The Force Wills - Chapter 123

I’d captained kilometer long starships, flown starfighters in a dozen odd battles in this war.

Yet that didn’t make actually flying a Lucrehulk an easy thing.

The helm station interface had been optimized for the basic input abilities of a B1 droid with its three fingered manipulator on each arm. As a result, I had to imitate the Vulcan salute on both hands to work the interface’s touch screen and buttons in any sort of efficient manner. The calibration settings were also meant for durasteel manipulators, so I also had to stiffen my fingers to get the correct inputs.

“Are we clear, DT22?” I asked the tac droid.

It was now standing beside me, arms folded behind its back as it acted as my patsy chess master to the assimilated and enemy droids on board the Lucrehulk.

“All access routes and airlocks are secured, commander.”

“Tech, how’s engineering looking?”

The clone was rushing back and forth along the large bank of controls on the right side of the bridge that governed power and engine systems of the battleship, making adjustments on the fly. Thankfully, he didn’t have my problems as most of the controls on that side had been adjusted for the bith to work on.

“Main reactors are spooling to full output, you’ll have engine power in ninety seconds.”

“Crosshair, how are you finding the weapon controls?”

“They are pathetic, commander. It’s a wonder the clankers can hit anything.” I gave the taciturn clone a pointed look. “But yes, I will be able to use them to defend this ship adequately.”

“Hunter, how’s the ship’s scanners?”

“The adjustments DT22 made is good enough. I’ll be able to be our eyes out there.”

“Wrecker?”

The big clone straightened from the rear of the bridge, where he’d just finished laying some claymore equivalent directional charges.

“Traps are set, anyone forcing their way into the bridge will get a big surprise, courtesy of yours truly.”

“Good, undocking.”

The massive tubular entryways attached to the Lucrehulk class battleship Seperatist’s Dawn broke their seals and swung out of the way.

“Just received a message from shipyard control, they want to know what we’re doing,” Hunter announced.

“Send back, text only, that we’re securing ourselves from potential boarders and saboteurs, not to mention dodging the uncontrolled ships and stations floating out there,” I said in exasperation.

Half a minute later the reply came and Hunter smiled, “Looks like they bought it, commander. They’ve even gone through the trouble of sending us a course.”

“Well, then we shall make good use of that,” I smirked and with a hard swipe, fed main power to engines and used aux thrusters to begin giving the colossal ship some velocity and reversed out of the docking cradle to the space station.

It truly hit my senses how big the craft I was flying now was. Just over three kilometers across its circular C-shaped structure and as tall as the length of an entire Venator. I had to partially embrace the Force to aid my piloting, as my conventional flying instincts in a Z95 just didn’t translate to something this big.

“Blast it! Commander, an out of control Recusant, on a collision course from below!” Hunter shouted. 

“I see it,” I gritted my teeth and applied maneuvering thruster burns and swiveled the battleship around as we coasted on the initial momentum achieved.

The problem was I couldn’t just use the giant main engines at the moment, not without utterly wrecking the station, which was just a few hundred meters behind us.

There was no way we had the velocity to dodge the Recusant conventionally.

I slewed the Dawn slightly further then applied hard counter-thrust and at just the right moment, and dropped all shielding.

“Karkin’ sithspit!” gasped Wrecker, not believing his eyes.

The Recusant's nose slipped right between the forward gap in Dawn’s main hull, practically threading the needle, except between ships massing multi million kilotons.

I hurriedly threw on the dorsal thrusters to give negative z-velocity to the Dawn, speeding up the process as the Recusant's own spin would end up slamming its aft’s into the battleship’s interior hull sphere if I didn’t.

Every member of CT99 watched in awe and gritted teeth as the Recusant’s hull seemed to loom closer and closer.

“Oh, kark, oh kark…”

Even Tech was frozen stiff at this station and Crosshair was left gaping as…

The Recusant's aft engines nacelles ended up missing the Dawn’s sphere hull by just nine meters.

“Clear,” I declared and pushed every thruster the ship had to scrub the odd vectors and push forward on the course we had been given.

Gasps of relief echoed across the bridge.

“That’s… that’s…” Tech was gaping.

“With all due respect, commander,” Crosshair turned to me. “That’s utter bantha fodder.”

“Yeah, I have to admit that was a close one,” I said, regaining equilibrium and feeling my butt unclench. “Shields up.”

I put the Dawn properly into the course given by shipyard control, which angled away from the chaotic mess we had caused.

When we were finally just over 50km from the station, I flared the engines into a burn that gave the ship an ultra high orbit over Bith of over six thousand kilometers.

“All right, Tech, what’s the ratio of assimilated droids to enemy ones?”

The super intelligent clone needed only a moment, “29% and rising as we speak.” 

“DT22, no resistance so far?”

“None, commander. I’ve been carefully managing the assimilation. Ordering deployed squads to meet superior numbers of assimilated droids. In addition to ordering enemy droid squads to either shut down or recharge, which makes assimilation a no-risk scenario. I calculate only a six percent chance of any hostilities breaking out on the ship between loyal droids of the Republic and the enemy.”

“Now there’s something I never imagined coming out of the mouth of a droid,” commented Wrecker.

“Shabla,” I grunted as a shifting annoying probability line hit me.

I set the helm to computer control and stood, using the Force to begin flinging parts of dead droids and bodies to one side of the large bridge.

Then gathered the severed head of the neimoidian captain and his body, “M8, scan the body, give me a full holodisguise.”

“Yes, commander. 23 seconds to complete.”

That was good enough. “Interface with the ship database, get me his full file and an image of his quarters.”

“Projecting to the HUD, commander.”

I started reading as quicking as possible whilst shoving the body to the corner to join the pile.

CT99 stared at me with weary looks.

“Tech, we’re going to inevitably get a holo transmission from whoever is in charge over there, modify the bridge holoscanner to focus only on the captain’s chair. Scan those bith bridge crew and get holodisguises for the rest of the team.”

The genius clone’s eyes widened behind his specs in realization, “Of course! Will be done in a few moments.”

“The rest of you, check your stations and make sure everything’s looking as good as it can.”

CT99 jumped to obey.

In the end, it took just under eight minutes to set a suitable stage for the call that was coming.

I was now donning the appearance of the late neimoidian, Captain Vurk Thalor.

He was tall, even for a member of his race, so his chest ended up being projected around my head, whilst I had to carefully arrange my legs, so the holo legs didn’t end up being disrupted through the floor. He had been just under fifty years old, which for their species, was a seasoned, respectful age to reach, with mottled green-gray skin that was slightly paler due to his many years aboard starships. 

His large, calculating red-orange eyes were framed in a perpetual squint. The hat he wore as a signature of his station was deep purple with gold trim, whilst his robes were luxurious yet practical, layered with hidden reinforced armor plates, hinting a paranoia about assassination, which was an ever present danger in his society. Their power plays didn’t stop just because the neimoidians were at war.

The final touch on the disguise was clutching an elaborate auridium plated datapad in my left hand that I had to fetch from his nearby quarters.

M8 had reviewed days worth of surveillance footage in minutes to build a mannerism set to use for impersonating Thalor, in addition to adjusting the voice emulation.

“Incoming transmission,” said Hunter, who had taken over at the helm in his new bith disguise. 

“Put it through,” I said impatiently. Thalor’s vocal emulation had a hollow note with an accent in his Basic that pegged him as coming from Cato Neimoidia.

The holo that appeared in front of me gave an immediate instinctual feeling of revulsion, that I clamped down on.

I dared anyone not to feel that when a nearly two meter tall harch, with six arms, two legs, and six red eyes set in a glaring, mandible face with a large fanged mouth, stares at you. Then add thick brown fur onto those arms with three fingered hands to this nightmare and you had something that made me want to pull out my lightsabers. Adding to the revulsive horror, was a body with just enough proportions that allowed the harch to wear deep blue robes and gray pants and legs that ended in feet with two large toes that ended in sharp keratin spikes.

My face quickly adorned a mask that showed annoyance but still conveyed a respectful tone.

“Admiral Trench, it’s good that someone from high command finally contacted me. I have a schedule that has been hopelessly interrupted by this disaster.”

Trench’s mandibles clicked, “Hmmm, yes, Captain Thalo. It seems we’ve been hit by sabotage. We are still piecing together just how it was done. How much of your supplies were you able to deliver?”

“54%,” I scowled into Thalo’s datapad and tapped the device, scrolling through the ship inventory ledgers. “There is no way we’re going to be able to finish the refits now.”

It turned out, in one of those lucky coincidences, that the Dawn was one of the main ships that had been supplying concussion missile launchers that were to be mounted on the new Recusant ships.

“Yes, it’s a significant setback. However, the small probing test we did in Eriadu validated the design against the enemy.”

“That is good to know, but what use is it now? There’s only two of the new ships left, hardly enough to make an impact.”

“Perhaps, in the meantime we’ll just have to make do. I want the Separatists Dawn to rendezvous with the following Recusants in our main battle line. Deliver enough cargo directly to each ship, the local crews will then mount the concussion launchers. It’ll be suboptimal and take more time, but it’ll at least get done.”

The list of ships came through the comlink and into the Dawn’s main computer, which I referenced immediately through the custom datapad.

Trench wanted at least two squadrons of Recusants refit to the new standard, judging by the list. Was he seriously thinking of going all in with the mainline fleet against Eriadu?

Probably not, because if it failed he was risking the Republic pushing into the CIS by a full sector in the south.

It was also interesting that Trench should be here of all places in the CIS. I remembered him well from my past life, simply because of his creepy visage. Yet the vagaries of fate, my own actions, the chaotic ever-developing war and the Force had changed the harch’s original destiny to find himself in command here, alongside Durge.

I swiped the file closed, “Very well, Admiral. I will set a course immediately.”

Trench’s mandibles clicked together in what seemed to be indicating a pleased satisfaction. “Good. Oh, my compliments to your ship’s pilot for that impressive evasive maneuver. Trench out.”

The holo faded.

“Now what?” asked Wrecker, his bith disguise rippling slightly as he turned quickly from the engineering stations.

“We do as exactly as ordered,” I smiled with an evil grin that I hoped translated properly on my disguise. “After all, it would be a shame to lose this opportunity to properly utilize our new droids.”

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An efficient course was set towards the dense cloud of warships that represented the main CIS line fleet.

At max burn it took just four minutes to reach and settle next to the first new target of the mission, which I managed with little issue.

This specific Recusant was called the Defiant Resolve and was captained by the first human I’d ever seen in such a role.

“We’re extending our docking collars now,” said Captain Veyl, a towering onderonian with a wiry frame, wearing a modified CIS uniform in black with crimson accents and a golden sash from his right shoulder to left hip, with a curious symbolic badge clipped to it. M8 scanned and with a bit of database research indicated that it meant he was a royalist firmly in the camp of Sanjay Rash. The monarch who had taken the Onderon throne with the CIS’ help.

“Contact, successful seal,” I confirmed idly as I stared at sensor readouts through my expensive datapad. “I’ll be sending droids from the Dawn to make the deliveries of components and supplies. I’ve designed their schedule myself, so please appraise your crew to not interfere. We’re on a tight enough schedule.”

Thalor was known for a certain technical savvy and would often micromanage droid crews for maximum efficiency in his own terms.

“Understood, Captain. We’ll stay out of your way.”

“Thalor out,” I said curtly, then turned to DT22 when the holo was gone. “Are our delivery units ready?”

“Units one through eight are assembled with a designated infiltrator droid in each that will remain behind, commander. Units nine through 24 will be constituted within the next half hour.”

“Tech, are you satisfied with their programming?”

The clone looked like he was having mild constipation for a moment, “Commander, maybe I should just look at it-”

I raised a hand to stop him, “Tech, you’ve already quadruple checked it. I know enough programming to realize that you’re chasing impossible perfection. I should’ve asked, will it be good enough?”

He reluctantly nodded, “Yes, commander.”

“Excellent, good work. DT, send our first delivery.”

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“This is grave news, general.”

Gideon Tarkin stood in Briefing One aboard Resolute and stared at the scaled down holo of the new build Recusant rendered in as exacting detail as possible. Some of it was interpolated and best guesses from both computer, droid and organic analysis from the RI department in the bowels of the ship.

“If we can no longer assume that our fighter forces can plug the gaps in defenses that open up after offensive waves on the front lines, this war is going to become much less static than before. We’ll be trading entire sectors through each phase, which threatens many worlds to attack in the Seswanna and Sluis sectors.”

“Unfortunately, but it can’t be helped. We’re reaching a hard limit in the EW capabilities that a fighter can squeeze into itself, unless a new technical breakthrough is achieved,” Anakin walked around the holo Recusant, scowling into it and wracked his mind for some solution to the problem.

Tarkin lightly pinched his own chin as he thought about the problem, but his eyes widened and a small smile of realization came upon him. “Then what if we simply get more space.”

He waved in the air, a holopanel appearing in front of him. It took a few moments to get used to the new interface but he managed to display a vaguely saucer shaped light freighter.

“Have you seen the latest YT freighter model from CEC yet?”

Anakin nodded, “The 1300? Yes.”

“As you can see, it's designed to be very modular and adaptable to multirole cargo and passenger. It can even carry external cargo containers in its forward hull mandibles here. Take a look at the speed and maneuverability figures.”

He looked and frowned at the projected specifications, “3000G? Class 2 Hyperdrive. Over 15 degree traversal per second. How’s it doing that with all the mass?”

Tarkin fiddled with the holo, which zoomed in. “It’s the latest core from Quadex. It’s naturally civilian grade, but that can be changed. Along with adding laser turrets on the dorsal and ventral sides, along with concussion missile launchers in the nose.”

“All right, so it can defend itself, not to mention its shields are quite strong. How is that going…” Anakin blinked as he connected the dots. “You want to make a dedicated EW craft that can keep up with fighters.”

“Precisely, with the modularity in the design we can cram that ship with hardware to jam hundreds of missiles simultaneously. Create a half squadron of them to escort a bomber or fighter wing…” He gave Anakin a determined look.

“That’s fine, but can we do it here? In enough time for it to matter. The 1300 is only at the prototype stage in Corellia and it would be a six day journey for them to reach Eriadu. Not to mention doing the militarization work and sorting out any problems encountered along the way.”

“As it so happens, we have a branch of CEC on Eriadu and they already have two of those ships on display for marketing to potential buyers.”

“Are they hangar queens?” Anakin retorted.

Tarkin chuckled, giving him a funny look. “What an interesting turn of phrase. You mean they’re just showroom floor models with no functionality? No, they’re fully functional, spaceworthy prototypes. The problem will be convincing the local branch of CEC to give them to us.” 

“As a high officer in the GAR, I have the authority to nationalize and requisition any asset in the defense of the Republic. CEC can look to the Chancellor’s office or Jedi Council for compensation if it comes down to it.”

“Well then, General Skywalker, shall we go get ourselves a shuttle?”

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The local general manager of CEC, in the end, only put up a token protest at the commandeering of the only two YT-1300 prototypes in the southern reaches of the galaxy.  

Anakin had felt the man was only doing it to at least show his own boss back on Corellia that he had done his due diligence. He knew full well how close the CIS was to overrunning the system and if his YT1300s could somehow help, then he’d give them up in a heartbeat. As it beat living under Separatist occupation, detention and interrogation for further CEC secrets.

Hangar Bay Two and Three in the nose of Resolute was now playing host to both identical ships.

Assembled in front of him was a small host of engineers and yardworkers from the Eriadu shipyard, including a full contingent of their clone GAR counterparts from Resolute’s engineering department and starfighter maintenance.

“All right, listen up!” Anakin projected his voice to reach every ear. “On your personal datapads you will find uploaded the manuals and blueprints of these ships, including some of my own notes and designs appended to it. Sorry if they’re a bit rough, but I only had eight hours to prepare them for you.”

He could see a bunch of men, a few women and clones mutter to each in disbelief as they stared into their datapads.

“Anyway, our first job is to detach the modular sections of the 1300 from the base spaceframe. Once that is done, the shipyards are already working on fabrication of the custom emitter dishes and we need to incorporate the electronic warfare systems from two dozen Z-95s into these hulls, including the cradling, power and data transmission trunks to accommodate at least ten R2 droids.”

“The power core also has to be pulled, that I will work on personally with a few engineers from Resolute. We need to get this ship to at least 3500G and Class 1 hyperdrive if they’re going to fly alongside fighter squadrons.”

“Finally, will come the weapons, but that’s the easy part, the parts for which are already onboard. Any questions?”

A single hand was raised.

A relatively small female engineer, who Ahsoka would call ‘mousy’ and ‘cute’, but with a starships tech’s tool belt around her coughed with embarrassment as every eye looked at her.

“Yes, uh, general. How long do we have to do this?”

“I want these ships in space, running exercises and trials, within three days.” Astonishment rocked the assembled engineers, and mutters of disbelief echoed. “I say so, because we expect by day five that the Separatists will launch another attack on Eriadu. If these ships aren’t in space, then our fighters and bombers will be dead.”

“That’s impossible,” said another engineer in the back of the small crowd.

“Not impossible,” Anakin countered immediately. “As long as you follow my direction when I give it with a much more open mind than that. Now… let’s begin!”

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“Commander?”

The tone and incredulous nature of Hunter’s question spoke for the rest of CT99 as they stood uncertainly in the wide doorway leading to Captain Thalor’s private dining area.

The neimoidian, as the captain of a Lucrehulk, by default had to be a very wealthy, even prominent individual in their society and his dining room reflected that.

A long rectangular wooden table and elegant chairs made of crimson greel wood from Pii IV, some of the most expensive in the galaxy due to the elaborate and ornate spirals, waves and bands that naturally grew in the material. Artwork from a dozen worlds adorned the walls, with a massive hand painted portrait of Thalor dominating the wall behind the head of the table.

It felt a bit macabre to be stared at by such a huge version of the neimoidian I had beheaded just a few days ago and to be using his dining room to eat.

On the table, was half a dozen large dishes steaming with food waiting to be devoured, made with food from the massive personal pantry that was managed by its own protocol droid. I had double checked its programming to make sure its assimilation protocol had taken properly. It would be just like Thalor to have some sort of contingency program that would activate on his death - feeding poison to those who had killed him via his inoffensive butler droid.

Even so, I wanted to keep up my culinary skills developed in Mortis, and had personally invaded the officer’s kitchen to make every dish on the table.

“Mynock got your tongue, CT99?” I laughed. “Come in, switch off your holodisguises, helmets off and sit, dinner is served.”

They looked at each other and obeyed hesitantly, mostly due to the fact that they were looking at my true face without a holo or my personalized Mando helmet in the way for the first time.

The plating had been arranged to be around the far end of the table, with me seated in the middle and two to either side.

The first to get into the spirit of things was Wrecker, who didn’t hesitate to break into a big smile as he caught a whiff of the food and immediately began using the large silver plated ladle to begin dumping heaps of spiced potato mash or the best equivalent I could make with what was on offer in the pantry.

Hesitantly the others followed suit.

“What’s the occasion, commander?” Hunter asked, taking some nuna meat drumsticks.

“We’ve been going non stop for days, delivering CIS weapon components, learning the ship, doing battle drills, keeping up our charade to the enemy. I figured it was time we sat down and ate in a communal setting. Mandalorian clan dining halls are large, boisterous affairs, meant to build camaraderie. We can’t exactly imitate that here, but we'll do the best we can.”

I began heaping my own plate from a dish of braised shaak roast.

A meat I had been pleasantly surprised to find stocked, as the shaak was a large herbivore native to Naboo. A quick query to M8 and one search of Thalor’s personal database later and it was clear the late captain had developed his own taste for it, as he had been part of the original Federation blockade of Naboo, as the second in command of another Lucrehulk.

Tech chose a few helpings of the nerf stew, whilst Crosshair took some of the tuantaun fondo.

“So, how are you finding it working with droids?” I asked after a bite of my food.

“I’d rather we scrap ‘em all, commander,” Wrecker said, after practically inhaling three nuna drum sticks in moments. “But they do as they’re told and it's not like we could run this entire ship by ourselves.”

“I find it disturbing actually,” Tech said softly.

This surprised me slightly, “Oh? Do elaborate.”

“I’ve been looking over the assimilation program and the original droid programming. I’ve learned more in this mission than I did in years on Kamino on the original source code that the enemy is using.”

“And what have you concluded?”

Tech shook his head, “Normally, the B1 droid is a mass produced piece of scrap, only meant to hold a blaster and shoot in squad or large company formations. The programming is sloppy, but the security protocols are much better, which are constantly being updated whilst leaving the rest alone. The assimilation program burns through that but then practically turns the B1 into what it could’ve been all along. A competent line soldier that is stable, follows orders to the letter and with minimal comment and no backchat. The maintenance and engineering versions have also improved their efficiency by nearly double in comparison with their previous iterations.”

“You’re realizing how different this war could’ve been, had the Separatists and the Trade Federation before them actually invested in proper droid intelligence programming and not been credit pinching misers.”

He nodded grimly, “We would’ve been overwhelmed from the start of the war.”

“Correct. We can be very grateful that the original greed of the Federation gave them such a relatively inferior weapon system that is all numbers and blunt instruments such as the B2. Commando droids buck that trend, but they are few, closely monitored and given stringent memory wipes. The demands of the war is also keeping credits away from further research in improving droid programming, so they rely on the tac droids to ride herd and keep order.”

“So, if we took all our assimilated droids on the Dawn, and threw them against a similar number of Seppie clankers, ours would win?” Wrecker asked.

“All things being equal, yes,” I said with a shrug. “General Skywalker and I made sure that their targeting and tactical reasoning protocols were brought up to par, whilst ensuring that their coding to be loyal to the Republic was now inviolable. Anything trying to subvert them back to the Separatists would simply not work and even if someone managed to break the new encryption, the droid would self-destruct before it could happen.”

That encryption was based on the technique used by Revan to secure HK-47 from similar hacking attempts.

“That’s certainly good to know, commander,” Hunter sighed, pouring water from a large jug into a glass. “I certainly wouldn’t want to get stuck on a ship with over two hundred thousand hostile droids.”  

“Why?” asked Crosshair shortly, his eyes narrowing suspiciously at me.

I smiled at him and tented my hands, “I understand your question Crosshair, but for the benefit of you fellows please elaborate.”

“Why only use the assimilation protocol now and here, if you’ve had it for as long as I think you have?”

The other’s eyes widened in realization. Their minds leaping to the point quickly. If the assimilation protocol was available here and now, why hadn’t it been used far and wide on other worlds to stop the fighting and the death of their brothers fighting in the war. The CIS could have their armies turned against them on every battlefield and the galaxy spanning conflict would be on its way to an end.

“We’ve been very careful where we use this weapon, always in controlled circumstances and on a small scale. All the droids assimilated on the shipyard destroyed themselves in the process of sabotaging it. This is the first time it’s been used on a larger scale to take over an entire Lucrehulk battleship and its entire droid complement. If all evidence needs to be erased, once again, I’d just self-destruct this ship and order every droid to stay. It’s known to very few that it even exists, which now includes you. The list of who knows is even more classified. Why isn’t it used more widely?” I drank from my own water. “How would you feel Hunter, if we were fighting each other to the death and I snapped my fingers and disarmed you of every weapon you have?”

“I’d retreat immediately, regroup, rearm with weapons that couldn’t be subverted, maybe…” he trailed off as he began to see the problem.

“You see it’s not so simple. The Separatists by now have more weapons than just their droid armies. The Republic has gone to great lengths to prevent or stop those weapon programs, but it’s impossible to stop them all. One of them was a targeted biological virus against clones. We stopped that from happening, but there are other diseases and ways to weaponize it. If we ever push the enemy too hard and into a corner, we will not like the way they come out swinging. They won’t care about just targeting clones, but also the people of the Republic.”

The nightmares of probability lines where mass use of the assimilation protocol had occurred was not something I care to remember much. The CIS had not just used bioweapons, but also chemical and kinetic kill vehicles on Republic worlds. Palpatine had seen the end of his managed war approaching too fast and unleashed Dooku and the CIS for maximum effect.

The KKVs had been something that had hit me out of left field. It was not a weapon that was really endemic to the Corusca galaxy and yet it didn’t take much desperation and necessity for some group of CIS engineers to as quickly as possible come up with the plan to strap a Proton 2 sublight engine to a 100 meter asteroid, load it up into a cargo ship, hyper to the target system, release and accelerate it to a fraction of light speed within mere minutes.

“That is why the protocol can only be used secretly and surgically, such as we are doing now. I wish things were different, but there are no good answers here. On the one hand we could shorten the war, save hundreds of thousands of clone soldiers from the future battles to come, only to see them and billions other perish when the CIS unleashes their own ultimate weapons of mass destruction.”

“I must admit, I’ve never thought of the war in its grander scale or implication,” Hunter shook his head. “It’s always just fighting the clanker, as simple as that. I knew that it would one day end, that we would be victorious and…”

“All four of you are special by design. Nala Se might consider you an experiment but I see so much more potential in you than just that. The missions I send you four on will not require clones, they will need uniquely, strong men that can see beyond just the scope or sight of your weapon. They will influence the very course of this war and even beyond it. Can you be that?”

I met the eyes of each of them in turn, looking at the spirit of each man before me.

Wrecker’s fist abruptly met the table, causing the cutlery to rattle loudly. “I can’t tell you yes, commander, but as sure as the kaminoan depths, I’ll try.”

Tech slowly nodded, his eyes calculating and the mind behind it going at lightspeed trying to divine why I was speaking like this.

Crosshair nodded, his eyes showing slight confusion but mostly a pleased surprise. “Yes, commander.”

“I…” Hunter looked at his fellows. “I can be that, Commander Tano.”

“Excellent,” I clapped my hands together and smiled widely. “You are the blood of Mandalore through your forebear. You’ve been trained in some of our arts and I have continued to progress you along it. As far as I’m concerned you might as well be Mandalorians, and we always take care of our own. When this war is over and it will be, the formalities can be done and you will have a home on Mandalore for the rest of your days.

“Now, who wants dessert, my fellow Mando’ad?”

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“Think she’ll do the job, general?”

Anakin, clad in a starship tech’s overall, stained rather thoroughly in patches with every fluid imaginable in mechanical use, stared with satisfaction at the re-assembled CEC YT-1300 electronic warfare refit. 

The ship still needed a lot of its hull and armor paneling put back, but that was just busy work which would be done within a few hours. Its shape remained generally unchanged, except for the eight emitter dishes stippled on the dorsal and ventral profiles. 

“It’ll do it,” Anakin said confidently, feeling that deep level of satisfaction that came with a completed project down to his very bones. “Anything to keep you guys from getting blown out of space, Drift. Who else is going to save my foolish skin out there?”

CT-4281 or Drift, Shadow Squadron’s second in command, just barely stopped himself from rolling his eyes at his commanding officer’s typical antics.

“Commander Tano perhaps?” Drift questioned dryly, fiddling with the accursed chin strap in his black and gray striped helmet that never seemed to sit right, no matter how many times he went to the quartermaster to fix it.

Anakin rolled his eyes, “She’s a bit busy at the moment.”

“No doubt about that, general. Have you thought about a name for the ship yet?”

“The engineering teams are currently having a bit of a war of words about it,” Anakin chuckled in amusement. “Signalbreaker, Pulsefang, Lockshatter and Scatterscream are among the names being tossed around.”

Drift frowned in open distaste at the thought of using any of them. “Clearly the engineering crew’s talents do not lie in creative language.”

“No, they don’t. The first one is all right, but it’s literally describing what the ship does from a certain point of view. Let’s go more imaginative, if our eyes could see the EM spectrum, what would we see this ship causing…” He trailed off and a lopsided smile appeared. “Her name is Furor.”

“Furor, Furor-class,” Drift tested the words and nodded in satisfaction. “Sounds good, general.”

“Now, time to see how it actually does in space.”

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The journey to the cockpit was markedly different in the now militarized Furor in comparison to the civilian YT1300.  

Most of the internal circular passageways were gone entirely, filled to the brim with EW hardware, extra internal fuel stowage and to make room for the bulkier power core. It would be ideally manned with only a crew of four; pilot, EW officer and ventral and dorsal gunners. There were currently only two sleeping bunks and the onboard galley had been relocated to the starboard side. Consumable stowage and life support had been reduced accordingly.

The original civilian ship had a maximum passenger rating of fifteen plus two crew members and all those amenities had been stripped, including the five Class-1 escape pods. The Furor now only featured one escape pod and all the extra room that freed was devoted to either more EW capacity or concussion missile stowage.

The hyperdrive had been theoretically tested to a 0.8 potential and Anakin could already see how that could be brought down even further in the future if he had more time. The new Corellian Avatar-10 hyperdrive had been especially designed for the YT-1300 and reflected the rugged, modular approach of the rest of the ship.

He sat down in the pilot seat and surveyed the instrumentation before him and looked out the large domed transparisteel cockpit module that hung off the starboard side of the ship’s saucer section.

It would take a bit of time to get used to the notion that the whole ship was to his left and nothing but empty space would be to his right.

The pilot still had a lot of the original controls from the civilian version, which in best CEC fashion was chunky and satisfying with physical knobs, switches, dials and levers. The flight yoke and acceleration controls were taken from a Z95 for more responsive and quicker inputs. The EW officer’s station to his right was practically from a different universe; touchscreens and holoprojections clustered around the seat, allowing the operator to manage the dizzying amount of systems at their fingertips with the aid of an integrated droid intelligence.

“Turning on the power,” Anakin muttered, flicking a bank of switches on his left, before pushing the large red button.

The humm of power resonated in the air and the cockpit lights flickered on, the multitude of holos springing to life. Through the Force and his hands, he felt the refit Quadex power core spool to standby power.

“EWE-D, you there buddy?” He stared at the small stalk eye mounted on the control console. Blue light blossomed and the stalk twitched.

“I am here, General Skywalker,” the electronic warfare droid said with a smooth voice, that almost bordered on having no emotional inflection whatsoever. “All systems are powering up, however I detect numerous inefficiencies and two dozen non-critical errors in control software.”

“Can you fix it?” he asked, knowing the answer.

“Of course, general… done. The inefficiencies will require a physical interface to correct or a suitably programmed R2 or R3 unit.”

“That’s on the schedule,” he assured the resident Furor’s intelligence, keying the comlink. “Shadow One to Resolute Flight, requesting departure clearance.”

“Shadow One, clearance granted. Dorsal doors opening on approach.”

“Thank you.”

He pulled slowly back on the yoke, repulsors and thrusters pulsed to bring the Furor to hover over the decking. Then tested minor movements by angling the ship and wiggling it in place, feeling the responsiveness.

A nudge on the acceleration, brought the distinctive idle whine of the Girodyne SRB42 sublight engines to his ears.

The Furor edged out through the magcon shield into the central spine of Resolute, where one of the armored doors began splitting open to expose a clear path to open space.

The Venator had relocated itself to a high orbit of Muntiadu, the first planet of the Eriadu system, for the space trials. The proximity to the star gave it a surface of mostly molten rock and for the purposes of keeping the Furor secret, the ambient radiation made long range scans problematic at best. 

“Here we go.”

He pushed forward on the throttle, a burn that shot the Furor out into space.

“Any issues EWE-D?”

“Injectors three and four in sublight engines are running at exceedingly high rates, compensating.”

Anakin brought up a diagnostic screen to check for himself and nodded. “We’ll keep an eye on the other injectors. Setting course for nominal orbit, full burn in three, two, one…”

He slammed the throttle forward to hundred percent.

The engines rumbled rather alarmingly through the hull before settling down into a steady yet somehow satisfying croaky scream.

He kept it up for a full five minute test at 3600 G before pulling it back to idle and staring at the engineering readouts.

“So far so good,” he muttered. “It seems though that the injectors are a definite issue. They won’t last to military standards.”

“I agree, General Skywalker. Correcting this issue would require a redesign.”

“Should’ve seen that coming,” he remonstrated himself. He had prevented more than a dozen issues with the Furor using his limited prescience and technical acumen, yet this one had slipped through. “It’ll be good enough at least until we beat back the coming attack. Run diagnostics on the EW suites in the meantime.”

“I began doing that the moment you brought me online, General.”

“Any results yet?”

“Preliminary simulations show me capable of jamming 43% of the theoretical mass missile attacks from a Recusant II missile ship. With the addition of the second Furor and Z95s inherent capabilities, it should bring the missile barrage into survivable levels for starfighter sized vessels.”

“That’s good in theory, but now we need combat data. Setting course for the edge of the mass shadow, let’s see the hyperdrive in action.”

He plotted a microjump that would only take him to Jaroona, the second planet of the system. For extra safety, he also channeled the Force through his actions, setting the coordinates and reaching out with his perceptions into the structure of the higher dimension. He was completely amateurish compared to a full Jedi Navigator, but it was good enough to live with.

“Three, two, one…”

He let the computer handle most of it, as even Jedi couldn’t handle the microjump timing beyond pushing the motivator at the correct time.

The universe around him blurred with streaks for the briefest of moments, the tunnel effect not even getting a chance to form as the small rocky volcanic world charged towards his point of view before stopping a mere 15 000 km from the Furor’s nose.

Anakin grinned in triumph, before turning the ship around and heading back in the same direction. He waited a few minutes for the hyperdrive to settle back to nominal levels.

“Three, two, one…”

The only sound to reach his ears was the whining stuttering of a hyperdrive motivator clearly ‘giving up the ghost’.

“Great. Shadow One to Resolute, I’m going to need a pick up.”

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We resumed our shift on the Dawn’s bridge, after taking the luxury of a full five hours of sleep. Letting the assigned droid crew go to their recharging cradles.

It had taken some convincing the men of CT99 to not at least have one of them stay awake in shifts, to keep an eye on the droids, but I had managed. I needed them all at 100%.

We were back in our bith and neimoidian disguises, but our time of relative ease on the ship was coming to an end. It wouldn’t be long now until we would be forced to retake the bith crew we had put off the ship during the emergency.

Our sabotage had completed its overall objective, but the bith were not known as being technological dunderheads. In barely a few days, they had arrested the out of control space stations and a number of connective yards and gangways. Even as I watched they were affecting repairs and bringing up the first replacement fusion cores.

It would take years to achieve a full repair and bring the yard back to what it was, but as a repair and build yard the CIS could no longer count on being able to use it. Also as expected, Tech was hearing through encrypted comlinks that almost every enemy ship still held in yard cradles was hopelessly unable to continue repairs thanks to our sabotage virus in the databases.

Almost every bith in the shipyard who was qualified was pushed into the effort to sort out what was wrong with each ship and shuttles from the planet brought even more techs to help.

“Status update, DT.”

The tac droid stood up from the captain’s chair to let me sit.

“There has been significant movement from the enemy fleet, commander.”

It brought out a sensor holo on the forward viewscreen to illustrate the point.

“They’ve partitioned out an attack fleet from their line forces.”

Two squadrons of Munificents along with escorting Recusants, including twelve of the refit missile Recusant and two Lucrehulk battleships.

“Commander, can what we have at Eriadu stop that?” asked Wrecker uncertainly.

“Pure numbers says no, especially if we can’t count on the force multiplier of bombers, not unless they’ve pulled off a miracle repairing our own ships.” There was something about that attack formation that was bugging me. 

“Incoming transmission from Admiral Trench,” announced DT22.

“Put him through.” 

The tall harch’s holo rippled into existence in front of me.

“Captain Thalor, good work on the refits. Thanks to you we now have the long sought after weapon that will change this destructive paradigm.”

“Dispense with the pleasantries, admiral, you know it’s wasted on me.”

“Quite, well as you can see, we’ve arranged for a suitable test of our new battle doctrine which will destroy the Republic backbone at Eriadu. There are just two things missing. The first… is you and your ship. I’m assigning the Seperatist’s Dawn to the attack fleet.”

I could feel the shock rippling through CT99 and I even heard Wrecker crumpling the armrest of his own chair at the engineering station.

“Very well, are we still to pick up the rest of our assigned bith crew?”

“No, they’ve been drafted to help sort out the mess at the shipyard. You’ll just have to make do with the few you’ve retained and use droids for everything else.”

A few moments of awkward silence followed and I hated that Trench was clearly waiting for me to ask. “And the second missing thing, Admiral?”

“Why me, of course-”

The sensor holoscreen still on the main viewer blared an alert as a massive hyperspace signature emerged. From it came a 2.5km long Providence class dreadnought marked with a transponder declaring the modest name of Invincible.

“- and my flagship.”

Frak.

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A/N: Oh dear. This is a bit of a pickle. ;-) Hope you enjoyed and have an awesome weekend!