.
From the west approach, you had a nearly flat plateau, with no cover and would be easy pickings for any artillery and attack by fighters that would strafe you at will. A kilometer to the east of the factory, a long deep chasm cut through the earth, which was spanned by a single bridge. That bridge fed into a narrow valley, with mountains rising on each side and would eventually enlarge to feed into another large plateau.
The theater shield covered most of this expanse, ending just as the valley opened up.
The whole setup combined with the CIS ground arsenal's capabilities, made the east approach the only viable assault option. Which naturally meant that every gun, cannon, missile and laser was trained in that direction.
Resolute took its place in the formation of Venators, off to the left flank of Obi-Wan's flagship, the Negotiator, which took the lead in the wedge formation, with the various Acclamators and cruisers arrayed in a fan behind the Star Destroyers.
It was a singularly impressive sight and would give anyone in the galaxy pause - if they were planning on engaging it in space.
The Task Force shot itself into hyperspace for the final leg of the journey, entering sector R-16 a day later, cutting into the Trellius Trade Route and emerging into the Geonosis system nine hours later.
No CIS forces in space was there greet the Task Force.
How this wasn't sending up red flags in the strategic thinking happening at a high level, I had no idea.
Then again, I was starting to think that I'd need a cast iron skillet and bash in Master Ki Adi Mundi's thick conical skull to get that bloody cerean to wake up and smell the ashes that surrounded him. Even here on the battlefront, it seemed he carried his ivory tower with him.
Anakin and I walked up to him and Obi-Wan, as they stood on the main bridge of the Negotiator, quietly talking.
In the far distance beyond the windows, the orange white orb of Geonosis was steadily increasing in size.
"You're late," Obi-Wan reproved his former padawan, but the jocularity in his tone took the bite out of it and turned it into something more like teasing.
"Sorry Master, but our pilot briefings ran a bit into overtime."
"Something that can be said about the war in general, overtime and with no end in sight."
As the two spoke, I was having a silent battle with the disapproving gaze of Ki Adi Mundi, who took in my new armor and found it much to his disliking. No doubt how it spat in the face of the Ruusan Reformation and tradition. Never mind that the armor was actually based on a Jedi design from the Old Republic… it was actually even more traditional from a certain point of view.
It must really grate him that, by tradition, the only person who had any say over that, was now Anakin - who would very politely tell Mundi to shove his own lightsaber up his ass, before he would order me to take off this armor.
Master Mundi broke from my gaze and fell into the discussion as if nothing had happened, "Which is why it is crucial that our invasion of Geonosis meets with success."
A beeping emerged from Anakin's chrono. "It's time for the command briefing. Ahsoka?"
I bowed briefly and hurried to the rear of the bridge, where the main holotable sat. It was the work of a few minutes to get everything linked and set up. Soon the holoforms of Master Unduli, Mace Windu, Yoda and Chancellor Palpatine were hovering in the air on one side, with the central area displaying the planet of Geonosis.
Obi-Wan began, "Our ships are in position and we're ready to begin our campaign against the Geonosians."
"What about Poggle? Any report on his location?" Mace Windu queried.
"Communication intercepts indicate he is indeed present in the primary droid foundry." The holo zoomed in to display the accursed terrain and tactical layout that the complex was situated on. "The factory is protected by a shield generator. Anakin, Ki Adi and I, shall attempt a three pronged attack, through their defense lines to a staging area just short of the shield."
I wanted to scream. The plan was a combined brainchild of Obi-Wan and Mundi - and clearly showed the high level tactical inexperience most Jedi had demonstrated so far in the war. All this did was add unnecessary complexity and would open up the assault to a defeat in detail. My prescience was currently showing that everything was on course to occur as I remembered. None of my butterflies in the event stream mattered to a ground battle on a distant outer rim planet with the same immutable terrain and tactical considerations.
"Once we've landed, we shall knock out the shield generator. That is our primary target."
"Isn't it risky committing three generals to one area of the attack?" Palpatine logically pointed out. Urgh, even the Sith agreed with me. "If something went wrong we could be dealt a serious blow."
Of course, Sidious really wouldn't like this. This was risking the skin of his planned future apprentice to a degree that was very risky. I doubt even his foresight could reliably plan a way through the maelstrom of probability that we were about to enter.
"To ensure, that rise again, Geonosis does not, capture Poggle we must," Yoda explained.
"Of course," Palpatine agreed with a mild smile. "As always I shall leave the strategy to you, Master Jedi."
Behind my metaphysical shields and concealment, I could only laugh.
"Our thanks, Chancellor," Obi-Wan said politely.
"May the Force be with you." Windu declared.
The senior brass bowed their heads slightly in politeness and their holo's vanished as they cut the connection.
Anakin turned to me, "Ahsoka, call in the legion commanders."
The four most senior clones in the Task Force entered the bridge a few minutes later and stood at attention briefly.
"Welcome to you all, Cody, these are coordinates for the rendezvous," Obi-Wan advanced the holo to a detailed view of the valley approach.
"Yes sir, when we hit the ground there, we'll create a perimeter. Getting past their AA defenses here will be the trick. General Mundi will cut across the defensive lines from the north. We will make our assault through the middle. General Skywalker, will make his attack on the defensive lines from the south and we'll meet at the rendezvous point at 0700 exactly."
Mundi began to say something, but Anakin spoke up, "I wish to make an amendment to this plan."
The other three generals looked at him in surprise.
"Oh? This should be interesting," Obi-Wan smiled and gestured to the holotable.
Anakin loaded a data chit into the table interface and began outlying our plan.
"First, we combine Master Mundi and Obi-Wan's forces into a single thrust that will attack straight into the enemy lines from the east. This is merely to occupy the enemy and present them with exactly what they are expecting."
Obi-Wan thoughtfully stroked his beard, "And what will they not be expecting?"
"That you will be escorted by numerous squadrons of space superiority fighters as you travel in your gunboats, towards the front lines, Z95s and Torrents."
"That's ridiculous," Mundi objected. "Intelligence has observed little to no enemy starfighters."
"Of course they haven't," Anakin retorted. "The Geonosians are insectoids, they live underground. Are you seriously thinking that in all the time since we were last here that they've just been sitting idle?"
Numerous small models of the Nantex class fighter began popping up from the valley sides, only to be engaged by equal numbers of Z95s and Torrents.
"With enemy air and ground forces engaged, the Resolute will take up a suborbital position above and out of range of the J1 cannon fire. Where myself, Ahsoka and a specially trained Recon squad of the 501st will do a skydive and steer ourselves to land directly on top of the shield generator."
"Ridiculous, even if you make it through the shield with jet packs to slow your falls, you'll be detected in short order and blasted out of the sky," Mundi pointed out.
"Which is why everyone doing the jump will be fitted with a device of my own design," he pressed a button and a first sized square device attached to a standard utility belt appeared in holo form. "It's an active lifesign dampener, prevents you from showing up on passive sensors, and emits a low level field that absorbs active scan emissions, preventing any reflections back to the receiver."
"Fascinating," Obi-Wan frowned, "But won't such a device emit harmful radiation?"
"Only if you're just wearing clothes, but luckily all our troopers wear void rated armor and I have my own version of the armor Ahsoka's wearing. We only need to keep the things active for the duration of the jump, which is less than eight minutes. Then we destroy the shield generator with demo packs."
The theater shield vanished from the holo.
"At this point we should have a measure of air superiority, where our Y-Wing bombers can come in and throw stand-off ground attack concussion missiles at the J1s and sonic cannons, not to mention bombing dug in Geonosian positions to scrap. Allowing our ground forces to advance… and the Acclamators can land and deploy the legions."
"It's certainly an ambitious plan, Anakin," Obi-Wan admitted.
"A plan which hinges on a single point, whether you can perform this insane stunt," Mundi also pointed out. "At least with the original plan there is a measure of redundancy."
"A plan that splits our forces into weaker components, to be picked off in an easier fashion, where we have to combine ourselves anyway, only this time while under fire," Anakin retorted with narrowed eyes.
Mundi pulled in a deep breath to respond but was interrupted.
"Enough," Master Unduli snapped. "Both plans have their merits, but I must admit the first was crafted with a few erroneous assumptions. Skywalker makes a valid point about the possible presence of a great number of Geonosian fighter squadrons and other threats that we may not know about. Baktoid Armor Workshop is a Geonosian company and are very good at what they do, they will have been contracted to build new weapons of war that we have yet to see deployed. We may even face them on this battlefield. Master Kenobi, I think we should go with Skywalker's proposed amendment."
Obi-Wan frowned into the holo, then looked very seriously at Anakin, "Can you do it?"
"Yes," he answered immediately.
"Very well, then let it be done. May the Force be with all of us."
Standing in the main reception area of the massive port docking area of the Resolute with the doors wide open and looking out to open space with only a partial disc of Geonosis in view was one of those moments where I wish I could've just brought a proper camera or even just sat down and painted the scene.
I was also wearing my armor's helmet for the first time and had to admit that Anakin had outdone himself with it. The Torgruta government would probably give him a medal and honorary citizenship, not to mention a ton of credits if he licensed the design.
My montrals and three lekku were sheathed first with a balaclava style headdress, which could act to provide mechanical counter pressure in vacuum. It also had flexible transducing speakers surrounding my montrals, which were fed from external microphones mounted near my pauldrons. The next bit was a head framework that clamped onto the armor's shoulders, but was articulated to allow neck movement, the montrals and lekku were arranged comfortably in there, after which the main armored helmet would be mounted.
It did have the unfortunate effect of making my profile look like a potato head Sontaran armor straight out of Doctor Who. Though, to balance that out, I had a freaking HUD, with various vision modes and limited sensors.
Klanking footsteps announced the arrival of Anakin, HK-47 and Alpha Recon company of the 501st.
Anakin in his new armor looked rather alarming. It was the Aegis pattern, like mine, but instead of any sort of urban camo scheme, he went for his preferred coloration - dark gray and black, with the only color on it being the red Jedi symbols on his armor's pauldrons. The only reason you didn't think kriffing Darth Vader was right there, was the normal rounded helmet and extra armor plates.
"Ready Snips?"
"Ready master, we're still ten minutes from the drop zone."
"Excellent, we're early for once. Shall we?"
Everyone walked to the edge of the bay and space yawned just a few centimeters from our feet. The view down was rather frightening to the uninitiated, even with many skydives under my belt by now, there was still that little part of my hindbrain that gibbered in terror.
"So I couldn't help but notice, Master Mundi shooting blaster bolts out of his eyes at you, Snips."
I understood his meaning and the implied question that went with it.
"I've long since put it behind me, master. Clearly, Master Mundi hasn't. You recall I told you about my padawan trials?"
"Yes, Mundi administered those and he wasn't happy how you succeeded with them."
"Correct, that was the truth, just not the whole story." I got my thoughts in order and even tweaked my bond with Anakin to help with conveying this. "You know the kind of student I am, Master. I question, I debate, I hold that nothing is set in stone. Now imagine a younger me in a classroom situation with Ki Adi Mundi as a teacher in the Academy."
"I can only imagine things not going well at all."
"That's putting it mildly. It also didn't help that Mundi loved teaching the Galactic Philosophy course, which is odd since it's a class that actually encourages debate in theory, but Master Mundi just used it to essentially preach and hammer the superiority of the Jedi Code as a belief system into the initiate's skulls."
"Which you naturally challenged him on."
"Yes, constantly. It got to the point where my classmates wanted me to stop. 'Just keep quiet, Ahsoka. We want to just finish the chapter and get on with it. Don't antagonize, Master Mundi.'"
I laughed ruefully. "I just saw that as conforming for the sake of it. Allowing Mundi's indoctrination to take hold, not just on myself but on the others too, allowing him to win."
I gave a look at the chrono on my gauntlet, "Eventually, it all came to a head at lightsaber instruction class, our usual blademaster was unavailable and Master Mundi filled in. When it came time for me to spar with him, he naturally beat me into the ground. The hothead I was, I couldn't let it go and hit him with words that it seems are still bouncing around in his skull. I said simply, 'Resorting to force, Master?'"
"Implying that even he would ignore the Code when it was convenient or if he was emotional enough," Anakin nodded in understanding.
"I recognized we were both at fault for letting things get to that level. It takes two to dance, after all. So I stepped back and resolved to tone things down, de-escalate, only it was too late. Word of it had reached the Council and Yoda, in his way, directed that Master Mundi's talents were best put to use away from the Academy. To this day, I regret those words. It might seem like I had won, but I had lost - because only then did I realize what value I had gotten from my debates with Master Mundi. How it had challenged my own beliefs.
"I might not like Mundi, he's a hyper-traditionalist, overly logical, almost too wise for his own good and too ready to simply dismiss death as 'rejoining with the Force' but I respect him and would even welcome having a debate with him again. It seems unfortunately that he can hold a bit of a grudge, rather illogical, but nobody's perfect."
"Statement: One minute to drop zone, Master," HK piped up.
"Thank you, HK."
"All right Alpha company," Anakin turned to face the clones. "You've trained hard. Watch your intervals, remember your dampeners and we'll get through this. I'll see you all in the mess after the mission, agreed?"
The clones let out a roar of approval.
"Thirty seconds!"
We turned to face the maw of the hangar, limbering up.
"Ten seconds!"
"See you all on the ground, Alpha, go, go, go!"
With a few running steps, we ran through the magcon field and jumped ourselves out into suborbital space above Geonosis. The gravity immediately began pulling on us, the troopers let out brief bursts from their jetpacks to get more clearance from the lower hull of Resolute. Anakin and I did the same with the integral boot jets of our Aegis armors - inspired by the same that Cad Bane had worn. HK was also fitted similarly.
We oriented into the head down free fall position immediately afterward to gain as much speed as possible.
I isolated my com briefly to only HK, "So, done anything like this before, HK?"
"Answer: No, master. Neither Revan, Suutrik or Valkorion had me do something like this. The closest was using a modified escape pod to infiltrate a world that had an assassination target. You'll be gratified to note that this particular insanity is unique to you, master."
The atmosphere became steadily thicker around us, slowing our fall and soon the buffeting and rushing of air began resonating on our helmets in an awful cacophony of noise that was thankfully dampened.
The view was now completely dominated by the planet, but we could still see its curvature and the first upper layer of clouds in the stratosphere was like a fluffy carpet way below us.
"Engage dampeners!" Anakin ordered.
I pressed a button on my gauntlet and just like that, we were invisible to scans.
The cloud layer steadily rose to meet us and soon we plunged into a world of fluffy white.
This didn't last for more than a few seconds before we broke through and plunged through the sky towards the next cloud layer.
When we broke through that, we could finally begin to see the battle happening far down below.
The small vaguely spiky shaped dots of Geonosian fighters dueling with the Clone squadrons, purple and blue blaster bolts and lasers flashing through the air and the occasional missile streaking through the air.
The Nantex fighter was nasty thing and not easy to engage. The pilot was situated on top of the double-needle nose hull in a bubble canopy, affording the Geoniotian inside a full 360 degree view that took advantage of their non-standard stalky eye anatomy. There was no surprising the pilot from behind or any significant blindspot. They were extremely maneuverable with a laser cannon situated between the prongs, which was also mounted on a swivel turret, which could give that laser an almost 320 degree traversal and off-bore shots. If that wasn't enough, the design incorporated gravitic deflectors that pulsed to repel incoming concussion missiles.
The only advice I had been able to give Resolute's pilots was to 'divide and conquer' the system - two fighters would target one Nantex and lob missiles at it from different angles. The gravitic system couldn't fire off in a full bubble around the ship at the required power to deflect a missile; unless they wanted to have a very small wrecked fighter compressed to the size of a small aircar afterwards.
It was a very good defensive craft, but otherwise lacked traditional armor, strong shields or any strategic mobility. It was fast, nimble, hit you from many directions, but once you got its number, it was dead. The Geonosians liked swarm tactics naturally, so could throw a lot of them at you.
There really was no certainty about who would win the air war in this case. I had to trust in Yularen and my pilots that they would see the day through.
To one side of the valley, the Republic ground forces were steadily advancing on the Geonosian lines and firing as they moved forward, centering the advance around AT-TEs with clones steadily marching alongside. Quite a few were armed with man portable rocket launchers and firing into the enemy, even sending a few streaking into the air at any passing Nantex fighter. Gunships made low flying passes, blasting away and lasering entire lines of Geonosians into pieces.
"Thousand meters to target, stand by!"
The angry red bubble of the theater shield was now directly below us, with only minor adjustments needed to head for the front right quadrant. The vagaries of the terrain meant that the shield generator building was off-center.
"Eight hundred meters, flare!"
We moved, spread our arms and legs, falling into the belly-to-the-earth position.
Our velocity decreased drastically.
"Five hundred."
"Four hundred."
"Mass reduction! Boost now!"
I slapped my belt to engage the device, forced my legs straight, directing one leg toward the earth below, and engaged my jet boots to max thrust. My will also reached out to the Force and pulled on the air around me to further slow me down.
Now in a feet first position, I gritted my teeth in tension as I worked to bleed off more momentum and speed, whilst also trusting in the Force for precognition on how to direct my legs to keep stable.
The shield would generally let anything moving below 11km/h pass through or about 3 meters per second.
I really didn't have the concentration to worry about how anyone else was doing. I was now two hundred meters from the shield and still had 70 kph of vertical velocity.
My deceleration wasn't cutting it. The jump couldn't be a standard sedate skydive, but would've been called on old Earth, a XALO or extreme altitude-low opening. Geonosians could fly themselves with their wings and while they couldn't really go to extreme heights, they had evolved to think of movement in 3 dimensions and had no problem with looking up. It was one of the primary reasons the army had to draw their attention, and we couldn't afford to go slow.
I drew on more of the air around me, creating a larger resistance.
At a hundred meters, I had slowed to 35kph.
In the next two seconds, 27kph.
"Oh shit!"
I threw two Force Pushes at the looming red bubble of death.
Then bent my legs as I finally shed the last bits of momentum.
"Cutting it close there, Snips." Anakin called.
Everyone else had seemingly managed to stop, and were hovering over the shield bubble perimeter.
Wait, someone was missing. "Who did we lose?"
"Drody, commander. Jet pack malfunction. It was quick at least."
Bloody lowest bidder shitholes!
Anakin lit his lightsaber, "Okay everyone, you know the plan. Final descent, now!"
We briefly deactivated our propulsion, and gravity 'slurped' us through the shield.
Below, we flared our jets again, regaining control and began our final approach to the shield generator building below.
It was a rather small building, but narrow and high, in the typical Geonosian style of angled organic looking spires, colored in a rusty orange. The walls were also organically round and flared out the closer it got to the surface. The only technological elements you could really identify were the industrial emitter dishes mounted on the spires.
Then there was the base of the building, which was a platform where the Geonosians had positioned numerous J1 cannon droids and sonic cannons, looking towards the valley where the Republic was likely to come from.
Not for long though.
The thirty-nine men of Alpha Company pulled two droid poppers from their belts, armed them and dropped the devices.
It rained poppers among the J1 droids and among the surprised Geonosians seated in the gunner positions.
They could only look up, in time to see Alpha company descending towards them, before the J1s and sonics were blasted and encased in crackling electric discharge.
HK already had his rotary blaster cannons out and sent scything fire down on the Geonosians in the tanks and those supporting them.
The clones followed suit and finally landed, blasting bugs left and right.
Anakin and I landed with lit lightsabers and began running along the perimeter of the building, deflecting fire from Geonosians who had overcome their surprise and were finally reacting. Those who came into close quarter range were also swiftly cut down. We rushed for the sonic cannons and with a combination of the Force and lightsaber, rendered them disabled and useless scrap.
The clones, in true guerilla warfare style, got into the gunner positions of the J1s and turned the guns to blast any targets of opportunity until the internal ammo ran out. This laid waste to fifteen CIS tanks nearby within less than ten seconds.
Meanwhile, the clones on demo duty started placing their demolition packs against the walls of the shield generator building. The packs were essentially twenty thermal detonators linked to share a common trigger and mounted into a matrix shaped frame, placed inside a standard trooper backpack.
HK, with shield engaged, was having the time of his life.
"Gleeful exclamation: Eat hot efficiency, bugs!"
The droid efficiently moved his rotary cannons from target to target, giving a brief burst of fire and moving on, whether it be a flying or running Geonosian.
"General! Demo packs are hot!" shouted Rex over the company frequency.
Anakin twirled his blade around him, sending deflections straight back into the flying Geonosians who were harassing him, whilst cutting down a further two who tried to engage with their own vibropikes. "Everyone, retreat east! Now!"
All of us, turned in the direction, took a few running steps before igniting our jetpacks and boots.
At this point, our element of surprise had run its course and the enemy was literally swarming towards our position.
Anakin led the way, his lightsaber efficiently moving in defense, whilst literally corkscrewing in the air, cutting down three very surprised flying Geonosians as he passed them.
For my part, I was on his left flank, flying with my lightsabers orbiting me, defending me from enemy fire and occasionally spinning in a blur, resulting in chunks of cauterized Geonosian to fall to the ground.
The recon troopers followed in a loose formation, all of them holstering standard blasters and using pistols to fire whilst they were in flight.
Our flight was brief, but it had given us enough distance quickly to send the signal, which Anakin did from his remote detonator.
We landed at the mouth of a cave that would lead us back to the valley, half of the company leading the way inside, whilst the rest formed a rear-guard.
A few seconds later, the demo packs detonated.
The baradium based explosives and their placement around the shield building, meant it looked like a Titan had lowered its giant hand on it and squeezed. The shockwave radiated spherically away from it in an eyeblink, picking up dust everywhere. The upper spine towers began falling, crumbling due to the stresses of suddenly finding no more support existing underneath it.
The theater shield flickered and vanished, taking away its ugly red hue from the entire area.
That was all we could process before we had to defend ourselves again.
"There's bugs in the cave!"
Of course there was.
"Snips, help them, we'll hold the entrance!" Anakin ordered.
I rushed forward with Force-empowered strides.
The cave tunnel snaked left then right, and I found the troopers engaged in a close quarters melee.
The largest deficiency I had found with the general rank and file trooper was their true lack of options when CQC against an organic enemy occurred. Sure, they could use their weapons to bash, but if they lost their weapon, they were mostly screwed unless they fell back to using a pistol. The problem with a blaster pistol backup, was that they were not really a favored weapon, due to their lack of stopping power against heavier droids.
In Alpha Recon company of the 501st, Anakin and I had made the first steps to fix this problem.
Each recon trooper now carried a machete length vibrosword and were at least proficient enough with them to carry them into battle. That was the weapon in their dominant hand, whilst a blaster pistol was in their left.
I threw my left lightsaber to spin and scythe through the air above the dozen troopers locked in struggles and duels with Geonosians who had tried to grapple them.
My lightsaber dealt with six bugs that were hovering in the air, waiting for their fellows to either succeed or take their place when they fell.
My right lightsaber moved in defense as I recalled the other, sending threatening blaster bolts back to their owners and killing them.
The tide slightly turned at this point. The troopers finished off their opponents and started to advance through the tunnel only to run into yet more of the enemy.
I rushed forward to join the line and with the Force, pulled every piece of rock or boulder that was loose to me, then when that wasn't enough, ripped away the stalagmites and 'tites.
The effort was considerable, but worth it as I pushed the mass forward.
The effect I could only liken to bugs on a windshield, on a large scale.
It created a considerable break in the swarm of Geonosians coming towards us, but more just kept coming.
"Statement: Impressive, master!"
HK's glowing form rushed into the line and his cannons began working.
The Recon troopers needed no prompting to switch back to blaster rifles and join in.
The volume of fire and the confined space, meant the enemy's numbers were to a degree less effective.
I busied myself acting as an active bulwark of defense, deflecting enemy fire back, generating mobile cover with telekinesis (though I had to be careful as I didn't want the cave walls and ceiling to collapse), and occasionally sending a boulder forward in offense when I had recovered enough.
The Geonosian handheld sonic weapons were a problem though, and I had to occasionally use HK as my own cover when those appeared.
Soon we were advancing slowly forward again, stepping carefully over the corpses of the fallen enemy.
"Ammo status?!" I shouted over the comms.
The surviving troopers in the line chimed in with various numbers, but it was very clear we were burning through power packs fast at this volume of fire.
I sent more heavy boulders into the storming enemy as my prescience narrowed to two paths.
I would fall exhausted, weakening our defenses, our ammo would run out and we'd be overrun in an avalanche of chitin, blades and sonic waves…
… or a wall of fire…
We had to buy time.
I reached to my belt and pulled a thermal detonator from it.
"Commander, you're gonna bring down the cave ceiling on us with that!" Rex shouted in alarm.
Do or do not.
I armed the device, grabbed it with TK and launched it into the throng of chittering screeching enemies.
I sensed it punch through the first Geonosian it encountered, like an ancient cannonball it continued through the throng, massacring as it went. Chitin yielding to the kinetic energy of the makeshift projectile.
Thirty meters downrange the detonator lost its integrity and the unstable baradium inside detonated.
I threw everything I had forward.
Creating a kinetic TK shield that stretched in front of me from wall to wall.
Then there was a flash.
Flame and pressure swept forward and hit my defense…
My world changed… I saw… something.
A hint of cerulean blue, an endless black… gnawing hunger… desperation…
The blue returned, an infinite stretch of it and…
I was now flat on my back looking up at the cave ceiling. The HUD of my helmet was displaying something but it felt like cotton wool had replaced my brain.
Anakin's face came into view, his helmet off and looking at me with deep worry, he was saying something.
Rex's face looked down on me next, he also said something but no sound was reaching me.
Was I deaf?
'Snips! I sense you're alive in there… speak to me!' Anakin thought to me in alarm.
"Master?" I was very confused.
A relieved look crossed his face and he knelt down, reaching towards my helmet and I sensed briefly how he used to Force to work the hidden internal emergency controls.
The faceplate came off and suddenly, blessed sound returned! I heard the footsteps of troopers, the smoldering cracks of burnt chitin, flesh. My sense of balance and montral echosense was back.
"Easy there, Snips. Relax. I think every Jedi on this planet felt that. Your armor's sound pickups are damaged as well."
"Oh, so this is not the afterlife?"
HK stepped into view. "Statement: Master I highly doubt I would be in your afterlife. So rest assured, your meatbag self has not expired."
I groaned, "It was sarcasm, HK."
"Think you can stand, Snips?"
I lightly embraced the Force, just dipping a toe in… giving myself a mystical diagnostic of sorts.
My answer was to nod and reach up. Rex and Anakin grabbed a hold of my arms and lifted me to my feet.
The world unfortunately swayed a bit and Anakin slung my arm over his shoulder. "Okay, ready?"
I nodded and stumbled forward with him, wearily walking forward… feeling like I could go and sleep for a week. I hated Force overuse.
We emerged on the other side of the tunnel to regard the valley below.
The Republic Army's legions had broken through.
Y-Wing bombers swept forward, dropping bombs among the enemy lines.
AT-TEs sent their rounds downrange, knocking out CIS tanks that came into view.
In the sky, multiple Z95 duos chased down Geonosian fighters, streaming ion and laser fire at the enemy, tagging them and sending them hurtling out of control to crash into the mountains lining the valley.
"Admiral Yularen is the reason we're still alive," Anakin explained. "They managed to trace our signal into these caves and when he spotted the Geonosians swarming through here… he diverted a squadron to bomb the area in front of the entrance."
I could see immediately what he meant… the cratering around the area was substantial.
"Your little trick with the thermal detonator bought enough time for the squadron to do its run and allowed it to make a difference in the end."
I only knew one thing at the moment, "Master, my bed on the Resolute is all I care about now."
"Well, you definitely earned it, Snips," he laughed. "Though do feel free to pass out right here if you want to… I'll carry you all the way."
"Thanks for the offer, but as tempting as that is, I have to leave this battlefield on my feet, Master."
He simply nodded in understanding and we kept walking.
I was surprised though when the survivors of Alpha Company, roughly nineteen clone troopers in all, hurried in front of us and formed an impromptu parade formation to one side.
"Company! Attention!" Rex shouted.
Nineteen pairs of armored heels clapped together.
"Company… commander departing! Salute!"
I stared in astonishment at the clones. Their arms and hands raised, their armor scuffed, dirty and even bloody. Their helmets off so I could see all their identical faces, with only the occasional facial tattoo that marked them differently.
I sensed their respect, gratitude and a whole mix of other emotions that washed over me from them. Their actual expressions were the rock solid poker faces you'd expect, but their eyes followed me as I passed and spoke volumes.
My throat felt gripped as my own emotions threatened to escape from my control.
I nodded at them as I passed, and awkwardly returned the salute with my left arm.
We continued on, Anakin led me towards the nearest vaguely flat area and in the distance a LAAT gunship approached our position.
It landed and opened its doors.
Anakin briefly helped me make the short jump into it.
The doors closed again, the engines spooled to takeoff thrust.
"It's okay, Snips."
My head lolled to the side on his shoulder… and I slept.
The end of the chapter game me some impressions of Ashoka squashing those bugs just like Obi Wan scrapped the clunkers in the older clone wars cartoon.
Like whoo. Big boom, walking natural disaster.
Are you sure you've not accidentally walked into being a sith? Ashoka in Sontaran bodyarmor and Anakin in a proto Darth Vader garb.
To this day, I regret those words. It might seem like I had won, but I had lost - because only then did I realize what value I had gotten from my debates with Master Mundi.
You lost a victim, one who you could relentlessy bully with philosophycal rebuttles and slams. Truly, nothing was the same after you had none to deride, philosophically.
The end of the chapter game me some impressions of Ashoka squashing those bugs just like Obi Wan scrapped the clunkers in the older clone wars cartoon.
Like whoo. Big boom, walking natural disaster.
Are you sure you've not accidentally walked into being a sith? Ashoka in Sontaran bodyarmor and Anakin in a proto Darth Vader garb.
You lost a victim, one who you could relentlessy bully with philosophycal rebuttles and slams. Truly, nothing was the same after you had none to deride, philosophically.
That's an interesting view. I mean this story can go anyway the author wants and a Sith Ashoka would be scarry considering her pre-knowledge from her first life. She knows a lot of concepts that has been lost from the Dark ages of the Star Wars history.
All we know of the direction this story is going in is "Star Wars: The Force Wills (SW SI)". So we have to see what the Force wants with Ashoka.
A/N: Here we go. Enjoy. As always, thanks to awesome Patrons for keeping me going.
Chapter 25
Anakin held onto the overhead handle in the passenger bay of his gunship as it sped through the dry Geonosian air. The seemingly endless mountains and valleys of this part of the planet was the only thing that served to differentiate it from the world of his birth. Otherwise it was a world of orange and dull browns with hardly any vegetation to speak of.
The gunship's engines whined into a higher pitch and he felt the craft flare into its landing cycle.
A slight shudder reverberated throughout the hull as it thumped onto hard crumbling earth and its expansive side doors opened.
He walked out onto a scene of orderly chaos as the 41st Legion's staging area was revealed.
As much as all clones were trained in the same manner on Kamino, even when it came to the logistics of war, it was inevitable that differences started to creep in. It wasn't just a matter of the influence of the Jedi General, but merely that a legion's quartermasters began to quickly develop their own style and what they found worked best in practice.
Theory might say that an AT-TE squad must be parked in a certain way, the ammunition dump located a certain safe distance from the troops and so on, but each planet added a new spin and challenge to the game of logistics.
His ears managed to pick out the thumping clanks of metallic feet despite the ambient noise of the staging area.
"Salutation: Greetings Jedi."
HK-47 had clearly taken some water to his own chassis to clean off the dust from the last battle. It had done a passable job but the droid definitely needed a proper oil scrubbing back on the Resolute.
"Hey HK, what happened to calling me meatbag?"
"Answer: When a meatbag has proven himself to be capable of rising above the limitations of their sloshy form and other mental deficiencies inherent. My programming causes a preferential order adjustment in my target assessment matrix, as a result designations are reassigned."
Anakin folded his arms, "That's a really long winded way of saying you're beginning to like me."
"Statement: You may choose to believe that Jedi, if you wish."
"And why am I in your target assessment matrix? That's part of your assassination function."
"Explanation: An old function of my original programming, Jedi. All Force sensitive organic meatbags are automatically loaded into my assassination protocols as potential targets."
Anakin felt a sliver of alarm going down his back. HK's programming was dense, complex and very difficult to make sense of, with elements that left even him baffled. Messing with or changing it, was something he had quickly given up on. Pulling even one string of code or altering a desired variable in simulations had resulted either in nothing happening at all, the code compensating and correcting itself or a cascade which resulted in the simulated bit of HK's code deciding that it was not content with being poked and swiftly destroyed the simulation computer - at the expense of it's own 'life' in the process.
It meant therefore that somewhere in that mass of coding, the droid was developing ways to kill every Force sensitive it encountered. He struggled to imagine the circumstances which could've led Revan to develop and build such a droid. The man, fallen to the Dark Side, had clearly become so paranoid, that he seemingly wanted a plan to kill everyone he ever met, even his fellow converts to the Sith cause.
"I see, so what are you doing here? Your master is up on the Resolute. Shouldn't you be by her side? Protecting her as she sleeps?"
"Answer: Normally I would be, Jedi. Clarification: She contacted me and instructed me to remain at your side and assist you for the remainder of the battle for this world. Otherwise she feared you would and I quote," HK voice modulation shifted and suddenly Ahsoka's voice emerged from its vocabulator grill, "'He'd probably get his fool head blown off doing an insane stunt, if there wasn't someone watching his back.'" The voice returned to its usual cadence and rolling masculine tone. "I also think she doesn't want me to get bored watching over her, not when there is glorious violence to be had here. Commentary: She is a remarkably thoughtful master in that regard and seems to… care about me."
"What's so odd about that? Most long-time droid owners do develop a liking for their droids that goes beyond just ownership."
"Answer: Oh, I understand that, Jedi. You meatbags can invest your emotions into the strangest things. Recitation: I once had a master who fitted me with a recreation of a male meatbag's reproductive organ. Many a night she would…"
Anakin hurriedly raised his hands, even as he inwardly groaned at the amount of meditation he would have to do to get that image out of his head, "No, no need to explain that story further, thank you."
"Disappointment: Very well, Jedi. Suit yourself." Anakin could swear the droid's vocal tone was very knowing and even teasing him. "Explanation: As I was saying, my master seems to understand what I like very well, but sometimes lapses occur where she compliments me."
"Dare I even ask? You don't like being complimented?"
"Answer: No Jedi. Meatbag compliments are statistically very likely to be couched in falsehood, for fear of giving offense. Explanation: Therefore I prefer being insulted and even derided. Statements such as these are more likely to be accurate and truthful. It helps me to improve and I really like improving my code. Conclusion: Therefore I like it when meatbags insult my capabilities and performance."
Anakin felt a headache coming as he contemplated that logic train. He knew there were some cultures in the galaxy and even subcultures of humans that enjoyed the negative elements of life and found it arousing or likable, but seeing it in a droid was kriffing bizarre.
He promptly glared at the masochistic droid, "Okay, let's just get to Master Unduli."
"Statement: I shall follow, Jedi."
Unduli was conducting a briefing for her clone commanders on a nearby hill, in the shadow of a destroyed gun emplacement, which had a good view of the distant droid factory.
A small holoprojector planted in the ground, beamed a rendering of the terrain and the factory itself.
"Gentlemen, the bridge is our first objective. Close range scans have revealed numerous fixed defensive positions," Unduli explained, the holo began slowly resolving to show the repeater emplacements. "Once these guns are neutralized we can push for the factory itself. Do make sure as well that you have double war loadouts." The clones didn't react to that but their feelings were easily sensed. "It's not ideal, I know, but there's no telling what new toys the Separatists are making in there to throw at us. I don't want us running out of ammunition. We can't count on our logistical rear to be able to resupply us due to the dangerous uncertainty of what we're facing. Everyone understand?"
"Sir, yes sir," the clones chorused.
"Good, you are dismissed."
The commanders nodded, giving brief salutes before leaving.
"Knight Skywalker, it's good to see you again."
"And you, Master Unduli."
As usual, the Mirialan Jedi was in her conservative brown robes and headdress, even in this generally hot and dusty environment. He knew it was both a statement of her mastery of internal applications of the Force - being able to regulate her body's processes to ignore the discomfort at all times - and her race's conservative and spiritual culture.
"Welcome, HK-47," she turned to the droid. "I take it you are going to participate in the coming battle?"
"Answer: Correct, meatbag."
Far from taking offense, Unduli merely quirked a slight smile. "Your experience and capabilities will be most useful, I'm sure." Anakin was slightly surprised at the Master's attitude regarding the old droid. Naturally, Unduli picked up on that. "Unlike the rest of my colleagues on the council, Skywalker, I have a penchant for ancient history. They might've written off HK as the relic of a past best forgotten, but I knew instantly what an opportunity it was. I even consulted with some friends in the Green Jedi, who have more intact ancient historical records, which clearly mention HK and some of its exploits."
She smiled at the droid, "Do tell your master to expect some Green Jedi seeking an audience with her to obtain permission to interview you."
"Statement: Note recorded. I do hope the Green Jedi of this era are less onerous and annoying."
"You shall just have to wait and see, HK. Let us speak of both your roles." She gestured to the active holo and it zoomed in to focus on the bridge. "As you can see, a frontal assault is risky. Our losses will be high."
"Our losses will be even higher the longer we wait. The factory hasn't yet reached full capacity. Scans from orbit are showing there are still dormant assembly lines inside, which are being activated."
"Indeed, but there is an alternative, which is what I want you two to do." She made an upward gesture and the holo revealed a virtual hive of snaking and coiling tunnels underneath the factory complex, going deep into the earth all the way to the bottom of the 120 meter ravine. "Our close proximity has allowed ground penetration scans to be conducted. Every Geonosian building has a series of catacombs beneath it that run deep underground. As you can see, some of the tunnels run close enough to the cliff wall that you could cut your way inside."
"So infiltration and sabotage of the main reactor?" Anakin surmised.
"Correct. HK can download the exact scans of the tunnels and lead you straight there. After which you can extract before the reactor blows."
"Then there's just the small matter of remaining undetected. How many Geonosian lifesigns are down in those tunnels?"
"Scans are inconclusive, unfortunately. There are areas which remain opaque to our equipment, most likely due to shielding or interference. The most we were able to count was around ninety. It is highly likely that the true number is much higher, unless we are dealing with a mostly abandoned area."
"Statement: My own chassis has integrated lifesign detectors, I will be able to easily effect an infiltration. None of these meatboxes will know we're even there," HK declared.
"Meatbox?" Anakin couldn't help but ask and immediately regretted it.
"Explanation: These Geonosians have a non-flexible chitin exoskeleton and fleshy insides, Jedi. Meatbag is not an appropriate descriptive term."
"Didn't I hear you call them bugs?"
"Gentleman and droid, can we please focus," Unduli pointedly said. "To even the odds for you in the hive, I intend to attack with my legion across the bridge. Drawing off as many Geonosians as possible and focusing Poggle's attention forward."
Anakin sighed with worry, Ahsoka's warning ringing in his ears, "Do you have any air support?"
"If the bridge is to be a battlefield, we risk destroying it with air support, Skywalker."
"I'm thinking more of what Poggle can throw at us that we haven't seen yet. Anything they design since the war began will more than likely be made with our offensive capabilities in mind."
"I see your point," Unduli scratched her chin in thought. "Whatever it is we'd have to be a tempting enough target for them to use the new weapons on, and draw it out across the bridge."
"Where a Y-Wing bomb can handle it."
"Assuming that they haven't developed a countermeasure for that," she reasonably pointed out. She stared at her chrono. "Confirm time, 14:03 in three, two, one."
Anakin tapped his own chrono, "Confirm, we're synchronized."
"I plan to begin my assault at 14:30. Given the flight capabilities you both demonstrated, that should be more than enough time."
"We'll get it done, Master Unduli."
"Then may the Force be with you."
Anakin and HK entered the unsecured zone of about two hundred meters of land before the deep ravine. There was a substantial amount of cover to be had though and scans had revealed a number of hidden outposts in the tall plinth towers that the Geonosians still occupied. It forced them to take a meandering course from cover to cover.
HK's ability to be sneaky in the first place was quite impressive. His GU-chassis wasn't outright designed for it, but one of the things the droid had insisted on in his upgrades was cushioned joints and active sound canceling emitters that the droid could activate to negate any noise from its internal mechanisms. Even without that, the experience the droid showed was obvious. It had learned to run whilst pushing its center of gravity down, going at a full pace, even going down onto all four limbs of its chassis when necessary.
Finally, they reached the edge of the cliff and lowered themselves down, only climbing a few meters down before stopping.
He gave a few hand signals to the droid.
HK's reply was to simply let go, push off from the cliff face and fall.
He took a deep breath and did the same.
A mere four seconds later, he flipped in the air, extending his will outward and bled his momentum through the Force, landing with a slight squat into the ravine floor. HK was slightly slower, having to use his foot jets to slow down enough to hit the landing.
It was a shadowy, cooler world down at the bottom, with only reflected light from the cliff face reaching down. He was quite thankful for his helmet and its filters at this point - the air was very dusty as a result of their landing and he didn't want to know what microbes lived down here, nor did he want to breathe them in.
HK was already heading straight towards the cliff face in front of them, bringing one of his cannons to bear off his back. With one metallic hand, it scratched out the rough outline of a door shape in the rock in front of them.
Anakin drew his lightsaber, which snapped to life before he stabbed it into the cliff face at the indicated spots and began smoothly cutting.
A slight gesture of his finger was all that was needed for the large door shaped slab of glowing rock to pull itself out of the cliff and land on the ground.
HK instantly entered the moment the new door was out of the way.
Beyond was an even darker world that was only lit with the occasional globe of eerie green biological plant matter. The Geonosian tunnels were tall enough to stand in, and were clearly styled in their biologically inspired round architecture. These lowest levels were also definitely 'catacombs' as there were alcoves containing the empty exoskeletons of dead Geonosians. The sounds of distant chittering and occasional crumbling of rock was the only sound that reached their ears. It all combined to produce an area that was straight out of some nightmare.
Complicating navigation in the tunnels was that the builders assumed those using it would be Geonosians capable of flight. HK couldn't risk activating his feet jets, lest have the sound echo everywhere throughout the hive.
At the first junction requiring a direct upward traversal, Anakin Force jumped the height easily. Then using TK to levitate the droid up to join him.
It was amazing how the droid could silently express its disapproval at being 'Force handled' in this manner, using the 'eyes' of the GU-chassis to effect a glare at him.
Anakin merely gave him a hand signal to the effect of 'shut up, clanker and navigate'.
At the next junction they had to quickly hide as both of them sensed two lifesigns approaching.
Two Geonosians armed with sonic rifles were patrolling and chittering at each other in their near incomprehensibly fast language.
HK didn't have any problems with translating but only signed that it was the inconsequential babble of two bored soldiers.
They moved on without incident.
A look at his chrono confirmed that Unduli's attack had started two minutes ago.
The next junction required another jump upward, but HK signaled an immediate halt before they could even turn into the corridor.
The reason why was obvious when Anakin slightly peaked an eye down there.
It wasn't really a corridor.
It was the Geonosian equivalent of a barracks.
All down its length, Geonosians were hanging from their equivalent of 'beds', which were no more than a few rods and bars bolted into the ceiling to provide handholds for their many limbs, as they slept upside down. There had to be over a hundred in view in that single corridor.
Scans had missed this completely and even in the Force it was difficult to truly sense them. It was like they were tiny candles of life seen at a far distance. Their 'sleeping' was probably a natural form of hibernation as well, which made sense on a world like Geonosis, food and energy was precious and too many mouths to feed was a problem.
Anakin signaled a question, "Another way?"
"Only a long route, no time," HK replied.
The droid did its version of a crouch and began moving down the corridor. Anakin embraced the Force, holding a light TK shell around himself to absorb any sound he emitted that couldn't easily be stopped.
Things were going well until halfway down the corridor, when he sensed a Geonosian above him beginning to wake.
He didn't know what could've given the impetus for it, maybe the thing had to go to the bathroom for all he knew.
The problem was HK was moving ahead and didn't have its head turned so he could signal him silently. HK's own life sign sensor was simply the native police model the GU came standard with and couldn't pick up such sensitive minutia as the Force could.
He had to resort to a trick he had seen Ahsoka pull off once. He held his forefinger with his thumb and flicked it out, trying to use the most minute amount of energy he could.
It still resulted in HK's leg almost being yanked out from under it.
The droid barely managed to keep its balance and it turned to glare at him.
He merely pointed up in reply and signed.
The droid in the next moment, proved why it had the designation of an assassin.
HK moved with a frightening silent speed, reached up with the dexterous five fingered metal hand and clamped it around the neck of the waking Geonosian, then squeezed and twisted.
He could sense how the droid had used its anti-sound systems to cover the cracking of the bony exoskeleton, as the Geonosians head was twisted in an unnatural way, before being completely severed and pulled off. The alien's limbs also tightened in death, gripping its sleeping poles so it didn't fall and cause a racket.
Anakin breathed a sigh of relief and followed HK forward.
The droid curiously kept a hold of the severed head and only dumped it when they exited the corridor into the first darkened alcove they found.
It was only a few moments later that he puzzled out why the droid had done that. It wasn't to give a token effort at a funerary rite. More to hide evidence from the other sleeping Geonosians, in case they woke up too. Their eyes were pointed towards the floor, and if they opened them only to see a severed head… that would be rather alarming. It would take the immediate neighbors of the killed alien to turn their attention up and right to see their dead fellow.
The route forward had no more 'barracks' on this level and in this way, they made good time ascending through seven more levels, only having to avoid the occasional patrol.
The noise of machinery and grinding steel greeted them at last at the next junction and they looked up into many layers of distant conveyors that were carrying a constant flow of newly manufactured B1 battle droids.
HK didn't indicate an upward direction though, and merely continued moving forward and took the next right.
This led to the first metallic door seen in the hive so far.
The droid approached the logic port of the controls, made a fist with its right hand, and an interface probe shot out and was inserted.
It took barely four seconds for the spike to work and the doors parted.
It was a steel tunnel leading up with rung handholds every meter or so. A rather curious thing for a flying species, but clearly the Geonosians made provision for members who either couldn't fly or perhaps where flying was not an option.
HK began climbing and Anakin followed, subtly using the Force to reinforce his strength and stamina to just as tirelessly ascend through the tunnel.
Another twenty meters higher the tunnel seemed to dead end, but HK found another control panel which he hacked to disable an alarm and disengage the lock.
The droid effortlessly pushed the heavy lid aside and climbed out of sight.
Anakin climbed the last rungs and emerged from the tunnel into a very large, cavernous circular room.
Dominating the central area, jutting from the ceiling and floor, was the typical arrangement and machinery of a hypermatter catalyzed fusion reactor. The room was also lined with control banks and computers all along its perimeter. Just listening to the thing in operation was enough for Anakin to determine that the Geonosians liked running the reactor at the bleeding edge of performance, eschewing any idea of efficiency.
"Statement: Most curious, I'm detecting no security mechanisms or sensors. Not even a simple visual sensor. Conclusion: The Geonosians are overly confident no one would ever be able to infiltrate this deep into their hive factory."
"Let's make them regret that, shall we?" Anakin removed the backpack containing all their explosives. Thermal detonators with both timers and manual remote detonation.
They walked around the central stalk of the main reactor, placing and arming the charges as quickly as they could, in nooks and crannies that would make them as hidden as possible to casual observation.
"Exfiltration," Anakin ordered.
The droid returned to the tunnel entrance, only to swiftly close and lock it down.
"Statement: We have a problem, Jedi. Explanation: There is a Geonosian patrol moving up the tunnel. My sensors are also picking up increased lifesign activity. The Mirialan meatbag's attack has stirred the hive, our exfiltration route is no longer viable unless we wish to openly fight. Request: Can we please do that? I prefer that to all this sneaking around, Jedi."
"Is something faulty with your self-preservation protocols? That shield doesn't make you invulnerable. Massed sonic fire or a missile launcher is still bad news for you."
"Acquiescence: Very well, Jedi. The only other option is to go out the front of the factory."
"You do know how many droids and Geonosians there are between us and the door?"
"Answer: Acutely Jedi. However, when I interfaced with the computer system to override the locks, I managed to have a brief look at what they've been building here." HK rushed towards one of the main doors leading into the reactor room. "Encouragement: Come Jedi."
"Fine," he ran to follow the crazy droid.
They exited the reactor room just as the tunnel lid was opening again.
From there they were in the purely industrialized spaces, with none of the typical organic construction. Sneaking here was both easier and harder, due to the sightlines you could see pretty far down corridors, but the bulkheads provided handy hiding spots. The Geonosians clearly anticipated having to fight in these halls.
It was here that they encountered the first droid patrols, which forced Anakin to activate his lifesign dampener.
Luck was with them in this case, as the patrol was only a trio of B1s who dismissed the blip on their scanners as a glitch.
They arrived at their destination, which was a large processing area for the production from one of the main factory lines. A production line that was building a new kind of tank, which had to be the threat that Ahsoka had warned about.
It was a beast of a thing, nearly twelve meters long, five meters at its highest point, with a curved sloping hull, thick armor and hinging flange of armor that could move over that main hull. It had two twin blaster cannons mounted on the side and two turreted laser cannons in the nose. The coverage meant infantry could only safely attack the tank directly from the rear. The heavy weapons it had weren't visible, but he'd bet his lightsaber that it was directly under the hinged flange of armor.
Five B1s were clustered around it, doing checks and final inspection on the tank.
Anakin silently signed a question on what HK planned to do, though he had a pretty good idea of what the assassin droid had in mind.
In reply the droid removed his rotary blaster cannon, signaling that Anakin better not lose it or forget to bring it.
HK walked into the processing area like he owned the place and approached the B1 crew with unhurried steps.
"Hey, who are you?" The B1 with a blue colored stripe decorating the left side of its chassis, looked up in surprise from its datapad.
"Answer: I've been sent as a new supervisor, Tactical Droid T3491 calculates that this line could be more efficient. So he sent me to motivate you."
"Just one microsecond," the B1 objected in its annoying tinny nasal voice, "we have been perfectly efficient. There must be something wrong with T3491's processors if it calculates that we have been inefficient. What kind of droid are you, anyway? Scanning network… that's odd, you are not in the network."
"Explanation: If I was in the network, that would defeat my purpose. I am an assassin droid, you see." HK was now within less than a meter of the droid.
"Assassin droid? What use could this factory possibly have for you…"
In the next moment, HK had produced two lightsabers which ignited into red blades and with two efficient swipes sent the B1 supervisor falling to the floor in glowing chunks of metal.
The remaining B1s dropped their tools and tried to reach for the blasters clamped on their backs.
HK moved with the top speed of his chassis and had dispatched three more droids before the remaining three could bring their weapons to bear.
The droid easily anticipated the shots and weaved through the sightlines of the B1s, completing a circuit around the tank and efficiently rendered the remaining battle droids to the scrap heaps.
Anakin broke from his cover and rushed forward with HK's cannon carried by his right hand, while his lit lightsaber was ready to defend from his left.
The droid stowed his blades and accepted his cannon. "Statement: We have triggered an alarm in the network. A response squad of B2s are on the way." HK grabbed a datapad on the floor that had been carried by the B1 leader, a few taps on it and a hatch opened on the rear of the tank.
Anakin followed the droid inside and sealed the hatch.
Inside was a small walkway that spanned the length of the tank, with enclosed machinery and control panels. At a glance he could see the repurposed reactor that could just as easily have been placed into a starfighter or even a small freighter, but this wasn't the time to be distracted by his tech savvy.
HK led the way into the small forward control room and using the codes from the liberated datapad, started up the tank's systems.
Anakin dropped into the uncomfortable driver's seat and quickly familiarized himself with the controls. The steering was with a yoke arrangement, controlling turn and what little altitude the stupendously heavy repulsortank could attain, which was a maximum of two meters. He was somewhat impressed at the speed indicators given the mass - the tank would top out at 40kph.
"What's the main guns on this thing, HK?"
The droid was managing the gunner station like he'd already absorbed the CIS field manual on the thing, which in retrospect he probably had taken from the datapad as well.
"Indirect fire, variable warhead launcher - currently loaded with shaped baradium mortar projectiles, maximum range - 12 kilometers."
"At least we can outrange the thing, though this ray shielding makes me think it won't matter. Not even our AV7 artillery can penetrate this shielding."
"Analysis: This armor would also laugh at the current mass drivers on Republic AT-TEs. The indirect, arcing fire also makes taking cover and any form of trench line warfare pointless. Warning: Enemy approaching, charging weapons. Jedi, I suggest you move us with high speed along this interior route, take the first left turn, it will lead directly to the main entrance of the factory."
Anakin pulled down the visual periscope sensor and grabbed the yoke. The tank's repulsors hummed to life in a deep eerie rumbling. He pushed on the throttle at his feet and the tank lurched forward - smashing three B1s and a B2 to pieces.
He accelerated the tank to 35 kph, not feeling willing to really push the new tank to its limit as it was inevitable that there would be performance issues and he really didn't want to break down in the middle of a hostile droid factory.
The tank's guns spewed laser and plasma at everything that moved in their forward and side arcs. HK even managed to slice Geonosians out of the air with the turreted lasers.
He had to throttle down for the turn as the momentum on the tank was considerable, even with the limited inertial dampening systems on-board.
He still underestimated it, however, and slammed the right side of the tank into a wall, utterly crushing unlucky battle droids which had been charging forward and firing ineffectually. Even B2 repeaters and rockets just bounced off the shielding and hull.
He pushed the throttle to extricate the tank and breathed a sigh of relief when it smoothly pushed any debris aside and got up to speed again.
The bright light of the giant main entrance was a mere eighty meters ahead and was wide enough to fit three tanks moving abreast.
Zooming in with the pericope optics he could see the main battle still being fought outside in the distance with a squad of 10 CIS tanks and the Republic was in clear retreat.
There was the wreckage of two tanks that had been hit with air strikes, but with their advance between the spired, craggy terrain, it had become impossible to get accurate locks from the air, not to mention that the clone troopers were too close to the enemy tanks at this point.
The light ahead began to dim, as the giant main doors were beginning to close.
"Statement: You must go faster, Jedi."
"This thing's acceleration is not good, I've got it floored."
"Calculation: At this rate, the doors will close in front of us. Deduction: We will need to improvise. Readying the main weapon."
"Are you sure that'll work?"
"Statement: The weapons will destroy the door with no problem, it remains to be seen if the structure around the door will handle it. Admission: I have no data on Geonosian building standards."
"We've got no choice at this point. It won't take them long to begin security sweeps of critical points and our bombs will be discovered. Do it."
"Acknowledgement: Very well. Calculating optimal trajectory and firing pattern. Opening weapon flange… firing."
Anakin stared anxiously as the door completely shut, plunging the entire exit tunnel into darkness. The tank reverberated from its launcher cycling rapidly. He vaguely saw bright orange globes flying through the darkness and quickly shut off the periscope.
They were so shielded and protected that the only indication that something had happened at all was the tank lost forward speed slightly.
"Statement: Doors destroyed, recommend you turn by four degrees to port in two seconds."
Anakin turned on the yoke, using only instrument readings to judge the turn.
The tank abruptly lost speed again and an awful screeching sound echoed throughout the hull.
"Instruction: Maximum acceleration."
Anakin floored the pedal, the engines and repulsors whined into an extreme pitch.
There was a lurch that translated through the inertial dampeners and suddenly the tank was moving smoothly forward again, building up to its top speed.
He pulled his periscope down again and had to hurriedly turn right on the yoke, to avoid the tank potentially tumbling into the ravine.
"Instruction: Set a course for the enemy tanks. Calculating trajectories."
"You think the main weapons can take them?" Anakin asked as he drove the tank onto the bridge.
"Answer: Yes. It seems that the CIS took into account the possiblity of the tank being used against them. A direct strike on the aft armor with the main weapon should destroy them."
"We better hurry before they send another tank on our tail then."
He pulled the detonator for the bombs from his belt, flicked the cap and pressed down hard. He got a green light from the device, but turned his periscope view to focus on the factory building behind them.
They were halfway across the bridge when multiple secondary explosions began bursting from the tall Geonosian structure.
Then a larger one suddenly erupted from the base of the building that sent out a visible shockwave that pulled dust and earth with it.
The tall spires toppled and began falling, creating a rapidly expanding cloud of earth that quickly engulfed all sight of the factory.
Their own tank was across the bridge and to relative safety, but the cloud of dust had completely blinded standard vision from being able to make out anything.
"Statement: Switching scanning modes."
Anakin did the same and turned the yoke to avoid a rock spire and followed the path that the other tanks had taken.
"Report: First target in sight. Firing."
His attention was diverted when his com link began beeping.
"Skywalker, I sense that's you in that awful tank," Master Unduli's relieved voice echoed across the radio.
"Yes, Master. HK and I managed to commandeer one. Do tell the fighters waiting overhead that there is a friendly CIS tank on field."
"Will do and my congratulations to you both. Ah, I see they're not so invulnerable to ground weaponry after all."
"A demo pack slapped on their rear armor should also do the trick, as should repeated hits from AT-TEs, but getting them in a position to do so is the problem."
"Make sure you keep that tank in good condition, Skywalker."
"I'll do my best, Master." He cut the com link. "HK, let's get rid of these things."
"Glee: It will be my considerable pleasure, Jedi."
I walked onto the bridge of Resolute savoring a large cup of caf. Nine hours of sleep and a very hearty breakfast had done wonders for my recovery. Only once before had I flirted with excessive Force usage, a week or so before my padawan trials. There wasn't any real comparison or metaphor that could be used to explain it to a layman. The condition any Jedi found themselves in afterward usually depended on many factors; age, body mass, species, their 'strength' in the Force and others, some of which was only theorized and couldn't be empirically measured, such as an individual's 'enlightenment'.
I knew more, but only because of acausal metaknowledge.
Which basically indicated that it was actually a first step into discorporating and retaining your consciousness into the Force itself.
My own manifestation was bone weary exhaustion and falling into a long, literally uninterruptible sleep. You could have an air raid siren blaring directly into my montrals and I wouldn't even twitch.
The command chair turned at my approach to reveal Admiral Yularen, who immediately stood.
"Commander, welcome back. I trust your recovery is proceeding apace?"
"Morning, evening, afternoon whatever, and yes, it's proceeding, report?"
"The weapons factory was successfully destroyed eight hours ago. Recovery and intelligence operations are proceeding forward with no resistance. Aerospace operations are ongoing, we're keeping the Geonosians underground and unable to muster any significant force concentration. Masters Kenobi and Mundi are spearheading airborne elements to attack what industrial installations can be identified." He handed me a datapad.
I placed my caf on the armrest of the command chair and began speed reading through the various reports.
"Ah, this is a nice surprise, we actually managed to capture an intact… are we seriously calling this thing a 'supertank'?"
Yuralen's mustache twitched in amusement, "The term originated from among the clone troopers and it's stuck, I'm afraid. We can expect a suitable reporting name from Intelligence within a few days."
"Which will probably be swiftly ignored. No word on Archduke Poggle?"
"None, though last I heard Master Unduli was leading a small recon squad in pursuit of him. He fled the instant the alarm was sounded by General Skywalker's infiltration."
"Which for Poggle is quite as simple as opening the nearest window and flying away," I said wryly.
"Indeed, though our operations on the planet have hit a bit of a snag," he gestured towards the forward transparisteel viewports.
"Oh, that's a rather big sandstorm."
Geonosis' entire northern hemisphere, the bit that was facing Resolute currently, was engulfed in a broiling brown mass.
"The last word we had was that General Unduli had tracked Poggle to the Progate Temple, apparently a place of religious observance for the Geonosians. Something rather odd, because it was a place bombed already due to the unusually high concentration of enemy stationed there. Most communications are currently affected by the storm."
"Do we still at least have data links to the staging area?"
"Yes, powerful enough transmitters can cut through the interference."
It said something about Unduli's commitment to end the threat of Archduke Poggle, that she would continue her pursuit in the middle of a sandstorm.
"Well, whatever happens, we have to wait for the weather to clear up, there's no flying into that mess. Do we have any scans of the 'supertank' yet?"
"It's one of the last reports, commander."
"Good, some light reading to look forward to. Troop casualties?" I braced myself for the answer.
"Across all four legions, currently standing at thirty one percent, fatalities at twenty seven."
"The sonic weapons?"
Yularen nodded, "Very few troops survive getting hit with them. Their armor just isn't really built for resisting such exotic weaponry. Making it worse is that sonic blasts have a splash radius, which means even inaccurate shots that hit the ground near a trooper can be debilitating and cause casualties."
It was a sad fact that even if every clone had the late-war Phase 2 armor right now, it wouldn't have made a difference. Even if you built armor that could resist or stop a sonic blast, it would simply be too specialized and would never see widespread adoption.
"No sign of possible reinforcements from the CIS?"
"No reports from our scouts on the Trellius Route and Crystal Passage so far. Either the Separatists have adopted a wait and see approach for the outcome of the battle or they are merely delayed. I hesitate to make this prediction, but given their predilection for mercantile behavior I don't think we have to worry about them sending a rescue expedition."
"Better to cut their losses and not incur more, fighting an already lost battle," I stepped forward and finally took my seat. "Resolute's status?"
"All systems nominal, commander. All fighter wings are on board for repair and maintenance. The storm's actually been a blessing in that regard."
"Good, thank you Admiral. I have the bridge."
"The bridge is yours, commander."
That little ritual of command done with I began reading and getting caught up with events in the greater galaxy that was coming through the comm channels.
The most significant of which was the successful occupation of Onderon by the CIS. It meant that the Separatists now had control of a significant chunk of the Lesser Lantillian hyperspace route, which would now be a key route towards the south and the core of the galaxy from their space. It would mean the CIS had created yet another possible invasion avenue that in turn needed to be locked down by the creation of yet another battlefront.
It rather made me feel extremely grateful that I was not saddled with the headache of the greater strategic decisions of the war.
Another report coming in detailed the successful defense of Dantooine by Mace Windu and his assigned legion of clone troops. It made for suitably dry reading for a military report, but I knew it belied the sheer grit and strength in the Force shown by Windu in the battle. His forces had been outnumbered by five to one and they still managed to carry the day by careful use of the new PLX personal missile launchers and what had to be a level of Force Wave that I was a long way from even attempting, let alone claim mastery of.
There was a reason Windu had been able to come within a hair's breadth of killing Palpatine and the Defense of Dantooine was a perfect demonstration for why.
My personal com link started beeping for attention.
I flicked a button on my gauntlet with slight annoyance, "Yes, HK, what is it?"
A holo of the droid appeared in front of me, "Greetings: Hello Master. Inquiry: I just want to confirm whether you still want me to remain with Jedi Skywalker?"
"Yes, what's the situation down there?"
"Report: The vexing sandstorm is starting to clear and it's predicted that flight operations will be able to resume within the hour. The meatbag Unduli also seems to have encountered resistance at the Progate Temple and contact has been lost with her."
"You are to stick to my master like glue, HK and make sure you use lightsabers first when engaging, understood?"
"Acknowledgement: Understood master. Is there anything else?"
"No."
"Very, well. Signing you off."
The holo vanished. There was no way we could allow any Jedi to be controlled by that bloody Geonosian queen and her brain worms, that went doubly so for Anakin.
A few hours later, to get over my worries about the potential for disaster on Geonosis, I was down among the 501st Legion's parked ranks of AT-TEs. The area set aside for it was roughly half empty, with most having been carried down to the planet by gunship carriers. With me was one of the legion's quartermasters and engineers, a clone with the name of Gritt.
It was simply inevitable that clones would end up with personal adopted names that repeated themselves - there were just too many of them and in similar professions among the army. Usually, it wasn't the case within a clone legion, but when legions came together for a major operation, then things could get confusing and humorous.
"Okay, let's walk through the main gun on the AT-TE. It's an electrothermal system? Power vaporizes propellant to create a plasma that creates the pressure?"
"Correct commander," Gritt answered with a slight frown on his face. The man was only wearing half his typical Phase 1 armor set, with this top being a set of red overalls with many, many pockets filled with pads, the occasional tool, code cylinders and so on.
"What velocity are we talking about? 2.5 kilometers per second?"
"That's the manufacturer's specs," he shook his head. "In practice it will vary depending on the planet you're on, atmospheric pressure, local gravity and so on. Down on Geonosis we're getting anything from 1.9 to 2.2. That's a typical variance because the guns and their barrels are at different points in their maintenance cycles."
"Have you got any of their ammo I can look at?"
"Nothing live up here, commander. It's all down in the stowage as per safety regulation."
"As it should be, I was more looking for a shell, the business end of the thing that hits the enemy. You can also please relax, this is not an inspection."
"Oh, sorry commander, it's just we rarely see top ranks down here." Gritt scratched the back of his shaved head awkwardly. "Right, shell, this way, commander."
He led me off to the side and towards a small office workshop that was clearly his little domain, with all sorts of typical knick-knacks, souvenirs of campaigns and the planets he'd been on. The place was still perfect according to regs, but with the personal bits layered on top.
With no effort at all he lifted a tank gun shell that was about as tall as his leg and handed it over.
Manufacturer specs put its weight at about six kilograms, fifty-five millimeters in diameter and it was shaped in a typical rifled 'bullet' fashion.
"Durasteel?"
"Yes commander, that's the standard piercing shell shot from these Firefront 04 Mass Drivers."
"Are there others?"
"Yes, but they don't really see much use. There's an explosive shell, they're awful for going against Seppie tanks, but they do see occasional use if a tanker has to clear out a bunch of weak clankers to stop them swarming. Most don't like loading them because if there's an ammo explosion - well, then your chances of survival are even lower."
It really boggled the mind, the energies I was dealing with here, but when you looked at it from an interstellar civilization standpoint, it was pretty standard. That the CIS had developed armor that could bounce off a round like this… it was delivering over seven hundred thousand joules or 15 kiloNewtons to target every 3 seconds! When you dealt with energies like this it was no wonder that no one worried about much more than speed performance when it came to mass drivers.
"You're aware of the new tank the Seppies threw at us down there?"
He nodded grimly, "Monster of a tank that. I can tell you commander, there's some grim talk coming from the tank crews at the idea of facing more of those in the future."
"Whether the CIS can actually fund them into widespread use is open for debate, it's also a prototype and it might turn out that they're just a testbed for other technologies. It's what actually brings me down here." I handed over a datapad.
Gritt tapped it and began reading, "Armor piercing, fin stabilized, discarding sabot?"
I opened my mouth to explain but my com link beeped for attention.
"Yes, Master?"
"Ahsoka, we've got a problem down here. I need you to order a full quarantine of Geonosis," Anakin declared grimly. "Stop everything. No more ships coming down. We've already stopped our traffic from going up."
My brain seemed to struggle to get in gear for a moment.
"Ah- at once, Master."
I frantically changed channels. "Admiral Yularen, FC officers, all ships in space are to return immediately. Geonosis is hereby quarantined. Any ships that are in-atmosphere and haven't landed are cleared to return. Ships that have broken seals and landed are quarantined."
"Understood, Commander."
"Master, what happened?"
"We've captured Poggle, but we've discovered how the Geonosians managed to keep such a high level of resistance going, despite everything they've endured. They have a queen that can create a parasitic creature that essentially controls the individual Geonosian, even if that individual is dead. She can also do the same to other species."
It was crazy from a medical standpoint but if the parasite could act as a substitute brain of sorts and have enough energy to at least fire off the nerves of the dead body - yeah, zombie town.
"Has anyone been infected down there?"
"We're not sure. HK has run scans and the strike team that went to the temple is clean. It was a close thing though, Master Unduli was nearly taken over. The parasite worms are capable of fast movement on their own and it's entirely possible that some may have abandoned their hosts upon 'death' and entered the clones after the battle, when their helmets were off."
"None of the wounded have been shuttled to the star destroyers thankfully."
"It's our one stroke of luck, yes, but we have to be sure, Ahsoka. I want you to carefully approach the med chief on Resolute, sense his thoughts and body, if he's clean then inform him. Get a team together and calibrate the ship's internal scanners to see if any are aboard. Then do the same for the other destroyers. I'm sending you the data we've gathered on the parasite."
My armor's internal computer pinged that it had received a file. "Got it. I take it we can't politely ask the queen to remove the parasites?"
"No, not unless she can survive tons of rock falling on her."
"Figures…"
Prescience and instinct had me dodging to the left to avoid the grappling hands of the quartermaster, who suddenly seemed very intent on wringing my neck.
My armored knee drove into his midsection in the next moment, along with a Force Push, sending him crashing into the shelving of his office.
Gritt recovered immediately and he literally growled at me, pulling out a hyperspanner from his belt.
"Nope."
TK had him off his feet and quickly I began stripping him of anything that could be used as a weapon.
His growl turned to a hiss and he opened his mouth wide… a yellowish worm began poking its head out, twisting and preparing to jump towards me.
"Mistake."
The parasite worm was yanked out and I used the Force to crush it from all directions.
All the fight left Gritt and his body became limp.
I put a hand on his brow and carefully sensed…
"You'll live, but I don't envy your headache when you wake up, Gritt."
I lowered the clone to the floor.
If the clone quartermaster on Resolute was infected… then there was really no telling how far it had spread.
I plunged my senses into the probability streams and tried to find the answer, only to come back with a rather grim conclusion.
The lack of any defenses in space was the key.
The Geonosian queen wanted the Republic to land and fight on the ground. She had instructed Poggle to do the usual defensive campaign, all the while she had sent her zombiefied warriors to fly in among the living Geonosians, waiting for the opportunities to quietly infect the GAR.
Geonosis was in fact, one giant trap on a level I hadn't expected.
If the entire task force, including Jedi were infected, it could potentially lead to catastrophic consequences.
Nothing of the original timeline had hinted at this. It had only been an accidental exposure then, which resulted in a single medical freighter being infected.
My mind had been so preoccupied with trying to improve the awful battle plan and countering the new weapons the CIS were producing here, that it had never occurred to me that the brain parasites would be the true danger that we would face here.
Gritt had been infected when he'd gone down to the planet to attend to the damaged vehicles of the 501st.
How many more on Resolute and the other destroyers? If this got out of hand, we could end up having to fight our own troops.
"Well, time to fix your fuck up, Ahsoka," I grumbled aloud to myself.
The man, fallen to the Dark Side, had clearly become so paranoid, that he seemingly wanted a plan to kill everyone he ever met, even his fellow converts to the Sith cause
Where's a handy Death Star when you need it to just destroy the kriffing planet that spawned them? Or at least, the political will to be allowed to Base Delta Zero the whole planet.
Also, why do I see Sidious taking this, causing an outbreak on Courscant in the Senate and starting a RedGoa'uld Scare to eliminate people who he needs gone from poltics?
Well, that would be a little ahead of schedule. No need to rush.
Haven't seen a good brain worm parasite story in a while. Hmm, not even Stargate really played out this scenario fully. Probably because they didn't want to kill off half their cast, given what poor sports the Goa'uld are.
Going to nit-pick here. It would not be called a sabot.
Sabot originally refers to a wooden shoe, carved out of a single piece of wood.
When the French started to ad wooden sleeves to their canon rounds to avoid misalignment in their cannons, they referred to it as a sabot due to visual similarities.
The only reason to call it a "discarding sabot" is if you have the same historical context.
Sabots have no history in star wars, as internal misalignment has never been an issue with plasma and blaster canons.
On the other hand, it makes sense for Ashoka to call it that. Though no-one would understand why she refers to the sabot as a sabot, and honestly that could be a fun scene where everyone is like "i get 'armor Pricing' and 'fin stabilized' but what's a sabot?"
And Ashoka has to explain herself.
On the other hand, it makes sense for Ashoka to call it that. Though no-one would understand why she refers to the sabot as a sabot, and honestly that could be a fun scene where everyone is like "i get 'armor Pricing' and 'fin stabilized' but what's a sabot?"
And Ashoka has to explain herself.
Ashoka isn't speaking English (or French) in the first place. So either they already have the concept of a device to fit a small projectile into a larger barrel, in which case she presumably used the Galactic Basic word for it and it was simply translated to 'sabot' for the benefit of the readers, or else she's the first to come up with the idea and she gets to coin a term for it and 'sabot' is as good a name as any.
A/N: Here we go. Thanks to all the new patrons who joined over the last week. All of you are awesome and keeping me going. Enjoy.
Chapter 26
The first thing I did was to calm down and accept that I couldn't have foreseen everything, releasing the emotions of frustration and anger, letting it pass through me and into the Force.
Do or do not, there is no try.
In the next moment, I expanded my awareness and senses to encompass the entirety of Resolute. I felt every erg of energy that flowed through the ship's conduits like blood flowing through veins, the movement of air through the spaces of the ship, pushed along by the air conditioning systems, every droid and power source, as tiny clusters of stars that moved through the corridors and among the crawlspaces… then the life of every clone.
I narrowed my focus, remembering how Gritt had felt in the Force, how the brain worm had felt…
The number of infected I counted with was both a relief and a worry.
It wasn't numerically overwhelming, but the damage they could do given where they were positioning themselves was the problem.
I tapped my comlink and got a private encrypted channel directly to my R3 droid.
"R3, I sense you're near my fighter at the moment in Hangar Bay D4, find the nearest logic port so that you can get access to the entire Resolute network."
"At once, mistress."
The astromech droid stopped its maintenance work on my Z95, pushed out its roller track and sped to the nearest terminal. The logic probe popped out and it slotted into a computer jack on a nearby hanger systems terminal.
"Good, give me a diagnostic on the internal sensors."
"I am unable to comply, mistress. The system is offline and in maintenance mode."
"Can you trace where the maintenance mode order originated from?"
"Certainly, one moment. It seems to be coming from a terminal in engineering, an adjunct computer mainframe room that is normally completely automated."
"Any visual sensor you can use there without possibly alerting the person in there?"
"Yes, there is… rerouting and slicing… interesting. There is a clone trooper in there, working on the system. He is clearly not a technician."
"Okay, listen carefully R3, I need you to slice his terminal and usurp control, but also act as a fake virtual terminal that will keep him in place. He must not suspect that we are on to him. Can you do that?"
"Please Mistress, even an R2 unit could do that without straining its processors."
"Good. In the meantime, I need you to reinitialize the internal sensors, lock in on all the clone's internal ID chips. I need a real time feed to my armor."
"Allocating processing cycles, it will take a few minutes, mistress. I am curious, what is this all about?"
"I foresee I'm going to have this conversation many times in the next few hours," I grumbled in annoyance.
The next half hour was one of the most frustrating experiences I've had in a long time, but made me rather grateful that the clones were unquestioningly obedient to a direct order. The problem came afterwards, especially the more experienced clones, who would begin to evaluate your order against the regs that were equally drilled into their brains.
In the interest of time and efficiency, I began to order every squad or individual clone trooper that I passed to go to Briefing Room 5, one of the larger rooms that could house multiple companies at once. I also made a stop at the med bay and gathered one of the clone med techs.
By the time I had Rex with me, who was thankfully not infected, there were already a hundred and ten troopers gathered and patiently waiting in their seats.
Any residual chatter died the instant I walked into the briefing room. I closed the door and sealed it with my command code.
"R3, keep this door shut until I tell you otherwise and all visual sensors rerouted."
The droid had a constant link open to my com, in the interest of safety and my own paranoia.
I walked to the podium and placed on it a clear stasis cylinder that held the dead brainworm for all the clones to see.
"501st, helmets off," I ordered.
Some clones didn't walk shipboard with their helmets on, but there were those who did. A moment later I was staring at a room full of light brown identical faces.
"I've gathered you all here because this entire task force, currently in space and on the ground, is under threat from an enemy we didn't even know existed. You may have all been wondering about the quarantine order and now I can show you the reason why. This…" I placed my hand on the stasis cylinder, "is a Geonosian brain worm. It does what its name implies, it infects any living or even dead being and controls them. Roughly a quarter of all Geonosians that were fought on the ground were infected and directly controlled by the Geonosian queen using these worms. And yes, if you were wondering, even if a controlled Geonosian dies, the brain worm can keep the body going and fighting. This specific one was on this ship and inside Quartermaster Gritt. I trust you can realize the implications."
There was a strong undercurrent of fear that erupted from the clones and they began looking at each other with suspicion.
"Before you all look at each other, I can now sense these worms and no one inside this room is currently infected. The problem we have is that on this ship, there are currently 37 people infected and there were 32 infected when I first began looking. If we are infected to this extent, what does that mean for the other Venators?"
"Commander, are you suggesting that if this goes far enough, we could be looking at having to fight our own?" Rex queried, his face and the turmoil I sensed from him clearly showed that he was having a hard time processing this.
"Yes, however, before we can help the rest of the fleet, we must clean our own house. I am assigning three of you to each infected. I myself am going to secure the closest armory and you will arm yourselves. At this point, don't worry, we're only going for stun shots. There is a way to safely remove the worms. The key aspect of this operation is grabbing the infected all at once. Even though the Geonosian queen is dead, I theorize an aspect of her remains within the worms and it's possible that they may have a hive mind and be able to communicate telepathically. The worms may also be a survival mechanism, allowing her to be reborn if enough of them come together."
I pressed a few buttons on the lectern, a cross section holo of Resolute appeared and thirty seven red dots representing the infected were sprinkled all over.
"You can see here the position of them in real time. Some of them are in critical areas, no doubt trying to sabotage or control key systems. This is another reason for the time critical nature of this mission."
A clone captain raised his hand, "Commander, once we've subdued the infected, what do we do with them?"
"It's highly likely the worm will try to jump ship, that's why you must keep your helmets sealed and armor set for vac fighting after you leave this room. That will be the third member of each party's responsibility, killing the worm if it jumps. They can survive outside of a body, for how long, I don't know. We don't want to spend days searching for the things, so please, don't miss. If the worm does not leave, carry the infected trooper to the medbay. My R3 droid is handling the sensors. Use your personal pads and you will note you have access to the internal sensors to guide you to your specific target… any questions?"
There was only silence in answer and determination.
"Good, on your feet and follow."
The nearest armory was one deck down and despite me navigating to avoid any infectees, it was inevitable that we would draw attention. Multiple companies marching together under the lead of a Jedi was bound to alarm any of the ship's personnel we crossed paths with. It was critical that word didn't spread through the grapevine. Therefore I commandeered them to follow as well.
The armory quartermaster was rather surprised to have so many customers at once and it was clear he wasn't pleased at having his schedule interrupted. The only way I could get him to not contact Yularen and blow the whole operation, by talking over the channels that were being monitored by the infected, was for me to take him aside and explain the situation.
Rex had everything well in hand while I did that, starting to organize and assigning men to each target. Then sending each trio of clones off with orders to watch the sensors carefully and avoid the infected. Thankfully, with the ship the size of the Resolute, that was easy to do.
Soon we were left with a mix of twenty troopers and naval personnel. I dismissed the latter back to their stations with orders to go about their duties as if nothing was happening.
"Rex, get these men organized, we are going to secure the bridge."
"I noticed there was an infected there. Who is it?"
"Someone who is going to be very grumpy at me after all this is over."
Walking onto the bridge, Rex and ten troopers immediately fanned out behind me as I walked across the gangway, past the crew pits and towards Admiral Yularen.
He was very intently busy tapping something onto a datapad.
"What the…"
Only to be very surprised when the datapad flew out of his hands and landed in my outstretched hand as I approached the command chair.
"Commander? What's the meaning of this?" he objected, his eyes taking in the armed troopers around the bridge.
"I'm truly sorry about this Admiral." I tapped my comlink. "Begin."
Rex brought up his pistol and fired.
The blue ring of a stun shot burst forth and hit the admiral in a blink of an eye, briefly giving his body a faint red glow.
The admiral jerked in his seat, not before surging to his feet and snarling at me with an animalistic growl.
Before he could even take a step, I had him suspended in midair giving Rex another perfect stun shot, which finally seemed to do the trick as I sensed both the admiral and the worm's combined Force signature dim into unconsciousness.
The naval crew were all out of their seats and gaping in astonishment.
I embraced the Force and infused my voice, "Relax, this is an intervention, not a mutiny. The admiral and numerous others have been compromised by an alien infection from the planet below." My voice was directed to the com link next. "All teams report."
Successful captures were reported steadily and I sensed many infected had lost consciousness.
"Commander, we have a problem at the hyperdrive, we tried, but they managed to activate a program of some sort before we could stop them."
"Status of our hyperdrive?" I snapped at the bridge engineering officer.
The naval clone worked at his station, "Sorry commander, it's offline. Its systems are completely scrambled, returning nonsense data and diagnostics. It's been sliced in a way that I've never seen before."
"R3?"
"It is a self-replicating program that has overwhelmed the navicomputer and internal hyperdrive systems," the droid reported.
How the hell did the worms even know how to do that… unless the brain worm's were co-opting the knowledge of their hosts.
"There's no easy fix for that, is there?"
"Negative, mistress. Each individual system in the hyperdrive needs to be shut down and reformatted to factory spec, then it must be recalibrated. Estimated time to repair, two days."
"We're not going anywhere anyway for a while due to this mess."
"This is Bits down in life support," reported another clone. "We've got our quarry. Minor damage down here, nothing too bad."
"Let engineers be the judge of that. All teams, bring your targets to med bay. Rex, get the admiral down there."
Two troopers were ordered to carry Yularen off the bridge while I reviewed the data pad he was working on.
It was just as well we had arrived when we did. He had been looking over command codes to every ship in the task force.
"Everyone back to stations, bring the whole ship to condition two but keep our shields lowered."
I dumped myself in the command chair as the bridge crew sprang to action.
"Commander, if you don't mind me asking, how are we getting those things out of our people?" Rex asked.
"By exposing them to something the worms don't like at all, extreme cold."
"That sounds uncomfortable, even dangerous."
"Nothing a brief bacta dip afterwards can't fix, which is preferable to being a prisoner in your own body."
"Can't argue with that. What is your plan for the other ships, commander?"
"The cold treatment is at the moment a theory, which med bay needs to confirm works. Then I plan to have a little chat with the ship captains via holo." I keyed my command chair's com system. "Nav, I want you to slowly and steadily alter our orbit, give me a course that will overlap with all the other destroyers over a period of two to three hours."
"Calculating now, commander… the best I can give you is a five hour course given those parameters."
"That'll do. Guns, I want your crews on standby, but don't power their systems. I want all our tubes filled with torpedoes though."
"Roger, commander."
"Sensors, I want you to keep passive eyes on all our ships that come into range, work with ELINT. If they so much as sneeze in our direction, I want to know."
"Understood sir."
I keyed the com system and tried to reach Anakin next. It took a few minutes before he answered and when his holo appeared it rather told the story already. He had his lightsaber lit and was leaning behind cover that the holo failed to render.
"Sorry to disturb, master, I see you're busy."
"You can say that," he said through gritted teeth, before going through deflections of numerous blue blaster bolts. "Please tell me you have some good news up there."
"Resolute is secure. We've tracked down and isolated 37 infected. I'm testing a theory on how to get rid of these brain worms efficiently and get the other Venators sorted."
"Good, I only wish the news was better down here. It might as well be a civil war between the clones at this point. A number of key positions in the army down here were definitely subverted and they convinced their subordinates that we were the ones who were infected. We're trying to keep it to stun shots, convince the subverted companies that their infected leaders are the actual problem… but you know stun shots, their accuracy is pathetic."
"Will you need reinforcements from us at some point?"
"Maybe, but you must first get our orbital assets sorted out."
"Very well, master. May the Force be with you."
"And you."
The holo winked out.
"Never thought I'd see the day," Rex's voice filled with disgust and grief. "Brother against brother. All just because of some worm."
"It's no comfort, but the galaxy is big, Rex. There are some threats out there that unfortunately can't be fought with fist and a blaster. It's inevitable that we will in time run into these things and either confront them or yield and retreat to them."
"Hard to imagine that, commander."
"Which is precisely the point."
"I- I don't understand."
I smiled sadly, "Pray that you never truly do. I'll be down in med bay."
It required a bit of jury rigging from engineering crews, the rerouting of quite a few coolant conduits, but we managed to create a large enough cold room by emptying out a storage space near the med bay deck. Testing first on a single infected trooper had resulted in the brain parasite instinctively trying to escape its freezing host, only to land in an even worse situation with a sub zero atmosphere outside.
To satisfy my own paranoia, I personally oversaw the process of all the parasites being removed, killed and then incinerated. I also had biohazard search teams go through all the infected's quarters and any of their gear, which resulted in a backpack full of ugly off-yellow eggs being discovered.
I personally threw that in the incinerator.
Now I was back in the hot seat on the bridge and the Resolute was slowly approaching the Negotiator.
"Com, hail the Negotiator's captain."
A Republic naval clone appeared in holo and bowed to me briefly, "Commander Tano, do you have news?"
I sensed carefully through the holo, using it as a focus to extend my senses to the entire bridge of the Negotiator.
Do or do not, Ahsoka.
I refused to let doubt and logic take hold of my thoughts. I refused to feel victory as my senses bloomed further to encompass the entirety of Negotiator.
"Yes, I do, Captain Garm."
Garm frowned at me for a second before his attention was suddenly diverted to something behind him, "By Kamino… what… sorry, commander I have to…"
"You will stay on the link, Captain. The two troopers and your helmsman that just seemingly fainted are infected by Geonosian brain worms that subvert their actions. I'm transmitting to you all data to verify and procedures you must undertake. I currently sense 81 infected on your ship."
Thankfully, my orders and his conditioning managed to break through his natural disbelief.
"Yes commander. I'll review it and get right on it."
"Good, I managed to incapacitate all of them and it should last for an hour or so, more than enough time for your internal sensors to get to work and round them all up. Once you've done that, set your command to condition two, but keep your shields down. It's entirely possible that we're going to have trouble up here. If we've lost an entire ship to these worms, we might have a battle up here."
"Understood commander. We'll be ready. Garm out."
"One down, four to go," Rex commended with relief.
"It'll only get harder from here," I declared, closing my eyes to draw on the Force. "The parasites will have had more time and infected more."
My battle was now with myself. Fighting to throw off the chains of logic and matter that bound me… that said I should now be tired after having thrown Force Sleep on 81 people at once at such a distance.
"Nav, time to intercept Victory?"
"Eighteen minutes, commander."
"Rex, I am going to meditate, short of the ship about to explode, do not interrupt."
"Understood, commander."
I fell into the Force. As usual, with such mediation, time became very murky even though I had set my anchor that would let me perceive its natural passage. The Force in and around Geonosis was 'strong', but in comparison to many other places it was quite lacking. Life had found a way, but the conditions were just too harsh below for it to truly flourish, so I had to turn to the cosmic side of things.
It was an energy tapped very gingerly. It was raw, chaotic, unfocused and powerful, yet increase your perspective enough and orderly systems could be perceived, obeying the laws of gravity and mass.
My eyes opened.
"Approaching Victory, commander. They'll pass us fifty kilometers to port."
"Thank you, Nav. Hail Captain Kitster."
The captain's holo appeared and he turned from whatever he was doing to look at me. "Ah, Commander, what…"
His eyes rolled back into the back of his head and he collapsed.
This naturally caused quite a bit of commotion on the bridge of Victory, the XO rushed into the holofield. "Commander, Captain Kitster's just collapsed…"
That was all this clone said as well, before he also just keeled over into sleep.
Another naval clone rushed forward, the Victory's second officer.
"Commander, what's happening? Half the bridge just collapsed at their posts."
"Lieutenant, them and another 126 aboard the Victory collapsed, because they were infected with Geonosian brain worms and I rendered them unconscious. I'm transferring all data and procedures related to this. Carry them out immediately. That is an order."
Again, it managed to snap the clone into obedience, he saluted. "Yes, Commander. Right away."
I cut the com link.
"126 crew down and the second officer in charge, I don't think Victory is in any shape to help us, Commander," Rex declared.
"How many bloody brain worm eggs did this queen lay?" I slammed my fist into my armrest in useless anger. Simply to distract me from thinking about what I had just done.
"If the Geonosians kept them in stasis over time as she laid them, thousands?"
"Nav?"
My helmsman knew what I wanted, "We'll intercept Valor in fifty minutes, commander."
"I'm seriously considering throwing subtlety out the window, Rex. The more time I'm given, the more I recover, but in the same vein, it means potentially more infection at each ship."
"Commander, I don't know the first thing about your powers or the Force, but is there a limit? Could you knock out an entire ship?"
I gritted my teeth with frustration as the war in me truly raged. It would be so easy to say, yes, there was a limit… NO! Who was I to truly say what was possible or not in the Force? Why do I so eagerly throw chains upon myself?
"Yes, I could!" I snapped. "The question is the potential disaster that would result. One single engineer falling at his post, failing to secure a system is one thing, but do that over an entire ship?"
"I see the problem. We must keep the element of surprise as long as possible, commander. We must stay the course."
I nodded, immersing myself again into the Cosmic Force. "Do or do not. I choose to do."
Mercifully, the Valor and the next ship, Chimera, were more like Resolute in terms of infection numbers, with 43 and 51 people hosting brain worms respectively. I incapacitated them and set their captains to work.
It was as we approached the last ship, the Vindicator, that I sensed and through prescience saw that any good grace we had received in dealing with the situation in orbit had been well and truly spent.
"Raise our shields, battlestations!"
The wailing alarm echoed through the Resolute but due to already being at Condition Two, there was little need to scramble and run for the crew. All systems were brought to full power and the massive turbolasers of the ship began moving.
"Nav, back us off to maintain a 120 kilometer separation from Vindicator."
"Roger Commander."
"What's happening over there, commander?" Rex queried.
"It's not good, no, in fact it's catastrophic. Comms, hail Vindicator."
There was a slight pause, "No response, commander."
"Keep trying. Sensors, go active, full power, I don't care if you make their hair stand on end."
"Understood commander. Scanning… 823 life signs register, commander."
My heart sank as it confirmed what I was sensing, there also should've been over one thousand crew on that ship. "Scan for parasites."
"I read… 310 signatures. Now also detecting high energy discharges in multiple sections of the ship. Concentrated around engineering and the bridge."
"There's a war happening for that ship," Rex commented grimly.
"Sensors, are there any lifesigns on the bridge?"
"Yes, commander, seven, no parasites."
"They're too busy fighting for their lives to answer our hail," I felt my hand curl into a fist as I resisted the urge to express my surging anger and frustration as I lost the battle. I needed at least some link, some focus to project my power and will through at this distance. Prudence, common sense and prescience prevented me from ordering the Resolute closer.
All guns were ready and aimed, with our bow pointed directly at Vindicator's aft, where very few of their guns could be turned to fire back at us.
The only thing I could do now was cast my Farsight forward and observe the battle.
Five clone troopers and two naval clones, including the Vindicator's captain and his second officer, were hunkered behind cover, desperately firing towards the parasite infected clones trying to storm onto the bridge.
"We can't hold much longer, captain!" screamed the second officer. "If they toss a grenade…"
"I know!" snapped the captain. "Keys!"
Both naval clones reached into the collars of their uniforms and produced two small code cylinders, which they promptly slotted into their datapads.
"Captain Hiram, it's been an honor."
"The honor is mine, Cengo."
I pulled back and shielded my eyes as abruptly a brief new artificial star was seemingly born and my sense of the lives of over eight hundred people winked out. Pulled into a conflagration of energy and rejoined with the cosmic Force.
In the material realm, the light died down and revealed all that was left of the Vindicator was a large chunk of its pointed forward bow, spinning off into wild orbit and a storm of debris radiating outward.
"Shields to double front!" I shouted.
The order penetrated through the grim horror that had gripped the bridge crew at seeing their fellow ship just die like that.
Resolute's shield flared into visibility as a field of debris began bouncing off it, throwing the pieces of hull, armor and all manner of wreckage into further erratic orbits. It was almost like seeing the most grim game of billiards ever played, except in three dimensions.
A grim but respectful silence settled on the bridge and I had to struggle to hold back stupid useless tears.
"Sensors, any escape pod beacons?" I asked softly.
"None, commander. I'm reading only the self-destruct beacon."
"Flight Ops, launch a shuttle to retrieve it when it is safe to do so."
"Affirmative, commander," replied the officer in charge of the flight bridge.
"Were they about to lose the bridge?" Rex asked stoically, his eyes full of pain.
"Yes."
"Then they died doing their duty."
I nodded, "I'll be in med bay," then stood and turned to the port crew pit, "Second officer Lorso, you have the bridge."
"I have the bridge, commander."
I left, knowing there was nothing more I could've done, but still feeling like failure was draped across my shoulders like an awful blood stained cloak.
A day of grinding and oftentimes bloody fighting passed on Geonosis. The infected clones had briefly received reinforcements from a nearby hive of Geonosians during the crisis in orbit, but the bugs swiftly retreated when I ordered squadrons of Y-Wings, Torrents and Z95s towards the battlefronts and to 'buzz' every major hive and rattle their ceilings with a bomb or two.
Seeing the pace of the battle from orbit was an exercise in frustration and distinctly odd.
The battle lines were drawn in a confusing mess between the various landed Acclamators and in some cases the fighting was happening inside the various ships.
Thankfully, none of the ships were in complete enemy control but it was still like watching a back and forth tug-of-war, where a deck was won here… then another lost on another ship.
It was a mess, but for the moment it seemed there was no need for reinforcements from any of the five remaining Venator's in orbit.
The enemy was losing ground and numbers steadily.
Every infected clone that was stunned and captured was swiftly dunked into a bacta tube that had been replaced with near freezing ice cold water. Once the parasite was removed the clone was taken to a recovery bed, where their body temperature was brought back up to safe ranges. A few hours of sleep, a good meal and that trooper would be ready to go back into the fight.
It was a fight that the clones took on with a grim dogged determination. They saw it as a rescue mission for their brothers.
The tide truly turned when I flew overhead in a gunship, sat in the belly of the craft in meditation position and started throwing out Force Sleep techniques that saw squads of infected promptly fall to the ground like puppets who's strings had been cut.
By day three, the second battle of Geonosis was over.
From hyperspace and into the system a large bulk freighter emerged. I stared at the massive craft feeling both satisfaction and a grim dread.
"Admiral, welcome back," I said before Yularen could politely cough to draw my attention.
"Good to be back, commander," he said primly.
"Things are generally well in hand," I reported, getting down to business.
"I never expected anything less," he gave a brief smile.
"Yes, only now we are tasked with a grim duty," I gestured to the freighter. "The Chancellor and the Jedi Council have ordered that a laser satellite grid and Golan platform be built around Geonosis. The 41st will be tasked with garrison duty initially."
Yularen made the deduction instantly and his eyes widened, "The Republic is turning Geonosis into an effective prison planet?"
"They have ruled that the danger presented by the parasites and from future queens rising among the Geonosians to create more brain worms is just too great. If they should get a foothold elsewhere or be able to spread to other worlds… no, best to just hem them in here once and for all."
Sentencing an entire world and species to isolation like this was one of the gravest punishments that was still on the books in Republic law. It hadn't been used once in the thousand years since the Ruusan Reformation, and even in the Old Republic it had been rare.
Of course, there was the other issue, the grinding wheels of destiny and Palpatine's plans.
Geonosis would now be the perfect place to begin the future Death Star's construction. Far in the outer rim, with a massive labor force of Geonosians just waiting to be enslaved and used. The ring of asteroids surrounding the planet was brim full of untapped resources that could be used to efficiently mine and fabricate from.
"Building this grid will not be easy, once construction begins it won't take long for the Geonosians to come to the correct conclusion on what we're doing."
"Which is why only half the task force will be leaving for other fronts, the rest are being assigned to the garrison and will be rotated out on a six month basis," I explained, then looked at my chrono. "I need to leave on a shuttle for the Negotiator in half an hour, so… you have the bridge, admiral."
He blinked in surprise, "The bridge is mine. May I ask, commander, why are you needed there?"
I wondered if I should be diplomatic and understated in my response, "I am to explain my actions to the Jedi Council."
Yularen picked up on my subtext immediately, "Commander, you did nothing wrong."
"From the point of view of the GAR, you are correct. However, the Jedi Order does not react well when someone of my station starts throwing around power like I did over the last four days."
"Obviously I'm not well versed in the internal affairs of the Order, very few are, but I just don't see what could possibly be the problem."
I racked my brains for an analogy that would work, but came up short. "It's hard to explain. The usage of the Force has potential consequences, which in some cases can be very negative and can impact the galaxy in ways that are difficult to predict or account for. An example of things going very wrong is demonstrated by the fact that we are here fighting this war. Dooku was a Jedi Master at one point, after all."
"But as far as I'm aware, did he not resign from the Order? It was only after he left that he began the Seperatist movement."
"Yes, but Dooku's case and the war is causing quite a bit of… doubt within the Order. Dooku was very well regarded, charismatic, powerful, a figurative jewel in the crown of the Jedi. Now if someone like that could fall so far, what does that mean for everyone else? Many masters are questioning themselves and their training methods. It means for me, unfortunately, that they are looking at anything beyond the norm as suspicious and needing investigation."
"And if they find something at fault in your actions, what could happen?" Yularen frowned with worry.
"The worst that can happen to any Jedi in my case, is expulsion from the Order." There was another punishment, but that wasn't spoken of to outsiders.
The admiral scoffed, "Utterly ridiculous."
"The chances of that happening is very slim," I agreed with a nod. The probability lines leading in that direction were miniscule. "What can happen is something like the Jedi version of a military reprimand - both General Skywalker and myself could be ordered away from the front lines and put in the gilded cage of the Coruscant Temple to reflect and correct our naughty ways."
"For how long?"
"As long as the Council decides it is necessary."
Yularen scowled, "That is equally unacceptable. The very thought of someone of your talents and General Skywalker, being wasted like that."
I nodded in agreement and stood from the command chair. "We'll have to see."
"Good luck, commander."
"Thank you, I'll need it."
It had been the briefing room for one of the Negotiator's bomber squadrons, but was now hastily repurposed. There were no real circular rooms on a Venator, so the long rectangular room was all that was available. It had the unfortunate effect of creating an adversarial air, with the council represented on one side and those being debriefed on the other.
Obi-Wan sat down in his chair and regarded his two fellow council members out of the corner of his eye. Luminara Unduli was her usual unflappable, perfect self and it took a Jedi Master's skill to determine that the Mirialan Jedi was irritated that she was being called on to sit at this meeting in the first place.
In contrast, was Ki Adi Mundi. The Cerean was just as perfectly serene to an outsider point of view, but Obi-Wan could sense a hint of impatience.
On the exact appointed time the doors opened.
Anakin and Ahsoka, master and apprentice, entered the room side by side and not in the traditional manner of master first. Already both of them were opening the meeting with a very clear message.
They made for quite the striking pair now.
Both bedecked in armor that he would only privately admit, was rather unsettling. As it gave them almost the look of old Mandalorians - the only difference being the integrated Jedi robes flaring behind them and the symbols that adorned the pauldrons. That the armor was not merely protective but also adding to their already prodigious abilities, such as flight, only added to the sense of strength that they carried with them. He could also tell that the armor even had powered limb movement assist systems.
They stopped at a respectful distance, Anakin clasping his hands together in front of his body, seemingly relaxed, whilst his padawan adopted a more militaristic at rest stance, with her hands behind her back.
Obi-Wan briefly took in his peer's reactions; Luminara looked rather fascinated, whilst Ki Adi had disapproval written all over his eyes.
"Knight Skywalker, Padawan Tano, thank you for coming," Obi-Wan began. "I hereby call this meeting of the Jedi Council to order. We must first recognize the unusual nature of this meeting, that it is being classified to a level not seen in centuries. Only those present in this room and the Grandmaster of Jedi Order will be privy to the records of this meeting. Understand that any transgression of this classification will result in expulsion and possible indefinite imprisonment. Is that understood?"
Obi-Wan turned his head to survey everyone in the room and received nods in return.
"Good. Padawan Tano, you've been called here to account of your usage of the Force in what is now formally called the Second Battle of Geonosis. As we were all generally present in the areas you affected, we can all attest to what we sensed you doing through the Force. With our own eyes and senses we can confirm and testify that you have no taint of the dark side on you. Yet, as has been demonstrated, the dark side can shield its users from easy detection - therefore we must resort to more conventional methods in our investigations. So please explain what you did."
"Very well masters," she readily agreed. "At its heart, it's a derivation of the Force Persuade or mind trick. Instead of targeting the active cognitive function of a being's mind in trying to get them to divulge information, this technique targets the autonomic functions of the brain and essentially convinces it to go through the natural process of sleep.
"Due to this any species that sleeps or has some form of hibernative function is susceptible and none of the usual limits or caveats of Force Persuasion applies. A strong mind, will or 'alien' thoughts are irrelevant to the Force Sleep's function.
"Next, I combined this with my perception abilities, one of which allows me to use any communicative medium - such as a holocall, to project my senses through it and perform certain abilities through that medium. This allowed me to not only sense how many infected troopers I was dealing with on a particular ship, but also to project the Force Sleep onto them. This has the effect of making distance mostly irrelevant."
"Fascinating," Obi-Wan murmured, stroking his beard in thought. "So, theoretically Padawan, if you were to open a com link and project a holo of yourself on Coruscant, you could knock out anyone you were speaking with there?"
"Correct, as I said, distance is irrelevant."
"In the battlefield reports," Unduli spoke up next, "the timelines indicate that you must have also done this to many dozens of troopers at once. Now I'm quite familiar with the strength needed to perform a Force Persuade and perhaps the Force Sleep is more efficient, but it seems to me that the amount of strength you had to expend is quite extensive to achieve this."
Obi-Wan nodded in agreement, even as the implication was there that one of the ways Ahsoka could've pulled on that much power was to draw from the dark side. He could tell that the young padawan also understood that.
"It was extensive and would have normally been beyond me, but I've recently had a bit of a growth and I drew on the Cosmic Force," the padawan explained.
Obi-Wan leaned back on his chair as the implications quickly became apparent. Unduli's eyes widened in surprise.
Mundi brought his hands together and visibly, openly frowned at Ahsoka. "Are you seriously claiming to be able to draw on the near infinite font of the Cosmic Force? A mere padawan?"
"Did any of the esteemed masters present sense that I was lying?" Ahsoka retorted wryly. "Or should I demean myself by lowering my Thought Shield to you?"
"That will not be necessary, padawan," Obi-Wan turned to give Mundi a brief glance, in which he communicated one word, 'Don't'. In hindsight, it was probably a mistake to include Mundi in the proceeding, as the two did have an antagonistic history with each other, but necessity and circumstances had left no other choice. Master Yoda had ordered this ad-hoc field council, but for some reason didn't want it to be held on Coruscant or the Jedi Temple.
"Tapping directly into the Cosmic Force at your age, Padawan Ahsoka, is extremely dangerous," Unduli spoke, her concern coloring her tone. "Most masters don't try until they're well in the latter years of their life and some don't even bother."
"It was necessary, Master Unduli and I will do what I must."
Obi-Wan was almost mentally bowled over by the phrasing and nostalgia, as his memory pulled him into the past on that sunlit balcony with Master Qui-gon as he argued with his old master yet again.
"I was presented with a choice," Ahsoka continued. "Play it safe and assault the problem of the parasites conventionally, in the process costing the lives of yet more of our troops in boarding actions and potentially more ships destroyed. The brain worms were well in the process of conducting sabotage on the Resolute and were doing the same all over the fleet. Any conventional assault would have alerted them that they were exposed. Instead of just losing the Vindicator, we could have potentially lost three quarters of the fleet. Therefore, I chose the path with the most risk to myself yet would save the fleet and the most lives."
"A selfless decision that is to be commended," Unduli declared. "That you so successfully used the Cosmic Force is extraordinary. Death is the least of the fates that occur to those that overreach."
Obi-Wan looked to Mundi and gave him a silent message that it was his turn.
"Padawan Tano, during the battle you determined that the solution to remove the brain worms was extreme cold exposure. How did you come upon this novel idea?"
Ahsoka gave a brief look to Anakin before answering.
"A combination of precognition and logic. Geonosis is a hot and arid world, without even polar ice caps. Water can only be obtained from the air by vaporators. It is in this environment that the Geonosians evolved. Exposing them to the opposite extreme would result in them attempting to flee the cold, much like many migratory species on worlds across the galaxy. Once I was determined to test it, I pushed into precognition to see the results."
"A risky thing," Mundi declared. "Unless you were certain you had eliminated any bias from your vision."
"Master Mundi, it is effectively impossible to remove bias. No matter how objective and logical one strives to be. I merely determined that it was within acceptable bounds."
The master nodded, seemingly accepting the argument and sat back in his chair.
"A point I also wish to bring to this session is to seek an explanation on your decision to wear full armor," Unduli said. "This is addressed to both of you. Over 980 years ago, in order to convince the Republic that we would not become a conquering army, the Jedi Order abandoned the wearing of full battle armor, renounced military ranks and disbanded all our army, navy and starfighter forces. Now, while I recognize that we have resumed a military role in the GAR, it is important that we not raise the old specter of fear from the public that the Jedi will once again step in to rule over them."
"The armor is a simple necessity, Master Unduli," Anakin explained. A slight cheeky smile adorned his face next as he said, "We don't send our troops onto the battlefield in robes and not all of us can be as skilled as you, Master. You saw the utility of personal flight systems. It would've been awfully embarrassing for Alpha Company to literally fly away from me and my padawan."
"A point well made, Skywalker," she gave a brief smile. "I'll caution you both to keep in mind the homefront of this war. Given all the time you spend in the outer reaches of the galaxy, you are perhaps not as aware of the slowly developing public perception of this conflict - that it is taking too long and its popularity is going to plummet when taxes are inevitably going to increase over the next few years to continue to fund the war."
"We will limit wearing it to the battlefronts, Master."
"That is acceptable, Skywalker."
"Knight Skywalker," Obi-Wan began formally. "Can you confirm that the testimony of your padawan is the truth?"
"I confirm," Anakin said immediately.
"Very well," he looked at Unduli and Mundi in turn to get their opinions. "It is the judgment of this Council that Padawan Tano acted within the best spirit and traditions of the Jedi Order. We would also caution her in the development of her powers, that it must be undertaken with care and forethought and this one especially not used on a whim. All actions have consequences, Ahsoka."
She nodded in acceptance and bowed.
"You are both dismissed."
Master and padawan now bowed in unison and left the room.
Obi-Wan turned to the astromech in the corner, "End recording."
The droid warbled its agreement, then rolled forward and produced a data chit from a slot, which he swiftly pocketed. Obi-Wan reached out with the Force and the droid promptly shut down.
"Off the record, what do you think?"
"A fifteen year old padawan has no business with such power," Mundi declared firmly. "And if she has it, I'd bet that Skywalker has it too. If she can use this Force Sleep technique remotely, then she can just as well use other powers, such as Telekinesis. Imagine it, she tunes into a holo sensor mounted on that blasted droid of hers and she doesn't even need to be on the battlefield."
"My dear Ki Adi, why did you not object on the record then, if you feel so strongly?" Luminara pointed out.
"Because I am a realist and I sense the winds of our internal politics acutely, not to mention she has a strong favor with Yoda that is completely illogical. This is compounded by the fact that the Chosen One is her master."
"You have to admit, Ki Adi, she's one of the five rising stars of her generation. Many masters haven't brought forth as much new knowledge of the Force as she has and her career hasn't even begun properly. Yoda I think sees her as a puzzle to solve. He did have a rather more active hand in her formative education than we see in most initiates and adepts."
"It is why I was so hard on her during the Academy, so much potential. It is unfortunate that our personalities are so… volatile when brought together. Now this war is only serving to turn that talent to the business of slaughter."
Obi-Wan stood from his seat, "It is a tragedy, but our eyes must focus on the goal of peace. It might take longer than we wished to get there, but it will happen. Now if you'll excuse me, there is a prison to build."
"Would it really have been that bad, Snips?"
I sat in front of my desk in my quarters, my head resting on my folded arms on the desk itself. Anakin stood behind me and had a comforting hand on my shoulder, sending me support through our bond.
"It would've been worse, I was accurate in my prediction to the Council, just not complete," I spoke into my arms.
"What would've happened?"
"Conventionally grinding through the fleet in orbit with boarding actions, would've lost us four ships. Rex would've died on one of the ships when a self-destruct charge was set off by the surviving crew. The surviving two ships would've been Resolute and Negotiator, but both would've been so badly damaged by that point that we would've lost any capacity to launch fighters." I raised myself from the desk surface and leaned back, allowing Anakin to see my weary eyes. "Without any threat left from the air, the Geonosians would've drowned you down there in numbers. All Jedi, including you, were infected.
"From there the infected and Geonosians commandeer what remains of the Acclamators, they ascend to orbit and launch an assault on Resolute and Negotiator. Obi-Wan's flagship is destroyed in the process, and the Resolute is boarded and taken over as well. Both you and Ki Adi Mundi assault the bridge and I'm forced to duel you both. The brain worms can't really use the Force properly through us, but they use your combined skill with the lightsaber well enough and my reluctance to truly fight you, to defeat me.
"From there I'm also infected with a brain worm, and the Resolute and all the other ships are repaired enough that the Geonosians can use them to travel the galaxy. Their first stop is Tatooine, where they pull the same trick of infection and subversion. Jabba is infected and with all his knowledge, funds and an entire army of criminals, smugglers and bounty hunters they launch a campaign to conquer Hutt space with CIS support."
"That's ambitious, would they have been successful?"
"It takes a while but eventually, yes. It also doesn't help that the CIS somewhat retreats to consolidate their space, while this is happening, giving the Republic breathing room. Many in the Senate cheer seeing the Hutts at last get their just deserts and they let it happen."
"Fools, let me guess, the Hutt hyperspace routes?"
"Correct, the CIS now has the galaxy effectively cut in half and all the resources of Hutt space behind them as well."
"What about us? Did the Jedi Council just let us remain enslaved with brain worms in our heads?"
"As you can imagine, they would be very leery of word getting out of the apparent 'defection' of five Jedi to the CIS. Not to mention the whole notion of the brain worms. If that became public knowledge it would cause rampant paranoia across the galaxy. Nevertheless, they attempt to send Jedi into Hutt space to find and apprehend us. It naturally doesn't work, especially as by this point the brain worms in our heads have gained better proficiency using the Force through us."
"So they're defeated and are also infected, causing the Council to refuse to send more."
"Yes, I stopped looking at this future at this point. It was… just too depressing to go further," I wearily rubbed my face. "So now we're on this path and I have to live with the consequences. Foremost of which, I have definitely garnered the attention of the enemy. Not exclusively, I'm no threat to be eliminated immediately but he knows that he won't be able to just kill me off-hand. No, he'd need to put more effort into it and it has surprised him."
"That doesn't sound good," Anakin frowned with worry.
"Yes and with that surprise will come curiosity. He'll begin sending feelers my way. Testing, probing, seeing what will be able to manipulate me. He'll discover that you Skyguy will be a lever he can pull, which is convenient because he was setting up to do that anyway."
"What can we do?"
"We're already doing the first step, realizing what is coming. The first step in avoiding any trap."
"He can just set more."
"Yes, we must be able to at some point turn it around on him. When that will be, I can't foresee, too many variables and he needs to make up his own mind before the future will solidify enough."
"I don't think we're going to enjoy this, Snips."
I shot him an amused look, "Trying your own hand at some foresight, master?"
"Can't be upstaged by my own padawan, can I?"
I laughed despite myself. It was honestly a relief to be able to share some of this burden.
The die has been cast and it'll have to fall where it may.
Any chance of her developing/rediscovering Destroy-Droid now that she has access to HK and his knowledge of Revan and The Exile? That Force power would be crazy useful in the current war.
Truly, nothing was the same after you had none to deride, philosophically.
