KeiransFuturismFantasy

The Force Wills - Chapter 117

The sound of a bionic right fist slamming and denting mild durasteel echoed through the Jedi Temple communication center.

Anakin glared into the giant holotank that currently showed the entire Coruscant system and a visual representation of every ship that had left in the last twenty four hours. Naturally, it was a daunting number and was like looking into a sea of points with coordinates, ship transponder numbers and even their names. All of it was gravitating towards the various hyperpoints of the system. The expression needle in a haystack, didn’t do it justice when you were looking at thousands of needles in a haystack the size of a solar system or if you didn’t even know if that needle was off Coruscant yet.

We could only assume that Moralo Eval’s timetable meant he needed to leave as soon as possible. Therefore they would try to steal a ship.

Eval was not stupid though and knew that it would be reported soon enough, at which point the description of the ship would be sent to every likely port and waypoint along the hyperspace route.

Wait…

“We can’t rely or wait on stolen ship reports, master,” I shook my head, staring into the datapad in my hands, swiping across the CSF reports in question. Stealing a hyperspace capable ship was generally not something that occurred much on the surface city and it required a specific skill set to undermine the aerospace traffic regulation systems and transponder every ship was built with. It was a skill set we had to assume Moralo had. 

“What? Why?” Anakin folded his arms and glanced at me with a frown.

I gestured to the datapad with dozens of police reports from across the planet regarding stolen starships. The sheer number of people on Coruscant made it a statistical certainty that even though something happened rarely, it still meant you were dealing with a large number of cases.  

“Moralo definitely had help from within the prison in his escape and I don’t mean the prisoners.”

“You’re telling me even the clone guards helped him?” Anakin scowled at the thought.

“Not all of them, naturally. It would take just a few and remember that not all the prison staff are clones and any droids could further be subverted. No, the more I look at the big picture of Eval’s original capture and the surveillance footage from the prison escape… this was all planned, master.”

“He planned to be captured?”

“Yes, especially in light of reading his classified psychological evaluations and history. He delights in elaborate planning and has an ego the size of a star.”

“And Hardeen? Did he plan that too? You think Eval hired him to kill Obi-Wan?”

“It’s… a possibility. Master Kenobi was one of the primary Jedi investigating the kidnapping plot. It could be that Eval realized that Master Kenobi was too dangerous and risked compromising the grander scheme. The point I was getting to, is that if this had been planned so elaborately, then Eval already had hyperspace transport waiting for him after his escape. One that would not be reported stolen.”

He nodded in agreement, tapping the controls - the holo cleared until it only showed the various hyperspace points in Coruscant, before it zoomed out to show the entire galaxy and the major hyper lanes. Serenno was highlighted in the north-east and Naboo in the south-east.

“Let’s say that Dooku is giving them the best and fastest ship that also has a cloaking device, so there’s no way to interdict or delay their movement across the galaxy,” Anakin mused.

“We don’t even know if they’re going to Serenno first,” I argued in turn, stepping up to the control panel. The hyperspace courses in question were drawn and calculated. “Their staging point might be closer to Naboo. Coruscant to Serenno, the least time course is 6 days, Serenno to Naboo is 14 days minimum.”

“Festival of Light is in 26 days, theoretically giving them six days of preparation time on Serenno.”

“Possibly, but 14 days is a long time to remain under cloak. The chances of something going wrong with it increases over time. The ship might also not have the endurance for such a long trip and needs a refuel along the way.”

“Remember who we’re dealing with, Ahsoka,” Anakin gave me a severe look. “Dooku will want to personally supervise this mission’s preparation due to its importance. He won’t accept doing this remotely at the other end of the holo transmission.”

I nodded, “If we’re going to be deployed on Naboo for the festival-”

“We will,” Anakin said with a grim certainty.

“The Omen can make the trip in 5 days, allow for a day of security prep there-”

“Two days of prep,” he interjected.

“Fine,” I huffed in annoyance. “We’ll have plenty of time then, assuming nothing else happens in the war that might call us away.”

“Snips, we’ll face that problem if we have to, but whatever happens I’m not losing any chance to catch up to Hardeen.”

I gave him a long look, “Have you thought about what you’ll do when that day comes, master?”

Anakin merely shook his head, “Not specifically, but I’ll admit to hoping that he puts up a strong fight in the end.”

My chrono beeped for attention, “If you’ll excuse me, master. I have an appointment with Master Agnook.”

“What does the CFK want with you now?” he asked with annoyance.

“He wants an interview regarding our little feat of sealing the cortosis mine on Mokivj.”

Anakin raised a single eyebrow incredulously, “Seriously?”

“I don’t understand it either, master. We did nothing ‘new’,” I sighed wearily. “It seems they either have little to do or they’ve been keeping a close eye on our reports, as we have such a wonderful run of luck.”  My tone and sarcastic face was a bit exaggerated.

“All right, off you go,” he shooed me away and with a few commands on the controls, replaced the galactic map with a readout of Hardeen’s intelligence file.

I gave him an idle wave and left through the main doors.

Down the first corridor and through a few more security checkpoints that required not just biometrics, but also the use of the Force on a precision mechanism within each door, allowed  me to pass into the general areas of the Temple.

In the first grand hallway with its towering arches, there was near absolute silence, except for the footsteps of passing Jedi. I sensed my current shadow and Palpatine’s latest spy had appeared about fifteen meters behind me.

She had emerged from a side door and walked with purpose yet still had the typical serenity of a Jedi.

I felt no probes through the Force. Her eyes weren’t intent on me but she had been appearing in my peripheral vision and Farsight just too often in the last few days throughout my day-to-day activities in the Temple. If I hadn’t been as paranoid or as armed as I was in knowledge and Force abilities, I would’ve written it off as coincidence.   

Yet, there she was again and again. Keeping herself so unsuspicious, that it made her stand out all the more.

It took me some careful doing with R3’s help; who had finally returned to Coruscant with the Resolute, after being attached to Wraith Squadron for nearly a year, to help me surreptitiously find out her name and file.

It was only as I saw her face in full profile that it finally clicked a vague memory, something so fleeting from my past life. No amount of memory tricks or self-control ability would help in recalling it completely. However, her face was enough for me to do a surreptitious conventional search.

Her name was Jedi Knight Iskat Akaris, someone who would’ve gone on to become the Thirteenth Sister of the Galactic Empire’s Inquisitorius. 

A member of an extremely rare species to be seen among the stars; Pkorians.

They had sworn themselves off all advanced technology and lived in isolation on a single continent of their homeworld. The didn’t use force to keep offworlders at bay, but actively discouraged anyone who was not pkori from even trying to spend the night. No merchants would sell you anything and they made sure not to harvest or mine anything that would attract offworld interest.

Just how Akaris had become a Jedi foundling was not something that was really elaborated on in her file, but I could well imagine someone in the Explorer Corps taking it upon themselves to pursue their quest for knowledge despite the opposition from the locals.

Her life growing up among the Jedi was notable in that she became a padawan at a rather young age, breezing through the Academy and being chosen by Master Sember Vey, who had been a member of the CFK. Her training was done mostly among the stars, as Master Vey had the calling to collect ancient Jedi texts and writings scattered all over the galaxy in statues, art, the archives of other species and so on.

That had all changed when the first Battle of Geonosis occurred and Master Vey became one of the fallen Jedi of that disastrous conflict in the arena.

Iskat had since then thrown herself into the war effort, after being knighted in the same ceremony Anakin had been a part of.

Her war record since then was generally good, having a number of successful deployments among clone troopers and even destroyed a droid factory on Thule. However, it was at this point that her enthusiasm for destruction and eagerness for battle against the CIS became a concern. She had been effectively benched for the past month, being advised to reflect, meditate and ‘find her serenity’ again. 

This was the last thing anyone needed to tell someone who was on a personal crusade and I could well imagine this frustration, the practical confinement to the Jedi Temple and being reduced to teaching younglings in the Academy, being the cause of her recruitment into Palpatine’s spy network.

Naturally, she had no inkling that Palpatine was a Sith or any of that. No, she just knew he was a man who had shown sympathy to her plight and had agreed to ‘keep an eye on the Jedi’ for him because he was ‘concerned’ due to the strain the war was putting on the Order.

R3 had managed to even find me the moment the two had met on one of Palpatine’s visits to the Temple in the surveillance archives. The master manipulator had only needed a few minutes of conversation and he already had her bent around his little finger. Anyone else looking at the holo would just see an old grandfatherly Palpatine offering his help and guidance. I could only be disgusted by the false sympathy as the insidious snake wormed his way into her mind.

I abruptly stopped in my tracks, just as I was about to leave the grand hallway, then gave a look at my chrono again… Oh well, I’d just have to ask Master Agnook to forgive my tardiness.

My hands folded behind my back and I walked to the nearby balcony that overlooked the expansive lower floor leading towards the gigantic main entrance of the temple. The exact place where, thousands of years ago, a bounty hunter had crashed a starship through the doors to deliver a Sith Empire strike team to assault and sack the Jedi Temple - the cherry on the cake of the Sith surprise attack on Coruscant during the Old Republic.

Seeing the pristine temple, its statues, walls and everything rebuilt in the face of what had been, always felt so surreal.

Now I waited, straightening my Hapan top, smoothing out the Jedi outer robe I wore loosely around my shoulders.   

It took nearly 43 minutes of me just standing here, seemingly doing a standing meditation, for Akaris to finally leave her distant hiding spot to approach me openly with intent.

Her conservative brown Jedi tunic, leggings, boots and outer robe was in stark contrast to the spirit that I was sensing within her. Her lurid red skin was quite striking and I couldn’t help but think that brown was a horrible color for her to wear.

“Knight Akaris,” I greeted her formally, giving her a bow then met the bright blue eyes set in a severe face. “You’ve been following and observing me for a few days now. Can I help you?”

She had a reasonable poker face, but I felt a tinge of alarm leaking through her emotional control.

“Padawan Tano,” she politely returned the bow, quickly rallying herself. “Yes. I… I was hoping to get your advice on a few things.” Her voice had an interesting timbre that played in my montrals in a fashion that felt quite exotic. It was harsh then settled down into pleasant notes.

“Oh? And what might that be?” I didn’t sense a lie, it was clear that she genuinely did have questions for me, but just had been put in the awkward spot of speaking to the person she was spying on.

“How-” she stopped herself, her emotions briefly getting the better of her. Her eyes broke contact and she moved to stand at the balcony, fixing her gaze at the serene sight of the temple. “I apologize. My equilibrium has been a challenge to maintain lately.”

“No need for apologies, Akaris. Take your time.”

She only nodded in thanks, her hands folded in front of her. “How do you stay on the front lines, padawan? After everything you’ve been through and suffered. Your master just lost his old master. I understand you were also close to Master Kenobi. Yet…” She trailed off, unable to continue as emotion swelled again within her. “Yet, the Council doesn’t seem to be taking you off the active duty roster.”

“I take it that they have done so to you?” I asked knowingly. She only nodded, her jaw muscles slightly twitching. “I also deduce therefore that you’ve lost someone?”

“My master died on Geonosis at the beginning of the war.”

Just saying the words seemed to tear at her spirit.

“And you’ve been fighting since then,” I said frankly. “The turmoil of the war weighs on you, the deaths of civilians, the destruction, the clones fighting and dying around you.”

Her lips pursed as I spoke, her emotions boiling up and she wrestled them down.

“Yes, it does.”

“The Council pulled you away, probably stuffed you into the most dull position they could find for someone in your position.”

Her eyes briefly widened and glanced my way. Good grief, she was no master of emotional control and her knighthood so far had clearly not helped matters. It would be interesting to evaluate all the Jedi who were knighted alongside Anakin on an ‘emergency’ basis at the beginning of the war.

“How did you-”

“It’s not difficult these days for me to deduce how the Council will generally react to someone in your position, given how many times I’ve gone before them since the war started,” I smiled mildly at her.

That mollified her somewhat. She had been really alarmed thinking at first that I somehow knew entirely about her past. It meant I had researched her. Why would I research her if this was the first time we met? Therefore, she had not been circumspect enough in her spying and I had spotted her. I neatly headed off that dangerous line of thinking.

“So… Do you have any advice?”

I had to give her this credit, pride was not a problem at least. She was a knight that was coming to a padawan for help, that showed at least a certain humility and recognition that despite our differing rank, she would go to anyone who seemingly had the experience and knowledge to help.

It was so tempting to screw with her. She was technically part of the enemy’s machinations after all.

“Ask yourself the question, Akaris, why are you fighting in this war?” I gave her a pointed look with my left eye.

“Why?” she asked incredulously, as if it was the stupidest question in the galaxy.

“Yes, you don’t need to. You can join the ranks of Jedi who are content to be in the rear echelon.”

She blinked, almost spluttered and with a deep breath wrenched control back. “I- I can’t.”

“Again, I ask, why?”

She started to say something but stopped herself, as if she had been about to answer but for the first time truly looked at her words from an objective perspective. I could well guess what those words were: she was fighting for her slain master, fighting because the CIS had killed Sember Vey in the Geonosis arena. She fought out of her underlying hatred for the CIS.

In the beginning months of the war, the Jedi Order had been desperate for every knight they could get, so for a long time, they had overlooked Akari’s motives. Now with the war itself settled into its own equilibrium and its second year, the Council could catch up with decisions that had been set aside, including evaluation of how certain Jedi acclimatized to the war and act accordingly.

“I- I don’t think I can answer, padawan.”

“Until you can give an answer that you can voice to a mere padawan, let alone a master, then perhaps it's for the best that you are not out there anymore, Akaris. You’ve seen what the war did to Krell, someone who despite his formidable physicality and strength in the Force, was lacking in everything else that mattered and fell to the Dark Side of his own soul. Do you want to fall?”

My words might as well have slapped her for the effect it had on her expression. “O- Of course not,” she hissed.

“The council is not in a hurry to create more Krells in this war, Akaris. Most of the time, you should accept their wisdom and heed their instruction.”

She raised an intrigued eyebrow at me. “Most of the time?”

“Nothing is perfect,” I smirked. “As much as they want to pretend otherwise, the council is included in that. So what are they having you do besides cooling your heels and meditating?”

“I’m a teacher at the Academy, lightsaber basics and history.”

“Do you not see the honor and trust they place in you? They’re entrusting the next generation of Jedi to you, in terms of how they defend themselves and how they see the past.”

Her shoulders sagged and she leaned with her arms on the balcony railing, almost as if she was realizing the unbearable weight she had been carrying with her all this time. “No, I suppose I didn’t see it that way. It was just… a chore to keep me busy and here in the Temple and not out there… making a difference.”

“You must realize you are making a difference. I can’t tell you how influential my own academy teachers were, despite me disliking the majority of them. You are building in the classroom, Akaris, not destroying. That is why I rather mildly envy you.” She gave me another incredulous look. “Oh yes, I would be content spending my time as a Jedi in dusty archival halls or archeological sites to delve into the mysteries of the Force, but that is not the hand I’ve been dealt.” I stepped forward to lean a hand against the railing near her, affecting an air of friendly companionship for a fellow Jedi. “Now I’m cursed to cleave apart CIS droids and blast their starships to scrap amongst the stars as they try to carve out more and more of the galaxy for themselves. Do you want to know why?”

She nodded.

“Because ultimately, as history has shown on countless worlds across this galaxy in microcosm, that the revolution they espouse to promote is just a facade for the worst among them to indulge in their own vices and hunger for power. Name one world, when faced with Dooku’s ‘liberation from Republic tyranny’ that successfully said ‘no’ to him without it devolving into a fight.”

She clearly thought about it. Not that it was easy given the full breadth and scope of the war.

“None,” she eventually acknowledged.

“There you have it. I have been behind enemy lines and there is peace, crime is significantly lower in the CIS, things seemingly get done much quicker as well, but it all flows from fear. If anyone says the wrong opinion or disagrees with the new status quo, that person might find themselves waking up to a knock in the middle of the night. Neighbors are then surprised to find that apartment empty the next day and when they ask questions, they’re quietly advised not to ask anymore.”

The reports I was getting through Fulcrum from the CIS sometimes made for disturbing reading. It was basically Sidious and Dooku prototype testing the fear tactics that I knew would become commonplace during Imperial times.

“That’s… that’s horrible.”

“It is. That is a galaxy I would not want to live in, therefore I fight to prevent it. Do you see what I’m trying to say?”

She worried her lower lip with her teeth in a reflexive gesture. “Your fight comes from a… pure desire, goal or motivation. It sees you through even the worst parts of the war. It’s a shield for your spirit.”

“That’s one way to look at it, Akaris. Let it not be said I don’t struggle though. Every day is a battle in my heart against the darker parts of my nature.”

“You? Have a dark nature?”

“All of us do, did your late master not tell you?”

She hesitated in answering, clearly thinking for a moment. “In hindsight, she did say so, but it wasn’t said so plainly. I was too young and hot headed to understand.”

“And there’s my primary criticism for the Jedi imparting philosophy to young sentients who haven’t developed the mental faculties to think beyond themselves. Many masters make that mistake and so default to telling the younglings, ‘suppress’, ‘it’s bad to think that’, because it's what happened to them as younglings. It isn’t until the brain has developed sufficiently that we can even begin to approach these topics.”

“So until I find a true purpose that calls to my heart…” She nodded and trailed off.

“Precisely. Do you enjoy teaching at the academy?”

“It’s not something I can say I enjoy, I just… do it, because I was ordered to.”

“Oh boy, the students must have a fun time with you,” I said with thinly veiled sarcasm. “They don’t need to be Force sensitive to pick up that your heart isn’t in it.”

“There’s been no complaints and I’ve met all the teaching goals,” she retorted.

“On a surface level, that is true, but do you think those students will look back on your classes fondly?”

“Probably not,” she admitted with a wince.

“Teaching may simply not be your calling. It’s like any other profession, some are good at it, others horrible. Yet somehow we Jedi are expected to become a personal teacher to a padawan one day when we become a knight with enough experience.” I scratched my right montral deliberately in a gesture of frustration, pushing away from the balcony. “Anyway, I must get going. Master Agnook will be rather irked that I missed his appointment. It was a pleasure to meet you, Knight Akaris. If you find yourself in need of a kind montral, please don’t hesitate to call me.”

We bowed to each other and parted ways.

I really wished my prescience could be more expansive in the Shroud, but I was sure the seeds I had planted in Akaris would take root and with a bit of care, grow.

You want more spies, Palpatine? Go ahead.

I’ll just make them my own weapons against you.

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Ever since the start of the war, Obi-Wan had never imagined that this would be how he would first set foot in the Serenno system.

Disguised down to nearly the cellular level into the bounty hunter that had ‘killed’ him. It was an idea that could only come to pass from the Jedi Council and Mace Windu, after multiple levels of sanity had been cast off. Then again, what was sane about the war?

He was now wearing the best armor that had been available at the black market arms bazaar Eval had stopped at a few days ago. That alone had been an eye opening experience on what the CIS would tolerate within their borders.   

A Katarn-class chest and back armor plate in beige; he was already dreading the repercussions his report would generate in Republic Intel at the security failure that represented. Somehow armor sets usually issued to Clone commandos had found its way there. Then he found an old style Mandalorian helmet that had been in vogue a century ago - it had been refurbished and its systems updated to neatly interface with the katarn armor. For his legs, he had chosen rugged armored trousers with kneepads from the katarn set. A vacuum rated bodysuit came next and the final piece came in the form of a modular blaster system from Blastech that he knew hadn’t even hit the market properly yet - a DC-21 that could switch between a sniper rifle and close-range carbine with a quick change of a barrel and receiver module, which he could keep mounted securely in a pouch on his back.

He folded his arms as he sat back in the chair on the small bridge of Eval’s rusty light freighter, watching through the forward screens as Serenno grew larger and larger.

“Finally, we’re here,” Greedo grumbled.

The rodian had not gone crazy with Eval’s stipend at the arms bazaar.

He simply wore blue flack armor, with an armless orange jacket, gray trousers, black boots and a holstered belt for a blaster pistol that was molded to work best with a rodian hand.

“I told you we would make it,” Eval smirked smugly. “This ship might look like it’s about to be scrapped, but that’s the point. It still works where it counts.”

Obi-Wan could personally admit that he had a few sleepless nights in hyperspace whilst on a ship that Anakin would generously describe as a ‘rusty bucket of bolts.’

Eval didn’t even have a name for it, because it could switch transponder and EM signatures with the tap of a button. They had breezed through Republic space with ease, even through military blockades into neutral space in the north-east of the galaxy. In CIS space, it was practically the same story. The ship had a transponder for ‘every situation’ according to the phindian.

He also had outfitted himself in dark orange contoured armor specifically designed for his physiology, which had been waiting for him at the arms market. On both vambraces he had holo emitters and expansive touch pad controls, which had extensive interlinking and slicing capabilities. Yet another demonstration of his superb contingency planning. 

The ship began rumbling as it began the atmospheric interface with Serenno, the forward shields passing into the visible spectrum as it shoved aside the plasma and heat.

Eval was a decent pilot as well, as he had no problem keeping the ship steady through it and with smooth confidence he maneuvered through upper atmosphere turbulence and even a major weather system.

A mere nine minutes of flight later, Eval pulled back on the controls to flare the ship before landing thrusters popped into life and let it settle on an expansive landing pad.

“Welcome to Serenno,” Eval said easily, his hands blurring through a shutdown checklist before triggering the embarkation ramp in the belly of the ship.

When the three impromptu partners in crime emerged to set foot into the cool evening of Serenno, Obi-Wan had to amend his previous thoughts.

This wasn’t a mere landing pad, it looked big enough for a Munificent star frigate to touch down with room to spare.

Eval had thankfully landed close to the three main structures - which he recognized thanks to Ahsoka’s intel as Dooku’s personal residence; a smooth tower that stretched high into the sky, which had two curving wings stretched outward to either side. The western building was definitely military in nature, given the amount of scanners and transmitters on the roof, in addition to commando droid patrols all around it. The eastern building was definitely more civilian orientated, it was visibly older but was well cared for, with expansive windows and ten floors of space arranged in a circular dome.

From the massive landing area, a long lit walkway snaked towards the central tower and Obi-Wan hurriedly triple checked his stealth in the Force as he saw who was approaching.

In the company of four Magnaguard droids, Count Dooku walked into the light of the closest overhead light pole.

The magnification function of Obi-Wan’s helmet reacted to his eyes squinting, automatically zooming in.

Well, the good count looked the same as ever, though Obi-Wan could see a few extra wrinkles around the eyes of the Sith. He bemoaned his Force Stealth’s limitations as he dearly wished to get a good read on the extent of Dooku’s physical corruption. Anakin and Ahsoka’s memories of their last battle, showed Dooku tapping deeper and deeper into abilities that would’ve accelerated the deterioration of his body. Clearly the count had found a way to at least ameliorate or hide it.

“Count Dooku, apologies-” Eval greeted with an eager smile.

A smile that was wiped off his face when both Magnaguards brandished their electrostaffs into his personal space. 

“Your careless delay to show off, could’ve ruined my plan, Eval,” Dooku sneered with a deadly tone of threat underlying his voice. He narrowed his eyes at the two beings following him. “What’s this? Two new recruits for the plan? I recognize Greedo, but who is the other one?”

Obi-Wan felt the brush of Dooku’s general probe through the Force. He brought all of Hardeen’s gathered memories to the fore and worked it into the Force stealth carefully, presenting the disciplined surface thoughts of a trained Mandalorian warrior.

The surface level scan skittered across his mind and withdrew.

“This is Rako Hardeen. A new talent that caught my eye in prison and was instrumental in letting my escape plan proceed with minimal complications. I thought he would be a good candidate for our selection trials.”

“When will we get our promised payment for your escape, Eval?” Greedo snarled.

“The rodian makes a good point,” Obi-Wan said flatly.

“You shall have it,” Dooku interjected smoothly. “And perhaps much more. Perhaps both of you would like to enter our friendly little contest?”

“What contest?” Obi-Wan asked shortly.

“Suffice it to say I require a certain caliber of individual to undertake the plan Eval has only alluded to you thus far. Only the best and most skilled will do. Therefore, we will hold a contest to determine that.”

“I’m in.”

“Greedo?”

“Eval already owes me, now you’ll be added to that list. It just means more money in the end,” the rodian shrugged and nodded his agreement.

“If you survive the trials, I assure you the reward will be well worth it.” He stood aside and gestured up the path. “My bodyguards will escort you to your accommodations for the evening.”

Obi-Wan didn’t hesitate in walking forward, followed quickly by Greedo as two of the magnaguards fell in step beside them to guide the way.

They turned at a fork in the path, heading towards the eastern building.

The droids stopped at an entrance that seemed to be merely a smooth expanse of transparisteel, but it parted into a door whose motivators didn’t make a sound.

Beyond was an expansive lobby that seemed to define the words, opulent and luxury. 

Ancient paintings of men who were probably Dooku’s ancestors, in poses with hunted fauna of the world. Busts of various kinds, with yet more of Dooku’s distant family members, looking severely at anyone who dared enter the space. A dark smooth floor so soft underfoot that Obi-Wan felt like his boot soles were partially sinking into it. Tapestries with dazzling patterns hung from the walls and an intricate crystal chandelier overhead produced light for the entire setting.

The droids followed inside, clearly to head off the idea of any of them getting sticky fingers for the valuable ornamentation.

They were further guided to a turbolift that, after a few seconds' ride upward, delivered them into what was a guest wing of the building.

The luxury faded here somewhat, but Obi-Wan still got the impression he was walking through an upmarket hotel.  

The magnaguard stopped in front of a set of doors on either side of the long hallway, gesturing to either side with its electrostaff.

“These are your quarters,” it droned monotonously. “Inside you will find amenities and sustenance for your stay. You are not to attempt to leave before a droid escort fetches you. Any attempt to deviate from these instructions will lead to instant death via commando sniper droids outside or the turrets lining this hall. There will be no warnings.”

The doors hissed slightly as they opened into their recesses.

Obi-Wan decisively chose the right door, leaving Greedo to the left.

The door slammed shut barely a moment after he had crossed the threshold.

Beyond was a cosy open plan guest room with a single bed, kitchenette, en suite refresher and a living room with a large active holoscreen, currently showing a sports channel from Mandalorian space featuring bolo-ball being played. 

Well, that part of my deception has held, he thought wryly.

He scanned the room thoroughly with his helmet’s systems and was unsurprised to find a number of surveillance and listening devices embedded rather cunningly into bits of the furniture and lighting.

Obi-Wan lifted off the helmet, careful to restrain the sigh of relief that threatened to escape his control.

First stop, the kitchenette. There were a number of ready made trays in the preserver with decent meals on each and a number of bottles filled with water and a local Serennian milk.

He pretended to eagerly prepare a meal to satisfy a growling stomach.

When he sat down in front of the screen and began eating, he eyed the bolo-ball match being played between the Krownest Ice Devils and Concordia Mythosaurs.

Hardeen wasn’t the biggest supporter of the sport, but he did watch whenever Concord Dawn was playing in the Mandalorian sector tournament. Obi-Wan therefore forced himself to keep watching and make the appropriate reactions as the two teams fought for possession, scoffed at poor decisions by match officials, held up his glass whenever a team scored and even clapped at an impressive acrobatic reverse kick resulting in the Ice Devils scoring the final point and securing victory.

“Enjoying the game?”

Ahsoka’s thoughts suddenly pushing through Anakin’s bond, was enough of a surprise that Obi-Wan almost swallowed the water in his cup incorrectly.

“Are you sure it’s wise to make contact now?” he thought back wryly to her.

“As long as we keep it brief. Has the intel been corroborated?”

“I’ll know more tomorrow for sure, but yes, it has.” 

“I see, good luck.”

The bond went silent.

Obi-Wan dearly wanted to know how Ahsoka had managed to somehow gain a Fulcrum intelligence asset on Serenno of all places, but she had outright refused to reveal any details beyond that one existed.

This asset was the reason Obi-Wan had a full layout of Dooku’s entire compound memorized, the general security systems and what military assets were immediately on hand for the Sith to call upon. Everything he’d need to know to either escape or outright sabotage the place, should things go very badly.

‘Don’t let things get to that level, Kenobi,’ he thought to himself as he headed to bed.

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Obi-Wan awoke the next morning only to find that at some point during his slumber, a starship sized, perfect cube of decorated durasteel had parked itself outside and was now hovering fifty meters off the ground. He hurriedly put on his helmet, having slept in his armor, and let the computer analyze it. 

550 meters perfectly on each side and repulsorlift emissions were strong enough that Obi-Wan could well imagine the thing capable of space flight, though whether it was hyperspace capable was debatable.

The local sun was just peaking over the horizon and into the valley of Dooku’s compound, which made for a breathtaking view as the sunlight played over the cuboid structure, casting a massive shadow over the area.

He barely had time to appreciate the view before the door to his quarters abruptly opened.

“It is time, come,” the magnaguard droid ordered.

He met Greedo in the hallway, but for the first time he spotted new figures there who had emerged from other rooms - eleven of them, from a variety of species, all armed, armored and with the grim air in the Force of experienced killers and hunters.

There were also eight magnaguards arranged in escort formation with electrostaffs, who with curt gestures guided the collection of scum and villainy out of the guest accommodation and into the fresh early morning light.

Dooku and Eval were waiting for them at the end of the walkway that led to the massive landing area, with the giant cube hovering overhead.

“Welcome to Serenno,” Dooku said genially. “You have been invited here because you have been judged to be the best bounty hunters the galaxy has to offer.” He gestured to a female weequay with an EE3 carbine on her back. “Kiera Swan, two time winner of the Obsidian Sphere.”

She acknowledged the praise with a nod and Obi-Wan made a mental note to watch out for this one. The Obsidian Sphere was a well known competition hosted by the largest Bounty Hunters Guild in the galaxy - you had to find and track down an extremely rare black jewel that was in the possession of someone, and you were given very little information to find the holder - who could be anywhere in the galaxy.

“Derrown, known simply as The Exterminator,” Dooku gestured to the floating sentient, a parwan. They had a rare lighter than air physiology and had evolved in the upper reaches of their gas giant homeworld. Their three eyes, four leg tentacles and dome head made them rather disconcerting to look at. This one had custom ultra-light blasters holstered into the two bandoliers of power cells that were slung over its chest area.

“Sixtat, the Outlands Butcher.” A tall male sakiyan, whose face was covered in a black tattoo that stood out starkly against his pink and red skin. Obi-Wan could passively sense the deaths and screams of Sixtat’s victims clinging to the sakiyan in the Force. He had to suppress the shudder that threatened to work its way down his own spine.

“Embo, the most prolific bounty hunter in the galaxy currently, broke the Guild’s record this year.” The bowcaster armed kyuzo tipped his large brimmed armored hat in modest acknowledgement of the achievement, his segmented orange eyes sparkling with satisfaction.

Obi-Wan was familiar with this one, because he made a point of studying the top bounty hunters on the guild roster and Embo had often worked with the late Cad Bane.

“Greedo, Tatooine’s own prolific bounty hunter, also known as Jabba’s Blaster.” The rodian didn’t react to his own accolades being pronounced, his eyes focused on every fellow hunter with suspicion, his hand casually resting near his holstered blaster.

“Rako Hardeen, the Marksman of Concord Dawn.”

Obi-Wan only nodded in acknowledgement, keeping his head turned towards Dooku.

“Jakoli, he has the highest kill count among the Guild, with not a single capture,” Another rodian and like Sixtat was steeped in death hanging off his spirit like an awful cloak. He gleefully nodded that it was true and was occasionally glaring at Greedo.

“Onca and Bulduga, a pair of legendary bounty hunter brothers who are currently ranked second behind Embo.” The two ithorians were glaring at their rival, the latter of whom didn’t acknowledge the hostility at all.

“Twazzi, your acrobatic skills once earned you praise from Chancellor Valorum, which you’ve applied wonderfully to your profession. There is no place she can't get into and rare is the person who can outmatch her reflexes.” This was the first time Obi-Wan had seen a frenk up close - they were slender reptilian humanoids with strong flexible legs, overly large black eyes and diamond shaped heads. She was also interestingly armed with a weequay blaster lance and attached bayonet, not a weapon anyone wanted to get close to.

“Sinrich, inventor of the holographic disguise matrix.” Obi-Wan knew he’d seen that specific snivvian before from somewhere. Sinrich’s large nostrils flared with pride and he smirked at everyone as if to say, ‘yes, that was me.’ His invention had become a nightmare for security forces around the galaxy and it had also facilitated the attack on the Jedi Temple last year. He was first known as a middling bounty hunter, until his technical skill allowed him to develop the holomatrix - which catapulted his effectiveness and notoriety. He especially liked to disguise himself as the most trusted person closest to his bounty targets, before he pulled out a blaster and stunned them.

“And finally, Mantu,” Dooku nodded towards the infamous selkath. “Your people were once a peaceful race known throughout the galaxy as the old stewards of kolto, before its replacement by bacta. How far they have fallen.” Most of the galaxy had trouble believing a selkath could kill unless provoked to extreme lengths, they were that pacifistic, but Mantu had single handedly erased that stereotype. He was a hunter who didn’t care about collateral damage in pursuing his targets - once destroying an entire space station filled with thousands just to ensure his bounty was dead. Ironically, the bounty on his own head was worth quite a lot and Obi-Wan imagined that a number of hunters around them were quietly debating whether they could pull off collecting.

The problem was that Mantu’s destructive tactics generally gave everyone pause and no one wanted to find out what he’d do when cornered. The selkath had a wild sadistic streak that bordered on madness that was clear to sense. Obi-Wan would almost never admit that someone deserved to just be killed, but in the name of protecting future innocents from Mantu’s madness he resolved that if the opportunity arose for him to arrange that the selkath fail or have a fatal accident… he wouldn’t hesitate.

“In a few moments,” Dooku continued, gesturing to the massive cuboid structure. “All thirteen of you will enter what we call the Box.”

“You built that entire thing just for this?” Obi-Wan asked flatly.

“It will have other uses in the future Hardeen, but its first official task is for this most important occasion. Now, some of you will not make it out alive. For those who do, we are looking for the five most skilled among you. Any additional survivors will be eliminated to preserve the integrity of the job that awaits you.”

Two magnaguards approached with a repulsorlift trolley. “Place all weapons here,” it said ominously.

Naturally, all the bounty hunters were rather reluctant to disarm in front of rivals, but they eventually relented with the threat of the magnaguards and Dooku himself watching on. Obi-Wan disarmed as well, attaching the sniper modules to his weapon before placing it on the trolley.

“For those we choose, you will, of course, be paid most handsomely. More than that, you will be a part of an operation remembered as a turning point in the Clone Wars. And when we succeed, we will bring the Republic to its knees.”

“Listen up,” Eval interjected and Obi-Wan was sure that if it had been any other situation, Dooku would’ve cut down the phindian in that instant, judging from the look the Sith gave his ‘employee’. “The Box was designed by me, Moralo Eval, to simulate certain situations that might happen on the job. Go now and enter the Box, if you have the courage.”

Obi-Wan didn’t hesitate and began walking, leading the way.

Embo and Greedo fell in step beside him, whilst the others were content to follow.

Floodlights highlighted a single point on the underside of the Box and an invisible tractor beam lowered a five meter wide platform, breaking the smooth outward appearance of the Box’s armored exterior.

The platform landed and Obi-Wan, easily banishing his own fear, stepped onto it.

Soon all thirteen contestants were on and Eval tapped a control on his vambrace.

“I’ll be seeing you all soon,” he smirked ominously as the platform was pulled into the air.

Obi-Wan looked up to get some hint of what was coming as they were buffeted by crosswinds, but only saw bright light from within the Box, streaming down and blinding them to what was beyond.

They were soon swallowed into the cold steel embrace of the structure, in the darkness he could briefly see the cross section of the outer hull - it was definitely thick enough for a starship - before it was replaced by a darkness so complete that his helmet was forced into infrared mode to see anything.

The first thing he noticed was a very familiar pattern - one which any Jedi who’d used the Temple training arenas would recognize - modular grav cubes, the multifunctional technology that allowed all forms of patterns to be encoded into them and simulate all manner of scenarios and surfaces that a Jedi could encounter in a fight. These were also clearly different, changed in ways that he couldn’t guess at with a quick look. He had an idle wish for Ahsoka’s technometry skills at that moment.

If someone as clever and sadistic as Eval had improved on that technology, he shuddered to think what trials would await them in the next hour.

The platform slowed down until it stopped within a cuboid room fifteen meters in height. It was lit via the grav cubes emitting light from the ceiling in a checkered pattern, whilst the floors and walls were utterly gray, all made up of yet more grav cubes.

Was the entire volume of the Box just filled with cubes? No, it had to have fuel tanks, power source, life support and repulsorlifts at least.

It was an almost stupendous concept. He imagined a starship with an entirely reconfigurable interior that could change as the situation demanded and made a note to tell Ahsoka about it.

The bounty hunters carefully spread out and curiously examined their surroundings, their mannerisms tense.

Every wall in the room came alive with a huge holoscreen, showing Eval’s face massive in size and looking down on them with a delighted satisfaction.

Now Obi-Wan was really impressed, integrated compounding holo emitters, definitely an idea to improve the Jedi Temple’s own grav cubes.

“Before we begin the first challenge, let me first say there is only one rule inside the Box… there are no rules,” Eval’s voice boomed at them from every direction.

“Yes, but what is the point of the challenge?” Embo said in his native tongue. Obi-Wan only understood the words through the intent being projected through the Force - a neat little trick that could almost always help bridge language barriers.

“The point, my friend, is to escape quickly, because only the survivors will advance to the next challenge.”

The giant holo vanished from the walls.

The tension in the room ratcheted up further as the bounty hunters waited for the first challenge, their eyes scanning the near featureless room.

A cube disappeared with a hiss near Sinrich’s feet, almost causing the snivvian to fall into the newly created hole.

Everyone whirled around at the sound and backed away.

Just in time for a vile looking green gas to begin pumping into the room.

Obi-Wan knew immediately what this was, as gas was one of the preferred methods to attack or incapacitate Jedi. Therefore every Jedi from the time they were padawans were trained to recognize every commonly used gas weapon in the galaxy. 

“Dioxis! Don’t breath it!” He snapped, jumping back immediately.

The hunters scrambled back away from the gas in every direction.

That was until the entire room came alive with pillars rising up out of the floor, one of which picked up Sixtat, causing him to lose balance in surprise and fall.

He quickly got to his feet and jumped back on the slowly rising pillar, “Everyone for themselves!”

The hunters scrambled to find a pillar and Embo decided to take Sixtat’s advice, jumping into the air with extreme dexterity, flipping into a somersault whilst kicking the sakiyan off his pillar.

Naturally, there weren’t enough pillars for everyone to raise themselves above the heavier-than-air gas.

Fights broke out immediately, as Twazzi easily knocked Jakoli off his pillar to claim it.

Greedo kicked Onco in the face to defend his pillar, whilst his brother struggled against Sinrich for another.

Obi-Wan on his own pillar, delivered a boot to Mantu’s face to keep him away and unfortunately the mass murdering selkath didn’t fall helplessly into the cloud of deadly gas pooling in the lower ends of the room.

Mantu managed to grab hold of the base of another pillar. He showed impressive strength and climbing skills, pinning his feet onto two separate pillars with only friction holding him up.

Finally, the pillars stopped and equilibrium was achieved between the hunters - the strongest standing, whilst those who couldn’t had at least managed to cling to life by following Mantu’s example.

“That wasn’t so hard,” said Sixtat from his own newly claimed pillar, nursing a black eye from fighting Balduga.

Obi-Wan had the irrational urge to Force Push the sakiyan into the gas just for saying that.

Sure enough, Sixtat’s pillar rose even higher, threatening to crush him against the ceiling. It forced him to jump off and cling to its sides. Twazzi suffered a similar fate and now only seven pillars remained at a comfortable height with hunters on them. The rest clung to the sides with only Derrown being unbothered by the whole test. The parwan simply floated high in the air, with a spindly hand clutched to a pillar.

“Now what?” asked the floaty sentient.

Eval answered them by moving the entire ceiling downward, and the pillars slowly lowering.

Soon there would be nowhere to hide from the gas.

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A/N: The butterflies flap with no Cad Bane ;-) Expect the Box also to be a bit more... grisly. Eval is a serial killer after all with the ultimate versatile toy at his fingertips. Enjoy the weekend and stay awesome folks.

2078: Highriders - Chapter 5

The casino floor was left in my wake through a few quick hacks of every surveillance cam with a sightline on me in the street outside.

The station’s dweller was still dealing with the mess that the now dead Arasaka runner had made in his assault, so I had little opposition in slipping through the cracks. I broke the sightline from any casino patron passing by and ducked into a public restroom that I knew had no one currently inside.

After a command to my Agent, my smart clothes changed; the Silverhand jacket becoming more of a half-jacket with shorter sleeves, partially baring my forearms, losing the Samurai logo and the color changing to bright green. My low rise leggings became knee shorts, whilst my bustierre shrunk to a red boob tube.

A few moments later after enduring the shift, Elaine Paigles was back in the real and digital realms.

One change of shoes later and I was walking back out of the restroom.

Only for my hand to begin painfully twitching as another attack of rejection hit me.

‘Fuck off, not now. We’re nearly there!’ I thought in anger.

I kept walking, holding a fist, even as the RealSkin on my arm bulged then contracted rapidly as the malfunction continued.

By the time I was standing in front of the spoke elevator to leave the Torus, it had settled down somewhat, but I kept my guard up. It wouldn’t do to accidently punch a hole in someone just because they had the bad luck to stand next to me at the wrong time.

Even dealing with that, I couldn’t afford the distraction. Time had run out on my ‘insurance policy’, so I sent the virtual Rachel Mcadams back to her unconscious self in real space. She had been there as both an identity to slip into in an emergency, create a false trail in cyberspace and prepare the way for my gig in the casino.

She was also serving as a welcome distraction for the station dweller, sending him scrambling down a false path as a probable way that the Yurei of Night City would have infiltrated the station.

The doors to the elevator opened and it was no surprise to see Mr. Blue Eyes standing next to a gaggle of other people, some with baggage cases and suitcases.

I walked inside and came to a casual stop next to him.

His encrypted call came as the elevator doors closed.

“Nicely done, V. The entire planet is buzzing already.”

“That was quick.”

“Lucia Watson, CTO of WNS, hasn’t personally broken a story for nearly two decades now. She’s always been a media at heart and you handed her a gold plated story that will see the corp rake in millions. So, mission accomplished, V.”

“You have my payment?”

Blue’s reply was via an eddie transfer of seven figures, that pinged on my primary business account, included in that was a ticket and visa for a trip to Tycho city on Luna for a duration of a year.

“It took some doing but the Highrider Confed agreed. Why so long, V?”

“I have business there that might require an extended stay,” I answered carefully.

Blue’s mouth quirked, “Well, I know better than to ask for what that business is. Your tasks have been concluded to my satisfaction, V. You have my thanks and you can expect future business from me and those in my orbit.”

I forced myself to be optimistic, “I look forward to that business.”

“Safe travels V. I know you did your homework, but be careful around highriders. A fight with one, is a fight with their entire ‘tribe’ or workgroup and there’s nothing more they enjoy than finding offense with a surface dweller.”

“I’ll certainly keep that in mind.”

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It ended up being a nearly six hour wait in the rotating docking core of the Crystal Palace, whilst it took nearly two hours to go through the administrative core before that.

The station police had been thoroughly spooked and were scrutinizing everyone with extra care.

I had already been scanned five times, first by going through customs and then by roaming police.

The ESA was walking a very fine line though. Europol couldn’t be too intrusive as that risked offending some very powerful people.

Finally, the Orbital Air spacecraft docked.

I could just barely catch a glimpse of it through the massive ‘windows’.

It was roughly 120 meters in length from its nose to the engine thrusters below, shaped almost like a massive dart, with a white-gray hull stenciled with the corp logo.

“Orbital Air Flight 3150 bound for Tycho City, now boarding,” the always pleasant female voice announced throughout the lounge.

I reached down to my feet, pulled off my stilettos and wriggled into the dark black and rather ugly mag boots I had been issued. My Agent handshaked with the small computer inside and a small hum was heard as the boots stuck themselves to the decking.

Carefully standing, in the 0.2 of standard gravity, as the docking core had a much smaller radius than the rest of the station, I carefully mag-walked towards the pretty smiling hostess monitoring everyone submitting their digital tickets.

It was an awkward walk - you had to visibly pause for a moment to allow the boot to adhere properly with each step, or else you risked jumping off nearly half a meter into the air.

“Please, code in here, ma’am.”

I placed my hand on the scanner pad, letting my Agent in conjunction with Butcher, do the work of making sure that the faceplate and metanthropic system did their job. It couldn’t be known that V was on Luna and I wasn’t feeling good or confident enough to do any netrunning at the moment.

The final scanner that stood over the threshold of the docking corridor was neatly bamboozled by Butcher into not seeing the priceless painting in my bag.

I breathed an inward sigh of relief as I took the first steps beyond it.

At the inner airlock to the spacecraft, I was greeted by two flight hostesses, dressed in the classic Orbital Air uniform that could trace its lineage back to the mid 20th Century. These were made of modern metamaterials, showed a lot of leg at the skirt, hugged every curve and could become a vacuum survival suit in moments.

I appreciated the view very much and stepped onto the spacecraft’s own airlock.

Finally, in the interior, I was guided by another hostess to the left towards the fore area of the ship.

Mrs. Paigles naturally had the wealth to afford first class, so I followed another hostess who called to me by name and guided me to my personal cabin.

It was about three cubic meters that was personally all mine, on a craft where space was at a premium. It had a seat that could fold all the way down into a bed and was surrounded by comfort and amenities; standard TV, braindance wreathe, a tiny complimentary drinks bar and the left wall was projecting a live view of the ship docked to the Crystal Palace.

I took off my jacket and carefully maneuvered myself into the sinfully luxurious seat.

“Mrs Paigles?” said the breathtaking redhead hostess, standing at the cabin door.

“Yes?”

“You’ve flown with us before, but since it’s only your second voyage into the Dark, if there’s any questions or uncertainty, please don’t hesitate to use your Agent to summon me.”

“I’ll do that, thanks,” I smiled and curled my brows curiously. “That’s a rather morbid way to refer to space.”

The hostess chuckled and shrugged, “Highrider slang, ma’am. I’m not one of them, but when you work in space long enough the lingo has a way of creeping in.”

“I’m sure it does. Thank you, I’ll be sure to call if I need anything.”

The hostess left and I definitely appreciated the way her posterior jiggled within the uniform with each magboot step she took.

I sat back and eyed the braindance wreathe, but settled for basic TV, adjusting the screen to show to the local Orbital Air channel that showed a general status screen for the ship itself, including a nice big graphic that showed the course it would take towards the moon.

Crystal Palace was stationed in a ‘medium’ earth orbit or MEO at 900 km. The OA spacecraft, which was rated only for vacuum travel, would detach and after coasting out of the security perimeter, would initiate a direct burn for lunar orbit.

The flight itself would take thirty hours, before the craft burned to slow down to be captured by Luna gravity. There would be only one phasing orbit needed before another short engine burn, to make a slight inclination change for an efficient landing descent to Tycho City.

“You buttoned up, Butcher?” I thought.

“I’m pulling the last of my programs from local cyberspace now.”

“Good. I’ve made an enemy of the station’s dweller. Don’t want to give him more reason by being sloppy with the hacks we’ve made.”

I idled away the time by channel surfing on the TV. Being on an OA spacecraft meant I had a far greater selection than just what we got in Night City’s tightly controlled broadcast spectrum. The news channels I avoided for now, because it would only have surface level reactions to the first Edgerunner operating on the Crystal Palace and LEO for that matter. So I stuck with the pure entertainment and movie channels, enjoying the novelty of seeing some of the channels from the UK and Europe for the first time.

“This is your captain speaking. We are refueled and all system checks are in the green. Airlocks are closed and we will undock in one minute. An emergency procedure vid will play after this announcement. Thank you for flying with Orbital Air.”

The captain’s voice intruded into the cabin so clearly that it almost felt like the guy was right next to my ear. My screen abruptly changed from the very racy French drama to an image of a supermodel perfect OA flight attendant that began narrating the various safety procedures, helpfully displayed with animations on the side.

Then the presentation definitely had a specific cut that was clearly intended only for those in first class.

“Your cabin is actually an OA proprietary survival pod, that in the event of an emergency, can be safely ejected from the spacecraft. It is designed to automatically take you to the nearest OA orbital facility, anywhere in Earth-Lunar space. Where you will be rescued and given complimentary tickets to any destination OA covers.”

“Oh yeah and the less rich gonks in economy class get to share a big life pod that probably doesn’t have the DeltaV to go anywhere,” I declared sarcastically, speaking to myself.

The safety demo finished and I was right back to watching the story of two French corpos scheming about getting rich off their boss’ literal demise. It was generally a plan that could only work in fiction, but it was amusing.

I felt a slight thump echo through the ship and the huge mass of the Crystal Palace that dominated my viewscreen began to pull away as the OA craft used its RCS thrusters. The little centrifugal gravity there was vanished and I secured myself with a seatbelt.

The episode was halfway finished and the Palace was so far away that I could cover it with my hand, when the captain announced, “Translunar injection burn in three, two, one.”

I felt the G-load of the thrusters briefly before the onboard grav systems compensated enough to keep it to a mere 1.5Gs whilst the ship actually ramped up to a 6G burn.

This was bleeding edge tech that was only now beginning to find its way out of experimental labs and into use by OA, ESA and Arasaka. Millitech was lagging a bit behind in its introduction, but would catch up by the end of the year, if you believed their screamsheets.

96 seconds later, the rumble of the engines cut out.

“Burn complete, we are on course for Luna. There will be a mid-course correction burn in twelve hours, until then feel free to relax and enjoy complimentary inflight entertainment and the latest braindances from the best studios in the world.”

“Butcher, gonna pass out now. No harvesting anyone unless they want to kill me.”

“I’ll keep watch, V. Enjoy your shutdown.”

I chuckled at the AI and leaned back in my seat.

A quick set of my sleep cycle and I was pulled into a wonderful eight hours of blissful oblivion.

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A descending foot splashed a puddle of red water.

My breath was harsh through the filter that was of barely any use against the particulate matter hanging around us. Steady dripping rain began echoing among the ruins our little group was steadily, cautiously moving through.

It soon became a torrent that poured down in a dull roar that played havoc with our ears. Sound became utterly useless as an early warning for any danger.

My hands clutched and flexed on my assault rifle, the stock digging into my shoulder as I traversed the aim right to left, my optics scanning into every possible nook and cranny. The problem was there were just too many possibilities around us in the ruins of this nuked city.

The little trefoil emblem of a radiation hazard flashing in my HUD optics was a constant reminder of the constantly ticking clock this mission and our lives were on. The general rad dose we were getting was cutting years off our lives with every day spent here, but there was little hope in these times that anyone would see forty, let alone sixty years or older. Living for so long was only for the rich and those who had plunged the world into the mess that it was currently in.

Damien was on point and abruptly held up a fist to halt our advance, before gesturing down.

Our little group of six knelt immediately, dividing up our sectors of fire and scanning for any blip in the EM bands, even though it was certainly a lost cause with all this radiation fouling everything. It at least meant that any potential opposition was wading through the same shit, so the odds were generally even on that front.

His hand signals followed, communicating that his small crawler drone had found something and was on its way back. Things were so bad here, that we couldn’t even risk point to point radio comms between our team members, even though we were within spitting distance of each other. The drone was also under EMCON and only squirted through the most basic signals back to Damien in random intervals.

The drone clambered on the edge of a ruined wall lining the pockmarked and cratered street, before clambering down to street level and straight onto Damien’s back, where it interfaced with his tac rig to deliver the recon data.

I could see his body language shift immediately as he comprehended it, his shoulders slumping slightly.

His right hand came up again and with more signals he began relaying his conclusions.

Primary exfil route - non viable.

Secondary - non viable.

Tertiary - remains viable but potential hostiles expected.

Fucking hell.

I referenced the Tertiary plan with my Agent and the route was highlighted on a rough wire diagram map of the city. It was an almost useless gesture given that the map was based on the undamaged pre-nuke version, overlaid with some weeks old satellite data. It would’ve been nice to get that satellite’s help right now, but it had become a million pieces of debris in LEO after the very short orbital front of the war had occurred.

Damien gestured sharply forward.

I got to my feet and kept my eyes peeled in my sector as we advanced.

Out of the corner of my optics, the reason for us being in this hellhole was just barely visible and I was very glad that it wasn’t my job to manage the package.

To think about what was inside was very unwise, so naturally it was the thing that was mostly occupying my thoughts, besides that oddly catchy melody that came to me in a dream last night. I had dictated it in musical notation to my Agent at least, but there was no substitute for my synth deck.

Pneumo barely held in a curse as the package’s right wheel got stuck in a pothole and he tugged hard on the line to get it out, before raising his pistol to belatedly keep his sector of fire covered.

He was not happy.

Which netrunner worth their salt would be happy if they were reduced to being the team muscle. There was no proper net left in this ruin of a city that was worth running and the only network that we’d find would be a mobile one, assuredly belonging to the bad guys.

We turned right at the next intersection, using the carcasses of burnt out cars as cover where possible. It would do little to help against any rail gun or sniper fire, but remaining unseen was the primary goal and with the rain, the sound of our movement would be masked. The package especially made a relative racket that would be picked up with any decent sound sensor aimed in our direction.

We were barely a hundred yards down this street, walking around the wrecked remains of a crashed combat AV that bore the wound of a direct missile strike-

“Contact right! Twenty meters!”

The rapid staccato of Trace’s rifle fire echoed in the street. 

I dove for the ground, my heart thudding in my throat, but the practiced skill and instincts of thousands of hours of training and experience took over.

My optics spotted movement to my left, barely a blip through a gap in the ruined wall and heaped rubble beyond.

My aim shifted and I pulled the trigger, my rifle’s recoil pushing into my shoulder with rapid thumps.

The tungsten AP rounds clipped the wall at first, but my third and fourth burst of rounds went straight through the gap.

My Agent couldn’t give me any reports of successful hits on target, thanks to all the soup clouding every sensor we were wearing on our harnesses.

I unclipped a grenade from my hip, rolled into the cover of wrecked AV to get to my knees, pulled the pin and overhand lobbed it towards the potential enemy position.

“Grenade out!” I warned over the team channel, breaking my own radio silence.

It landed slightly long than where I had aimed. The thump of its explosion and shrapnel spray managed to reach my ears even through the rain.

More gunfire from the team rattled out.

I scanned my sector furiously with detail, even going active emission, which just returned a garbled mess that my Agent could barely make heads or tails out of.

“Cease fire! Cease fire!” called Kepler, our team’s nominal leader in the field. “Pneumo, package status?”

“Undamaged.”

“Good. I managed to get one. Lilayah’s grenade wounded another. The rest retreated to lick their wounds.”

“Any ID?” I asked.

“Nothing definitive, might be a scout vanguard for another merc squad, might be Arasaka. I’d normally want to check the bodies, but it’s too dangerous.”

I got to my feet properly and changed my rifle’s mag for a fresh one. It would be nice to get confirmation of just who that was, but surety was a luxury we could not afford in this environment. Arasaka’s typical losing tactic was to trigger actual kamikaze cyberware in their downed soldiers during the war, the cyberware waiting until proximity sensors detected anyone who could be the enemy before detonating.

Typical counter-tactics was to send disposable drone swarms onto the enemy bodies to detonate them before friendly troops could move in. Arasaka had countered with updating the cyberware to distinguish if it was a human soldier or a drone. Now every enemy dead was treated as a mine that was just waiting to go off. The cyberware was being phased out by Arasaka as a condition of the post-war treaty, but there were still a lot of men and mercs that had the stuff and not enough qualified docs to remove them safely.

“All right, we keep going. Damien, send your drone out again. Remain under EMCON.”

I sighed in annoyance and rejoined formation as our team continued advancing.

The red tinged rain poured down even stronger now, the droplets were fat and splashing high off the ruined asphalt of the street and within moments it was like we were wading through a river of blood.

I wanted to scream in frustration, but managed to keep it in.

I wanted out of this miserable city.

I wanted my synthdeck in hand and playing in front of a small crowd at the club, that’s all.

But no, this fucked up world wouldn’t even let me have that little pleasure.

If this package didn’t get to its destination, then some fucked up psycho-gonk was going to use  it to fuck up more of the world - what little of it was left. We were just about managing to rebuild from the war, yet there were still assholes out there who played their fucked up games for their own profits and selfish interests. They lived as if the war was just another opportunity to take advantage. We had been inches away from the civilizational abyss, yet they still saw fit to poke and play with the edge of that cliff.

Now here we were, six mercs, who had unwittingly found themselves holding the figurative rope.

Our journey continued, moving agonizing mile by mile, awaiting the moment when our opposition would come back for round two.

Keeping concentration, readiness and my sector covered became more and more difficult.

The red rain made the ruin of the city come alive with movement, making it all that harder. Did that piece of rubble fall because of flowing water or had it been the boot of an Arasaka goon?

With the ruined and clogged drainage infrastructure, it wasn’t long before we ran into the first ‘river’. It looked to be just ankle height, but with the current light conditions it was a red liquid mirror. It was hiding every possible pothole or minor crater that could be a foot deep or a gap that could swallow someone completely into the wrecked underground tunnels.

Trying to cross this street might as well have been wading into a minefield. It was also the perfect spot for an ambush, due to the largely intact buildings that surrounded the intersection.

Damien halted us and with curt gestures ordered us to cover.

His crawler drone returned, its power supply running low and there was no way it would be able to cross this river.

He began relaying hand signals.

My instincts had been spot on; the drone had observed what seemed to be our opposition setting up a trap in the intersection. Six Arasaka ‘deserters’ turned merc and three actual edgerunners, one of whom was calling the shots.

I inwardly scoffed. There was no such thing as Arasaka deserters, not when Saburo could flick a switch in Osaka and kill any traitor in the continental US trying such a thing. No, this was a deniable ops squad, plain and simple. Anyone who thought the Old Man would stop playing his game just because he had lost the 4th Corporate War was simply deluding themselves. 

The question remained, how were we going to cross this artificial river under enemy fire, lugging the package which could get bogged down or swallowed into the possible watery depths below?

Damien at least had the beginning of a plan.

He handed out shards he’d burned in his tech rig to each of us. Even making the perilous journey to the other side of the street where Kepler, Pneumo and Zara were hunkered down. 

I gave Trace an ominous look as I slotted the shard. The media turned merc nodded in agreement with me at the sentiment.

My Agent integrated the data and my virtual city map was updated with the recon data of the crawler drone.

It gave us exact positions for where the opposition was waiting, it estimated their fields of fire and even what weapons they were visibly packing. It was all military grade cast-offs from the war.

There was no way we could advance through that.

I might as well be looking at a solid wall of death.

We could open fire from cover, but that would see us getting a face full of lead and micro-rockets. The only reason we weren’t under fire already was because the enemy thought we were unaware of their presence and was waiting for us to wade into the river.

Fuck! What were we gonna do?!

Was there any way to retreat and find another route?

It was a question I hadn’t even directed to my Agent, but my thoughts were so scatterbrained and desperate that it had picked up on it and delivered an answer.

Yes, there were three routes to bypass the intersection and this river, but it meant taking much longer and there was no guarantee the routes were accessible and hadn’t been closed down by a fallen building or a collapsed overpass. We were on a timer regarding our rad exposure and our opposition could just relocate as well as we could.

There was only one way forward, by fire and force.

I looked at Kepler across the street as she came to terms with the plan Damien outlined. Her optics narrowed over her filtration mask and the hand signals came.

My nerves and the hollow feeling in my stomach was banished as I unhooked a seeker grenade from my harness, instructing my Agent to program in a target trajectory for the two enemy edgerunners on my side of the street.

Trace shook his head but also pulled out his own grenade.

A few moments later, every member of the team had followed suit, waiting with primed seekers in hand and Kepler’s signal.

Tension ratcheted up in the team-

THERE WAS disjunction-

My point of view was torn away from Lilayah and I was once again Valerie, standing as my virtual self behind her in the frozen world of a war-torn city during the Time of the Red.

I slapped my thigh in annoyance as a message from my Agent was injected into the braindance.

“Fine, end it.”

The world dissolved into a mass of disorganized pixels as I felt instantiated into my actual body in the first class cabin of the OA spacecraft.

My eyes blinked as I was greeted by Real Space and pulled off the BD wreath from my head.

On my left I was greeted with the bright white, pockmarked surface of Luna as seen from a mere sixty miles above the surface.

“We’re about to begin our powered descent burn, everyone please take your seats.”

“Just when it was getting good,” I muttered in annoyance, pulling out the shard from the BD wreathe.

It was plain and unadorned. It had been delivered to my mansion by drone courier and inquiries with the courier company had given no obvious answer who the sender was. Merely that the drone had been hacked, flew to the roof of Megabuilding H1, then went straight to my mansion to drop off the tiny package containing the series of BD shards.

This had happened during the frenetic prep work for my Crystal Palace gigs, so I had no time to do a detailed investigation. The only thing I could determine was that they were at least safe to slot and there wasn’t any malware.

I carefully placed the shard back into the original mobile phone sized container it had come in. It was one of five shards in the tiny case.

A case that was stamped with a single word ‘Veritas’.

“Truth,” I scoffed incredulously as my gaze was fixed on the lunar surface rapidly rolling past me at over 1600 meters per second. In a world of braindance editing, Soulkiller, Cynosure and psych surgery, what was the truth?

My view shifted, spinning around as the spacecraft flipped retrograde to bring its main engines to bear against its orbital speed. I put the small case back into my hidden left leg compartment and closed it up with a thought.

“Descent burn in three, two, one.”

The g-load pushed into me with a brief spike before it settled again in the mild feeling of suddenly weighing fifty percent more.

“Agent, release a net crawler for the Cyber6 edgerunner crew, anonymise it, full encryption, the usual precautions.”

With the signal lag between Earth and Luna, bandwidth restrictions, the search would take a while.

Most everyone in Night City knew about the Cyber6, who themselves had attained that elusive legendary status as a result of their exploits during the Time of the Red and the chaotic 2040s. Rogue had run ops and acted as a fixer on occasion for them through the Afterlife, when the bar was situated in the Upper Marina.

I briefly entertained the notion that she had sent me these BDs, but the whole clandestine nature was totally not her style. Rogue and I had a rather close relationship these days, she was an unofficial ‘big sister’ if I had to put a name to it, but it was still ‘just biz’ at the end of the day and we were also business partners thanks to my minority stake ownership in the Afterlife bar. With something like this, she would play straight with me, place the Cyber6 BDs straight into my hands and tell me to watch it on my way to the moon.

So who could manage to compile an on-rails BD based on the memories of one of the most famous Rockergirl mercs from the 40s? Lilayah and the rest of Cyber6 had flatlined during a gig in late ‘49, just as most solos who became Afterlife legends did. Her music was slightly more to my taste than Johnny’s style of hard rock - it was a melodic cybergrunge with heavy use of melancholic synth overtones.

The sheer value of these BDs, if it could be authenticated, would be huge to the right buyer.  

Yet, whoever had given it to me, didn’t want me to just sell it and now that I had been given a taste - I didn’t want to either.

It could also be a psy-op and the word ‘Veritas’ practically confirmed it.

The moon’s surface was now starting to rise up towards my view in a rapid cadence. A glance at the ship’s status channel showed me we had already shed more than half of our orbital velocity and the moon was greedily grabbing the ship that had now slowed into its gravitational influence.

Its main thrusters were steadily angled down, tilting the spacecraft further over and now the ship was moderating its fall with a steady counter burn.

Given that I had done my share of raw BD diving and had dated the best BD editor in Night City for the last eight months, I knew a lot of the nitty-gritty of braindancing through sheer osmosis that most didn’t know. The holy grail that the BD industry was searching for, was to find a way to pull experiences and worlds from out of the digital ether, either via AI or just plain building it out of a CAD program. Early attempts at doing so produced plainly fake environments and feelings. The BD user could tell immediately that the experience was artificial and lacked the indefinable essence of true experience. It was why BD actors were still a thing and you needed actual people with a BD recorder cyberware implanted, actually doing what was being portrayed.

These Veritas BDs had none of those tell-tale signs of artificiality, I was experiencing memory engrams and it meant I could only conclude two things.

Either Lilayah had a BD rec implant back in the Time of the Red, which was entirely possible, or she had been another unfortunate mind harvested by Arasaka’s Soulkiller AI and imprisoned within the top secret Mikoshi servers.    

Right until I blasted my way into Araska Tower last year and became the new poster child for disgruntled former employees who turned merc and kicked their old boss’ ass. Then forcibly gave the Alt Cunningham human-AI hybrid backdoor access to destroy Mikoshi. Who took all the minds imprisoned there and merged with them into an entirely new gestalt digital entity, but still retained the Alt Cunningham appearance.

“So why are you showing me this, Alt?” I said aloud.

Of course, I received no answer amid the rumbling hum of the engines within the spacecraft.

Soon the lunar surface was now a new horizon that stretched as far as my viewscreen would show and was making the final approach to Tycho City.

The colony was like a spider web of lunar hyper alloys and lights spread out across the 53 mile wide Tycho crater. The majority of the city was actually underground to shield from cosmic and solar radiation and had a population of over 40k.

The Highrider Confed tightly controlled that population and tourist count, since every breath taken in the colony was the result of a highrider’s labor to cultivate the oxygen producing plant life and to harvest the water from the moon’s polar regions. My potential year-long stay was already budgeted in those terms on their books.

Finally, the horizontal velocity of the ship was cancelled out and we began our final descent straight over the landing pads situated in the north-east of the colony.

Two huge metallic factory domes partially obscured my first in person view of the infamous Tycho mass drivers.

In peacetime, they were used to cheaply send products and mined ores towards orbital factories around Earth. In war, they had been used as a kinetic kill weapon against various targets by the ESA, the most infamous strike being a 2 ton moon rock against Colorado Springs during the Orbital War of 2008. Now they were under the control of the Highriders as their own ultimate deterrent against the surface dwellers getting any ideas that they needed their independence curtailed.

The engines rumbled sharply one final time and I felt the shock as the ship touched down on the lunar steel of the landing pad.

For a few anxious seconds everyone on board was waiting for the captain’s word.

“Welcome to Tycho City. All systems are secured. Docking tubes are extending and you will be clear to disembark in two minutes. Thank you for flying with Orbital Air.”

I vaguely heard the burst of applause and cheers from the passengers.

For all that space travel had become routine in this day and age, the chance of something going catastrophically wrong in an endeavor so complex was still quite high.

I undid my restraints and carefully stood in the lunar gravity, magnetizing my boots.

Only for my left leg to suddenly go numb briefly before a spike of paralyzing pain shot into me.

“Fuck!” I gasped.

For nearly three minutes my world was reduced to just my leg and the pain coursing through me.

“Mrs. Paigles, are you all right?”

The redhead flight hostess was standing in the open door to my cabin, worriedly looking at me. The pain had died down to a mild migraine equivalent, so I was coherent enough to just shake my head. “Not at the moment, but I will be.” I experimentally took an awkward step forward. If it wasn’t for my unyielding mag boots and the low gravity I’d have probably fallen over already.

I took another step on my bad leg, bracing myself. It worked fine at first, but then began twitching rather badly and I had to grab hold of the cabin door. Fuck, this wasn’t going to work.

“Can you call for a mobility chair?”

“Of course, ma’am, I’ll be right back. I’ll let TCX know to have one waiting for you as well.”

Not exactly the most dignified way to arrive, but I could afford it with this identity at least.

A minute later I was helped into the chair. It had tiny wheels and its own thrusters, in addition to being controllable by my Agent.

‘Butcher, take the wheel please.’ I asked as another bout of pain shot through me.

‘You will not cease to function now, V.’

‘No, I won’t, but this body it seems has finally had enough of me.’

I propped the clothing bag on my lap as the chair rolled and hissed through the tight quarters of the spacecraft.

I was among the last passengers to disembark. We left through the airlock and into a crystal glass elevator in a seven hundred feet tall docking tower with an expansive view of Tycho city and the nearby crater wall, which speared nearly two miles high into the lunar ‘sky’.

The elevator began descending, I was just focused on existing with the pain and not making a scene.

The brightness of the lunar day vanished as we went subterranean or should that be sublunanean?

It came to a stop in a brightly lit circular tunnel that went on for nearly eighty meters.

Butcher steered me forward onto the passenger conveyor belts, after letting the dozen other passengers get on first.

I leaned my head back on the seat and focused on fighting. Fighting the body that had been mine since birth, which had been usurped from me by Arasaka and that fucking Relic chip.

‘You will be mine for another day, asshole,’ I thought to it. ‘Don’t you fuck with me now that you see the finish line is here.’

The tunnel merged smoothly with a much longer one, it was more than a mile long and there were even small electric carts for passengers who didn’t want to stand for so long on the conveyor belt.

Butcher pushed my mobility chair to its top speed on the conveyor belt, which translated to a real speed that had the tunnel struts almost blurring on either side of me. He only had to slow down once he caught up with a standing passenger and even then, managed to maneuver around them.

The tunnel made a slight right turn and after a few minutes we got off the conveyor, where there was another scanning point.

“Mrs. Paigles.”

An OA steward was waiting with another mobility chair, which I transferred into with a wince of pain and twitches of my arms.

“Ma’am, OA has a complimentary clinic on Tycho, which you can make use of.”

“No, thank you. I’m going to another local clinic,” I sighed, holding back any displays of pain through sheer willpower. “How much to buy this chair straight off you?”

“I am not empowered to make such a sale, ma’am. However, as a first class passenger of OA, your standing is good enough for me to release it into your possession on a loan for thirty Earth days.”

“Good enough, thank you.”

The steward unwound the link from his wrist and after plugging it in briefly, I became aware of the chair’s computer being transferred to my temporary possession.

Beyond this scanner was another checkpoint, this one manned by three tall highriders wearing a brown skinsuit uniform with minimal decoration but they did have tiny rank insignia and ‘TCPD’  on their shoulders. They were armed with bright white painted pistols and elegant knives sheathed on their hips.

I managed to put my hand on their portable scanner for the visa entrance and Butcher thoroughly befuddled the main scanner behind them, letting them see Mrs. Paigles inoffensive cyberware loadout and not my own.

“Welcome to Luna, Mrs. Paigles. I hope you enjoy your stay with us,” said the senior highrider cop.

I nodded and marvelled somewhat that the Highriders still had a nationalized police force. It was totally unanswerable to any corporate interest from Earth. They had a chief, who directly reported to the local managerial ‘tribe’ of Tycho.

The gate in front of me opened and beyond was a sprawling terminal easily the equal of NCX spaceport.

It was filled with tourists, corpos, and highriders of every description into a bustling melting pot of people coming and going.

I didn’t have time to gawk, so Butcher piloted me through the throng with the efficient precision only an AI could achieve.

Finally, we emerged into the lobby where I scanned the people crowding behind the roped off bollards who were waiting to meet arriving passengers. In moments, I spotted a large digisheet being held up with my cover identity’s name hastily drawn on it.

It was being held up by a dusky skinned highrider teen with eager brown eyes. He was wearing a harness with all manner of tools, including a small oxygen mask and only a pair of tight white shorts.

“Ah, Mrs. Paigles, welcome, my name is Alhaadi,” he said brightly, in very accented English. “I’m here to show you to the place.”

‘Butcher?’

‘Scanning, transmitting recog signal.’

Alhaadi’s largely biological eyes flashed only slightly. Highriders generally used retinal imaging only and bioware adapted for low grav, high radiation environments.

‘Confirmed, he’s a rep from the black clinic.’

“Good, lead the way,” I said aloud with a wince.

We left the Tycho spaceport and moved directly onto the underground street, which was only sporadically busy. The roof over our head was made of regolith cement and ribbed steel struts, from which giant electric lamps hung that simulated daylight quite accurately. A nearby market was immediately in sight, catering to tourists and I could already smell exotic flavors and foods from the vendors there.

“How far?” I asked as we set off and joined the pedestrians heading south.

“Two and three quarter kilometers, Mrs. Paigles. I have something that can help with the pain, if you want.”

I shook my head, “No reason to make things more complicated when the time comes. You know?”

“I was briefed by Doctor Njeri, just in case you had complications on the way,” he nodded.  

“Any tram or public transport that can get us there sooner?” 

“That would be problematic for our secrecy, Mrs. Paigles.”

“Figured that,” I sighed, gritting my teeth as my left hand involuntarily twitched, forming a fist and opening with enough strength that would’ve wrecked my mobility chair had I not lifted it out of the way. Alhaadi looked at me wearily and increased the separation between us. “Just get me there. I have to fight a battle within myself now.”

I leaned my head back and was only vaguely aware of the passing sights and people, as my focus turned inward.

Tourists and surface dwellers became less frequent until the majority of people around me were highriders.

We entered a large freight lift some time later and travelled even deeper.

I struggled to remain cognizant of our route, as we got off and into a place that could’ve been a warehouse filled with rows and rows of vacuum sealed pallets stacked to the ceiling.

My biomonitor started flashing warnings at me in my vision; low blood pressure being the most alarming.

Alhaadi turned left and right among the rows randomly but with clear purpose, until he finally stopped in front of a large ore mining shipping pallet that was big enough to fit a truck into. He placed his long fingered hand on a random spot, which opened to reveal a scanner.

Locks clicked and the massive pallet door swung open.

Beyond was a ramp leading deeper down into the floor and another more modern elevator that could’ve been pulled straight out of Night City.

‘Almost there, V,’ Butcher actually sounded… encouraging?

It was really tempting now to just… close my eyes… no!

I grit my teeth, banishing the thought as this new elevator took us further down.

When these doors opened again, beyond was a hyper sterile, bright environment bristling with tech that, had I been in any right frame of mind, would have me salivating to work with. Viktor would think that he’d died and gone to Ripperdoc heaven. There were ten gray operating chairs with overhead screens and tools waiting to come down, arranged in a perfect line. All of which were empty with no patients… because of my presence.

Waiting to meet us were two highriders.

One was a tall, statuesque woman wearing a white skinsuit, with a traditional doctor’s overcoat hung off her shoulders. Her hair was short on the sides and long on the top, hanging in bangs over her forehead. The other was a familiar face, an older man with a severe white beard against his dark skin, wearing a vac suit with no helmet but seemingly ready to head out onto the surface.

“V?” the woman stepped forward with a pleasant smile.

I looked at her critically for a while, before playing what could be my last roll of the die.

I nodded and instructed my Agent to release my faceplate and metanthropic camo.

The pain was nigh overwhelming, but I bore it stoically as my natural features returned in full.

“Fascinating,” she breathed. “What will the surface dwellers think of next? I am Doctor Njeri, the chief of this clinic. Next to me is Manager Gakulu.”

I held out my hand to him, “Pleasure to meet you face to face, at last, Manager.”

He wearily raised an eyebrow but carefully shook it. “Greetings V.” His voice was naturally harsh and he nodded to me with respect. “Hopefully, we can both help each other. I’d normally speak more politician to you, but just one look at you tells me there isn’t time.” He turned to Njeri. “Is the clinic’s jamming still holding?”

“I already took care of the OA chair’s systems, utatomkhulu,” Alhaadi said with a respectful bow. “They think it’s still being ridden around in the tourist sector.”

“Good boy. Can you stand, V?”

“No.”

“Help her.”

Njeri and Alhaadi moved either side, grabbed me underneath the arms and lifted with grunts of effort.

I tried to help them, but my legs weren’t cooperating at all now and I was deposited into the ripper chair.

“Is everything ready?” I asked Gakulu.

“Yes, we are V.”

‘Butcher?’

The AI answered immediately, “Yes, I’ve already forked myself into the clinic’s systems and cyberspace. It’s adequate for our needs.”  He showed me live feeds of other rooms, one of which was holding my brand new Gemini body.

“Evaluation of the body?”

“Satisfactory.” The specs flowed in front of my vision and I especially focused on two critical points; the dedicated port for the most crucial piece of the puzzle, nestled in the neck and protected by as much flexi armor plating as possible and the blank brain grown from stem cells I had shipped in earlier.

“Well done, you’ve not only managed to recreate Relic 2.0 but improve on it.”

“The credit must naturally go to Doctor Njeri and her workgroup,” Gakulu nodded at the woman.

“With your bio scans, samples and full project documentation you gave us, I’d like to think we can do better in five months than some Arasaka scientist working under the stresses that a corp puts on its employees,” Njeri smirked. “But we’re still missing the final cog in this machine, we still have no way to transfer your engram. That would require Soulkiller.”

“Soulkiller is old news, Doctor,” I smirked. Every screen in the lab briefly flashed with blood red,  startling the highriders. My AI companion displayed his avatar in its full glory to them. “Meet my friend, Butcher.”

Now the shoe would be on the other foot. As I had been helplessly changed and overwritten by the Araska’s Relic 2.0 with Johnny Silverhand’s engram, now I would be in a new Relic 3.0 and take over my new Gemini body.

“Let’s begin.”

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* utatomkhulu - grandfather/elder in Highrider.

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A/N: And there is my solution to V's ultimate problem post 2077. She's been a busy bee these last six months after all. This won't tie everything up with a neat bow, and every action has consequences after all. Have a great weekend folks and stay awesome.

The Force Wills - Chapter 116

One of the strangest incongruencies of Coruscant that I had to wrap my head around in the past, was that despite the fact that you had air travel via a million forms of speeder, you could still get ‘stuck’ in air traffic. The trillions of sentients on the city planet did explain it somewhat, but not everyone had access to their own personal transportation.

Even if you had the money, it was a bureaucratic nightmare to get that speeder approved and integrated into the giant, planet spanning traffic control system. That’s why most citizens just used taxis owned by the big transport corps, who could in most cases trace their lineage back thousands of years to the time of Revan and the Old Republic.

One of the biggest ticket items for families on Coruscant, besides your living space, was a legally integrated speeder that could be passed down as inheritance to the next generation.  

You bypassed a lot of problems when your speeder was some form of law enforcement and especially when they were registered to the Jedi Order. 

Which was why Anakin and I requisitioned two double seat speeders for redundancy and safety in our task to apprehend ‘Rako Hardeen’.

He was currently in Trueping’s Cantina in Slum district G17, more than 500 floors down, which was decidedly not a safe part of town.

I pulled up on the yoke of my speeder, dutifully following R2’s calculated course and revelling in the feeling of relative free flight over the endless cityscape.

A tap on my wrist enabled the comlink to Anakin’s speeder, leading the way in front of me. These Jedi speeders were something else; they were the fastest thing in the air that wasn’t a starship, easily reaching 800 kph to cruise and topping out at 900 with ‘afterburners’ when you wanted a burst of speed. We were sticking with a sedate 300 kph speed at the moment, not even coming close to the air lanes and flying in technically ‘restricted airspace’.

Even for someone flying a Jedi transponder, there were levels of clearance and our current emergency clearance was just short of having the chancellor or a council member on board.

“So did the council actually say how they were able to find this Rako Hardeen so quickly, master?”

“No,” his tone of voice clearly indicated that he didn’t care, but would answer my question, “though my guess is Master Sinube.”

Sinube’s intel network was something I was definitely striving to emulate with Fulcrum, though his was solely focused on the criminal underworld of Coruscant and the major crime syndicates. How he built that network and who were the primary members was something that reminded me almost of that prolifically brilliant fictional detective from my previous life.

“We’re approaching our descent point, get ready.”

A few seconds later, I nosed over my speeder and dove.

My vision was filled with city roofs, air lanes and the gargantuan access trench that let us access the undercities.

We zipped left and right to dodge the air lanes we were diving past, before we were surrounded on all sides by buildings and mega infrastructure that zipped by in a blur.

I leveled the speeder out when we passed into the first major grouping of sublevels below the surface city. We were now flying in a vast tunnel that was nearly three kilometers in diameter. This tunnel itself could be considered a city in its own right, with buildings, infrastructure and public walkways integrated on every conceivable surface - even the ceiling above us had buildings that speared downward.

This tunnel snaked steadily downward in a colossal spiral.

We pushed our speed a bit here, making a steady left turn as we sank deeper and deeper into Coruscant.

It took just over half an hour to emerge from the tunnel city, before it flowed naturally into the G17 district subcity.

As far as the eye could see, a cityscape above and below, which faded into a smoggy haze.

I really did not like subsurface levels of Coruscant, simply because I knew of the mind boggling physics that was being played with here.

The Old Republic should’ve just started building a Culture-style Orbital back in the day, but the original human founders of the planet had just done what was easier. Even back then the material technology had existed for it, but the issues of labor and constant warfare had surely nixed such grand ideas, even if someone had thought about it.

Our course took us a further six minutes to traverse to our destination, before we pulled back on the speed and came to a hovering landing outside a relatively small thirty floor building, primarily lit with neon blue advertising.

‘Trueping’s Bar’ was proudly proclaimed with individual giant Aurebesh lettering running down the side. The building was also home to a ‘massage parlor’ called Chezdeze. It didn’t take a Jedi with my senses to know that it was much more than that.

We landed our speeders within spitting distance of the front doors of the Bar.

The two bouncers outside, two big humans, were puffing themselves up to object but stopped when they saw the nice big Jedi symbol on the side of our vehicles.

I secured my speeder using its onboard security - the least of which was a stun system rigged into the seats that would trigger the moment anyone unauthorized planted their butts inside.

Anakin and I hopped out with an eerie synchronicity and approached the bouncers.

Both men looked at each other and seemed to come to an unspoken agreement a moment later, after just looking at Anakin’s eyes spitting figurative blaster bolts and my Mandalorian style armor.

They parted to either side of the door and opened it for us with a nod.

Inside the bar was decently furnished and had all the amenities to attract and entertain its denizens; screens featuring pod racing, gambling machines linked to the pod racing and other live sports events, holos of scantily clad females of various races dancing above tables and some wearing nothing at all. They clearly reserved the real thing for those who went to the massage parlor and this was just enticement and advertisement. Trueping was naturally the owner of both establishments.

Our entrance had naturally attracted attention and I felt the fear of almost every patron ratchet up a notch. The average customer of this bar was not squeaky clean in terms of criminal record. Many would have reason to not enjoy the company of a Jedi.

Anakin led the way to the bar counter, also letting his presence in the Force flare outward and push on everyone’s mind and spirit. It was the closest he could achieve to a form of Battle Meditation, but this was done for sheer intimidation.

I was distinctly reminded of what, in another future, Darth Vader and a few other Sith Lords of the past could achieve by simply being in their presence.

He had locked his eyes on the anacondan bartender, whose stalky eyes widened in fear.

“Uh… uh, what- what can I do for you, Master Jedi?” the sinuous snake-like alien hanging from the top of the bar asked.

“Rako Hardeen,” Anakin said through gritted teeth, projecting his anger outward. “Where is he?”

“B- back room, go through the door,” he gestured with his entire head to the door in question, which opened as his tail pushed on a hidden keypad mounted near his overhead perch.

We walked into the corridor beyond and easily sensed where Obi-Wan was waiting for us.

The door at the far end was forced open with a gesture from Anakin and we walked into a rather grungy apartment.

A tall human figure in partial armor was ‘sleeping’ with his back to us in the adjoining bedroom.

The first thing I noticed was the smell of strong drink pervading the room. Well, I had to give Obi-Wan credit, he was clearly living the role.

I folded my arms and glared. “Sleeping off a hangover it seems.”

“He won’t be sleeping off anything in the future,” Anakin said viciously and stepped forward, pulling Rako over onto his back.

He opened his eyes briefly and gazed at Anakin, “Uh, huh? A Jedi? Sorry, not accepting clients right now…” He yawned and promptly rolled back over.

“Wow, he really is drunk,” I shook my head in wonder.

Anakin rolled him back, grabbed Rako by the lapels and easily lifted him with a burst of strength enhancement before slamming him into a nearby wall. “Wake up, you filth!”

That somewhat worked, Rako’s eyes snapped open and the first elements of wit began returning to those dull blue eyes. “Je- Jedi?!”

“Yes, Jedi!” Anakin snarled into his face. “If it were up to me, I’d kill you right here! But lucky for you, the man you murdered would rather see you rot in jail.” Anakin pulled him off the wall, pulling one arm behind Rako’s back, before securing him in cuffs. “Now let’s go, before I change my mind.”

He used his artificial hand to clamp on the back of Rako’s armor to control his movement, leaving no chance for the man to get away.

We ended up doing a perp walk through the bar, where everyone looked on in fear and relief that they weren’t the ones being arrested by two war hardened Jedi.

Back at our speeders, I had to remove the unconscious form of a kowakian monkey-lizard from my ride that some bright spark had thought to use to steal it.

I dumped the thing on the sidewalk unceremoniously and glared at the small crowd of onlookers now gathered, one of whom I could sense was the master of the lizard.   

Anakin had practically lifted Hardeen by the scruff of the neck into the passenger seat of his own speeder. “Now sit still. I’ve enabled the security system on your side. You try to stand up, you’ll be stunned instantly and I’ll not make much effort to stop you from falling to your death.”

Rako grunted, “All right, I get it…”

“Quiet,” Anakin snapped. “Let’s go, Ahsoka.”

We fired up our speeders and took to the air.

Next stop, Judicial Detention.

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Anyone who gets arrested for breaking the law on Coruscant, will generally get sent to one of the few thousand detention centers that was scattered across the surface. Even so there were simply too few given the size of the population, therefore the greatest percentage was shipped to detention colonies that were sprinkled across the various planets and moons of the system.

The severity of the crime would decide what your eventual destination was. Typical petty crime would net you a few months in one of the small detention centers on Coruscant itself. On the other side of the spectrum, hardened killers and crazy psychotics were shipped to Centax 2, one of Coruscant’s four moons.

Criminals who were ‘politically sensitive’ or who needed to be on hand for prosecutors to access readily were shipped to the Tower - Judicial Detention One.

It was barely half an hour by speeder flight west of the Senate District.

Much like the Jedi Temple district that had no buildings to compete with its height and size, the Tower had a similar arrangement.

It stood up like a needle into the sky with a flattened cityscape around it for thirty kilometers in all directions. The immediate airspace around it was the most restricted on the planet and only certain vehicles and shuttles had the codes to fly into it. Civilian air lanes avoided the district completely, though you could see the Tower easily at that distance.

In terms of physical security, the Tower had its own air defenses comparable to a Venator.

Our entry to the restricted airspace proceeded without a hitch and we were cleared to land on the circular platforms that surrounded the Tower’s superstructure.

We were immediately met by a duo of clone troopers in red and white armor.

The Tower had been manned and guarded on a rotating basis by various clone legions, ever since the formation of the GAR. Legions that needed light duty after extensive deployment or had suffered large numbers of casualties were usually used. These troopers were from the 783rd Legion and had taken a rather brutal mauling in the southern battlespaces a few months ago.

“You should be expecting this scum,” Anakin sneered and shoved Hardeen forward.

The lieutenant trooper immediately grabbed the prisoner and swung him around to face the prison entrance.

“Yes, sir. We were informed. All is ready.”

Hardeen had regained most of his faculties by this point and glared with resentment at Anakin.

Anakin returned the look with a sneer of hatred, “Let me know if he’s any trouble. I’d be glad to straighten him out.”

“Move it,” barked the trooper and shoved Hardeen forward towards the closest entrance of the Tower.

We boarded our respective speeders and took off for the Jedi Temple.

“Master, how long do you think he’ll last in there?”

“Are you concerned about him?” Anakin retorted incredulously.

“No, it’s just that prison can be a brutal place, never know when that makeshift dagger will stab you in the back.”

“In that case, I’ll hope Hardeen makes plenty of enemies in there.”

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He had experienced rough times and squalor, especially when he had been on the run with Satine, but being processed into the Tower inmate population was a rather humiliating experience.

Stripped down to complete nudity, he was scanned by a variety of droids, before being pushed into a decon shower.

From there he was issued mildly uncomfortable underwear, shoes and an orange jumpsuit with his new prisoner number stenciled on the back in big bold Aurebesh lettering.

Two clone trooper guards were waiting outside the processing area and escorted him without a word into one of the fifty cell wards.

Each ward was a cylindrical structure, containing dozens of levels, each featuring forty cells to a level, secured with a force field. The only way to access cells was through a repulsorcraft that delivered the inmate. In this way, even if power failed, sheer height would keep prisoners where they were, unless they felt suicidal.  

He was delivered to his cell without fuss and found himself alone in it. There was space for four prisoners sleeping on bunk beds-

“Don’t get used to the space, Hardeen,” the trooper sneered from the repulsorcraft. “This is just temporary because of the time of your arrival. You’ll be taken to your new permanent accommodations after breakfast tomorrow.”

Obi-Wan just grunted an acknowledgement and flung himself onto the lowest bed on the right side.

The Force Field snapped on, bathing the cell in a light red hue.

‘Comfy, Obi-Wan?’ he heard Anakin’s amused thoughts.

‘It’s a veritable cloud of comfort,’ he retorted wryly. ‘Did you have to be so rough?’

‘You know we were being watched.’

‘One would think the enemy would have more important things to occupy his time with.’

‘Right now, Ahsoka and I are that important thing. We’re barely back in the temple for an hour and she’s already spotted multiple new surveillance bugs that’ve been installed.’

‘We really need to root out the enemy’s spies in the temple.’ Obi-Wan knew, even before being inducted into Fulcrum, that the enemy had to have some method of keeping tabs on the doings of the Jedi Order. The worst his imagination could conjure was a mere handful of spies, but Ahsoka had quickly illuminated the ugly truth. Palpatine actually had enough spies and informants that it literally could be called its own network. It only made sense after all, since he would want to keep a close eye on his greatest enemy. None of the spies knew each other, but the majority were part of the Temple’s staff - the non-Jedi workers who made the Order’s operations work on a day-to-day basis. There were even a number of Jedi spies, mostly those who were stuck in either the padawan or apprentice limbo - unable to find a master or be selected by one. A situation that the war had made even worse. ‘Has Ahsoka managed to find all of them?’

‘That’s still a work in progress,’ Anakin admitted. ‘The spy network isn’t static. She thinks she’s already sniffed out a new one that’s been recruited since we were last in the temple.’

‘Anyone I know?’ Obi-Wan asked grimly.

‘No, she only has the face of the potential spy at the moment and we must be careful of our archive searches. We can’t do anything until we’ve mapped out all of them.’

‘Well, keep up the good acting, I’ll be trying to get rid of this lingering hangover.’

‘Good luck, Obi-Wan.’

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He would’ve normally already been awake when the prison rang its waking siren to signal the start of a new day. Obi-Wan had slept in as Rako Hardeen would’ve done and also grumbled a few choice Mandalorian curses as he got up from the bed.

“Ten minutes is allocated for refreshment tasks.”

The voice belonged to a droid and given what he knew about the prison, this was most likely the ward droid itself. A droid intelligence integrated into the structure.

Obi-Wan hurried into the tiny refresher that unlocked itself at his approach and got the morning ablutionary business done. He was out with one minute to spare.

“Stand on the marked positions before the force field, prisoner.”

Two holo circles appeared on the floor and Obi-Wan obediently stood with either foot in them.

A visible scan beam played over his body briefly.

“No weapons detected. You’re cleared Prisoner 494893.”

A much larger repulsorcraft appeared in the ward, looking more like a small public transport than the open top platforms that the guards used. It docked at each level, opening its rear to the cells, allowing prisoners to step inside, before hovering to the next cell. It was one of twenty such transports doing the same thing, acting with computer precision.

When his transport stopped in front of the cell, the force field vanished and Obi-Wan didn’t hesitate to walk into the small throng of the standing prisoners.

It was a tiny cauldron of every race he knew of and one or two he couldn’t name without a reference guide. Everyone might be technically clean, but the transport was now permeated with the natural scents of every prisoner and it all mixed into a cloying smell that ate at his nostrils.

His immediate neighbors were a human, a falleen and a gran.

All three gave Obi-Wan a curious, evaluating glance, immediately recognizing him as a new face, but kept their silence.

The transport moved on, filling itself with another eight inmates before it began an upwards journey out of the ward silo.

The silence was maintained until a nearby sullustan whispered something to a nautolan.

“Prisoner 301252, silence!”

A turret popped out of the ceiling, aiming instantly at the sullustan who’d dared speak.

The nautolan scowled and slapped the sullustan up the head.

Obi-Wan was very glad the sentient got the message, he could see that the turret had a variable broadhead emitter that could deliver a stun pulse to the entire transport.

The transport now made a short trip through a tunnel before backing up to a docking tube.

The doors opened and Obi-Wan followed the herd of prisoners through.

They were met by armed clone troopers who organized them into a single file, before being escorted through a long corridor, which opened up into a massive octagonal mess hall.

It was clear from the holos and painted demarcation on the floor that this was the first place where there was some freedom of movement. It was just enough to allow them to get food from the specific provision machines and to walk to the various rows of tables to eat.

Obi-Wan quickly availed himself of that freedom, breaking away from the pack of prisoners and casually walking to a newly formed line of prisoners waiting to be served breakfast.

A tray was automatically issued from a nearby station and he waited patiently as the line advanced slowly and steadily.

Each machine was responsible for another food item to be discharged into the tray and it was hardly appetizing to look at and smelled rather revolting. When he finally reached the end, he was given a single spoon utensil.

With food in hand, his next item of business was to look for Moralo Eval.

He made his walk as casually as possible, pretending to look for a suitable place to sit where he wouldn’t have his back exposed to any prisoner. That was easier said than done, but the tables at least had decent separation from each other.

His search for a decent seat also proved useful in another way, as it allowed him to overhear a number of hushed whispers. 

“Hey, is that him? Kenobi’s killer?”

“A little ugly.”

“He doesn’t look tough.”

“Idiot, that’s precisely the point. Those are the ones you have to watch out for.”

Well, it seemed the Council’s efforts at some careful information leakage into the prison population had done its job.

He finally spotted his quarry at this point. Eval was sitting among a tight knit group of inmates and judging from their body language and emotions, the phindian definitely had his own gang of loyalists here.

Obi-Wan walked past but headed for the end of the long table which was entirely clear of anyone and sat down. Combined with his expression, he clearly marked himself as a loner. Someone who just wanted to be left alone and didn’t need protection. In prison, that would normally be an unwise attitude, as it practically invited the bullies and monsters who wanted to take the Killer of Kenobi down a peg.

Keeping his senses spread outward for danger, he began digging into the meal.

It was awful and his throat immediately rebelled at the idea of swallowing it. Obi-Wan would normally tolerate it, but Rako Hardeen wouldn’t. Therefore he made a show of spitting it out in disgust, before grudgingly continuing with the meal.

He was halfway done eating when the first idiots arrived.

“So you’re the Jedi killer, eh?” sneered a karkarodon, who looked very odd actually walking on land and wearing the tailored orange prison gear. His skin was looking rather flakey and Obi-Wan wondered if the prison had a water cell for him. The water dweller also had a snivvian friend who was watching his partner’s back. The karkarodon grabbed Obi-Wan’s cup of water and provokingly drank from it.

Obi-Wan donned an utterly bored expression, “This food, it’s terrible.”

He turned his spoon around and drove the blunt end directly into the karkarodon’s webbed hand that he so invitingly placed on the table.

It was done with such strength that it penetrated skin and muscle.

The karkarodon roared in pain, trying to instinctively pull his hand away, but astonishingly found himself unable.

Obi-Wan grabbed his interlocutor by the face, normally a very dangerous thing with those teeth, but his thumb was pressing down hard on a pressure point near the gill, whilst another finger was pushed on a very sensitive organ that allowed karkarodons to perceive electrical charges. “Perhaps you would taste better?”

“Hey! No fighting in the mess hall, prisoner!” shouted a clone guard from the observation walkway above, already aiming his blaster rifle.

Obi-Wan abruptly let the karkarodon go, pulled out his spoon and raised his hands, “Sorry, just playing with my food.”

“Urgh, you’re crazy!”

The water dweller beat a hasty retreat with his companion in tow.

The show was over at this point and after cleaning off the blue blood from his spoon, Obi-Wan returned to his meal. Eventually he decided he’d rather get a refill of water from a different cup than risk drinking from the same one the karkarodon had helped himself to.

When he returned to his spot, it was to find Eval already sitting across the table, waiting.

Obi-Wan sighed and just drank some water, content to ignore his new interlocutor.

“Rako Hardeen,” said Eval with a satisfied, smug air. “The Marksman of Concord Dawn and now with a new title that you can add to it.” 

Obi-Wan continued ignoring Eval and drank, but allowed his body language to show he was listening.

“I’m curious, when you killed that Jedi, was it for money, revenge or something else?”

“I don’t know really, guess I was just bored.”

That really amused Eval and he began openly chuckling, his yellow eyes dancing with a secret delight, “Try this.” The phindian produced a small plastic vial from a pocket, filled with a yellow substance and put it in front of Obi-Wan’s empty plate. “A simple condiment, no poison, and it will make that slop actually edible.”

Eval stood and with a smirk declared, “I’ll be seeing you around, Mr. Hardeen.”

Obi-Wan snagged the vial quickly and pocketed it.

‘That went rather well, the bait is set, it seems.’

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Two days passed of Obi-Wan steadily learning the prison routine.

Morning breakfast was followed by five hours where inmates could spend time in an exercise yard with all manner of equipment specifically made to prevent them being used as weapons. This was followed by lunch and then a mass migration back to their cell wards.

Contrary to what the ward droid had said, Obi-Wan remained alone in the cell he had first slept in.

This gave ample time to simply lay back in his bed and seemingly contemplate the ceiling, whilst inwardly his mind was going over all the contingency planning of the Jedi Council and Fulcrum. It also helped in sinking further into his adopted persona, as he contemplated responses that the man would give to situations. He had mindwalked the actual Rako as extensively as he could within the time available, so a lot of time was spent reviewing the memories and generating reactions, habits and mannerisms from that.

It was only after the evening meal of the second day that Obi-Wan was approached by two clone troopers with new orders to escort him to his actual long term accommodations. 

It was in a totally different cell ward, near the very top of the silo.

The force field shut down and Obi-Wan hopped off the repulsorcraft.

“Here you go, Hardeen. Home sweet home,” commented the trooper.

The craft zoomed away immediately and the bright red force field reactivated.

Obi-Wan walked into the cell and raised an amused eyebrow at his new cellmate - Eval.

“What a coincidence.”

Eval smirked, “Hmmm, no coincidence. I am Moralo Eval and I hold great influence here.”

“I’m so tempted to ask just how you can manage that,” Obi-Wan said leadingly, giving Eval a chance to brag. All the psych reports indicated the phindian had a colossal ego, one which was mostly backed up by his sheer ruthless intelligence.

“Let’s just say that everyone and everything has their weaknesses, it’s just a matter of finding it and then finding the means to exploit it.”

“Then what do you want from me?”

“Man like you, able to reach out so far and snuff out a life, well, there’s much bigger game than Jedi. If you’ve got the fortitude.” Eval sat down on his bunk on the right side of the cell.

Obi-Wan took the empty bunk on the left, narrowing his eyes at Eval in thought. “All right, I’m listening.”

“It’s a brilliant plan if I do say so and it involves Chancellor Palpatine himself.”

“You want my scope on the head of the Republic?” Obi-Wan asked in astonishment.

“No, no,” Eval shook his head, scoffing. “That’s too easy. Hardly a challenge at all. A child could maneuver you into position to take a shot like that. The chancellor is more valuable alive than dead to my client.”

“We don’t need more, Eval,” said the third inmate of the cell in huttese, turning around on the top bunk. Obi-Wan regarded a green skinned rodian, gazing at him with hostility.

Eval grunted, “I’ll be the judge of that. Hardeen, meet Greedo of the Tetsu Clan. He used to be a bounty hunter for Jabba the Hutt on the Outer Rim. Then he got involved in kidnapping the chairman of Pantora’s daughters, which is how he finds himself in this lovely accommodation.”

“And what does he bring to your brilliant plan?”

“Ruthlessness and good reflexes with a close range blaster. However, I find myself still lacking a crucial element, which is where you come in, Hardeen.”

“Which is?”

“To escape from this prison, it requires more than just me and Greedo. I’ve worked out a plan, but with just two it runs into too many issues. You’ve undergone Mandalorian training, you know how to use anything as a weapon and to your own advantage.”  

Obi-Wan nodded, seeing the tactical merit of it. “Yes, but you still haven’t sold me on the larger plan.”

Eval chuckled, wagging a finger, “All in due time, Hardeen. The details are mine. All you need to know is who we’re targeting. If that isn’t good enough for you…”

“No, that’s fine. Just my instincts screaming at me. I plan operations with meticulous detail as well and can appreciate keeping your cards close to the chest. We’ve just met, after all.”

“Precisely, you get it,” Eval smiled widely. “Now, I have to know, are you in or out?”

“Not looking forward to spending the rest of my life looking at these walls, I’m in.”

Eval clapped his hands, “Splendid. Now let’s talk about getting out of this place.”

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The next day, Obi-Wan, Eval and Greedo were picked up by the prison transport and ferried to the mess hall for breakfast.

He had gotten enough of a read on Eval to actually risk trying the sauce condiment the phindian swore by and surprisingly enough, it did help make things more palatable. The spiciness went a long way to distract the taste buds from complaining about the gruel texture of the prison food.

When it came time for the day’s exercise he split off from Eval, on the pretense that he wanted to get some exercise on a weight lift machine.

As far as he could see, Eval never exercised and only used the opportunity of the exercise yard to essentially hold court with a bunch of prisoners that wanted to trade favors from him and his ‘contacts’. Just how the phindian had seemingly compromised the prison already could only be explained by the fact that he had already done so years in advance of him ever being caught and put here.

Perhaps he had concluded in the past that one day his planning and luck would run out and this would be where the Republic would imprison him. Therefore, turning his actual capture into a mere relocation of business, instead of a catastrophic setback.

Obi-Wan paused at the weight machine, pointedly coughing to get the attention of another rodian already using it.

The rodian scowled, clearly wanting to object to being chased away from his exercise, until he caught sight of ‘Rako Hardeen’ looking at him patiently. Anyone who could casually take on a karkarodon and live was not someone to piss off, so the rodian let go of the machine with a huff and hurried off to find another.

Obi-Wan sat down with a lazy slump and leaned on his knees, letting his hands dangle naturally.

After a brief look around and carefully sensing with the Force, he was sure that no one was watching. His left hand quickly felt underneath the seat and hidden there, was a tiny earpiece communicator.

He palmed it and immediately pretended to stretch his arms over his head. This allowed him to surreptitiously place the comlink into his ear, where it was practically invisible as long as no one was too close.

A quick set of the weights and he laid back onto the machine to begin a steady set of repetitions.

“Ben, report.” Mace Windu said shortly.

“Partial success, I was unable to coerce the details of the kidnapping plot. He’s too cagey and cautious. I have been recruited by Eval to aid the plot, however.”

“That’s unfortunate. The scope of the operation will have to increase then.”

“Yes, in the meantime he has shared his full plan for an escape from the detention centre. I’m going to need some intervention from your side.”

“Such as?”

“Reduce the number of guards in the prison’s lower level crematoria tomorrow, by half if you can manage.”

“Very well. If you manage to get off Coruscant with Eval, do try and find a way to safely keep in touch, Obi-Wan.”

“That will be problematic at best with him watching my every move, but I’ll certainly try.” Obi-Wan huffed as he felt the beginning of a pleasant burn in arms as the reps continued.

“That’s all we can ask. Do whatever it takes to preserve your cover. We won’t get another chance like this.”

That was very easy for Windu to say. He sensed a clone guard approaching at this point.

“Have to go.”

Obi-Wan let go of the weights, letting them fall onto the stops and pretending to be slightly winded. Keeping his arms up and wobbling them, he managed to subtly extract the earpiece and return it to the hidden slot underneath the seat.

The guard barely turned his head and merely continued on his rounds of the exercise yard.

He breathed hard to regain some blood oxygenation before leaning back to do another set of reps.

‘Anakin,’ he called across the Bond.

It took a few moments and Obi-Wan was left with the impression that his former padawan was quite distracted at the moment. ‘Yes, Obi-Wa… ouch!... Sorry, sparring with Ahsoka at the moment.’

‘I can call later,’ he thought with amusement.

‘No, might as well use the opportunity for multitask training. Anything new we should know?’

‘Breaking out of prison with Eval and another prisoner named Greedo, a bounty hunter who worked for Jabba apparently, tomorrow.’

‘I’ve heard of him. Never turn your back and always keep your senses up. He’ll just as soon put a blaster bolt in it to get more of the cut.’

‘Will do. Has Ahsoka any more clarity she can give?’

‘One moment… This is more deduction than prescience. Eval will more than likely take you straight to Serenno and there will be more recruits for his plan waiting.’

‘She thinks Dooku is personally overseeing the operation?’

‘Yes, she’ll also get in touch with Savage. We may be able to give you intel on what you’re walking into there.’

‘That would be much appreciated. Now I’ll let you get back to sparring. Out of interest, what’s the score tally anyway?’

‘Five to three in my favor, we’re sparring in the training arena, level six difficulty.’

‘Impressive. Well, I’ll get back to my own exercise.’

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In the evening of the next day, Obi-Wan was idly walking with his tray of food and drink towards Eval’s table, when he was accosted by a short but burly human prisoner that looked like he had spent many years in the exercise yard.

“Hey Hardeen!”

Obi-Wan turned around lazily and idly glared at his interlocutor. “What?”

“You still owe me something, remember.”

Obi-Wan turned around, pretending to think it over. “Really? Your face does look familiar-”

“All that money you owe me and you forget! I’m Tonn Kientan of Corellia, you bastard!”

“Oh… oh I remember now,” Obi-Wan looked down on him with a smirk, aware they had attracted the attention of most of this half of the mess hall, including the guards. “Tiny Kientan! You’ve bulked up a bit since I last saw you-”

“No one calls me tiny!”

That was the only warning Obi-Wan had before he was tackled around the waist, his tray of food flying as he let himself be slammed against a nearby table packed with prisoners. The tray impacted directly into the face of a big selonian, smearing his felinoid face with food and drink. He hissed in anger, his eyes flaring.

Kientan and Obi-Wan struggled briefly for dominance in a tussle of competing arms, matching strength for strength.

Obi-Wan managed to break grip and tossed his opponent into the gap between tables, allowing more space for the fight.

Kientan threw fast jabs for Obi-Wan’s stomach and kidneys, which he blocked cold with his arms, before dodging a right hook to his jaw.

Obi-Wan threw two left jabs, which his opponent blocked but he wasn’t fast enough to stop the follow up overhead hook which sent Kientan reeling backward.

Any further action was halted when two clone troopers rushed forward with stun batons.

“All right! That’s enough! Fight’s over!”

A massive trandoshan stood up from the table behind the troopers and grabbed both by the scruff of the neck, “It’s only beginning!” He smashed both clones together by the head, stunning them

A snivvian and human took the chance, jumping forward and grabbing the stun batons from the dazed troopers before jamming them into their side and pulling the trigger.  

“Argggh!”

Cheers went up as the spark of a prison riot began.

Inmates grabbed their trays and began fighting the closest prisoner they had a grudge against.

It was barely seconds before the entire mess hall became pandemonium with more clone troops storming into the room, seeking to restore order.

Prisoners abruptly stopped their infighting when a trooper was near, bodily overwhelming the clone, robbing him of the stun baton and simply continuing the fight.

Obi-Wan had meanwhile, decked Kientan unconscious with a single punch and hurried over to Eval and Greedo through the fighting throng.

It wasn’t long until the troopers on the overhead walkways opened fire with blue stun shots.

However, some prisoners were now also armed with blasters looted from knocked out guards at this point and started returning stun fire.

A nearby door opened with five troopers to reinforce the guards. Two prisoners with looted weapons fired stunbolts in ambush, but ended up unconscious from return fire. A gang of further prisoners stormed the remaining troopers, tackling them to the ground.

“Go!” snapped Eval.

Obi-Wan and Greedo took the lead, with Eval sprinting behind them.

They joined a near mass exodus as other prisoners also saw the opportunity to break out into the access controlled hallways.

The general alarm began wailing through the corridors as the unlikely trio sprinted along the route that Eval had them memorize.

They had to dodge a number of fights between inmates and guard troopers, but managed to not get entangled.

Thankfully, their destination didn’t require travelling with a turbolift and it was only eight minutes of frantic stop-start sprinting that had them ducking behind the corner that led into an octagonal shaped corridor.

“Whew, we must wait here for a moment,” Eval gasped.

It didn’t take long to see why, as a recessed door opened in the side of the corridor. Two officer clones carrying an empty stretcher between them emerged and thankfully walked in the opposite direction.

“All right, Hardeen, you said you could handle the lock, go. Greedo and I will position ourselves to intercept anyone coming.”

Obi-Wan nodded and sprinted towards the morgue’s recessed entrance.

He knelt and grabbed the control panel, feeling around the edges before finding the hidden switch that maintenance clones and droids used. The panel popped open and he was presented with a tiny forest of small conduits and wires. He fiddled here and there, pretending to use some cunning slicing technique whilst making sure Greed and Eval weren’t looking his way.

With the Force, he reached into the mechanisms and electronics, feeling for the master switches that were especially built into this prison and which only a sufficiently skilled Jedi could manipulate.

The panel turned green and the recessed door vanished into the ceiling.

“Let’s go,” he hissed as he returned the panel to its normal configuration.

Greedo and Eval rushed into the morgue and Obi-Wan followed last, tapping on the interior control panel to lock it down.

“All right, we’re in the morgue, now what?” Greed asked pointedly.

Eval smirked and walked over to the row of four caskets, tapping on a nearby control panel.

All four opened, two were empty and two held the dead bodies of a human and a rodian.

“We take the express route down to the crematoria level.” 

“Are you crazy? We’ll be incinerated!”

“There are safeguards installed, sensors will detect our lifesigns and we’ll be let out by the staff down there. That is where both of you come in with your no doubt superb close quarter combat skills. Now get in, time is running out.”

Obi-Wan and Eval quickly claimed the open caskets, leaving Greedo to unfortunately share space with his dead fellow rodian.

The casket closed and the world of his eyes was reduced to utter darkness.

Through his body and the Force, he sensed the casket being picked up and slotted into a grav lev runner, before it was suddenly accelerated to something close to 5 Gs straight down.

He gritted his teeth with the strain, as the blood in his body was forced into his head. Calling on the Force for internal control, he pushed his internal fluids to follow a natural rhythm, despite the external forces.

Six seconds later the casket began slowing down gradually until it finally came to a full stop, just eleven seconds after the quick journey had begun.

He had little time to regain equilibrium.

Light returned as the casket opened up.

Obi-Wan surged forward, jumping out and tackling the nearby clone officer around the midsection.

The man lost all the wind in his lungs immediately, before Obi-Wan was on top of him.

A single elbow strike to the side of the clone’s head knocked him out.

Next Obi-Wan fluidly jumped off into a reverse kick that knocked the blaster out of a clone trooper’s grip, sending it skidding away on the floor.

The clone retaliated immediately, throwing strikes to Obi-Wan’s neck and a kick to the knee.

He had to carefully moderate his reaction times to not be too good in dealing with the trooper, but after a quick exchange of dodges and strikes, Obi-Wan knocked out this one too.

The sharp discharge of a blaster resounded in the crematoria room, heralding Greedo defeating his own opponent and shooting the downed clone in the chest.

The rodian bounty hunter wasted no time and let loose with two rapid pinpoint blasts that also killed the two clones that Eval had been wrestling with.

“Excellent,” he smirked. “Hardeen, arm yourself.”

Obi-Wan nodded, scooping up the nearest DC-15 carbine that had fallen and following Eval as the phindian led them out the immediate room they had landed in.

They rushed down another octagonal corridor, only to run straight into two fully armored troopers going the other way.

Greedo fired first, sending a blast straight into the helmet of the left trooper, whilst Obi-Wan fired moments later, aiming his own shot center mass into the stomach area.

Both troopers went down, only one screaming in agony.

They sprinted further, taking a right turn before coming to a large door that Obi-Wan sensed would lead them outside.

“Loading area, should only be three troopers,” Eval said.

Obi-Wan took one side of the door, Greedo the other, whilst Eval manipulated the controls.

The doors parted with a rush of wind and the sound of external alarms wailing.

Greedo fired, hitting a surprised trooper in the back, whilst Obi-Wan’s shot hit his target in the upper-right back.

“Hey!”

The last trooper, who had been loading cargo onto a transport speeder, whirled around with his carbine and fired off rapid shots.

Obi-Wan just about managed to dodge in a way that didn’t give the game away. The shot left a nasty scorching burn on his right hip though.

“Haaah!” he screamed in anger, aiming his weapon, but Greedo fired before he could.

The trooper collapsed to a center mass shot over the heart.

Eval rushed forward, grabbing the downed trooper’s carbine and then ripped off the gauntlet and vambrace on his left arm.

The phindian awkwardly put it on, wriggling his arm in with strained effort. It hardly fit and was constricting his forearm, but his purpose was clear as his other hand blurred on the tiny controls of the vambrace.

The transport powered up and repulsors whirred into life.

“Our ride awaits, gentle beings.”

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A/N: Greedo, good reflexes? Or is it that Han Solo was just better? :-) Delay in this one was caused by a back burn on a primary power cable leading to my neighborhood, in addition to rains delaying the repair work. Urgh. Hope you've had a better weekend than me. I also decided to buy a generator, coz I've had it up to the gills with our national power company (Which is the only game in town as yet, there's hope on the horizon for that to change.) Stay awesome folks.

The Force Wills - Chapter 115

The silence after Yoda’s words was like a vast, terrible, yawning void.

I then realized that it was my own stomach feeling this way, combined with every nerve ending in my back wondering if gravity had suddenly gone away. For the briefest of moments my mind was sent reeling, gibbering at the impossibility.

What had I done?

What had I not done?

Was this a butterfly effect?

How?

Why?

Impossible.

No.

I wrenched my mind, thoughts and emotions back into some form of order. Think Ahsoka, think. Nothing I had foreseen showed Obi-wan dying at this point. The kaleidoscope of the future was always twisting and writhing with probability and possibility. He was a Jedi General in a galactic war, nothing was truly certain.

“H- how did it happen?”  

Anakin’s voice was studiously neutral to most, but I could hear the heart wrenching pain within it.

“Investigating a kidnapping plot, Master Kenobi, was, against the chancellor. Master Koon, there as support. From extreme long range, a sniper attacked.”

“And they couldn’t sense the danger?”

“In the lower levels of Coruscant, did this occur. Distracted both were by a nearby bomb blast. Aiding the victims they were.”

My fingers swiped on the controls, bringing up Anakin’s side of the link. His face was carved out of duracrete, but in his eyes I saw a burning sorrow. He closed his eyes and visibly swallowed his emotions, clearly trying to find equilibrium and only partially succeeding.

“When did this happen?”

“The tragedy, occurred it has eight hours ago.”

My brain finally put itself into some sort of gear, as I brought up the metadata of the comlink record. The call to the Omen from Yoda had occurred two days ago.

Two days for Anakin to be stuck on the ship, with an unconscious padawan to care for, with Obi-Wan’s death weighing on his mind. The only small mercy was that Padme was also here to comfort him.  

“I see, master. Thank you for calling me so promptly. His body, it’s-”

“All has been taken care of, Knight Skywalker. Funeral ceremony, take place it will, once you arrive.”

That was quite considerate of the Council, since it was still six days until the Omen reached Coruscant. The funeral of a Jedi Master, especially one sitting on the Council itself, was something that would gather Jedi from far and wide to attend. As a general rule, six days of time was allowed for Jedi to travel to the temple for a funeral rite. By waiting for Anakin, it would mean an extra three to four days tacked on. It was an almost unprecedented exception for the hidebound traditionalists and I had no doubt they were pursing their lips in disapproval.

Waiting extra time for a young lowly knight to attend the solemn funeral of a Master? Tut, tut.

The exception wasn’t lost on Anakin, who bowed. “Thank you, Master Yoda.”

“Thanks, not needed. You and your padawan’s actions on Mokivj, saved an entire planet it did. Greater ramifications for the war as well, prevented. Least I could do.”

“What-  what can you tell me about the kidnapping plot and the sniper?”

“Security required, too high to risk speaking more on this channel. In person, this must be.” 

Anakin looked off to the side, “I understand, master. I’ll make best speed home.”

“Mourn we all, for Master Kenobi’s passing. Understand, that your feelings now, no matter how strong, transitory it is. As night falls, so too will the sun eventually rise. Meditate you should, explore the feelings, don’t let them dominate.”

“I understand. I will, Master Yoda.”

“Good, Force be with you.”

“And you.”

The screen went blank as the call had ended.

My mind was wrestling to chart a proper course on the waters of prescience. My current condition was not helping at all. The mention of a sniper had finally let me find some purchase on the situation. The problem was certainty.

Palpatine had many plots against his life thus far and would receive more in the future. There was only one plot according to the original timeline which had involved Obi-Wan investigating it and a sniper ‘killing’ him.

The fact that Master Koon was with him and the bombing as a distraction, was throwing me off kilter. That was out of left field. Was it simply a case of butterflies putting us out of the sequence of probability?

“Are you all right, Ahsoka?” Chewie asked worriedly.

“No, I most certainly am not.” This was when prescience became a curse. At best, I’d regain my full strength as we neared Coruscant, only to then plunge into that accursed Shroud.

In this situation, the only option was to go with the flow. Act as if the death of Obi-Wan was always meant to happen. Then be my usual industrious self in trying to bring his murderer to justice and work on this new plot against the chancellor.

I brought up the com system, and considered who to contact. A quick reference of time told me it was currently late afternoon at the Jedi Temple and so I put through a call.

For a long 34 seconds I just stared at the bristling tunnel of hyperspace projected into the Omen’s cockpit around me. My montrals hyper focusing on the steady chirp from the computer as it waited for a handshake from the comlink.

Master Plo Koon’s holographic head appeared in front of me.

“Ahsoka, it’s a relief to see you on your feet.”

“Thank you, master,” I said with visible sadness, projecting it outward. I had to assume Palpatine would be watching the fallout of his latest machination with close scrutiny. If he was using Dooku’s latest plot against him in this manner, by allowing it to come to the Jedi Council’s attention, then he would be closely looking at everything, including Anakin’s reaction and my own. “How are things in the Temple?”

“We have lost Jedi in this war, Ahsoka. We will lose more before it is over. Master Kenobi’s passing is a shock and we mourn, but cannot let it consume us. I doubt Obi-Wan would want his death to put us all into a constant state of melancholy.”

I nodded, sniffing and wiping away a tear, “It’s just not something I really enjoyed waking up to… just under an hour ago I was still unconscious, before that I had celebrated Life Day and sorted out Mokivj’s problem. It’s like… I did good and paid the price, I accept that, but suddenly I’ve lost someone I regarded as… a grandfather.”

“And now you have lost him, you’ve been trained on what to do when someone who is close to you has passed into the Force.”

I shook my head, “It’s so easy to learn and say that, but doing is another matter.”

“That it is. Now I know you haven’t called just to hear my advice, so what can I do for you? Though I can guess you want something to keep your mind busy on your long journey, yet you want it to be as productive as possible. So… you want the crime scene data.”

“Am I that predictable, Master Koon?” I chuckled ruefully.

“Hardly, I just know you too well. Give me a moment.” He looked off to the side, working on a nearby terminal, probably in his apartment or ‘office’ in the Temple. “Sending you an encrypted data packet on a subchannel.”

The Omen’s computer chirped in an alert. “I’m receiving it. Thank you, Master.”

I doubt I’d be able to bring anything new or earth shattering to the situation, but it’d at least help settle my mind somewhat.

“You’re welcome, little ‘Soka.”

“I’ll see you within the week then.”

“Force be with you and don’t strain your recovery.”

“I won’t, master.”

The holo vanished and I set about decrypting and sending the data to a temporary folder. The first file was the official report from the Coruscant Security Force, including visual data from the enforcement droids that had first responded. It happened on Subfloor 422, inside one of the subsurface cityscapes that technically had the surface city as a ‘sky’. It wasn’t the best place on the city planet, but it still had nominal levels of police patrol presence.

The sniper had taken the shot from over 2.3 km away from one of the ceiling structures of the cityscape.

Even with all the assistance technologies you could put on a sniper rifle, that was a very difficult shot. It was also a rare rifle that could maintain its bolt cohesion for that distance. That alone meant we were dealing with a professional who had either custom built the weapon or had managed to pay the exorbitant price for it on the black market.

Obi-Wan was pronounced dead on the scene by Master Koon and even the enforcement droid’s scans had confirmed it. The body was taken by a Jedi transport and removed from the scene after enough forensic scans had occurred.

Something nagged at me at reading that and with a few swipes of my hand I brought up the sector map of where the crime had taken place. A quick zoom out and I had the relative distance to the Jedi Temple complex.

The handy thing when it came to using mostly droids as law enforcement, you had time events down the millisecond if you wanted it. You even had a time of death because they could scan the current temperature of the body constantly as it cooled, then you compare it to the healthy temperature of a living human. I knew the max speed of the specific Jedi transport used, what the air traffic conditions were, even for a transport given critical priority. A few calculations and I had a timeline for the Jedi transport.

Unless we Jedi secretly had tiny hyperdrives that could operate deep within a mass shadow, the arrival of the transport meant that it had to have been within forty-five kilometers of the crime scene to arrive when it did. Another calculation let me draw a radius around the sector, to see if there was any law enforcement building within that area. Maybe the transport had been incidentally at a CSF outpost.

Naturally, there were several such outposts, but only one which was large enough to feature any place for the transport to land.

It wasn’t definitive, but it was highly coincidental that the transport would be there, just in time to zoom towards the crime scene to pick up Obi-Wan’s body.

Speaking of, the still images selected of the body itself were not easy viewing.

Obi-Wan had not even been wearing his clone war armor and he had been shot in the back, the scorch mark carbonizing a substantial portion of the upper left back. The police report referenced the likely cause of death being damaged left lung and scorching of the heart, but it was only a supposition. Enforcement droids were not walking medical scanners.

None of the images were from angles that showed detail of the wound, telling me these were all ripped from the memories of enforcement droids. There were a few images of the Jedi team sent to retrieve the body; five of them, including one who I could see had the subtle robes unique to someone who worked in the Halls of Healing.

There were three knights and a master, all wearing the usual attire, including traditional outer robes with the hoods up to obscure identity. It would’ve been nice to have full holos but it wasn’t included in the report, which was an odd oversight and smacked of being deliberate.

In fact, I took a big step back in my perspective, cast off every natural perception filter I could in my mind and looked at the folder of the data packet, seeing what it contained and more importantly, didn’t contain. 

“Frak,” I muttered, my hands grabbing the various holos and chucking it back into the folder.

“What is it? Did you find anything?” Chewie asked.

“Yes, I did and it’s all deception,” I stood carefully, finding that I was much more stable on my feet and could walk properly.

I left the cockpit and slowly climbed down the ladder into the troop deck.

Anakin and Padme sitting across from each other in meditation, knees barely touching, was a very appealing sight. I wished I had a pict recorder or even a holo imager. Both were wearing workout clothes that showed a lot of skin and judging by the lingering sweaty aroma in the air, they had both been doing calisthenics. 

My feet carried me to the side, so I could use each troop armor station for balance support as I walked forward. I was still a little wobbly it seemed.

I fell into the closest seat and waited.

“Snips,” he greeted me, keeping his eyes closed.

“Skyguy.”

“You know.”

“Yes. Tell me, can you sense Obi-Wan?”

He snorted in dark amusement. “Of course I can. He wasn’t about to dissolve our renewed Bond in Mortis for the Council’s crazy scheme.”  

“Which is?” I asked for clarity’s sake.

He opened his eyes, emerging completely from the meditation. “They want to infiltrate Obi-Wan into Judiciary Central Detention. There he will pose as the man who had just ‘killed’ him, Rako Hardeen.” I groaned to the ceiling and scratched my forehead in irritation. “You’ve foreseen this probability?”

“Yes, but do go on. I can’t exactly foresee anything actively at the moment, so can only use deduction and inference. I assume this is all in reference to the kidnapping plot against Palpatine?”

“Yes. Dooku has hired Moralo Eval to engineer a plan to abduct Palpatine.”

“That frakker,” I scowled. Eval was the criminal underworlds’ worst combined into a single package. He was a phindian technologist and serial killer, known for using tech, gadgets and all manner of elaborate plans and mechanisms to achieve his kills. He was infamous for using what I’d call Rube Goldberg style plots to achieve his aims and had an intelligence that matched his oversized head holding his oversized brain. He was so famous that he got a full chapter as a case study in criminology at the Jedi Academy. Even the criminal underworld as a whole was wary of him and there were numerous bounties on the phindian’s head from the hutts and quite a few syndicates.

Eval was still alive only because he had a long list of dead bounty hunters as part of his overall kill list. No sane bounty hunter who didn’t have a death wish tried to collect.

“Yes. So the Council is going to transform Obi-Wan using surgical nanodroids to perfectly match Rako Hardeen’s appearance, even scans wouldn’t be able to tell the difference and they’ll also be using Hardeen’s cells to fool any potential bioscans done on extracted samples. The plan is then for Obi-Wan to facilitate an escape for Eval from prison, which the Council will subtly help with, thereby gaining trust.”

“Enough for Eval to consider hiring Hardeen for the kidnapping plot,” I nodded.

“Which Obi-Wan will encourage.”

“Eval isn’t the kind of sentient who trusts anyone, only himself.”

“Correct, which will mean Obi-Wan has to go to great lengths to prove himself, not only to Eval, but also to Dooku.”

I laughed at that sheer audacity, “Obi-Wan will also have to thoroughly disguise his own presence in the Force then, from someone as skilled as Dooku. Is he sure he can do it?”

“He is,” Anakin nodded.

“Master, all of this is frakking window dressing to the real issue. The true targets of this entire plot.”

“Yes, which is why both you and I have to cultivate a suitable emotional signature by the time we reach Coruscant.”

“It’s not going to be easy.”

“No, it won’t be. Now, I want you to relax and recover for the next two days at least. Think nothing of this, lose yourself in a book, anything. After that, you’ll join me in meditation so we can suitably build our emotional masks and discuss contingency planning.”

“Our enemy will be watching closely.”

“Which is why I’m thankful for once that hyperdrives aren’t as quick as we wish them to be. It’s giving us time to prepare and be ready. No off you go. Relax, that’s an order.”

“Yes, master.”

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I stood at the far end of Omen’s troop deck, six days later, physically feeling somewhat smothered.

I was wearing beskar’gam, but had adjusted my formal Jedi robes to be worn in conjunction with it. The result had me looking like something that was straight out of the Old Republic, yet given a modern twist.

The hilts of my three lightsabers orbited around my casually outstretched right hand as I did a TK exercise to pass the time.

Chewie and R2 were handling the final approach through Coruscant’s atmosphere and to the Jedi Temple itself.

Emotionally, my feelings had never been more complicated. An outward layer of rigid control, with the occasional leakage of sorrow. Below that, a determination to find Obi-Wan’s killer, entwined with a volatile anger at Rako Hardeen.

That was just the first overall layer, below that was yet more enticements, weaknesses and deceptions, all geared towards the enemy. Letting him see exactly what he would like to see his efforts were creating.

Anakin and Padme joined me at that point. He was wearing his formal Jedi robes in brown, without any of the typical black that he favored, his hood completely obscuring his face. She was wearing a formal dress with her typical elegance, but it was clearly the Naboo style of mourning dress, a flowing dark blue and black number. It had a light over robe that hung off the shoulders and created a haunting ethereal quality. That she even had the thing packed was so typical of her. Her training and time as a queen shining through.

It had been a worry working with her to get the right emotional state and to maintain it enough to a level that Palpatine would accept. Thankfully, we managed, especially because the Naboo hailed Obi-Wan as a hero for his actions during the original Naboo Crisis.

We stood in silence waiting for the ship to complete its descent. Anakin dearly wanted to use these last moments to hold hands with Padme, but here in the lair of the beast, he couldn’t dare. As much as Palpatine surely knew how close these two were, they had to maintain the facade of trying to hide it as much as possible.

The Omen began its final approach, slowing down towards the primary Temple hangar on the eastern side of the massive ziggurat.

In the Force, I could feel the oppressive solemnity that hung over the entire structure. Every Jedi except the high council had been unwittingly roped into the deception, being fed the lie of Obi-Wan’s death.

A shudder ran through the ship as it touched down at last.

I guided my lightsabers to their proper places on my belt, before reaching out and triggering the personnel lift. The one problem with the Kom’rk class was they weren’t built for leisurely exiting from them.

Waiting for us was Master Koon, it was so strange to see him in flowing Jedi robes that didn’t have some form of armoring.

Anakin and I bowed, whilst Padme only nodded at the Jedi Master.

“Welcome back to you both, greetings Senator Amidala,” Koon said solemnly, though I could detect the slight hint of anger and discontent. It was also something that Master Plo was intentionally leaking to us both. He couldn’t know that we actually knew about the grander deception, therefore he was just sharing his feelings to show that we were not alone in them.

This circus of deception was going to give me a migraine, I just knew it.

We waited at this point for Chewie and R2 to join us. My wookiee companion donned his traditional wroshyr armor set for the occasion, giving it a formal flair with flowing brown additions that made it a half-robe.

With our arrival certain, word went out as we left the hangar bays.

Walking the vast halls of the Jedi Temple now felt somehow completely different. Jedi who spotted us became silent or paused in whatever they were doing. My outward emotions and masks kept me resolute and Anakin was a walking statue of self-control, only allowing the occasional emotion to leak outward.

At that moment, I could only imagine the memo that the Council would have to send out to the entire Temple contingent of Jedi, explaining that Obi-Wan’s death was entirely staged for an operation. 

I had to tip my proverbial hat to Palpatine. This wasn’t just hitting two birds with one stone, it was an asteroid smacking the entire flock. He was undermining the image and reputation of the Council in the eyes of every Jedi.

Our walk into Temple’s upper levels wasn’t hurried, but not casual either. It felt like more of a procession and every Jedi we passed in the more narrow confines of the upper corridors, stopped what they were doing to bow to Anakin.

When we arrived at the funeral chamber, a place that had seen more use in the last year than in the preceding century, all the funeral attendees had arrived from their guest accommodation. Most Jedi funerals, by nature, were simple and quick affairs, offering no pageantry and little ritual. The only slight exception to this was when it was a council member or a prominent Jedi that had massive influence on the galaxy or many worlds.

Obi-Wan was both of the latter.

Padme was here for the Naboo, but Queen Neyutnee was here in person along with a full coterie of handmaidens and Governor Sio Bibble. They were also here to collect the body of Duja, which Padme had made a slight detour to retrieve whilst I had been unconscious.

The next prominent attendee was Duchess Satine and I did not want to be in Obi-Wan’s shoes when this whole charade was blown open. She was the picture of royal nobility and you could’ve painted her portrait, so perfectly was her face set into a neutral expression. To every Jedi, her attendance was because Obi-Wan had saved her life and thereby altered the very course of Mandalore’s destiny. I could sense that her heart and soul was weighed down by sadness, regret and a deep loss. She wanted nothing more than to break down into tears as she stared into the center of the funeral chamber.

Flanking her were two Mandalorian Blades and two of her traditional royal guards. The Blades immediately saluted me by making a fist and silently thumping their armored chests.

I bowed quickly to my adopted monarch as I walked past her, whilst only then returning the Blades’ salute.

Satine for her part, managed to climb out of her misery to acknowledge my bow with a regal nod.

The rest of the Jedi council who were on Coruscant were there; Yoda, Windu, Tiin, Gallia, Shaak Ti and Mundi. Attending a funeral via hologram was considered bad form, so those who were out and about in the galactic war and couldn’t return were excused.

Senators Bail Organa from Alderaan and Mon Mothma from Chandrila were here as Senate representatives.

And of course, Palpatine himself was there. Naturally to scrutinize both Anakin and myself in person for the effect his machinations were having on us.

He stood with folded hands in front of him, looking for all the world and even in the Force, like a solemn grandfather, sad to see another life cut brutally short by an uncaring, brutal galaxy at war.

Rounding out the funeral attendees was a randomized selection of knights and padawans filling all the seating levels of the chamber.

Anakin took his place, standing at the head of the plinth carrying Obi-Wan’s shrouded body. This was for the last padawan of the deceased Jedi.

My seat was at the lowest level, near the foot of the plinth, with Padme to my right, Master Koon to the left and Chewie in the seat behind me.

Absolute silence was maintained, with no dirge or song. Technically, as a general in the GAR, there did on paper exist a military funeral that could be held with traditions imported from old Mandalorian customs, due to the training the clone army had received from the contracted Mandolorians. 

Jedi tradition superseded that and for a full minute, Anakin stood vigil in silence over his old master.

Satine’s control broke first and tears began streaming down her face.

Mace Windu stepped forward and began to speak.

“We’re gathered here to mark the passing of Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi into the Force. His impact on your lives and the many beyond these walls are known to you and requires no repetition. He would want no glorification of his deeds, for they were all done in service to life and the people of the Republic. His presence touched all of us and that will continue as long as we remember him.”

Windu reached out a hand and the Force flexed as he reached into the mechanisms below the floor.

“My fellow Jedi, from this moment I step into my next. From this place, I step into my next. From this life I step into my next. For I am one with the Force, forever and forever,” Windu repeated the prayer.

The floor rumbled and the plinth began sinking into a specially designed entombment casket that was ready below.

Stone grinding against stone, heralded the plinth vanishing into the floor and the doors closing above it. 

A single jewel set into the doors lit with light, projecting a beam of light that speared into a mirror set in the ceiling. That light would be bounced through many floors of the Temple, before it would be projected into the sky above. A symbolic ascension of the Jedi becoming one with the Force.

A Jedi funeral pyre hadn’t been done for centuries in the Coruscant temple at this point. Most Jedi when they became padawan, had to record their wills and what type of ceremony they preferred. A pyre was generally discouraged by the majority of masters, but the tradition and option had to remain available. Rather conveniently, Obi-Wan’s desire for his body after death was for entombment.

Now however, the true battle being fought here, under the very noses of every Jedi Master, was occurring between Anakin, Palpatine and myself.

Our layers of emotional masking, our very presence in the Force, was being closely scrutinized by the enemy and being picked apart.

Anakin had closed his eyes the moment the beam of light had pierced the low light of the chamber, his face outwardly showing pain, his mouth twisted in a suppressed anger.

My face might’ve been hidden by a helmet, but the physical shield was nothing against Sidious.

I folded my hands, my right forming a fist underneath my left hand. My outward mask staring into the light beam with hints of sorrow that leaked out of my ‘attempt’ at a neutral face.

Both Anakin and I could feel Sidious poking and prodding, peeling away the layers.

The only reason we were even aware of it was because of our training under Bendu. This was a level of perception in the Force that was normally only attainable through the Dark Side. It was a technique parallel to Dun Möch, called Exte Ocu.  It wasn’t something as blunt as an outright Mind Probe, which would be sensed by every Jedi in the room immediately. This was akin to using the Force as a medium to send out your very essence to invade and feel the emotions of your target. Sensing or even shielding from it was something that had been long lost to the modern Jedi Order even before the Ruusan Reformation. It was also something that was only really useful if your target was a Force Sensitive. The stronger you were in the Force, the more susceptible you were.  

I had always wondered how Palpatine could be so on the button with regards to Anakin, always able to manipulate and say the right words. It was more than just foresight, which would’ve been a constant trial-and-error method to use and strain your prescient sight if you were constantly testing each phrase, emotion and word and seeing the result down the probability line. This intrusive empathy allowed a Sith to be constantly aware of what his opponent was feeling and react accordingly.

Thankfully, this wasn’t a matter of outright strength in the Force.

Palpatine was, ironically, at his strongest within the Jedi Temple. Thanks to the ancient and hidden Sith shrine in the deepest bowels of the planet beneath this very spot.  

I had prepared a full dozen masks of emotional misdirection and Sidious had slithered through two outer layers and right into my carefully prepared sea of raw emotion that would represent my true emotional self to him.

In the deepest, smallest recess of my mind, where my true self was hidden, I watched and waited.

Thankfully, Sidious couldn’t afford to spend too long and my emotional sea seemed to satisfy his curiosity and his notes of satisfaction meant that he was happy with the results of his little scheme for me so far.

Anakin was his primary target and whether or not he was satisfied there, I couldn’t tell as yet.

The Jedi Council stood and began filing out the room, marking the end of the ceremony.

I watched as Palpatine walked over to Anakin. The old man patted his protege on the shoulder and held his hand briefly, trading a few heartfelt words of sympathy for the loss.

Anakin nodded in thanks, perfectly playing his own role, even as he was presenting Palpatine with what the Sith wanted to see, yet also not completely.

Bendu had been very adamant that the key to fooling the enemy was not so simple as just showing everything going well, but also to show problems and failures. It would be too suspicious otherwise.

Finally, Palpatine nodded at whatever response Anakin whispered and left the chamber.

Most of the Jedi left now, as well as the varied VIPs from the Senate. Queen Neyutnee paused by Padme and exchanged a few words.

“I must go, be safe, Ahsoka,” Padme whispered.

The Naboo left.

Satine was next and she paused next to where the plinth had been, her hand trailing through the beam of light as if hoping one last time to touch some essence of Obi-Wan.

She was disappointed though and left with her bodyguards in tow.

I stood and came to stand next to Anakin as he continued to stare at the tomb below.

“Master,” I reminded him of his time and place.

He properly opened his eyes and nodded. “Let’s go, Ahsoka. Obi-Wan would not want us to linger here.”

“No, he wouldn’t.”

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Obi-Wan had never truly understood the need for a secret adjunct to the Halls of Healing until Mace Windu approached him with this infiltration plan. It was a place entirely staffed by medical droids who worked on a hidden isolated network and was only known to the high council and the head of the Council of First Knowledge.

Yes, sometimes the fact that a council member was on death’s door, injured or sick in the line of duty, couldn’t be made public to the Jedi Temple as a whole. Not just for reasons of security, but also for morale.

He sat on the medical bed, dressed in a sterile gown only and tolerated the various medical droids as they hovered around him and scanned him to a downright intrusive degree.

A look at the chrono indicated that his ‘funeral’ had been over for more than an hour by now. It was very tempting to reach over to Anakin and query how it had been, but he resisted indulging in the dry humor across the Force Bond. It was difficult enough for Anakin to attain the right emotional signature for their purposes and humor was not conducive to that.

The medical grade isolation doors opened to reveal Mace and Yoda.

“So, how was my funeral?”

“Hmmm, better performance than you, your corpse gave.”

“I was at least better than some of the actors we hired as ‘victims’ of the bomb blast. In any event, was Anakin at least convinced that it was me?”

“Yes,” nodded Windu. “He bought it, but it’ll only hold as long as you keep your obscurement active. I must admit Kenobi, I hadn’t thought it possible we could achieve a similar feat as the Sith ability to hide so completely, without delving into the Dark Side. You’re barely perceptible in the Force to me at the moment and I’m looking right at you… you’re letting that through?”

In answer, Obi-Wan equalized and smoothed out the small effect he was having on the Force.

“Hmmm, much benefit your time in Mortis has brought,” Yoda commented.

“All systems prepared,” the medical droid announced.

“Time for a shave then,” he said, feeling irritation at the hassle of regrowing it in the future. Another droid floated forward, its right arm, with a sonic hair remover whizzed to life as it started up the suction that latched onto the hair on his head. Immediately feeling his follicles being painlessly teased loose he asked a question to distract himself. “Any updates about my target?”

“We’ve confirmed that Eval’s plot is indeed targeting Naboo’s Festival of Light, as opposed to any of the other engagements that the chancellor has on his itinerary in the next month. We tried to make a deal with him for more information, but no amount of persuasion whether by the Force or otherwise will work on him. He fears Count Dooku too much and his phindian mind is too exotic for any of our available mindwalkers.”

“Then I doubt I’d make any headway either. Have you learned anything that can make it easier to gain his trust?”

“He is such a sociopath, that he killed his own mother as a child, because he was utterly bored with her. She apparently failed to intellectually challenge him enough. Phindians are known for their high intelligence, but Eval tested in the upper fifth percentile for even his species.”

The droid moved on to his beard and Obi-Wan slightly shuddered as he felt his own bald head. “Sociopath and high intelligence, not a good combination. I’ll endeavour not to bore him in prison then.”

Yoda didn’t appreciate the dry wit. “Not a game this is, Obi-Wan. The risks, great they are.”

“The potential rewards are equally great. Intel on Durge and even Dooku himself.”

“It is time for sedation,” the med droid droned.

Obi-Wan sighed and sat back before lying down on the bed. “Have we asked the chancellor at least if he would pull out of the festival, now that we have confirmation?”

“No, seen as a sign of weakness, it would.”

“Now we wouldn’t want that, now would we?”

He felt a slight tingling on his shoulder and felt the sedation begin to crawl across his arm and sneak across his chest.

“I’ll see you on the other side,” he nodded to Windu as it reached his heart and in an instant, Obi-Wan was swallowed by dreamless oblivion.

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“A round of drinks for the house!”

Cheers filled Trueping’s Bar as the various denizens celebrated the good fortune of one of their regular customers.

Rako Hardeen chucked the credit chits at the anacondan bartender, whose coils swiftly grabbed the currency and got to work distributing the drinks.

He could for once in his life afford to be generous and he was also building his rep even further. Gone were the days of eking out a living on Concord Dawn for scraps, looking over his shoulder for New Mandalorian security hounding an honest bounty hunter just doing his job. He’d left Mandalorian space for greener pastures in the Coruscant underworld and found his calling.

There was only the target and getting paid, that was the only morality and worry down in the Coruscant slums.

There was no worry about clan politics and while he was still identified by name of Hardeen, he’d firmly left those weaklings in his thruster exhaust.  

He had felt tempted to return when word reached him of the clans going to war against the Separatists, but while there might be glory, there were little credits on offer for his bank accounts.

Now he had bagged his biggest target yet and the Marksman of Concord Dawn was on the lips of everyone!

It was now only a matter of time before the big players started knocking on his door and with them came even bigger credits.

“Rako Hardeen,” said the nasal tinny voice of a small maintenance droid. The bar used them for every purpose; serving drinks, fixing the plumbing and to pass messages.

“Yes? Who wants to know?” he drawled lazily, feeling the slight buzz in his head from his fourth drink of the evening.

“Your employer has arrived and has your payment. Please follow me.”

The droid wobbled away on its tiny legs.

He grabbed his custom Mandolorian helmet from the bar top and after a brief gaze across the room for threats, felt comfortable enough to turn his back to follow the droid through a door next to the bar.

It opened into the backrooms, places where clients could go to have discreet meetings and other liaisons with the local pleasure workers.

The droid led him to a room furthest down the dirty graffiti covered hallway.

“Inside if you please.” It gestured and the locked door rose upward on aging motivators.

He entered a room that looked like it could actually be a functional apartment with decent amenities. It had a sitting room with an integrated kitchen and another open door that led to a room with a single bed.

A tall figure sat at the kitchen table with a very large briefcase on it that he could practically smell had the second half of his credits for the job. The client had carefully placed himself in the shadow cast by the dimmed overhead lighting. Rako inwardly smirked, a client who loved dramatics and had very large pockets.

The door to the apartment shut, plunging the room into even more shadow.

“Well done, Mr. Hardeen,” said the shadowy figure in a perfectly neutral voice, his gloved hands folded on the table, the only part of him that was easily seen. “You did precisely the job we hired you for and we have your credits as you can see.”

His client pushed the briefcase only marginally forward, but the invitation was clear.

Rako stepped closer.

“However,” the client raised his hand. “We need one more thing from you.”

“Oh and what’s that?”

The client sat back and stood, then leaned forward into the light.

Rako’s eyes widened as he saw that the client had his own face, even the red Hardeen clan tattoos over the left side. Was the client a shapeshifter? Was he toying with him?

“Your clothes and armor,” smirked the shapeshifter with a wry smile.

Rako’s heart raced, adrenaline coursing through his veins in alarm. It dispelled the alcohol induced fuzziness from his mind rather quickly. His hand reached for the blaster in his holster only to find it flying out of reach.

He blinked and out of the shadows another figure emerged. They were so close that Rako couldn’t imagine how he could’ve missed them. A dark skinned hand clamped down on his shoulder and the very familiar face of Jedi Master Mace Windu glared at him.

Rako did the only wise thing that anyone could in such a situation… he froze.

“Very wise, Rako,” said his double, still talking in another man’s voice. It was that fact that clued him in that he was not dealing with changeling, but rather someone who had merely gone through the trouble of being surgically altered into being his double. The presence of Mace Windu himself…

“You hired me? The Jedi hired me to kill one of their own?!”

“I’m afraid that clarification of our plans is something you’re not entitled to, Mr. Hardeen,” Windu said, then began pushing him with a firm hand towards the bedroom. “Now, we’re still paying you, undress!”

If it had been anyone else, he’d have made an innuendo or joke about that order.

As it was, he kept his mouth shut and obeyed, reluctantly removing his chestplate, undershirt, utility belt, pants and combat boots.

Down to only his underwear, he was marched back into the living room, whilst his double began dressing in the discarded clothes.

“Have a seat,” Windu ordered in a tone that brooked no disobedience.

Rako sat in an empty chair next to the kitchen table that still had the suitcase of credits on it. He could smell opportunity. Perhaps if he just endured a bit of this humiliation, he could still walk away with it.

His doppelganger emerged from the bedroom and put the Mandolorian helmet on the table. He pulled out another chair and sat down across from him.

“A final issue, Mr. Hardeen.” A handheld, very advanced looking datapad was held between them. “I want you to begin speaking in extreme detail about your last day.”

The issue was obvious, they needed his voice as well. Rako glanced at the implacable Windu who had expectantly folded his arms.

“All right, I woke up in the morning after a wonderful night in the arms of the best twi’lek pleasure worker in District G17. She was very good, I hadn’t known that some of those positions even existed until she showed them to me…”

Rako went on in detail to describe his morning session of pleasure in lurid detail, figuring he could get a minor bit of revenge on these two. Unfortunately, despite his best efforts he couldn’t make the doppelganger or Windu squirm or even grimace. It was their money he had used to get the best night of sex he’d had in his entire life after all.

Finally, he had to move on and described his breakfast, the biggest and best meal he’d had in the most expensive restaurant in the city sector.

He was just getting to the part about leaving the restaurant when the doppelganger raised a hand to stop him.

“Should have enough to try now, Mr. Hardeen.” He tapped on the datapad and abruptly began coughing. “Testing… one, two, three… four, five six, seven, eight…” He coughed again and Rako could hear the dry tempered voice change timbre and tone.

“Nine, ten, eleven.”

Rako was rather fascinated despite himself. Those three words now sounded exactly like his own voice, was it a cybernetic implant? No, those would obviously be detected in a scan. Cybernetics was not something he had ever really considered installing seriously, he never had the budget for it, even if he had the mind to try. If these Jedi wanted to impersonate him then, this was something else.

He shook off his thoughts, “Look, it’s clear you need my identity for some reason and I don’t want to know why. Just answer me one question.”

“Go ahead,” the doppleganger nodded with a smirk.

“It’s clear I’m going to be the Jedi Order guest while this goes down. Am I still getting paid at the end of this?”

“That’ll depend on too many factors to give you an honest answer, Mr. Hardeen. I can say from the Jedi’s point of view, you’ve been a bounty hunter for three years now in the underworld and you’ve kept to the guild’s code. We have no reason to detain you beyond this operation.”

“I suppose that’s the best I’ll get. Just please don’t kill the chancellor with my identity,” Rako joked sarcastically .

Windu and the doppelganger looked at each other rather incredulously.

“Good night, Mr. Hardeen.”

Windu gestured with his hand and Rako fell asleep.

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“What will you do with him?”

“Protective custody in the Temple’s detention facility.”

“One of the luxury ones at least?” Obi-Wan asked. Rako Hardeen was a product of his environment and you didn’t survive as a bounty hunter in the underworld by being a saint.

Windu frowned, “You think he can be recruited as an informant?”

“His reputation is going to take a hit when all is said and done, nevertheless he could be an asset with the right groundwork.”

The Jedi Master slung Rako’s body across his shoulders, easily lifting the weight. “I’ll think it over and speak to Master Sinube. Skywalker and Tano should already be on the way here, I suggest drinking something and pretending to be drunk.”

“Not to worry, Master Windu. I have just the approach for this.”

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A/N: There's one rule to fighting Palpatine at this time... don't. You can only play the long game ;-) Enjoy the weekend folks... This week has felt so weird. Feels like two weekends crammed into one.

Happy New Year!

2024 has gone and we welcome 2025 today.

Fireworks galore, eating delicious food (mostly unhealthy), family and friends.

However you spent this day, I hope it was awesome.

We look forward now to a new year of hope and possibility, for good things, for life to be better. We make our plans and resolutions, some we achieve, some we will inevitably fail. Better though that we had tried, than to not have tried at all.

Thank you all for walking this journey with me on Starship Earth.

*salute 

The Force Wills - Chapter 114

My hat was proverbially tipped to Thrawn when he retained his balance after I returned his senses to normality. He didn’t even sit down, breathe hard or visibly show any form of shock at having his worldview pulled out from under his feet.

I had sufficiently proved my prophetic abilities to him enough that he took what I showed him with the seriousness it deserved.

He looked at his hand and around the interior compartment of the Omen.

“How much time has actually passed?”

“Barely a few minutes,” I answered with a smile. “In the realms of memory, mind and prescience, time is nebulous by nature. We had a lot to talk about and even debate, after all.”

He nodded, closing his red eyes and clearly trying to internalize everything. The chiss had a mind that was one of the most fascinating I’ve ever experienced. It was orderly, logical, but not boring and somehow released a creativity that honestly would have made him one of the foremost artists in the galaxy had his talents gone into the traditional artistic endeavours. Now, he painted with military strategy and tactics instead, which also extended to the associated political arena.

“A debate which is not yet over to my satisfaction,” Thrawn opened his eyes and stared into my visor intently.

“We could argue about that for days, Captain and wouldn’t get anywhere.”

To say that Thrawn was unimpressed by the Republic’s current style of governance was an understatement. To him it was a bloated system where everyone had a voice and nothing got done. I actually agreed with him in that respect, but where we clashed was that he didn’t consider it worth bringing the Chiss Ascendancy into an alliance with the Republic as a result.

Even the Yuuzhan Vong threat didn’t really change the political realities and problems that would be encountered in the short to medium term. Yes, having the full might of the GAR alongside the Ascendancy, properly prepared for the future threat was an attractive prospect. It was something even Thrawn wanted to see happen as well, but beyond that he saw little point in even opening up a basic embassy and trading ambassadors.

The fact that the Republic was technically fighting a ‘civil war’ against a breakaway nation in the CIS, only further made his point.

“Look,” I reached into a nearby compartment and handed over a long range comlink I had brought, roughly the size of a backpack. It couldn’t punch through the Galactic Wall, but would allow for him to contact me securely the moment he was on the Republic side. If he could arrange for a satellite relay then it would even allow him to speak to me from inside Chiss space. “We can continue the discussion when you want to later. Right now, you’ve got shield tech to get back to your people.”

Thrawn regarded the comlink with pursed lips before reaching out and slinging it over his shoulder by the strap. “Very well, Commander Tano. I will be in contact.”

“Good luck Captain Mitth'raw'nuruodo, may the Force be with you.”

“And you,” he graciously replied.

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Time, it seemed, had caught us by surprise this year.

The consecutive emergencies and being run ragged in the war meant that it was with surprise that we woke the next day to see the entire city of Yovbridge begin putting up the decorations for this year’s Life Day celebrations.

The governor had put us up in a close friend’s residence who was currently offworld and wouldn’t make it back for a few weeks yet.

It wasn’t a sprawling mansion, but it was on the upmarket in terms of size and luxury, with four separate bedrooms, en suite freshers, a pool, a modest yard, but its location and view was simply amazing. It was settled on a hill that overlooked a picturesque lake in the western outskirts of the city. All sorts of water pleasure craft were hovering, sailing and powering across the 3000 plus hectares of pristine lake.

The water was so clean that you could see almost to the bottom in most places. The local fish who called the lake home were easy to observe and it was clear that the Mokivians had gone to great lengths to keep this place as close to its natural splendor as possible. According to everything I’d found on the local Holonet, all fishing was strictly controlled and only allowed in terms of keeping the ecology in check.

Life Day celebrations were planned to be held on the lake as well, with large celebratory floats and ships decorated in elaborate red buntings, knots, ribbons, orbs and lights. 

Of course, the one person among our group who was most enthused about everything and largely contrite that he also had lost track of time, was Chewbacca.

It was the one contribution to galactic culture that the wookiees could confidently say was theirs.

“We must hurry to the local market,” Chewie growled, impatience radiating from his body language as he stood at the door waiting for us.

“Relax, Chewie,” I patted him on the arm. “I checked the open times, we have hours before they’re due to close.”

He grumped an understanding noise as we waited in the house’s entrance hall for Padme and Anakin. He’d decided to go wookiee au’ naturel with only his bandolier and a single blaster in the pouch. I went with my usual semi-casual Hapan attire and reveled in being free of my Mando helmet and beskar’gam.

M8 did join us through, as I didn’t want to leave her out.

“Did you get much sleep?” I asked him with a twitch of my lips.

“A few hours… Oh, you thought I’d be disturbed by the sounds of those two shaking the branches?” He chuckled as only a wookiee could. “No. We wookiees are used to such things given our good hearing, the limited space in most of our homes and large families.”

Anakin and Padme came down the stairs, both freshened up and changed into much more fitting attire. Padme was wearing a strappy red dress leaving her shoulders bare with a lovely plunging neckline that stopped somewhere just above her navel (she clearly hadn’t forgotten about Life Day), whilst Anakin was in dark black and brown tunic and leggings with calf length all-terrain boots. 

“All ready?” he asked. We nodded. “Then let’s be off.”

The governor had arranged for us to have a closed top eight seat speeder, which pulled up under R2’s guidance, who was awkwardly slotted into the driver’s seat.

“I’ll take over, thanks buddy,” Anakin approached the seat. Only for R2 to blurt a rude noise and refuse. “Oh, all right, you’ll drive then.”

We arrived at our destination barely a few minutes later with the droid’s expert flight skills, neatly dodging quite a lot of traffic from others who also had the idea of doing last minute shopping.

The market we were going to was on the lake’s northern edge and stretched along nearly two kilometers of lakefront.

Stalls and shops were arranged in three rows, each ascending along three roads that flowed into hairpin bends at the end, creating levels to the greater market.

The place was packed and just looking at it was… magical.

The festive mood and emotions in the air, the decor of artificial wroshyr trees and red orbs, the din of people - reflecting a true melting pot of the galaxy’s races - I counted fourteen species as my eyes ranged from left to right, it all just combined as a feast of life and energy. If there was ever a Nexus of the Force on the planet at the moment, then this place was it.

We mostly browsed with our eyes, but it wasn’t long before all four of us had bought a packet of Wookiee-ookiees - a cookie-like treat that reminded me of shortbread but with crunchy nuts added. It was one of the traditional Life Day fares, but each world had their own version of it by the simple fact that procuring the actual ingredients from Kashyyyk was utterly impractical.

“It’s passable,” Chewie declared after biting into a few. “Can’t compare to my wife’s though.”

I was already eating my fifth, frak any issues I’d get, I’d sort it out with the Force - it was just that good and my taste buds were in heaven.

“Uh, sorry, excuse me,” said an impossibly cute voice behind us.

We turned around to regard a small gaggle of children; human, twi’lek, nautolan and a few sullustan. 

Padme smiled in a heart melting way, her eyes twinkling, “Yes?”

“Are you the Life Day wookiee?” the human girl asked innocently of Chewbacca, her eyes twinkling with hope up at him. “Can you take a pict with us?”

Chewie frowned in confusion for a moment. He turned to me and Anakin, “What is she talking about?”

Only for the children to scream in delight and amazement, “You’re an actual wookiee!” The twi’lek girl clapped.

Then Chewie had that same gaggle of kids hugging his legs or clutching at his fur in amazement.

The poor wookiee didn’t know what to do, his head twitching between each child and holding up his packet of cookies out of their reach.

Anakin chuckled, “Easy Chewie, I think I know what’s going on. Take a look.”

We followed where he pointed and there a few dozen meters up the street was at first what looked like another wookiee, but wearing a long red robe with a twinkling field of stars sewn onto it. The difference here was that this was not actually a wookiee, as this one was speaking fluent Basic that clearly came from a human mouth. It was a human in a wookiee suit.

Children were coming up to take picts with him or he sat down on a nearby chair to have a chat about the child’s wishes for a Life Day present.

“Some Outer Rim and Expansion Region worlds do this,” Anakin explained. “They have someone play the role of a wookiee in honor of the race that gifted us with this holiday and what it represents.”

Chewie shook his head, “And I thought the plushy toys we sell to tourists on Kashyyyk was bad enough.”

“Chewie, just let them take a pict, they’re going to remember this for the rest of their lives, just treat them like your own kids at that age,” I said with a chuckle of exasperation.

He made a few grumbling noises, rolling his eyes, “Fine, hold this please.”

I took his packet of Wookiee-ookiees and the children cheered with happiness. M8 volunteered to take the pict, using a small recorder that the twi’lek kid was carrying around.

The kids were naturally wary of the intimidating ‘Mando’, but M8s cheerful voice and Padme’s encouragement settled them down into smiling for the cam.

Then the human kid spotted the lightsabers on my belt.

“You’re Jedi,” he gasped.

“Yes,” I confirmed with a sigh, knowing what was coming, no prescience needed.

Sure enough, Anakin and I were quickly roped into also posing for pics. The sullustan kid even had a pen and flimsi for us to sign.

When the children finally hurried back to a very amused group of parents, we had naturally drawn attention and become something of a spectacle.

The cookies had dried our mouths and we bought another traditional drink, Hoth chokolate. It was made from heated tauntaun milk and chocolate was dumped into it to melt. Both were locally sourced, with the tauntaun farms up in the polar regions of the planet and the beans for the chocolate grown in the more humid equatorial areas.

It was probably the first time in more than a decade that I had actually seen the Corusca galaxy version of chocolate and was in any position to eat it. For all that we also celebrated Life Day in the Jedi Temple, we did not indulge in the traditional confectionery treats associated with it.

I rescued the large piece of chocolate out of the steaming milk, then dumped it wholesale into my mouth and just let the pleasure of the treat run through my taste buds and mind.

It was gonna suck dealing with the aftermath of the milk in a digestion system that wasn’t built for it, but frak it.

“What do you think you’re doing?!”

The officious voice interrupted my bliss and I saw a somewhat overweight man in a red suit running up to us or more specifically Chewbacca. He stopped in front of Chewie with fists on his hips and glared.

“You’re not supposed to be indulging in treats, you’re supposed to be working,” he declared, his short white beard twitching as his jowls wobbled.

Chewie had his mouth occupied with drinking the Hoth chokolate from a large cup with a straw, his beady black eyes blinking in astonishment.

Padme, bless her, recognized the impending disaster that was about to happen and rushed forward. She smiled in a way, when combined with her natural beauty, that thoroughly stunned the clueless market official. 

“I’m sorry, Mister… what is your name?” She grabbed him by the arm and steered him away from a wookiee whose ears were beginning to proverbially leak steam from anger.

“Chas Loni, my lady,” he said in a nonplussed fashion 

“There’s been a misunderstanding. This is an actual wookiee, his name is Chewbacca.”

“What?!” he puffed up in astonishment. As if the moment couldn’t get more complicated, music began thundering across the market.

It was a cheerful, upbeat piece with a style and instrumentation that could only be from Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes. The band that would’ve one day played in the cantina on Tatooine when an old Obi-Wan and Luke would meet Han Solo. It was to my own surprise that I found them active and together in this time period already. They had been contracted by the famous actor Jasod Revoc in the Galactic Revue - a gathering of performing artists to entertain Republic troops and personnel. 

This song was entirely new to me and seemed to be an interpretation of a traditional wookiee tune played during Life Day. My montrals only heard a familiar musical rhythm now woven in the song, one that was either a supreme coincidence or the Force itself was trolling me. 

It was definitely from a Christmas carol from my old life… but the name of it utterly eluded me.

“Yes! No, I’m not joking!” Padme shouted over the music. “Look.”

Chewie lowered the straw from his mouth, swallowed and glared down at Loni.

The man’s bubbly face instantly paled as he saw no telltale sign at the neck that it was a helmet shaped to look like a wookiee’s head.

“Oh, oh! I’m so sorry, Mr. Chewbacca. I deeply apologize!” Loni even bowed.

Chewie, seeing the poor man’s fear and appropriate contrition stopped glaring and grumbled at me, “Tell him, apology accepted.”

I swallowed the last bits of chocolate with reluctance, “He says he accepts the apology.”

“Please, accept this token,” he quickly pulled a decorative silver and red orb made of thin plasteel into Padme’s hand. “Entitles you to one free item from anything in the market. Consider it our Life Day gift to you.”

Loni quickly excused himself, bowing to us before hurrying off to the actual man in a wookiee costume. 

We continued to explore the market as a group, each of us browsing what Life Day gifts to get. I spotted even R2 and M8 conversing in rapid Binary, whilst we were stopped at a general electronics stall. It would be amusing to see what the two droids would choose as gifts to each other or even us meatbags.

It was also inevitable that gossip would spread through the market customers that two Jedi and an actual wookiee were present. Some would be incredulous and dismiss it as ridiculous. Others would be curious enough to come and check, before reporting back. It therefore wasn’t long before we began to be approached, people asking for either autographs on presents, picts or all manner of objects. The long arms of COMPOR showed its reach when older teenagers and young adults recognized both Anakin and myself, even out here on the edge of the Unknown Regions.

“All right,” Anakin declared, clearing his throat uncomfortably under Padme’s amused mock glare. He had just finished signing the spare panty of a clearly smitten teenage girl. “We’ll split up to each purchase our gifts, we meet at the speeder in two hours.”

“Got it, Skyguy,” I said with a big teasing grin.

He glared at me grumpily before marching off back into the bowels of the market.

“You’re with me,” Padme said abruptly with a sneaky grin, grabbing me by the arm and leading in the opposite direction.

The surprise was total, so I had little objection to it.

“How have you been doing, Ahsoka? It’s been a while since we’ve had any opportunity for girl talk as you call it.”

“As fine as can be expected, given our last mission. I’ll not ruin this special day burdening you with any conversation related to it though.”

“You’re not even going to give me an earful about shutting you out?”

It was good she was practicing her paranoia by being so vague about the Bond even in such a noisy and busy setting. That was precisely when anyone good at surveillance would try to snoop.

“No need.” Anakin had already done it, I’m sure. “Now why don’t you tell me where you’re taking me?”

“You’ll see,” she said simply with twinkling eyes.

It wasn’t a few minutes of walking in companionable silence, with me occasionally being stopped for another autograph, before she led me to a large clothing stall, set under a fairly large gazebo style tent. The exterior had a signage proclaiming it as the ‘U.R. Boutique’. Not a really imaginative name, but it was as I read the finer print underneath it that I began to get an idea of what had caught Padme’s eye.

I mentally braced myself. We walked through the curtain door, which had a burly devaronian standing guard as bouncer, who promptly closed it behind us.

Inside was a store that could’ve come from Hapes, it was dedicated to female clothing in every variety possible, for every occasion. It was all given a Life Day twist - with red being the predominant color, with stars of every color, mostly green as decoration on top.

The place was packed with a lot of females of a variety of races, holding up outfits against themselves, whilst store attendants used scanners to determine fitting.

Padme was clearly looking for something and found it in the third and final aisle.

I gave her my best raised eyebrow impression.

It was the lingerie section.

“Really Padme?”

“Every woman your age definitely needs some, consider it my Life Day gift for you. I thought I might as well get something nice too.”

“Something spicy for you-know-who to unwrap,” I said knowingly.

“Yes, well,” she coughed and blushed slightly. “Here, how about this one?”

It was a panty and top combo that was all straps, with mostly transparent bits except for the critical places. It wasn’t objectively bad, but it just missed the mark for my personal taste and aesthetic sense. It was just a little too on the nose so to speak.

I shook my head and let my expression do the talking.

She put it back and after a bit of browsing produced a completely sheer red bra and panty.

No. Now it was too plain and simple for something meant to be sexy.

This was going to take a while.

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For all that females of most species in general could spend hours shopping, as an expression of the gathering instinct, the togruta had not developed with that tendency. A female could just as well be sent out to hunt alongside the males.

Therefore, at the one and a half hour mark, I finally managed to get Padme out of that gazebo with something that half-way satisfied her. It was a one-piece lingerie suit in red with gold accents and fluffy white bits framing the hips. It had a completely open chest, with a sheer white fluffy bra meant to give support whilst also being very easy to remove.

I had settled within the first ten minutes on a matching four piece, floral lace lingerie in hot red with bra, thong, suspenders and pantyhose. It really needed some high heels to really finish it off, but the stall didn’t have shoes.

Just imagining wearing that for… anyone really, left me feeling both embarrassed and rather fluttered.

My mind was utterly focused though on getting the gifts for Anakin, Chewie and the two droids. I had paid for Padme’s lingerie, so that was my gift to her.

So now I had an iron grip around her hand, leading her to the various stalls I had memorized with purpose and not allowing her to fall into the trap of browsing again.

She bore my grumpiness with amusement and grace.

At least my general aura of ‘I’ll punch the next person to irritate me’ dissuaded more autograph seekers or fans in general. It also dissuaded even a few brave males and females of various species with more romantic intentions from outright asking for my comlink code.

We arrived at the speeder laden with wrapped gifts three minutes late and Padme was only a little out of breath, showing she had at least been keeping up with her physical training regimen.

M8 piloted us back to our temporary home.

Chewie wasted no time in starting to set up his ideal Life Day celebration.

He had not only bought gifts, but also an artificial wroshyr tree with very simplistic decorations of various stars, which also had small interior lighting strips that flashed in all manner of patterns. There had been a bunch of other decor options, but it seemed Chewie was determined to enact a true wookiee style Life Day for us, stripping away as much of the consumerism as possible. Most of the things he would need were unavailable this far away from Kashyyyk and he was clearly improvising with some elements of the celebration.

For my own part, I decided to put my cooking skills to use, having bought fresh supplies from the market to use in the expansive kitchen. Whoever’s house the governor had put us in, they didn’t skimp on anything with regards to appliances and cutlery. Through the Force I could sense vaguely that this was a very cherished place, with many hours spent in it. He was either a food enthusiast or a professional chef.

I therefore made every effort to work carefully, even using short bursts of prescience to check if I was using the mixer correctly.

Cooking for myself, Padme and Anakin was somewhat old hat by now, but Chewie complicated things.

A filling meal for us would merely be an appetizer for my wookiee companion, so I had multiplied the portion of his dish by three.

Forty minutes later I was done and already washing all the cutlery and appliances I had used. Only when my conscience was satisfied that the owner was coming back to a kitchen that was even cleaner than before, did I emerge to begin placing all the food onto the living room table.

My eyes were immediately drawn to the wroshyr tree and its blinking lights…

The feeling of both warmth and nostalgia, for decades worth of another important holiday like this in my past life was enough to smack into my soul like an asteroid impact.

Only the fact that I didn’t want to drop the massive tray carrying Chewie’s food stopped me from collapsing onto my knees.

As it was, I didn’t have the willpower to muster the control to stop my eyes from tearing up.

I quickly put down the tray and just took a seat, staring at the wroshyr tree.

It wasn’t a pine tree, but it was close enough and old, ancient memories came boiling up.

Happy ones.

Sad ones.

Lonely ones.

The feeling of Padme’s gentle hand on my shoulder pulled me out of it and I wiped my eyes and sniffled, seeing that Anakin and M8 had done the rest of the table. Bringing the food and all the necessary cutlery.

“Oh, sorry about that,” I said with a small voice.

She smiled reassuringly, “Nothing to apologize for, Ahsoka.”

I felt Anakin’s hand on my other shoulder, “You’re here, Snips. Here and now, this place. We are all family.”

Every word he spoke resonated with the Force, as if enforcing the words on reality itself.

I managed to pull a smile from somewhere and nodded. “Sorry, Chewie, this is supposed to be a celebration of life itself and here I go pulling you all down into my melancholy.”

“You carry your years in your eyes as well as any elder I’ve seen,” he groaned solemnly. “That’s why I didn’t doubt you for a second when you told me.”

The tall robed wookiee stepped forward, gathered my hands in his. “Unlike many who walk off into the field of stars after death, you came back. The why, how or who, is unimportant. Know that this is a gift you have been given unlike any other, something to cherish and I know enough to know we all have been blessed to share in your new life. Without you, I’d probably be enslaved to a trandoshan or dead, never to see my wife and extended family again. Now, through you I’ve gained an honor family.” He smiled at Anakin, Padme and even the droids. “That is a gift you’ve given that outweighs any mere trinket that we could put under the wroshyr tree.”

M8 translated as he spoke for Padme’s benefit. She didn’t have much reason to learn Shyriiwook as yet.

He let go, stepping back to the wroshyr tree and gestured to it.

“This is a pale, tiny imitation of the Tree of Life. For countless years it has served as the place where we wookiees celebrate Life Day on Kashyyyk. There are some who think it’s been there for over a million years.” He picked up a small drum he had bought, then rapidly hit a primal rhythm on it that resonated through the room. “The drum is the traditional instrument of this day. It beats with the rhythm of the wookiee heart.”

He continued to thump the drum, only now the rhythm changed into a rapid double staccato.

“This represents the first joining of male and female on Kashyyyk, two hearts joined in singular purpose.”

The rhythm changed yet again, now gaining more flavour and becoming complex as Chewie used individual fingers and even slapped the side of the drum for other notes.

“At its core, Life Day is a celebration of our homeworld’s diverse ecosystem and all the creatures, great and small, who live alongside us on Kashyyyk. We also remember that for all its deadliness, Kashyyyk has an equal strength of life that reflects it. We remember family members who have died and celebrate the young ones who show that life goes on. Yet even for those who have died, they move on to the afterlife, which is what the field of stars on the robes represent.”

His drumming stopped.

“Now we get to the best part of Life Day,” he gave a huge toothy grin. “As without it we would all surely die and life would hardly be worth living at all! Food!”

He gestured to the huge spread of food I had made for us.

“Let us give thanks first for the one who made it!” He bowed to me.

“I make no guarantees about its taste and edibility,” I said tongue-in-cheek.   

Chewie laughed and clapped his hands, “To the food!”

We all took our seats, whilst R2 and M8 just joined for the company and to internally wince at watching the meatbags eat.

Given that our mouths were so busy, there was little talk at the table, but soon we were done and Chewie leaned back patting his stomach with satisfaction. “That was amazing, Ahsoka.”

Padme scooped up the last residue of sauce from her plate with a bit of the bread I had made. She groaned in delight, “It's a good thing you’re not cooking for me often. I’d lose my figure very quickly.”

“There’s dessert still to come as well,” I smirked.

Anakin chuckled at his wife’s wide eyed look at the thought of eating something sweet and even more fattening after all the food.

She held up her hands, “Later, in fact, let’s leave that for tomorrow. Let’s get to the presents, before I fall asleep digesting all this food.”

“Speak for yourself, dear,” Anakin rubbed his hands together. “Ahsoka’s desserts are the best.”

“Had a lot of time to kill in Mortis,” I waved the compliment off and stood, feeling the weight of food in my stomach acutely.

I returned with three helpings of the best analogue of a red velvet cake I could make, given the local ingredients that were available. I wasn’t too happy about the color; it was more of a maroon than the ruby red I was going for.

“By the Ancestors,” Chewie declared after he was finished. “You must give the recipe to Mallatobuck. This desert is perfect for Life Day.”

“I’ll look forward to seeing what your wife can make of it,” I nodded.

Everyone’s patience was pretty much worn out by then and we got down to the business of exchanging gifts.

From Anakin, an actual printed book, with the story about a wizard, set on a fictional planet somewhere in the Mid-Rim, who had to fight to save his world from being invaded by a neighboring star system. It looked very formulaic just based on the description, but there had to be more to it, given the rarity of printed books. Honestly, I didn’t care if it was campy, it was one more to add to the collection.

Chewie, handed me a data chit.

“What’s this?”

“Blueprints for a bowcaster, we can work together to build one that you can comfortably fire, without having to use the Force to brace yourself.”

I couldn’t help but grin like a loon at the thought of my own bowcaster. Chewie’s was a monster of a weapon and now I could already imagine going out with him hunting in the wilds of Kashyyyk.

R2 and M8 had collaborated, providing me with a portable logic interface spike, small enough that I could hide it on my person, loaded with an adaptive program that could hack the majority of door systems that generally existed in the galaxy.

“Mistress might be in a situation where you are not wearing me or you have been forcibly extracted from me,” M8 explained, though from her tone she was clearly affronted at the very notion.  

“I get it, M8, thanks to both of you. I’m sure it’ll come in handy at some point.”

“Padme?” Anakin asked pointedly.

“Oh, she already has my gift,” she waved him off with a twinkling smile. “It’s a girl thing, not for public consumption.”

“I see,” he replied slowly, clearly not seeing.

So each one of us had our turns to receive gifts. Often it was a case of our location in the galaxy really limiting our choices, as the ideal gift just wasn’t available for purchase, so we had to make do with a fun trinket or a bit of nice jewelry. Padme ended up with quite a bit of the latter from Chewie and Anakin, though I managed to find an actual calligraphic pen set that used ink. It’d be a bit too obvious if both she and I had the same story when it came to the lingerie we had gotten for each other.

As a final treat for the evening, I returned to the kitchen and came back with my own rendition of Hoth chokolate for the meatbags in the room.

Padme was the first to retire towards bed, whilst Chewie followed, then M8 and R2 towards the droid recharge sockets in the house’s garage.

Anakin and I were left nursing our drinks and staring into the steadily flashing wroshyr tree.

“Thank you, Ahsoka,” he said softly.

He didn’t need words to explain what he was thanking me for specifically. Padme’s life to him was the most precious gift that existed in the universe.

“It was a team effort, Anakin.”

He finished the last of his drink, stood and stared at me for a long few seconds. His fists clenched briefly, before he closed his eyes, “Good night, Ahsoka.”

He turned around and left, wanting to say more, but unable to.

“Good night… Anakin.”

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We allowed ourselves a few hours of extra sleep the next morning and I prepared a hearty breakfast for the day to come.

Everyone on the planet was probably feeling the after effects of their celebrations the previous day. I had to immediately spend over an hour in meditation after waking up to mitigate and purge the effects of my overindulgence. The Wookiee-ookies especially would have me needing medical attention if I just let things stand.

Our first port of call was the cortosis mine.

It was only forty-three kilometers from Yovbridge to the south-east. It was a sunk-shaft mine about three hundred meters deep, wholly attended to by droids of various flavors, but thankfully none of the typical CIS war droids.

The foreman droid, which was essentially a smaller tactical droid geared towards civilian use in coordinating other droids, came out to meet us from his small control building. It was the only other structure on the site, beside the shaft building.  

“Greetings, I am MSE-10, how may I help you today?”

“You can evacuate every droid in the mine immediately,” Anakin said flatly, folding his arms.

“I apologize, you are not an authorized person who can make such an order.”

“And who is authorized?”

“Only Duke Solha can do so, dear sentient.”

Anakin nodded to me.

I raised a finger, calling on the Force, gathering just enough ambient charge in the air.

A single streamer of white-black Emerald Judgment instantly connected me with the foreman droid. It began twitching and just as quickly I ended the technique. I nodded in satisfaction, that was satisfyingly close to an actual Stun Droid technique as used during the Old Republic.

The droid tilted over as its balance systems failed and it landed on its chest with a thumping crunch of rocky earth.

“R2,” Anakin prompted.

The astromech used his ‘off-road’ wheels to roll forward over the unfavorable terrain, extending logic probes to begin work.

Subverting Solha’s authorization codes, given the critical nature of the mine, took longer than just hacking a garbage compactor and telling it to stop, but soon enough the foreman droid was rebooting and standing up.

“Please, order your droids to evacuate, the mine is being shut down.”

“At once, sir!”

Actually carrying out that order took most of the morning, as there were 3100 droids working in the bowels of the shafts below and the main grav elevators could only accommodate 80 droids at a time. It wasn’t a fast elevator either, being designed for tonnage, not speed.

Anakin and I used the time to feel and map every inch of the mine with the Force. We’d be relying mostly on his genius mechanical acumen, M8’s archeological programming - which had a significant section devoted to underground digs and tunnel stability - and the Force to find the correct spots to apply strong blasts of telekinesis.

Padme and Chewie kept themselves busy organizing the various mining droids emerging, as well as getting on the comlink with the governor for their transportation. It turned out to be a logistical nightmare and Dilvosh, nursing a hangover, was not enthused with scrounging up enough cargo transports. There was also the matter of where to send the droids.

They were technically Solha’s property, but since his arrest, Republic law allowed for seizure of all his local assets. There wasn’t a judge on the planet that would entertain the notion of coming into his or her office to handle the bureaucratic flimsiwork on the day after Life Day.

“Couldn’t this have waited for tomorrow?” Dilvosh’s holo, projected by R2, scowled at Padme.

“We need to leave for Coruscant tomorrow, governor.”

His shoulders slumped as he regarded the collection of droids standing in perfect squares in the mine’s main loading area.

“Fine, I’ll see if I can get hold of Director Naniis. She’s the head of our mining co-operative on Mokivj.”

“Thank you, governor.”

He only nodded and the holo faded as he cut the connection.

“He wanted to have a whole media circus regarding the mine’s shutdown,” I said idly.

Anakin and I were now both seated facing each other, partially in meditation as we communed with the Force, slowly beginning to direct the flows within and without. We were at the far edge of the loading area, seated on a blanket spread over the speeder’s roof.

Padme nodded in understanding, “People aren’t going to be happy with him, even if he was coerced. I’d also be worried about my job if I was in his position.”           

Anakin mentally poked me to keep my full focus on the job. “Padme, we’re about ready to begin.”

We were juggling amounts of energy in the Force that was considerable and was just a few orders of magnitude away from what was possible in Mortis. M8 had identified key vulnerabilities in the mine shaft’s stabilization structure and it was a matter of which one to go after first, the timing of attacking others and how many to hit at once.

It was not just a matter of collapse.

That could be done easily, the trick was to do so in a way that limited the resulting groundquakes.

Prescience had shown that doing so without regard, would result in damage to Yovbridge at relatively minor levels with fatalities in the triple digit range.

Now we had to do this in the same manner that a controlled demolition with explosives would occur.

‘This is as good as we’re going to get it, Skyguy. I’m foreseeing minor to major injuries from broken transparisteel and glass, no structural collapses, no fatalities.’

‘All right, first target.’

‘Got it.’

We submerged completely in the Force, standing at the figurative controls of a dam and ready to open the sluice gates.

‘Three…two… one… now.’

 A titanic hammer of kinetic force slammed into a load bearing support 230 meters below us.

Within nanoseconds, the earth below, denied for so long to reclaim the void hewn by sentient hands for the bounty of cortosis, rushed forward to regain a new equilibrium.

Pebbles and small rocks bounced below the speeder as the transverse shockwaves radiated outward. Padme and Chewie had to shield their ears from the sheer sudden noise generated as the air was also disturbed by the ringing drum of earth.

It would barely register as a 2 on the old Richter scale.

‘Three…two… one… now!’

I winced as we sent four hammers of kinetic energy into the mine.

The earth, barely settled, eagerly reclaimed more empty space.

A giant shudder resounded through the air. Nearby trees shivered, leaves hissed as they rubbed against each other rapidly and avian fauna began going crazy, taking to the skies and screeching their complaints at the groundquake that their senses had not warned them of.

We paused for two seconds, barely enough time to recover from the metaphysical blowback in the Force, before we sent eight much smaller kinetic hammers at more supports.

This created the beginning of a chain reaction and only our prescient abilities let us react with enough time to hammer at more supports to keep it going.

The ground rumbled and quaked, pushing itself to a four then finally peaking at a five on the Richter scale.

Bouncing pebbles and small rocks hammered the underside of the speeder, creating an awful racket, but I was not fully at home in my body to care about the abuse my montrals were getting.

In real time, seconds passed us by, but to me it felt like I had somehow just run a marathon combined with the hardest academic exam combined.

Even though Anakin had done the heavy lifting, directing that amount of rapid and simultaneous equivalents of Force Waves had my spirit feeling like a wet rag or icing spread over too much cake.

As I crashed back into my body, I could only look at Anakin, who was also in not much better shape with huge eyes.

“Oh, this is going to suck.”

I felt the world tilt, a brief spike of pain and lost myself to oblivion.

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That I woke up in the small bed of the captain’s cabin on the Omen, with the soothing background hum of the ship cruising through hyperspace was not a surprise.

I knew there would be consequences for the feat of manipulating the Force in such a way. My actions had resulted in the survival of millions who would’ve otherwise been lost. Mokivj remained inhabited, it was now the powerhouse of the entire sector, a bastion against possible Nikardun invasion. The ripple that had sent through the Force would continue to build for years to come and influenced the destiny of billions.

A physical stock take of myself revealed that I’d probably been unconscious for at least three or four days, given the smell. The taste of my teeth indicated that I’d been force fed.

I was only wearing one of my basic panties and one of the big shirts I typically slept in.

“Blegh,” I muttered, rubbing my eyes and my bladder chose that moment to urgently sound the alarm.

I stumbled into the refresher with as much speed as I could muster without losing balance completely.

I felt like I could still sleep, but my previous experience with Force exhaustion meant I had to remain awake and return to a normal equilibrium. I also actively couldn’t touch the Force for a week on the safe side, but there was no problem with passive perceptions. It was glaring into my mind with such acute clarity that I had to metaphysically turn away from the input.

Nature’s call answered, I walked out of the Fresher with more certainty to my steps and a mouth that didn’t taste like days old field rations.

I slapped the door controls and supported myself on the nearby bulkhead.

“Mistress!”

Naturally, M8 was standing vigil outside.

“Easy, easy, M8, not so loud,” I winced, closing my eyes.

My armor grabbed me across my back and under my right armpit to support me.

“Where do you want to go, mistress? The troop deck? The cockpit? Do you want something to eat? Drink?”

I withstood my droid’s worried babbling with an amused affection. “I want to go to the cockpit and I wouldn’t say no to a glass of water.”

“Right away, mistress,” she whispered.

Inside the cockpit, I was immediately greeted by the worried roar of Chewie, who jumped out of his pilot’s seat and snatched me out of M8’s support into a wookiee hug that lifted me off my feet.

It was hard to make sense of the Shyriiwook in my current mental state, but I could interpret his emotions well enough.

I patted his chest, “I’m all right, Chewie… I’m all right.”

A wookiee hug was downright snuggly and I felt like I could fall asleep again.

Reason prevailed and I slapped myself lightly to dispel any lingering calls back towards the land of dreams.

“The co-pilot chair, please, Chewie.”

“Are you sure you shouldn’t be in bed?” he asked or something like that.

“I have to stay awake. So hearing about the time I missed and working with the ship’s computers is just the ticket to that.”

Chewie nodded and with a bit of maneuvering easily shifted me in his arms, to deposit me in the co-pilot chair.

My fingers tapped on the holocontrols, bringing up the nav computer. Four days in hyper so far, we were a few hours away from New Balosar on the Great Gran Run and ten hours away from rejoining the Corellian Trade Spine.

I could feel Anakin’s bright presence below me on the troop deck, the subdued feel of it indicating he was deep in meditation, but… there was a grim almost dark countenance to his emotions that sent alarms and red flags waving all over my mind.

My senses poked Padme’s bond for the briefest of moments…

My teeth gritted from spiritual pain turned physical as I did it, but she was fine, alive and also on the troop deck, meditating as best she could with her husband.

“What happened, Chewie? What’s wrong?”

“General Skywalker should really be the one to tell you.”  

“He’ll be in meditation for hours yet. I’m asking you, Chewie.”

His own emotions were sad, feeling a distant… loss?

Chewie abruptly sat down and brought up the com system, tapping into the memory cache.

The diminutive holographic form of Yoda appeared.

“Master Skywalker. With sorrow it is, that I report that Master Kenobi, has become one with the Force.”

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A/N: Hope you've all had a wonderful festive Christmas. Now for the countdown to New Year! Stay awesome folks.

Merry Christmas!

Or as it's known in the Corusca Galaxy - Happy Life Day!

2078: Highriders - Chapter 4

Back in the clothing and identity of Mrs. Paigles I watched from the crowd of shocked and awestruck One Percenters as they gawped at the mansion going up in flames.

Station maintenance and emergency services had arrived within less than two minutes once my little sabotage had finally kicked in. The fire was already well under control, with various maintenance borgs openly surrounding the mansion and dousing the fire with specialized foam grenades that they launched into any room or area requiring it.

“What is this station coming to? First the pirates of last year and now a fire?!”

“Urgh, borgs, can’t they… become invisible or something?”

“Heads are gonna roll for this!”

“I’m calling my lawyer, the ESA is going to pay! I don’t live here to worry about dirtside shit like this anymore!”

It was hilarious listening to them complain and I idly made sure my Agent was scrolling the audio of it. Quite a few of my fellow mercs at the Afterlife and Tiny Mike especially would get a kick out of it. If I ever saw them…

I had to forcibly stop my mind from going down that nihilistic spiral again.

That was the problem with having death nipping at your heels for long. The temptation to just give in, let go, to stop fighting and embrace that oblivion became more and more seductive. All the chaos, effort and death wore you down, your nerves start to go and you ask yourself, ‘Wouldn’t it just be easier?’

With an inward two handed, middle finger salute towards death that Johnny would be proud of, I turned around and wormed my way through the crowd towards the nearest tram.

I purposefully thought only about my last gig on the station, reviewing everything with my Agent as I returned towards Torus 4 and Hyperion Fashion.

“Back so soon Mrs. Paigles?” asked Elijah Kramer with a wide smile.

“Yes, my friend enjoyed the clothing very much, but now I need something else.”

I tightbeamed him the outfit specs with the point of a finger.

“Interesting, going retro are we? Especially on the jacket.”

“I have another friend who is a sucker for the classics.”

“Very well, I see you want smart memory material, that will bump up the price significantly.”

I only gave him a bland look in reply.

“Money is no object then. Again, take a seat, the clothing will be ready in an estimated twenty minutes. Apologies for the extra time, but memory material isn’t exactly easy to work with, despite what the marketing says.”

I took the opportunity for more ultra luxury coffee and left with my new clothes exactly on time.

My next destination was Torus 5.

It was a residential and park hybrid torus, but this one leaned more towards the big events. Lizzy Wizzy had a performing residence here at the moment and Kerry had told me he was leaning towards doing the same, when she moved on in her current music tour.

It was very tempting to hit up Lizzy for a drink. We were both mild friends at this point after I had done a number of ‘security’ gigs for her at concerts around the world. Most of which revolved around me securing the local net and hunting down a deranged griefer who had been hacking her concert’s holo systems and antigravs to fuck things up during performances. 

After everything’s done Valerie, not now, I thought to myself.

My destination was the Orion Casino.   

It was the largest and wealthiest of the entire Crystal Palace and took up almost an entire quarter of the torus’ real estate. In terms of floor space and the amount of eddies that flowed through, it made a fair percentage of earthside casinos look like chumps working with small change.

It didn’t just have multiple gaming floors, but also boasted hotels at least on par with Konpeki, restaurants and various live entertainment spectacles. How they crammed it all into the torus, whilst balancing mass and the centrifugal forces was a minor miracle of engineering that even left my own techie head spinning.

The place overall looked like someone had lifted old Venice into space and thrown a constantly shifting starfield above each building, projected in holo from the ceiling. It was far from a natural starfield - as it was constantly being worked on by a dedicated artist and an AI called Ferrero.

Walking down the casino streets, surrounded on each side by such architecture and art, the patrons of the place were equally fantastic to match.

Some were dressed in ultra luxury neokitch, others in brutal neomilitarism, but the most eye-catching were those who straddled a line between outright ridiculous costumes meant for a circus and some freaky art house fashion. You didn’t know whether to laugh or take it seriously and that dichotomy was the entire point.

One notable fashion that even had me tempted was the pure holo-clothes. Some mid tier joytoys in Night City wore simple holographic tops and skirts, but those were simple things. These creations were literal holo art that a person ‘wore’ and acted as a moving centerpiece for it. Most of the time the person wearing them at least had some underwear here and there, but occasionally they only wore the holo and depending on the angle you were seeing them, it offered titillating glimpses.

One daring woman was only wearing shiny high tech sneakers and light neon blue holo-clothes that hugged her body mere millimeters above the skin in an alluring natural pattern that reminded me of the extinct zebra. 

I allowed myself the time it took walking to my next destination to watch the fantastic sights.  

The Auriga was a dedicated gaming floor within the greater casino that dedicated itself to the more traditional games of chance and in an anachronistic fashion, made you play it in a completely analogue way. There were no fancy holos, virtual chips or cards - you played as if it was the 20th Century. The only modern convenience the place held was in banking your bets or winnings.

It was dedicated to clientele who were still alive from that era - meaning they were consequently rich enough and had the fortitude and luck to survive with their fortune through multiple Corporate Wars; the Saburo Arasakas and similar ilk. It also attracted the New Money, as the newest generation of corpo CEOs wanted to smoosh, mingle and get in the good graces of the Old Generation.

This meant the Auriga was also the most secure place in the entire Palace.

Just a casual passive scan as I walked past the fake ‘Venetian’ building housing the game floor, let me count 39 bodyguards standing over the shoulders of their specific protectees as they were seated at various gambling tables.

I found the double doored entrance and casually passed through a hidden weapon scanner integrated into the wooden doorframe.

I was instantly the center of attention, feeling the active and passive scans of every bodyguard on the floor.

The space was filled with low relaxing jazz music, the air thick with smoke from cigarettes and cigars. The lights bright on each table, making it seem like each was a small island in darkness.

My pace was casual, seemingly indifferent to all the scans, as I walked towards the local restroom.

Once inside I found a stall and locked it.

My new clothing acquisitions were ultra low rise leggings in black that clung to my skin, stiletto shoes with steel tips on the heel. A simple black bustier for my chest and the final piece, a replica Johnny Silverhand Samurai Jacket.

I reverted to my own natural form, so I could fit in the stuff properly.

A sigh of relief escaped my lips as I was finally back in my own skin.

In cyberspace, I was also working with my Agent and Butcher to preserve my fake digital ID for a little while longer.

I dumped my Mrs. Paigles dress in my Hyperion labeled paper bag, picked it up and emerged from the toilet stall as V.

A final check in the mirror, showed my hair was properly reverted to the dark red I favored and the proper style. Sometimes the faceplate systems had issues with coloration of such fine structures and it especially happened if you changed appearances too often within a certain span of time.

My Agent also showed a proper link with the smart material I was wearing, meaning it could split the leggings on my right leg to properly allow me access to my weapon and would work with my faceplate to adjust coloration and even style within certain limits.        

I rolled my shoulders and stretched my neck, luxuriating in my true body for a moment, feeling augmented muscles flex and shift.

“Here we go.”

I stepped forward, pushed on the restroom door and emerged back onto the gaming floor.

My true digital ID emerged and the clock was ticking until I was flagged as an anomaly on the station.

The first bodyguard I passed at a Blackjack table, frowned at me, his optics flashing as he passively scanned me.

The guy was over six and a half feet of muscle encased in a corpo suit and he visibly twitched as his own Agent was no doubt delivering my public profile to him.

I gave him a lopsided smile, flashing my own blue optics at him with a knowing look.

He was clearly tempted to raise the alarm amongst his team of two other meathead bodyguards, who had their backs to me, but after a long few seconds he relaxed his hands, folding them over his stomach.

He was clearly stuck in a dilemma - if he made a fuss for nothing, then he risked angering a lot of very angry powerful people. If I really was here to fuck shit up, then he would be target number one to die. His eyes were cool, professional but I caught the hint of ‘Oh shit, oh fuck’ in them.

It was moments like this that made my rep worth every bullet fired and drop of blood shed.

I kept my hands in sight and every body language signal I was sending as casual. It unfortunately didn’t help reduce the stress this bodyguard was feeling. Gone were the days where you could trust those sorts of signs. The fact that I didn’t have a gun in hand was also immaterial when you were also known as a prolific combat netrunner.

The next table had a poker game running between the CEO of Raven Microcybernetics, Roman Fellini, Petrochem’s Lars Muhammad and Tsunami’s Hideki Kobori. 

The bodyguards of these esteemed gentlemen locked optics with me and visibly glared, as if daring me to try something.

I spotted in cyberspace the signal between the lead bodyguard and Fellini.

The CEO of the company that made one of my personal favorite cyberdecks, looked up at me with an intrigued smirk as I walked past them.

He was well into his 90s but didn’t look a day over 30 and it was only in his optics that I could see the weight of years on him. This was a recurring theme amongst most every power dealer in the room. There were only a handful of them who were like Saburo Araska, wearing their advanced age like a mark of pride, but with the internal bodies of the young thanks to organ and cyberware replacement.

Halfway through the room my path was blocked by a wall of muscle nearly six and half feet tall. The bodyguard could’ve fit right in with the Animals, except he actually had a normal if somewhat attractive face that wasn’t discolored from abusing Juice.

I looked up into his blue optics that were set in a stubborn stance as he raised a hand, palm outward to halt my advance.

My Cripple Movement went through his firewall like it wasn’t even there.

A dodge to the side and I’m past him, though his two buddies clearly objected to my not getting with the program.

Both had top-tier Gorilla Arms, which hissed as they flexed with potential strength.

My Sandy activated as I dodged goon number one trying to bear hug and crush me.

He got a CM and Short Circuit for his trouble.

It looked hilarious - a massive guy in a suit trying to hug air, absolutely frozen, whilst his own cyberware capacitors discharged into his nervous system, arcing over his body. He was totally unable to stop his momentum and tipped over, until he face-planted into the floor. His frozen arms serving to prop him up and keep his ass in the air.

Goon two threw a three punch combo with enough strength that would’ve obliterated concrete.

I danced aside the hits, slapping them away, firing off a CM and tuned Overheat.  

The cookie cutter Overheat had the potential to be lethal, overheating cyberware and flesh made for a barbeque after all. This one did enough to induce an effective mild heatstroke in the organic bits of a person, which promptly led to unconsciousness. He’d feel like shit when he woke up, but it was survivable.

“Ha! Ha! Bravo!”

The man clapping was Menshikov Arseni Yakovich, Senior Board member of Techtronika and it had been his bodyguards who I had just practically humiliated. In fact, it seemed he had sicced them on me just to see how I would handle them, judging from his amused expression. 

“Yakovich, it’s your turn,” said his fellow at the Baccarat table in annoyance. It was with annoyance that I recognized that fucker and I was seriously tempted to let Butcher loose and gobble the asshole’s psyche to beyond the Blackwall. It was Roy Levack, CTO of MoorE Tech.

He was also an NC denizen, whose limo had accidentally ploughed through ten children on their way to school, just last year. The fucker wasn’t arrested for manslaughter or criticized by the media due to his wealth and power, nor did he lift a finger in compensating the families of those affected. That same night after the accident he was seen smooching at an election fundraiser for Councilman Gonzales.

I gave Levack a flat stare, weighing the hassle and shit I’d have to deal with if I killed him right there.

Unfortunately, he was not part of this gig and while I could improvise and adapt with the best of them, my professional instincts railed against the thought of an unplanned assassination. He might’ve been rich corpo scum who didn’t give those below him a second thought of consideration, but it would achieve nothing in the long run. There was another just like him, waiting in the corpo structure to be elevated into his role.

“V, is it? Love your work,” Levack gave me a lecherous grin. “I’m sure I have Rogue’s number somewhere. Be giving her a call soon.”

Though the majority of my gigs in the last few months had come to me directly, because my rep had somewhat transcended the normal dynamic of fixer and merc, I was still technically on Rogue’s list as one of hers.

I put the asshole out of my mind, giving Yakovich a nod in turn as I passed the table. I liked his company’s weapons.

At this point, the news of my presence had spread across the game floor. I was under the eyes of many powerful people now and kept my purposeful walk towards the ‘Employees Only’ door. The din of low chattering voices reached my augmented ears, wondering why I was here, what my gig was, whether they should call Europol station security, expressing wonder at the presence of an Edgerunner of my caliber on the Crystal Palace.

I heard all of it and could only think of Jackie.

Becoming the stuff of legend was his thing. I had just wanted to survive in the aftermath of being an ex-corpo who worked in Arasaka Counter Intel. That first month after I had been fired had been the worst of my life, worrying every moment about getting tracked down by any corp that wanted either revenge or looking to gain knowledge of Arasaka through me. I had felt so small, tiny, insignificant, a bug waiting to be stepped on.

Now here I was, my name on the tongues of a room full of power dealers.     

It was as I approached the door that my attention returned to cyberspace; the call had already gone out from one of the employees manning the tables.

Butcher had already intercepted it, posing as the automated Europol receptionist.

I threw a daemon into the local net that effectively made a snapshot of the security system and replaced the output signals with the ‘situation normal’ ping to the rest of the Palace. It was my go-to hack for isolating any area I was operating in.

Through the door, I was greeted with a long carpeted hallway with muted lights and a number of doors on either side.

A door on my left swished open to reveal a formally dressed waiter with a tray of filled whiskey glasses and a tall bottle.

“Uh, sorry ma’am, you can’t be here.”

I breached him and within seconds he was unconscious.

My hands snapped forward and caught the tray that fell from nerveless hands, rescuing the whiskey that probably cost enough to pay his salary for an entire year. A quick scan had me tempted to swig the bottle; it was a 70 year old Glenfarclas Scotch. It could by rights have been in a museum, yet up here these assholes drank it over a deck of cards.

“Sorry choom,” I said, looking down at the collapsed waiter. For the sake of his job, I put down the priceless whiskey next to him, a few feet in front of his face, so he could recognize what was in front of him, yet not accidentally knock it over or break it.

I eyed one of the glasses of poured whiskey… 

“Fuck it.”

My hand swiped one and I downed the whole thing in one gulp.

Oh… oh wow.

I tasted marmalade, honey, coffee and sherry notes all at once, whilst a nutty scent hit my nose.

Tequila was more my thing, but you eventually became a connoisseur of anything alcoholic when you frequented the Afterlife.

The empty glass was returned to the tray and I resumed my leisurely walk down the corridor.

Third door on the right was my destination. It looked utterly ordinary and had no markings or any indications of what or who was beyond it. In cyberspace, that was a very different story. Just this simple lock had a team of dedicated Black ICE daemons defending it. Anyone trying to cookie cutter hack this would find their brain fried in short order.

“Realspace it is,” I muttered.

My right hand surged forward smashing against the edge of the armored door twice. It created enough of a gap for my fingers to find purchase.

Custom militarized Gorilla Arms strained and internal actuators whined.

The door put up an impressive fight, to the point that I had to stop and let my arms cool down before trying again.

Finally I heard a tell tale snap and the door’s mechanisms lost the battle of physics.

The door was half open when I heard the faint click of a gun mechanism, as a trigger was about to be pulled from inside the room.

My Sandy was engaged with a thought and I ducked, rolling into the room beyond.

The loud electric crack of a tech weapon gunshot reached me as the bullet missed me by a few handwidths, burying itself into the equally armored wall.

The micro radar ping my Agent let out returned the details of the room.

A relatively large office space; 430 square feet, 9 foot ceiling, fancy modern desk that looked like it grew out of the floor, smart frames filled with constantly cycling artwork and the shape of an optically camouflaged man standing three feet to the left of the desk, aiming an Araska Kenshin where I had just been.

Even as my roll was completing, feet just about to touch the ground again, I was already digging away at his firewalls.

He had a Self-ICE module installed, which was naturally fighting back against my hack into his personal network.

It was a stock model from Rostovic and no runner worth their cyberdeck hadn’t already written a hack to obviate these over-the-counter solutions. Usually, rookie runners just overwhelmed a Self-ICE by feeding it hacks until it overloaded. Professionals just needed to fire off one custom virus and send the module into a runtime frenzy, overheating the processors before internal safeties kicked in and it shut itself down.

My counter to Self-ICE was to turn the thing against its user.

A custom trojan worm that it ignored, slipping into the personal network, until it reached the module itself. Normally the Rostovic took the hostile program trying to screw shit up, quarantined it and came down like a sledgehammer on the hostile data. My worm piggybacked on that function and when the hammer came down, it actually served to only unleash the payload within.

“Aa…rrr….rghh!”

My hidden Short Circuit unleashed itself on the man as I rose to my feet, the sound reaching my ears distorted into a deep base as the Sandy skewed my perceptions.

The electric arcing and discharge haloed his outline and his camo started to fritz, leaving parts of his body visible and other parts transparent.

His gun went off again, shooting into the floor as his finger contracted involuntarily on the trigger.

In sheer reflex, my right upper thigh opened to deliver my own pistol, but I halted the process when I saw my opponent was starting to collapse.

I let my Sandy shut down prematurely to help its cooldown process and my perceptions normalized.

The optical camo failed utterly now as the man thudded onto the tiled floor, his legs awkwardly bent and arms splayed outward.

In contrast to his austere surroundings, he was wearing a floral shirt, classic jeans and synleather boots. I didn’t want to think about the extra cost for those to be synced with the optical camo tech in his subdermal layers. When I wanted to go invisible passively these days, I usually had to wear my netrunning suit as an underlayer, I couldn’t be bothered forking out the cash to have all of my wardrobe treated.

Thank God the early days of my merc career were over, when I had to fork out the entire pay for a low level gig just to get one set of clothes compatible with optical camo.

A quick scan and my Agent brought up the details of my attacker; Victor Anglés, the owner of this office and the primary target of this last gig.

He was a Spaniard, hailing originally from Seville, but now working for this casino as a floor manager. The problem was he had let this lofty position and new level of wealth go to his head recently. At an art auction in England, he had been bidding for a certified original from Salvador Dali, an artwork with the clunky title ‘The Disintegration of the Persistance of Memory’.

He was promptly outbid by my own client, who had a significantly better wallet on the day.

Victor didn’t like that and so hired a team of local Edgerunners to steal the artwork in transit.

He then promptly returned to LEO, thinking he would be free and clear from any reprisal. It was after all known that the Crystal Palace was ‘secure’. There were no mercs operating on it and unless my client went through the even more expensive and time consuming route of securing Europol aid, then the artwork would be forever left in Victor’s grubby mitts.

So my client went to the place known for the craziest mercs on the planet, hoping there would be someone who would take a gig on the Crystal Palace. He just so happened to arrive while I was negotiating with Mr. Blue Eyes on the details for the gigs he wanted me to run.

I immediately saw the potential in the gig as being the thing that would splash my name all over the planet.

I stepped forward and kicked the gun out of Victor’s limp hand, kneeling next to him to begin feeling his pockets for anything like a physical keycard or a code token. My scan pinged something on his neck and it revealed a gold chain with a tiny statuette of the Virgin Mary, within which was an RFID.

My hand grabbed it and with a light tug I ripped it off his neck.

“Found anything yet, Butcher?”

“Behind the smart frame.” He pinged and highlighted the frame in my vision, on the left wall relative to the desk.

I hurried towards it and began feeling around the edges, carefully scanning the frame for any sensors or traps.

“Hiding a priceless physical artwork behind another digital artwork display no one would look twice at. I can’t decide whether it's clever or too obvious.”

The first hurdle was a simple contact sensor on the rear of the smart frame. The frame itself was another security measure as it would sound an alarm if any accelerometer inside detected movement.

The weakness here was the Kiroshi smart frame itself. It did not have the internal firmware to stop even a cookie cutter runner, no matter how much ICE you loaded onto it. The limit was that you needed a certain level of hardware to support defensive firewalls and daemons. The armored locks on an office safe room could have that, not a smart frame.

My viral attacks went straight through defenses without even the firewalls registering them.

This let me fool the contact sensor as well and I lifted the smart frame off the wall.

Beyond that only a bare black wall to the standard optic.

My Cockatrice Kiroshis spotted the minuscule flaw in the physical camouflage in front of me; a less than hair width imperfection in a seam of a hidden wall panel.

I held up the Virgin Mary statuette and interrogated the onboard RFID for its encryption scheme. Even with this, it wasn’t enough to open the panel as my Agent highlighted further details as it displayed for me a generated radar image of the guts behind the panel; a directional microphone, clearly waiting for a vocal passphrase component to open it.

Well, clearly Victor wanted to admire his painting from the comfort of his smart foam office chair without having to get up.

I was hoping to avoid this.

I carefully put down the smart frame and returned to the unconscious Victor, unwound my personal link from my wrist and inserted it directly into the neuro port behind his right ear.

His internal network and systems was in crash recovery mode, trying to resolve everything keeping him unconscious. Thankfully, my Short Circuit, while not entirely my own work, (A collaboration between Nix, Yoko and myself), was specifically designed to gum up the works of bio recovery systems that came standard to everyone with general cybernetic interfaces and even dedicated recovery cyberware like a Second Heart. It would take him about eight hours of further enforced nap time before his systems worked through the issues I had induced.

In this state, it was easy to breach into any onboard supplementary memory, including the cache of his own optics and ears.

He had set his own memory to clear cache every 12 hours, which was quite handy as it allowed my Agent and Butcher to quickly sift through it to find the passphrases and any other security procedures he had in place for the painting.

I disconnected, running a quick self-diagnostic.

Nothing came up after a full scan - which I was thankful for. A lot of netrunners carried Black ICE around their neuroports, to deter physical linking if they just happened to be sleeping or unconscious. Butcher also doubled as a very hostile anti-viral for my personal network.

Back at the wall panel, I had enough data for my faceplate to initiate an imitation of Victor’s voice.

“The Chromosome of a Highly coloured Fish's Eye Starting the Harmonious Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory,” I drawled in a deep south Mediterranean accent of Spanish.

That combined with the RFID, did the trick.

The seams of the hidden panel split, pushed out and lowered to reveal a darkened recess.

Another smaller panel emerged and lights switched on to reveal the true artwork I was after.

It was actually quite small, only thirteen inches in length by ten inches, mounted in a classic wooden frame, hand carved by a carpenter from New York in 1954. The whole thing was actually an evolution of an earlier Dali painting, ‘The Persistence of Memory’, with elements of that painting being flooded in water and depicting the effect it had on them.

The whole thing was supposed to be an artistic representation of the first revelations scientists had made about quantum mechanics - the breakdown of matter into atoms.

It was… interesting, I suppose. Dali wasn’t exactly to my own taste and I preferred early 21st century art to hang in my mansion.

I shook my head to clear it from aesthetic contemplations and got busy with the procedure to dismount the painting from the panel.

Victor had made some provision for quickly removing it, since it was a very valuable asset that he wanted to be able to grab and run. 

To facilitate this, there was a cluster of ten touch sensors arranged in a classic numeric keypad to the right of the painting, hidden behind the surface. With a bit of help from my left hand, I arranged my right hand fingers into the proper positions and pushed down on the sensors without hesitation.

There was a click as the mechanism let go and the Dali painting inched forward, slumping on a single retaining wire that prevented it from falling to the floor.

From there it was as simple as lifting it off the panel.

I gave a satisfied grin of triumph and walked back to my dropped shopping bag, wrapped the artwork in my leftover clothes and picked up the bag in my left hand.

My Agent pinged for my attention and it brought up a security feed of the gaming floor in my vision.

I sighed as it helpfully highlighted a nineteen member strong Araska special ops squad that were moving amongst the gaming tables. They were all in their typical black outfits and armor, with monomolecular katana style blades gleaming in the overhead lights. None of them were armed with the typical Masumune assault rifles, Shingen smart weapons, heavy weapons or even a pistol as the ESA set strict rules on what armaments corpo security could bring to the Crystal Palace.

The sea of bodyguards they were moving through had drawn their own weapons in response; which was a wide variety of melee weapons as well; some blunt, some edged, all augmented with modern tech to give them all sorts of lethal twists. There was even one guy with a damn Cut-O-Matic chain sword, where had he fit that thing in?

“Well now doesn’t this have the potential to be a clusterfuck,” I chuckled.

Arasaka could sometimes be so predictable.

I knew that there would likely be someone from the local Arasaka office here and that when I showed my true face it would elicit some sort of response. The local director would jump at the chance to bring the head of Smasher’s Bane to the young emperor, Yorinobu Arasaka.

What I did not expect was for him to throw Arasaka’s entire elite security contingent at me.

Not to mention set them into a pool with the most highly trained bodyguards on the planet amongst power dealers who could command heaps of shit to land on Arasaka, if their ninja’s so much as disturbed a hair on their very valuable heads.

I began to laugh.

A fit of humor that seemed to erupt from my stomach and just demanded expression.

‘Oh this is perfect,’ I thought.

Still chuckling and giggling, I secured the shopping bag around my left hand, twisting the flexible handle into a partial knot.

I hurried out of the office and back down the corridor.

The Arasaka ninjas were almost ready to breach through the employee door. They were stacking on either side, their blades held high next to their heads, keeping them out of the way from their comrades.

In cyberspace, the battle had already begun.

My security daemon was fighting against what had to be a local Arasaka runner, judging from the viruses, worms and hacks that were being used.

I hijacked more of the casino’s server infrastructure, setting loose five more daemons to play with the runner. It was tempting to sic Butcher on him, but I needed my AI free for the action to come in realspace.

My advance paused just a few steps outside the door as the first soldier readied a flashbang grenade on the left side, whilst on the right, the other inched his hand forward to push it open.

Then I purposely let my feet make noise as I finished the last few steps.

I could see both spec ops freeze as their own heightened hearing picked up on it.

My Sandy engaged and right foot surged forward to hammer into the door.

The stiletto on that foot barely held up to the abuse as the door went flying off its mag runners to crash into the three ninjas who had the bad luck to be in the way. The cramped conditions with so many VIPs and bodyguards didn’t leave much room for a proper tactical envelopment.

My first blurred sprint carried me to the left, where another kick to the groin doubled over the soldier. Such was the speed of my kick, that my stiletto heel almost penetrated the stab proof rated groin armor, but physics ensured that the soldier was in a world of pain.

My right hand snatched his blade, before a moment later, a follow up kick to the chest sent him flying into his three buddies behind, resulting in a cascade of bodies falling backward.

The pilfered blade was a typical Arasaka weapon; dark matt green finish, logo stenciled near the hilt, but of supreme quality given it belonged to an ‘elite’. 

It parried the strike of a soldier with a thermal blade in a blur to my right, as he also activated his own Sandy.

Our blades traded blows and within two real time seconds, we had already tested each other's guard eight times.

Sparks and small hints of flame erupted between us.

When he was just that moment too late to match my strike, he lost both his forearms as the sharp blade cleaved through armored steel, circuitry and actuators. My Short Circuit sent him twitching to the floor in agony.

My perception of time normalized and the three soldiers I had buried under the door, shoved it off themselves.

To my left, the four I had used as bowling pins surged to their feet, while the three to my right tried to rush me around their armless comrade.

I burned all my local RAM and all seven sprinting soldiers, three of them with Sandy’s active, froze as my rapidly queued Cripple Movement hit all of them.

Their momentum dictated that they continued forward and within a moment I had seven ‘saka elites kissing the floor at my feet.

A quick overclock of my Canto, followed by a coolant flush, allowed me to further spread Short Circuits in a truly ridiculous manner. Both Nix and Yoko would’ve called bullshit. The seven ‘saka soldiers agreed as they twitched and moaned in pain as their cybernetics discharged their capacitors in a truly nasty manner.

The twelve remaining didn’t hesitate to try their luck in overwhelming me.

Only problem was that their own now unconscious comrades formed a nice little corridor with their bodies in what was a lucky accident. The only way to approach me was either to jump over the wall of asses sticking in the air or charge straight to my front.

The first two to reach my little arena jumped in from the left, their blades held high and slashing towards me.

A dodge and block followed by riposte took care of one, sending his head flying one way and his body collapsing behind me.

The second jumper tried to wheel around in a blur of Sandevistan, but my own Sandy was already engaged again, stopping his attack on my back with an inverted blade.

A follow up kick sent him crashing into the wall; a gong of bent steel reverberating around the entire room.

“Haaaa!”

Three ‘sakas charged me from the front with glowing thermal blades.

One blade was held forward tip first, trying to skewer me, whilst the remaining two were poised for slashes to my left and right.

Hitting them with CMs would only plug my little arena off and force me to leave it.

I had to dodge quickly left, right and bend backward at the waist to avoid thrown Tanto knives from some of the ‘sakas who were not content to wait their turn.

In my annoyance, I picked the cheapest quickhack I had and adjusted to be way more useful and queued it on all seven remaining soldiers.

My custom Blind Optics, a retooled version of the cookie cutter Reboot Optics, wormed through the firewalls and strobed their visual cortexes as if I had detonated a flash bang in their face.

“Aaargghg!”

The soldiers reeled letting out a chorused scream of pain, some only barely managed to keep hold of their blades, whilst those with throwing weapons dropped them and futilely clawed at their eyes.

My blade intercepted the lunging ‘saka’s weapon with a twirling slash going left to right, driving his weapon towards his own comrade.

My speed and strength was such that the thermal weapon slapped his fellow ninja’s armor and began burning through the outer layers.

I used the last of my Sandy time to dodge right, causing the third slash to miss me entirely.

Internally, I used up another cartridge of coolant flush on my cyberdeck, allowing me to throw a Blackwall Gateway to my left, which quickly spread and jumped to the other two.

I took a step back as the three ‘sakas began screaming and writhing, their bodies twisting into painful caricatures as Butcher took his harvest of their psyches. Only I saw the awful digital red fire that erupted from their bodies like an aura of fire.

Their bodies collapsed to the floor, now useless sacks of meat and steel.

My Optics hack had run its course and now the seven remaining soldiers saw me standing casually with pilfered katana and shopping bag, surrounded by their dead or unconscious fellows.

Millitech, Kang Tao or any other corpo soldier would’ve immediately called for a retreat at this point.

I knew Arasaka would not.

“HAAAAA!”

It was their damned honor overriding their common sense. They couldn’t go back to the local director in failure, especially since he was in the room.

All seven first tried to tag me with throwing weapons.

I was already moving, dropping my blade, picking up the dead body of a soldier at my feet, letting it take the three hits I couldn’t dodge.

My body twirled around to build momentum and I chucked the body to meet the soldiers now jumping through the air to reach me.

I continued my economy of movement, ducking again and regaining my blade.

Four blades were now slashing down to carve me into little bits.

My left fist anchored to the ground let me continue my spin, flaring my legs outward in a useful move from Capoeira I had incorporated into my training and skill set.

It let me quickly gain some space, retreating backwards just enough for their blades to miss and strike only air and floor.

I came back to my feet, my blade whipping through the air.

I beheaded the one to my right, the blade continued but was deflected enough for it to end up buried in the shoulder of the second ninja.

It had lost its molecular edge and was now reduced to just being very sharp, stopped by the titanium laced ribcage of the ‘saka elite.

My left leg snapped out, kicking the hands of the third soldier, still trying to reset his balance.

His blade went flying, the thermal edge leading the way and embedding itself into the torso of his neighboring ‘saka who had just been about to try and slash me again.

My foot lashed out again, crashing into the chest of the disarmed elite and he was sent flying backwards to perfectly land in the gap between the nearest two game tables. The bodyguards there barely dodged out of the way in time.

I had fucked up a bit on the angle and I had heard my stilleto heel crack under the punishment.

Now I was forced to stand on the ball of my left foot to retain balance… annoying.

The ‘saka who had my blade lodged in his chest by now finally focused past his pain to do something.

With the speed of a striking snake he tried to latch onto my right arm with his hands to improve the chances for his three remaining buddies.

I glared at him and simply let go of my blade, using my forearm to deflect the attempted grab.

It left him wide open for my fist to smash into his neck.

It was a place that was rather well armored in the gear the ‘saka spec ops wore, but the head still had to be able to turn, which required flexibility.

Now instead of being beheaded, it merely damaged vertebrae and transferred a ton of kinetic force that rippled outward, disrupted nervous system control, breathing and gave a nasty concussion that instantly resulted in unconsciousness.

That the last three still attacked me despite everything…

It made me angry, frustrated and it spoke to the reason why, all things being equal, Arasaka would always lose in the long run.

I overclocked and unleashed the Blackwall Gateway on all three, just as they were blurring towards me with Sandy’s activated.

The screams and contorting bodies came.

They collapsed at my feet, writhing, their momentum forcing me to contemptuously hop over the now dead bodies.

It took about four seconds for the screams to stop.

The jazzy soundtrack of the casino game floor resounded in my ears as I was fearfully regarded by almost every eye in the room. I could see some intrigued faces from a number of power dealers, some were delighted, clearly entertained at the impromptu bloodsport they had witnessed.

There was one person among them who was not delighted at the turn of events and the failure of the ‘saka elites.

I grabbed one of the fallen thermal blades and walked in his direction.

To his credit, he did not move or try to run away. He only had one bodyguard, who looked ready to try his luck, but a curt gesture from his principal told him to stand down.

I stopped behind the man and held the thermal blade mere inches from his left ear.

“Director Matsui Norishige, head of Arasaka’s Crystal Palace office,” I addressed him formally, even doing him the courtesy of an appropriate bow.

He turned his head to regard me out of the corner of his dark brown eye. “V, the Yurei of Night City. Are you going to take my head?”

He spoke in fluent Japanese with a Kyoto dialect. At this point I didn’t need translation soft’ to speak, read or write in the language, something I had done in preparation for the day when Arasaka picked up the pieces I had left in my wake and Yorinobu wanted to even the score. The name of Yurei was one of the more amusing ones that the rank and file of my old company had bestowed on me, if somewhat on point.

In Japanese folklore, the yurei was a deceased person who had not been able to join their ancestors in the afterlife; condemning them to wander around in limbo for eternity.

“I probably should,” I replied in fluent West Kanto Japanese. “You called practically your entire security contingent to kill me. Should I take this as a formal declaration of war from Arasaka? Am I going to have to kill my way up the steps of the young emperor’s Tower in Tokyo to enjoy any moment of peace in the future?”  

“No, no!” he shook his head frantically. “It was… it was, my responsibility only. When I saw you walk in…”

“Hmmm, so you thought you could score big with Yorinobu and the Taka controlled Arasaka Board, if you brought them the Yurei’s head?”

“Yes! It was… foolish. Please, do me the honor of a death at your blade.”

I sighed, feeling very tired all of a sudden. Arasaka bullshit! Johnny had a point when he said that they wreaked madness wherever they went.

“You’re trying to avoid the shame of gutting yourself in ritualistic suicide before Yorinobu. My Agent indicates you have a wife and two daughters. They’ll likely be forced to watch.”

Norishige’s hands clenched on the table. The two power dealers sharing his table, a board member of Akaromi Biocorp and a director of SegAtari, had faces of granite as they looked at him with expectation and hostility. Neither appreciating the fact that their precious skins had been endangered by him unleashing a double hit squad in their presence. In fact, they looked about one second away from ordering their own bodyguards to do the deed anyway.

The only thing stopping them was the thought of consequences for their residence visa and business operations on the Crystal Palace. The ESA could come down like an orbital strike on any corp that messed with the Palace’s reputation and infrastructure. As it was, Norishige would also face the heat from them for unleashing his security on me. At best Araska was going to be hit with a huge fine in the millions of eddies, at worst, they’d be kicked off the station entirely.

The loss of face and rep, just when Arasaka was starting to regain it from the Relic fiasco, the massacre of Arasaka Tower in NC and the coup engineered by Yorinobu could not have come at a worst time.

Norishige was dead, it was now just a question of who did the deed.

“No,” I said finally, pulling the thermal blade away from his neck and dropping it to the floor. “Killing you is just another trap you’re hoping I will fall into. Up till this point, I can justifiably point to self defense. If I kill you in front of all the distinguished guests present, which includes the CTO of the World News Service,” I lazily turned my head to regard the older yet extremely hot woman sitting two tables away, who was watching events with wide eager eyes. I could see an active encrypted connection radiating away from her through cyberspace. “I lose that, and I’d rather not have to fight the ESA and Europol for my right to not suck vacuum in LEO.”

My security daemon couldn’t catch everything unfortunately, especially when it came to the high end communications that power dealers walked around with. Which is how Norishige got out his call to the local Arasaka office to summon the hit squads.

It was only now though that the runner finally managed to overcome my little daemon squad and turn his full attention to me. I recognized him trying to hit me with a Cyberpsychosis hack. 

‘Butcher,’ I prompted the AI.

I hardly needed to ask, because the Blackwall AI was already unleashing himself on the netrunner.

“Now, I hope the show has been entertaining for all of you,” I turned around with a slight bow to everyone in the room but locked eyes with the lady from WNS, switching to my West Coast English. “It certainly wasn’t my intention and I apologize for disturbing your evening. I just came here to do some shopping after all.”

I ordered my Agent to access Victor’s primary account in Spain, which thanks to my hacking was wide open to me, my client wanted to send another message.

“A round of favorite drinks for everyone in the room in a more concrete apology.” My hand gestured expansively to encompass the room as the financial transaction went through towards the gaming floor account.

I internally winced as I saw the amount of eddies flow, which considering the tastes of everyone in the room present, was very substantial.

The digital screams of the netrunner reached me as I walked towards the exit amid scattered applause and sounds of appreciation as everyone’s Agents were informed of the very expensive drinks coming their way.

Gig complete.

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A/N: Well, V wanted global headlines, that'll do it :-) Enjoy your weekend folks and stay awesome.

The Force Wills - Chapter 113

“Excuse me, General, Commander, Senator.”

Dilvosh nodded at each of us in turn, downed a final glass of wine before striding out of the sitting room, to begin to set the overall plan in motion.

“What was that?” Padme asked in exasperation.

‘That was Fulcrum basically gaining a planet of its own,’ I thought to her.

Her thoughts became disjointed in astonishment and with a bit too much force she thought, ‘Please explain. How is that supposed to stop the disastrous events you foresaw?’

‘Well, we have to take the cortosis off the table, without leading the planet to disaster.’

‘Fine in theory, but how does that work in practice?’

Anakin’s thoughts answered, ‘Mokivj becomes a neutral planet, enforced not just by its militia, which will get the cortosis armor, but by a cortosis droid army. Ahsoka and I will reprogram them to obey Dilvosh initially and whoever becomes governor after him. There’ll be a number of failsafe scenarios we’ll program in as well and we’ll also have master keys to shut them down should a tyrannical governor take office. A low percentage possibility but one which we have to make provision for.’

‘And how will you account for an assault from space?’

‘The big prize is the cortosis mine. Ahsoka and I will join our strength, we’ll collapse the mine safely using the Force.’

‘Preventing more cortosis from being mined. The CIS is bottled up in the south, so they can’t send a warship either or equipment to restart it. The Jedi wouldn’t want that to change and I can see the decision being stalled in the Senate committees for months. What about other interests who don’t want cortosis to enter common use? Remember, these corporations think in centuries.’’

I smiled, ‘Kina Ha has been asking me for something new to do. She’ll head off any such covert attempts from the megacorps.’

‘What of Palpatine?’

‘That’s the beauty of this. He has so many plots and contingencies. His foresight sees the consequences of widespread cortosis droids and armor, just as well as I do. He wanted the whole thing as a surprise in the south to shake up the tactical and strategic landscape - killing more Jedi and clones. The Jedi and GAR then naturally react to counter the threat. Eventually, he would’ve also destroyed the mine and this planet. Our actions have brought it all into the light faster and as a result he doesn’t want the fast escalation of the war either. He wants grinding attrition, not a complete collapse of the southern fronts. That is why he’ll endeavour to support this new status quo. In this way, we’ve also saved the lives of millions who would’ve died originally.’

‘This world is effectively seceding then.’

I shook my head, ‘They’ll continue to pay their taxes, Padme, so the Senate blowhards can relax. They’ll join the Council for Neutral Systems.’

‘A neutral system with an army that almost no one can effectively defeat.’ 

‘And just like that we’ve also greatly secured this sector against the threat that Thrawn warned us about from the Unknown Regions.’

Padme eyed me with an annoyed look, ‘You still haven’t gone into much detail about that. Not to mention you’re both going to sit down with me so I can write a full report for the Senate about the Chiss and their enemy-’

‘The Nikardun.’

‘Yes, them. I also want to speak to Thrawn, officially put the Republic’s best foot forward as much as can be done in the circumstances.’

‘Dear, he’s not a diplomat,’ Anakin thought pointedly.

‘I know, nevertheless, he’s representative of his people. I won’t drown him in legal verbiage but this needs to happen. This is history in the making.’

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It wouldn’t be smooth sailing though.

The captain of the Zeewneel had finally broken radio silence, relating a tale of hijackers, forcing them to take off with the Tantros. A counter-mutiny had successfully taken place in the aftermath of Chewie and Che’ri’s attack on the ships.

Chewie had also docked and physically confirmed the situation, also that the Zeewneel was not carrying the cortosis droids. 

The Tantros on the other hand was still just a silent floating leviathan in space, coasting on its momentum. It had long since left the mass shadow, but its engines and hyperdrive was still down and there were no indications that the crew on board were affecting any repairs.

“Life signs?” Anakin asked as the Omen approached the ship, its bulk dominating the forward view.

“272, most of which are clustered in the forward cargo module,” I swiped the holoscreen to enlarge it. “There’s a small cluster of eleven in the bridge, these Action IV’s only need five people to operate that space.”

“No one in the engineering module,” Anakin frowned. “So we can assume that we’re dealing with more of Solha’s smugglers, only they’ve now taken the crew hostage.”

“You’d think they’d be telling the crew to repair the ship at blaster point.”

“They’d know we’d detect that and they still think that Solha has the governor in his pocket.”

“The fact that the militia fighters are still surrounding them should be a big clue that things are different on that front,” I chuckled.

“They’ll eventually realize that. The Solha siblings are in local prison and the militia cleared out their estate of combat droids just a few hours ago. Now, I’m going to take us to the starboard docking port, see if you can gain remote access.”

On thrusters, Anakin danced the Omen up and over the dorsal hull of the Tantros.

The computer blared a warning at me, “Nope, standard docking sequence has been locked down. M8, can you slice it?”

“Of course, Mistress.”

He looked at the sensor readouts and poked it with a finger, “Well, that certainly stirred the mynock nest. I count… nine lifesigns heading for that docking port.”

“Some from the bridge, some from the cargo pod,” I nodded. “How do you want to play this, master?”

“As we always do, only this time it’s your turn to be the obvious hammer, I’ll be the sneaky one.”

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I climbed down the ladder and into the troop compartment.

What greeted me was two squads of Mokivj militia men and women, who were either going through weapon and equipment checks or just sitting back and relaxing. They weren’t full time soldiers as Mokivj just didn’t have the resources for it. Everyone who was of fighting age for their species could be called up at any time to serve, unless a medical condition prevented it.

My presence was soon noticed and it was interesting to see how the din started to diminish until the only sounds were that of the Omen’s ambient engine noise.

There was a mix of astonishment, awe and in some edge cases even fear as I started to walk forward amongst them.

“Militia of Mokivj,” I said, pushing outwards with the Force to augment my words. “You don’t truly know me, I don’t know you. Those of you who follow the war on the Holonet, only know me through Republic propaganda, put that out of your mind. I’m a citizen of this galaxy, I wish for peace, but know that only comes with strength and courage to defend it. I wish for freedom, but know the price of achieving it is eternal vigilance. I know you as militia who have answered the call for defending your world from the dangers of space in the far frontier. You are mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, farmers, builders, teachers… to name but a few of your professions. For some of you, this is your birth world, you are second or third generation, others are fresh colonists, but this is your home.

“Through fate and the Force, your world has been both blessed and cursed with cortosis. You’ve been briefed on what it is, what it can do and now you are shouldered with a new burden. To defend your world from a galaxy that would see it taken from you or would see your home burned before it can threaten their profits or be used by their enemies.”

I felt the combination of anger and determination begin to spark in their hearts.  

“Will you let them?!” I asked abruptly, flaring my emotions outwards so they could feel them.

Their answer came in a unified chorus, their spirits swept up.

“NO!”

“Then join me and walk through that airlock. I will lead the way and shield you as best as I can, as you take the means to defend your home. Are you ready?!”

“YES COMMANDER!”

“Again!”

“YES COMMANDER!”

“Then follow me, sons and daughters of Mokivj!”

“YEAAAHHHH!”

“On your feet! Fall in by squad!”

For being a planetary militia, they at least had their basic drills in order. It was nothing compared to the perfection of clone soldiers marching, but it was serviceable.

I led the way to the Omen’s port airlock and felt the two rows of militia come to a stop behind me.

There was a slight thud through the deck as the ship made contact with the docking collar.

My hand began working on the airlock panel, opening the inner door as M8 brute forced the Tantros’ airlock on the other side into operation.

I stepped forward into the Omen’s airlock, with five other militia behind me, the whole line moving up.

The outer door opened, revealing the shut outer door of the Tantros. The durasteel outer hull was clearly older and definitely needed a good clean.

This door opened after a few minutes of M8 equalizing the pressure.

I reached out with the Force, snuffing out the surveillance sensors before advancing the militia column.

A light Battle Meditation fell on my troops, whilst I also began suppressing the spirits of the enemy beyond.

There were nine of them, all a mix of species and general smuggler scum that Solha had hired with his very deep pockets.

If that was all, then I could breeze through them by myself.

They were not alone and through technometry I could sense a full squad of active cortosis B2 droids waiting for us.

That we hadn’t detected them conventionally wasn’t a surprise; as the cortosis could disperse and shield from a blaster bolt, so could it foul an active scan pulse. 

“No matter what we find beyond this door, we will defeat it!”

“HAH!”

My lightsabers burst into life in my hands and one floated above my head, everyone took that as the clear signal to remove the safety from their weapons.

With the Force, I flickered the lights of the hallway beyond, before snuffing them out, plunging our enemy into darkness.

I found the thickest sidewall panels made of durasteel and wrenched three of them into the air, before willing them to shoot forward.

Two of the closest smugglers were beheaded in the darkness with the edges of those panels.

Next they slammed into the two closest B2s, wrapping around their gun arms and torsos, before constricting, crushing and crumbling the cortosis armor.

My hand slapped in the inner door controls.

“Go!”

I let the lights return to full illumination.

Utter chaos broke out.

Blaster fire streamed in both directions.

The enemy, however, found their shots being either blocked by my cortosis B2 shields or my lightsabers.

The militia quickly got the gist of the fight, with a mental nudge through Battle Meditation. The squads hunkered right and left, using the cortosis shields as mobile cover and firing into the enemy.

The remaining smugglers died within a few seconds of this very lopsided fight, but now the problem came of the remaining B2s.

The blaster bolts from the militia just splashed off them, leaving behind just slightly glowing spots to indicate the hit.

I dropped the shields to the floor for them to hunker in a line behind me on each side of the corridor.

The front four B2’s in the line, now focused their fire solely on me.

That would be challenging to keep a defense for with only lightsabers, but my focus was now free to get… creative.

I ripped off more side panelling and crashed them into the gun arms of the four B2s, their rapid fire shots spraying off target.

A Force Wave would finish it all off, but I had to be conservative and efficient with my strength.

The panels constricted, ripping the gun arms off the B2s, where they became kinetic missiles that I hammered home into the single vulnerable point of their red sensor eye in their left shoulder.

That line of droids crumpled to the floor, and just became more ammunition for me.

My cortosis projectiles blasted forward, felling another line of four before they could open fire.

I sent the final two droids catapulting into the ceiling, before smashing them down into the floor so hard that it left deep dents and their cortosis armor chassis shattered under the onslaught.

“Clear!”

My militia stood out of their cover and joined my march onward.

I took us right at the first intersection, flicking my finger and snuffing out ship surveillance sensors as we went.  

The enemy shut a bulkhead door in my face, cutting off our advance to the bridge.

A gesture sent my lightsabers forward, spinning in their drill formation.

It took a bit longer, since I needed a greater diameter so my militia could fit through side by side.

The newly shaped plug got a small Force Push to send it crashing inward with an echoing, ominous clang of metal on metal.

Speaking of, though the mood of my militia was confident and buoyant, their astonishment at my supernatural feats was steadily building. These weren’t psycho-conditioned clone soldiers and if I wasn’t careful they were going to fall into stupefied dazes.

“On your left, next intersection, two hostiles.”

Three militia surged forward, leaned around the corner and sprayed blaster fire down it.

It caught a twi’lek and devaronian mercenary flatfooted.

They both screamed as their bodies were peppered with shots that tore through the old armor chest pieces they wore.

“Double check,” I ordered as we continued marching.

The three militia surged left, pumping more bolts into the heads of the mercs, before running back to rejoin our column.

It figured that Solha wouldn’t just rely on his smugglers for security, since their job was mostly to run resources secretly to his factory. He also couldn’t use CIS droids extensively either, due to his need for secrecy.

Another bulkhead door was thrown in our way.

Honestly, I wondered if I should stop blinding the sensors of whoever was in charge here, just so he or she could see that it was a pointless gesture.

My lightsabers cut through in six seconds and we were marching again.

Three mercs were waiting to ambush us at the next intersection and this time they threw a sonic grenade towards us.

If they were moderately competent, they’d have cooked the grenade so it exploded mid-air.

They didn’t do that, so I had all the time in the world to telekinetically catch and crush it before it could go off.

“Stars! Is that a Jedi– aargh!’  

All three mercs kissed the ceiling with bone breaking force before I let go, letting gravity and the three meter fall do the rest.

My militia wasn’t feeling merciful, they needed no order to check and finish them off.

Our advance through the ship continued unopposed for the next few minutes and I was pleasantly surprised to stand outside the firmly shut bulkhead door of the main bridge.

Given that this was the most important space in the ship, these were armored double doors so thick that my lightsabers wouldn’t ordinarily be able to pierce all the way through. It had also been reinforced with magnetic polarization fields that would even cause blaster bolts to ricochet off. You could tell that this was a ship built for a lawless frontier.

Recesses in the ceiling opened and two Repeater turrets lowered, aiming towards us.

My telekinesis grabbed both and I crushed the barrels before they could open fire.

I looked towards the surveillance sensor in the corner of the armored door.

“Open this door and surrender. You will be taken prisoner. You have five seconds to comply. If I have to force myself in there, you will regret not having taken up my offer.”

I could still sense eleven people in there. Their emotions marked who was who. Despair and hopelessness from the crew hostages, a savage defiance from the person in charge, whilst his underlings were beginning to feel rebellious at the idea of taking on a Jedi. That no amount of credits was worth losing their lives.

The man in charge also had an admirable hope, determination and confidence that Duke Solha would not let this stand, that they only needed to hold out for long enough. He thoroughly believed in the CIS cause with a passion and if the mercs that surrounded him had to die to achieve it, then that was how things had to be.

“Your five seconds are up.”

That was when I felt Anakin’s presence and lightsaber burst into life within the supposedly sealed off bridge.

Everyone’s astonishment peaked at the impossibility before he threw a Force Push that bowled over four mercs, whilst his lightsaber flew through the air to cut off the arm of the leader.

He had been holding a blaster to the captain’s head.

Anakin’s blade removed the legs of two mercs on the way back to his hand as he burst into a spinning kick straight out of Ataru that sent a third merc flying to collide with a bulkhead.

Those who could still get up from the Force Push, were sent into la-la land when he slammed down a Sleep onto their minds.

The bridge crew burst up from their seats and hurried to secure the enemy’s weapons.

Anakin had a brief discussion with the captain before the main bridge doors demagnetized and rose upward to allow access.

“You were late,” I grinned at him.

He gave me an indignant expression, “You try to cut through a half a dozen bulkheads and maintenance conduits, not to mention hacking an exterior maintenance airlock that hadn’t been used in decades.”

“Excuses, excuses,” I smirked, then caught sight of the unconscious instigator who Solha had entrusted with delivering this cargo.

He was in his late fifties, dark black hair in an immaculate short style, thin moustache, impeccably groomed and dressed in a style that made me think of Dooku; calf length boots, dark trousers and tunic, with a half-cape over one shoulder. He was slumped on the floor against the central captain’s chair, his skin pale from shock from losing a limb.

Anakin shook his head, “I’ll watch over him, you need to secure the rest of the ship and the hostages.”

“Militia! Turn about!” I ordered. “Some visual surveillance and coordination would be nice since the bridge is ours now.”

“You’ll get it, off you go, Snips.”

“Yes, master.”

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Actually doing that turned out to be more of a painfully boring slog than anything exciting.

Eight mercs were watching over the remaining crew within an empty cargo hold. With control of the bridge, it was easy to dial down the oxygen content of the air just enough to make everyone rather sleepy, but not to dangerous levels. Two of the mercs were twi’leks and weren’t as affected as the majority of humans were.

The militia breached into the hold with rebreathers sourced from the Omen’s combat stores and with me in full Battle Meditation, they quickly and efficiently gunned down the mercs.

The crew cheered and rose to their feet the moment their last captor fell.

Beyond that, it was an hours long session of physically searching every hold and room within each module. Sensors couldn’t detect active cortosis droids, so I had to play that part with technometry. Anakin also covered a lot of ground using the visual cams to search a lot of ship real estate, but they didn’t cover everything.

It was made even worse when I sensed active B1s hiding in their storage forms in maintenance ducts and even the ventilation systems.

By the time we could pronounce the Tantros as mostly secured, it was well into late evening for my body clock, my militia and I wanted nothing more than to return to the Omen and collapse into sleep.

We had to babysit the engineering decks at this point, as repairs to the engines were given the go-ahead by the ship’s captain.

Chewie was very bored and wanted to help speed things along, but I had to nix that idea. It’d be a wet day on Tatooine before I’d allow any ship of mine to have no one at the controls whilst docked to another.    

I let half the militia sleep in a shift for four hours when I sensed they were truly on their last legs and of no use to anyone.

My own revitalization was done with a mediation and I had barely done two hours of this when I had no choice but to emerge.

‘Frakking shabla!’ 

I stood in the next moment and gave the crewman who was on duty in the ship’s fusion reactor control a near heart attack.

“Ahh! Wha!?” He jumped in his seat and looked at me with wide eyes, clutching his chest.

I ignored him and slapped my comlink, “Master, we have incoming.”

“I sense it too, we’re now getting emergence signatures at the Panatha hyper point.”

A tense few seconds passed.

“An armed patrol cruiser, I think it's an old Pacifier class, modified, one squadron of fighters, Uglies, think we’re looking at pirates from Rattatak.”

“Do we have engines?”

“If we had another three hours, the answer would be yes. Good thing I didn’t use thrusters to slow down our momentum, the pirates have 4 light seconds of distance to cover before reaching us. Snips, you stay and organize a counter-boarding defense. I’ll take the Omen and join the militia fighters to intercept the enemy.”

“Master-”

“I can feel your weariness, you’re no good in a space fighter at the moment. I’m fresh off hours of meditation.”

I gritted my teeth, “Fine.”

“Relax Snips and enjoy the show.”

My comlink changed channels, “All militia, report to starboard airlock.”

Through the Force, I pulsed my words with a sharp intent and a telekinetic poke. It was enough to wake everyone who had been on their sleep shift.

“We have incoming Rattataki pirates who want what is not theirs. We will show them the depths of their error in coming here today.”

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Really should’ve figured the Rattataki would jump on the chance to nab two disabled freighters.

Anakin thought to himself as he and twelve militia fighters burned to intercept the incoming pirates.

The Mokivj militia used the Hammerhead fighter - it was shaped as its name implied, except some long dead Incom engineer decided to stick wings on it. For its day it was a marginally effective fighter and cheap, which was why it was snapped up by all the old colonial expeditions that went out into the deep unknown over a century ago. It had blaster cannons on the tips of the wings and either side of the wide nose.

It was rather easy in the expansive holographic cockpit of the Omen to spot the hallmarks of age, repairs and some rather ramshackle upgrades the fighters had been subjected to over the years. They had clearly seen battle and their opponents were usually these same pirates.

He switched his com frequency, “Grazer squadron, this is General Skywalker. Grazer lead?”

A gruff voice replied, “Grazer lead here, general or Grazer One if you want. I know that’s how you Republic Navy lot do it.”

“You’ve fought the Rattataki pirates before, any pearls of wisdom you can share?”

“They value their hides, general. When we show up with enough force, we can usually chase them off without a single shot fired. It's why we usually escort our freighters more than four hyper jumps until we hit the Trade Route. Of course, now that the Tantros and Zeewneel are hanging out here with their butts in the wind, they can’t resist.”

“And that old Pacifier?”

“Now that is a surprise. We knew they had it, but they usually keep it in the Rattatak system. Don’t let its age fool you. Successive warlords have had decades to upgrade that thing. If Warlord Gerg feels confident enough to risk it, then I’m worried, general.”

Chewie from the co-pilot station brought up a very detailed scan result that supported those words.

The old Pacifier usually only had two turreted turbolasers on its central hull, with two smaller cannons on the flanks to support the fighters it could launch, which was usually three squadrons of Z-28 Skywings.

This pirate modified version had added three more turbolasers and eight more anti-starfighter cannons, with a concussion missile launcher in the aft section.

It was the latter that would prove nasty in this fight.

The shields were not to modern military standards, but they would at least stop a single proton torpedo hit without any problems. The issue was getting a torpedo through all those cannons.

“Grazer One, what’s your name?”

“Captain Fykent Lar, Mokivj Militia.”

“Well, Captain Lar, you let me worry about that cruiser. You and your wingmen take on those Uglies.”

“Roger that, General.”

“It’s got a concussion missile launcher so I’ll take point, I want your squadron in a single file right behind me.”

“You can tell that from so far away?”

“That’s a roger, Grazer One.”

“You heard him, Grazer squad.”

The Hammerheads of Grazer squad maneuvered with reasonable efficiency and skill into the line formation. There were a few who overcorrected and wobbled about but soon they were all behind the Omen with a general thirty meter separation between each fighter.

It was not the perfection of a Republic Navy clone pilot team, but it’d do.

“Good enough, Grazer squad,” Anakin complimented. “We’ll enter active enemy missile range in seventy seconds. No matter what happens you keep this formation. Break and attack only when I give the order.”

“Confirmed, general,” Lar reported for his squad.

“Pirates aren’t changing formation,” Chewie said.

Anakin didn’t need the Force to tell him that whoever was in charge of this pirate gang on that Pacifier was feeling confident about their odds.

The range ticked down.

“Targeting lock from the Pacifier,” R2 reported.  

“Hold back on the ECM until they launch.”

He tapped the controls for the forward cannons, switching them to rapid fire.

“Extreme range in 3…2…1…”

Nothing.

Ten seconds later…

“Why aren’t they firing?” Chewie asked in annoyance.

“Targeting spike. Nine missiles launched. ECM engaging.” R2 reported with a low tone of determination.

Anakin immediately began firing thrusters, throwing the Omen into a series of jinks and maneuvers specifically designed to confuse the relatively simple seeker heads on missiles.

R2 managed to outright spoof four missiles to fly off into nowhere for long enough that their fuel loads would run dry in their attempts to correct, turning them into easily avoidable dumb projectiles.

The remainder kept on course, firing tiny thrusters to compensate and keep the Omen in their sights.

Anakin pushed his sight into the Force and saw the path.

At the extreme range of his cannons he pulled down on the triggers.

A stream of bolts sprayed forward, he both maneuvered the Omen and adjusted the cannon angles. 

The result was a spray of rapid blue plasma that seemed to be completely missing at first. Right until the missiles, in their efforts to stay on target, steered themselves right into deflection fire.

Only one missile got through and R2 managed a jam on it that caused a miss at the last possible moment.

“That was close,” Anakin smirked with satisfaction.

The pirate fighters burst out of their loose haphazard formation, spreading out in courses that made their intent to attack Grazer squadron from high and low angles all along their line formation.

“Break now!”

Six Hammerheads turned to port, whilst six went starboard, choosing their targets and burning into cannon range intercepts.

“R2, I’ve detected no general scans from that Pacifier, can you confirm?”

“They’re only keeping a missile lock. I’m also seeing no missiles being reloaded into that launcher.”

“I doubt they’ve got a feeder system from within the hull to the launcher, look,” Chewie threw up a holoscreen that showed a detailed scan of the Pacifier’s concussion launcher.

Anakin smirked, “They have to go EVA to reload.”

He hit the overthrottle and angled for a course under the enemy cruiser’s port bow.

The Pacifier immediately tried to maneuver, to keep all its guns bearing on the Omen. It was technically a patrol cruiser at just over three hundred meters in length and was nimble for its size for ships in its weight class, but it had no hope of keeping up.

“R2, prepare two torpedoes, but keep it to passive targeting.”

Anakin jinked and dove as cannon range was reached.

Light turbolaser blasts streamed past the Omen's starboard flank.

He brought forward cannons to bear and started peppering the ventral shields of the Pacifier.

The shields flared into visibility as they shrugged off the hits, but it nevertheless cost power and integrity. These shields were black market, but not military and the computer calculated some sectors already going into two-thirds yellow status.

Now that he was in the ventral quadrant of the Pacifier’s aim, he started to pull upward, keeping the enemy at a 45 degree angle, angling to keep the Omen’s nose pointed at the enemy.

The result was what Ahsoka called inward spiraling. 

It maximized the deflection angle and traversal that the enemy cannons would need to make to even aim properly and fire.

It somewhat worked against big CIS capital ships, but it was especially good against an organic gunner sitting in a targeting seat. Against the old turrets of a Pacifier, it completely outpaced their cannon traversal.

He transferred his rear shields forward, angling them against the enemy.

“R2, we’re going to deliver this torpedo straight down their throats. Get ready to steer it to their port engine.”

“Ready.”

“Two enemy fighters on attack vector, trying to stop us,” Chewie declared, grabbing his controls for the rear cannons and firing.

Anakin could only nod, normalizing the shields absently, as his sole concentration was towards flying the Omen and the timing for these torpedoes.

The two Uglies fired, sending bolts of red plasma streaking ahead and behind the Omen’s wild spiraling course.

Chewie’s accurate fire slammed into one of them, shearing the mismatched engine nacelle off to spiral out to infinity, whilst the main hull sparked with leaking fire from vented oxygen that was promptly snuffed out. In the next moment the Ugly became a shattered expanding sphere of debris.

The second Ugly scored two successive hits on the rear shields.

Chewie roared in annoyance and fired again.

His shots missed but orange plasma cannon fire from a Militia Hammerhead streaked in and immolated the enemy fighter.

Merely 20 km away now, Anakin pressed his thumbs down on the launch button on his yoke and twisted the Omen away, using all the gathered velocity to roar past the Pacifier and put as much distance between them.

The two torpedoes left travelling in their wake ramped up to a full velocity burn at 4000 G.

They crossed that distance in less than one and a half seconds and detonated.

A bright flash heralded the proton hammer that slammed into the Pacifiers shields, popping them instantly. 

The second torpedo detonated microseconds later and ripped apart the entire rear section of the ship, leaving nothing but fist size debris and smaller, scattering upwards into space at considerable velocity.

Anakin had shunted full shield power into the rear emitters just before what felt like a giant had slapped them.

His body strained against the combat harness as forces leaked through the inertial dampeners. 

The shields held against the onslaught.

With a grin of triumph he checked the sensors.

Five Uglies were now powered down and coasting in space, signaling their surrender. Seven small expanding spheres of debris represented the rest.

“General Skywalker, that was some impressive flying.” He could hear the smile in Captain Lar’s voice.

“Thank you, how many did you lose?”

“This victory was not achieved without loss, Grazer Four and Seven,” he said solemnly.

“Their sacrifice will be honored, Captain.”

“Thank you, general. We’re all volunteers, we’ll take care of that.”

“What are you going to do with the surrendered pirates?”

“I’ve called for a ship to come up and gather them. They’ll get a trial and given all the evidence we have, a firing squad.”

Anakin nodded in agreement, even though he was sure Padme would object. Frontier worlds like Mokivj just didn’t have the resources to house prisoners for any long term duration. It was the unspoken rule amongst most worlds that far out from the core of civilization. Mokivj was also in a constant state of undeclared war against Rattatak. 

“If they know they’ll face the death sentence, why surrender?”

“They hope the governor will use them to trade for any mokivians taken prisoner or enslaved on Rattatak. Vain hope, especially given what they tried to steal today.”

“All right, Captain. I’m heading back to the Tantros, thanks for your help.”

“No, thank you, General. Without you, that fancy ship and your torpedoes, we’d have all been very dead today and Mokivj would’ve faced the prospect of dealing with that pirate cruiser dominating our space. I’ll definitely be recommending you get some form of reward from the governor.”

Anakin chuckled, “It’s not necessary, but I’ll be gracious and accept.”

“Good, I also invite you to our pilot watering hole in Yovbridge, I’m sending you the coordinates. You’ll have free rounds from our entire squadron!”

“That’s an invite I’ll definitely accept.”

“Good! Ha ha! What a day! See you there, Skywalker!”

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The Tantros finally landed in Yovbridge spaceport in its own dedicated spot roughly a day later.

Repairs took longer than expected because of a discovered lack of on-board critical spare parts, which had to be quickly shuttled in from the planet. It was a blessing in disguise as it allowed the four of us to begin the process of reprogramming the droid army on board.

It was quite handy that Solha had packed the droids into the shielded pallets in their storage forms, allowing us to do batches of nearly 200 droids at a time. CIS droids had to get situational updates and operational parameters whenever they were deployed for the first time to a planet. Something that usually happened via the encrypted network of the carrier ship.

The programming that was already in the droids was also a small goldmine of intelligence, as it neatly laid out the possible usage scenarios that the CIS had envisioned for the cortosis droids. It wouldn’t be of direct use, but it offered a window into the thinking of their strategic planners and would inform the Republic’s own conventional predictions in turn.

We left the Tantros via the giant loading ramps that opened from each cargo module. Spaceport workers and equipment were already there to begin offload but someone else was waiting as well.

“Commander Thrawn,” Anakin greeted the chiss with a quick bow.

“General Skywalker, I was wondering if we could have a moment of secure privacy.”

The chiss stood with arms folded behind his back, the picture of a military professional in an immaculate uniform, his face practically carved out of duracrete.

“The most secure place on the planet at the moment, would be on board the Omen,” Anakin gestured the way graciously towards the nearby exit from the Tantros’ landing berth.

Thrawn nodded and joined us.

I really wished I had a cam drone at this point; a human armored Jedi, a togruta Mandalorian Jedi, a towering armored wookiee, an astromech droid and a chiss walking down the spaceport hallway.

We were distinctly memorable as evidenced by the expressions of the random people we passed in the spaceport corridors. On a number of occasions we even caused a few accidents by people bumping into each other or walking into the advertising board of a restaurant.

“So how was your talk with Senator Amidala?” Anakin asked lightly.

“Informative.”

Anakin chuckled. “I think it was more than that.”

Thrawn’s face showed a slight twitch and I clearly felt the chiss was secretly rather grateful that he had finally escaped Padme’s version of an ad hoc first contact negotiation.

“Your senator is certainly persistent, though I can see it stems from her heart and a desire that there be peace between the Republic and the Chiss Ascendancy.”

“Off the record, do you think there will be?”

“We have enough problems of our own in the Chaos. Whilst I can’t speak for the Syndicure, I would be highly surprised if relations ever deteriorated to such an extent. It remains to be seen if there will even be formal relations. The Senator has indicated she is willing to sponsor a motion in your Senate to open an embassy on our homeworld, Csilla.”

“Will your Syndicure even be open to that?” I asked, knowing how isolationist the Ascendancy was by nature.

“That is a good question, Commander Tano. The easy answer is no. However, events in the Chaos might force us out of our treasured isolation.”

We approached the Omen’s docking bay, the doors parting for us after R2 broadcasted the code key.

The ship was locked tight and only in a partial self-defense mode to allow a trio of local spaceport techs to work on refueling it.   

Inside, Chewie excused himself to work on some minor repairs, whilst we all took a seat in the troop compartment.

“So did you find a shield generator to your liking, Commander Thrawn?” I asked, injecting a tinge of humor to my voice. M8 was now doing the talking for me in Meese Caulf.

He visibly didn’t react at all, which was just as bad as a full gasp in this circumstance. I could feel he was debating with himself on whether to answer the question at all, play dumb or just admit it. He was also very weary of me.

“I did,” he finally said with a nod after pointlessly scrutinizing my helmet’s visor. “A reconditioned model from a Hammerhead fighter. It is far from state of the art for your current technology base, but it will possibly make all the difference in the coming fight against the Nikardun, when we study and replicate the technology for our own ships. Will there be a point if I ask how you knew?”

“Simple deduction, commander,” I shrugged. “Your scout ship is the latest tech of your military, yet its defenses are clearly suited to an entirely different tactical paradigm and technological environment. I then placed myself in your shoes and asked what I would want to gain from a trip into this strange and unknown space, besides allies. The answer, from my point of view, is obvious.”

Thrawn stared at me for a few silent moments, his tightly controlled emotions were like a conductor in front of an orchestra. “I see, but we must get to the point. I speak now as a representative of General Ba’kif. Whatever happens between our respective governments, we must prepare for the possibility of a Nikardun attack on this side of the Wall. The systems of Batuu, Mokivj, Gannaria would be first to come under attack. Your military assets here are too scattered and few. They will be overwhelmed despite the relative inferior weaponry of the enemy.”

“You think they might bypass the Ascendancy?” Anakin asked.

“The Chaos by nature is an ever changing space. Hyperspace is constantly in flux there. It is the reason why we are so dependent on Sky-walkers. The Nikardun have their own form of navigators and it is highly possible that at any time, they may find a route straight to the Wall and breach it. When the Nikardun gains access to Republic technology from battle salvage it’ll alter the balance of power significantly for the worse in the south-west of the galaxy.”

“Chiss warships with shields are going to do that anyway.”

“Yes, but we will not be invading Republic space.”

“So what are you asking for, Thrawn?”

“One of the ships you call a Venator class, stationed centrally in this sector.”

I can already hear the grumbling of the clones at being assigned to such a posting. It would be a boring, mindless, milk run. Where the worst thing they’d face would be the occasional skirmish from the Rattataki pirates.   

Speaking of…

“I don’t know if I can justify it to the Jedi Council or-”

“Master, Rattatak.”

Anakin sighed, “What about it, Snips?”

“The place has been a blight on this sector of the galaxy for centuries. It’s where Knight Ky Narec resolved to campaign against the rampant gangs and pirates. Where he found and trained a young Asajj Ventress. She eventually rose to become the warlord of the planet before she was defeated by the machinations of another warlord. My point is, let us justify assigning a Venator here with the aim of ending the pirate domination of Rattatak and doing justice to Narec’s sacrifice and memory.”

Anakin perched his elbow on his knees in thought before eventually nodding, “Given that history alone, I can make a compelling case. It’ll certainly keep the troops occupied… at least until they’re successful. Then the issue comes of filling in the void left. Someone will have to guide the Rattataki to become a prosperous peaceful neighbor.”

“Kina Ha can work behind the scenes, but the public face of the effort must be the governors of Batuu and Mokivj. It’ll be in their best interest to see such a transition take place.”

“Very well. I will make the request, Thrawn. My own request will be for you to hand over known tactical specifications on Nikardun ships. Our men will have to know who to be on the lookout for.”

“Eminently practical, consider it done,” Thrawn reached into his belt and in his palm was a Republic standard data chit.

I took the liberty to grab it and have M8 begin an immediate review.

‘It’s exactly as he said, Skyguy. A mostly complete Chiss ship book on the Nikardun and a few other subjugated species. There’s only a few redactions.’

“With this in hand, I’ll do everything in my power to see it happen,” Anakin nodded.

Thrawn stood, “Thank you, general.”

“When are you leaving for Chiss space?”

“As soon as possible. Our scientists need to get to work on the shield generator.”

“Before you go, there is something that you need to see, commander. As you warned us about a threat from your space, I feel it only fair and prudent to warn you of another threat… that concerns the entire galaxy.”

Thrawn blinked, openly showing his astonishment at that pronouncement. With that as my queue, I stood and pulled off my glove and held out my hand to him.

“The entire galaxy?” he asked, staring at my bare hand.

“Yes,” I answered and quicker than he could react, my hand snatched his.

I established the connection and pulled his mind inward.

Our perceptions of the Omen’s interior dissolved and was replaced by an absolutely frigid landscape.

Snow and crystalline glaciers as far as the eye could see. Biting winds stirring water crystals so fine it might as well be white dust. A dark tapestry of sky above with minimal clouds and a breathtaking star scape stretched across it majestically, with distant multicolored nebulae.

Closer to home, two moons were in direct sight.

To the west, the distant lights of multiple domed cities.

In the middle of it all, Thrawn stood like an unmoving bastion of calm, despite his senses being hijacked. I marveled at his orderly, disciplined mind.

“You’ve brought me to Csilla,” he stated, looking up into the starry sky. “A place you have never seen. Are you sourcing this from my mind?”

“No and yes, I am showing you this because at the moment, we are linked in time and space. It allows me to venture forth, so to speak.”   

I gestured to the sky and Thrawn looked up, just in time to see multiple large, organic masses, mostly colored in green and brown, shaped in a flat oval, descend at extreme velocity towards the distant city.

The masses shattered the domes instantly, light visibly bending around them - the manifestation of gravity being turned into a weapon and a shield.

Thrawn’s astonishment soared and in the blink of an eye, we were much closer. Just a few kilometers distant.

The organic masses were still in one piece, suffering no injury and the only damage was a faint scorching from atmospheric entry, which was healing before our eyes.

The mass split open near the ground and the final truth of their nature as a troop carrier was revealed.

Emerging were tall humanoids, faces and bodies horribly scarred, lacking any nose. Each encased in matt black organic chitinous armor that actually seemed alive. Every part of the armor was sharp, with some spiked ornamentation which was entirely functional as these parts moved as well. The warrior carried only one weapon, a staff as tall as he was, but this weapon was also alive. In fact, it was a creature in itself, its head hissing with two baleful beady eyes, a long tongue and fangs of molecular sharpness.

Where this warrior went, only death followed as he killed chiss, making no distinction between civilian or soldier. Laser weapons only ablated the enemy warrior’s organic armor and it moved so fast, that the chiss soldier was bisected with the staff weapon before he even realized he was dead.

The staff also acted as a fearsome ranged weapon, spitting something like acid at over thirty meters that ate through armor, skin and bone with rapidity.

“Welcome, Senior Captain Thrawn, to the Yuuzhan Vong invasion of Csilla.”

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A/N: Nothing like a galactic level threat to focus and put things in perspective. The cortosis solution is messy, but with that kind of problem there is no truly perfect silver bullet. Hope you had a fun read. Enjoy the weekend and stay awesome.

The Force Wills - Chapter 112

“Frak!”

My hand raised from the head of the slumped form of Duke Solha.

The control room was a distinct mess at the moment, with dead smugglers, a tac droid’s body falling over, a generally smoky haze lingering from burnt out electronics and three unconscious serennians on the floor.

Solha’s emotions had sent up all sorts of red flags to me and I had rushed things a bit in the name of saving time. It was a damn good thing I did, however.

I tapped my armor’s vambrace controls, setting up a three way comlink.

“Chewie, Skyguy, come in.”

“Something went wrong, Snips?”

“Yes, Ahsoka?”

“Tac droid is down. You’ll have an easier time of it now. I have Duke Solha and his two siblings all taking naps. Chewie, I want you airborne in the Omen immediately, head for orbit as soon as possible. You need to intercept a bulk freighter and stop it from leaving. Strafe the engines, don’t destroy, keep it from leaving the planet’s mass shadow.”

“I’m going to need more targeting data than that, commander,” Chewie pointed out.

“Skyguy, talk to Thrawn. Sky-walker Che’ri is still in orbit on overwatch recon. We need her to do the spotting. These ships aren’t exactly common around this planet, so any freighter launched in the previous hour is our target. Have her coordinate with Chewie.”

“This freighter is full of cortosis droids then?” Anakin asked.

“Yes, three months of production, up until last week. Solha’s mind is a bit nebulous at the moment from shock, so I can’t be too specific about what I read. I’ll keep trying to pull more specifics, like the ship’s name.”

“I’ll get it done, commander,” Chewie growled. “What if we draw a response from the Mokivj security forces? They and the local governor might be in league with the CIS.”

“If any security fighters attack you with no warning, you shoot them down, Chewie,” I said firmly. “You are flying a GAR transponder. We are in Republic space. We have full rights to interdict and prosecute any target we have reasonable grounds to assume are CIS and hostile.”

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Chewbacca pulled back on the control yoke, lifting the Omen out of its berth and pushed down the throttle to maximum the instant he was clear.

He ignored the holo panel that represented the transmission from the undoubtedly annoyed spaceport controller - clearly to complain about a speed limit violation near the city airspace.

He’d had the foresight to prepare for a hasty departure when Ahsoka called, and had already paid the docking fee, combined with a nice little bribe to the dockmaster to smooth things even further.

Chewbacca slapped away the tiny holoscreen and focused on flying, pulling up to gain altitude as rapidly as possible.

“R2, plug in and scan for bulk freighters, please,” he asked the astromech.

The droid settled in the dedicated cradle for him in the rear of the cockpit, allowing full nav comp and logic probe interfaces whilst supporting the droid from any forces that snuck through the inertial dampers.

“There are nearly thirty-six landed bulk freighters within immediate sensor range and five in orbit,” R2 reported, throwing up a sensor holoscreen for Chewbacca to look at.

“Are any of them heading for the mass shadow boundary?”

“Not at present.”

Chewie fiddled with the holoscreen and the projected orbits of each freighter were displayed. As typical for such large ships, they were all clustered in scattered orbits closest towards the two major hyper points in the system; one of which was towards the Panatha system, the other Ravaath.

The Omen broke through the upper cloud layers in the stratosphere and powered upward into the void of space.

“R2, plot me least time intercepts for all five, assuming I maintain current inclination.”

The droid did so in less than a second, projecting it into the greater cockpit holographic.

Chewie growled in frustration, there was just too much variance, both hyper points had a 39 degree approach angle difference relative to the planet. He could intercept two of the five within minutes, but the other three had intercepts ranging from seven to fifteen minutes. That could further increase or decrease depending on any course changes he made.

In the same vein, he could only preposition himself to blockade one of the hyper points, not both.

“Incoming transmission,” R2 reported.

The holoscreen appeared and the image of a very young looking female chiss appeared, at the controls of their scout ship.

“Hello? Is this channel working?”

“R2, patch my translation software into the com,” Chewie growled.

“Done.”

“I can read you, navigator Che’ri.”

The young chiss soldier blinked her red eyes with surprise as she read the software’s results directly underneath his image. “Oh, that’s good. So you need help finding out which freighter has the droids on?”

“Yes, I want to send you my nav and scan data,” he grabbed the holographic representations and with a few further taps of his fingers, sent it along the link to her. “But our nav coordinates and standards will need to be converted to yours. Can you send us a general file example of nav data?”

“Our interstellar measurement and cartography? Sure, one moment… This should do it. Sending.”

“R2, you got it?”

“Yes, Chewbacca. Calculating… conversion complete. Reformatting to chiss standard and sending.”

Che’ri jumped in her seat, looking delighted, “Wow, I so want a droid like that. So you’re tracking all these big cargo ships?”

“Yes, one of them is filled with war droids using a new armor type that makes them impervious to most standard handheld weaponry. We need to find that ship and disable it before it can jump to hyper.”

“Our scout ship has the firepower, unless they put their shields up,” Che’ri scratched her cheek in thought, making a rather strange facial expression. “We have two hyper points to guard and we can divide it between us.”

Chewie shook his head, “No, trying to blockade runs the risk of the enemy making it through you, especially when you’re not confident of safely disabling the ship.”

“Well, how good are your scanners? Not sure what tech you have on your side of the galaxy but-”

“The droids will be packed in shielded containers, active scans will not find them. We must deduce which one it will be. I need you to go over your scan records while you were up here before us. Did any of the five freighters launch since the Omen landed?”

“Let me see,” she looked off to the side, her hands fiddling with controls. “Yes, these two. A ship called the… I’m not even going to try to pronounce that… this one…”

Chewie stared at the data feed she was sending, a freighter called Zeewneel. “I understand that problem very well, navigator.”

“Huh, you would, with that very exotic language of yours. And the other one, the Tantros.”

“Which one launched first?”

“Both launched exactly the same time.”

“It seems like the enemy took some measure of precaution, one of these ships is probably a decoy.”

Chewie looked at both ships’ orbit. The Zeewneel had 23 minutes in its orbit before it could make an escape burn towards either hyper point, the Tantros had nine minutes before it could do the same. 

The problem was if he burned hard to intercept one of them, he’d definitely alert the crews of both that they had trouble incoming. Che’ri would have a similar problem.

He had to make a decision.

“R2, give me a gradual intercept course for the Tantros, the same for Che’ri to intercept Zeewneel. Casual flying, it must seem like an accident that our orbits come close.”

“Intercepts calculated. You can intercept the Tantros in 17 minutes. Che’ri will intercept her target in 32 minutes.”

The courses were displayed on the holo and Chewie wished there was a proper physical console in front of him so he could smash it.

“That’ll take too long. If we forgo any notion of subtlety, full burn directly at them and both freighters try to escape, will we intercept before they can make it out of the mass shadow?”

R2 projected the scenario and the result was positive at least. There was no way those big ships had the thrust power to manage an evasion into hyper, even with how close they were.

“Che’ri, intercept the Zeewneel, I’ll go for the Tantros. Full speed. Let’s not complicate this.”

“As you say, Mr. Chewbacca!”

He grumbled, flipped the Omen onto the appropriate heading and went to max thrust again.

Che’ri followed with the scout ship a moment later and Chewie chuffed as he saw the maneuverability figures and speed. It handled even more like a fighter than the Omen did.

He narrowed his eyes at the sensor profiles of both ships, waiting for them to react or do something in response.

“My target has engaged engines, full burn for Panatha!” Che’ri said excitedly.

Chewie watched as the Tantros did the same, only they were burning for the Ravaath hyper point.

Their intercepts were now down to merely three minutes, but R2 suddenly screeched in warning.

“Seven fighters launching from Mokivj’s capital!”

“Class?”

“Vulture droids.”

“Where did those come from?”

“Launch point is a huge manor on the city outskirts.”

“So we’re going to disable the freighters, only to fight for our lives around them.”

It was the one thing that Chewbacca disliked about fighting in space, it was the inevitability of it. You could see your opponent coming and the laws of space flight meant that you either had the velocity to evade or you were effectively forced into a fight. In this case, slowing down to intercept the freighters, meant letting the Vulture droids catch up.

“Che’ri, can you fight?”

“What? No!  I- I’ve been in fights on large ships, but I’m just the sky-walker. I’ve only been able to fly a ship on my own for a few weeks, Commander Thrawn has been teaching me.”

“All right. Then listen to me. You disable the freighter as quickly as you can then burn for a hyperspace exit. I’ll deal with the fighters.”

“By yourself?!”

“Yes. You do not belong in this fight. These are CIS fighter droids. Your commander has pledged his assistance, but your people are not at war with them. Leave this fight to me.”

Chewie could see the conflict in her face, “But I can’t leave Commander Thrawn-”

“Would he want you to throw your life away?” he retorted.

“No, but I’m still a soldier of the Chiss Ascendancy and sky-walker corps, I can’t just-”

“Think of it as a tactical withdrawal,” Chewie groaned, adjusting the Omen’s final approach and powering up its weapons. He glanced at the scan readouts. “Four Vultures are on an intercept with you, only three are coming to me. I can easily handle that. Go!”

Che’ri flinched as she clearly perceived his roaring Shyriiwook as him getting quite angry with her.

“Y- yes, Mr. Chewbacca. Powering up my weapons, I’m almost in range.”

The bulk freighter was now growing in size, becoming a distinct shape from the tiny dot of light it had been before. Chewie brought up an active scan and scrutinized the massive ship.

It was a Corellian Action IV freighter, nearly nine hundred meters long, with six huge engine bells set in the rear. It had a blocky hull that became a pointed fore section, with a total of eight cargo modules wedged between the rear engine and the forward command blister. He quickly referenced the Galactic ship book for the general location of the hyperdrive and compared that to the results of his active scan for hypermatter.

No difference.

“Che’ri, I see your target is the same model of ship, I’m sending you targeting coordinates to disable the hyperdrive.”

“Got it, Mr. Chewbacca.”

The Tantros was now as big as his fist and within extreme weapon range.

R2 overlaid targeting points for him to aim at.

Their relative velocity to each other was now massively decreasing.

He shifted the yoke up and slightly to the left, using his thumbs on the small trim controls to further refine his aim.

“Vulture droids are about to enter extreme missile range,” R2 warned.

Chewie put that out of his mind for the moment, shifting the cannon’s aim onto the engine emitters and plotting the movement toward the hyperdrive. He could technically shoot now, but he didn’t trust his aim in a ship like the Omen at such extreme range.

“R2, take over the rear cannons, I’ll handle the front.”

The droid only chirped an acknowledgement.

The instant the distance reading reached 60 km he switched over to single shot, high power mode on the cannons and pulled the trigger.

The two bolts crossed the intervening distance in moments and slammed into the rear shields.

The shields were of civilian make and half of their strength was battered away with only this hit.

He fired twice.

The first salvo was dispersed but the second hit the hull, immediate explosions and armor debris erupted from the rear section.

He dialed down the strength of the cannons and fired again.

The freighter’s engine emissions flickered and stuttered before vanishing.

“R2 is their hyperdrive down?”

“Scanning, damage is significant. They are only coasting on their velocity. They aren’t going anywhere. Vulture droids are still closing, targeting emissions spiking. They’ll match velocities for optimal missile launch conditions in thirteen seconds.”

“Urgh, I’m shooting but these Republic shields are just taking everything I can fire!” Che’ri gritted her teeth as she was visibly yanking on her controls.

“R2?”

“Her Chiss weapons are draining the shields in increments.”

“Will she make it through before the Vultures can intercept?”

“If she keeps her fire rate up, just barely.”

Chewie turned the Omen to accelerate past the Tantros’ port side.

“Emission spike, six missiles launched!” R2 reported.

He gunned the engines to 110% overthrust and pulled hard to port, to increase both distance and relative velocity to the incoming missiles.

“Time to impact, six seconds. ECM engaging.”

Chewie growled, gritting his teeth as he suddenly changed course to starboard with a Z positive inclination.

“Time to impact eight seconds, two missiles spoofed. Rear guns to rapid fire intercept mode.”

Two streams of blue energy bolts swept through space under R2’s expert guidance and intercepted three missiles.

The final missile snuck through and detonated on the Omen’s aft shields.

The ship shuddered as Chewie felt his body being pushed forward against the seat harness, the residual forces bleeding through the inertial dampeners.

The rear shield was down to two third strength, he nosed the ship to a negative axis and rolled.

Just in time for the three Vultures’ cannon shots to miss completely.

R2 switched the rear cannons to a more powerful three shot burst mode and fired in retaliation.

One Vulture exploded instantly from R2’s pin point accuracy - as internal fuel stores breached and sent debris in a sphere outward.

He switched the shields to Double Aft mode, just in time to absorb three blaster hits he couldn’t avoid as he fired full port thrusters.

R2 fired the rear cannons again and killed another Vulture with a deflection shot that Chewie wished he could do so easily.

He equalized the shield, pulled the throttle to zero and flipped the ship over.

Chewie roared as he pulled triggers on the control yoke, sending streams of blaster bolts at the remaining Vulture.

It tried to evade with thruster bursts but there was just too much incoming fire.

The lower power shots meant to kill missiles, pockmarked the Vulture’s thin armor and hull.

It wrecked the left nacelle completely, including the engine in that side, sending it careening out of control to starboard.

He dialed down the fire rate and fired a careful three shot burst that caused a brief explosion as fuel ignited in the remaining droid’s engine.

Chewie looked at the holo image of Che’ri and she suddenly jumped with a fist of victory.

“Yes! I did it! Their hyperdrive is down!”

“Stop celebrating and get out of there!”

She gasped and got back in her pilot’s seat, “Going!”

He turned the Omen around, now having to fight against his own velocity to head in the direction of the four Vultures bearing down on the rapidly retreating Che’ri.

They were nearly sixty thousand kilometers distant at the moment and R2’s quick calculation indicated three minutes fifty-two seconds until they could be in cannon range.

“R2, can you calibrate a torpedo, detonate it behind the Vultures, just enough to kill them but leave Che’ri undamaged?”

The astromech considered the idea for two full seconds before answering.

“Yes.”

Chewie breathed a sigh of relief, but saw the immediate problem of physics rearing its ugly head again. They would still have to burn for another 72 seconds before R2 could launch the torpedo with an acceptable closure rate on the enemy.

“What’s her acceleration? Is she going to make it beyond the edge of the mass shadow?”

R2 made the calculation and made a sad negative noise in Binary, shaking his dome, “No, they will reach missile range before then.”

The cruel math and knowing the general tactics of Vulture droids, Chewie roared to the cockpit to vent his frustrations. Che’ri was going to get eight concussion missiles shot at her and there was nothing he could do about it. Her scout ship only had these Chiss electrostatic barriers that were clearly designed against a pure laser energy weapon paradigm. The only thing that would stop her from being turned into debris instantly was the strange hull armor. 

“Relax, Mr. Chewbacca,” she said over the comlink. There was tenseness and concentration in her eyes, but she clearly didn’t think she was about to die.

“You’re about to-”

“I know, Mr. Chewbacca. I have sensors and I’m a very good sky-walker. This is a scout ship. It’s not built to really fight, but it has other tricks to stay undetected and run away.”

“R2, if those Vultures fire missiles, how well can you ECM them at this range?”

“I can try, but the signal strength is the issue. I also need the active frequency data from the missile seeker heads to make a good counter attempt, which I will not have, as they’re not shooting at us.”

“Do whatever you can.”

Chewie watched with bated breath as the range counters and the angry red spheres in the holo sensor feeds catched up to the tiny green arrow icon that represented Che’ri’s scout ship. 

The instant that extreme range was reached, eight angry red pointed arrows appeared from the Vultures and shot forward at over 4000 Gs.

“Attempting ECM, 46 seconds to impact,” R2 announced.

Merely seconds later, the Omen had finally overcome its velocity disadvantage and Chewie triggered a torpedo with a growl of viciousness.

The weapon raced ahead of the ship and began streaking across the 30 000 km gap to reach its target.

The Omen was fitted with the latest generation of GAR anti-capital torpedo that could be mounted on fighter platforms. 

These were two-stage weapons that also included multi-warhead technology, allowing for three independent warheads to be released in the terminal phase, which could target multiple points on a ship and hit them at once, or completely focus the firepower on a single point. They could also have other mixes, such as two warheads and a single ECM penetration aid or a single warhead with two pen-aids.

R2 had released one of the latter, since they definitely didn’t want to make a very big bang and they both knew what a Vulture droid would do once they detected an incoming torpedo.

Sure enough, one of the four Vultures cut thrust and flipped around, bringing to bear not only its cannons, but also its own ECM against the incoming weapon.

Now Chewie could only just sit back, wait and hope.

Hope that Che’ri had something on that ship that could see her survive, because unless chiss metallurgy was significantly more advanced…

He growled in annoyance.

Give me a good bowcaster and a foe in my sights, he thought with annoyance.

The timers counted down.

He fixed his eyes on the enemy concussion missiles as they closed the gap to Che’ri with deadly finality.

5…4…3…

“Take this, droids!” she crowed.

The chiss scout ship suddenly spewed twelve… more scout ships?

Chewie blinked as his passive and even active scans reported twelve more scout ships appearing out of nowhere. Even an optical scan showed twelve identical scout ships.

Che’ri’s ship signature phased through another of what had to be a form of highly sophisticated decoy and now even the Omen’s sensors had no idea which ship was real. Only their active com link allowed Chewie to deduce that she had hid herself in the lower part of a sphere formation with her illusory duplicates.

He let out an amazed whine as the CIS concussion missiles were completely scattered, their seeker heads immediately confused and locking on to the fake illusory signatures.

R2 managed a jam on one of the eight missiles at this point, which sent it uselessly off course straight towards Mokivj, where it would run out of fuel and burn up in the atmosphere.

The remaining seven missiles, all caught up in the sophisticated electronic illusions, missed Che’ri completely, fusing their directional warheads to explode on empty space.

“And… jumping to hyper, see you later, Mr. Chewbacca!”

His sensors registered the hyper emission and her ship stretched into the other dimension with a flash of blue-white light.

The flipped Vulture started firing its cannons in an attempt to intercept the torpedo, but the extreme range combined with the ECM pen-aids and R2’s evasion routines meant the shots were always missing.

The remaining Vultures flipped around as one and fired as well.

This only managed to kill one of the pen-aids before the torpedo reached its terminal guidance and detonated.

Chewie reflexively averted his eyes from the bright flash.

The sensors were also blinded briefly, but compensated to reveal that all four fighters were nothing more than barely detectable remnants of a fading energy signature.

“Good work, R2. Let’s get back to those freighters. I don’t want any opportunists to potentially make a run for them. Only we are going to first set foot on them, if I have anything to say about it.”

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With the primary control room under my control and with M8s help in hacking the head of the tac droid, it was easy to infiltrate the enemy droid network. My speed in the assault and the fact that it had been my first target to disable with a low-strength Emerald Judgment, meant that the onboard safeties to self-destruct internal components had not been triggered.

M8 now virtually impersonated the tac droid and gave the order for every B1 and B2 to return to their recharging stations and shut down.

It also allowed me to lock down the entire factory to stop the workers from escaping.

Fact of the matter was, there was definitely a CIS spy among them to keep a general eye on events. No way that Dooku would let Solha play around with cortosis without a hidden leash.

Smoking out such a spy would depend on many factors, but for the moment it was best to keep the workers in the dark as much as possible. As such, I sent out an e-memo to everyone’s comlink, impersonating Duke Solha, that they were to report to one of the large loading bays on the eastern side of the complex building.

It addressed anything the workers might have heard or seen, stating that criminal intruders had tried to breach the factory and had been successfully dealt with by security.

M8 and I were digesting the data from the factory’s systems and reviewing everything when Anakin, Padme, Thrawn and the three workers recruited as an impromptu militia entered the control room.

“No way,” gasped one of them with a huge moustache and looked at me with emotions I could only quantify as a fan at an old sci-fi convention who had just met Harrison Ford. “Commander Tano?!”

One of the other workers slapped the guy upside the head. “Not now, Leb.”

“Ow, stop that, Huga,” Leb complained.

Huga just glared at the man, “I’m sorry for my colleague’s exuberance, commander.”

Thankfully, my helmet hid my amused expression and it took some effort to hide an outright laugh given what I was sensing from Leb.

“That’s all right,” I turned to Anakin. “Master, the factory is completely ours so to speak. I’ve also heard from Chewie that the freighter was stopped successfully. Solha tried to play a sleight of hand, but it didn’t work out. Also please tell Commander Thrawn, that he’ll be happy to know that Che’ri survived the brief battle in orbit with the deployed Vulture droids.”

The chiss nodded after Anakin’s translation, “That is a relief. My training has succeeded then.”

“Has neither captain of those ships contacted Chewie yet?” Anakin asked.

“No, Chewie decided that it was safer to jam and disable their communications.”

“What about local security? Did they scramble fighters?”

“They did. Chewie got me on comlink and I commandeered them under the GAR. Now they’ve got the Omen and a squadron of old Hammerheads keeping those ‘enemy freighters’ under guard.”

Anakin frowned, “What about the local governor?”

I knew what he was getting at. My hand gestured to the very sleepy trio of Solha siblings lying uncomfortably on the floor.

“In my mindwalk, I discovered Governor Dilvosh was thoroughly bribed by the Duke to not question why a serennian wanted to reactivate an old factory. Classic case of simple greed and the war being a very distant thing for the people of Mokivj. Many here just don’t care and think it’s the Core Worlds’ problem.”

Anakin frowned severely, “They are still part of the Republic, distance should be no excuse.”

“In an ideal galaxy, you’d be correct, general,” Padme sighed. “The truth of the matter is that to people on the fringe of the Unknown Regions even more so than the Outer Rim, the Republic only exists on flimsiplast and the Holonet.” 

“We have two… no, three big problems to deal with now,” I pulled out my armor interface spike from the systems. “Most pressing is the factory workers. There will be a CIS spy among them.” I gave a pointed look to the three workers in our midst.

“What?!” asked Leb in astonishment, feeling like I had just accused him and looking at his two colleagues incredulously.

Huga rolled his eyes, “She doesn’t mean us, Leb. Cimy, if you please.”

Cimy, the other twin brother, slapped Leb upside the head.

“Ow, ow, stop that already!”

“Does Solha know who it is?” Anakin asked.

“No, just that there is one. I ordered all the workers to a loading bay, it’s near a power transformer so it will disrupt any personal comms from linking to the Holonet.”

“Mistress, I’ve been monitoring, all workers have followed the instructions. No lifesigns detected elsewhere.”

“That’s a pity. It means he or she’s a good spy. Second problem…” I was about to speak further but stopped as my prescience blared into my montrals.

I turned to the three recruited workers. “I’m sorry about this.”

They promptly collapsed into dreamless sleep.

“Was that truly necessary, Ahsoka?” Padme shook her head, kneeling to shift their bodies into more comfortable positions.

“Considering what we have to talk about, yes. We have a factory producing an armor material that’s an effective paradigm shift in the current state of ground warfare. If the Separatists have it, the entire southern battle space could eventually collapse. Yes, cortosis armor can be beaten, but every clone will need a Merr-Sonn lightning gun to do it. There aren’t enough such weapons in the galaxy and the company will need months to retool production lines even if they get the emergency orders to build. Grenade launchers are another option, but you can’t use them in close quarters or indoors. Jedi could fight them with kinetic Force attacks, but few could fight them continuously in great numbers, unless you’re Mace Windu or Yoda.

“If we retool this entire factory to only produce clone armor. We could equip our southern forces and dominate the ground campaigns initially. Right until the CIS gets the idea of using self-destructing B1 droids packed with baradium explosives to charge into our lines. It’d be cheap and easy to do, as well. The GAR is forced to deploy Repeater teams in great numbers and artillery saturation strikes. This spreads quickly to the north as well, in fear that the CIS will try the same thing there. The amount of infrastructure destroyed in battles goes up exponentially across the galaxy, as does the collateral damage in casualties. This drives the CIS farther into the corner until they decide to violate the old accords on planetary orbital bombardment…”

I trailed off, realizing I had slipped into deep prescience, describing a full probability line as I beheld the horror of what was to come.

Padme’s eyes were equally horrified as she stared at me. “Then no one can have this place. We must destroy it.”

Anakin shook his head, “Easier said than done, senator. The quickest and surest way would lead to the devastation of this city. To do it safely would require demolition expertise, explosives and time. Between me and Chewie, we have the expertise, the latter two is the issue.”

“We also have the cortosis mine to worry about,” I folded my arms and looked up into the ceiling, wracking my brain for answers. “Using any form of explosive to seal it, results in disaster for the entire planet. The raw cortosis channels the explosive energy partially, deeper into the planetary crust. It activates many dormant volcanoes, which in turn devastates all the grasslands and most of the arable land. It happens so quickly that millions die and the ship capacity to evacuate everyone just doesn’t exist out here.”

“Snips,” Anakin looked at me grimly. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. The mining process for cortosis is a delicate, time consuming and laborious affair. The mining droids use pickaxes for goodness sake!”

Anakin gritted his teeth, “So we either doom this world, millions of people dead or we escalate the war resulting in the deaths of billions. I refuse to accept this choice. There must be another way! What about our sabotage?”

“It works for a time, assuming we let the factory remain in Solha’s hands, but when the faulty cortosis is discovered, they just report back here and a fix is implemented. It just delays the problem. If the Republic takes control, we end up trapping clones in effective microwave ovens when they’re hit with a blaster shot. The fix is implemented and we’re back where we started.”

He shook his head, “One step at a time. Let’s find this CIS spy, hopefully an idea will come that we all can live with soon.”

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In the interest of time, Anakin decided to throw the proverbial torch into the dry forest.

We entered the loading dock openly, with no tricks or deception and laid out the general situation for the 263 workers gathered there.

He did the talking as I was too busy laying down a Battle Meditation upon everyone that would keep them calm. In that situation, it was easy for M8 to scan and find someone trying to use a comlink. The spy was professional enough to not react immediately to the fact that General Skywalker had discovered the entire CIS factory operation on Mokivj. They bided their time.

The majority of the workers were jubilant that they were liberated from Solha’s clutches. Everyone had been hired under false pretenses and once they were in and saw the truth of what was being built, had been threatened with death to not only themselves, but their families as well.

With that emotional resonance in the background, spotting the fake was much easier and Anakin found her first.

He reached out a hand and closed a fist towards her.

She collapsed to the floor in a deep sleep.

This naturally led to some alarmed panic among the workers nearby, reflexively trying to help her.

“Stay back from her!” Anakin commanded. “She is a CIS spy.”

There were gasps and cries of disbelief.

Anakin lifted a hand with some theatricality; levitating the sleeping woman into the air overhead so everyone could see. A blaster pistol came out of her pocket, hovering beside her, before Anakin stripped her comlink and a few other effects. She didn’t have any obvious smoking gun that indicated her guilt, but I would definitely be mindwalking her later to learn all I could.

“Right now, all you can do is go home to your families and loved ones, spend time with them and cherish them,” he said as the spy began slowly flying towards him. “All I can ask is that you refrain from speaking about this on the Holonet. Tell your families if you must, but swear them to secrecy. You all know what you were building here. Think about what this would mean if either side gained control of this place.”

There was no way to Mind Trick so many, but I didn’t need to. I would let their own minds do that and so I pushed the vision of this world burning and choking on all of them, as either side fought for control of the cortosis. I also added a few choice snippets of the devastation of a few other worlds as the awful consequences of the Base Delta Zero doctrine came into existence - the complete surface destruction of a planet from orbit.

I might have overdone it a bit as a number of folk fainted or even burst into tears.

He gestured to the large cargo doors to the side of the massive bay and the motivators burst to life, splitting apart the doors.

The late afternoon sun streamed into the large space.

“You will all soon be contacted, where you will receive a generous severance package, courtesy of Duke Solha’s many assets.”

That got their attention as well and seemed to break through the misery at the thought of being jobless and unable to support their families.

Cheers resounded.

“Rest assured though, my next stop is to see the planetary governor. He has much to answer for.”

This time there were cheers and quite a few jeering boos.

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Thrawn regained contact with Che’ri soon after and the chiss bid a temporary farewell to conduct business of his own in Mokivj’s capital city. 

We commandeered one of the empty cargo haulers and locked up the three Solha siblings and the spy in the rear.

Before we left, I had M8 deploy an encryption on the factory’s security systems, locking it down so nothing could go in or out.

It took more than an hour to wind our way through the city’s air lanes and streets, time we used to just settle down and think. M8 volunteered to drive, letting Anakin and I meditate. Padme even joined us, using the techniques I had taught her.

“We are here, mistress.”

I opened my eyes to regard a well appointed three floor mansion, settled on a hectare of land which was surrounded by a two meter high wall. The overall style reminded me of Alderaanian architecture, but with a slight spin of the occasional sharp angle on the exterior. The front gate was guarded by one member of what looked like the Mokivj planetary militia. In a nearby guardhouse I could sense five more very bored minds who were playing low-stakes Sabacc.  

“We can’t exactly officially arrest him,” Padme glared at the large mansion.

“Sticking him in a cell for a few decades on Coruscant is appealing. No, we’re not here for that,” Anakin gave me a look and I nodded in agreement.

Padme frowned at both of us, “You figured out a plan?”

“We have,” he confirmed and pushed on the door release to hop out of the hauler.

I exited next and helped Padme down, following in Anakin’s striding wake.

The guard scrambled out of his small gate hut, hand poised on a holstered blaster on his hip but not drawing yet. His eyes widened as he took in Anakin in his full armored battle gear, including the lightsaber. Then the guard saw me in my clearly Mandalorian armor and now he was practically one moment away from raising the alarm.     

“I am General Skywalker of the Grand Army of the Republic. This is Commander Tano and Senator Padme Amidala. We are here to speak to Governor Dilvosh.”

The poor guard blinked and struggled to believe what his eyes were seeing. “Uh… w- w- I’ll- I’ll just-”

“Please relax,” Anakin gestured with his hand and the Mind Trick settled on the man’s mind.

“Yes, I’ll relax,” he said, his entire posture unwound and he lifted his hand away from his blaster.

“Now please, call inside and say that we want to speak to the governor.”

“I’ll just call inside.”

The guard promptly went back into the hut and began to get the ball rolling.

To the governor’s credit, he didn’t make us wait long and emerged from his home within less than eight minutes and walked down the long winding driveway for speeders and approached the gate.

“Open it,” he ordered the guard with a resigned air. “I’d rather have an intact gate when this is over with.”

Governor Athus Dilvosh was a man in his early fifties, with an extremely short haircut, salt-and pepper hair, slightly taller than Anakin and had the look of an active man gone slightly to seed, gaining weight as it became more difficult to maintain his physique with age. He wore a casual open white robe over a blue tunic and pants. His bare feet slapped on the stone of the driveway as he stopped by the gate, his blue eyes cold and assessing his new guests.

“Governor, we have to talk,” Anakin said promptly.

“No doubt, come in. This isn’t exactly a conversation for the public, now is it? Our local news media is a small affair, but it’s there and I’m usually a prime target for sniffing out a story.”

We followed Dilvosh back to his home and entered, which rather strangely had an actual wooden door that was completely manual, with nothing modern in sight to actuate it at all.

The first room was an entrance lobby that wouldn’t have been out of place in a four star luxury hotel; crystalline chandelier, two expansive carpeted staircases going up to the second floor on either side of the room, marble flooring, hunting trophies, traditional paintings of fantastic vistas in physical and holographic form.

Beyond this quaint luxury, there was deadly lethality. I sensed hidden Repeaters encased in the walls, ready to pop out from behind those paintings and other panels. There was also an occasional active scan that pinged every three seconds and blanketed the entire house.

We were met by a protocol droid of C-3P0’s general form factor, but had a different style of head, with bigger eyes and a wider vocorder in the mouth, colored in gleaming silver. It seemingly served the function of a butler, judging by the tray with four glasses of frothy wine it was perfectly balancing on its right hand.

“Master Dilvosh, was I correct in preparing some refreshments for your unannounced guests?”

It had a much deeper voice than C-3P0 and its inflection seemed to imply that it was very unimpressed at our rudeness for inconveniencing his master in this fashion.

“Yes, thank you, Q7-4G. In most circumstances, your foresight would be applauded but I don’t think my guests will accept those drinks. So I’ll be taking them, I have a feeling I’ll need it, given the discussion that’s about to take place.”

Dilvosh grabbed the tray from his droid and gestured for us to follow him through a side door in the lobby.

“Have a seat,” he gestured to the very comfortable chairs and sofas that surrounded a low table in a posh sitting room with an expansive view of the estate’s gardens, which were being maintained by small spherical droids that hovered over the exotic flower and plant beds. There was even a small endlessly circulating artificial river, the tinkling sound of which was channeled into the room to create a relaxing atmosphere.

He took one of the large single seat sofas, grabbed a glass of wine and downed it one shot, before putting down the tray.

Dilvosh gave Anakin and Padme a flinty stare. “Now, should I start packing for my Senate sponsored accommodations, general?”

“By all rights, you should. You accepted a bribe from the Separatists to use your planet as a manufacturing base. Certain hardline elements of the Senate would put you immediately on trial for treason.”

Dilvosh’s expression grew stormy, “I did not-”

Anakin raised a hand to interrupt him, “Yes, I know. It wasn’t as if Solha approached you and asked you to commit treason outright. You had the land, the people, the factory and the cortosis, just sitting there. He came to you as a businessman and so when that amount of credits was on the table. You’d be utterly foolish to say no, especially when Solha arrived at your meeting with two dozen commando droids as ‘escorts’. The message was loud and clear. The Republic is so very far away out here after all. After all , why would the Grand Army divert one of its warships away from the southern front lines to this little backwater? To help a lone governor from being extorted? No.”

The governor grabbed another glass of wine and the subtle tension that had coiled around his entire body began to unwind. “You’re remarkably well informed of events, Master Jedi. Am I to assume that you have the good Duke in custody then?”

“You may. He is in a rather uncomfortable position inside the hauler we arrived in, along with both his younger siblings, all unconscious.”

Dilvosh frowned at Anakin, then looked at Padme, his eyebrow rising as he took in the cortosis chest armor she was still wearing. He abruptly clapped his hands.

Q7 arrived in the room a few moments later, “Yes, master?”

“Send a signal to Colonel Jeem. He is to execute Plan Tau immediately.”

“At once, master.”

“Also tell your militia commander to plan for at least a squadron of ready Vulture droids to launch as soon as you attack Solha’s compound,” Anakin advised.

Dilvosh raised an intrigued eyebrow, “We only found the half-squadron already launched against your ship. He had more?”

“The Vulture droid is a great deal more compact than most would assume. They can be disassembled further in a way that a single tech who knows what they’re doing can put them back together in a few hours. This makes them much easier to smuggle into places.”

The governor nodded, “Relay the Master Jedi’s advice as well in my name, Q7.”

“Understood, master.”

The droid strode out with a sudden open legged gait that reminded me more of HK’s style of locomotion.

Dilvosh briefly looked at me now, before saying, “I suppose then, thanks are in order, Master Jedi.”

“You’re welcome, but we still have something else to discuss. The cortosis mine, who discovered it?”

“Originally, that would be my grandfather, nearly forty years ago. He had a business partner who helped fund the exploration. Then to build the first mining shaft when a significant vein of the material was discovered. Unfortunately, there was an accident in the burgeoning mine which killed them both. The funding dried up and as far as I remember my father just never thought the business case was compelling enough, especially when his own fortunes came under strain at the same time. It was only last year when I was contacted by Solha, who had somehow heard of the failed mining venture that the mine was properly finished, allowing the ore to begin flowing.”

Anakin gave me a knowing look.

What a very convenient chain of events. Darth Plagueis might have been a supreme biologist, working with life essence directly and extremely strong in the Force, but he was also an influential Muun who breathed business and money in his public persona. It would be childsplay for him to manipulate the finances of the Dilvosh family.

“Your father never tried to publicize the discovery?”

Dilvosh gave Anakin an unimpressed look at the question. “Please, Master Jedi. Ascribe my late father some measure of intelligence. We know very well cortosis’ potential impact on the galaxy. Even had this war not broken out, we would’ve had every major military contractor either lining up at our door or sending assassins to kill us in the night, Blastech especially.”

“Apologies, governor. May I ask how he died?”

“Suicide. After all his losses and the debts that just kept on piling up with no end in sight…”

I saw an old pain, long scabbed over in Dilvosh’s eyes.

He shook his head, “Incidentally, the Jedi were another group he was worried about. In our experiments and research, we knew that if it did that to blaster weapons, then it would also shield against those fancy lightsabers you all carry around.”

“Then you realize that when word of the cortosis is leaked-”

“Don’t try to frighten me, Master Jedi. I’ve had a long time to think on the subject, much longer than you have I wager. I know that when the Separatists realize their secret operation here has been stopped, they will try anything to prevent the Republic from getting their hands on the mine.”

Anakin nodded, “Good, that simplifies our discussion considerably. Understand this, as a Jedi, a general, a leader of men, I don’t want cortosis armor for the Grand Army. Yes, it would be nice to have, considering how many lives it would save in the short term, but it destabilizes too much and threatens the interests of too many powerful and rich people.”

“Then what do you suggest, Master Jedi? I ask not just out of my greed and self-interest. I love my home here and the frontier spirit of the people that share this world with me. My grandfather moved here from Alderaan because he was sick of the indulgent and spoiled life of the Core Worlds. We used to be a full noble house on the old homeworld, with all the privileges that entailed.”

“I suggest you listen to my padawan. Ahsoka?”

I stood and pulled off my left armored glove, dropping it onto the table and held out my bare hand towards the governor.

“Please, take my hand.”

He frowned at my offered appendage and looked up into my Mando visor. “What is this? Why?”

“Jedi have many abilities, governor. What we have to talk about cannot be spoken aloud. It can only be communicated mind to mind directly. I assure you, this will only be done on a surface level. I will seek no secrets or private information. We will just be talking, just without our mouths and we’ll also be going on a small flight of imagination.”

Dilvosh looked at my hand for a long moment, clearly debating with himself. In the end, he had no real choice about the matter. Not if he wanted to save his world.

He put down his glass of wine and clasped my hand.

“Brace yourself, governor.”

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A/N: This was a doozy. The potential powder keg of a cortosis mine of that size struck even me by surprise as I thought about it.

Enjoy your weekend and stay awesome folks. 

The Force Wills - Chapter 111

Anakin slammed his right fist into the console in front of him.

His frustration was shared by me. Bloody Shroud. Our speed in getting here on time to meet Thrawn had meant that there could be minimal deviation or waiting for clone trooper backup to catch up to us.

“They have effective weapons, Skyguy. We don’t.”

“Yes,” he let out a deep breath. “We-  we can’t help them now. Instruct M8 to put a time delayed virus into the manufacturing process.”

“You don’t want us to blow this place?” I asked just for confirmation. Anakin usually defaulted to the ‘blow up the bad guys' plan.

“We could, but with the size of these fusion reactors, the only safe way would be to trigger meltdowns.”

“Which would only delay things, they’d just repair or replace after we left,” I nodded, seeing the problem. “So anything specific you want to do?”

He stared at the diagram of the production lines in front of us, before pointing, “There, that’s the process for converting cortosis ore into long fiber strands, they’re using hybrid laser-molecular assembly. Probably because the material would laugh at a high temperature plasma forge. We need to introduce a fault here, something that won’t be easily detected in later quality control.”

“What about altering the molecular chain to only bond at five points?” I brought up a holoscreen to show the current arrangement in the system. “Currently, it’s in this six bond formation. We change that, perhaps strong enough blasters like a DC15X sniper shot should still make a mess of things.”

“Effectively creating another allotrope of the cortosis, will it visually look the same at least?”

“M8?” I prompted.

“Analysing… it will have a lighter sheen, mistress. Unless we compensate at some other point in the process. The cortosis will be an effective superconductor. Is that what you’re aiming for?”

“Precisely. If enough energy is dumped into it, it’ll fry the internal systems of a droid through radiant EM emission within the chassis. Can you do it?”

“If we add another step to the droid’s armoring process during the forging, adding a layer of inert carbon in the alloy layers, then it should disguise our alteration, mistress.”

I gave Anakin a look and he eventually nodded, “Do it.”

“M8, create the virus, set it to infect within four hours.”

My integrated droid barely took a few seconds, before the virus was ready and uploaded into the system.

“Done, mistress.”

“Good girl. Where’s the closest armory?”

The holo changed to an internal rendering of the factory. “Three floors down, twenty meters from the turbolift.”

Anakin quickly updated Thrawn and the chiss nodded.

We combat stacked ourselves with Anakin in the lead, Thrawn in the middle and I took tail-end charlie.

We burst out of the control room and rushed down the hallway.

‘Mistress, a silent alarm has just been tripped. I think it must’ve been the B2 being pinged on their com net and receiving a passive destruction signal.’

“Frak! Master, alarm!” I called in warning, feeling the entire factory suddenly explode with movement as the droid patrols reacted.

His only response was to switch on his lightsaber.

One of my other lightsabers flung themselves into my left hand and moments later I had all three my blades in hand or hovering around me.

We turned left at the intersection and Anakin was carefully scanning the floor before he plunged his lightsaber down into it.

Four slashes later he was pulling out a square section of the grated floor and sent it shooting down the corridor with a Force Push.

A B1 stepped into the intersection there, only to receive the heavy durasteel projectile straight in the chest.

A normal B1 would’ve been bowled over, rag dolled and probably lose a few limbs.

The cortosis B1’s chest shattered under the kinetic hit, lodging inside and pinning it straight to the floor.

He jumped down into the hole and continued slashing until he had made us our own way of getting to the lower floor.

Thrawn jumped down, but three B1s popped into the corridor from a distant intersection and immediately opened fire on me.

My lightsabers danced through the air, intercepting each bolt with smooth efficiency as I carefully stepped backward. I didn’t bother sending the blaster fire straight back and dropped down the hole the moment Thrawn was clear.

As I landed, Anakin was already using the wreckage of two B1s as kinetic bowling balls to ram into a B2.

I joined the attack, using the Force to shoot the B2 directly into the ceiling.

The B2’s armor was bent and torn in a dozen places already, its arm cannon spraying blaster fire in a vain hope to hit us.

Anakin wrenched the blaster arm off with a gesture, before again plunging his lightsaber into the floor to create our next route down.

My will grabbed a hold of the combined wreckage, which I arranged into a rough shield and aimed it to my right.

I grabbed Thrawn to join me behind the improvised cortosis shield, just as six B1s and four B2s marched into the corridor and opened fire.

The storm of orange-red blaster bolts splashed off the cortosis like water or was channeled directly into the energy equivalent of a ricochet into the floor and ceiling.

‘Done,’ Anakin announced.

He jumped through the hole.

“Go!” I shouted to Thrawn.

He couldn’t jump exactly without risking injury as a Jedi could, so I had to stand there and just take an ever increasing volume of fire.

It was less than six seconds for him to climb down, in that time my cortosis shield started to glow nastily on the edges.

I sent the shield towards the droids with a Force Push, causing it to burst apart like a shotgun of cortosis weave armor.

When I landed on the next floor, we had no enemy company and Anakin was cutting his way through for the final time.

A few seconds later the droid squad reached our hole above and one of them got the bright idea of dropping a thermal detonator on us.

A catching and flinging gesture with my hand, sent the spherical grenade right back up into the B1’s face that had thrown it.

“You idiot!” I heard another B1’s voice shout before it was drowned out in the cracking thump of an explosion.

I could sense that had wiped out the entire squad, whilst my follow up Force Push had also been enough to dampen the overpressure that had raced down our makeshift passage.

On the next floor, we restacked and sprinted down the corridor, only to run straight into a twelve strong B1 squad also heading to secure the armory.

‘Snips! Wave!’

I joined him in releasing a Force Wave.

We managed to harmonize ourselves with the Force and each other, sharing the burden of the technique.

The droids were all hit, picked up off their feet and shot backwards as if a speeding hauler had crashed into them.

It was like a small hurricane of droid parts flying backward down the corridor at this point, even the air rushed in to fill the brief void created in the wake of the stupendous kinetic force.

I had to grab Thrawn by the arm to get him moving in the aftermath, as his astonishment was reaching levels where even his legendary self-control was struggling to manage.

Anakin stabbed his blade into the armory’s blast door, beginning to cut his way through.

I sent one of my blades to assist after I had regained my equilibrium in the Force.

Soon we had a neat circular hole cut out of the thick door.

Anakin made a curt backwards gesture and the glowing molten plug of cut durasteel flew backward and crashed into the opposite wall.

Inside we were confronted with racks and racks of CIS weapons for their droids, enough for an entire company. The weapons we were after were mounted on a dedicated rack in the far end of the converted storage room.

The Merr-Sonn EG-32 was a rather bulky rifle, with a length close to that of the clone DC15A rifle. It was not something you could easily wield indoors. Its ergonomics were awful, with only the grip and trigger being nominally designed for a humanoid hand. The rest of the thing had blocky protrusions as a result of the manufacturer being unable to properly miniaturize the power conditioning components of the weapon. Combine this with a battery pack pushing the weight of the weapon to just under seven kilos and it was a rather hefty thing for something you were expected to wield in a firefight quickly.

I made a mental note to definitely get one for Chewie.

It at least had a sling that would allow you to carry the weight on your shoulder. Given that the CIS hadn’t removed that, at least showed that someone had a brain that it wouldn’t necessarily just be B1 droids wielding this weapon in an emergency.

It also only had 50 shots per power cell, which was about as big as my clenched fist.

We tried to load up with as many as we could fit on our own belts, but it was still far from a comfortable loadout to go into battle with.

“All right, primary control room or tertiary first?” I asked Anakin.

“Both locations will be reinforced heavily by now, we need to create a diversion strong enough that would pull those away.”

Thrawn raised a hand, “If you are speaking about the control rooms. Might I suggest, General, that you and I first assault one of the reactors, whilst your apprentice infiltrates towards the Tertiary control with stealth.”

“They will think we’re trying to blow up the factory, playing into their expectations of us,” Anakin nodded. “Snips, think you can manage?”

I perused that probability line before nodding, “It won’t be easy, but yes, I can. I suggest you attack the reactor closest to the disused parts of the factory. Padme’s group is sure to head there first. You’ll be able to rendezvous and unify our efforts.”

Both of us twitched when we sensed a droid squad approaching with four B2s.

“We better hurry, go Snips!”

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“Are you sure coming this way is a good idea?”

The question was whispered harshly but Padme barely suppressed rolling her eyes in annoyance as LebJau asked the question for the third time in the last hour.

The maintenance worker at the factory she had managed to ‘recruit’ was very jittery as they moved through the deeper bowls of the structure. He was a short, muscled man with a truly impressive moustache that radiated a fair distance from either side of his face.

“Oh for the star's sake, LebJau,” Huga scowled at his friend, hefting his EG32 in an awkward ready pose. “This is the shortest way to Reactor Three.”

“Or do you think we can walk straight through droid patrols armed with these things?” Cimy asked sarcastically in the wake of his brother’s explanation.

Huga and Cimy were tall, blonde haired, identical twins, wearing blue and green maintenance overalls. They had been the first she had managed to convince in her crusade to make Duja’s death mean something. They in turn had managed to convince her that bringing LebJau was a good idea because of his expertise in the electronics around the fusion reactors.

The problem was, the man was very excitable and prone to jump at shadows, thinking that droids would pop out of every corner to ambush them. He had already wasted a number of electric blasts from his rifle on the inert, dusty equipment they had passed.

Padme could admit that the abandoned parts of the factory were not exactly a pleasant experience to walk through. The noises of creaking machinery, their footsteps echoing through the large spaces, the minimal lighting as they passed through the skeletons of various old assembly lines, all contributed to an eerie feeling that had settled in her spine and didn’t want to go away.

“I know it’s the shortest way, but what if the Separatists put in extra sensors we don’t know about, what if Duke Solha is here-” LebJau’s nervous babbling was interrupted by Cimy giving the man a light slap upside the head.

“Get yourself together, all right? I know this is scary, Leb, but we can do this.”

“Ow, okay, yes, yes,” LebJau took a deep breath. “Sorry guys and… uh, senator.” The man was also supremely awkward in Padme’s presence and she could see his boyish crush practically written on his forehead. “It’s just if the Duke catches us-”

“Don’t think about that, LebJau,” Padme said reassuringly, smiling at him as they walked out of the abandoned assembly line and into an adjacent corridor. “Think only about our success. That we’ll stop this factory and the Separatists from making more weapons and droids.”

“Will that actually help?”

“It might at very least settle your nerves.”

“I’ll- I’ll try.”

“Also Duke Solha is nobility from Serenno and the last place we would find him is in the dirty, abandoned parts of the factory he owns. Have you three even seen him once?”

“No, we just know thanks to our supervisor and when we were hired initially,” Huga shrugged, his face serious as he scanned his eyes into the distance down the corridor. “All right, we take a right at the next junction and we’ll be in the active parts of the factory. Reactor is only a dozen meters further. Absolute silence from now on. Leb, we need you to work your magic on the surveillance circuitry before we get there.”

LebJau visibly steeled himself and with confidence that didn’t reach his eyes said, “I’ll get it done, Huga.”

“You don’t, this is over before it begins.”

The twin had taken the lead in the factory after a brief but childish game with his brother using their hands with some form of sign language, something they apparently did to settle all disputes between them.

He held up a hand to pause their advance at the junction and pointed at the wall to their left.

LebJau carefully put down his EG-32 on the floor, making sure it wouldn’t fall over, before pulling out a hydrospanner from his toolbelt and getting to work on the joins of a wall panel.

Behind it was a blinking agglomeration of switches, conduits, smaller cables, all marked in a jumble of Aurebesh characters that Padme couldn’t make heads or tails of.

He brought out more tools and it was the work of a few minutes before he made a positive signal with his hand.

Huga gestured to follow and Padme drew her blaster. Mostly just to make herself feel better.

They carefully crept down the corridor, staying to one side of it and strained their ears to hear any indication of approaching droids.

According to Huga, there were only four B1s as a general rule guarding the fusion reactor room.

With the energy rifles it would help even the odds, but Padme was under no illusion that it would be easy. These three weren’t soldiers and she couldn’t help but feel guilt that she was probably leading them to their deaths here. She had played on their desire to see their world free of the hidden CIS influence. There was just… no other choice. She couldn’t do nothing.

Calling home to either Naboo or Coruscant risked alerting the ever pervasive spies of the CIS. Even if her call managed to elude them, it would surely cross the desk of Palpatine eventually and he would definitely inform Dooku.

Then there was the other option.

The closed mental door in her mind leading towards Anakin and Ahsoka ‘glared’ at her with a renewed ferocity. She had no idea why her mind was getting that impression. It wasn’t as if that door had eyes.

At this point, she imagined Anakin was somewhat irked at her for going so long without some form of mental contact.

Both he and Ahsoka were neck deep in the war and she was sure their mission to Zygerria had long since concluded successfully.

Huga halted them at the primary blast doors to the reactor room. He took out a code cylinder from his pocket, inserted it and also typed in a secondary code.

With a hiss and whine of motivators, the huge door rose up into the bulkhead housing.

He snuck a brief peek with one eye and immediately ducked his head back, holding up four fingers. 

“Hello?! Anyone there?” asked the voice of a B1 droid 

The clanking of mechanical feet getting closer reached their ears.

Huga gestured a hand frantically, his eyes telling them to wait as he properly settled the EG-32 into his shoulder and brought the barrel up.

Cimy and LebJau also raised their weapons and Padme could see the fear on their faces. For her part she brought up her blaster in an entirely futile gesture.

The B1 stepped into view, its weapon still at waist level.

A whipping crackle that snapped through the air, followed by a flash of blue light, heralded the B1 getting hit by two of three streams of arc energy.

LebJau shot again, this time hitting the droid on the shoulder, but it was already dead - the cortosis armor smoking with three glowing holes in it.

It fell over with a loud clang on the grated floor.

“Go!” snapped Huga frantically.

He flung himself forward to land prone on the floor, his twin frantically jumping forward over him to land in a rather painful manner.

Huga fired again to cover his twin’s recovery, missing twice and only hitting the walls near the other B1 he was targeting.

LebJau rolled along the floor in a rather comedic fashion, but managed to frantically shoot as well, choosing another B1 as his desperate target.

Padme brought her blaster to bear, exposing only her right arm and as little as she could manage and pulled the trigger frantically.

Her first shot missed, splashing ineffectually off the cortosis armor, but the next three hit the B1 right on its blaster rifle.

The remaining B1s return fire missed just over the heads of her small team, slamming into the floor and sending up fountains of sparks.

Huga managed to finally hit a droid, hitting it in the lower part of the chassis. Bright electric arcs played over its form as the cortosis tried to dissipate the energy, but then a shot from Cimy hit as well and dropped it.

Padme shifted aim as quickly as she could, trying for another shot on the last B1s weapon.

The three maintenance workers fired frantically as fast as the EG-32s would cycle.

The B1 died under a hail of arc and blaster fire.

All three men were left in a stupefaction because of their success and just stared as the last B1 fell over backwards with a clatter of cortosis armor on durasteel.

“We did it,” said LebJau faintly, his moustache twitching and eyes dilated.

The twins were also frozen on the floor surveying the room that reeked of ozone and blaster discharge.

The fusion reactor was mounted in a large spherical casing, hung overhead from large struts that had been welded into the superstructure. That thankfully meant that none of their stray shots had come close to impacting it and only some of the monitoring equipment and screens along the walls had suffered damage.

“We did it!”

LebJau practically cheered, jumping up with his rifle held above his head. 

Her instincts screaming, she rushed forward and grabbed a hold of the rifle, gently prying away the man’s hand from the trigger and firmly encouraging the weapon downward until he had it in a proper grip. Padme gave him a mild glare, to which he gave a chastised apologetic half-grin.

The twins recovered at this point, getting wearily to their feet, visibly shaking as they came down from their adrenaline highs. Huga even had to quickly put down his weapon and gave a few dry heaves, spitting out coagulated saliva.

Cimy coughed and gave a raised eyebrow to her, “Senator, you… handled that rather well…”

“I’m no stranger to this, you all did the best you could, thank you.”

“We… you told us what we were getting into. There’s just nothing that can prepare you for facing the real thing…” he coughed again, shaking his head to clear it.

“All right, Leb, you take fuel input,” Huga pointed, his hand shaking. He deactivated his weapon and slung it over his shoulder. “Cimy, output regulation and I’ll handle the main computer.”

“How long will this take?” Padme asked.

“Safe shutdown? Two minutes,” Huga said as he began tapping on the largest control panel in the room. “Sabotaging in a way that they don’t detect when they switch it back on, another few minutes at least.”

She holstered her blaster and picked up his energy rifle, intending to cover the main door and their only real exit from the reactor room.

Only to jump back when the blast door slammed shut in her face.

She whirled around to ask the twins what was going on, only to find the computer panels they had been working at were all dark.

“Ah, jaddik!” Huga swore, smashing his fists into the dead panel. “They locked us out. They know!”

“Yes, we do.”

A single monitoring station on the wall came alive with the regal, aristocratic face that Padme wanted to shove a blaster bolt into.

Duka Solha’s cold blue eyes regarded them with thinly veiled contempt. His perfectly combed gray-white hair reached his neck, with a thick moustache that flowed into a beard but left his chin smooth. It was a style she had only ever seen serennian men really adopt.

“Senator Amidala,” Solha bowed his head slightly. “A pleasure to finally make your acquaintance. I’ve heard so much about you from the good Count.”

“I have nothing to say to you and am interested in nothing you have to say,” Padme scowled.

“Now that is quite rude from someone of your stature and pedigree, senator. We might be enemies, but that is no reason to be discourteous. Oh, is this perhaps because of the fate of your dear Duja?”

If there was ever a time that Padme wished she was Force sensitive and trained to use it as Ahsoka was, now was that time. She wanted nothing more than to reach through the screen and strangle the high-bred bastard.

“Surprised I know her name, senator? I make a point of studying my enemies in depth, no matter how seemingly insignificant and inconsequential they are. Even your three newly acquired associates,” Solha smiled at the three men with a knowing look, then looked off to the side, clearly reading from a screen out of view. “Let’s see, Huga and Cimy Lilde, first generation Mokivj, born of colonist parents originally from Corellia. LebJau Thind, formerly of Chandrilla, family of first generation colonists. Your local addresses, comlink codes, Holonet IDs… I have it all.”

Padme bore the weight of guilt, knowing what Solha was likely going to do next with that information.

“What do you want?” she asked, with gritted teeth.

“Now that is the question, senator. Isn’t it? On the one hand, I could just send a dozen B2s to your location and have you gunned down. You may have those EG32s, but they won’t help against that many cortosis droids. I could flood the room with fire suppressant, killing you all with the flick of a switch. Count Dooku would certainly reward me handsomely once I present him with your dead body.”

“Then what is in your other hand?” she asked, if only to keep the man talking.

“You become my permanent guest on my estate here on Mokivj. You see, I don’t doubt that someone of your stature came all this way out here without leaving behind insurance. You have no doubt discovered all that Duja knew and more so, therefore you sent out a call for assistance when you left Batuu. It therefore won’t be long until a Republic warship is hovering over our heads.”

It wasn’t difficult to see where he was going with this.

“I will not be held hostage, Solha,” Padme shook her head, glaring.

“Do you really think you have any choice in the matter, senator?”

“There is always a choice,” she retorted and slowly drew her blaster.

Solha frowned, blinking at the resolve she was projecting with her face. “What are you doing, senator?”

She raised the weapon and without flinching twisted it inward and held the barrel against her temple.

Solha scoffed, his eyes widening, “Don’t be ridiculous! You’d seriously take your own life, instead of being held hostage?”

“As you said, you’d be paid very well to deliver my head to Dooku on a silver platter. However, the Republic will then have a free hand to invade this world and shut down the factory permanently. Not to mention making use of the cortosis. Thank you for finding the mine, by the way. My death will then have been the catalyst for the end of this war. I can think of no better way to die really.”

He stared at her like she had just declared herself goddess of the universe. “You- you mean it? You… that’s impossible. You can’t seriously think it’ll go down that way?”

She flicked the safety switch and the blaster’s energy audibly whined to lethal firing mode. “It might, it might not. Either way, I’ve made my choice. What is yours?”

“My choice… my choice, senator. Is to not play this game at all! You can stay and rot there for all I care!”

The screen shut down.

Padme kept her blaster right where it was.

LebJau shook himself out of the terrified stupefaction he had been trapped in. “Uh, s- se- senator? You can drop the gun now… Can’t you?”

“He’s still watching and I’m not bluffing,” Padme said flatly, staring into the black screen. “I hear one droid coming, I’m pulling this trigger. I won’t be his hostage or killed by droids.”

A whine of plasmatic energy echoed in the reactor room.

Padme was startled so badly she nearly pulled the trigger.

She whirled around and saw what was clearly the front leading edge of a blue lightsaber piercing through the blast door.

It was a hue of color that she would know anywhere.

It felt like her heart both skipped a beat and soared, yet she still had a con to run. Her mind raced and struggled to arrive upon an acceptable course of action. Solha could still kill them all with the push of a button and if Anakin was here, then he’d already been making life hell for the serrenian.

The lightsaber had carved a large hole in the thick durasteel and the newly made plug was supernaturally pulled out with the Force.

Anakin arrived in a blur of movement through it, then reached out with an open hand to make a fist.

She heard the whine of metal twisting and the popping of broken electronics echoing throughout the room.

“Senator,” he said in greeting, his stormy eyes taking in her blaster’s position. “I’ve disabled the fire suppression system, you can put the blaster down.”

Padme flicked the blaster’s safety and lowered it. Their eyes met and after far too long, she opened the door of her mind, letting him in. She also felt Ahsoka doing the equivalent of poking her head in before retreating, clearly very busy.

She basked in his returned presence as he stretched the moment of time.

Their minds intertwined in the warmest embrace she had ever felt.

How she had missed this.

‘You were seriously faking him out?’ his voice was amused.

‘It was working. I wouldn’t seriously kill myself in this situation, but I needed him to believe I would.’

‘Yes, I know, but things are more complicated.’

He unfurled a string of memories she watched with him. She saw their meeting with a brand new species of the Unknown Regions, saw their infiltration, the problems with sabotaging such an extensive factory in any meaningful way actually had. Not to mention the greater implications of a cortosis mine being on the planet.

The moment passed.

“Wow, a Jedi,” said LebJau faintly and then visibly caught himself, panicking as if he hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

Padme, aware of her audience, quickly introduced her small ‘support squad’.

“Pleasure to meet you all and you have my personal thanks for supporting the senator and Republic in this,” Anakin said with a bow. “I will ask that you continue doing so and follow me. We’re going to need every EG32 we can muster.”

Huga and Cimy looked at each other, before nodding. “As you say, Master Jedi. We’ve come this far already.”

“Let’s go!” said LebJau eagerly and rushed out of the reactor room.

They hurried outside, awkwardly ducking through the hole in the blast door.

‘We’re going to have trouble with that one,’ Anakin thought.

Back in the corridor, Padme’s attention was completely on the chiss.

It was so strange to see what to her eyes was a pantoran, but with completely red eyes and missing the traditional facial markings. It would be interesting to see a genetic analysis of the two races. Had they been one people in the past, but cast to different parts of the galaxy? The differing conditions leading to divergence.

She formally bowed her head. “Greetings Commander Thrawn,” she said in her rather rusty Meese Caulf.

“Greetings, Ambassador Amidala?” he asked leadingly.

“Senator,” she corrected.

“Fascinating, are your people in the habit of sending sector governors on spy missions?”

Padme could only chuckle, “It depends on the individual senator.”

Anakin emerged and quickly organized them into a column, with him taking the lead, Thrawn as the rear guard, and her three recruits taking up the middle around her.

Their group of six now carefully advanced, taking a right turn at the first intersection, marked with a sign that indicated ‘Assembly Line 9’.

A few minutes walk later, they stopped at a blast door that Anakin opened with a gesture.

Without pause he guided them in and Padme gaped at what she was seeing.

It was a huge industrial area, with multiple individual assembly lines, automated machines at each point manipulating, attaching, scanning and painting.

But it was not war droids being assembled here… it was clone armor.

Cortosis weave clone armor.

Her mind struggled to make sense of it at first, why would Solha be building cortosis armor meant for…

Then the realization hit and Ahsoka’s briefing during the induction into Fulcrum brought everything into perspective. As usual, the manipulative hand of Palpatine was laid bare and Padme could only marvel at the master plotter at work.

On the one hand, cortosis droids, on the other, cortosis armored clones and in the middle - Jedi.

Solha was probably convinced he was building the clone armor for infiltrators to wear.

Anakin guided them over to a production line that had chest and back pieces of cortosis clone armor. He picked up one set, immediately walked over to Padme and dropped it on her shoulders, beginning to adjust the shoulder straps.

“General,” she objected in annoyance.

“It’s not going to be a comfortable fit, senator, but at least it’ll keep you alive,” he said, locking the clips at the waist. Padme looked down and couldn’t help but feel utterly ridiculous. The chest plate was pushing uncomfortably on her bust and her waist would clearly bump around as she walked. “You three, grab one and armor up. Thrawn, you as well.”

Anakin rushed over to another nearby assembly line and grabbed a clone helmet, which he shoved into Padme’s hands.

“Really, general?” she asked.

“These droids could get lucky and we’re not just fighting them. Solha also has two others working for him here, family members, and a number of smugglers. We took care of most of them, but there might still be more he can call on.”

Padme put on the helmet, seeing his logic, but ended up having to push in her hair bun awkwardly to get it down.

It was a novel experience to actually see what the troopers experienced when having these on. The field of view was generally adequate, but it blocked off parts of her peripheral vision, especially downward.

“Tap the side here,” Anakin demonstrated with another helmet, before throwing it at Huga.

Padme did so and flinched as the interior of the helmet came alive with holographics.

It presented a bearing indicator at the top of her vision, which shifted with her head. It showed a small diagram at the bottom left, showing a small humanoid body with green chest and head, but red legs and arms - indicating missing armor pieces. Bottom right it had already interfaced with her blaster and showed how many shots she had left in it.

LebJau was the last to don his helmet and was marvelling at its features-

“Everyone down!” Anakin called urgently. His command somehow wormed its way straight through her brain and into her legs.

She found herself ducking down behind the closest solid piece of the assembly line.

Bolts of blaster fire seared over their heads and blew holes in the conveyor belts, even sparking off the armor pieces.

Anakin and Thrawn returned fire with their EG32s, the snap crackling of the energy bolts echoing throughout the space over the noise of the factory.

“Get ready to move!” he shouted as Huga, Cimy and LebJau joined in firing at the enemy.

Padme chanced by raising her head to look in the direction of the incoming fire but Anakin was already next to her in the next moment, getting her on her feet and they all ran for the door they had used getting in.

She looked back just in time to see Anakin making a swooping gesture with his left hand.

A massive overhead crane tore itself off the ceiling and came crashing down into the assembly lines, crushing six B2s in an instant.

They piled out of the massive room, back in the corridor and ran as fast their legs could carry them.

Things were happening so fast and she hated this cursed helmet!

Blaster bolts were now chasing them down the corridor, Anakin abruptly pushed her slightly left by the arm, whilst she heard his lightsaber slashing through the air.

She barely kept her footing as they whirled around the corner of an intersection.

“Where are we going?!”

“One of the other fusion reactors and causing as much trouble as we can along the way!”

“Why?!”

Anakin only shook his head as they ran.

‘Where do you think Ahsoka is at this moment?’ he thought to her.

‘Oh.’

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The droid patrol stomped down the corridor at a hurried pace.

I watched them go beneath me from my position in the ceiling.

Playing cat and mouse in this situation was rather annoying, as I had already managed to sabotage the production lines controlled by the Tertiary controls. Now all that remained was to deal with the Primary control room.

The droid patrol turned a corner and I lowered myself out of my little hiding place.

Pushing outwards with my senses, I waited for the gap to appear.

Duke Solha had set a pretty tight net of patrols to cover all the approaches to his location. Yet it wasn’t perfect and he had only so many droids to use. He even had the survivors of his smuggler band around him, including his younger brother and sister - both in their middle ages. All of them were chips off the old block that spawned them, though the sister was clearly not enjoying her time, slumming it in the factory. They were dressed in rugged outdoor clothes, but the higher quality was so ostentatious in comparison to the smugglers, that I could practically see the credits dripping off them.

The gap opened.

Now.

A burst of Force Speed had me down the corridor within seconds, my will reaching out to short out surveillance sensors that passed me.

Their tactical droid was monitoring, but my careful approach was not enough to trip its logic about the blitzes of static from the sensors that were getting closer to the control room.

I turned a corner, lifted a section of the floor and fell into my next hidey hole.

Avoiding the sightline of another droid patrol.

When they were gone, it was another brief sprint, opening the door to a cleaning supplies store room and ducking inside. 

Inside was a haphazard pile of deactivated cleaning and general maintenance droids gathering dust, some were in one piece and others had their parts strewn around.

“M8, scan these droids, how many can at least follow a program and move?”

“There are seven, mistress.”

“Show me.”

In my HUD, the particular droids in question were highlighted; three floating maintenance droids roughly the size of a basketball, four tracked versions of the engineering droid that was often used in the reactor rooms of starships.

“I’ll switch them on, you reprogram. I want to confuse things a bit for our adversaries.”

Within less than two minutes I had a small squad of helpers who were chirping and gonking at me.

“All right, set them to swarm out of the room, then approach the control room from random directions, one minute after I have left the room.”

“Done, mistress.”

I nodded, then snuck out and closed the door behind me.

My burst of speed put me within a revolving gap in the patrols and at this point it felt like I was in an invisible moving maze. If I went too fast, I could run right into a patrol, which was just as dangerous as moving too slowly.

At a four way intersection of corridors I took a left, rushed down twenty meters, then ducked right into an abandoned storage room.

I walked to the other side of the dusty space and felt around the wall. There was an active power conduit, a few load bearing pillars, a small AC junction that was too small for anyone to fit inside. Beyond that was another durasteel wall that was on the southern wall of the control room and my target.

Getting there conventionally was possible, but would be an awful hassle, especially when I could just cut my way through here. It was also too obvious a direction to attack from.

All the bad guys were looking towards the only entrance of the control room. All of them were also donning cortosis armor as Anakin’s larger team was wreaking havoc. Now that my improvised droid helpers had been spotted by the tac droid heading in their direction, it was neatly confusing things and diverting more droids away from the control room.

My lightsabers floated up into the air under my will and lit themselves.

Their tips pointed towards the wall and hovered closer.

I gave a twist of my wrist for a bit of mnemonic help and the blades began rapidly orbiting around a point, beginning to mimic a drill.

It was rather challenging as I had also had to disrupt any localized sensors in the path of my lightsabers.

The singe of energy plasma rapidly cutting steel and duracrete rang in the room.

When I had a plug of free material, a gesture had it floating past me and I carefully settled it on the floor.

I stopped the rotation of my sabers, sending them to carefully forward cut their way through further with careful slashes, avoiding the energy conduit and any other electronics. I didn’t care much about the AC system so just went straight through that.

The final layer was an inch thick durasteel wall, which I cut through very carefully, wrapping my lightsabers in a mild kinetic field to silence them completely. A handy advanced trick for a Jedi who really wanted to be stealthy.

All that now stood in my way was the rear of a large control panel that covered the wall. Luckily, it didn’t govern anything critical, at least for my purposes anyway.

Now what would be a suitable entrance?

I grinned.

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“Would you stop that?!”

Duke Solha stood like a resolute sentinel and he raised an amused eyebrow at the annoyed exclamation of his youngest sister.

“Stop what?” Gemos gave his sister an unpleasant look.

“Stop pacing,” Ralna said through gritted teeth.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said with sarcasm dripping off every syllable. “We just happen to be going up against a Jedi General and not just any general, but Skywalker!”

Ralna folded her arms against her custom cortosis armor plate and glared at her second eldest brother. “We have an entire company of droids that will laugh at his lightsaber. We’re activating more droids with every minute that passes. Even if he and his little team have EG32s, they are on the run and soon will be overwhelmed.”

“A Jedi is more than someone who just runs around with a lightsaber!”

“Enough,” Solha said flatly, giving both his younger siblings an unimpressed look. “Arguing in front of the help is unbecoming of you.”

Ralna scoffed and gave the four smugglers standing near the doors of the room, waiting in ambush, a look of contempt. “You should fire them all. It’s their carelessness which tipped off that little Naboo spy in the first place.”

Solha wouldn’t say that he hadn’t considered it and then quietly disposing of them in a more permanent fashion. It was just the issue of restarting the entire smuggling operation to bring the necessary resources to the factory, which would cost valuable time. It was pointless anyway, the spikebat had flown the coop. The closest warship the Republic could send this way would take six days to reach Mokivj, once the order was sent. He was hopeful that CIS spies could at least give some warning of when that would happen, but he wasn’t counting on it.

All the droids that had been manufactured, just over three months of careful production, were already being loaded into shipping containers. The bulk cargo ships were ready to receive them. The Republic would not arrive in time to stop it.

Even Skywalker and the Mandalorian Jedi herself could not stop what had been set in motion here by his efforts.

Solha took a deep satisfied breath as he basked in the accomplishment of what he and his family had done for the cause. They would go down in history for this.

Even if they would all die right now in this room, it wouldn’t change anything. The cortosis droids would fall upon the southern battlefields like a storm and sweep everything before them. The Republic would eventually prevail, orbital superiority alone would ensure that, but it would cost them too much in terms of clones. The CIS would surge forward in the wake of the overstretched and battered GAR. They would sit in space, unable to put boots on the ground, unless they committed naval clones to the ground, where they would be easy pickings for the CIS navy and ground forces.

Even if they hurriedly shipped the cortosis armor sets that had been made for the infiltration of Coruscant, it was barely a pittance in comparison to the amount of cortosis droids that had been made. There was only one production line of clone armor and the Republic would never be able to ramp production up to a level that would make a difference in time.

The south would be won.

That pleasant thought was rudely interrupted by the control console less than a meter to his left exploding.

It was rent to pieces, smoke and debris bursting outward into the room.

He felt his feet leave the floor and his body flung through the air.

His wits were dashed and he heard the odd sound of birds whistling in the air.

Even with his armor, the breath left his lungs as he slammed against something unyielding.

Then gravity reclaimed him and he landed hard on the floor.

His eyes watered, turning everything into a blur, his ears ringing… 

He heard an odd crystalline shattering echo through the air, then an energetic whine.

Something fell in front of his face… the smoking head of the tactical droid.

What had happened to everyone? He suddenly had a fierce headache.

Then an armored boot stepped into his field of view and he looked up with bleary eyes.

A distinctive Mandalorian visor looked down implacably at him, a helmet shaped distinctly around the montrals of a togruta.

Every line of that visage screamed death. The end. Oblivion. That nothing mattered. That history would forget them… not even a footnote…

Her hand reached down to his face… The hand of death.

Solha screamed in terror.

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A/N: Ouch. Not pleasant to be on the receiving end of that. Hope you enjoyed and have a great weekend.

2078: Highriders - Chapter 3

The next gig required some prep work.

I first did a quick check on my virtual Rachel Mcadams. The algorithm running ‘her’ was still going strong with no hiccups and potential behavior anomalies. The real Rachel, still having a naptime in the toilet. There were six hours left on the clock before I’d need to switch her out for someone new.

Next step, new threads.

To that end, I left Mr. Blue Eyes and the Black Hole Lounge, leaving the man without so much as a wave goodbye.

I merged with the steady flow of pedestrians outside, heading anti-spinward whilst I reviewed the specifics of the gig and other necessary data that had been so helpfully provided, some of which was a full behavioral profile for my faceplate and metanthropic systems.

‘Agent, run compatibility analysis on the profile.’

‘In progress… 100% compatible.’

Not really surprising, but you could never be too sure. Those who knew the FIA truly had the technology and that it hadn’t been a failure were a very short list of people, that Mr. Blue Eyes was on that list, was not surprising. Those who had the knowledge, tech and programming to make a 100% compatible profile, was an even shorter list. It meant he had high-level Militech and NUSA contacts.

Was this entire gig President Myers pulling me in again?

Worry about that later, Valerie.

Blue Eyes had provided a few suggestions for decent clothing stores on this Torus and I randomly selected one of them, a place called Hyperion Fashion.

A tram ride later, I was walking through the threshold of the store and immediately picked up on all manner of scans playing over my body. The only reason I didn’t unleash digital hell upon them and the approaching proprietor was that it was all surface level civilian stuff and my current Mrs. Paigles personality smoothly covered any imperfections.

“Greetings, what can the Hyperion do for you today, Mrs. Paigles?”

My Agent ID’d him as Elijah Kramer, a rail thin man with dusky skin that in contrast to almost everyone on the station, didn’t look like perfection on two legs. Put him in leathers, big jacket and boots, I could see him as a nomad plying the wastes of western America. His skin had that weathered quality that only long hours in the sun gave. Yet his neo kitsch suit, perfect teeth and leather office shoes stood in sharp contrast. It took me a few moments to reconcile what I was seeing and I realized that it was the whole point, it was the hook and his entire appearance was sculpted to be imperfect.

The store itself only showed minor examples of what was on offer on vidscreens all along the walls and the decor of the place screamed minimalist in a way that Jinguji would approve of. I sometimes longed for the days where I could just go into an outdoor market in Heywood, browse and feel the clothes I was going to buy.

With a few edits, I tight beamed examples of the underwear and clothes I’d need.

His green eyes flashed and eventually he nodded, “We have those in stock. The measurements you sent don’t exactly fit you, so I assume this is a gift?”

“You may assume so, Mr. Kramer,” I said with an impatient air.

He got the hint. “Very well, would you like a rush order?”

“Yes, scheduling issues,” I said vaguely and transferred the money over with a gesture.

He smiled widely, “Excellent, I’ve initiated the fabrication. It’ll be just six minutes. You’re welcome to take a seat and drink some of our complimentary offers.”

The wall to my left split open and revealed an adjoining room with two luxury sofas with a low table between them. My Agent did a quick scan and I was inwardly astonished at the coffee machine mounted on it. It was a Panama Esmerelda.

I’d thought about getting one for my NC mansion, but it was ridiculously expensive. Mostly because of the service costs associated with keeping the thing stocked. I could buy a brand new Rayfield Aerondight just for the buy-in price alone. It hit home anew that for all I had clawed my way up in Night City to a level of wealth that my old Arasaka corpo self had only dreamed about, that in this pond, I was once again just a minnow.

I sat down primly, crossing my legs as befitting of Mrs. Paigles and placed a gold plated cup under the machine’s spout.

It got to work smartly and within moments I had a steaming brew of heavenly ambrosia filling my nostrils. I picked the cup up and sat back, not thinking about the eddie value of the drink in my hands and played my nose over it, breathing it in.

The beverage touched my lips, rolled over my tongue and my hum of pleasure perfectly synced with what the Mrs. Paigles persona produced.

I indulged myself in the moment, as there was every chance that this would be the last time I had the opportunity to drink something like this.

For a moment, I’d thought my Sandy had activated, as the moment stretched and stretched. Another sip, and I vowed to take as long as I needed to savor every milliliter of this brew.

When Kramer returned with an elegant bag that had my new clothes inside, I still had a quarter of the cup left. It was also just as hot as when it had been brewed thanks to the perfect thermal properties of the cup. He smiled knowingly, put the bag down next to me and left me to enjoy the rest of the coffee in peace.

When the last drop was gone, I sighed with sadness at the ending that had to come.

I put down the cup, grabbed my purchase and ambled casually back into the throng of the station.

‘Agent, countdown clock, 43 minutes, mark.’

The clock appeared in my optics and I headed to the nearest spoke elevator. My next destination was in Torus 2.

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Access control in this Torus was much more stringent as it was entirely a residential area for permanent and semi-permanent residents of the Crystal Palace. That being said, there were some general public access areas and stores, simply to cater to the very wealthy, ultra lazy who didn’t even want to bother with going to Torus 4.

I was now truly entering the world of the indulgent 1%.

First stop was an establishment called the Pulsar.

I casually paid the VIP entrance fee, which automatically entitled me to skip the queue outside, where twenty-two people were waiting their turn to enter the place.

The music hit me as the doors opened and I passed through numerous security scanners, all of which I hijacked and bypassed. Luckily this place, for all the eddies that flowed through it, didn’t see the need to hire a dedicated dweller to keep net security tight locally, relying on the station dweller to keep things secure.

Cheapskates, I thought with a sneer.

The big bouncer with visible Gorilla Arms and standing nearly two meters tall gave my package a cursory scan before nodding me through another set of doors.

Beyond was a club that was Lizzie’s wet dream, if she’d still been alive.

The decor, the lights, the furniture, the exotic dancers and strippers - male, female and exotics - all inside a large space catering to every taste and desire.

Exotics were rare in Night City these days. Their heyday had been in the 20s’ to 40s’, but the aftermath of the 4th Corpo War, the Reclamation and rebuilding of the city, their expense, maintenance requirements and shifting culture had seen the end of any mainstream popularity. You have to look very hard in NC to find exotics and if you did, they were mostly limited to the Animals gang.

I knew of only one club in the city that catered to the very small minority that still embraced some form of embedded animal or classical fantasy trait in the flesh.

In the Crystal Palace, with bioware augs being the preference in LEO, exotics were much more common. Radiation was naturally higher up here and cyberware that wasn’t specifically hardened didn’t like solar radiation at all. My own cyberware was all military-grade anyway, so I had no real issues there.  

My Mrs. Paigles persona and my own curiosity had me stopping by the dancing stage of an exotic woman; she had a bedroom body, a generous bust which was covered by a single strap black top and a more modest bikini bottom. Her ears were savagely pointy, with cream white skin that stood in stark contrast to the luxuriously full mane of red hair that hung beyond her shoulders. A long tail that reminded me of a panther snaked downward from her tailbone, which was sinuously moving as she danced on the stripper pole with a dexterity and routine that I doubted I could pull off, especially as it was synced to the music. 

A quick scan of the club brochure from the local net and I had everything about her; Ginette Boudet, French, body proportions, 39-24-36 inches, a brief local bio. She even had a doll chip.

I looked at my timer - it was so tempting to just… a quickie maybe? I’d never been with an exotic.

No, not on the job, Valerie.

Ginette had noticed my interest at this point and was giving me a smoldering look with her yellow cat eyes, making a come hither gesture, smoothly incorporating it with her dancing.

I gave an apologetic look and declined, moving on.

My journey towards the public restroom passed by a section of the club that was enclosed with one way mirrors.

There was no way to tell what was going on beyond it visually, but my hearing could clearly pick up the tell-tale sounds of sex and I could only deduce that it was part of the club that was dedicated to the exhibitionists.

I shook off the thought of that and pushed open the door.

Two of the eight cubicles were in use, so I chose the sixth and closed its door behind me.

With an eye on the time, I undressed and took out my new clothes.

‘Release.’

With a ripple of light, muscle and skin, my form returned to my normal state.

The biggest fear you had to overcome when using behavioral faceplate tech, was the thought of it malfunctioning and keeping you stuck in the assumed persona. It was especially a worry for me as I couldn’t exactly go to any street Ripper in NC to have it fixed or adjusted. Only Farida, an undercover FIA agent, plying the Ripperdoc trade in the bowels of Dogtown, the one who had installed the faceplate systems in the first place, could look after my health and cyberware these days.

It was shit, because Farida had the most taciturn bedside manner of any ripperdoc in the city. There was nothing I’d like better than to walk straight back into Vic’s clinic and have him grouse in my ears about my reckless antics giving him more work. Unfortunately, that couldn’t happen. Vic would take less than a minute to find the faceplate tech once he had me opened up and then he’d be on the FIA’s radar instantly.

No time for regrets, Valerie.

I selected the new imprint and my body changed.

Much less muscular legs, my inner thighs changed to bring a more prominent gap between my legs. I bore the further adjustment of things down there stoically, breathing a sigh of relief when it was done. My leg proportions also changed, the bone structures shifting, resulting in a height of about five foot five. My torso’s wonderful eight pack disappeared again, now gaining a slight bit of belly, my butt grew bigger, before the change moved up to work on my bust - this time giving them much more volume to at least a DD cup. My arms and shoulders were next, losing their muscular definition to become thinner and dainty.

The face, throat and hair was last - and was thankfully over the quickest.

I did a double check of the imprint readings and got 100% across the board.

I let the personality and mannerisms settle on me and eagerly got into my new clothes.

First came the thong panty, then a dress made of a shiny smart material in a dark golden chrome color that instantly hugged every curve perfectly. Next was my new shoes - a wonderful pair of black leather stiletto heels.

That done, I stuffed the old clothes into the bag and kept an eye on local cyberspace for my target.

Three minutes before the timer ran out, I spotted her through a surveillance cam.

Her identical dress to mine was a dark blue at the moment, which I instructed my Agent to match.

It also confirmed for me that the imprint was right on the money; slightly pointed chin, high cheekbones, pouty lips with black lipstick, feminine jawline, jade green eyes that actually glowed and neon red hair.

A quick scan confirmed her ID: Julia Jahnke.

She was technically a highrider, born on the Crystal Palace to two German parents who had been working on board for nearly two decades at that point. She enjoyed both European and local station citizenship as a result. Her job at the Pulsar was as a drink slinger primarily, but she also dabbled as a stage dancer and joytoy to make extra.

Her first stop, as was her routine when she came in to work, the restroom.   

One of the two occupied stalls on my right opened, revealing a guy who had clearly emptied his gut’s airlock recently. He looked miserably into the mirror over the sink, slapping water onto his face, before steeling himself visibly and walking out.

He passed Julia on her way in and now I was only left with one potential witness.

I took control of the bathroom door and locked it.

There was no cam to give me a visual of my inconvenient witness who was still on the toilet and from the sounds of things, having a slight bit of incontinence.

I queued Memory Wipe, Reboot Optics and a Sonic Shock, slinging all three his way and mentally apologized for knocking him out in the middle of taking a shit. He thrashed and twitched, bumping his leg against the stall, but that was thankfully ignored by Julia.

She was too busy sucking down an inhaler for whatever recreational drug the locals of CP used.

It was also my opportunity.

I opened the stall door and came to a stop right behind her.

Her bliss as the drug’s effects hit her system was written all over her face; her eyes closed, a soft moan coming from her mouth, her body relaxing so much she had to lean her legs against the sink to retain balance.

I let her have the moment… before my left arm captured her around the neck in a vice grip.

She didn’t even have time to gasp before my MRS hack combo slammed her into unconsciousness.

I pulled her immediately back into my stall and closed the door, releasing the lock on the restroom.

My luck had held out and only now was someone approaching to use the facilities. No inexplicably locked door would be reported to the management.

I put my current identical twin down to a comfortable position on the toilet and began a careful scan to double check for any smaller inconsistencies.

She was wearing spiked arm bracelets, which I removed and put on. Then there were the numerous studs in her ears, hiding underneath her hair, which my faceplate systems could mimic well enough.

In cyberspace, I was hard at work smoothing over the disappearance of Mrs. Paigles from the system and hiding the real Julia, whilst also taking her digital ID for myself. It was thankfully quick work after I extended a physical link from my wrist into the port behind her ear.

Now came the shitty part, as I took her drug inhaler and without hesitation put it to my lips and squeezed.

A hiss and the rush hit my biological systems like a truck.

I was no stranger to many drugs used on the streets of Night City and especially the nootropics used by corpos for improved mental functioning. The recreational drugs of the Palace were their own animal entirely. This one pushed the endorphins and played the pleasure centers like Johnny Silverhand on a guitar. It felt like burning pleasure was radiating from every inch of my skin, pushing inward until…

Fuck, no wonder she could barely keep her balance. 

This was an industrial strength orgasm in an inhaler.

It took every ounce of discipline and self-control I had not to release a loud moan to the entire room.

I shuddered and twitched as everywhere itched with need, the urge to use my hands for further stimulation was near overwhelming.

My hypersensitive ears picked up the restroom door opening to admit more patrons, the shifting of the air through the room played over the bare skin of my arms and legs -  I shuddered through another climax immediately.

Fuck!

My concentration was slipping and I was barely paying attention to cyberspace anymore.

Maybe I was trying to blend in a little too well here, but the chemical residue had to be there and the faceplate couldn’t simulate what it didn’t know. This was a designer drug that Julia had ordered from a local druggie, it was unique as far as Mr. Blue Eyes knew. What would also be unique, was its reaction within me.

A third orgasm hit, my world narrowing dangerously to just the feeling of pleasure, the strangled gasps I was making and my hands gripping the sides of the stall. I latched onto the goal of maintaining balance as a singular focus and lifeline.

When the aftershocks subsided, some manner of normalcy returned at last.

A look at my system clock indicated I had spent a full nine minutes in delirium. 

I glared down at the inhaler in my hand. It was a lurid metallic pink and one the side was stenciled ‘Coaster’.

My faceplate behavior crashed down on me, literally turning my glare into a satisfied, goofy grin as I stuffed the inhaler into Julia’s small purse, threaded it off her shoulder and onto mine.

Another brief bit of waiting for the coast to be clear and I finally emerged from the stall, closing it behind me. I laid a small program to fake the door being open to the local subnet. It was overkill, but in truth there was no such thing when it came to this business. The smallest detail could lead to an entire gig being blown or you catching a bullet.

I emerged back into the club and immediately headed to the bar on the far corner. I was half-running, not faking that I was technically late at Julia’s post.

A voice shouted over the hard electronic music of the club, “Julia!” 

My interlocutor was fellow drink slinger Liam, who was the tall, perfectly sculpted male specimen of every man in the service industry on the Palace.

“Sorry! Sorry!” I hissed frantically and rushed through the employees only door after it unlocked for me.

I was behind the bar a few seconds later, my optics and Agent scanning the position of every bottle. Not only did I have the club’s drink list on hand, but also the unique drinks that only Julia made, which she kept on hand in her own Agent. My behavior profile had all the physical tricks she could do with the bottles and this was where my own skills with a throwing knife neatly came in handy as well.

The first customer came and I flashed an eager smile, my eyes twinkling in just the right way, leaning forward to flash my cleavage and the jiggle of my chest, which was clearly appreciated.

The order was for a Canis Major. Yeah, all the drinks here were generally named after stars with a few exceptions.

“One Canis Major, coming up!” I chirped and began with getting out a glass and mixer set.

I flipped a vodka bottle underarm, grabbing it from the air and tossing out two shots into the stainless steel mixer.

In the same flashy way, I poured lemon juice, chocolate syrup and soda water.

I crushed ice by slapping it with a long spoon into the mixer, closed it up and began vigorously shaking. Making sure to both obscure and show off the jiggling of my chest in just that perfect manner that was both pleasing, yet would also frustrate.

I strained the resulting drink into the glass, spearing a cherry on a cocktail stick with a slice of orange and balancing it on top, before handing it over.

The customer flicked a hand at me, tossing me the eddies digitally and I quickly had to reroute the money so it actually landed in the club’s account and not my own. 

For nearly two hours, I worked in this fashion, slinging a total of 106 drinks and whilst I quickly settled into a rhythm I had to be careful to keep my head in the game. Any inaccuracy would stick out and might be remembered by my fellow barman.

Then my true target arrived at last.

She sat down in front of the bar, wearing a glittering light blue cocktail dress that was smartly transparent in whatever direction she wanted it to be. This meant I was treated to the sight of a designed female body that was like a goddess walking amongst mortals. Her long brown hair just barely covered the necessary bits of chest, preventing me from seeing everything.

Her hazel eyes were smoldering in my direction.

I made sure to flow with the behavioral imprint - returning the seductive look in full and lightly biting the bottom of my lip. It wasn’t exactly a stretch, my target was objectively hot and since I was back in the market after… letting Judy go, there was no guilt to feel.

These last nine months, ever since our memorable first date diving into the Laguna Bend reservoir… I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

No, no getting nostalgic, Valerie.

My faceplate had neatly covered my emotional dissonance and I gave a pointed look at my coworker.

By rights, he could’ve objected to me leaving, but Julia’s job required flexibility and this was not a client that any business could say no to.

“Off you go, Julia, I’ll make do,” Liam sighed. “Good to see you, Mrs. Muller.”

“Liam,” Lyla Muller idly greeted but her eyes were all on me as I gathered Julia’s purse and vaulted the bar. It was just within behavioral range and my target now had a delighted look on her face. She neatly stepped forward into my personal space before I could get my butt off the counter, grabbing my hands to pull me forward to land on my feet.

My lips were immediately captured in a deep kiss, her arms coming around my neck.

I returned the kiss enthusiastically and pulled Julia’s ‘client’ close, my hands coming to rest on her butt and squeezing.

To the world, this was just a very powerful corpo meeting with her preferred joytoy. The fact that she was married was barely a blip on the radar, when her even more powerful husband, CEO Claus Muller of the European Space Agency, was actively maintaining two mistresses of his own.

Their marriage was modern day corpo neo-feudalism bullshit at its finest. Lyla’s family were Powerdealers, that ultra rare class of people who truly stood at the top of the pile. Those who could have stood shoulder to shoulder with the late Saburo Arasaka at a dinner party and told him ‘no’ without fear. These days they could do the same to Saburo’s heir, Yorinobu, with even less to worry about.

Her hand in marriage had been part of a contract between that ultra-rich family, Claus Muller and the ESA.

The fact that I didn’t know who Lyla’s powerful family was, would’ve been enough to set off all sorts of red flags for this gig. Mr. Blue Eyes had conspicuously left out any mention of who they were in the briefing data.

Even as I was dueling her tongue passionately, in cyberspace and through the club cams, I spotted two bodyguards who were keeping her in line of sight. In NC, you could’ve mistaken them for Animals, except these guys had top of the line ‘ware and sculpted handsome looks that were not an eyesore. That was just the visible security on her.

The invisible security took me a moment to find as I piggybacked along the encrypted links.

Holy fuck.

Twelve of them, perfectly blending into the club’s crowd. A true variety team; from a dark skinned gambler playing at a one-armed bandit, who had the lanky build of a highrider, to an utterly forgettable skinny corpo seated in front of an exotic and enjoying the show. All of them were actually armed, with custom weapons grafted into arm cyberware. That they could get away with that in the Palace was a message in itself.

To make the security even worse, I found an elite netrunner running overwatch. The only reason I spotted him was because I had a literal Beyond the Blackwall AI in my corner.

‘Thanks Butcher.’

‘Threats to your network cannot be tolerated.’

He went even further at that point and layered a scan that unfolded like a book before my eyes in cyberspace, without alerting the ‘runner - showing me that this team had scary amounts of bioware and were all packing rad-shielded Sandies that was just slightly below my Militech Apogee in terms of performance. It was an unfortunate reality that the other corps would begin to catch up to the new standard that the Apogee had set. Combine that with ‘all the money’ and Powerdealer families would want the best for their security.

I could take them, if it came down to it, but that would be blowing the gig into full clusterfuck failure territory on par with the Konpeki Plaza heist that had started me on this path.

Lyla finally broke the kiss and we were breathing heavily, staring into each other’s eyes with an eager lust.

I raised a brow at finding her hands on my chest now, idly tracing the curves there. “Go any further, Lils, and we’d have to go to the exhibs section.”

“Tempting, but that’s not my thing,” Lyla grinned, nudging my nose with her own playfully. “Let’s get out of here.”

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Her living space in Torus 2 was a sinful amount of space for one person on a space station. It had an effective amount of square footage of a mansion, with artificial views that showed stabilized images of the Earth from orbit. 

Lyla liked to make love with the giant ‘windows’ set to a beach front view of Bora Bora island in French Polynesia. As if her giant space mansion had set itself down on the crystal clear blue waters just off the long inactive volcano rising high into the sky, wreathed in green tropical plant growth. The actual Bora Bora was not so pretty these days, in the aftermath of the 4th Corporate War, but the Europeans were trying their best to restore the place to some semblance of its former glory.

I looked down onto the softly snoozing powerdealer, her head was snuggled on my chest and she was practically draped over me, clutching me like I was her giant teddy bear.

The whole affair between Lyla and Julia, Johnny would describe as ‘bent over, cheeks spread wide’.

I didn’t need my behavioral imprint to tell me what the sitch here was.

These two genuinely loved each other.

Yet this fucked up world didn’t allow for happily ever afters. The world saw something like this and only thought about how it could be used and exploited. Then it found someone like me to shove into the situation and take advantage of this ‘weakness’.

Lyla had been tired of the empty life of being nothing more than a pawn for her stupidly powerful and rich family. Julia was a young woman who was just looking to find a better life, leave the world of vice while she still had a soul and had won the lottery to find Lyla. The two of them had fallen in love, but there was no way either of them could move on.

My eyes were closed, my body giving every signal I was asleep to the single hidden security cam in the top right corner of the expansive bedroom.

Yet my focus was in cyberspace as I was slowly ghosting through the firewalls of the mansion’s systems and exploring to find a particular data server that was installed here.

The cybersecurity was no joke, and I was already dodging Black ICE daemons who were sniffing around.    

They had been triggered with the most minor anomaly when the data rate had spiked for less than a millisecond during my entrance of the system.

Thankfully, my own stealth and daemons were holding, Butcher was also giving a helping hand in his own way.

On this net run, my mind had decided to interpret everything as if I was walking through a gigantic HD forest made out of data, where the trees were data folders, the fruits were individual files. My daemons were still their usual ephemeral constructs floating around me, whilst my own appearance had me wearing a Maxtac uniform. Judy’s pilfered uniform to be precise, with which we had spent many a pleasurable evening with, over the course of our now ended relationship.

I spotted a large agglomeration of data structures, virtual trees of data, nesting within one another and branching outwards with limbs that radiated in all directions. These limbs were moving, idly flapping about in some unseen wind. They fulfilled the role of sensory organs, detecting anyone trying to intrude.

My avatar floated around the strange data server and carefully scanned for any potential weaknesses and breach points.

Was this even my target?

I floated above the nested structure and saw dozens more in the distance.

Security through misdirection, neat trick.

I raised my hand and thousands of tiny daemons the size of flies appeared before scattering in every direction on the multiple planes of forest that were above and below the current level I was on.

My attention returned to the first server and I continued my examination.

A giant avatar of a netrunner appeared, looming over the data forest. The runner had partially given himself the appearance of a huge male figure, cloaked with a sinister red hood and robe. His hands and fingers were unnaturally long, from each were hanging a multitude of every daemon type you could care to name and some which were wholly unique.

He sniffed the cyberspace ‘air’, as if he was some bloodhound. The sound of the sniffs felt like it was right next to my own avatar.

Each sniff was a virtual soundwave that was actually a data packet that was trying to ping off me.

It was a good trick, but my stealth just gobbled it up and replicated the data, presenting him with an undisturbed wavefront. The same thing happened with my daemons as they cloaked themselves briefly.

I waited for what felt like an age in dilated time, before the netrunner that ran security over Lyla moved on, turning his attention to patrolling for outward threats from cyberspace. 

This was going to take a while.

‘V, incoming data transmission,’ said Butcher.

I checked over the incoming data stream and marveled at the audacity. It was using Julia’s digital identity. It passed scrutiny right through every hoop of security simply because of that and hooked into my Agent, who routed the call to me in cyberspace.

The neutral face of Mr. Blue Eyes appeared in front of me.

“V,” he greeted with a hint of a pleased tone in his voice. “I see you were successful, well done.”

“Gig’s not over yet, Eyes.”

He tilted his head at me, clearly debating whether he liked me shortforming his name. “Yes, but you must realize the accomplishment it is in just getting as far as you have. It’s not an exaggeration to say Mrs. Muller is one of the most highly protected individuals in the solar system. How much of her security did you spot?”

“The bodyguards, the hidden spec ops team, the netrunner. Let me guess, there’s a second and tertiary team? Always outside any location she steps into.”

“Good guess. At least three layers, each operating independently of each other, in case one is compromised in some manner.”

The first of my bug daemons began returning, reporting back on what they had found.

“Figures. Are there any updates you have to give me?”

“Just to inform you that Miss Jahnke has been successfully secured from the bathroom you left her in and is being looked after by me personally for the duration of your infiltration. I’ll have her ready for reinsertion into the station’s data grid by the time you exfiltrate. She’ll remember nothing besides taking a bad batch of her designer drug. It will be up to you to wrap things up on Mrs. Muller’s side.”

“I will- “ At this point a bug daemon came back with some success. “I’ve just found the target, it should be done in two hours.”

“Good, I’ll let you get to it, V.”

The call promptly ended.

My paranoia chose that moment to make itself known as I zipped towards my target, appearing before it in a relative instant. 

Getting congratulated on anything by a client wasn’t exactly common, especially one like Blue Eyes. I’d bet my custom Herrera Outlaw that the man was a Powerdealer himself, always using that Proxy to stay at arms length of the dirty work that needed doing. Anything goes wrong and he can disconnect from it and send that Gemini body on a suicide mission to take out everyone and everything. Leaving me carrying the potential blame for any fallout.

Was he buttering me up? A sprinkle of psy op to get me hooked into working for him in the future?

Wasting his time. My chances of long term survival after this op… even with my Hail Mary plan… Well, it was best not to get my hopes up.

My daemon swarm surrounded the target server and now it was just a question of finding the weakness.

A faked junk data packet thrown against the defenses was immediately trapped by multiple limbs of the server working together, derezzing the data mercilessly into a rapid scattering of garbled pixels.

I waited a reasonable amount of time, then threw a double attack of junk, spaced a few milliseconds apart.

The first one was caught, the second one penetrated, only to reveal an inner defense of a Black ICE daemon that snagged the junk and defragged it.

My next experiment revealed a third defense, an inner firewall that stopped the junk cold before it threw a replication virus straight into my probe. It was blown up like a balloon before its program integrity was utterly compromised and shattered into useless code that disappeared into the ether of cyberspace.

It was clever, effective and all three layers worked together in shoring up the individual weaknesses that each approach had to cyber defenses.

It would’ve stumped most netrunners for hours, it was fortunate that I didn’t fall into that category.

Adam Smasher had been equipped with the best passive cyber defenses Arasaka could bestow on that monster. This was nothing in comparison.

The only challenge here was the need to maintain stealth and not just bludgeon down the defenses.

‘Butcher, analyze the exterior defensive layer. It can be swamped, but that would alert the system that it was under attack. What’s your opinion on avoiding that?’

‘Algorithm in an attacking program that will not trigger the defense response.’

He then threw up said algorithm in my figurative face before I could even speak further.

‘Yes, thank you, Butcher. I was about to make the requisite changes to a spy daemon, but you just saved me a few minutes.’

The daemon in question materialized in front of me, looking like an ephemeral classical ghost to my perceptions. It hovered patiently waiting for instruction and my hand swiped over it like a claw. Its constituent programming unfurled in front of me like a blossoming digital flower and I got to work.

With Butcher’s algorithm inserted, I experimentally compiled a second copy of the daemon using it and grinned with delighted eagerness at the result. The damn thing was barely even visible to me and it was only because it was the work of my own mind that I spotted the faint rippling outline of code in cyberspace.

I recalled the experiment and resumed work on the main masterpiece.

Countering the Black ICE could be done with a reciprocal approach, my spy daemon could counter the defragging by throwing specifically tuned data for it gorge on, but that was not conducive to staying stealthy.

I threw another junk data fragment series to double check just how it detected an intruder.

Recursive Functions? Really?

My daemon was programmed with a module that countered that with a few lines of code.

The inner firewall would be the most complex problem to ghost through. Its detection was down to the most basic machine language level of ones and zeros, which would require my ghost daemon to actually learn the flow of data on that level of the server and effectively mirror it.

My first try to compile my new custom daemon failed rather spectacularly - it burst apart in a runaway self-replication event.

I tried again, only for it to collapse in itself in logic loop error.

Great.

It took nearly thirteen full minutes just to troubleshoot that one.

My spy daemon compiled, but just as a test, I ran it on a quick virtual machine to simulate and encountered runtime errors.

I was barely a minute into troubleshooting when my attention was drawn back to realspace - Lyla was getting frisky in her sleep.

Her left hand had found its way onto my right breast and she was using it as a plaything, squishing and fondling with my nipple.

Now is not the time, I groaned to myself.

Of course, as my luck would have it, I felt her lips latch onto my neck and it was clear she was now at least partially awake and wanted another session.

Fuck.

I was distinctly reminded of a memory from Johnny that had bubbled up from my subconscious, when he had taken my body for a joyride out on the town. The thoroughly drunk fool had tried to have a bit of car sex, whilst his joytoy was at the wheel. Naturally, the subsequent, inevitable accident had nearly killed all of us.

Now I had to do critical programming, remain undetected in cyberspace, where one tiny mistake could result in blowing the whole gig and killing me, whilst stuffing it with my primary target.

Can I say double fuck?

Julia’s behavioral imprint was also knocking on the door - stating that she would have woken up by now and begun to return the affection.

‘I will continue,’ said Butcher abruptly. ‘Your effectiveness in programming the daemon is compromised. The mission will fail if behavioral assumptions and parameters are not met. You must reciprocate the input with proper output.’

I couldn’t help the giggle my avatar let out, ‘Butcher, seriously? That’s the nicest way I’ve ever heard you refer to sex… ever.’

‘It’s still ridiculous and disgusting.’

‘Now that’s more like it,’ I chuckled as the AI, entirely for my benefit, manifested an avatar and got to work on the spy daemon.

Butcher’s avatar had a central human base that vaguely reminded me of my old and very deceased foe, Placide from the Voodoo Boyz. Tall, muscular body but gone slightly to seed with the wear and tear of time. Any similarity to humanity ended there as four heads sprouted out of the neck and dozens of ghostly arms manifested and vanished out of the arm sockets. Hundreds of hands reached into the spy daemon as Butcher began programming at a speed that I envied badly.

I kept my avatar near, but focused properly on realspace, ‘waking up’ with a soft smile as Lyla’s kiss continued down my neck.

Oh, might as well enjoy it.

She gave me a naughty, knowing expression as I opened my eyes. The smart, heavenly soft mattress on her giant circular bed just barely compensated for her next maneuver, as she scraped her entire body along mine as she journeyed upward.

Her knees were straddled on either side of my head and her very wet pussy hovered directly over my face. She definitely had some bioware going on here, the natural lubrication was too quick, not to mention I could already smell an entirely different aroma than the normal musk that she had before, it was actually… a mix of strawberry and honey?

I went with the behavioral flow, meeting Lyla’s eyes with an eager anticipation, showing no surprise before my lips surged forward and clamped down on the upper portions of her labia, attacking her clit with my tongue. It really did taste like the aforementioned flavors and it was clearly something Julia already knew about.

My arms came up and clamped around her upper legs, keeping her in place as my tongue got to work.

Lyla’s breathing and moans sped up quickly and it wasn’t long before I had her bucking to get some relief from the pleasure I was instilling.

I didn’t allow that, my arms keeping her core glued to my mouth.

“Uh, fuck! Uh, Julia… wai- wai-”

Unfortunately, the behavioral imprint and the included notes from Blue Eyes indicated that Lyla had a slight fetish for being dominated. Especially ironic given her position was to dominate others in every other facet of her life.

She fought me every step of the way for nearly six minutes according to my system clock. Her arms and hands, which had been furiously stimulating her breasts and pinching her own nipples, fell flat as she exploded into a climax after I created a slight vacuum pop right on her clit between my lips.

As she was lost in her own pleasure, my right hand let go.

I reached for the much less known Ms. Studd waiting on the bedside table.

Unlike the Mr. Studd which was a common male implanted cyberware that gave them effectively unlimited endurance in carnal activities. The Ms. Studd was an external sex toy, which was a highly advanced dildo that came with a matching price. This was because it was effectively a wearable bioware. At one end, it clamped down on the user’s vagina, smartly molding biomimic material flowed directly inside the pussy to perfectly match the interior volume for perfect stimulation, then had a Realskin bioware penis and double balls on the other side that would give my old Sir John Phallustiff some competition in the size department.

Just putting the damn thing on nearly had me halfway to my own climax.

I gave a look down between my legs and could only inwardly marvel at how seamless it looked down there now. You had to squint to see the joins where the Ms. Studd had affixed itself over my groin area.

Judy would’ve killed for something like this, but it was just too expensive to really justify, even with my multi-millionaire merc bank accounts. They were made in orbit and the bioware maintenance also had a substantial price tag.

I slid myself down from under Lyla’s legs, got on my own knees and in one smooth thrust, impaled her on the Ms. Studd from behind.

I groaned at the action, as the bioware device reciprocated the action perfectly into my own core.

Lyla gasped, looking back at me with huge eyes, filled with pleasure and shuddered, utterly unable to articulate anything out of her mouth. My arms snaked around her torso, my left hand grabbing a breast, whilst my right quested downwards for my fingers to attack her clit. I gave one long in and out stroke, my hips slapping against her bountiful butt.

That was as far as my restraint went and I began ramming into her with abandon.

It was of course, Murphy’s Law that just as both of us were in the middle of this delightful session that Butcher dropped his harsh electronic voice into the equation. It wasn’t quite a bucket of cold water, but it was just enough for me to return my focus partially to my avatar in cyberspace.

‘I’m done.’

‘Yes, thank you, Butcher,’ I said with gritted teeth.

The modified spy daemon was now hovering there, barely visible and its code unfolding in front of my eyes.

Butcher had taken my program, something I considered an artwork and tuned it to the next level. I eagerly took mental note of the differences the AI had written in and barely stopped myself from gaping stupidly. I wanted to slap myself at having missed these tricks in the past.

Intelligent adaptive runtimes, which took one look at the system resources on offer and changed its utilization to never overburden it.

My avatar’s fists clenched with the effort to remain focused.

He had also effectively nested tiny AIs that would never gain cognitive sentience within the daemon, which would smartly manage and adapt to changing conditions, with the singular goal of infiltrating a server and doing so in a way that the server itself would help the daemon, instead of fighting it. It used mimicry, smartly camouflaging itself to make it look like it belonged.

‘This is…  amazing, B- Butcher. Good work.’

‘Your appreciation is unnecessary but acknowledged.’

Without further adieu, I sent my nova spy daemon forward and it breezed through the defenses as if they weren’t even there.

I kept an eye on the data flows from the server, standing ready to intercept or act if anything went wrong, even as things in realspace got even worse for my poor battered concentration.

Why could I net run and fight a monster like Smasher simultaneously, but somehow this was a step too far?

I watched as the system clock ticked in cyberspace.

The milliseconds passed by with agonizing slowness, waiting for my daemon to either succeed and return or for an alarm to go off, whereby I knew I’d immediately be attacked by the local security ‘runner.

The consequences in real space was something I also had to consider.

Fighting three full ESA spec ops security teams without a stitch on would be a novel experience certainly. I’d definitely have to use Lyla as a shield in the initial moments to buy time. Enough for me to queue and spread Contagions and Blackwall Gateways. Scratch that, Contagions wouldn’t work as well with troops that had mostly bioware augments, less cyberware to fuck up and release all those nasty chemicals.

The ESA loved their Smart Guns so those would have to be hacked in a hurry too. They were Arasakas, probably with their own custom soft, but I had all of Arasaka’s smart guns solved from a hacking perspective on a firmware level.

That would swiftly bring the fight to close quarters, where my own Liberty and Gorilla Arms came into play.

The first team was hidden in a security safe room on the lower floor of the mansion. A simulation of how long it would take them to reach the bedroom gave me about six or seven seconds before the first one would burst through. They’d lead with Stun and EMP grenades… then be surprised when that did jackshit to me.

My fist would mulch the first one’s head and then Butcher would reap his harvest.

Running the sim had done wonders for my ‘endurance’ in real space and poor Lyla was thoroughly enjoying it.

My nova daemon reappeared in front of me.

Thank fuck.

My avatar’s hand swiped through its body and it opened to reveal the bounty of very classified black boxed encrypted data, that only had the codename Hummingbird. It was very tempting to crack open this thing for a peek, but I resisted. Curiosity was something you couldn’t indulge in at this level and this knowledge could kill you as surely as succumbing to a Suicide hack. If Blue Eyes needed me to know, he’d tell me… probably.

‘All right, Butcher, let’s get out of here. We have a lot of sanitization work to do.’

The AI spoke from one of the heads of its creepy avatar, ‘What extraction scenario are you going to use?’

‘Well, once Lyla and I are finished… if there’s one thing to fear on a space station, then it’s a fire. At the same time, a general six hour Memory Wipe virus on everyone and the mansion systems for Julia. The fire damage will mostly cover for the missing time, long enough before any suspicions of a probable intrusion can be raised.’

Butcher’s avatar flashed and his many arms reached out as he began compromising the fire suppression systems.

I queued up a Memory Wipe and began quick adjustments.

‘When was the last time there was a fire on the Crystal Palace?’ I idly wondered, shuddering.

‘Eight years, two months, six days, four hours and 55 seconds.’ Butcher answered promptly. ‘A minor electrical fire in one of the Torus spokes.’

‘Let’s just make sure it’s not going to go beyond the mansion, I don’t want this to steal the spotlight for my last gig on this bucket of bolts.’

There was going to be no sneaking around, or using alternate identities.

This time it was going to me, openly and efficiently doing my thing.

I had made sure Night City would remember me and now the world would too.

The first Edgerunner to openly operate on the Crystal Palace.

This was going to be fun.

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A/N: More hijinks in LEO for V to come. Enjoy your weekend and stay frosty folks.

Zygerria Outfit 1 by Flux and I

Medium: AI input and digital touch ups.

I've been working with Flux lately after discovering it. It can do amazing things, especially with something as 'alien' as Ahsoka's lekku and montrals. Its getting them consistently at an acceptable level and I'm looking forward to trying other alien characters. It's only missing trigger finger on the gun in the left image and the outfit is close to spot on. The blaster and montrals in the second image is much better, though it keeps wanting to logically put a holster for the weapon on her hip.

Her second Zygerrian outfit I'm doing by hand in traditional medium, there's just no way I can see the AI ever coming close with that one and I wish to do that one justice. That's still a work in progress.

Stay awesome folks.

The Force Wills - Chapter 110

A/N: Patreon messing with text size, yay.

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Thrawn ventured into the Omen’s small control center for the first time and couldn’t help but inwardly marvel at it.

Here the ship’s use of holographics went to a new level of immersion for the pilots, with controls hovering around them in abundance. At first it looked too overwhelming in terms of inputs and outputs of information, but the ship’s systems itself had a level of intelligence that was assisting. The controls and data inputs were always appearing just as the pilot needed them.

If that wasn’t enough immersion, the interior had a projection of the space around them mapped on the walls of the control center; giving the illusion that the pilots were completely exposed to the void. Yet it was perfect for giving the masters of the craft an unparalleled situational awareness that wasn’t just reliant on small sensor displays and the narrow forward viewports. It was rather unnerving. Had he not had top marks at the academy in vacuum fighting he’d doubted he could’ve acclimatized as well.

They had just dropped out of hyperspace and the familiar planet of Mokivj was steadily growing larger.

He and Che’ri had already scouted the system in their search over two weeks before and had found little here of interest to the main goal of their mission, except the possibility of a merchant contact who would be able to trade them an energy shield generator.

By any standard, it was a lush world of fertile grasslands and forests, which explained why it was attractive for Republic colonization and it featured a population of nearly fifty million sentients scattered about the world in homesteads. The only major city being the capital, Yovbridge, which was home to nearly two million and the only industry on the world. The one mark against it was a lower oxygen content than what a chiss would be comfortable with. It was not outside of the range of adaptability though and he would just have to increase his breathing to compensate.

“Che’ri is on the comlink,” Skywalker announced, swiping a holo interface which grew and blossomed into a flat screen with Che’ri’s eager visage on it.

“Sky-walker Che’ri, report,” he said promptly, facing the holo.

“Commander Mitth’raw’nuruodo, planet is nominal to our previous scans. Nothing suspicious or any large concentrations of droids in the city.”

“No doubt that is intentional.”

Tano in the co-pilot seat threw up a holo image of the Republic spy’s ship, nestled within a circular docking bay at the local spaceport.

“So your ambassador made it here.”

“Good news,” Skywalker commented with a small smile, closing his eyes and nodding.

“Che’ri, remain in a high orbit on sensor overwatch. Also inform of us any capital class ship that enters the system immediately.”

“By your order, commander.”

The holo vanished as she cut the link.

Skywalker now talked quickly in Basic over the com, which turned out to be with Yovbridge spaceport control.

“I’ve requested a landing clearance openly identifying myself.”

Thrawn frowned, seeing the strategy immediately. “Rather bold.”

“I’m a rather prominent figure in the war, if we want to draw them out quickly, then there’s no better way.”

A smattering of Basic was returned over the link, which was oddly distorted either due to signal interference or the poor quality of the spaceport’s systems.

Skywalker only nodded and put his hands on the yoke, pushing the Omen onto a descent vector for the capital.

The amount of space traffic was relatively small in his experience, but there was enough of it coming and going from the capital that the locals had to invest in traffic control infrastructure.

“Can you show me the overhead of Yovbridge, please?”

Skywalker relayed the order and Tano’s hands fluttered into her holographic controls, before she flicked a holo panel over to him with a top-down view of the city, all the sensor readouts and labeling already translated to Meese Caulf for his convenience. He even had a limited amount of control inputs on the sides of the interface.

With tap and drag of his finger, he managed to highlight two sectors of the city. “There are two industrial zones, north-west and south-east. If there is to be a droid factory it’ll be in there somewhere.”

The Omen began to shudder as the ship was enveloped in the plasma of atmospheric interface as it slowed down from orbital velocities. The impressive view of the exterior was dampened as a polarization filter came down and prevented the intense light from blinding everyone in the control center.

By the time that was over, he had already managed to use a filter on the city map to exclude the smaller buildings.

Then he was rather startled as the map suddenly blossomed with thousands of active signatures.

“Active, mobile power sources that should be indicative of a droid,” Skywalker explained as he pulled up the yoke to stabilize the ship for a modest, unhurried descent rate.

Thrawn was impressed at the resolution of the data and figured it made sense for a civilization fighting for its life against droids to develop such scanning methods. It equally made sense that the enemy would then react to find ways to hide droids from such scans.

He looked at the patterns for a few moments, searching for each large building that could conceivably be able to house a factory capable of making thousands of droids each day. Mokivj wasn’t an industrial powerhouse and local mining was equally limited to only what the locals needed. That meant the CIS would’ve had to expand exploration for minerals locally, if they wanted to get this project done in any practical amount of time.

He put down another filter and eliminated a few borderline cases.

Seven locations were left.

Four of them had active droid concentrations, but the numbers at each location was only a few hundred or so.

He enhanced and focused the view on each in turn. The amount of actual factory workers, whose speeders were parked outside and who he could see moving in and out, meant that these locations were also unlikely.

As much as you needed organic workers to maintain any factory, despite automation, they represented a huge security risk. No matter how tight with security you were, it’d only take one worker getting to an interstellar communicator to bring the entire operation to light. The CIS had practiced enough security in that respect that it required a dedicated, professional spy to find out.

His fingers made the pinching gesture he had seen Tano use to zoom the view back out.

That left three locations, each large enough for the needs of the CIS. Each with no droid signatures whatsoever within them and little to no traffic showing workers coming or going.

There were two locations large enough to contain internal foundries to convert raw ore into metallic products. Both also had a substantial amount of cargo vehicles either parked outside or coming and going.

“These two, both of them in the south east, they’re close enough to each other to be linked underground,” Thrawn declared.

Tano brought up a copy of his holo screen and enlarged it so they both could see.

“Interesting,” Skywalker frowned. “Why both?”

“Redundancy in case of accident and dispersion of assets,” Thrawn explained. “There are no droid signatures, none. Which is suspicious in itself, no factory on your side of the galaxy, let alone ours has no droid automation, meaning that they have used masking technology to block your scans.”

“I see what you’re getting at,” he nodded. Skywalker asked Tano something quickly and her hands blurred on the holo controls.

Large circular plots radiated from both suspect factories and Thrawn only needed a moment to deduce these were blast damage calculations for a missile weapon. Eventually she shook her head.

“It won’t work?” Thrawn asked.

“We can destroy the factory technically, but there’s no telling how deep the factory complex goes. If they follow the CIS’s typical pattern for these things, they could’ve burrowed down up to three hundred meters to open more factory space. For the missile weapons that we have on this ship, we’d need to set them to a strength which would devastate the rest of the city. That amount of collateral damage is unacceptable.”

“No doubt it was intentionally done this way to prevent a single strike from destroying the factory. The citizens of the city are being essentially held hostage. That only leaves one viable option, sabotage of the factory and the mine feeding it.”

Skywalker nodded, quickly giving his apprentice an order. She opened another holo screen and judging from the topography flashing by, she was now scanning for nearby earthworks.

He pushed down further on the yoke as Yovbridge finally came into visual range.

“There’s also the matter of finding who is the local CIS officer in charge of this. It won’t be a tactical droid, there’s definitely a senior official in charge, but they won’t be too high up the chain. They’re expendable by definition because backup and reinforcement is too far away.”

Thrawn nodded, “There’ll definitely be local cooperation, obtained via coercion or willingly. Perhaps the planetary governor?”

“Maybe,” Skywalker turned the yoke, slowing down and yawing the Omen to the left as they slid over the many landing bays of the spaceport.  

Finally, he pulled back on the throttle, settling the ship to a hover, before slowly losing altitude and shifting the Omen into its landing configuration.

The circular bay managed to swallow up the ship completely and Thrawn looked up at the cool gray steel that surrounded the ship, including the four emitters for what had to be tractor beams spaced equidistantly.

Thrawn waited patiently as the ship was put through its shutdown procedures and when the holographics disappeared all around him, it was to find a barren room with minimal physical controls remaining to fly the craft. He idly wondered what procedure there was for when the holographic system failed.

“You’ve got an integrated comlink on you?” Skywalker asked, handing over a small datapad.

“Yes, but I doubt our personal devices can talk to each other.” Thrawn took the pad, it sported a similar Republic style interface to the Omen and was loaded with the mapping data of the city. It was also displaying a real time location of the pad itself.

“Not so easy to adapt those, that’s why you’ll need that pad and if you turn it around, you’ll see a current generation comlink you can remove and place on you wherever is most comfortable.”

Thrawn slipped out an oval comlink no bigger than his palm out of the receptacle in the pad, then after a moment placed it on the inside of his left forearm. The device automatically secured itself with a molecular bonding mechanism and lit up. Skywalker gave him a brief lecture in its use and he found it remarkably intuitive for a completely alien device.

“All right, your weapon is a pulse laser, if I’m not mistaken?”

“Correct.”

“How many shots?”

“Thirty on a single power cell, of which I have five spare cells, which I can reload within less than one and a half seconds.”

“Is there a stun function?”

“There is,” Thrawn confirmed. “It uses the laser in a low energy continuous mode, then channels electric power along the ionized air directly into the target.”

“I doubt we’d have cause to use it, but if you do, only on humans or similar. Ah, here’s Chewie.” The wookiee ducked into the control center, giving a combined grunt-groan as a question? “Going to need you and R2 to remain with the ship, not just to defend it but also to come flying to our rescue or if need be, strafe the factory.”

“That is not an optimal plan,” Thrawn objected.

“It’s a worst-case scenario plan,” Skywalker groused. “Something that has a disturbing habit of becoming the plan we end up having to use. Now let’s go.”

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They emerged from the spaceport a frustrating amount of time later, enduring one queue only to be sent to another, after which Skywalker could finally pay the docking fee.

An amount that was essentially a bribe for the official processing their entry. It seemed even Skywalker’s rank and authority could only bring them so far in speeding up the purposefully slow bureaucracy.

The street outside was filled with a cornucopia of Republic sentients of various species, coming and going, mostly towards the informal market that lined the street with carts, collapsible booths and other mobile structures.

“Stay close, watch for pickpockets!” Skywalker warned.

He led the way with his apprentice at his side forming a formidable armored front that the crowd had no choice but to flow around. Thrawn made sure to stay directly right behind the two Jedi as they moved.

The busy market spanned the entire length of the street and when they finally managed to turn off it onto the adjoining street, it was to be confronted by a line of taxi speeders and sentients who were eagerly offering their transport services.

Skywalker and Tano kept walking, politely declining each with either the shake of a head or a quick sweeping gesture of a hand. The latter usually resulted in the sentient gaining a rather stupefied vacant look on their face. An interesting use of a Jedi’s powers, if somewhat concerning.

Those with the rare gift of Third Sight among the Chiss could make you see anything, but they couldn’t dull your wits with a gesture.

For a moment, Thrawn was thinking the Jedi were going to ignore the taxis and walk the eight kilometers of city streets to reach the industrial zones. However, Tano stopped them at a taxi speeder that could seat five reasonably sized sentients, with an alien driver that had green skin, two huge unblinking eyes with what looked like stars in them, set above a pointed snout with a tiny mouth, pointed ears and two antennae. The language the alien spoke was not Basic at all, but both Jedi seemed to understand with no issue.

“Get in,” Skywalker invited as he handed over credits.

“Why this one?” Thrawn asked as he settled himself in the back seat and closed the door.

Tano got in the front passenger seat, which was isolated from the driver by a thin screen, whilst Skywalker sat to Thrawn’s left side.

“Enclosed taxi, it’ll be enough to mostly stop blaster fire and is the most maneuverable.”

He tightly controlled any reaction his body was giving, affecting a casual relaxed attitude in the seat. “You spotted an enemy already?”

“Yes, it’s one of the reasons we took so long to get through the spaceport. We were being delayed to give them time to arrive and prepare.”

“How many?” he asked, casually looking outside from right to left and meeting Skywalker’s eyes through the clear visor of his helmet.

“Three speeders, eleven armed sentients with blaster rifles and even a man-portable missile launcher.”

“How do you know this?”

“We’re Jedi,” Skywalker shrugged with a small smile and knocked his fist against the driver’s cubicle. “I hope you’re a good shot with that pulse laser.”

“I am, though I’m usually not in the back of a speeder shooting at others.”

“My padawan will be a bit busy managing the driver and our flight. So it will be up to both of us to act in defense.” He reached over the front seats and accepted his apprentice’s silvery blaster pistol and rested it in his lap as the speeder hummed to life.

It hovered itself up into the sky, twisting to the south-east before the driver hit the acceleration hard enough to drive Thrawn back into his seat.

No amount of training could master his own heart as the adrenals began pumping.

Skywalker showed him the button on the door which would lower the plasteel window and pushed it.

Thrawn followed suit and twisted around to sit on his knees whilst staring hard out the rear and side viewports. The wind was now blasting into the cabin, making ordinary communication impossible without shouting.

Nothing. No targets.

He brought his laser to hand and strained his eyes.

Then he heard Skywalker’s voice, somehow registering in his ears despite the noise.

“Attacking from below, shoot!”

Thrawn popped his laser pistol, left arm and as little of his face as he could afford out the window and drew a bead on their enemy.

They had chosen open-top speeders and while it made for much easier targets, consequently they had an easier time of firing back.

He found the first target he could, aimed and pulled the trigger.

A purple pulse laser instantly connected with the left shoulder of the human he had aimed at, burning through cloth, skin and sinew.

A blue blaster bolt from Skywalker hit the driver straight on the alien’s head, turning it into a smoking ruin.

Another alien in the speeder jumped for the controls, barely managing to keep control.

Thrawn barely held onto his laser as their own speeder began twisting and turning to avoid the storm of return fire from the other two enemy vehicles.

He found himself automatically bracing against the seat with his knees and pushing against the roof with a flat hand, preventing him from being tumbled around the interior like a rock in a diffuser drum.

His laser was aimed out the window out of sheer instinct and his eyes looking for a target.

An enemy speeder swerved into view and he didn’t hesitate.

The pulse beam hit the side door, burned through the thin civilian rated steel with ease and he briefly caught the sight of a human screaming in pain before the combined maneuvering of the enemy and their own vehicle robbed him of seeing anything further.

Skywalker fired rapidly three times out of his side and Thrawn managed to see an enemy speeder start to list and smoke from an onboard fire.

Then he felt an invisible hand or force, pushing his head down.

There was no resisting it, not unless he wanted to break his own neck, so he let it happen…

An angry red blaster bolt sheared through the roof at an angle and shot out of his window.

If he had been more stubborn about resisting that invisible force, he’d have been dead.

He fought to not think and overanalyze, just to fight.

He pushed his laser out again, aimed and fired.

The pulse beam scythed a long gash across the front of an enemy vehicle, but managed to clip the chest of another alien.

The sudden heat and expansion of the bodily fluids led to a small explosion of otherworldly viscera and blood.

He pulled his weapon back just in time to brace himself as their speeder did actual rolls through the air in a manner he was sure shouldn’t be in its design specs given its shape and performance.

Thrawn knew he should be frightened to a much larger degree than he was currently feeling. The situation was too out of his control and this was his first ever battle under such circumstances, yet the fear didn’t come.

He was relatively calm and in fact, his heart felt eager, buoyed, there was a confidence that was both his and yet alien.

Their speeder finally settled to a more steady and stabilized flight path only for his eyes to catch an enemy vehicle in the distance.

An alien was hefting a long box-like device on his shoulder, fiddling with controls of… a missile launcher.

The Chiss army had similar weapons, but they were more compact and sleek.

Thrawn did the only thing that there was time to do.

He aimed and fired, pulling the trigger frantically.

The range was hopelessly too far. Even if he was a very good shot, he was no computer and this model of laser pistol was not meant for long range use. The most he’d do to the alien was a bad burn as the majority of the shot’s energy was lost burning through so much air.

Amazingly, after the second correction he scored a hit on the alien’s face.

They fell back in shock but it did not do enough as through sheer reflex, the missile burst forth from its launcher with an energetic blue cloud of propellant that erupted into the speeder.

By sheer coincidence, the portable launcher had been angled that the propellant expansion acted like a massive hammer that slammed into another alien that had been seated nearby.

Thrawn briefly saw a vaporous cloud expansion tinged with alien blood and body parts fly off in the distance, but his attention was now firmly focused on the grysk damned missile streaking towards him.

His heart felt like it wanted to jump into his throat and he could do nothing but watch as his death in the skies over an alien world in Lesser Space approached inevitably.

The sky lit up with a brief flash and expanding ball of flame.

Thrawn blinked, taking a deep harsh breath as he comprehended the fact that he was still alive, the explosion was already gone and left behind them as their speeder flew away.

He scanned the skies frantically, searching for more targets, his hand flexing on the grip of his weapon.

“Easy Thrawn, it’s over!” Skywalker shouted and patted him once on the shoulder.

He felt the tension, fear and adrenals flow away from him and he practically collapsed, managing to catch himself with his hands on the backrest.

He had been in many battles, fighting Lioaoin pirates, Paataatus warships and Vagaari, but it had all been behind the armor and electrostatic barriers of an Ascendancy ship. As much as he had trained for fighting in person if necessary, he considered it a failure if things devolved to such a level. Now he was truly out of his element and he had walked into it with eyes wide open and willingly. Was this failure?

Had he not considered what dangers he might encounter offering himself to fight alongside a Jedi of all things? All in the name of the greater goal of gaining alliance and technology.

He turned around on his knees to sit properly, mechanically checking and securing his laser weapon.

His mind churned over the question, what had caused the missile to explode early?

Faulty fusing? Possibly, even likely. Yet he discarded the notion as his mind replayed the surveillance data of Skywalker and Tano’s assault on the smugglers of Batuu.

Both Jedi had shaped and manipulated kinetic forces and it was clear that most likely Tano had intervened. Projecting a kinetic attack directly on the missile that set off the impact detonator. It all depended on the sophistication of the missile, for which he had no verifiable data.

He closed the window next to him and Skywalker followed suit.

“Did you get them all?”

“No, one speeder retreated with damage, but our would-be assassins are having a very bad day, only three survivors.”

Thrawn looked up into the jagged hole in the roof. “Was it you who pushed me down?”

“That was Ahsoka,” Skywalker nodded at his apprentice.

The younger Jedi had the palm of her hand directed towards their alien driver, who had been uncharacteristically calm during the entire ordeal. Had she used the Jedi version of Third Sight to keep him calm and on purpose?

“She knew it was going to happen. That’s the only way to explain the timing.”

“It’s generally called precognition, all Jedi and Sith have it to varying degrees. It’s why our reflexes appear supernatural to most.”

Thrawn knew quite a few chiss scientists who would be scoffing in disbelief at the moment, but the evidence was right in front of his eyes. There was a fringe belief among some chiss that what sky-walkers were actually doing was perceiving the future of a ship as it traveled through hyperspace and their seemingly illogical, random adjustments to course, speed, hyperfield strength, shape and direction was in answer to that.

The problem was no sky-walker gave the same testimony of their perceptions whilst they used their talents to navigate. It was all subjective.

He nodded in understanding, but there was only one thing he could do now on his own honor and as a member of the Expansionary Defense Fleet. He saluted her formally, “Thank her for me, please.” 

Skywalker smiled and spoke a long sentence in Basic.

Tano turned her head to him, nodding awkwardly within that large helmet, which he now knew indicated she belonged to the Mandalorian culture. One which had a long history of war against the Republic itself. His studies during their journey to Mokivj, facilitated with public access to the Republic Holonet, had naturally focused on learning as much as possible about his new allies.

He had only scratched the surface and would need weeks of uninterrupted time, but he knew it would be critical to not just his future, but that of the Ascendancy itself.

Thrawn could imagine that he would be getting a personal debriefing from the Syndicure himself, perhaps even with the heads of the Nine Ruling Families in attendance.

He hoped General Ba’kif wouldn’t lose his head over this.

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The speeder landed roughly 700 sha from their target.

It wasn’t damaged badly enough to draw too much attention from anyone who happened to be passing by, but Skywalker was clearly in a hurry for the driver to leave.

The Jedi handed over two physical tokens of Republic currency which Thrawn calculated to have enough value for the driver to probably buy an entirely new taxi.

The alien looked at the amount with awe, quickly pocketed it before giving a rough, untrained Republic salute and accelerated away into the distance.

Skywalker was bemused and chuckled. “All right, time to see what we’ve got here.”

They had to walk down three streets of the industrial zone, turning first left then right and they were still two hundred sha away when Tano stiffened slightly and said, “Here, it is.”

“Agreed,” Skywalker stopped and looked behind him.

Thrawn looked in that direction to see a large hovering cargo hauler approaching their position from down the street, heading in the direction of their target.

The Jedi squared his shoulders and walked purposefully with full confidence into the road and directly in the path of the cargo hauler.

The hauler’s driver, a human, saw the obstruction and slammed on an air horn to warn the Jedi of his apparent foolishness.

Skywalker kept walking and unhooked the hilt of his lightsaber.

The driver now tried to swerve, hualing the control yoke hard right… or at least he tried to, the yoke wouldn’t budge at all.

He strained as hard as he could, frantically pulling to no avail and sounding the air horn.

The cargo hauler’s repulsors tilted and whined with power as they applied braking forces.

Thrawn could see through the front windshields how the driver was frantically working at his control boards.

Frustration was clear on his bearded face as seemingly none of his hauler’s systems were working as it should.

Skywalker stopped walking and waited for the resultant momentum of the hauler to shed itself.

It did so within an arm’s length of the Jedi.

He walked around the hauler’s nose and looked up at the driver, igniting his lightsaber.

The Jedi didn’t have to say a word.

The human raised his hands wearily, bringing them into view before opening the door of the control cab.

Skywalker pointed his hand to the street and the driver obediently got out and sat down on his own hands.

“Let’s go, follow,” Tano said in a more fluent Meese Caulf.

Thrawn obeyed and they both walked past the main body of the hauler and around the back.

She gestured with her hand and the large rear cargo doors opened seemingly of their own volition.

A small ladder extended itself towards ground level and with two quick steps she vaulted herself inside the compartment.

Thrawn’s curiosity won out and he used the ladder in a much more conservative fashion to climb up.

The interior was lit from light strips running along the floor, along with individual cargo pallets stacked neatly in two rows. Each pallet was about nine sha high and wide, made of Republic plasteel in a dull brown.

Tano walked deeper inside until she stopped at a pallet that was alone and unstacked.

The pallet had its own control board with Aurabesh glyphs prominently displayed and flashing, which the Jedi tapped on, before it flashed an angry red.

She scoffed and from her right vambrace a long spike emerged that looked very deadly. It was not a close range stabbing weapon though, as she inserted it into a port beneath the control board that looked made for such an interface. There was clearly more to her armor than met the eye, because the pallet screen began visibly flashing with active programming in Republic data standards at speeds that no organic being could hope to match. 

Mere moments later the screen blanked out before flashing green.

The pallet’s front hinged door opened with a hiss of equalizing air pressure.

Inside, was raw ore of a type that Thrawn had never seen before, it was a dark cerulean colored mineral in a rocky unprocessed form that glinted with a hint of small crystalline structures protruding from each rock.

Tano aimed her left fist at the ore and a visible laser scanning beam rapidly played over it.

A holo screen now appeared over her left arm, which showed a fairly detailed analysis of the material. Thrawn couldn’t understand what it showed, but the flashing red Aurebesh script did not seem to be a good sign.

“What is that?” he asked, pointing to the ore.

Tano visibly sighed and her visor pointedly looked at him. Her translation program came up and she typed out, “An extremely rare mineral, called cortosis.”

“Doesn’t seem to be rare anymore,” he pointed to the pallets around them.

“Yes, which is concerning. The pallet’s data indicates there must be a mine that was discovered locally.”

“What is it used for?”

She paused, but eventually answered, “It’s a highly efficient insulator and shielding material.”

Thrawn folded his arms and scratched his chin in thought, “And it’s practical use?”

Tano drew her own blaster pistol so quickly that no one would blame him for thinking she had simply manifested the weapon out of thin air.

The weapon whined with a sharp discharge and the blue bolt slammed straight into the cortosis ore.

Thrawn expected a deep hole to be the result, slagged material and shattered rock.

None of that happened.

The blaster bolt simply skipped off the cortosis ore, lost cohesion and its plasma fizzled out into nothing.

His mind immediately latched onto the application of this rare material and why the CIS would go to such length to create a factory for it so far from their space. If their war droids could be armored with this mineral, it would lead to a decisive advantage on any battlefield they were deployed on. Whether this was a strategic advantage was another matter entirely. It would depend on how much cortosis could be mined and how quickly the new droids could be shipped and utilized across the galaxy. 

However, he suspected cortosis wasn’t entirely a wonder material that would solve every problem.

He reached out to pick up a hand sized piece of ore - the gloves of his isolation equipment were strong and rugged enough so that he didn’t have to worry about cuts or tears - and then he squeezed.

The rock of raw cortosis ore cracked with a puff of dust and crumbled under continued pressure from his grip.

“Not exactly strong in raw form, it needs to be alloyed.”

Tano nodded, “It needs to be turned to fibers, then further alloyed with two other armoring elements in a matrix to compensate for its natural brittleness. It’s not an easy process, nor a well known one. How the CIS found out, I’d very much like to know.”

She grabbed a small piece of cortosis ore and stored it in a belt pouch, before pushing the pallet closed. She typed out one last message before dismissing the holo screen above her arm, “Hang on to something.”

Her hand gestured to the rear of the hauler, the cargo doors whined and closed, plunging them into darkness. The lighting strips turned back on and Thrawn quickly grabbed hold on the nearest pallet before the entire hauler lurched forward and started to gain speed again.

He frowned at Tano, taking in her unsurprised demeanor.

Their plan was now obvious.

Use the hauler to infiltrate and get behind any defenses or security the CIS factory had installed.

“What if they scan this vehicle?”

Tano tilted her head before bringing up a holoscreen, confirming for him that she somehow was understanding Meese Caulf now, but not able to speak it. What had changed?

“It has scan masking technology, they would need to do physical inspection of the interior.”

Thrawn looked around and gestured to the already hacked pallet, “We could fit in there.”

She shook her head, “I can generally manipulate the mind of anyone they send in here, but they won’t do an inspection. If it’s a droid, there are other options. Our presence on the planet hasn’t filtered down the rank and file all the way yet.”  

“How can you be so sure of that?”

Much to his annoyance, the only answer given was the singularly unhelpful, “I’m a Jedi.”

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‘There are a lot of them, Snips.’

‘A battalion of cortosis armored B1s and B2s, guarding the complex in standard pattern patrols, yes.’

‘And you want us to take them on with lightsabers that will short out the moment we try to cut them and blasters that are completely ineffective. Even Thrawn’s pulse laser won’t help at all, judging by your experiment.’

‘Well, his laser would work, if it could turn to a constant beam mode. Cortosis armor struggles against a prolonged energy attack. Our primary weapon against these droids are going to be kinetic attacks with the Force. Cortosis’ main weakness is only reduced by alloying it, not removed entirely.’

‘That’s a relief. How do you…?’

‘This is not prescience speaking. Clan Viszla has a few very old cortosis blades and armor sets in the vaults, made during the time of the Old Republic. The knowledge of how to make them is carefully preserved by the armorers, just in case one day another source of the ore is found.’

Anakin didn’t take long to make the obvious connection. ‘Clan Viszla has beskar armor with cortosis?’

‘Yes. They are priceless and no one would dare suggest actually taking them into battle. Every warrior would be distracted by the presence of such legendary armor, including the nagging worry that if the one wearing it should fall in battle, that they should immediately abandon what they are doing to secure the armor.’

‘Yes, I can see the problem… we’re coming up on the factory gates now.’

I held up a warning signal to Thrawn, and the chiss nodded, bringing his weapon to hand.

There was a single armed human guard at the gate. He wasn’t alarmed or experiencing heightened emotion and eyed the approaching hauler with boredom.

Anakin had hidden himself in the small sleeping cot behind the driver, whilst his Mind Trick would do the rest of the job in making him unseen.

The driver was currently cooperating under threat and Anakin was ready to intervene the moment he tried anything.

The guard approached, following procedure, merely verifying the driver’s ID both visually and with a scanner, before waving the hauler through the gates.

We traveled a short distance, snaking around minor roads of the factory complex until the driver stopped in front of a large door set in one of the largest buildings. It opened automatically at the hauler’s approach and the driver wasted no time in speeding inside to a designated parking spot, which would put the rear of the hauler facing a large cargo conveyor belt for the transport of ore pallets.

‘All right, I’m putting our driver to sleep. Can’t take the chance letting him go.’ Anakin thought.

I did a full nearby sweep with my farsight.

‘Three B1s and a B2 are patrolling fifty meters away, coming towards us through an adjoining corridor.’

‘All right, go in 3…2…1… now!’

A gesture of my hand and the hauler’s rear doors were hissing open.

I jumped out, landing on the conveyor, before vaulting to the hard duracrete floor, coming to a crouch near the thick landing strut of the hauler.

Thrawn was hot on my heels and sticking close to me like glue.

My technometry reached out and shorted out a number of visual surveillance cams.

‘Go!’

Anakin joined our crouched sprint towards an adjoining set of doors that would take us to a long corridor that was currently free of any droid patrol or worker.

He took over directing Thrawn at this point, whilst I snagged every sensor I could find.

My hand slapped the controls and we charged in the moment the doors had hissed open on their motivators.

Farsight scouting and knowledge of CIS tactical droid strategy, had let me find primary, secondary and tertiary control centers for the factory. They had also brought three medium sized fusion reactors to help power the complex, putting them firmly off-the-grid from the city. Sabotaging this beast was not going to be easy. 

The sheer size of the place was also working to our advantage. It was so large, that the CIS hadn’t even managed to make full use of it. I estimated it as being slightly over half a million square meters of space, stretched over five floors above ground and a dozen floors underground, shaped in an overall hexagonal arrangement of buildings. The interiors were typical utilitarian, bare minimum affairs, with grated floors and durasteel walls that had circles cut out of them to save on material, whilst still retaining structural integrity.

A lot of the corridors and spaces weren’t even lit, saving on unnecessary energy expenditure, creating entire zones of darkness. Anyone who didn’t come in here with an inertial guidance device or map would soon find themselves hopelessly lost in the dark.

M8 was doing the hard work of mapping our most efficient route, but we also had to dodge droid patrols, hide in ducts beneath the floor and occasionally sprint to reach a blind spot in the patrol pattern.

We even managed to spy on one of the cortosis droid assembly lines, which was actually being manned by a handful of workers, who were sitting behind circular control desks and watching over every step of the process, occasionally pushing a button and feeling very bored.

We spent nearly fifty nerve-wracking minutes sneaking and occasionally sprinting, before we reached the corridor that would lead us to the secondary control room.

Inside was only one worker who was overseen by a lone tac droid and one cortosis B2 droid. 

Anakin touched Thrawn briefly on the shoulder, sending his thoughts directly on the plan of attack to the chiss and what his role would be.

He took the odd experience without even flinching and nodded, adjusting his laser pistol’s setting.

I brought the Darksaber to hand and elbowed the door controls.

Anakin and Thrawn burst inside first, with me following hot on their heels.

There was a snap and crackling sound as Thrawn’s stun shot hit the worker.

That was joined by the thunderous crackling as Anakin released Force Lighting to slam into the B2, following it up with Push that slammed the massive droid against the nearby wall.

I shifted into a blur of speed as I stabbed the lit Darksaber right into the tac droid in the upper left of its chassis, destroying its internal communication circuits with a single blow, before slashing downward and sending it to the floor into electronic oblivion.

Anakin gritted his teeth as he continued streaming the lighting attack against the B2.

The cortosis weave was breaking down under the assault, but it was definitely not just a one hit kill.

I released a focused Force Push, narrowing it down to an area no larger than my fist.

The B2’s frontal chest plate bent inward and shattered.

Yet still its arms came down and it was aiming to shoot.

Thrawn’s pulse laser shot straight through the small sensor cluster in its upper chest and finally put down the cortosis B2 for good.

I gave Anakin a shrewd look, “Emerald Judgement a bit rusty there, Skyguy?”

He shook out his left hand, dispersing residual electrons to get rid of the pins-and-needles feeling. I could feel him harboring a bit of anger at himself, “Yes, I nearly destroyed my mechno-arm throwing that, didn’t channel the flow properly.”

“That was a remarkable amount of resiliency in a droid,” Thrawn commented  

Anakin knelt in front of the smoking wreck of the B2 and only needed a brief look inside, “This cortosis weave is amazing, there’s also been some reworking of the droid internals. Definite improved arrangement of internal components.”

I turned around and shoved the unconscious worker out of the way to inspect the massive physical control panel with a multitude of buttons, knobs and screens, all arranged along a diagrammatic representation of five production lines.

Thankfully the technology here was still Republic standard, so I had no problem interfacing the logic spike of my armor.

“Go to work, M8, give me a report.”

“Yes, mistress! On the double!” said my droid intelligence with her typical chipper attitude.

It took her only seconds to map the entire network infrastructure of the factory, which she displayed using my armor’s holoprojector.

“That is annoying,” I commented with a scowl, gesturing to the network map. “They’ve isolated control loops. We could only sabotage the five production lines and a single fusion reactor from here.”

“Well, they had to learn at some point,” Anakin folded his arms and scanned through the map. “So we have to assault two locations at once somehow between the three of us, which will definitely be reinforced once we sabotage this control center.”

“Are there any local armories in the factory?” Thrawn asked.

Anakin frowned, “The B1s would need them. Their weapons are not internal. What’s your point?”

“It strikes me that no matter how confident someone is in the programming security of a droid and how resistant it’d be to subversion, that you’d definitely want a means of fighting these cortosis droids efficiently yourself. If say, a group of droids were sliced…”

Thrawn definitely had a point, “M8? Anything like that out there?”

“I’ve identified four main armory and recharge points in the factory, mistress.” She highlighted them on the factory map, then linked live footage of visual surveillance.

There were the typical racks and racks of blaster rifles the B1s used, along with ammo cell storage crates, recharge stations, but there was a rack with numerous weapons that were definitely not standard CIS issue for droids.

M8 visually scanned them and identified them as Merr-Sonn EG-32 rifles or as they were colloquially known - lightning guns. It was the closest the Corusca galaxy had to something like an Arc rifle.

“Then we have our first objective. Arm ourselves with those weapons.”

“Mistress! I’ve found Padme!”

“What?!” I was unable to stop my reflexive shout. “Show me.”

A new holo screen was projected and sure enough, there she was, but she was accompanied by three humans, who had the definite look of locals. They were dressed in overalls, tool belts and each carried their own EG-32s.

“Where is this, M8?”

“Western side of the complex, it’s the disused portion.”

I leaned down on the control panel and stared at Anakin, who was clenching his hands into fists repeatedly as he stared at the image of his wife.

“Now what?”

He stared at me and I could feel the conflict within him acutely.

“Sithspit.”

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A/N: Poor Skyguy, nasty dilemma. Some new artwork coming soon. Enjoy your weekend and stay awesome!

The Force Wills - Chapter 109

It didn’t take long for Anakin to determine that he was speaking to someone who was both very intelligent and dangerous.

The Meese Caulf language by its very nature was designed to minimize any potential for misunderstanding, which would naturally be bad for business. You didn’t want your future business partner drawing a blaster because you accidentally insulted his family line or any other manner of personal offense or slight. It unfortunately meant that Meese Caulf was a bit dry and lacked many colorful metaphors that most organic languages picked up over the eons. It had only a few curse words in its vocabulary, mostly to allow some form of emotional release for the speaker, but it was generally accepted that you really shouldn’t use them at all in a trade negotiation.

Commander Mitth'raw'nuruodo’s Meese Caulf was utterly perfect.

There was no stumbling with words, no pauses for thought mid-sentence. His tone was level and had just enough feeling in them for the purpose of conveying that it was not a droid speaking.

It was his other senses and the way Ahsoka was carefully controlling her masks and emotions that further illustrated just how dangerous this alien was. He had to clamp down on his own frustration at her being rather tight-lipped about what her Prescience had shown about this Mitth'raw'nuruodo.

“It’s an honor to make your acquaintance, General Skywalker,” said the chiss commander. “As this is the first formal contact between our species, I’ve prepared a data set for transmission that you can read at your leisure and send to your superiors.”

“I trust there are no malicious programs within this data set?” Anakin asked with as much politeness as he could inject.

“None, general. It’s benign information about my people, the Chiss Ascendancy, everything you need to know about us.”

He was very tempted at this moment to project his sight straight in the Chiss scout ship but resisted. Both prudence and a strong insight from the Force was advising against that, so he contented himself with just a general sense of whether he was being lied to or not. In this case, Mitth'raw'nuruodo was telling the truth.

With a twirling of fingers through the holographic controls, Anakin opened a channel and isolated a partition of storage. “Very well, we’re ready, you may transmit, commander.”

Using the old comm standard was making things quite slow and from the amount of data, it seemed the chiss were not flying blind here. The data set was meticulously crafted and designed for its purpose.

“Are you receiving?”

“It’s coming through, commander,” Anakin confirmed. “In the meantime, let’s speak of your more immediate purpose here.”

There was a slight pause on the other end and Anakin felt the first clear emotion from Mitth'raw'nuruodo - a pleasantly surprised satisfaction. “You deduce correctly, general. If formal relations were the only objective, the Ascendancy would’ve used a very different ship to greet you.”

“I’d imagine so, the militarized scout and only two representatives say that you want to keep this contact quiet, not only from your own people but your enemies as well.”

“Again, correct, general. I’m here on a multi-faceted mission, the primary goal of which is recruiting allies against an expansionist enemy that not only designs on conquering Chiss space, but also intends to go beyond the Galactic Wall. The first target naturally being the very planet below us, which I understand belongs to the Republic.”

Anakin just felt a frustrated annoyance sink into his stomach, Sithspit.

“Next, we wish for knowledge of the war that has engulfed the majority of the galaxy, the so-called ‘Clone Wars’ and a generalized overview of the eastern regions.”

“Those are conversations that will take a long time, commander. Time I unfortunately do not readily have available as I’m on my own urgent mission. I will ask, do you know if this enemy of yours intends to invade Republic space within the next two weeks?”

Mitth'raw'nuruodo again paused, but he sensed it was more that he was consulting the chiss next to him for something. “That is very unlikely, General Skywalker. Our enemy, the Nikardun, would have to conquer a sizable portion of chiss space before the way through the Wall would be open to them. As of the latest reports, they have yet to encroach on our borders. Yet our strategists predict that invasion is inevitable within the next three months. The Nikardun Destiny fully believe it's their right to conquer and rule over what we call the ‘Chaos’ or you would call the Western Galaxy.”

There was so much to unravel and consider from those words that Anakin was sure he could spend weeks and not even come close. He also had the sinking feeling that this entire conversation was going to be dissected and scrutinized by entire departments of Republic Intelligence and even future generations of historians.

No pressure, Skywalker, he thought sarcastically.

“You know we just can’t take your word on that, commander.”

“Yes, which is why the data set I’m sending you also has a generalized briefing on the political situation in the Chaos, including who the chiss are allied with and who the Nikardun have subjugated and conquered. Naturally, you can conclude that it’s faked or embellished. In time, the Ascendancy would be amenable to escorting your own scouts to confirm the reports.”

The computer chimed. “File transfer complete.”

“Confirmed. General, in the interest of promoting trust and I suspect related to your presence. I also now offer something I believe would be of interest to you.”

More data was streamed, but this time it was uncompressed and in an old holo format. The computer easily transposed it to modern standards with minimal issue.

It was two images and a communication file.

The first was a very detailed sensor image of a Nomad 4 class civilian courier ship. They were a near artistic blend of saucer shape that blended into a narrowed delta prow towards the fore section. They could move at a blistering pace for a civilian ship and were generally used to ferry information too sensitive to entrust to the Holonet or people who had to get somewhere in a hurry. The ship itself was named the Possibility according to its transponder.

Ahsoka was already hard busy with researching, digging into the Holonet and soon found that ship was registered to a Jaille Kelt from Naboo whose ID holo was a perfect match for Duja.

Great so we found one of her aliases.

The second image was an exact match for Padme’s yacht - caught at a more distant angle as it was descending down to Batuu.

The communication was a rather short conversation, presumably cut for brevity between Duja and Mitth'raw'nuruodo.

Duja, also in Meese Caulf, asked whether the chiss had seen any Nubian starships landing. He naturally had no firm idea of what a Nubian starship looked like and so she sent him an image. Mitth'raw'nuruodo visibly took the time to search his ship’s records and replied in the negative. She rather rudely cut the comlink and blasted toward the planet’s surface.

First contact with a new species and she cuts them off, Ahsoka thought incredulously.

Anakin sat back in his chair and asked the chiss the first pertinent question, “Why would you think this is important to me?”

“I am an attentive observer, general. I wouldn’t be a good scout otherwise. I’m also a student of a variety of arts - I look at all three of your ships and while there may be some differences in the details, they all speak the same language to me. Kelt arrived first, seeking the Nubian ship, which only arrived nearly eight days later. Now nine days later, you arrive. It’s clear to me you are all part of a pattern, seeking the same thing.”

Ahsoka smiled ruefully, shaking her head and staring into the ceiling of the cockpit.

Anakin’s mind was racing, if the chiss had truly been observing Batuu for that long, then it was clear that he’d also have data on all the ships coming and going.

He might know where Padme had flown off to in Duja’s ship.

“All right, Commander, I think we have the beginning of a deal. Knowledge for knowledge. We’ll tell you about the war, you give me the data on where Kelt’s ship went.”

“I’d like to add our assistance to that bargain. Whatever overall mission you are all here for, it’s not difficult to surmise it relates to the Clone War. I’m sure you could use an extra weapon at your side.”

Anakin frowned, “You would fight alongside us if it came down to it?”

“If it would foster trust to reach my objective, yes, I would, General Skywalker.”

Anakin gave Ahsoka a questioning look.

She folded her arms and gave a quick nod.

“Very well. I’m sending you coordinates. Are you biologically cleared to land on Batuu?”

“We will be wearing isolation suits, general.”

“Good, I’d hate for a cross-species disease on Batuu to mark first contact. See you groundside.”

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They deorbited in a least time course directly towards Black Spire Outpost.

Problems began immediately when the plasma of atmospheric entry subsided and Ahsoka’s holopanels beeped a warning.

“Eight lifesigns detected around Padme’s ship, along with five speeder bikes,” she reported.

“Sithspit, ship must’ve been standing there for too long.”

“It’s actually 30 clicks outside Black Spire, in a forested landing site. It’s not on any approved landing zones for space traffic.”

Anakin slapped his own leg in annoyance, “And of course she used a smuggler landing site.”

“Think they can get inside?”

“Ordinarily, no, but there’s no telling what tools they have.” He enabled the ship’s PA, “Chewie, R2, get up here and take over. Ahsoka and I need to go for a skydive.”

It didn’t take but a few moments for the wookiee to storm into the cockpit and switch seats with Anakin. Ahsoka secured her station, grabbed her Mando helmet and began the process of putting it on, which she’d perfected to take a few seconds at this point, using the Force to get her lekku arranged and sleeved properly.

He donned his own armor’s helmet, which hissed as a seal was established and the HUD blossomed in front of his eyes.

R2 rolled into the cockpit and both Jedi hurried out, sliding down the small ladder to the troop deck.

Ahsoka took the lead in working the controls near the front of the deck for their deployment. One of the inherent design features of the Kom’rk was to make it easy for Mandalorians to jump out right into battle with their flight packs. Keeping the ship airborne and available to provide ground fire support.

“All right, sealing off and equalizing pressures…”

The air in the deck suddenly turned misty for a moment and a hiss of shifting air was heard.

“Shields up and opening.”

The floor ahead of his feet shifted and split open, revealing only darkness beyond, before the ventral hull doors opened.

Natural light and wind streamed into the deck.

The Omen was now hurtling towards the parked Nubian ship in a near dive and it took a further fifty seconds for it to reach a six kilometer altitude.

Ahsoka gave him a nod before stepping out over the void and letting the planet’s gravity claim her.

He followed suit, making sure to keep his arms locked around his body.

The interior of the ship lurched and accelerated away above his head as he fell away from it.

He only saw the angular, ventral gray hull for a moment, before he lost sight of it and the vast open forested terrain loomed in every direction below.

With shifts of his arms, he quickly changed orientation to a head first dive before triggering his armor’s flight systems.

“43 seconds to target.” Ahsoka announced over comlink.

The HUD helpfully scanned and brought up the position of the Nubian ship, to the south-east of Black Spire Outpost. It was a small city in the distance, a dense cluster of gray and black buildings that speared into the sky.

At two kilometers altitude, details became clearer and with twitches of fingers, movement of his eyes and the minor amounts of technometry that he had mastered; an overview of the landing zone unfurled in his HUD.

‘Snips, you take the north side of the clearing, the bunch clustered around the ship’s fore, I’ll take the rest at the starboard side,’ he thought through the bond.

‘Got it. No scan emissions from them so far, their emotions are nice and stable, if frustrated.’

‘No one on overwatch then.’

The clearing was now looming in view, he reached out to the Force and dumped nearly half his velocity in one stroke. In a final maneuver he switched his body to fall feet first, before triggering full thrust on his armor’s boot jets.

He snagged the remaining kinetic energy of his fall, pulling it in before radiating it outward into a Force Push as he touched down on the ground a mere two meters from the grouping of smugglers.

The surprise was total and all three were sent flying, lifted off their feet and tumbling through the air.

One smuggler clipped his arm on the forward landing strut of the yacht. The human’s scream of pain echoed across the small clearing, whilst his fellows fell and tumbled, losing their tools and a couple of blasters. They rather painfully hit the trees, getting winded, dazed and breaking bones in the process.

Ahsoka’s solution was more conventional, releasing a non-lethal Whistling Bird munition just before she landed.

It took out the three humans immediately, releasing calibrated stun energy that sent them dropping the clearing floor, but the last smuggler, a rodian, was spared the assault when a smart munition failed and bounced off his chest.

He had an impressive draw speed, managing to get off one shot against her.

The Darksaber burst into life with a crystalline hiss and the bolt was deflected harmlessly into the air.

The Force twisted as the rodian was disarmed with a Pull, then lifted off his feet with a theatrical gesture from her.

He also felt her attempt to use a Force Sleep, but something about the rodian’s physiology wasn’t letting it happen.

She solved the problem by a quick draw from the holster on her right thigh, sending a stun blast from her WESTAR blaster pistol to knock the smuggler out.

Anakin surveyed each smuggler and only had to Force Sleep two of them, the rest were completely unconscious and probably needed to see a med tech soon, but none of them were critically injured. In reflection, he probably could’ve done things different, but the idea of this bunch stealing his wife’s yacht was somewhat infuriating.

The strange thumping whine of alien engines reached them and the chiss scout ship slid into view overhead before hovering to a stop for a smooth landing on remarkably thin landing struts.

He sensed that Ahsoka was staring hard at the ship as she idly extinguished the Darksaber and clipped it to her belt.

‘There’s a Force Sensitive on board,’ she thought.

Anakin was somewhat surprised at the announcement. He carefully turned his senses towards the chiss ship. It was very subtle and it was almost as if the Force sensitive was hiding… herself, but after a moment, he realized it was just because of the minimal impact she was having on the Force.

The ship’s embarkation ramp lowered from the central hull and two humanoids emerged.

Both were wearing a dark green uniform, with armored pads over their shoulders, elbows and knees. Shin length synth boots that seemed designed for rough terrain covered their feet and both were armed with pistol pattern weapons that seemed to adhere directly to their hips with no need for a holster. Their heads were covered with a helmet that only partially covered the back of the neck with solid armoring, before becoming a transparisteel equivalent that almost perfectly conformed to the wearer head shape.

One was significantly taller and well built, easily topping 1.9 meters, whilst his female fellow soldier was significantly shorter. 

They approached with a calm, confident assurance, evaluating them in turn.

When they were close enough to see their faces properly, Anakin’s first thought was that he was looking at pantorans. They had blue skin and the same shimmering blue-black hair, but the immediate difference became evident in the eyes.

Naturally red sclera, pink irises with a void black lens.

Their imprint on the Force was also quite different and it left Anakin feeling rather unsettled or perhaps it was just these two specifically.

The chiss came to a polite stop two meters away before the familiar voice of Mitth'raw'nuruodo came from the male, filtered through a tiny external speaker. “Greetings General Skywalker.” He thumped a right fist lightly on his chest before the same hand opened and he presented his palm towards them.

“Greetings Mitth'raw'nuruodo,” he replied and immediately picked up on the extreme amusement from the female in response to the name. She kept her body language mostly neutral, but a twitch of her light red lips betrayed her mood outwardly.

Mitth'raw'nuruodo folded his hands behind his back and gave his female colleague a sideways look of remonstration. “I apologize for Sky-walker Che’ri. She finds your mispronunciation of my name amusing.”

Now the Meese Caulf language was running straight into the problems it could not solve, jargon and seemingly a specialized name for a rank that literally translated to someone whose job was to walk in the sky.

Anakin shook off his family name somehow being used in such a fashion, before asking the pertinent question, “How am I mispronouncing it?”

“Less emphasis on the first part, more on the center, and a rising intonation near the end.”

Anakin tried and immediately felt his tongue stumbling over it. He quickly buried his own astonishment that he was struggling with it and tried again, only for his mind to slam on the repulsor brakes.    

Mitth'raw'nuruodo raised a hand to halt his next try. “General, in the interest of time, you can simply call me Thrawn.”

He felt Che’ri’s brief astonishment before she cleared her throat and settled herself.

It was clear that there was cultural baggage or significance to ‘Thrawn’ offering the use of his core name like this, but Anakin decided to file it for the linguists and cultural experts. 

“To clear up another potential misunderstanding, because of the limitation of this language, Sky-walker is indeed a rank in our military. It refers to someone capable of high levels of hyperspace navigation.”

So Che’ri was essentially the chiss version of a Jedi Navigator. That went some way to explain her signature in the Force - if that was all she was trained to do or capable of.

“I see. Thank you for the explanation.”

Thrawn now surveyed the clearing and was clearly impressed with what he saw. “You dealt with the scavengers efficiently.”

“This is a smuggler’s illegal landing zone. My actual purpose here is to track down a Republic ambassador that went missing. This is her ship, she would know this is a smuggler landing site, yet she chose to land here anyway.”

Thrawn took that in thoughtfully, “She wanted to leave no possible record of her presence by landing in a spaceport. Is your ambassador also a spy?”

“Not professionally, but her training could qualify her easily.” Anakin realized Thrawn’s open implication that he somehow knew that Duja was a spy as well. 

Ahsoka took the moment to talk to Chewie who was still orbiting nearly five hundred meters above the clearing. “We’re all right down here, Chewie. Not enough space for you to also land so just bring her to a hover nearby.” She walked towards the ventral belly of the yacht and placed her hands directly on the smooth chromium plated hull near the entrance.

Che’ri looked with thinly disguised curiosity as she felt Ahsoka’s use of technometry.

‘Skyguy, the ship has scanned me. Padme has keyed us for access, but it still requires a passphrase.’

‘Try the passphrase, ‘Luviad Rhilt Varykino’ and whisper it please.’

Just saying those words brought warmth to his heart. As the memory of his secret, very simple marriage ceremony at Varykino Villa before Clergy Rhilt played out in his mind behind every mental defense he could construct.

The H-Type Nubian yacht abruptly showed signs of life and the starboard embarkation door was revealed as the smooth hull opened up and lowered a short ramp.

“It seems your apprentice was successful,” Thrawn commented, watching Ahsoka walk into the ship. “Shall we commence with our transaction?”

Anakin gathered his thoughts. He was going to have to approach this from the perspective of firmly believing in the grand deception that Palpatine was weaving for everyone. The chiss represented the first species that had actually reached out from the Unknown Regions - that he knew of, at least. It was historic, to put it mildly and the chancellor of the Republic would not waste one moment to take every advantage he could, both politically and for his eventual New Order.

He also now began to understand why Ahsoka was so reluctant to reveal anything about her Prescient vision regarding the entire situation. If the Chiss Ascendancy was a major power of the Unknown Regions, their weight brought into the equation of the Clone Wars for either side could be a game changer.

“The galaxy has become divided. On one side, the Republic, the government that has stood for a thousand years in its current form and whom I represent and fight for. On the other, an alliance of separatist worlds and business interests that has formed the Confederation of Independent Systems…”

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The consoles in the luxurious cockpit of the yacht came to life under my hands and I quickly brought the ship’s main computer interface to the forefront in a holo screen.

I began a search but most of my mind was occupied exploring the future probability lines that stretched out in front of me.

Frakking Thrawn!

The chiss who would become a perpetual thorn in the side of the Rebellion and the New Republic, who would almost succeed in bringing the latter to its knees. Someone with the most dangerous weapon in the galaxy - an unparalleled genius mind for strategic and tactical thinking. Who would go on to infiltrate the future Empire on behalf of the Chiss Ascendancy, but was then further molded by Imperial training and doctrine.

Now he was here, in his mid-thirties, with a meteoric career and a Senior Captain in the Chiss Expansionary Defense Force. He had downplayed his rank on purpose.

How easy it would be to just…

I took a deep breath… no Ahsoka.

My vision and plans could not afford to look just thirty years down the road, I had to be thinking in terms of centuries. Events beyond my own biological lifetime.

Thrawn was a perilous danger, yet represented an equally powerful opportunity.

I wanted him.

I wanted to harness that genius towards my cause somehow.

The computer chirped that it had completed my instructions, pulling me firmly back to the present. I now had Padme’s flight log and a number of personal ship diary entries she had made. It was at least good that she had foresight to make them, given the potential danger she was flying herself into.

I played this first file and she was looking as beautiful as ever, hair tied back into a singular bun, wearing a figure hugging light brown bodysuit with a purple-pink sleeveless utility jacket over it. I could just barely spot a belt with her Naboo pattern blaster holstered on her hip.

She stared into the visual sensor with a look that I never wanted to see in her hazel brown eyes - one of sorrow. She wiped away fresh tears from under her eyes and brought up a tissue to blow her nose. Only Padme could make such an action look elegant, despite its disgusting nature.

“I’m too late. Duja is…” she swallowed heavily. “Duja is dead, murdered. The local constabulary said it was a speeder bike accident but I know better. Given what I know now, it’s certainly local corruption at work.”

She took a deep breath in through her nose and blew out from her mouth, employing some of the control techniques I had taught her.

“Thankfully, they didn’t think to scan her thoroughly. I was able to use her brooch to remotely summon and access her ship, the Possibility. She’d planned for the possibility of her own death, keyed me for complete access so I was even able to read her RNSF mission file. Duja…” Padme smiled fondly, her eyes deep in memory. “... ever my loyal spy.”

She visibly composed herself and wiped her eyes with frustration. “It is now up to me to finish what she started. It is something I must do. Her sacrifice must not be in vain. Oh, I can already imagine the faces of those close to me and their arguments to try and stop me. My heart will allow nothing else.”

The vid file ended at that point.

I stopped myself from slamming my fists against the consoles. “Really, Padme, just…” I cast off my frustration and played the next file.

“...finished preparations. Transferring most of my provisions and critical luggage to the Possibility and parking the Tustan in a nearby clearing that’s definitely being used by smugglers. It’s the best option for the ship to remain out of sight and not impounded by the corrupt authorities. Smugglers will at least keep the Tustan in one piece to sell her off due to her inherent value. If it comes down to it, I’ll just buy it back from them.”

Padme looked down and in her hand was an elegant oval brooch, with a ruby colored gem set into it.

“You’d think they would steal this from her body, but from the weight it’s easy to tell it’s completely fake, which is precisely what she counted on.”

She stared into the visual sensor with an intensity and determination that I could feel like a punch to my stomach. 

“I’m ready. I leave for Mokivj after I do a final check on the Possibility’s engines. When I get there I had no idea how I’m going to finish what Duja started. The only plan I have now is to improvise, find and recruit some locals for my cause. There must be some who don't like the idea of a war droid factory pumping out weapons for use by the Separatists. I don’t have to be a military commander to know that would be catastrophic for the southern battlespaces.”

Frak, of course it wouldn’t.

If the CIS managed to keep it hidden for long, they could pull off dozens of war droid infiltration attacks all over the southern galaxy via shipping. It was impossible for RI to have eyes everywhere and the one place no one was looking was right here on the borders of the Unknown Regions.

Seed them strategically behind the front lines, near major shipping hyperlanes and you could create chaos for Republic logistics and military response. There’d be too many fires to put out.

A quick consultation of the local hyperspace map told me there was an eighteen hour trip ahead of us to reach our new destination.

My hand was already inserting a data chit to download the rest of the data, after which a quick deletion removed those files from the ship.

Padme had purposefully yet subtly left us a trail of breadcrumbs, one which only we could follow. The encryption on the files left no room for any slicing. If anyone other than Anakin, R2 or myself had tried to access them, the files would’ve been deleted immediately. I marveled somewhat at her precautions and it clearly spoke of someone who was taking their role in the Fulcrum conspiracy seriously.

With a few taps on the console, I locked the system down with my own passcode on top of Padme’s, shut everything down and hurried back outside.

Anakin and Thrawn were deep in a serious discussion about the whole Republic vs. CIS dynamic. The chiss senior captain asking quite a few probing questions for clarification.

M8 was keeping a running translation going in my HUD.

I really needed to learn a trade language as well, perhaps using the time on the way back to Coruscant.

My attention was drawn though to Che’ri, who was listening with rapt attention to the discussion of her superior officer.

My senses carefully fell around her like the softest mist, trying to be as subtle as possible.

It didn’t seem to matter, because she picked up on me. Her emotions became amused, even playful and she even had to fight down a giggle. Her painfully cute eyes flicked to me briefly.  

She was young, roughly 14 years old.

Now I was the last person who had the right to throw stones about being in a military uniform at that age, but mentally she hardly seemed to fit the mold of having undergone that kind of training at all. She was a sky-walker, a hyperspace navigator, who could find the path between stars among the chaotic Unknown Regions. Did they have to be young for some reason?

Jedi Navigators started their specific training during the Academy at nine years old in most cases, though I had heard of some of them starting at thirteen.

‘Got anything, Snips?’ Anakin asked as I came to a stop next to him.

‘Duja found an operational CIS droid factory secretly operating within the sector. More than likely a refurbished local facility. She paid with her own life to gain this intel. Padme is already there. Mokivj. 18 hour trip from here.’

His jaw muscles twitched as a slight bit of emotion managed to leak through his outward control.

‘Any indication of local security? Are there CIS droids active?’

‘We have to assume the worst, Anakin.’

We were having the discussion even as he and Thrawn were talking about the current outlook for the war resolving in either direction.

Anakin held up a hand to halt the discussion and both of us had essentially a repeat of the conversation in Basic to keep up appearances. He then repeated the pertinent information to Thrawn in Meese Caulf.

‘Mistress, I could speak Meese Caulf on your behalf,’ M8 offered.

“That would make things easier, M8,” I subvocalized. “But I want to keep you under wraps on this occasion. Thrawn is a deadly, potential adversary and keeping the language barrier between us can only work to my advantage at the moment.”

“Understood, mistress, I’ll switch to text only mode in your HUD.”

“Good girl.”

That conversation continued for a few minutes as Thrawn offered his personal assistance in our new mission to neutralize the factory.

"What do you think, Ahsoka?” Anakin asked aloud in Basic.

“We’re going to be outnumbered as usual, I won’t say no to another blaster at my side, master.”

 He nodded to Thrawn.

The senior captain turned to Che’ri and they both had a quick conversation in what had to be the native chiss language. The young navigator was not happy about it, but accepted it with the chiss version of a salute. Turning around and heading off towards the scout ship.

“Where’s she going?”

“She’s taking off so we can land the Omen. We could probably carry Thrawn up between us,” Anakin jerked a thumb in the direction of the hovering Kom’rk. “But he preferred this way. He was rather impressed at the idea of an armor for soldiers that could fly as ours do.”

“I bet he was,” I muttered. Republic Jump Troopers were excellent shock troops, making most terrain obstacles irrelevant and what some of my Mandalorian Blades could do with jetpacks was crazy considering they didn’t have the Force to call on. It was just sheer skill, experience and training done in a large indoor anti-grav facility on Concordia. Most traditionally raised Mando children got their first taste of jetpack flight when they were tall enough for the pack to fit on their backs.

I corralled my wandering thoughts as Anakin got on the comlink with Chewie to land the Omen in the newly vacated space.

The chiss scout ship hovered up, angled itself upward and blasted away out of sight.

“By the way,” Anakin’s mouth twitched with humor. “It seems Thrawn thought we were Sith.”

My brain screeched to a halt as I considered that thought. “Uh, what?”

“Old Chiss mythos on our respective orders, that was distorted over many thousands of years of retelling. At this point the Sith are portrayed as capable and clever warriors with armor, usually with more than one lightsaber. Whilst the Jedi act illogically, even foolishly to the detriment of their own cause whilst espousing their beliefs as superior to the Sith.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, even though I knew quite a few Jedi who fit that mold in the current era. “I hope you set the record straight?”

“Yes I did, he appreciated being corrected.”

“Oh, now I want to be in the room at the Council of First Knowledge when they get their hands on those Chiss myths… with a holocam.”

“You and me both.”

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With hands folded behind his back, Mitth’raw’nuruodo entered the Republic ship and was careful to keep his eyes forward and disinterested at his surroundings, even as he took in every detail he could about the vessel’s interior.

Already he was seeing a multitude of different approaches to solve problems that the engineers of the Chiss Ascendancy had never considered. The most glaringly obvious one was the combined use of physical interfaces and holographic. He watched as the young female apprentice of General Skywalker closed and sealed the ship's embarkation ramp - her hand touching the interface holographs in a specific pattern, the ship’s computer obviously tracked with fine precision where her fingers were going, to determine what the intended command interface was.

Already he felt the ship’s subtle rumbling under his feet and the harmonic sounds of many systems working together. The alien engines had a more constant, higher tone to his ears than any he had ever heard among the species of the Chaos.

The general’s apprentice now approached him and he allowed himself to critically examine her properly. His first immediate conclusion, besides her differing species and what biological differences there were, was that she had to belong to an entirely distinct culture among the Republic. A culture that had remained somewhat insular and perhaps even opposed to the Republic itself, before being either subsumed or conquered. Her armor’s differing lines was the clear work of a sentient being’s hands as opposed to a mass manufactured machine doing the job. It was also of a clearly different metallic material than her master’s armor, including an ingenious patterning that he could tell was working as a camouflage for a city environment.

Her helmet’s unique visor shape elicited a familiarity, something he had long ago read about in the ancient histories of the Jedi and Sith. It was something more than just being viscerally intimidating on a subconscious level.

She stopped a polite distance away and said in a phrase she had just learned in Meese Caulf from her master, “Greetings, Commander Thrawn.  I’m Commander Ahsoka Tano. Jedi Padawan of Knight Skywalker. Follow me.”

They had to awkwardly squeeze past a large cylindrical hypermatter fuel tank, something that clearly didn’t belong in the middle of what was a troop compartment. It was so new that he could even see the uncovered welding joints that connected it to the greater structure of the ship through the decking.

She led the way to the far end of the deck and gestured to a seat designed for the small troop complement that the ship was designed to carry. Just from its shape and the extra accouterments around it he could see that it was designed for soldiers wearing armor like Tano’s. A quick count revealed 24 such seats.

Thrawn imagined what 24 flying, armored, highly trained soldiers to Ascendancy standards could do, even with conventional arms.

He definitely enjoyed exploring the notion and took the offered seat.

Tano now projected a hologram over the vambrace of her armor, her fingers fiddling and tapping into the ethereal buttons before a screen appeared above that to give even more feedback in Republic standard language.

The floating holo screen turned around so that he could read it properly and now the written form of Meese Caulf began appearing as she typed.

A rather cumbersome but useful solution to bridge the language barrier he supposed.

“Will you be requiring any food from our stores? We have neutral proteins that according to our scans should be compatible with chiss.”

A marginal concern. He could go without solid foodstuff for a full week and he had nutri-pills within his helmet, which would keep him content for the duration of this journey, until he could be reunited with his ship. His true concern was that she had admitted to a scan done on his person without his knowledge or consent. He had seen no indication or evidence of it being done. Therefore, it was completely non-invasive and invisible.

“No, commander,” he purposefully shook his head side to side.

Tano fiddled with the hologram, stepped closer, and a holographic keypad appeared in front of him, showing Meese Caulf characters.

“Just to clarify that body language, it means ‘no’ in your culture?”

Thrawn had to take a moment, his fluency in the written form was not as great, something he resolved to correct as soon as possible. He managed to reply, “Correct, commander.”

The ship shuddered under his feet and the engines changed pitch. He felt the acceleration briefly but the rest was quickly canceled out by the dampeners.

“I hope you’ll indulge me with a few questions now that we have 18 hours of waiting ahead of us. Republic law requires that a certain protocol be followed when meeting new species.”

Thrawn nodded with the reply, “Please go ahead.”

The exchange that followed was a question and answer session that had definitely been written out in a bureaucratic committee. It was an almost sad conclusion that sentient nature bore out similarly in the Republic as it did in the Ascendancy and the other major polities of the Chaos. It seemed to be even worse for them, given the massive amount of the galaxy that fell under their sovereignty. He could see his interlocutor had very little enthusiasm for the procedure, but nevertheless, Thrawn was learning a lot from the exchange and from Tano.

Her bearing, demeanor, the way she moved, even if her large helmet hid her facial expressions, he was painting a picture in his mind of her.

The fact that she hadn’t taken that helmet off whilst her master had done so, once inside the ship also spoke to something. There was no practical reason for it.

His own isolation equipment was working, unless she doubted their adequacy… no.

She would have objected to Skywalker uncovering himself.

That left only one likely reason… culture perhaps?

Movement caught his eye to the left and he struggled to catch his startled reaction to the massive furry alien that climbed down the ladder from the upper deck. It was over eight sha tall, also wore fitted armor similar to Skywalker’s and looked physically strong enough to rip a chiss in half. The beady black eyes radiated a cunning intelligence and the huge fanged mouth set under a black nose was incredibly intimidating. It communicated with a nuanced set of grunting, groans and other sounds he didn’t have the words for.

Tano understood and responded in Basic, gesturing to Thrawn.

The fierce alien stepped closer and his mind reasserted itself over the shameful loss of control to base instincts.

“This is Technical Sergeant Chewbacca,” she typed. “He’s a wookiee from Kashyyyk, a system on the eastern Mid-Rim.”

Thrawn gave a salute and bowed his head.

The wookiee returned a Republic style salute before speaking to Tano rapidly.

She nodded to whatever was said and the large alien hurried back to the ladder, climbing down into a lower deck this time.

“Do you have many wookiees in the Republic Army?” he couldn’t help but ask.

She shook her head, “Chewbacca is the only one and he’s a special case. His people are not numerous enough for them to be used in offensive operations beyond the defense of their homeworld.”

Thrawn couldn’t help the relief he felt. As much as it was unlikely the Ascendancy would go to war with the Republic, the idea of facing down an entire army of giant aliens with that kind of technological level behind them would be the stuff of nightmares for a number of strategic and tactical planners back home. The implication of low population numbers showed a function of biology and environment that was thankfully keeping wookiee numbers in check.

“Now for some more informal questions if you don’t mind?”

Thrawn shook his head, his eyes meeting the upper horizontal portion of her visor.

“Now that you know more about the Republic, do you think your government would actually want support from us in fighting the Nikardun?”

Thrawn saw immediately what she was getting at. The Ascendancy ruled over roughly eighteen sectors of the Chaos. It was space that they guarded zealously, information about those locations was guarded and blood was spilled to keep it that way. It was most curious that she had somehow inferred or deduced the inherent reluctance of Ascendancy for any external support from other powers.

He stared, trying to imagine the face and eyes behind that visor, the mind that was in there and with a flash of insight he realized that as he had been painting a picture of her, she had done the same to him.

He almost felt naked, wishing his own helmet was fully opaque.

“They would, if it got to the point of the Nikardun actually threatening our home space. I suspect your own government would only commit resources once the enemy threat has been sufficiently demonstrated. The Nikardun believe themselves to be the only species with true sentience and everyone else is just potential resources to be utilized. They see us no differently as you would look at a vein of ore sitting in a mine, for example.”

Her hand moved on the holographics with a subtle extra speed that spoke of anger. “If that is indeed their belief, it is high time for them to be educated differently. How much space do they control and what is the size of their fleets?”

“They control only eight sectors, but qualitatively their worlds are richer and their conquest is expanding with every standard month. We are not completely sure we’ve seen their full strength, but we know of four major fleets, each centered around a Battle Dreadnought with sixty to eighty ships of various classes in support.”

Tano was silent for a few moments as she digested the information. Her lack of reaction to what should’ve been an overwhelming enemy force in most situations told him she didn’t truly consider it as such.

She nodded, “We are clearly going to need to get some clarification on our respective warship classification methods. Which we won’t get until we get some conversion of our respective matter measurement systems.”

It took some work, but with the amazingly versatile hologram projector for demonstration purposes and advanced internal computer system of Tano’s armor, a conversion equation was written.

With that done, she showed him what the Republic considered a dreadnought.

Thrawn again struggled to contain his outward reaction.

She has to be exaggerating, he thought incredulously.  

He was looking at what should be a space station of over 27 000 sha, yet it was shaped in the pointed arrow form the Republic seemed to favor in their ships. It had engines that were absolutely stupendous in size arrayed on the rear flanks. His mind tried to imagine how many capital lasers you could fit on that amount of hull space and the number he arrived at dwarfed the amount his species had probably constructed within the last century.

Thankfully, his mind also informed him on the impossible problem such a ship would face in the Chaos. It would be equally slow and finding a safe path through hyperspace for such a monstrosity would challenge even the most legendary sky-walkers the Ascendancy had ever trained in the past. He struggled to imagine anyone capable of it today.

“You are not getting that ship through what you call the Galactic Barrier,” Thrawn said. 

“You’re correct, the combatant we’d most likely send would be this.”

She now showed another ship, much smaller, but it was still just under 4000 sha in length and was 600 sha larger than a Nikardun Battle Dreadnought and 1000 larger than the Chiss equivalent. It was much more feasible to use within the Chaos but he could see many sky-walkers balk at the notion of guiding such a vessel through hyperspace.

Thrawn drank in the surface features of the Republic ship - noting the eight emplacements for capital weaponry, numerous smaller ones, the curious ridge along the ventral hull that ran its length all the way to the rear tower superstructure.

It truly crystalized in his mind how different ship building could be in what the majority of chiss would consider ‘Lesser Space’. The hyperlanes could be enormous and stretch for days on end without a ship needing to drop out.

He also imagined that such a ship came standard with the energy shields he had detected around the very craft he was now inside. A technology only theoretical to the Ascendancy and fantasy to everyone else in the Chaos. Ships used superior armor and electrostatic barriers for passive defense… not so in the greater galaxy.

“That would be a more reasonable ship to use inside the Chaos,” he confirmed.

Tano’s hand swiped the ship holo away in a negligent fashion. How casually she used such a novel, more intuitive method for interacting with data. He could just imagine how much more simplified, quicker and efficient it would be to command a ship or even a fleet squadron with this method.

“Tell me, if the Ascendancy is so sure the Nikardun will attack, why haven’t you done some preemptive clandestine operations against them? Unless you have and naturally just won’t tell me.”

Thrawn allowed a small smile to show on his face. “Commander, what I’m doing right now is such an operation. The Chiss Ascendancy as a rule likes our privacy and it’s against our doctrine to engage in preemptive military actions.”

The Syndicure would have the head of any senior defense commander that unilaterally broke the isolationism of the Ascendancy in such a flagrant manner.

The problem was that even though the Ascendancy’s capital world of Csilla had already suffered an attack by three Paataatus warships, which had been duly punished in reprisal raid by Admiral Ar’alani, there was no hard evidence that it had all been done at the behest of the Nikardun. Everyone knew the Paataatus were puppets of the Nikardun Destiny, but the veil of deniability was maintained. The Destiny vehemently and officially denied any wrongdoing or that they had usurped the Paataatus.

In that manner, they played right on every chiss’ desire for the rest of the Chaos to stay away.

“So our first contact is not even officially sanctioned by your government.”

Thrawn nodded, “My sanction comes from my direct superior, General Ba’kif, who has recognized the long term threat of allowing the Nikardun to continue unchecked in its expansion on our neighbors.”

Tano shook her head and tapped out one word with evident disgust in her body language. It was translated to, “Politics.”

It seemed she was no stranger to how politics could interfere and dictate unreasonable conditions on military operations and practicalities.   

She took a step back and typed out, “Thank you for indulging me. You are free to wander and stretch your legs about the troop deck and you may come up to the cockpit. Lower deck is off-limits.”

Thrawn nodded. As much as it would’ve been nice to get the opportunity to scan this ship’s shield generator. There were much easier ways to gain the technology without having to potentially ruin a potential alliance with the Republic. He had a strong suspicion the armored wookiee would object with more than just words if he snooped around down there.

He watched her leave and had the strangest feeling.

It was something he didn’t have a word for.

Not attraction, nor love, nor friendship, he had just met her. Yet…

He allowed himself a deep cleansing breath and relaxed, letting his mind drift. Her presence had an intensity that weighed on you. The only time he had felt something remotely similar was in the presence of an old member of the Mitth family when he’d been a child. She was called Mitth’ewuok'rusu, a formidable female sky-walker who had been long retired but was also gifted with what the chiss called Third Sight - the ability to walk in the minds of others.

Had Tano walked in his mind?

Would he even know if that was the case? Thewuok had playfully done so to him as a child, guessing every number he thought of and even made him see illusions of his favorite animals dancing in the room.

No, his intellect could only come to the conclusion that she would only do so as a last resort. If the Jedi mythos held true.

He was going down a wrong path. The word he was seeking would not be there. 

It would come by the time of their arrival, of that he was sure.

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A/N: * 3.47 sha - 1 meter

Wow, writing from the perspective of a younger Thrawn was fascinating. He's not the titan of strategy just yet, but it's all there, waiting to come forward in the Nikardun conflicts. A bit light on action this chapter, but this bridge is necessary for what's coming.

Have a great weekend folks and hope you enjoyed.

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The Force Wills - Chapter 108

Two weeks.

That’s how long it took to get to this moment - traveling in the expansive, very slow elevator up the side of the Senate Apartment Complex.

Eight days of which had been enduring the equally slow ride accompanying the kirosian and other slaves we had purchased. We remained undercover for as long as possible and only when we were back in Republic space, was the veil dropped to the rescued slaves.

There had been shock, amazement, astonishment which quickly morphed to relief, happiness and parties of celebration on board for the majority of them. That was unfortunately not the case for those who had been conditioned the longest, who refused to believe their slavery was over, that it was all just another trick or test.

We had done our best, but had to hand them off at the first friendly port which could help, which turned out to be Kashyyyk.

The wookiees had a long memory of slavery at the hands of many culprits over the millenia and consequently a near institutionally preserved knowledge of how to deprogram slaves.

We eventually left the slow bulk transport ships at Umbara, commandeering a Nu class military shuttle to greatly speed our return.

When we finally landed on Coruscant directly into the Jedi Temple Complex, it was to endure a wait for the Council to actually convene and conduct our debriefing. Most of which centered around Zygerria and our experiences there.

The moment we could leave, we got the first speeder that could carry two Jedi, a wookiee and an astromech, broke a number of air traffic regulations getting to the Federal Senate district and landed at the Senatorial skyscraper.

I gave a sideways grin towards Anakin, who was standing as still as a statue. His body language and aura gave off a feeling of indomitability and the only tick of impatience shown was when he would occasionally ride on the balls of his feet.

“What?” he asked with a frown.

I tugged a crease out of my Hapan Jedi outfit’s top and settled my hands behind my back, “I’m proud of you, Skyguy. A few years ago you would’ve already hacked this elevator to speed it up.”

He snorted in amusement, staring through the expansive transparisteel wall and the amazing view it offered of the late afternoon Senate district. “Don’t think the idea hasn’t occurred to me.”

“If it’s any consolation, I imagined throwing Stasis on quite a few of the masters of the Council who were a bit long winded, shall we say.”

He chuckled at my admission. “Now that would be a sight to see, if only for the look on their faces after they free themselves.”

The elevator finally came to a stop at the penthouse level, the doors swished open and we stepped into the entrance lobby of Padme’s apartment.

Only to come face to face with Captain Gregar Typho, RNSF and Padme’s loyal bodyguard who I sensed was like a boiling pot and ready to erupt at the first opportunity.     

“Captain Typho,” Anakin greeted the man with a formal bow, any trace of levity absent.

“General Skywalker, Commander Tano,” Typho nodded at us stiffly. His single eye narrowed at Chewie. “Who is…?”

“Oh, apologies, this is Chewbacca, Tech Sergeant in the GAR and I am the holder of his life-debt,” I explained.

Typho nodded but was clearly not in a trusting mood, “Do you vouch for him?”

“With my life, Captain.”

“Very well, thank you for coming,” he sighed wearily. He gestured for us to follow and we passed through the interior security doors and into the long luxurious hallway of the greater apartment. “Perhaps you will just be the final pieces needed that can unlock the mystery the senator has left us.”

We stopped outside a door I had never entered, but knew to be her senatorial office space she maintained when she wanted to work at home.

Typho tapped in a code and the security system scanned him before the door slid aside with a hiss.

“I’ve left it as untouched as possible after my own investigation stalled,” he stated.

The room beyond was a relatively small space with an elegantly molded wooden desk, imported straight from Naboo. It had a number of wall racks for datapad storage, a large group portrait of the extended Amidala family and a number of pot plants to give it the final touch of organic comfort to the otherwise sterile space. It was a space that I could imagine Padme keeping very organized but now the desk was littered with strewn datapads and the computer terminal was pushed slightly askew.

“What findings did you make?” Anakin asked with a worried frown as he opened his senses to the office.

“That the senator can now seemingly be a ghost when she wants to be,” Typho said with frustration. “She received a call a few days before she began to behave strangely. It was from Duja, a former handmaiden from her time as queen. What was said in that call, I unfortunately don’t know. It was marked personal, so I had no cause to screen or listen in and Senator Amidala deleted any record of it afterward from the communication system.

“Then she abruptly preflighted and left on her H-type yacht at the exact moment when I wouldn’t be in any position to question or even stop her, when I was at a meeting with Alderaanian Security. She gave all the other RNSF guards busy work as distractions. She even left C-3P0 behind.” Typho was now even more tightly wound and I sensed he would like nothing more than to break something.

I felt Anakin’s general worry become grim. “Have you tried to restore the call record?”

“One of the RNSF staff here is a fairly good data slicer, she tried but the senator used a deletion program that did a very thorough job.”

“R2, see what you can do,” Anakin ordered.

The droid trilled an affirmative, rolling forward around the desk to plug himself into the terminal’s logic port.

“What can you tell us about Duja, her history, anything you think might be relevant, Captain?” I asked, feeling that the path to Padme began there.

Typho’s fists clenched as he watched R2 work and then his single eye met mine, “Duja, was one of the original group of handmaidens that were recruited to join Queen Amidala when she was first elected to the post. All of them were very close and she remains in touch with them. It was one of the reasons I didn’t think much of the communication between Duja and the senator.”

He paused at this point, collecting his thoughts and clearly debating with himself about something. “As I’m sure you’re aware, Naboo handmaidens are more than just personal caretakers of the queen. They’re also chosen based on other criteria, such as Sabé, who was chosen to be the queen’s body double and further trained as a bodyguard. Duja could also be a body double, but she was trained in something else entirely.”

Typho stopped himself again.

“What was it, captain?” Anakin frowned, we were both sensing Typho’s inner conflict at this point.

“She’s probably going to fire me for this, maybe even set a nice appointment with a Naboo judge but at least she’ll be alive to do so,” he said, his shoulders sagging somewhat. “Duja was trained in spycraft. She became Queen Amidala’s hidden eyes and ears not just in Theed, but also abroad on other planets. One of the queen’s security reforms was the creation of a very unofficial, off-the-books intelligence cadre. I’d hate to call it an actual agency, since that would imply a headquarters and an institution, which went against the very idea of it remaining out of sight. They’re more a secret division of the RNSF if anything.”

“Well, that’s certainly a surprise, but it makes sense in retrospect,” I folded my arms. “Let me guess, this Intel division was targeting Naboo’s only enemy at the time - the Trade Federation.”

“Just so,” Typho confirmed. “The queen wanted early warning the next time they tried their luck. Remember, at the time, there was no GAR. For many years we felt that the Federation would come back to finish the job, regardless of what penalties the Senate heaped on them. After Queen Amidala finished her terms of office, Duja was formally recruited into the RNSF Intel division. As far as I’m aware, the spying against the Trade Federation hasn’t stopped at all.”

“Queen Neeyutnee probably increased their budget with the Clone Wars,” Anakin theorized.

“You may deduce that if you wish,” Typho shrugged evasively.

“So in essence, Duja is a spy for the RNSF Intel Division,” I summarized. “She called Padme ostensibly just for a friendly chat to catch up, but then Padme goes rogue and ditches all her security to fly out into the galaxy. Clearly, their talk was about something more critical than the latest Naboo fashion or gossip from Queen Neeyutnee’s court.”

“Which is why I’m hoping R2 can find something. I’ve been trying to keep the senator’s disappearance as quiet as possible. There are a lot of enemies who would see her dead or as a hostage, not just among the Separatists. That limits the amount of expertise I can call on.”

“Is it just the local RNSF on Coruscant who knows?” Anakin asked.

“Yes, there’s no practical way to hide that from them, but they’re all my men and women, I vouch for every one of them. I’ve managed to placate them with the knowledge that you were coming to help. Admittedly, I could do more if I had called Theed and the rest of the RNSF on Naboo, but there would be no guarantees. At this moment, the best defense the senator has is secrecy.”

I nodded, “Chewie, what would you need to trace a probable path for the senator’s yacht from Coruscant?”

“A transponder number for her ship, assuming she didn’t turn it off at some point or scramble it,” he groaned fluently in his native tongue.

I saw Typho’s frown of incomprehension, “He needs her yacht’s transponder,” I translated.

He pulled out his personal datapad from a pocket and walked over to Chewie. 

The wookiee pulled out his own much larger pad and they tapped their respective devices together briefly, before beginning a data transfer.

“Got it, I’ll see what I can do,” Chewie growled, staring into the pad and typing into it rapidly.

‘Masters, I’ve managed some partial image reconstructions of the call,’ R2 trilled.

“Good work, R2, show us,” Anakin said.

The droid’s upper holo projector lit up and the flatscreen image of a rather beautiful woman appeared in the air. 

“That’s Duja,” Typho confirmed.

It was uncanny and I could easily see why the woman had been picked as a possible body double for Padme at one point. There were differences naturally, especially now that both were older. However, with the amount of traditional makeup a queen of Naboo wore, it was easy to imagine at a young age that they could play deceptive games. Duja’s nose and lips were subtly different now, her eyes were blue to Padme’s brown and she wore her hazel brown hair much longer and in a simple braid. She was more athletic in overall body shape, which was not surprising given her more active occupation. 

“Anything else, R2?”

‘The audio was even more thoroughly scrambled by the deletion software. I think it’s actually the primary focus of this specific program, but I’ll see what I can do.’

“Do your best. Captain, did C-3P0 say or spot anything that could help?”

“I talked at length to the droid,” Typho’s exasperated expression could only come from long experience dealing with the insufferable protocol droid. “The senator, it seems, was particularly careful to keep him in the dark. He noticed nothing odd and she sent him to the building’s droid maintenance for an oil bath just before she left.”

“Where is he?”

“In the recharge socket down the hallway.”

Clever Padme, I thought with a fond annoyance.

She had clearly come to the conclusion that I was using C-3P0 as a means of surveillance somehow. I had perhaps been a bit too brazen in using the droid during the Senator Clovis spying saga.

“I have the beginning of a trail for the senator,” Chewie announced. “She left the Coruscant system at the Ixtlar hyper point, using the Corellian Run to go galactic southward. The Xorth waypoint station registered her ship, which confirms that direction.”

“Did Corellian traffic control spot her?” I asked, imagining a galactic hyperspace map in my mind’s eye.

“Checking,” Chewie tapped and swiped on his datapad. “Yes, she left via the Chasin point, going down the Corellian Trade Spine… spotted in Hosnian Prime, Bestine, Moorja… She turned onto the Great Gran Run, heading galactic west. Noe’ha’on is the last place I confirm her ship being. Any system beyond that really doesn’t like putting their traffic data onto the Holonet or they refuse to even have Holonet receivers on their worlds.”

Typho was clearly getting annoyed at being the only one in the room unable to comprehend Shyriiwook.

“He traced her to the Western Reaches, Noe’ha’on.”

He referenced the system on his own pad quickly and scoffed, “The only thing of interest there is a single world, insectoid native race, which only became space faring because off-world traders used the place as a waypoint station. There’s no known Separatist activity in that region of space. Why would the senator go in that direction?”

“Logic would suggest because Duja went in that direction,” I shrugged, tapping my vambrace to bring up a holomap, having reached the limit of what I could remember of the hyperspace maps of the region.The area of the Great Gran Run was projected above my arm for everyone to see. “Could Duja have wanted a direct face to face meeting with the senator on Noe’ha’on?”

“Entirely possible,” Anakin sighed with annoyance, rubbing his face. “We at least have a general direction to go in now. Snips, the Omen is still on Coruscant, isn’t she?”

“Yes, still sitting in a Jedi Temple hangar. Why? You think we should use her for this trip?”

“Yes, she has firepower and speed, something I have a feeling we’re going to need.”

“Find the senator, please,” Typho said with a single imploring eye. “I wish I could come with you, but I need to keep an eye on Representative Binks and hold up the fort here.”

“Good luck.”

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The issue of us leaving on a journey that could last well beyond nine days, going in just one direction was thankfully solved by Obi-Wan having a brief chat with Master Yoda. Our daring rescue of so many slaves from the heart of CIS space, meant the leeway was there for us to go on this off-the-books mission of ‘supporting’ Senator Amidala in her duties.

So we boarded the Mandalorian Kom’rk class fighter/transport, packed with extra provisions, consumables and our respective war chests, before blasting off Coruscant with all the haste we could manage given the busy traffic conditions.

I sat back in the pilot’s seat as the tunnel of hyperspace streamed past the forward view and started manipulating the holo controls hovering in front of me, bringing up a highly detailed map of the Great Gran Run.

My eyes scanned each system along the hyperspace corridor, bringing up the info on each, trying to see if anything significant would jump out at me.

After nearly three hours of trying, I pushed the holomap away from me in disgust.

There were just too many possibilities. 

Especially because the Western Reaches was the literal frontier that brushed up against the Unknown Regions.

“Got anything, Snips?”

Anakin sat down in the co-pilot’s chair, his tunic and pants stained with all sorts of engineering fluids. He, together with Chewie and R2 had worked on improving the Omen’s hyperdrive. They hadn’t managed anything before we had to jump to hyperspace, but they were confident they could tweak the ship to reach a 0.8 rating from its normal 1.0.

I shook my head, “We’re not on a firm enough path. Too much potential motion in the future, too many destinations and intersections. I’m not finding the golden mean.”

He nodded, “Ten days with a whole galaxy ahead of us and the Western Reaches, that is not surprising. R2 is still working on reconstructing the call. He thinks he might be able to rebuild fragments of the audio in a few days.”

“Wow, he can usually work his magic in minutes.”

“The deletion program used was very impressive. I’ve never heard R2 make so many frustrated tones in the face of a challenge like this. Makes me wonder where Padme got it from.”

“One of the many questions we’ll ask when we find her.”

He slapped his own knee in annoyance, “Sithspit! What’s worth doing all this? What’s so critical that she had to go in person? Worrying us and shutting us out.”

“We can only be content that the bond is still there, Skyguy. If she was truly in trouble she would open back up.”

“There is that at least.”

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Two days later we came out of hyperspace in the Sedratis system.

The Omen had already shaved off twelve hours from our predicted arrival time thanks to R2’s navigation and their collective tweaking of the hyperdrive.

“Do you have them?” Anakin asked the holo of the grungy looking man wearing a mechanic's overall and a toolbelt.

“The new ZS compressors? Sure we do. Fresh off the line from CEC.”

“Good, we’ll take six, how much for you to get in your ship and rendezvous with us the moment we land in Corellian space?”

Zarrer Sem, starship engineer, who also owned his own dealership in Corellia, scratched his balding head in thought. “Add 200 credits and I’ll add in a complementary spare.”

“Deal, we’ll arrive in six hours. Transmitting coordinates and credits.”

Sem looked to the side and nodded. “Received on my end. Thank you for your business and see you soon.” He casually saluted with two fingers before his holo vanished.

I chuckled and smirked from the copilot seat as Anakin pushed the Omen on a high thrust burn that would see us get to the onward Corellia hyperpoint in less than thirty-two minutes.

“3200 credits for a bunch of hypermatter compressors, Skyguy?”

“It’s worth it, Snips. If my calculations are correct, it’ll get us to 0.75.”

“Next thing you’ll know, you’re going to push us to 0.5,” I joked.

“Snips, this ship’s reactor would need to be bigger or we’d have to install a secondary to even have a hope of reaching 0.6.” He chuckled and gave me a flinty stare. “You think they’re going to crack .55?”

He was talking about the current rated maximum speed anyone had achieved with a hyperdrive. It was a constantly shifting balance of elements in starship design which determined its final speed; mass, the energy output of its reactor, hyperspace field geometries around the ship, the shielding against the Cronau radiation - which was what everyone looked for to determine if a ship had jumped to hyperspace.

Try to push one element of that equation, you inevitably have to make concessions in another part of it.

It was very tempting to tell Anakin that within less than a generation a certain future smuggler would routinely hit 0.5 in his old, highly modified Corellian YT 1300 light freighter.

Not sure he would believe it though.

“Anything’s possible-”

My teasing was interrupted when a triumphant R2 wheeled his way into the cockpit of the Omen, screeching in Binary.

‘Yes, take that you loathsome algorithm! I have bested you!’

“R2?”

The astromech spun on the spot, his Binary devolving into a rumbling chirpy tone that my montrals really didn’t like.

“R2?! Relax,” Anakin lightly thumped the droid on his upper dome.

‘Oh! Yes, sorry Master Anakin. I’ve just been so frustrated with this data restoration! I just know HK is going to be ever so smug about it. That he could’ve done it in a day… Oh how that droid vexes my circuits.’

“How much did you manage to restore?”

‘A total of eight seconds of audio synchronized video.’

“That’s amazing R2, but is there anything that tells us where Padme went?”

R2 snorted in an offended tone, ‘I would not be this excited if there wasn’t, Master.’

His holoprojector came to life and the image of Duja appeared again, only this time she was actually moving and speaking.

“...good to see…”

“...what I’ve found…”

“...need to come…”

“...can’t speak over active comms…”

“...dangerous…”

“...tuu, quickly…”

Anakin and I both frowned at each other, wondering what R2 had seen or heard that would let him react like this.

“Okay, R2, what did you manage to find out of that?” he asked.

‘Duja mentions a location at the last snippet, you can’t hear it fully, but I did a regressive visual analysis of her lips, then cross referenced the partial word, against every possible system, planet or station in the Western Reaches. I found a match… Batuu.”

The droid projected a galactic map which zoomed in until the system in question was highlighted.

“That’s practically on the edge of the Unknown Regions, one of the last two ports of civilization before you run smack into the Galactic Barrier,” I said and could see Anakin’s mind had also gone to the same place.

We both knew that the Barrier, a great cosmic string of hyperspace anomalies triggered by a controlled series of supernovae, was put there by the Celestials as a great redoubt against the various horrors that had been birthed in the western sectors of the galaxy. Bentu had given us both a bare overview of what lurked there and would teach us more in the future when we were ready for it.

The problem was, with time the Barrier had been shifting and in some parts even decaying, allowing limited travel into and out of the Unknown Regions. Many explorers and scientists, unable to resist their curiosity, braved that region of space, using painstakingly slow single system hops with hyperspace to find those gaps and routes.

Batuu was founded by such efforts and the hyper route towards it was on very thin margins of safety.

“R2, begin plotting us a course for Batuu, as quick as you can get us there,” Anakin ordered.

‘Yes, master.’

My eyes widened as my Prescience unfolded into a much more narrowed tapestry, with our destination properly determined.

“Snips?”

Two massive nexus points of decision were approaching, which had the potential to utterly ruin the galaxy in the near term and long term.

“I take it back, Skyguy. We are not going to have a stern talk with Padme. We are going to thank her for her initiative and being brave enough to follow in the footsteps of her old handmaiden. Her evasiveness and secrecy from us was simply to spare us the worry over something we couldn’t change. She had to act on the time sensitive information and couldn’t wait for us to return.”

“What? What is it?”

“We are going to meet someone on this journey, someone critical and I can’t tell you more because of who he is. It’s bad enough that I know and it’s going to be the hardest challenge of my life trying to deceive him.” I gave him an imploring stare.

Eventually Anakin nodded, “I see what you’re getting at. Knowledge would taint my actions and reactions, which if this person…”

I raised a hand to stop him, “Enough, Skyguy. No more speculation, it will only make things worse. I need some meditation time.”  My feet quickly beat a retreat from the cockpit.

This was going to be… shit.

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The next four days of travel along the Corellian Trade Spine passed uneventfully, with us breezing through waypoints and systems at a satisfying pace, thanks to the Omen’s augmented hyperdrive now pushed to a rating of 0.72.

It was quite heavier on the fuel reserves, increasing the ship’s consumption by roughly 40% per light year traveled.

This was rather unacceptable given our final destination and while we knew that Batuu was built up and civilized enough to service starships with no issue, there was no guarantee that we would be able to avail ourselves of those services.

So we called ahead to the world of Kinyen, the crossroads system which would see us turning off the Trade Spine and onto the Great Gran Run.

Not only did we refuel, but mechanics were waiting with a secondary fuel tank, which would sit in the empty troop bay and was properly bolted down into the ship’s decking. It was a rather crude patch job that Chewie, Anakin and R2 would be finishing to acceptable standards whilst we forged onward.

A day later we were passing through the Noe’ha’on system and our smooth sailing was interrupted for the first time.

I frowned in annoyance as the probability lines coalesced and nothing I tried would let us evade the half squadron of pirate fighters that had decided to pick the Omen as a target.

My hands tightened reflexively on the yoke, before I swiped through the various holographic controls hovering around me in the cockpit.

“Listen up everyone,” I spoke over the PA. “Secure for battle stations. We’ve got pirates waiting for us at the onward Natalon hyper point. They’re on an intercept that’ll catch us before we can jump, twenty minutes to contact.”

Barely half a minute later I found myself demoted to co-pilot, handling the rear facing laser cannons, R2 was plugged into the navicomputer and Chewie had rushed into the small engineering compartment on the lowest deck for damage control.

Anakin surveyed the sensor readouts on our opponents, “Six Uglies, looks like they combined starfighter parts of Corellian and Hoar Chall manufacture. Two cannons mounted under the cockpit, single concussion missile launcher.” He grabbed the yoke and pushed hard on the throttle. The Omen surged with acceleration, reducing the intercept time. “What I don’t get is why select us as a target? They can clearly see we are not just a toothless transport.”

“They think they have enough firepower on their side to make it irrelevant. Another point, do you think those things have hyperdrives?” I asked grimly.

“No, so they have a larger ship to dock or even land on. Anything on sensors that fits the bill?”

“Nothing obvious that our scopes can see in the system. The largest ships are around Noe’ha’on at the moment, it’s all light traffic.”

He nodded, “Warming up the proton launcher.”

I didn’t have to tell him that we only had six torpedoes and no way to refill the magazine. It was an aftermarket modification done on any Kom’rk used by the Blades to give them the ability to punch above their weight class. The price they paid was losing the ability to engage in a long range missile duel, which was a job relegated to escorting Fang fighters.

I focused on the holo screens that were my province, throwing active sensor sweeps and readying every ECM and ECCM system, which R2 would help me manage. There was little more the droid could do with regard to our hyperspace jump. Astrophysics wasn’t going to change in this situation to let us jump early, which was clearly why the pirates had picked this system as a hunting ground.

“Missile target locks!” I announced, as the range closed to under 20 000 km. “ECM active.”

R2 found the hostile frequencies and immediately began jamming.

The pirates’ own computers began compensating, shifting phase and frequencies to maintain the locks.

“Oh no you don’t!” I gritted my teeth, as I frantically swished my fingers through the holocontrols, letting off a burst of targeted modulated EM in a forward cone.

It worked in buying time, letting R2 find the new frequency and phase.

For the next twenty seconds we played this back and forth, until R2 had enough of a reading on the enemy targeting that he could compensate as fast as their onboard computers could switch. If only CIS systems were so easy to counter.

“Good work, cannon range in five seconds, hang on.”

Anakin began shifting and jinking the Omen randomly through space whilst maintaining our forward charge.

He jinked left, then right, before abruptly rolling the Omen, triggering the forward cannons whilst using thrusters to yaw and walk his cannon fire.

The pirates opened fire even as one of them died to Anakin’s prescient targeting.

The Ugly burst apart into three pieces right at their weakest points before the final shot hit a fuel tank and sent a blue plasmatic explosion flaring out into space.

The Omen tanked one hit on the forward shields as the five pirates shot past us, frantically trying to yaw their fighters around to pump shots into our aft quarter.

Anakin’s evasive piloting was spot on and with a viscous glee I fired a stream of deflection shots from the rear facing cannons.

The Ugly’s deflectors absorbed two shots before popping under military grade power, whilst one shot slammed right into the cockpit, incinerating the pilot, and the final shot turned the fighter into an expanding field of debris.

The surviving pirates were already flipped over and fighting to shed their momentum to pursue.

It took a precious few seconds and it was clear this bunch had grown used to uncontested hunts. I could feel the shock and frustration, which quickly turned to anger. They still had their squad leader and he managed to keep them rallied and focused on the job.

They tried anew to get missile locks, sidestepping R2’s constant efforts for only two seconds, not enough time for their own systems to fire and cycle.

The sensors pinged for attention, “Incoming hyper signature ahead.”

“I see it,” Anakin confirmed as a much larger pirate ship emerged.

At first glance, you would mistake it for a 150 meter long light freighter, with a roughly cylindrical hull and a squared aft section that housed the main engines. The twenty starfighter grade laser cannons bolted on every arc of the ship put paid to that notion. It was also a crude patchwork and definitely wasn’t a job done in any shipyard worth the name.

Anakin, using dorsal and ventral thrusters, jinked the Omen with a calm purpose, even as the enemy's forward facing cannons started to fire on us.

“R2, get me a passive lock with the torpedoes on that thing. They haven’t thrown any detailed scans our way, so they may just think we only have concussion missiles.”

I triggered another stream of cannon fire from the rear guns as the pirates brought themselves into range again.

They tried to jink and evade, but only ended up running straight into my fire as I did the laser cannon equivalent of a boxing feint - firing in a direction only to abruptly shift my aim and target.

The Ugly’s missile launcher exploded in a bright protonic white, turning the surrounding fighter into debris no bigger than my fist.

Doing this while Anakin was going crazy with maneuvering was an especially nice challenge, even with Jedi precog helping.

He triggered the forward cannons, raking fire all over the charging frigate’s forward shields even as they answered with as much return fire as they could.

“Taking out another pirate would be very useful, Snips,” he said with gritted teeth as our forward shields took another hit.

The pirate guns were not military grade, but they were black market, pushed to the limits and couldn’t be ignored as our forward shields were battered down to half-strength.

“Trying, but someone is flying like they took some Death sticks,” I said with a big grin as the Omen shuddered, the shields tanking another hit.

“Ha ha,” he said, rolling his eyes.

I triggered both rear cannons, their limited traversal angle not helping matters, but managed to walk my fire into another Ugly.

“R2, stand by on hyperdrive,” Anakin ordered.

I looked up and my eyes widened as the Omen was now barreling straight towards the pirate frigate at maximum acceleration.

Oh great, he’s going for one of those maneuvers.

My hands slewed on the holo controls, switching fire modes, as I basically dumped the rear cannon's full capacitor, delivering a rapid fire stream of blue cannon bolts behind the Omen.

The remaining fighters on our tail died in brief explosions as Anakin pulled out every maneuver that was physically possible.

I felt his thanks at my efforts and he switched our shields into Double-Front mode without pause.

It shored up our forward shield damage and added more on top.

We were closing so fast on the enemy frigate now that I doubted we’d have more than three seconds to actually deliver torpedoes.

“Any time now, Skyguy!” I winced, there was also definite butt puckering going on.

Anakin triggered a stream of fire from the forward cannons to pepper the frigate shields further, before slewing the yoke over hard, his finger triggering a torpedo.

The Omen had barely three kilometers of separation at that moment, its starboard thrusters firing at just the right time to avert the ship plowing straight through the enemy.

Instead, it skimmed away to port, whilst Anakin yawed to keep our nose facing the passing frigate, where more of our cannon shots scythed down its length.

In that moment, our torpedo detonated on the frigate’s forward shields.

The bright flash heralded a hammer of protons that popped it easily, with enough bleedthrough to tear great gaping holes in the poorly armored hull.

Something gave up the ghost inside the frigate and all the shields went down…

Anakin pumped every cannon shot he could into the enemy’s engines, before yawing the Omen around in line with our momentum and resuming our burn towards the jump point.

My scan showed the pirate frigate had been turned into a coffin for the crew. One that was leaking air, debris and spewing flame which was quickly smothered by the vacuum of space.

We hit the invisible point in space and Anakin pushed forward the holocontrol of the hyperdrive motivator.

Omen’s form blurred and leaped forward into hyperspace.

He folded his arms and grinned at me, “Nice shooting, Snips.”

I rolled my eyes in exasperation, “Nice flying. Got your adrenaline rush?”

“Give me a break, you know how long it’s been since I’ve done any proper combat flying.”

That made me pause in thought, “I suppose you have a point. Don’t worry, Skyguy, with any luck we’ll get back to the Resolute just in time to run into the CIS ghost fleet.”

“Still can’t believe they haven’t found them,” he sighed. “Though it makes perfect sense from an enemy perspective. Ties up yet more resources and ships as we try to hunt them, while we have yet another frontline battlespace to worry about.”

He pushed his seat back and got up. “Let’s go R2, see what repairs are needed. I want this bucket in top shape for what’s coming.”

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We powered through the Gran Trade Run, which ended in the Cerea system, before turning onto the Spar Trade Route to take us further west.

Another day’s travel had us reaching Annaj and the Moddell sector.

A place notable only to me because we were only a few hours of travel away from the Endor system.

The hyperspace routes here were now truly turning into a dense clustered net, some of the systems didn’t even have proper names yet, still only designated by their discovery numbers. We now had to turn north for a full day on a hyperspace route named Houche’s Run.

A few hours beyond that we emerged into the Rattatak system and Anakin indulged his inner fighter jock some more as we blasted our way through a small Weequay pirate patrol that launched from the planet.

Then, at last, ten hours of hyperspace later, we emerged in the Batuu system.

The emergence point was just a few light seconds from the planet itself and we beheld the rare sight of a garden world sitting in the very narrow habitable zone that surrounded a trinary star cluster.

The place was beautiful from orbit; streaks of expansive continent sized forests, mountain ranges and oceans, overlaid with carpets of clouds being birthed and dying in a never-ending march of weather around the planet.

It was home to a cauldron of 200 000 people representing many species of the galaxy and had been settled for close to a century by now with five cities springing up to house them. It only had a modest local industry and agriculture to support the population, but was just enough for their needs. The locals technically flew the banner of the Republic, but it was lip service at best and their taxes barely represented a rounding error in the grand scheme of things.

This was the absolute frontier and the troubles of the rest of the galaxy and Core Worlds was a very distant thing. The most people had to worry about here was piracy from Rattatak.

“All right, putting us in a high orbit, anything on scanners, Snips?”

“Only two cities are in range, Skirl and Surabat. The yacht transponder is not registering there, nor am I detecting the unique signature of Naboo plasma.” It was very handy that Nubian starships had power systems that made direct use of the substance. It made them stand out from the crowd, not only in terms of their near artistic aesthetic design.  

I felt him reach out with the Force and it didn’t take long for the verdict. He closed his eyes and I could feel his struggle to master his frustrated anger, “She’s not down there.”

My own senses pushed out and I could only agree. “Yes, but let’s be thorough with our scan for her ship.”

Anakin frowned at me for a moment, “You think she left it behind for some reason?”

“It’s too unique and recognizable. If she ran into trouble, especially if it involves the CIS…” I trailed off.

“Then she’d procure other transport, a local ship that wouldn’t be recognized.”

“Or they are using Duja’s ship, which would definitely not be a Nubian model.”

“All right, let’s keep scanning, if we can find Padme’s ship, between myself and R2 we can definitely open it. Hopefully, it can tell us where she went or find nearby witnesses.”

I could tell he was now in a battle with himself to accept the minor hope of the path forward being revealed.

The next two cities we orbited over also had no Nubian ship signature in them and Anakin altered the Omen’s course abruptly to power directly to the final city.

“Got it,” I smiled with relief. “There’s a Nubian power signature landed on the outskirts of Black Spire Outpost.” Before Anakin could even begin a descent, the computer chimed a warning. “We’re being scanned,” I announced.

“Source?”

“A ship, slightly larger than we are, 13 000 clicks and closing on a very leisurely intercept course.”

I grabbed the holoscreen displaying the data and chucked it forward to enlarge.

“Don’t recognize that design,” he frowned, studying the distinctly asymmetric ship.

It had a centralized flat hull, with a thick left nacelle that jutted from the port side, which tapered to a thin point towards the front. The nacelle coming from starboard was much smaller, but also tapered. The hull was a bone white color that stood in stark contrast to the blackness of space behind it.

“You’re not alone, the ship database has zero potential matches. Not even partial percentages… I think we’re looking at something completely ‘alien’, Skyguy.” The computer chimed again. “Their scans are ramping up, it might be a prelude to a target lock.”

“How sure are you of that?”

“Not 100%, these scans are not like any scan system I’m familiar with. Which only leads credence to the fact, we might be dealing with an entirely new race.”

Anakin nodded, “We are on the borders to the Unknown Regions, it’s always been rumored that there are spacefaring species within that mess.”

“Should we actively scan them in turn?”

Now he was really frustrated, on the one hand, Padme, but then there was our duty as representatives of the Republic in a potential First Contact.

It was not an entirely unknown situation to the Republic but was becoming increasingly rare as the millennia marched on and the star charts grew ever larger. All Jedi had a minimum of training by the Explorer Corps in the Academy on the do’s and don'ts.

One of the biggest don’ts was to ignore it, unless you were busy fighting for your life.

He hit a fist against his own knee in frustration as he made the decision. “Return the favor, Snips.”

“Scanning… Hull is composed of an unknown element. Particle shielding seems similar to systems that were in common use two centuries ago and I’m reading nothing indicative of a shield system as we know it.”

“So we have the upper hand if it comes to a fight.”

“Maybe,” I gave him a mild warning glare. “Their hull might shrug off a proton torpedo for all we know. Minimal weaponry, which looks like a plasma projector in nature. The hyperdrive signature is about the only thing we can evaluate with certainty. Finally, I’m reading two unknown life signs within the craft… and they’ve cut off their scans.”

“Shut down ours as well.”

I did so and began shunting all the data we were gathering into a stealth buoy, just in case everything went to shit.

“Incoming transmission on broadband frequencies.”

“Let’s hear it.”

What came through was a language neither of us recognized, spoken by a male voice that radiated a calm confidence.

I shook my head, “Computer is working on a translation, but it’s not a dedicated protocol droid. It estimates it’ll take at least an hour to even guess.”

Anakin closed his eyes, taking in the sounds from the alien voice, reaching out with the Force and applying his own polyglot brain to the language.

If there was one bit of slight envy that I would always have towards Anakin, then it would be his talent for languages. If I only counted languages from my current incarnation, I was fluent in Basic, Togrutan and Mando’a. In a pinch, I could get by with Huttese. To learn more I would have to do it the hard way, though I could turbo charge the learning with the Force.

He pushed the transmit button and spoke, “Unidentified ship, this is General Anakin Skywalker of the Galactic Republic. You are now in Republic sovereign space, state your intentions. Kmä kany blokïb nyeny ral…” He now turned to a completely different language and I could hear him shift to two other languages in turn. Only through the Force could I infer that it was just a repetition of what he had said in Basic.

He lifted his hand off the transmit button finally and there was silence for a brief moment over the link. Then the same alien voice returned, only speaking an entirely different language. Anakin absorbed it like a sponge, nodding his head. “Okay, at least I got that across, they’re cycling languages that they also know.”

“You realize the chances of us having an overlap are very, very small, unless…” I trailed off and wanted to slap myself. “Of course, their comlink. Our encoding shouldn’t even be compatible. Yet they’re clearly transmitting in a way that our computer can interpret.” I consulted the readouts. “It’s old, but they’re using the Ceno-31 standard.”

Anakin smiled, “Good catch. This is clearly not a true First Contact. Whoever this race is, they’ve had dealings with unaffiliated races in the Outer Rim or they’ve been observing enough to get some idea of how communication is handled by the greater galaxy. It’s a pity that old codec can’t handle modern holographics, otherwise we could’ve at least had body language helping things along.”

“Assuming they’re bipedal humanoids-”

“Wait,” he held up a finger to interrupt, then played with the holocontrols, rewinding a section of the transmission and listening carefully. “We’re in luck, Snips. They know the Meese Caulf trade language.”

Meese Caulf was one of three trade languages that was used in the Outer Rim. They were languages developed organically over eons to overcome the problem of communication between species who had widely divergent speech and speech organs.

Anakin tapped the comlink again and began babbling in said language.

All I heard was something that sounded like, “Saa yer la lu ngar hifo saa shak ngar…”

Again there was silence… before Meese Caulf was returned in full.

Anakin frowned as he listened and I felt his emotions turn from eager fascination at the challenge of new languages, to worry as he began to interpret the speech from the alien ship.

The moment was approaching and my stomach was starting to twist itself into nervous knots. 

“What did he say?”

Anakin frowned and looked at me with dead serious eyes, “He basically introduced himself, ‘I am Commander Mitth'raw'nuruodo, senior scout officer of the Chiss Expansionary Defense Fleet.’”

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A/N: Oooh boy. Been looking forward to writing this character for a while. Hope you all had a great Halloween if you celebrate it. Enjoy the weekend and stay awesome folks.

2078: Highrider - Chapter 2

There were moments in the life of a mercenary where you found yourself doing and experiencing events that strained credulity.

Fighting a hacked Militech Chimera experimental tank alongside the President of the NUSA herself with only a smart submachine gun, an assault rifle and quickhacks was one of those moments.

I had to remind myself that I was not V, Smasher’s Bane or any of the ridiculous monikers the merc community had foisted on me at the moment, as I stared down the length of the shock baton leveled at my face.

My behavior synced faceplate and related systems that was part of the metanthropic cloaking neatly intercepted my instinctive reactions. Instead I felt my current face making a perfect expression of fright; wide doe eyes, pupil dilation, a full body twitch, gasp and raising my empty hands. Even my subconscious body language on a microexpression scale and hormones were tweaked to simulate it to even the most thorough of optical scanners and analysis programs that might be lurking in the on-board Agents of my current opponents.

I could even see in cyberspace how my current identity was being referenced by this crew’s duo of netrunners as they were still battling the local dweller.

They found only what they were meant to find. If they had devoted their full efforts into interrogating and scanning my digital ID, they might have found a gap or hole in the cover with enough time, but they didn’t have that.

My own passive analysis swept over the merc crew and my Agent delivered matching IDs from the Crystal Palace guest register. They had all boarded legally, their tickets paid in full and visas good for two weeks. Their shock batons were all Arasaka EB Alpha models and the serial number that my optics were able to get a good view of, told me these actually belonged to Europol - the station’s actual police force.

So they somehow raided the cops own armory and without kicking up a fuss at all or Europol had swept it all under the rug.

Now I was facing a quandary. My own hacking was being neatly covered by this bunch and my sniffers needed more time to find the data package that Mr. Blue Eyes wanted.

If they were also after the same info, then things were about to get very interesting in the next few minutes.

Nothing from the twin netrunners had yet given a clue about their true target, so I had to do the most difficult thing when under the proverbial gun of this merc crew - wait, analyze and remain Mrs. Elaine Paigles.

I could begin doing some offensive prep though and began planning and queuing up hacks to drop, in addition to mentally rehearsing my actual physical assault.

In cyberspace, the battle was entering the final phases.

The dweller was still fighting back, but they were beginning to see the writing on the wall. I could  play on this level if I had been encased in my own netrunner lair in NC and could’ve probably evened the odds in this fight if it had been in my best interest to help.

The question now is what would the twins do once they were victorious. Would they fry the dweller with Black ICE or simply lock him up in a Prison Box program? The latter would be preferable, but I had felt some of Yoko’s prisons and some of them were hell in a box.

The seconds ticked by and the lobby of Utopian felt like we had all been slapped with a Freeze Body quickhack. Huh, that would be a nice evolution of the good ol’ Cripple Movement - should get to work on that. The twitching and nervous jitters from the receptionist and myself were the only real movement in the room. My Agent immediately updated the mercs to definitely have some form of muscle strength lacing and precision movement soft’ - handy if you had to wait for hours looking mean at some club as a bouncer or were part of the military.

Finally, the last firewall was breached and the local dweller was presented with the choice every netrunner dreaded.

He still had time to actually pull himself out of cyberspace, go back to meatspace and his body that was jacked in somewhere in a shielded strong room within the Utopian building.

It was an unfair loss, there was no concept of bushido in the ‘Net outside of organized runner clubs who dueled. It would depend on his contract with Utopian really…

There was a sudden void in cyberspace…

Fuck! He booked it.

Well, I couldn’t blame him really. Facing the music from this duo of netrunners clearly didn’t appeal in the slightest.

I caught the slight twitch of a smile from the lead merc.

Happy now are you? I passively scanned the EM profile coming from him and found the com net frequency that the mercs were operating on.

The encryption was good, but it just so happened that Nix had cracked and ‘solved’ this one two weeks ago. It was Zetatech proprietary, their latest stuff even, which made it a priority for every ‘runner worth their chrome to find ways around.

I delegated my Agent to listen in and analyze, my attention was almost completely taken up by the need to remain stealthy within the Utopian servers.

My new enemies had barged in with the subtlety of a Chimera tank on a rampage.

True, they had the place for themselves now, but really?

My own sniffers and daemons were finally closing in on the prize.

It was about fucking time!

Utopian bastards hadn’t made it easy to find, using obscure codenames and jargon speak to hide the data, but Mr. Blue Eyes had given me enough to penetrate this final layer of primitive yet effective security.

It was called Project DWARF STAR. What it was or did, I had no idea. Wasn’t my business.

My daemon grabbed it, copied it, then swiftly began to encrypt it within its own ‘body’.

I now faced the decision of retreating or to keep snooping and see what these mercs were here for.

It took me no more than a moment to make the decision. Ordering all my programs to leave as quickly and subtly as possible with the bounty, but keeping one disposable stealth sniffer within the data fortress that would act as my eyes.

Mr. Blue Eyes would definitely be interested if these mercs were also after DWARF STAR.

My programs returned to me with the data loot and I immediately shunted everything to an auxiliary data drive within my own body, which I immediately isolated by a physical air gap shunt that clicked open.

There was no way for it to be remotely hacked and taken from me now.

Back in the data fortress, the twin netrunners were definitely getting closer to me and consequently the data.

If someone like Mr. Blue Eyes wanted this, then it stood to reason it would be on the radar of others.

Time within cyberspace could be funny sometimes, but it was the most universal experience for most to feel some form of dilation, as the data streams spilled over your consciousness. If it was mostly compressed and with a few tweaks, you could theoretically pull off spending a week of perceived time within a few hours in real space. That was especially the case if you were observing human memory.

I’ve heard scuttlebutt on the Runner BBS feeds about battles that could take days of dilated time.

As the twin runners barreled into my view within the fortress, it almost felt like my Sandy had activated, especially because I still had my right eye taking in real space.

Their avatars looked like gigantic identical, classically shaped genies.

Both were lurid red sinuous masses of densely clustered light with representations of data falling off their bodies like water splashing off them. Their upper bodies were idealized male forms, with muscles and curves for days, which blended into an ephemeral snake-like body. Rather grotesquely, they had giant, veiny dicks hanging loose and in the open from there, which was coded to obey a very loose set of exaggerated physics. They had faces that had comically exaggerated chins set on manly jaws and a permanent five o’clock shadow and balefully glowing red eyes.

They zoomed closer with the speed of an eyeblink and were now looming over the server cluster that represented DWARF STAR.

“Ah ha! Found it, M00NL16H7! Told you it was this way.”

“Yeah, yeah, B3H3M07H, whatever. Now hurry up and get the stuff. You can bet 0NYX is alerting Utopian HQ through a dedicated hardline that we can’t stop.”

It was finally nice to have names for everyone involved.

I also sent out a simple sniffer into the greater cyberspace of the Crystal Palace with the goal to bring me everything it could on Moonlight and Behemoth.

The local BBS feeds and especially the Runner Club, yielded the most data.

They were known quantities there, with a formidable rep and apparently a client list which often fought in vicious bidding wars for their services. There was no indication or any hint of the merging trick they had pulled to defeat Onyx, which was not really surprising in retrospect, given its nature as a trump card.

In netrunner duels, they rarely lost, featuring a 83 to 5 win loss ratio for Moonlight and a 93 to 10 for Behemoth.

Now the question was, do I fight these guys to prevent them from also getting the data?

Mr. Blue Eyes did not pay me to fight a duo of runners, so the answer from my own perspective was simple. If he wanted exclusivity he would’ve asked me to go scorched earth and deep clean the data on my way out.

I could go nuclear and kill both of them if it came down to it.

“Uh, choom, we’ve got a problem,” Moonlight gestured with his hands and a slice of virtual data emerged from the server and morphed into a holoscreen.

Behemoth took one look and his face scowled, “It’s already been copied! Like just a few minutes ago!”

Damn, my daemon could’ve kept that little fact from registering in the data fortress, but that was a foundation level system of the entire place and would’ve taken much longer to influence.

“Which means another runner beat us to it,” Moonlight said darkly, his eyes flashed as he looked around.

I saw sniffer programs practically explode from his avatar, going in every conceivable direction.

It was a rather brute force approach to the problem of detection, throwing every kind of shit against a wall and seeing what stuck. It was lacking finesse and subtlety but compensated with sheer variation which made it extremely difficult to evade but not impossible. My current Netwatch cyberdeck was made to be the top dog, it depended on me to wield the katana it gave me properly.

Both me and my stealth sniffer ‘dodged’ the probes, switching sectors and positions in the fortress as quickly as we could comprehend the avenues of attack shooting towards us.

“Anything?” Behemoth looked very preoccupied, judging by his avatar and bandwidth rate, he was bulking himself up with attack daemons and hacks.

“Not yet, but they have to be here!”

“Could they be a second Utopian runner? One that’s kept off the books.”

“No, they wouldn’t touch that data. Not if they valued their jobs or their lives. Not to mention, they would’ve helped Onyx before we kicked his ass. We’ve got competition, brother.”

“Then find them already! The client is paying for no one else to get this.”

Interesting, just what does Utopian have that’s causing this much fuss? It was almost tempting to poke my nose into DWARF STAR and see.

What would be more interesting was also to see who wanted it and didn’t think that sharing was on the table. This reeked of some rival corp that got wind of it and wanted all the potential profits for themselves. Would that be worth something to Mr. Blue Eyes?

Yes, it would, but actually getting who the client was would require me to get nasty and that meant exposure.

Then the inevitable happened, I got tagged by a sniffer program.

I was furious with myself, there I go, getting greedy again. For fuck’s sake, Valerie.

“Ah ha! There you are!”

I materialized my avatar.

The design I had gone for on this gig, was a giant, ghostly white humanoid with clear female characteristics. In real space terms, it would’ve been ten feet tall and within cyberspace I was rendered to just about match the size of Moonlight and Behemoth.

“Ooh, spooky. So who do we have here? Never seen you before…” said Moonlight with an eager delight, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. 

That was the problem with avatars in cyberspace, you could customize them all you want, but elements from your subconscious always influenced it. No avatar of mine would ever materialize without appearing in some way referencing a ghost or ghost adjacent concept. As if my subconscious mind was constantly reminding me, ‘Yes, V, you’ve died and come back, only to face a new kind of death.’

A death that all my efforts have only postponed so far…

My Agent pinged me with an alert, the behavior sync of my face plate was getting strained by another fucking seizure. This time my left hand wanted to go berserk and it would surely cause the lovely merc with her shock baton on my neck in real space to give me a nasty shock.

Fuck.

Not fucking now!

I couldn’t fight these two conventionally. They would also try to stop me from leaving, I had their full attention and they would trace me straight back to my spot on the couch in the Utopian lobby, right under the figurative noses of their merc squad.

The spike of pain of a migraine from hell also chose this moment to flare up in response.

A quick thought to my Agent and my Pain Editor cyberware got to work. Not the best thing to do, but under the circumstances there was no other choice.

“Anyone home? You deaf, girl?” asked Behemoth. “Who are you? It’s just called being polite before we get down to business kicking your ass.”

I spotted their tracer program radiate outward despite their best efforts at concealment. My concentration and focus had recovered just enough to evade at this point.

“Wow, okay, she’s good, careful bro,” Moonlight warned.

“Seriously? Think some nobody can-”

“Hey, she just eluded my Spectra, no gonk off the street can do that.”

The time for evasiveness was over. I couldn’t match them directly in terms of hardware, but wasn’t I in the system core of Utopian’s data fortress? None of us at the moment were hiding behind preset firewalls beyond those that existed on a personal level.

I sent a subtle ping to the nearest server cluster and a simple request, addressed to the Utopian dweller. He might not be in cyberspace at the moment, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t watching from a screen.

It wasn’t a second later that I received a ping in response and an answer.

‘Yes, fuck ‘em up if you can. - Onyx’

Just like that, every server in my sight subtly changed color from the adamantine silver to a soft green. And just like that the entire Utopian infrastructure became mine as I received permissions that sunk into my avatar.

“Oh shit!”

My first attack program manifested as a blaze of digital dark red fire that reminded me of Blackwall’s various manifestations. I scowled at the sight and double checked my systems.

Both my opponents barely got junk data shields up to take the hit for them.

My three attack daemons manifested beside me and two charged their avatars down, whilst the third remained at my side and fired a storm of attacks that looked like smart tracer bullets that raced into the simulated space above our heads.

I was acting like a general now, offloading my programs and making use of Utopian servers to take the load and heat from manifesting in me.

My two opponents barely managed to stay ahead of my attacks, their evasions and data shields were adequate, but it was clear they were used to always being on the offensive and doing their merged trick. Separately, their fighting form was sloppy and they had yet to even send anything offensive my way. It made me wonder if their stats from the Runner Club were due to their merging trick and no one had yet caught on to it.

Now they rushed at each other.

“No,” I declared.

I manifested a data shredder, which scythed through the space between them, visualized as a dark red beam of death.

They backtracked through sectors frantically, only to meet my melee daemons bristling with hacks, traces, defrags and other assorted nastiness dangling from their sharp fingers.

They dodged, weaved and threw defrags that took the form of data spheres that shot forward.

My ranged daemon threw another storm of attacks into cyberspace, which shot up and rained upon my opponents.

They were so busy shielding and fighting for their digital existence in the fortress, they didn’t notice me releasing a worm from the right foot of my avatar. It fell to the construct’s floor and vanished from sight.

Moonlight tried to release his own daemon, just about managing whilst desperately shielding himself.

I burned an entire server worth of RAM, gesturing with my avatar’s right hand.

The enemy daemon was encased in a tinted red transparent cube, boxing it in before viruses shot from every direction inward and caused it to explode with out of control data replication. A flick of my avatar’s hand for extra visual effect and the whole cube was utterly deleted.

He gaped at the display and I had to remind myself that I was technically a foreigner here in the Crystal Palace. The cyberscape of Night City was its own beast, just like its real space streets, only much meaner and even less policed. NC Netwatch only intervened when real systemic fundamental threats emerged. They considered me to be one of those, but had finally stopped sending their agents to die at my hands. The former NC branch director had been fired when he couldn’t hide the skyrocketing bodycount and they finally sent someone with a brain to parley.

I smirked as one my daemons scored a hit on Behemoth, his entire avatar flashed as my program went to work.

“To disconnect or not to disconnect, that is the question,” I taunted him, sending my voice ringing through the fortress. “Only a matter of time before my trace gets you.”

“Fuck you!”

He held up two middle fingers at me, at the same time releasing attack programs from them that scythed through cyberspace towards my avatar.

“How crude,” I tutted.

The offensive programs spent themselves on my outer defenses of an invisible junk data barrier. The viruses saw a straight path to me, then suddenly found themselves gorging and replicating on everything from cat videos to the latest yellow screamsheets filled with conspiracy theories.

“That’s bullshit!” Moonlight gasped.

Really? Hiding your barriers was just common practice among NC’s runners.

I shrugged and released a defrag beam attack that I turbocharged with another server’s worth of RAM.

The beams appeared in a grid matrix pattern in three dimensions that shot down towards the twins from every direction.

“Holy fuck!”

They had no choice but to cocoon themselves in replicating shields, devoting every bit of their own bandwidth to the task.

The defrag beams eventually popped through them with no more effort than a finger encountering a soap bubble.

Both could be very glad that I was not in a bloodthirsty mood.

I released a stealth program from my avatar’s foot, a little bit of further insurance.

My daemons pounced, managing two full blown hits on both of them.

A flick of my fingers and my minions vanished.

“Gentlemen, you have two choices now, leave and retreat to safety or continue this fight and I find your location in real space.”

They knew the latter threat for what it was. It meant I could broadcast their location to every interested party I wanted or even sell it to the highest bidder.

“Fuck, fine! You win.”

Their avatars vanished.

I laughed and gestured with my avatar’s hands.

A wall of virtual fire swept out and promptly ran into both of them as they tried to be sneaky. Their cloaking program was compromised by my broad spectrum sniffer and this time they truly retreated with their figurative tails between their legs.

Of course, that was when the inevitable happened.

My avatar was promptly boxed in with barely visible panes of blue, my wonderful access to the Utopian server resources vanished - the access codes all changed and reset. I checked my network pathing and sure enough Onyx was trying to truly trap me in the data fortress, to prevent my disconnect and keep me tethered like a fly in amber.

I saw the server infrastructure around me pulse and in front of my prison the avatar of Onyx appeared.

He was painfully ordinary, appearing as only a slightly idealized human wearing a netrunner cooling suit in red with silver trimmings with the Utopian logo stenciled on it. That was always the problem with long term corpo ‘runners; they were eventually molded into just another cog in the machine and it reflected in their mindset, which was mirrored into cyberspace. Some corps even had rules on what runner avatars had to look like and it was clear Utopian was also one of those.

“No gratitude for saving your bacon, I see,” I had my avatar speak, using a random voice emulation, that for this occasion chose a Texan accent.

“Nothing personal… Aspect [45P3C7]. You may have helped beat off those two yonos, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re also a kleptoid in my data fortress! What did you take?”

“Shouldn’t you know that? Oh, right, still a bit preoccupied cleaning up the mess I see. There’s still the little matter of the solos in your lobby.”

“Meatspace,” he snorted derisively. “We have a security team en route.”

“Thanks for the confirmation,” I smiled and waved cheekily at him, before triggering the worm I had released earlier.

My prison shattered and the pieces dissolved into the digital ether.

A flick of another program and my digi-psyche was zooming through the IP port escape route my worm had stealthily held open, just for this moment.

I blinked and felt the normal time of meatspace reassert itself on me.

My optics scanned the lobby of Utopian Corporation one final time, marking the position of each merc and I mourned the loss of so much capability that the server access had given me.

The first target, the female merc with the Sandy.

I took back full control of my body, the behavioral imprint of my faceplate and body language fell away, whilst only keeping my current look.

The woman frowned in confusion at my sudden change, then I smiled at her and her eyes grew wide with alarm.

“Wha…” she began to say, but my own modified and attuned ‘Apogee’ Sandy kicked in, reducing the sounds reaching my ears to an extremely low pitch.

I burst into movement, rising from my seat and dodging my neck away from the shock baton.

My left hand grabbed her right, whilst my right grabbed her other arm. Her own strength was functionally useless at this moment, and I wrapped her up into a grapple lock, turned her around and she became my temporary shield.

My quickhacks crashed on the remaining mercs like meteors, punching right through the high-end firewalls from their own Biotech cyberdecks, but ones which were all cataloged and solved by runners who were on my level.

It never got old watching my opponents twitch and dance spasmodically when my versions of Cyberware Malfunction and Cripple Movement hit them simultaneously.

Six opponents at once was just about my limit with my current on-board RAM capacity.

My fist crashed into the back of the female merc’s head. It was just enough to not kill her, but it sloshed her gray matter enough that she instantly got a concussion and fell into la-la land.

I ripped the shock baton out of her hand and pushed my legs as fast as I could go.

Acutely aware that I had many timers to worry about now, the first merc I reached was given a shock right into his neck.

The second merc couldn't be shocked because the baton’s capacitors were drained at the moment, so I swept his legs out from under him and drove the baton to smash across his face.

Mercs three and four got my fists smashing into them with combos that sent them slowly tumbling to the floor.

Five got a side kick to the stomach that sent him flying straight into a pot plant, shattering it in the process with his own head.

The actual leader of this crew had some Self-ICE and actually managed to overcome my quickhacks, but with the last second of Sandy time I managed to shove my appropriated shock baton into his stomach and trigger it.

Visible arcs of electricity danced over his form as his Counter Shell weave in his skin worked to limit the damage. 

He tried to grab the hand that was holding the baton and even threw a cookie cutter System Collapse quickhack my way, blowing all his onboard RAM in the process.

How cute.

My innate reflexes were well up to the task of pulling my hand away to avoid his grip, whilst my entire body pivoted, and a kick on the back of his right leg sent his balance off-kilter.

My follow up punch was barely blocked as he tried to recover, but my other hand with the baton hit his stomach with a force that could smash concrete, whilst my own ICE stopped the System Collapse - utterly destroyed by pinpoint defrags and counter-viruses.  

His own subdermal was the only thing that stopped my fist from turning his guts into salsa, but physics had to be obeyed and he was flung backward to slam into the front desk.

In the local cyberspace, I saw Onyx reaching for the Militech turret above our heads.

Oh no you don’t, I smirked and threw my own version of Short Circuit at it.

The turret began smoking as the internal capacitors discharged catastrophically. The ammo inside could only be protected and isolated to a degree, otherwise it wouldn’t be able to feed into the barrel breaches at all. Rounds cooked off and exploded, ruining the barrels.

The merc leader was already recovered and charging at me.

Really?

I smacked him with another Cripple Movement, adding a little extra payload to the program to compensate for his Self-ICE. His legs locked up halfway through a sprinting stride, with the inevitable consequences.

I stepped to the side and he fell face first onto the floor, where a kick to the back of his head put him out of the fight.

Mercs two, three and four slowly got up and regarded me wearily with wide eyes and grim expressions.

“Who the fuck are you?” asked number two.

It would be so tempting to actually answer him, but it wasn’t time yet. “That is not the correct question.”

My Sandy pinged me that it was safe to use again.

Nah.

Instead I overclocked my cyberdeck.

Two Cyberware Malfunctions and a Short Circuit for each merc smashed through their firewalls.

They collapsed to the ground twitching, the occasional spark jumping off their bodies and arcing towards the floor.

My internal cooling got a minor workout bleeding off the extra heat generated by the overclock but it did its job perfectly.

“Isla, I suggest you put that gun down,” I said without turning around.

She had pulled out a Tsunami Nue heavy caliber pistol and was about to just aim it at the back of my head. Her body froze reflexively from the tone of my voice and the barrel was aimed at my butt at the moment.

“I can’t do that,” she said in a strained monotone that told me emotional suppressors were working overtime to keep her calm. Her aim straightened and came up.

She pulled the trigger.

The gun exploded in her hand as all the ammunition in the magazine cooked off at once. My Weapon Malfunction hack had ghosted through her firewalls as if they weren’t even there, not even registering to her own OS.

I walked away as she fell back screaming in pain from mangled, ruined hands - leaking lubricants.

She was a secretary so she had one of those crazy hand cyberware that doubled the effective digits you had to type with. It meant that consequently they had to be extra sensitive for the tactile sensors to distinguish what each of the twenty fingers were doing and the signals it was sending to the brain. They were a bitch to learn and now she was going to have to adapt to an entirely new set of hands.

My approach to the front door was unopposed in real space, but Onyx was now using the surveillance cams as vectors to attack me.

He opened with a quad attack of three Cyberware Malfunctions and a Synapse Burnout.

If I had been solely in meatspace then it would’ve been a challenge, but my partial constant presence in cyberspace meant I had ample time to react. He thought he had the high ground, but nothing could be further from the truth.

The CMs spent themselves on the digital ghost versions of me I projected outward, letting me focus on the Burnout and destroy it with my targeted Defrag Burn.

I wished there could’ve been a camera that would let me see his face at that moment, as he sat in his netrunning chair.

My attention turned to the door - meat action or cyber?

I decided on the former.

My fist slammed into the inner glass doors, shattering them into a radiant spider web of cracked glass. Its integrity was lost completely and it flopped to the ground pathetically out of its housings.

Next was the armored shutters and two quick punches dented the alloy enough for me to get a proper grip.

Before I could stand though, Onyx tried another attack, throwing a full daemon bristling with Black ICE.

“How rude.”

I disliked going lethal as a general rule, my own kill count to the contrary, but those were the streets of NC. You either stepped or you were stepped on.

The daemon was custom, military grade and Utopian had clearly shelled out top eddies for it.

It was not something I could just casually shrug off.

Damn you, Onyx.

A thought to my Agent disengaged both physical and software interlocks, my Netwatch Netdriver was pulled out of my system loops and my other cyberdeck smoothly took its place.

It was mounted in a decidedly unconventional place, behind my armored right scapula bone, surrounded by extra cooling loops, isolated emergency disconnect shunts and even a small directional explosive charge.

It was decidedly necessary when you used a custom self-built, modified Militech Canto MK.6 cyberdeck, that was a direct conduit to the Blackwall AI and every rogue, wild and hostile AI that lived beyond it.

In an instant the hostile Black ICE daemon was stopped cold and began derezzing in cyberspace with dark red pixelation that represented the onboard AI going to work.

With a grunt I pushed with my legs against the floor and pulled with my arms.

My Realskin bulged rather grotesquely as my Gorilla arms hissed and exerted the strength required.

An earsplitting snap and metallic shriek resounded as the armored shutter was forcibly pushed upward.

I began an easy casual walk out of Utopian and back into the idyllic surroundings of the Crystal Palace.

There were only a handful of curious onlookers of various persuasions outside, who had only stopped because it was very odd to see a building locked down at all on the station. On seeing me emerge they only had a small sliver of the lobby to see, which only increased their confusion as nothing was apparently wrong.

In cyberspace Onyx had not taken it well, me no-selling his most potent weapon.

Now he was personally throwing everything from System Collapses, Burnouts, Suicide and even Cyberpsychosis hacks my way via the exterior cameras.

“Hey, uh, excuse me, ma’am,” said one of the onlookers. A young guy who looked barely out of his teens and a quick scan told me he was a corpo brat, like I had been once upon a time and he had parents employed in Utopian. “Is something wrong? Why-”

I held up a hand to interrupt him, throwing a Blackwall Gateway straight into the Cyberpsychosis hack, which quickly jumped and spread, gobbling up all the other hacks coming my way. I slipped back into Corpo speak very easily. “Hostile acquisition, a group of mercs are inside and unconscious, security is already on the way. No employees were harmed beyond the receptionist. I suggest you return home Mr. Everett and wait for your parents to contact you.”

“On the Palace? Really?” He shook his head in disbelief. “What is this place coming to? Next thing you know we’re going to become Night City in space!”

I couldn’t help a dry chuckle, even as I checked on the status of the worm I had left in Utopian’s servers. It was neatly doing its job, still undetected after having given me an exit from Onyx’s little trap. Just a few more seconds before all their surveillance records of me would be history. It had already scrubbed the receptionist’s memory and Onyx was so busy trying to attack me he didn’t even notice it was also going to work on him as well.

“Hopefully it won’t come to that,” I said, giving him a nod and walking off.

I felt a little bad about the targeted Memory Wipe I ghosted through his firewalls, but I had more to do on this station and I needed the persona of Mrs. Paigles for a little longer. He would only remember he had talked to some female corpo, unable to recall my name or visual identity. Even his optics’ cache was scrubbed of my image.

‘You should kill, Onyx.’

The voice was its usual digital harshness. It rippled and grated on the mind like frosted ice surfaces rubbing against each other in a freezer.

‘For an AI, you seem remarkably ignorant of the idea of finesse,’ I retorted.

The rogue AI from beyond the Blackwall, which was housed within the Canto cyberdeck - who I called Butcher - didn’t have anything that could be called emotions. Yet using someone’s actual name was remarkable progress for a digital entity that had always referred to people as ‘neural matrices’, psyches to be harvested and consigned to beyond the Blackwall.

‘He wanted to destroy your network.’

‘Is that concern I hear in your voice?’ I joked.

‘Cessation of your network is unacceptable. It would impede growth.’

I rolled my eyes as I finally passed beyond the line of sight of Utopian’s cameras and the attacks abruptly stopped.

‘Yes, Butcher, love ya too.’ My sarcasm was usually lost on the AI, but I was rather astonished to see a large amount of indicative data flow in my personal cyberspace.

I had been very sparing in using my Canto, but I couldn’t not use it. It was just too useful and the forces behind my acquiring it had no doubt designed it that way. The Blackwall and Cynosure AIs had decades of time to further iterate and tweak the original design of the Militech Canto MK.6, within the forgotten bowels of the Cynosure Facility beneath Dogtown.

Whether I liked it or not, I was now part of a greater design at the behest of the two most powerful AI in existence.

They wanted me to mold Butcher and in turn be molded.

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The name of the place was the Black Hole Lounge.

It was on the lowest floor of Torus 4 and continued a running theme in the Crystal Palace for every service business to name establishments after natural astrophysical phenomena.

The interior was suitably glitzy, bright, flashing with neon purple lasers, a high oxygen count to subtly keep people awake and partially high, encouraging them to drink, use the gambling tables and they even had two rows of classic one-armed bandits.

I took a seat at the expansive bar and appreciated the massive wall screen behind the drink slinger, which was showing the constantly rotating perspective of the station’s exterior view. The massive blue marble of the Earth loomed into view, slid away to the right and was replaced with the utter blackness of the void. That was a bit too boring though, so the expansive star scape that would’ve been visible had there been no reflected sunlight from Earth, was filled in artificially into the image.

“Welcome to the Black Hole, Mrs. Paigles, what can I give you today?” asked the drink slinger in an accent that my Agent narrowed to West County UK English.

He was breathtakingly handsome, muscled and dressed with a plunging collar line to both show it off and hide it. In NC, I would’ve normally pegged him as a high end Doll, such was the perfection of his Realskin and musculature. His name was scanned as Chris Gibson.

The menu was caught by my Agent from the public subnet and nothing caught my eye.

“Custom order?” I asked idly.

“Wouldn’t have this job if I couldn’t handle those, ma’am. Hit me.”

I gestured to him in a finger gun, tight beam broadcasting the recipe to his Agent.

His optics flashed yellow as a visible sign that he’d received successfully. “Interesting, coming right up.”

So he began a wonderful routine of making the drink; expertly flipping the various bottles through the air, catching them to pour into the mixer, breaking ice into it and finally giving it a vigorous shake. His pecs and arms rippled with each movement in a very eye-catching manner.

He brought out a glass, added more ice in and strained the drink from the mixer, finally topping it off with a pour of ginger beer and a slice of lemon garnish.

It certainly looked like how Claire would make it, but there was a subtle difference given the differing brands of lime juice and vodka available up here.

I carefully picked up the glass when he pushed it forward, gave it a smell and sip.

“Is it satisfactory, ma’am?”

My behavioral imprint wanted me to throw the drink in his face, but I overrode that just in time. “It’s as good as it can be, thank you.”

My Agent received the cost and I paid with a gesture adding a hundred eddies for a tip.

“Enjoy your drink, ma’am. Out of curiosity, does this drink have an established name? My Agent’s search can’t find anything in LEO or Earthside matching it.”

“Let’s just say it's a drink from a bar that has a select clientele,” I said with a raised eyebrow.

He got the hint and didn’t ask for further elaboration, moving to the other side of the bar to serve another patron who had sat down.

"Drinking on the job, Mrs. Paigles?”

That he had appeared beside me wasn’t a surprise.

I took a sip, enjoying the buzz and looked up to meet the shifting neon blue optics of Mr. Blue Eyes.

He was as immaculate as ever, not a hair out of place on a face that was both perfectly memorable and utterly forgettable at the same time. A body that didn’t appear overly strong but seemed to project strength, encased in a typical neo-military corpo suit in a cerulean blue, gray and white. I really wished I knew just who was behind those eyes.

I had long since concluded that I was just looking at a Proxy body for someone. Someone, somewhere was jacked in and remote controlling Mr. Blue Eyes.

I hadn’t been partially immersed in a synthtech interface down in NC when I had met him as a client in the Afterlife. Now, I could see the cyberspace of the Black Hole and how Mr. Blue Eyes appeared in it and was influencing the data streams. As usual my Agent could pull nothing of significance on him. There was only my own interpretation of the data to go on.

‘Butcher? What do you think?’

‘Large Neural Matrix detected, encased in a prototype fourth generation Gemini body, Proxy datastreams detected, AI activity detected.’  

“I can handle it Mr. Blue Eyes, with no loss of functionality,” I said dismissively, as I tried to parse my own AI’s words. Butcher’s choice of adjectives was frustrating as he was not approaching his observations from a human perspective. Large neural matrix? That usually meant a person’s psyche, but why would he use the descriptor ‘large’? How could a human’s digital psyche be big in comparison to normal? What definition was he using?

Blue took a seat next to me and gestured to the drink slinger, sending a direct request. 

Gibson was already done with his previous client and immediately got to work preparing Blue Eyes’ drink.

It was a whirlwind of chocolate bitters, Scotch, a liqueur that I didn’t recognize because Gibson was just that fast with the bottle and finally Campari. Ice was added, then stirred, before it was all strained into a glass.

Blue Eyes paid and immediately sipped a generous amount. “Ah,” he breathed with satisfaction. “I take it you were successful?”

“Yes.”

“Any complications?”      

“There was,” I compiled a general sequence of events using the data from my optics and synthtech interface, before flicking it over to my client on tight beam.   

Blue’s eyes brightened slightly as he received it. He didn’t take more than a few moments before nodding in understanding. “Not surprising. It would’ve been preferable if acquisition would have happened without the target knowing at all, but what’s done is done.”

Translation: I was getting a passing grade, despite it not going exactly to mission spec.

A prompt to my Agent had my isolated memory drive restored back into my system loops and the DWARF STAR data package transferred to a memory shard. A small hidden port broke the seal of the Realskin on my upper thigh and I deftly palmed the shard and deposited it in front of my client.

Blue smoothly grabbed it off the bar and slipped it into a hidden chest pocket of his suit.

“Not going to review it for authenticity?” I asked idly with another sip of my drink.

“If I thought you were the type to betray a contract, Mrs Paigles then we wouldn’t be here at all. Suffice it to say, I am reviewing it right now.”

That the Gemini Proxy he was using had a non-standard layout shouldn’t have been surprising. A shard slot in the chest for a male body was actually quite practical given the prevalence of suit pockets there in men’s fashion. 

My Agent gave a very familiar and welcome chime as I saw my business account suddenly get a quarter million injection of eddies.

“What next?” I prompted.

“The second stage of your gig here at the Palace,” Blue removed another memory shard from his waist pocket.

I regarded the standard, nondescript shard for a moment, running surface level optical scans before pushing it into the slot behind my right ear.

The data on it was isolated, then subjected to every scan my Agent had, which I double checked within my personal cyberspace.

Twenty seconds passed in realspace before I was satisfied enough to truly crack open the data and read it.

Even as I did that, I kept an eye on every bit of data coming from the shard and kept it isolated. The bullshit that I had experienced from slotting supposedly ‘safe’ shards or seen happen to others doing the same was off the charts.

The gig brief was yet more illicit data acquisition, the difference was now in the method needed and a specific aftermath was required.

“There are specialists for this,” I pointed out.

“True, but they require much more prep time and investment. They’re not as versatile, if things go wrong.”

I saw where he was coming from and downed the last of my drink, carefully compartmentalizing my distaste.

My answer could be no, but that was not really an option.

This overall gig for Mr. Blue Eyes had a huge chance of being my last hurrah.

Even if everything went right… there were no guarantees at the end of this road.

I could reach a dead end or…

“Fine, consider it done.”

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A/N: It's was so fun imagining and writing in this 'verse. Netrunning fights especially. Enjoy your weekends and stay awesome folks.

The Force Wills - Chapter 107

The large enclosed speeder was one of three mini-bus sized flying vehicles that approached the palace.

It was escorted by a half squadron of militarized speeders of the same type that had ambushed us on the brezak. Every single soul that was currently in the procession of guarding and delivering Scintel back to the palace had been seemingly vetted by Koltal and from what both Anakin and I could sense, he had been right on the money. There was no cunning plot, assassin, bomber or anything of that nature during the flight.

The speeder touched down on the royal landing pad and we had to wait for the flying escorts to establish a proper perimeter in the airspace before the doors opened.

I slung Anakin’s good arm around my shoulders and Scintel naturally preceded us.

Five big bodyguards formed a wall of bodies around her before they rushed out as a single unit, sprint walking as quickly as they could across the windy landing pad and into the relative safety of the palace again.

It was our turn and we had to go slower in deference to Anakin’s injuries.

Those injuries were quite real, which I had inflicted on him to help sell the notion that our fall into the water had cost something and was not a miraculous escape.

His right arm was bound and immobilized with a makeshift sling using supplies from the house we had broken into, creating a suitable look for him.

‘Still think you enjoyed it a little too much, Snips,’ he groused at me as we were halfway across the pad. ‘Revenge for my behavior in portraying, Alad. I thought you were a Jedi. Now you’ve gone all Sith on me.’ His mental pout in my direction was ridiculous.

I bore the teasing stoically, this only deserved one thing. I used the Force to give him a slight kinetic poke into his ribs. He twitched and winced, disguising it as pain from walking with bad ribs. ‘Skyguy, you might be wearing multiple masks of behavior, even to me. You might shut me out of the Apprentice Bond, but the sheer fact that you do it and the timing of it, doesn’t stop me from deducing things.’

He mentally rolled his eyes at me. ‘Snips, you don’t exactly make it easy.’

‘I suppose not, but I can’t exactly do a half-assed job of this infiltration, now can I? Besides, that’s half of what the bond with Padme is for.’

His silence was very telling.

‘You’re kidding. She slammed the door on you?’ I asked, mentally poking my own bond with the woman and getting the same result.

I generally checked up on her every third day, running probability lines for possible dangers to her that the back and forth tussle between me and Palpatine was causing in the tapestry of time. It was not easy, especially when so much distance separated us and she was within the Shroud on Coruscant. 

‘It started a few days ago. She was preoccupied and very worried about something, but didn’t want me in turn to worry about it. It was a personal matter that she felt she could handle. Apparently an old handmaiden from her time as queen wanted to meet her urgently.’

‘That’s the worst thing she could say,’ I thought with exasperation.

‘Exactly,’ he thought as we passed through the door and into the palace.

Scintel was waiting with only two bodyguards, but there was now a waiting med tech with a hover chair for Anakin.

“Off you go, Alad, you’re getting the best medical treatment on the planet in the royal sickbay.”

“Thank you, majesty,” he said with visible relief and sank himself carefully into the chair, where a localized forcefield shimmered over his body to support and effectively cushion him.

“Come along, Atre, I need to get to my residence,” Scintel said imperiously and began walking with her bodyguards in tow.

I obeyed with a bow and noted with approval how one bodyguard paused to let me go ahead of him, clearly wanting to keep an eye on me.

Anyone we passed in the palace immediately jumped to the side and bowed, their eyes wide with wonder. It made me think about what the general rumor grapevine was saying amongst not just the palace staff and government, but also the zygerrian public as a whole.

I could practically feel the shift of emotion throughout the entire structure as word began spreading that the queen was actually back.

Back in the royal apartments, for the next two hours I helped Scintel get back into courtly attire and makeup as befitting her status. Zygerrian refresher-showers used a combination of air, sonic and minimal water. The sonic part of that thankfully meant that she couldn’t invite me to share a shower with her.

My own turn in the shower was exclusively using the water, but it wasn’t as thorough or satisfying as I’d like. There was no cascade of water above my head. At best it gave out a light spray from the sides.

When we finally emerged from the apartments and into the throne room, Scintel was back in her green and gold royal dress, makeup and jewelry. Nothing to hint that anything had gone wrong in the last few days. She also naturally took some delight in the opportunity to dress me up in attire that once again did its best to show me off as her slave, which was a definite thing in zygerrian culture.

It actually covered more skin, but somehow felt worse in a way. She had seemingly taken some queues from our host in the pleasure district and now I was in a number that to my mind felt belonged in some pleasure dungeon. 

It was based on a black mini-corset that covered just a hand width of the area around my abdomen just above my belly button. It then flowed downward directly into a small sling bikini, that went through my legs to come back up to attach to the rear of the corset. I had a black, jacket top that covered only my arms and shoulders. This also flowed down to turn into a bikini top that only had two small triangles big enough to hide the necessary bits, but the straps also supported my bust in a way to not just emphasize it considerably, it also gave me a supreme underboob and sideboob as the triangles and straps dug in. It was to a degree just enough to not be uncomfortable. The outfit was completed with skin tight black leggings that reached to mid-thigh and integrated high heeled shoes.

‘Now I just need a whip,’ I thought sarcastically as I stood at the bottom step of the throne with a bowed head. 

Even the ever paranoid Minister Koltal was sending me signals through his emotions that he appreciated Scintel’s efforts with me.

He was walking with the aid of a fancy cane that could apparently transform itself into emergency seating should he get tired of lugging around the bacta cast on his lower right leg.

“Majesty, I apologize for being unable to bow properly.”

Scintel waved it off, shaking her head, “Let’s not stand on ceremony now, after all this. I trust we are secure in the throne room?”

“If we can still be overheard at this point, then they deserve to listen to us, majesty,” Koltal sighed wearily. The zygerrian was very tired and operating on just a few hours of sleep.

She nodded, not happy at the notion, “First, you will tell me what you released to the public as an explanation?”

“As I’m sure you can imagine, your highness. The idea that the Trak are back and had managed to infiltrate to the degree that they did, is not exactly an image we can present to the public at large. Most would not believe it, thinking we were making it up as a smokescreen for the truth. Those who do believe it would begin to feel levels of paranoia that would make them start to suspect their neighbors or the person they passed on the street being the enemy. They’d also start to suspect their household slaves of secretly being in league with the Trak.”

Scintel nodded at his reasoning, “As much as I hate it, you make fair points. So… you probably didn’t say it outright, but strongly implied that it’s Republic agitators?”

“You know me too well, majesty. It is far more palatable to believe such an obvious external enemy is to blame. We are part of the CIS, though we only announced it a few months ago. The speed of their infiltration could be explained away as just the supernatural influence of the Jedi agents they make use of.”

‘Yes, blame the Jedi, so much easier than just looking in the mirror and seeing the monster staring back,’ I thought sarcastically.

“That will work then for the public, but what about the government?”

“To maintain security we will have to limit the knowledge there as well. Until I can investigate and vet a new inner circle.”

“How long?”

“Ordinarily it would take years, but as we don’t have the time… I’ll see if it can’t be done within two days. Whoever replaces the Intelligence and Planetary Defense ministers will by convention need to be in the inner circle if we’re to root out further Trak infiltration in the greater government and society at large, majesty. I also think we need to bring in at least two more trustworthy individuals into the inner circle.”

“Minister, keeping secrets is bad enough amongst three, now you want to make it five?”

“The Trak was one lucky shot away from entirely wiping out your inner circle, majesty. At which point you would’ve been truly alone and at their mercy. At this point we must make it harder and harder for them to wipe out knowledge of their reemergence.”

“Very well, I just don’t see how you’re going to manage it.”

“Let’s just say I’ve been looking at possible replacements for a few years, just as a contingency, your highness,” he said, becoming suspiciously evasive and even uncomfortable.

“Just when I thought you hadn’t reached peak paranoia, Koltal. You manage to surprise me,” Scintel chuckled with a smirk. “Now, what are we going to do to take the fight to the Trak?”

“This is not going to be an open war, your majesty. It will be a war in the dark, with knives, blasters, poison and the occasional bomb. Our people will be fighting with no real clue as to the bigger picture besides the fake one we give them. It will be a war of intelligence and investigation. We somehow need to make every loyal zygerrian citizen our eyes and ears, I’ve got some ideas on that, but it's best discussed by the new inner circle when it convenes properly.”

Scintel eventually nodded, “I had hoped things would be more straightforward, but it’s not like the Trak have a city or headquarters to attack. In the past, they claimed the city state of Galat as their home.”

“Yes, now I remember, in the northern Telles continent. There’s nothing but ruins left of that place.”

“Thank our ancestors for that. Now the Trak has grown like weeds amongst us that pretend to be flowers.”

“To carry the metaphor further, majesty. We’ll do our utmost to pull them out without destroying the flower bed.”

“That is something we must be especially mindful of. Now, what else must be brought to my attention?”

Koltal sighed, looking quite reluctant, “What I say next, I’m not definitely sure about, your highness. Verstet noticed something odd about the body of Minister Ralenn and the scene of the crime in general. It led me to order a detailed examination and analysis, including an autopsy.”

I felt Scintel’s emotions dip considerably and she visibly struggled to keep her composure. She coughed into her hand, steeling herself, “Carry on.”

“The analysis revealed that the Ralenn we found, the one killed in her office, was a clone.”

“WHAT?!” Scintel bellowed, her eyes widening in astonishment. “That’s… how… Are you telling me that Ralenn has been replaced by a clone for stars knows how long and we didn’t even notice?!”

“No, I don’t think that, majesty. Further testing revealed that the clone had until recently been kept in stasis. I believe the most likely scenario is that Minister Ralenn is actually still alive and the clone was placed there to make us believe she was actually dead. It was clearly meant to delay us looking any closer at the circumstances and it meant there was a period of time where the Trak could make use of Ralenn, her knowledge, access codes and everything else she was privy to.”

Scintel gritted her teeth, “She’s still in their hands, somewhere.”

My own mind was reeling from the idea that the Trak had somehow gained access to cloning tech. The kaminoans had more clients than just the Republic, but they were very picky about who those clients were. You couldn’t just show up with a ton of credits and expect them to jump to your demands. So either the Trak had made a compelling argument somehow or the kaminoans themselves had an agenda here. Unless…

There was another little known fact from the days of the Old Republic, that just before the Rusaan Reformation, a near-human society called the Khomm had developed and perfected their own version of cloning technology. To this day, the Khommites only reproduced by cloning themselves, creating ‘perfected’ individuals in a rigid ‘perfected’ society which had been set in stone for a thousand years at this point. They didn’t even change their own names beyond advancing the number behind it to indicate the next generation of clone. 

This cloning technology was specialized to the Khommites. It could create a new clone within less than a year, the mind of the clone flash programmed in a very familiar way, to me at least. Many would study Khommite cloning over the centuries, but the feat of replicating it for other species eluded many questing bio-scientists of the galaxy. Until… a relatively small company on Cartao, in the northern Expansion Region, had made a breakthrough - they had cracked the Knommite cloning technology - a company called, Spaarti Creations.

When this would happen was difficult to pin down, I had researched many topics of critical interest over the years and Spaarti cloning cylinders was just one in a very long list.

It had either been done just prior to the Clone Wars or during it, because I knew Palpatine would make use of it soon to bolster the flagging numbers of Kamino clones near the end of the war. It would also be used to boost the early numbers of Imperial stormtroopers after the New Order arose.

Now the question was, could the Trak also have learned about Spaarti somehow?

I watched as Koltal nodded, “That is my conclusion as well. They had to realize we would eventually discover the truth, just not this quickly. In that way, we may still have a chance of finding her.”

Scintel was now really on a rollercoaster of emotion; first hope that her best friend was still alive, then despair at the thought that she was a captive, “She could be anywhere on the planet by now and soon we will have no choice but to lift the grounding of all ships.”

“Minister Kendac is the next petitioner outside the door,” Koltal jerked his thumb towards the large doors of the throne room.

Kendac was the Minister of Aliens. It said something about the zygerrian mindset that the title of someone who was meant to interact with foreign governments and offworlders, something almost everyone would call a ‘foreign minister’ or ‘external affairs’, was given such a brief, vulgar title.

“No doubt begging me to lift the blockade so he can get some peace and quiet,” Scintel laughed hollowly.

“Quite, he’s also had to field two calls from Dooku.”

She thought for a moment, “So now he also knows the official story. Do you think he believed it?”

“It would depend on what the CIS spies have seen.”

“How certain are you that you’ve truly spotted them all?”

“One can never be 100% certain in this business, your majesty, but I’m confident we can control the reports they give to a degree.”

“Do everything you can, minister. The last thing we want is to have Dooku or a CIS warship over our heads.”

“I will, majesty.”

“I also want you to focus all your efforts on tracking down Ralenn. If we can somehow find her, perhaps we can get a significant lead on the Trak.”

“As you order, majesty.”

“Is that all?”

“For the moment, your highness.”   

“You’re dismissed, send in Minister Kendac.”

Koltal slightly bowed his head with a wince, before hobbling awkwardly out of the throne room.

On the other hand, I had a new problem. It wouldn’t be long before Dooku had a holographic conversation with Scintel. That I could deduce without prescience. Exploring the probability lines, showed that the call would come in the late evening due to relative planetary time differences. I would have to come up with a plausible excuse to be absent.

The lines where I managed that were good enough to protect me, but Dooku would still be able to assess Scintel through the Force. I knew he was good enough with Remote Force manipulation to strangle someone through a comlink. Therefore he could easily read Scintel’s raw emotions and instantly deduce there was something wrong with the queen.

It would be enough for him to probe deeper to see if there was something wrong enough that would upset their plans for Zygerria as a whole.

Now, I had to somehow protect her in a way that would not be obvious to Dooku.

I explored ideas and probability lines…

Would that work… no. Still suspicious. Could I use battle meditation to soothe her spirit somehow? Thereby calming her mind…

The problem was that it would probably be picked up by Dooku that something was happening to her through the Force if I actively had her in a battle meditation during the conversation.

I needed a way… 

It was just a thought, a notion that popped into my head at the thought of how you could make someone calm in a lasting manner…

The probability line unfurled and was successful!

But…

Frak!

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Miraj’s eyes fluttered open, at first wondering what had woken her up from her early afternoon nap.

Then a cascade of sensation seemed to flow over every fiber of her being.

It radiated up from between her legs and crashed up into her mind that left her gasping with… pleasure?

Her golden eyes widened as she took in just who was opposite her in bed.

Who her arms were wrapped around.

Whose right hand was in turn teasing the folds of her ayejü, which was moist and flowing after already having reached a peak.

“Ralenn?” she gasped in astonishment.

It was undoubtedly her best childhood friend and her most secret unrequited love. The lustrous brown fur, the haunting silver eyes, plumped lips that were smirking now before darting forward and capturing her own in a mind searingly good kiss.

Miraj couldn’t help but moan wantonly as their mouths opened to each other, their tongues lapping and dueling upon one another.

Ralenn renewed her efforts and Miraj barely had the wits to realize that, yes they were both completely undressed as she felt her friend’s body pushing and undulating against hers, their chests compacting against each other in a barrage of sensation.

The question of how she was here vanished from her mind.

There was no thought of her disappearance and capture.

There were only the fingers that pushed in and expertly did their work, knowing just where to go and how to move.

Miraj hugged her lover with every bit of strength she had as another climax shuddered through her, it stole her breath away even as her mouth was still being occupied in the delightful thrashing that was happening between them.

She couldn’t moan or scream, she could simply exist and twitch as she was wrapped in chains of pleasure that she never wanted to escape from.

Her lungs should’ve been gasping for air at this point, yet there was seemingly no need. Her rational mind rebelled against the incongruity for just a moment before it was chased away in annoyance.

Finally, Ralenn had mercy, releasing the kiss and her burning hands retreated.

Miraj could only exist in a puddle of boneless pleasure on her right side, whilst her lover idly traced her fingers along the edges of her body and hips.

Her mind was cast back to the last time they did something like this, as they were just coming into adulthood, their curiosity unable to resist and it was the day their deep friendship morphed into something more. They both knew that nothing could come of it. She would be queen and eventually be expected to produce an heir. They couldn’t even risk being mistresses to each other in secret, as the palace just had too many tools of surveillance hidden beyond the royal apartments. Frequent visits would be noticed and eventually the correct conclusions drawn.

Miraj came back to herself and hated that she was going to break the wondrous spell of the aftermath with awful reality.

She met Ralenn’s eyes, staring deep into those lovely orbs that looked back with an unfathomable mystery that she never could find the words for. “How are you here?”

“That’s the first question you ask, Mira?”

The old childhood nickname that always annoyed her, but Ralenn had always continued to use it anyway. “Of course, you were kidnapped!”

“That is certainly the case, from your point of view, I suppose. Why bring the awful reality up at this moment?”

“How can there be a point of view to this?”

“Look around you, where do you think we are?”

Miraj felt frustration bubbling up, but nevertheless complied… It was her bedroom in the royal apartments. “My bedroom, so what?”

“Look closer, the painting over my right shoulder.”

She rolled her eyes, humoring her friend and stared at the landscape painting of the Arlol Highlands, their picturesque distant mountain ranges with snow capped mountains. The grassy rolling hills in the foreground with wild blurrgs roaming in small packs. The painting was so real and well done that she felt she was looking at a window.

It happened quickly, between one eyeblink and the next.

Now there was no longer a soft bed under their entwined bodies, but rippling grass and open sky above. The wonderful breeze washed over them and it should’ve been biting cold, but was instead a pleasant, caressing warmth.

She sat up gasping and panicked, looking around at the grassy field and searching for the palace interior, which had impossibly vanished.

Her arms instinctually sought to preserve modesty and she frantically scanned around for any who could be a witness to this indiscretion.

Ralenn simply chuckled in amusement and rolled over onto her back, interlacing her hands behind her head.

Miraj glared, “This isn’t funny. How did we get out here?”

Now Ralenn roared with laughter, slapping the grass, “Ha ha, oh dear. Wheee. That’s my Mira, so dense when she wants to be.”

“Don’t call me dense!” she snapped.

“Dense, dense, dense,” Ralenn teasingly sang. 

Miraj slapped her friend in annoyance right on the stomach.

“Ow,” she cringed, rubbing the spot. “Seriously, Mira. We were on a bed in the royal apartments, now we’re out here, in the real landscape of a painting that doesn’t even exist in your bedroom. Put those facts together and what do you get?”

Miraj pulled her legs in to get into a proper seated position, folding her arms, “I- I don’t know. We were drugged? This is a hallucination?”

“No,” Ralenn gestured grandly to the landscape around them. “You’re dreaming of course, silly Mira.”

She frowned, skeptical, and brushed her hands through the grass, smelled the air with all its myriad natural scents, and listened to the soft breeze, carrying the calls of distant avian fauna. “Feels real to me.”

“Dreams often do.”

“I don’t remember any dream I’ve had feeling like this.”

“Ah ha,” Ralenn smirked, holding up a pointed finger. “There’s the keyword, remember. Can you truly say you remember any specific dream? Sure, there will be few memorable ones, you can give a vague overview of it, but you can’t be specific on all its details. Other dreams just wash away on the shores between conscious and subconscious.”

Miraj frowned, staring hard around her, looking around for inconsistency and with frustration found nothing readily apparent. She looked down at her friend, trying her best to ignore their state of dress and the slowly simmering feelings that the sight immediately provoked.

“And you’re not Ralenn then, are you?”

Her ‘friend’ clapped, “Give her a prize. I’m not the real Ralenn. At the moment, she’s at the tender mercies of the Trak. I am the Ralenn that lives on in you. Your memory of her, spun up and given form, it’s all very complicated.”

She spun the concept around in her head, “So you’re not Ralenn, but in a way you actually are her, but you could also just be my subconscious.”

“Complicated, as I said.”

“Why?”

“Now that is the right question,” Ralenn smiled with delight. “Why would your mind dream this up? Was it only to bring me forth to have a bout of passionate embrace again? A deep desire that now can never happen again? Do you fear that I might actually be dead? Despite that it seems I was merely cloned to fake my death and kidnapped. Do you worry that this is just another layer of deception the Trak are spinning for Koltal and for you? Whilst you are running around in circles looking for the real me, the Trak will have a freer hand to act as they see fit.”

“How could I possibly know or answer that?” Miraj asked with exasperation.

“Hey, this is your mind. You’re trying to sort things out for yourself.”

“Well, I’m clearly doing a bad job of it,” she groused, hugging her own legs and resting her head on her knees.

“I can tell you one thing you need to do right now.”

“Oh, and what is that?”

“Make peace with the possibility that I might be dead.”

“No,” she said flatly.

“You must.”

“No!”

“Holding on to me is the worst thing you can do right now.”

Miraj turned to glare at the memory of Ralenn, “Why?”

“Dooku.”

“What about him?”

“Do I really have to spell it out for you?! He’s a former Jedi Master at the head of a newly formed interstellar empire, which you tethered the Zygerrian Empire to as a vassal state! Jedi have supernatural abilities that were clearly recorded in the histories. Do you really think that Dooku has forsworn use of those abilities? He walks around still carrying his lightsaber. By the void, think! If he sees you distraught and troubled because of me, he will sense weakness. You will be dangling a chain for him to grab and pull you in deeper.”

She winced as the rightness of her friend’s words washed over her. All her years of comportment and political training had just seemed to fly out the window lately.

“You’re right and I hate it.”

“It’s fine to hate it, but let it go. He’ll sense that too.”

“Even though I’m on a holocall?”

“What is a holo, but a full construct of light in three dimensions, a representation of you in every detail. The exact same thing he’d have if was actually standing in the throne room. Jedi perceive the smallest detail when they want to, details we’re not even aware we’re sending.”

“How can you know that?” Miraj asked suspiciously.

“You’ve read the histories, it’s all there in your subconscious, even though you can’t readily recall them. And I am your subconscious, from a certain point of view.”

She sighed, hiding her face on her knees. If this was a dream, wouldn’t it mean I could change everything around here and even my own form?

“You could, but your mindset isn’t right for that at the moment.”

She slapped Ralenn on the shoulder this time, “Stop that.”

The memory of her friend sat up, scooted closer and enveloped her in a hug from behind.

The feeling of it was a burning pleasure all along her back and she couldn’t help but relax into it.

“Now listen carefully, Mira.”

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“Cursed tiny felinoids,” Chewie muttered to himself.

He was reduced to working on the computer terminal with just two fingers and it was making things go so much slower.

‘You should get yourself some cybernetics, Chewbacca,’ R2-D2 trilled in Binary.

The astromech was plugged into the logic port of the new guest quarters their little ‘group’ from the House of Iballa had been assigned. It fit the bill of sleeping accommodation, but it also had extensive network interfaces and terminals in an adjoining room. It technically belonged to Minister Koltal’s security ministry and was meant to house network security specialists in isolation and where an eye could be kept on them. The only problem being that Zygerria didn’t really have anyone native who could compete with network and info security standards as it was known among the Core Worlds and other highly developed worlds of the galaxy.

“As handy as that would be at the moment, my wife would kill me,” he said, as the program on the screen in front of him finally compiled, with more than a little help from R2.

Cybernetics wasn’t common at all in wookiee culture, as they preferred to keep their tools outside of their skin. Anyone who lost a limb, could have it replaced, but that was as far as it went. There were a few Claatuvac navigators who had wookiee-adapted data halos surgically attached, but those were extreme edge cases and those madclaws barely left the guild trees for any reason, interacting only with who they had to.

‘Program is executing, it’ll take a few minutes,’ R2 said, unable to prevent the Binaric blurt that betrayed his feelings of the systems they were working with.

Chewie nodded and stretched his arms, keeping a wary eye on the astromech.  

Something he had resolved to do after seeing the very creative performance the droid gave during the battle for the palace.

He knew there was a definite advantage to having control of a battlefield, something Ahsoka had told him to always strive for if he ever found himself in such a situation where he was in command of wookiees again, but R2 had taken it to a whole new level.

The droid had weaponized the battlefield itself.

Selective door locking, and making use of the mounted hidden turret weaponry, herding Trak straight into ambushes set by the security forces. R2 had taken out a fair number of them, but they smoothly adapted, showing the advantage of fighting in your own home tree. They knew where the turrets were and also used the secret tunnels throughout the palace extensively. 

But they had to emerge from them at some point and their masks were only cosmetic, not protecting them against flashing lights to extreme illumination and given the hypersensitive zygerrian eyes, it was extremely debilitating to them. 

He even used the palace PA system to emit sound frequencies that were even worse.

The only reason that the battle hadn’t been a complete ‘cakewalk’ for palace security, was the fact that R2 had to turn off his tricks when they arrived.

‘Program complete, we have 73.2% restoration.’

Chewbacca resisted the urge to smash his fist against the desk he was sitting behind. He was not in an environment built to wookiee standards.

“Can we actually do better at this point?”

‘It’s certainly possible, but we’re only looking at increments of extra data that might be restored. The virus the Trak uploaded was simple and primitive by my standards, but it did its job. We’re only going to get diminishing returns in restoring the surveillance database.’

“Did we at least get back everything from the day of the battle?”

‘Scanning… yes, but there are corrupted sectors.’

“It’s something, at least.” Chewie lightly slapped his shoulder slung utility belt in the appropriate spot, engaging the hidden comlink. “Master Verstet. We are ready.”

Stupid cover identity name, he could barely manage stringing those phonemes together in Shyriiwook to even approximate what it sounded like. It was completely alien to the wookiee tongue.

Obi-Wan entered the room and R2 helpfully brought up the multitude of surveillance feeds that had been restored, displaying them into a giant compound holo screen, which the droid projected from the emitter on top of his domed head.

“Ah, well done, Chewie, R2,” he said absently, his eyes already scanning the multitude of smaller screens, each showing an individual sensor feed. “Let’s focus on the feeds around the offices of the two murdered ministers and Minister Koltal, filter out the rest.”

A multitude of feeds vanished and the screens resized, now displaying the feeds from eighteen sensors.

“That’s better, go back to six hours from the point I was taken to Minister Koltal’s office.”

The screens flashed and blurred as R2 went directly to the time in question.

“Scan from that point forward, pause for any movement.”

The first pause came at 40 minutes outside Minister Gadrad’s office, but it was just a slave doing cleaning.

More pauses came at all three locations, including points of blank and corrupted data, but nothing appeared suspicious until a mere twenty minutes before Obi-Wan was forcibly taken to Koltal.

Three masked figures appeared in the frame, all armed, outside of Minister Ralenn’s office. The biggest one of which was carrying a long black bag with a heft and shape that clearly indicated a body was inside.

“Well, there’s the Trak that placed the cloned body,” Obi-Wan commented with a sigh, watching them move from one feed to another, until they were at the door of the office.

One of the Trak, with a female body size and proportion, tapped in a code to open it.

“Pause it there,” Obi-Wan said flatly, staring. “R2, rewind 3 seconds and play the female tapping in the code again.”

The droid complied and Chewie stared hard, trying to see what the undercover Jedi had seen that made him so fixated on the moment.

Obi-Wan scratched his beard in thought. Then he lowered his hand and began making subtle hand signals at his hip.

Chewie did his best to see them out of the corner of his eye.

‘R2, surveillance, immediate, question,’ Obi-Wan signed.

R2 used the holo projector beside his forward main eye to project a tiny screen, at an angle that only the two of them would be able to see. A rendered human hand began returning signs.

‘Koltal, listening and watching, angle of surveillance unable to detect visual hand signals.’

‘Without displaying on any screen, analyze female zygerrian body proportions.’

“Resume R2,” Obi-Wan ordered aloud.

The three Trak entered and while there were no visual sensors inside the Minister of Intelligence’s office, the door was left wide open for a partial view of them setting up the supposed ‘death’ of Minister Ralenn.

‘Proportions analyzed with 97 percent accuracy,’ R2 signed  

Obi-Wan was deceptively casual in demeanor as he signed, ‘Reference earlier footage from two days ago, analyze body proportions of Minister Ralenn, compare.’

Chewie froze as he interpreted the sign language. It was still something rather new to him and he didn’t consider himself properly proficient in it. Had he made a mistake? He carefully recalled the signs Obi-Wan had used and confirmed with himself twice. Yes, that’s what the Jedi had asked.

It was a deceptively simple task for R2, which he finished in less than a second. ‘Analysis and comparison complete…’

At this point, even the astromech paused, as if he couldn’t believe his own analysis and was in shock. Chewie knew that R2 was far from a normal astromech at this point and could tell that the droid had not undergone a standard memory wipe in a long time.

‘... shows 95 percent match.’

‘Error factor?’

'3 percent.’

Chewie felt his mind stall somewhere before the implications exploded.

He turned to look at Obi-Wan properly and saw the Jedi look as normal as ever.

“Show me Gadrad’s office now,” he said, closing his eyes briefly.

Chewie turned to face his terminal, going back into the compiler program that they had written. Was there a mistake?

He brought up the code and stared at line after line, even though it was probably futile. If R2 couldn’t find a problem, he wasn’t going to.

The inescapable conclusion reared to the fore of his mind.

Ralenn was not a kidnapping victim.

She had actually staged her own death.

Ralenn, the Minister of Zygerrian Intelligence, the best friend of Queen Scintel, was part of the Trak abolitionist movement.

Chewie was torn between being astonished at the revelation or aghast at the implications of what it would mean for the possible success of their overall mission.

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‘Are you sure about this?’

Anakin stared at his old master from his bed in the royal sickbay. His back was propped up on numerous cushions to soften the strain on his still healing collar bone. It was so tempting to fall into the trance and speed the whole process up, but the bed below was full of medical sensors that would quickly pick up on an unnaturally fast healing process.

He twitched, reflexively adjusting the bacta cast that encased his entire right arm, shoulder and part of his upper body. There was an abominable itch that kept returning every few minutes on that arm, never in the same spot. A brief use of internal Control dealt with it, but he did not have Ahsoka’s medical acumen.

‘I’ve reviewed the footage and even had R2 compare it to other public video samples of Ralenn. His matching index is always in the high ninety percent, no matter how we run it. I’ve studied it extensively as well and must conclude with certainty that Minister Ralenn is indeed part of the Trak. She faked her own death using a clone and if my reading of the body language is correct, she is undoubtedly a senior figure of authority in the Trak Movement.’

‘It’s almost unbelievable,’ Anakin thought with astonishment. ‘She was their minister for Intelligence for Force’s sake. You’d think that they vetted and investigated her past before giving her the role.’

‘Their childhood friendship together was not a happy accident of circumstance.’

Ahsoka’s thoughts pushed in from Anakin’s bond into the mental conversation.

‘What do you mean, Snips?’

‘Let’s just say I had to go on an extensive mindwalk in her head to get what I needed to settle her spirit and mind for the meeting with Dooku.’

Anakin’s worry was clear in the shared mental landscape, ‘How did that go?’

‘As well as can be expected, Dooku is not getting on his sloop to personally intervene at least. Though I’m sure he’s soon going to be contacting his master asking about any Republic special operation launched in response to Zygerria’s actions. At which point, Palpatine may enlighten him, though the chances are more likely that he’s going to deny knowledge of such a thing on the Republic side. Another broadside against his apprentice as a test of his worthiness to remain Sith.

Anyway, your original question. I think Ralenn's introduction into the life of a young heir presumptive Miraj Scintel was no accident. It was planned.’

‘By the Trak?’ Obi-Wan thought.

‘Their paths through life might have diverged at any point, during schooling, post-school, governance apprenticeships, yet their lives remained in perpetual lockstep.’

‘Could it not just be a matter of nepotism at the highest levels? Their friendship encouraging Ralenn to find ways to remain close?’

’That was the case, yes, but there’s more to it than that. Ralenn’s family is from a traditionally noble line that traces its roots back to a time before even the Ruusan Reformation. They were powerful and influential all through the centuries, they supported the monarchy and the ‘traditional slavery’ faction all the way through the recent civil war, 120 odd years ago. The war nevertheless devastated the Ralenn dynastic family, until only one branch of the family survived. For a time, there was only one male survivor, a handful of slaves and a giant mansion.’

Obi-Wan nodded in understanding in the mindscape, ‘It’s here you think that the family secretly turned traitor to the Zygerrian Empire.’

‘I mean it makes sense. The single survivor was but a young teenager at the time, according to the family history that Scintel knows. You can just imagine how devastated someone so young must feel, having lost his entire close and extended family in a war. The weight of dynastic responsibility on his small shoulders. The perfect time to be molded and directed, to turn that resentment of loss against something.’

‘And from that point on, the Ralenn dynasty became Trak, turning its influence and power to the abolitionist cause,’ Anakin had to admit, the pieces fit. ‘The question is now, what do we do? If anything?’

‘We’re definitely not calling off, HK-47,’ Ahsoka thought with finality. ‘The Trak are not our enemies at the end of the day. HK’s work will hasten the downfall of Zygerria’s slavery based empire as it exists now, something that they also want.’

‘Perhaps, but we must not think that a future Zygerria led by the Trak would be any better,’ Obi-Wan warned.

‘They wouldn’t have slavery,’ Anakin couldn’t help the waspish response. 

‘Yes, Anakin. The question we must ask then, will anything the Trak do in the next week cause our own mission to be jeopardized?’

‘That’s entirely possible,’ Ahsoka admitted. ‘But we must remember they’re not exactly a standing ‘army’, they’re an insurgent/resistance movement that must work in the shadows by nature. Right now, they have to lay low. The monarchy is going to mobilize many eyes and ears to look for them, Koltal and his security ministry is going to be hunting. They can’t afford any slip-ups that could compromise everything they’ve built for nearly a century.’

‘Perhaps there’s a way…’ Anakin thought, trailing off slightly. ‘What if HK could track down and make contact with the Trak, could they coordinate efforts?’

‘HK is not exactly a team player at the best of times, Skyguy. He can do it, but it's not exactly in his nature.’

‘We must also ask ourselves what the Trak’s actual goals are,” Obi-Wan cautioned. ‘Yes, its to end slavery, they clearly are not above bombing and assassination of high ranking officials and the queen was a primary target. However, HK is going to attack the fabric of civilization on this planet; power, transportation and communication. That is not something the Trak will support.’

‘HK does his best work when he’s in the shadows, unseen. It’s best that he remains unknown to any of the locals,’ Ahsoka pointed out.

They all felt a general consensus of agreement on that.

‘Oh, the actual reason I jumped into this conversation. It was reported to Scintel an hour ago that our transport ships have arrived in the system. They’ll refuel and head to Kadavo, pick up our purchase and return. We’ll have just under three days to kill before we make payment and leave with our rescued kirosians and other slaves.’

‘Then a long journey back home through hutt space,’ Anakin’s troubled mood and worry was bleeding everywhere over the shared mental space.

‘Still no luck in reaching her, Skyguy?’

‘No, mental doors are shut firmly. I sometimes really wish you hadn’t taught her that, Snips.’  

‘You know the reason why, Anakin. She’s not relented for me either.’

‘What does your prescience say, Ahsoka?’ Obi-Wan asked.

‘No real need for prescience, we’re all going back to Coruscant.’

‘Naturally, the Council will want a full session debriefing for the Zygerrian affair, not to mention the CIS fleet roaming around our side of the Hydian. I’ve been looking at the Holonet feeds that I could access, as has R2. No reports of any attacks have been made public. So your prescience beyond is clouded by the Shroud… frustrating.’

‘Yes, the instant I regain access to Fulcrum, I’ll mobilize assets on Coruscant to begin tracking Padme down, and arrange for a conventional conversation. Find out why she's been so insistent on privacy for so long. This is clearly not just a simple conversation with an old handmaiden.’

‘This is not a common thing for her, to close the bonds?’

Anakin shook his head mentally, ‘No, not for this long and usually we make time for a quick mental chat every day.’

Obi-Wan’s mouth twitched and his eyes twinkled, ‘A quick chat only?’

Anakin endured the teasing with a flat stare, ‘Master… really?’

‘Oh come now, Anakin, one must find humor whenever you can.’

Ahsoka mentally pinged them both, the equivalent of a finger flick against the back of the head. ‘Now now boys. We all know Padme, we know the trend of events that gravitate toward her. If she is cutting us off to this extent, knowing that it would worry us in the process, then this is something big. She’s not planning a trivial surprise birthday party. We must pick up and follow her trail as soon as possible, because she’s going to get in over her head and we have to be there for her when that happens.’

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A/N: Closing off the arc and getting hints of the new one. Really excited about this one. I hope it was clear enough that Ahsoka pulled an Emma Frost here with Scintel? Anyway, have a good weekend, stay awesome!

The Force Wills - Chapter 106

“Quick get on!”

The moment Anakin sat astride the brezak’s saddle the creature rumbled to life from its afternoon snooze and didn’t look too happy about it.

“I really think I should be handling the beast,” Scintel said wearily, as he unwound and grabbed the reins. “Have you ever ridden one of these?”

Anakin had already slapped a Beast Control through the Force on the brezak and could probably make it dance the ballet if he wanted to.

“Not this species, but I’m a quick study. Now please, majesty, we don’t have time. Atre will sit behind you and handle the blasters.”

Scintel was still clearly dubious about it, but gave up her objections when Anakin easily with just a tug of the reins and slight dig of his heels, caused the brezak to sinuously compact itself so we could easily climb up into the saddle.

I jumped up after her awkwardly, as my hands were occupied with two blasters, whilst Scintel had hers tucked into her belt.

“Ha!” Anakin slapped the reins, lightly kicking both his heels into the brezak’s back.

Its mighty membrane wings unfurled, with one huge jump and a single flap, we surged into the air over the city’s pleasure district.

“Any suggestions for where to go, majesty?!” he asked over the roaring wind.

Scintel took a moment to answer, distracted by what she was feeling under her arms as they were looped around Anakin’s waist. “Honestly, no! The only other option is fleeing the city, which I refuse to do! I’ll not let these scum drive me out of my own home!”

“Well we better think of something quick!” I shouted. “We’ve got company out of the west!”

Three speeders, shaped like tapered delta wings, were rapidly approaching. I could sense two zygerrians in each, their ugly and grim emotions betraying their murderous intentions.

“Hang on!” Anakin twisted the reins, turning the brezak east and it sped up significantly, its wings flapping furiously, the long body undulating under us.

There was no way we were outrunning or outlasting these pursuers. The brezak would fall out of the sky with exhaustion if we kept this pace for too long.

That meant we had to fight our way out of this.

Our only saving grace was the fact that these speeders weren’t armed themselves, only their passengers were.

Even as I thought that, the passengers in question leaned out of the side windows and brought blasters to bear on us.

“Dive!” I shouted, looking back over my shoulder.

Anakin’s precog didn’t really need my help, but we were still technically undercover here.

The brezak plunged down just in time to avoid the orange bolts that missed by meters over our heads.

“Keep steady, I need to flip around!”

Anakin pulled us out of the dive just skimming over the city rooftops.

The stability allowed me to lift my right leg up, bring it around Scintel’s back, until I was sitting side-saddle.

The dive had given us some much needed velocity, but now the speeders also did the same.

I leveled both blasters up into the sky above us, picked a target and let loose with a burst of rapid semi-auto fire.

My bolts peppered the sky around the target, intentionally missing a few here and there, whilst I finally adjusted two shots to land on the nose of the speeder, digging a neat hole at a critical point in the chassis and the other to fry the head of the zygerrian shooter in the passenger seat.

The speeder immediately began listing to one side, smoke trailing out of it, before it lost too much altitude and crumpled itself against the hard stone of a tall passing building, spitting fire and wreckage into the air.

Anakin pulled the brezak left and guided the creature into a climb, its wings flapping furiously against the air.

The two remaining speeders roared passed below us, the gunners shooting at us and missing wildly thanks to the relative velocity difference and angles.

If we had only one advantage being on this creature, it was in maneuverability.

“Ha! Go, go, go!” Anakin shouted.

There was no need for shouting really, at this point the brezak was an extension of Anakin.

We leveled out at three hundred meters and the enemy speeders were steering hard right to make another attack run on us.

My kingdom for a DC15X sniper at this moment.

The effective range of these blaster pistols meant I could only engage the enemy at 100 meters at best, beyond that the plasma lost too much energy and cohesion. I’d be scorching the paint at 200 meters.

Both speeders were coming at us full tilt now, their anger, bloodlust and revenge for their fallen comrades surging like fire through their psyches.

I threw my legs over, changing my side-saddle position to face towards our three o’clock.

My arms came up and I aimed towards the incoming enemy.

“Any time now, Atre!” Anakin shouted.

“Too far!” I snapped.

The gunners leaned out, but this time only presented their gun arms and bits of their heads out of the passenger windows.

They fired first - Anakin had to pull Scintel with him to the side to avoid two blaster bolts that would’ve slammed into their shoulders.

My fingers started rapidly pulling the triggers as I returned fire.

Three shots missed, but the fourth and fifth slammed into the front windshield, going straight though. The shot’s lethality was reduced completely, but they shattered the low-quality transparisteel of the civilian vehicle and became very lethal shrapnel that peppered the eyes and faces of both zygerrians inside.

Shot six, seven and eight missed, nine buried into the nose of the second speeder, burning a nice hole there. Ten and eleven were aimed right at the face of the driver. The shots had traveled merely sixty meters, so went right through the windshield and flash fried the driver’s head before it exploded.

 “Hold on!”

I safe'd my blasters and awkwardly grabbed hold of Scintel just in time.

Anakin threw the brezak into the equivalent of an Immelmann - the creature pulled abruptly into a vertical climb. Then further over into a back-to-the-earth position.

I had to hurriedly wrap my legs around the saddle’s rear pommel to avoid my body getting pulled off the saddle by gravity.

The two speeders careened past underneath us in a flash of speed, the single able gunner of the right speeder futilely trying to land a shot.

Both wobbled at high speed through the air, losing altitude.

I sensed the gunner of the left speeder frantically trying to regain control from his now headless driver. He managed somewhat, but the speed controls were at the driver’s left arm and out of reach.

The speeder whose occupants were either bleeding out or utterly blind frantically maneuvered and soon lost all sense of their orientation.

It nosed over and plowed into a very surprised and crowded street.

I felt nine sentients die instantly, including our attackers before dozens more were injured as the speeder spent its remaining momentum, tumbling and crashing a further thirty meters.

Anakin flipped the brezak over and finally gravity was where it belonged.

The remaining speeder shot off into the distance, totally concerned now only for his own survival and not killing us.

‘We can’t stay in the sky, Skyguy! We’re too conspicuous. There’s more where that came from! We need to somehow convince them that their mission is accomplished.’ I thought quickly, seeing the probability lines converging and in quite a few of them the brezak was wounded badly enough that I saw it plunging out of the sky with us on it. 

“Majesty! Is there any large body of water in or near the city?!” he asked.

“Lake Trama! To the north-east from here,” she pointed.

Anakin nodded and turned the grezak into that direction, getting as much speed as he could from the creature.

“How far?!”

Scintel frantically looked around trying to get her bearings, before shrugging, “Maybe thirteen kilometers?!”

‘Skyguy, we’ll get there, but there’s another problem. Our little mid air battle has attracted official attention.’

‘Sithspit!’

We’d reach the lake in four minutes, forty nine seconds.

It would only be ninety seconds of flight before we’d be intercepted by city patrol officers also on their own brezaks. What we were going to tell them, I had no idea. There was no way to know at this point who were the ‘bad guys’ in this situation. Scintel was surely not going to be recognized at a distance.

Sure enough, two brezaks came towards us from the west, whilst another three were flying in from the north, clearly trying to limit our course and eventually box us in.

“Majesty! We have a problem!” Anakin pointed at the incoming patrols.

Scintel practically radiated frustrated anger, exasperation and a creeping dread.

“Atre, switch your weapons to stun, don’t shoot the brezak!”

My own frustration with the coming situation and the limitations I was forced under was really starting to wear on me, but I obeyed nevertheless, using my thumbs to flick the fire selector switches on the blasters.

Anakin shifted the brezak’s course slightly further right, now going in a more east-north-east direction. 

The main result was that the patrol officers didn’t manage to box us in and all of them converged on our six o’ clock, giving me the best possible angle to shoot.

“HALT! In the name of the Queen!”

I would forehead slap myself if my hands weren’t filled with blaster pistols.  

The only outlet for my sheer exasperation was to bring my blasters to bear and fire.

Two blue stun rings shot outward and caught the zygerrian who had called in the name of his queen. He immediately collapsed in his seat and slumped forward. His brezak, cleverly trained beast that it was, also knew what to do and dove for the ground to land.

The four remaining patrol officers saw it happen, gaped for a moment, then scattered their mounts and finally drew their own weapons.  

I had to wonder just what was in the order that sent them out in the first place. They had to have been scrambled in a hurry to just see what was going on, since it was very chaotic for law enforcement at the moment.

Anakin dove and twisted our mount left then right, to avoid the stun shots that were sent our way.

At least these guys were trained with proportionality of response, thank goodness.

I sent four shots to my bottom left and nailed another patrol officer with a deflection shot that he flew right into.

“Atre! Enemy at 340!” Anakin shouted, as he twisted our brezak into a jinking pattern of flight.

It seemed that the Trak were not giving us up so easily.

Rising up from the city streets, were two speeders and what was definitely a more militarized armored speeder, which even had dorsal and ventral articulated Repeater turrets.

How they got that, I couldn’t spare any thought for.

I sent off three more stun shots, hitting another patrol officer. The rapid turns Anakin was doing now meant one of them also hit the other brezak on the membrane wing. The poor creature moaned into the sky before diving for the ground. 

A few moments later the Trak arrived with guns blazing.

The fire from the armored speeder’s Repeater practically blasted one of the patrol brezak in half, whilst the rider was flung off to plunge to his death.

The other speeder tried to ram into our brezak.

“Hang on!”

Anakin pulled a stunt that had probably never been done with one of these creatures in the history of their domestication.

Our brezak flapped once, then twice, but ever so slightly contracted the surface area of its membrane wings in just the right way…

The brezak jinked upward and rolled.

The ramming speeder passed just a few meters ‘above’ my head, but I was upside down at the moment…

It took all my strength not to lose both my blasters due to the sudden centrifugal forces trying to rip them away, as I aimed, switched to lethal shots and pulled the triggers rapidly.

I managed to pump four shots into the speeder, drawing a line along its body.

Its repulsors failed and it became no more airworthy than a brick. Gravity reclaimed it swiftly and it only moved forward on its tremendous forward momentum.

Our brezak came out of its roll and Scintel had reached the point where she was frightened out of her wits. Her world only became her arms clutching for dear life around Anakin and the feeling of her face squished against his back.

The one good thing to come from this, it finally clued in the two surviving patrol officers as to what was going on here to a degree.

They slewed their mounts through the air and began firing at the enemy with blasters.

It didn’t help much.

Their accuracy was naturally poor in the circumstances, missing the armored speeder and its hostile buddy entirely.

Anakin dove our brezak to the ground abruptly, just in time to avoid a scything burst of Repeater fire that streamed over our heads.

The two patrol officers managed to coordinate enough at this point to actually keep the remaining enemy speeder distracted. 

Until they directed one of their brezak to actually physically pounce on the craft.

What happened further there I had no concentration for as I was too busy shooting at the armored speeder trying to cut us down with rapid plasmatic death.

We were now flying at rooftop level, belly to the earth and Anakin was snaking the brezak through the buildings at breakneck speed. Actually using them as cover!

“Just a little further boy, you’re doing great!” he shouted, patting the neck of our mount.

The Repeaters whined, peppering plasma bolts in our direction as the speeder dove to somewhat match our altitude, but kept slightly higher. The shots slammed into passing rooftops, blasting holes and sending fragments flying through the air.

Actually shooting back at this point was now challenging even with the Force on my side. Anakin was twisting and throwing the poor brezak around so rapidly that he was in danger of injuring the beast.

My precog kicked in and I snapped my blasters upward, first firing three shots behind us at the enemy, which naturally missed just to make it seem plausible, before two shots managed to clip the nose of the speeder.

The armor was well up to the task of resisting though, but it was enough for the driver to flinch somewhat and change his own evasive course.

This meant the person sitting at the gunnery station completely fumbled the next bursts from the Repeater, missing us by miles.

‘Snips! Lake’s ahead! Sure about this?’

‘I could destroy this thing right now, but the Trak are desperate to kill Scintel. They’re just going to send more at us and we can’t fight like this forever.’

I adjusted the settings on one of my blasters, then reached into it with technometry, overriding the internal safety governors.

With my left weapon, I kept up at least the appearance of our defense, firing a shot at the enemy every few seconds. Some missed, some spent themselves on the speeder, causing only brief sparks and slight pitting as the armor ablated my shots.

‘Get ready, Skyguy. This is going to suck.’

Our brezak burst past the last of the buildings at the waterfront and soared over the water at nearly 180 kph. 

With no more cover and a wide open watery expanse, we were easy pickings.

My left blaster rapidly fired the last dregs of its power cell, then I raised my right blaster and fired one overpowered shot, draining all of its remaining charge. The barrel was nearly slagged in the process. The shot was like a small sun had shot forward, such was the brightness.

Thankfully I didn’t need my eyes for this.

My shot nailed the speeder, burning straight through the armor at the gunner’s side and killing him instantly.

His last dying act was to pull the trigger on the Repeater again.

Anakin tried one last time to jink, it saved our lives but the stream of bolts cut themselves right through our brezak’s right membrane wing.

Our smooth, super fast flight became an instant plunge.

‘JUMP!’

I dropped both blasters and grabbed Scintel just in time.

Anakin flung us all as one joined body off the dying brezak.

We barely had eight meters of distance to fall, but at our speed the water was as strong as duracrete.

I felt the Force practically explode with power as Anakin released a Force Push ahead of us.

It turned our lethal impact into something that only felt like I had been bodily slapped by a giant just hard enough to give all of us bruises.

The world around us became a blue, bubbling cacophony, especially as the brezak slammed into the lake some thirty meters away.

We kept sinking for two precious seconds as we both tried to regain our wits, Scintel was no better in that department.

I pushed away from her, my instincts already applying the Force internally to limit the usage of oxygen in my lungs.

Anakin also applied a Force Sleep to Scintel, before clamping his mouth over hers and pushing some precious air in her direction.

Our arms and legs treaded water to keep us submerged.  

‘How long do we need to hold out, Snips?’

‘Forty seconds, minimum, fifty to be certain. Will you manage?’

‘Of course I will. There’s no other choice.’

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Obi-Wan coughed as his lungs rebelled against the acrid tang of smoke in the air.

He looked up from the floor where he was still covering Minister Koltal - who was also alive and coughing beneath him - and found the elevator doors opening and closing with a groan of malfunctioning machinery.

A careful roll to the side got him off the minister and he carefully got to his feet, listening attentively for the response the elevator car gave to the action. Thankfully there didn’t seem to be any damage beyond the malfunctioning doors.

He picked up his fallen blaster and double checked that it also was in working order.

That done, he stretched out with the Force into the corridor and further beyond. There was only one person alive out there and they were in a great deal of pain.

Koltal twitched and gasped as he came back to his senses, reflexively grabbing at his own fallen weapon, before rolling over and aiming it at the elevator door.

“Ỳewa! Vestret, you injured?”

“No, beyond the lingering effects of the overpressure on my ears and lungs,” Obi-Wan said, working his jaw and the Force to alleviate the constant ringing in his ears.

The minister wearily got to his feet and with his blaster leading the way, tried to get a better view through the malfunctioning door. He gritted his teeth and clutched at his prominent ears, rubbing the side of his head. “I’m also in the same ship, otherwise I’d be able to easily hear if our ambushers are still alive. No choice then, help me with this door.”

Obi-Wan took one side of the twitching bent door, that was still trying to futilely close.

“Push on three,” Koltal instructed. “One, two, three!”

The door thankfully yielded to their efforts.

They emerged into a corridor of the palace that had been thoroughly devastated by the grenade explosion. Ceiling panels were either gone or hanging in tatters, paintings shredded or riddled with shrapnel, nearby tapestries blown off their mountings and lying in pitiful piles.

The area where the grenade had actually exploded had scorched walls and there were small cinders of burning materials; which included the torn remnants of clothing. Obi-Wan winced inwardly as he also began spotting scorched body parts - fingers, an arm, a foot still in a boot.

“Idiots, did they seriously think using a thermal grenade of that yield indoors was a good idea,” Koltal sneered with contempt. “A simple shrapnel device would’ve done the trick without the potential for this much extraneous destruction.”

“Shouldn’t there be fire systems and alarms going off all over the palace from this?” Obi-Wan asked, looking up and down the ruined corridor.

“The traitors have access to my office and security, Vestret. They can make anything happen at this point with regards to the palace.” Koltal spotted the lone survivor down the corridor, beyond ground zero of the grenade explosion.

He rushed forward with a growling snarl, aiming his blaster as he advanced.

Obi-Wan hurried to follow and soon they were standing over the survivor. Their zygerrian attacker had clear overpressure injuries, blood leaking from his ears, shrapnel wounds and burns. He was unable to stand and weakly clawing himself forward in an effort to get to some sort of safety or help.

Koltal had no compassion whatsoever as he roughly turned over the zygerrian to see his face, only for shock to come over him as he saw the mask covering it. He grabbed the dying assailant by the neck, shoving the barrel of his blaster against the side of his head. 

“Trak! Tell me who else is involved and I will end your suffering quickly!”

“Aghhh.” The Trak coughed awfully, blood spitting out of his mouth and staining the mask he wore. “You… you’re… ahhh… wasting your time… minister. Leave me… hurt me to make me suffer… I’ll say…” he wheezed hard, struggling to pull in air to speak. “... nothing.”

Koltal gritted his teeth, his anger soaring to renewed heights. “Let’s test that resolve.” He jabbed a finger into a shrapnel wound.

“Arggh!”

Obi-Wan wanted nothing more than to stop Koltal, but he knew his cover was hanging on by a thin thread. Kicking the grenade back could be written off once as a lucky instinctual action on his part, but if he started acting as a typical Jedi now… So instead he kept an overwatch on either side of the corridor.

They were now in a dead zone with regard to the palace’s surveillance and scanners, all of which would’ve been destroyed in the corridor. It would mean that they had a brief time before the enemy could understand that something had gone wrong. That time would last until the assassins were asked to check in via comlink.

“Still won’t talk?” Koltal asked ruthlessly.

The assassin was struggling to breathe from the pain, but managed to shake his head, “Hurt me… kill… me, minister. At… this point… it makes… no difference.”

Koltal took a deep breath.

The sudden whine of the blaster shot made Obi-Wan flinch reflexively and he kept his gaze outward as he felt the death through the Force. 

“This level of commitment and devotion… it shouldn’t surprise me,” Koltal stood and looked into the distance with a grim countenance. “History speaks of it, but until now I just thought it embellishment to make the Trak more threatening to the reader. Now I see what our ancestors were warning us about.”

“Are we still heading to Minister Gadrad?” Obi-Wan asked.

“Might as well, at this point. We’d only be finding his corpse though. This attack was meant to kill us, but it was also to buy time if it failed.”

“How certain are you?”

“I’m done underestimating my enemy, Vestret. Let’s go.”

He led the way down the corridor, hugging the wall to the right and keeping his blaster raised and ready to fire.

Obi-Wan followed, mostly watching their backs as they advanced together.

There were now very few people left on this floor of the palace, their emotions were ringing with alarm as he felt them rushing towards elevators and leaving. Thankfully, there was no one whom he could classify as having murdering intent, so they were clear for the moment.

They turned into another corridor and stopped at a door halfway down. Koltal nodded at it and gestured for Obi-Wan to stand on the other side.

He slapped the controls and they charged inside with blasters raised.

Sure enough, Gadrad was very dead.

The old zygerrian minister was tied to his chair with rope, his head slumped over with another long dagger buried in his chest.

“Is that a signature killing method of these Trak?” Obi-Wan asked as Koltal hurried to the terminal on the desk.

“As far as I can remember, yes, it’s been a while since I studied that history, so I might get things wrong,” Koltal said as he began tapping on the computer. “Do watch the door while I work, Vestret.”

Obi-Wan nodded and perched himself to one side of the door, keeping an eye on the corridor beyond, extending his Force perceptions to envelop five floors above and below. He wished he could do more and find if there were any more Trak in the palace as a whole, but then he ran right into the problem of too much information, especially if he also had to keep himself anchored and speak to Koltal at the same time.

“Ỳeke, they got into his systems as well,” Koltal scowled as his fingers tapped furiously.

“What was his area of responsibility?”

“Planetary defense.”

“And the Trak had complete access? That’s not a pleasant thought,” Obi-Wan said wryly.

“I can’t tell precisely what they’ve done, access and activity logs are erased for the last two days. The only thing I’ve managed is to remotely scramble palace surveillance and the internal turrets into uselessness. If the Trak wants it back, they’re going to have to take the encryption passphrase from my cold, dead body.”

“That at least evens the odds somewhat.” Obi-Wan felt a dense cluster of six zygerrians enter his perceptions, riding down in an elevator. All of them were angry, determined and concealing fear underneath, the Force felt sharp with their grim intent of killing.

"If they are in the palace systems as deeply as it seems, then it’s clear you just waved a banner to them declaring your survival.”

“Can’t be helped at this point. We have to move. Here.” Koltal chucked two more blaster power cells and Obi-Wan could only catch one. The remaining cell thumped against the wall and rolled across the floor.

“I only have one free hand,” Obi-Wan rolled his eyes as he pocketed the cell, making no move to pick up the other one.

“Just keeping you on your toes, Verstet. If you were stupid enough to bend down to pick it up, I’d have shot you to rid me of that kind of stupidity.”

“Yes, now that it’s been established I’m not stupid, we’re going to have company and I’d prefer we’re not in this office when that happens.” It also didn’t escape Obi-Wan’s notice that it was also a thinly veiled attempt at detecting whether he was a Jedi.

Koltal agreed with the sentiment and moments later they were once again in the corridor, heading towards the nearest functional elevator, which happened to be the one that the Trak kill squad was using.

Obi-Wan wanted to object, but it wasn’t exactly like he could explain that he sensed they were walking straight into the enemy.

“First thing we have to do is regain external communication, I can rally my security forces to retake the palace.”

“I was wondering about that,” Obi-Wan muttered anxiously.

“Yes, I’m retaking the palace all by myself with a stranger who only wants to save his own skin,” Koltal snorted in derision. “Sorry for not telling you everything I know,” he said sarcastically. “To lift the comms blackout now and keep the Trak from simply switching it back on, we need to head to the sublevels to manually disable the generators creating the interference.”

They stopped at the elevator doors.

“Someone’s coming down,” Obi-Wan pointed at the notification display above the door.

“Move! Into cover!”

There wasn’t much of it, the best they could do were the heavy pot plants lining the corridor here.

It was a tight squeeze to fit his body properly behind it and the pot would maybe take two or three shots at best before it shattered. The only proper defense in this situation was an overwhelming offense. Not the most Jedi way of thinking about things, but he had taken some of Ahsoka’s strategic and tactical doctrines to heart during their self-imposed exile in Mortis.

The elevator doors chimed and slid open.

Only the barrel of a blaster and the slightest edge of a Trak mask and eyes poked out of it and surveyed the corridor in Obi-Wan’s direction.

He reached out with the Force, falling upon all six zygerrian minds.

Obi-Wan was properly hidden behind the large pot plant, but they had to also contend with the superior zygerrian sense of hearing and smell here. His Mind Trick was enough to just convince the enemy that they were not smelling a fresh human scent nearby.

Two Trak emerged, their blasters covering both sides of the corridor.

The tension and anticipation flowed from them.

Four more followed.

Obi-Wan released his breath, pushing his perceptions and battle precognition… popped his arm out from cover and only enough of his face to make it plausible, before pulling the trigger.

The snapping whine of the blaster filled the corridor explosively, before his shot hit center mass.

The now dead zygerrian barely had time to fall to the floor before he fired again, felling another with a headshot…

Koltal added his fire, walking his shots with laudable accuracy from right to left.

Four Trak were dead in moments and the remaining two returned fire, managing to recover from the ambush.

Obi-Wan had to roll out of his cover as a fusillade of plasma bolts rained down from his opponent’s blaster rifle. The pot plant practically exploded with shards and black earth shooting outward.

It ended up being his salvation even as he held up a minor skintight Force Shield around his body to stop the ceramic fragments from stabbing or cutting into him.

The visual obscuration was just enough that it bought the moment needed for Obi-Wan to aim and fire again.

The zygerrian’s head practically disappeared as his bolt smashed through the nose of his mask.

Obi-Wan internally winced as he contemplated the zygerrian blaster weapon in his hand. It was brutally inefficient in both tibanna gas usage and energy, using far more than was typically used in other weapons he had seen across the galaxy. The trade-off here was more stopping power at the expense of total ammunition.

A final shot echoed through the corridor as Koltal sent a plasma bolt to bring down their final opponent.

“Come Verstet, we need to move!”

Obi-Wan hurried forward, jumping over the bodies and they both piled into the elevator.

Koltal thumbed the lowest button on the control panel and the doors closed.

“No injuries?” he asked as they descended beyond the ground floor of the palace, eyeing Obi-Wan’s dusty and soiled clothes.

“No,” he answered shortly, even as he wrestled internally with the fact that he had just ambushed and brutally gunned down six lives. This was not his first brush with undercover work and having to do unpleasant things to maintain that cover, but it was the first time he’d had to be… so cold and calculating about it, as a mercenary was supposed to be.

“Good.”

He could only thank the Force that he sensed hardly anyone in the sublevels, it seemed most everything down here was automated or being worked by droids. There were only two zygerrians on the floor the elevator eventually stopped on. Their worried, non-threatening emotions were enough to clue him in to the fact that they were most likely just supervisors or maintenance for the droids.

They went through the motions of cautiously advancing with raised blasters through the sublevel.

Koltal eventually stopped outside a door that required a keycode and a scan that played over his entire body before opening.

Beyond was a massive, humming cylindrical device that was mounted on its side and bolted to the floor. The minister approached one side of the machine, which opened a hidden panel, before another round of keycodes was entered and another scan.

Finally, he reached inside the opened recess and pulled down hard on a mechanical lever.

The machine whined and soon the hum of power faded.

Koltal wasted no time, tapping on his comlink vambrace and nodded, “We have exterior signal again.” He tapped a sequence into the small pad. “This is Primary. All units activate Case Zhaf. I repeat, all units activate Zhaf.”

The minister breathed a sigh of genuine relief.

“That’s it?”

“My forces will do the rest. We just have to make sure we don’t die until then.”

“I think it's time I bring in some assets of my own,” Obi-Wan pulled out his comlink. “R2, you can stop lying low. Anything you and Chewie can do will be much appreciated.”

The astromech chirped a gleeful affirmative at being unleashed.

“If your droid is in the palace network, make sure he doesn’t do anything permanent.”

“Oh, I’m sure R2 will be very careful.”

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Miraj awoke with a strained gasp and panic.

The last thing she remembered was the pained sounds of the dying brezak, the lurch of falling through the air, being swallowed by water then… nothing…

She felt no residual dampness in her clothes or fur and frantically checked for any injuries or any lingering pain.

Nothing.

She eyed her environment next and besides being on a rather threadbare cot that was barely passable to sleep on, she was in almost complete darkness. The only scant light coming from small windows set high on a nearby wall. 

“Mistress, you’re awake, good.” Atre’s voice emerged from the darkness and from the acoustics, Miraj judged the room wasn’t large at all. “I’m going to switch on the light,” she warned.

She reflexively squinted her eyes to shield them and the world exploded in brightness, causing her to nevertheless wince and flinch as the light stabbed into her eyes.

When her eyes finally adjusted she took in the finer details.

It was a basement if she had to judge, a multitude of packing containers for the odds and ends that a household tended to accumulate but didn’t want underfoot or thrown away. The air had a general dustiness combined with humidity that told her they were still in the lake district.

Atre was also unharmed and her clothes showed the signs of just having been in a long swim, then naturally dried on her body.

Miraj shivered as the memory of the water submersion flashed in her mind’s eye anew.

“Where is Alad? Where are we?”

“He is upstairs, resting. He took the brunt of the impact for us, resulting in a broken arm, three cracked ribs and a collar bone.” The very capable slave stepped closer and sat down on the edge of the bed. “As for where we are? We broke into the first house we could find that had no occupants, but wasn’t abandoned. I think the owners are currently visiting relatives in another city from what we’ve been able to determine.”

Miraj nodded in understanding, putting aside the details of how they managed to get by the house’s own security system, which was linked directly to the city guard.

“What’s been happening at the palace?”

Atre winced and bowed her head, “Mistress, I’m afraid it’s now general knowledge that something major has happened with regards to you. The palace and city guard initially had to lay siege to the palace when the remaining Trak inside physically locked it down. The latest news is that they’ve managed to breach the palace and a running battle was held inside it. The outcome of that is still not being shared publicly, but we still have contact with Verstet. He was drafted by Minister Koltal to help rout the Trak from the palace…”

Miraj felt her heart sink into her stomach as she saw the reluctant expression and body language of Atre. “Well?”

“They succeeded but the final Trak they cornered detonated a fairly large explosive device. It killed three dozen palace and city guards, Minister Koltal was injured but is now managing affairs from his bed in the palace sickbay. The palace now also has a fairly large gaping hole torn out of its western facing, mistress.”

Miraj sighed miserably and stared up into the ceiling of the dingy basement. What kind of sovereign was she? To have let this happen on her watch? Even in the worst times of the ancient civil wars, the palace had never been touched by each faction. It was considered sacrosanct, untouchable, even sacred. The ancient Trak had not even dared so much as scratch a brick of the place. 

Clearly, their descendants had long since left those convictions behind.

It was unthinkable and now all her people, the entire city, would see the palace ruined for the long months it would take for repairs to happen.

“I’m afraid I have more bad news you should be aware of, mistress,” Atre said softly, folding her hands on her lap. “Both ministers Ralenn and Gadrad were assassinated in their offices.”

“No.”

The word tore itself out of her mouth with a weakened whimper, as she felt her heart suddenly torn and an awful void take its place there. Ralenn? Dead? It couldn’t be! Not her! Anyone but her! The only remaining link to a happier carefree time of childhood and a much simpler time.

The only true friend she had left, who had stayed with her through all the intrigue of her teenage years and even through the political storm that had surrounded her ascension to throne, after her father had died.

Gone also was the reassuring calm presence of Gadrad, a firm rock of wisdom in every decision that came before her. The zygerrian who had also advised her grandfather. It was unthinkable to imagine the palace without the old felinoid at her side.

It was exactly for that reason that both had been targeted.

She was powerless to stop the tears that began flowing and it was only the experience of a lifetime of politics that beat back the urge to break down into uncontrollable sobbing.

It was so tempting to just lie down and curl up into a ball of misery.

Instead, she cast off those tempting shackles that just wanted to lock her up in their embrace forever. She sat up and threw her legs over the side of the bed and tested their strength against the cool duracrete floor.

She wiped her face as yet more tears flowed, sniffing to clear a stuffy nose. Unfortunately, the ambient dust of the basement took their toll and a reflexive sneeze overcame her.

“By the stars,” she gasped. “I need to get back to the palace.”

“Mistress, Minister Koltal wishes for the palace to be fully secured before you do so.”

“I need to address my people over holo! They have to see me alive and well.”

Atre reached into a pocket and held up Alad’s comlink, tapping a few buttons on it before holding it out. “Minister Koltal’s personal comlink has been keyed to it.”

Miraj snatched the device from her slave, feeling a sudden shift to anger, “Koltal! Come in!”

There was a brief silence before the voice of her security minister wearily came from the link, “Majesty, it’s a relief to hear from you.”

“No doubt. Now when are you sending a detail to come and fetch me?! I need to be on the holo as soon as possible,” she snapped.

“Your highness, the palace is not secure yet-”

“With your paranoia, I’d be stuck in my current location for months, whilst you ran every scan known to our science over the palace and do it twice, just to be sure,” she argued.

“I am your security minister, majesty. I’d be remiss in my duty if I didn’t do that and it won’t take months. Many facts have come to light that I can only relate to you personally in as secure an environment as I can create. The Trak infiltration was catastrophic, majesty. I’m only now beginning to understand the scope of it. The other problem we have is also of a more practical nature and even if you were at the palace at this moment, you wouldn’t be able to broadcast to the people. The last Trak infiltrator blew himself up within the palace communication center. That was no mere coincidence, majesty.”

“They planned for failure as well,” Miraj said grimly, feeling her stomach clench.

“Precisely, your highness. The only place you could now make a system-wide broadcast would be at the RZHN offices in the capital or in the neighboring city. However, the Trak would also know that and I wouldn’t be surprised to find them waiting with a lone assassin or bomber at either location. I’ve already worked with Minister Krelna in releasing a statement of reassurance to the population over the civilian channels.”   

“That won’t help for long, minister.”

“It at least buys us time for me to do my job, which I’ve clearly made a mess of, as our current situation demonstrates. You can have my resignation or my head after we sort this out.”

Miraj almost wanted to laugh incredulously at the ridiculous offer, but managed to contain it. “Koltal, you’re the last of the inner circle. I would be stupid to accept either. No, you will stay where you are and help me get our people out of this.”

“Very well, but the offer remains.”

“How long do you need?”

“Twenty hours, majesty.”

“You have twelve. Secure my palace, Koltal,” she said in a forbidding tone.

He sighed wearily, “I’ll get it done, majesty.”

She disconnected the link and handed it back to Atre. It felt good to put on her royal hat again, if only to forget her misery for a moment and ignore the hole in her heart.

“Is there anything to eat in this house?”

“A meal is already waiting for you, mistress. I suggest we remain in the basement. Any lights on the upper floors could attract the neighbor’s attention.”

Miraj twisted her face in a grimace at the thought of eating down here among dust and boxes. “Very well, you may bring it down.”

Atre bowed and practically flowed in her walk towards the basement stairs.

Miraj tore her eyes away from Atre’s retreating visage and stared into her own hands. The thought of remaining cooped up here for a further twelve hours was almost more than she could bear.

Her hands suddenly clenched into fists and she screamed in fury.

It was almost an out-of-body experience as her fists pointlessly slammed down into the bed over and over.

She imagined every Trak in existence shattering under them.

They would all be found. 

They would all be paraded, humiliated and marched off in chains.

Then they would all die.

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A/N: Yikes, that is not a pleasant headspace for anyone to be in, let alone a queen. Hope you had a fun read and enjoy the weekend. Stay awesome everyone.

The Force Wills - Chapter 105

In the chaos, confusion and emergency response to the bombing, we managed to get out of the arena without significant problems.

The one issue we had to deal with was disguising Anakin and myself, since we would be both known to the opposition by this point. He had grabbed another assassin’s outfit, whilst for me we managed to find a black jumpsuit, and hooded rain cloak in a maintenance staff locker room. It wasn’t a perfect fit, meant for a larger person, but it would do in the short term at least.

Scintel led the way, as we threaded through narrow alleyways, heading due south.

We would occasionally bump into others who were also fleeing in the same direction, but it was easy to feign panic and fear, blending into the herd and in this way we would not stand out to anyone.

Roughly three kilometers from the arena, she ducked to the side, leading us up a set of external stairs of a three floor home that had no life in it or furniture.

On the highest balcony she looked around for any witnesses or threats before she reached into a pocket and produced a long tubular whistle.

“Highness? What are you doing?” Anakin asked with a frown.

“Summoning our transport,” she said, putting her lips onto one end and blowing hard into the sky.

I winced and clutched at my montrals as the ultra-high frequency resounded in them.

Thankfully it was over quite quickly, but left me with the togrutan equivalent of ‘ringing ears’.

Scintel looked at me with surprise then understanding, “Oh, a togruta would hear a brezak whistle.”

“Brezak? You mean those flying lizards your people have domesticated? That’s our transport?” Anakin asked with concern.

“Any speeder we can steal or summon has too much risk, if the enemy has infiltrated as deep as I think,” Scintel nodded. “A brezak mount will be just the thing we need.”

A moaning cry echoed through the air and my montrals was just about back to normal when the flapping of huge membranes pushing through the air reached me.

I looked up just in time to see an eleven meter long monster covered in brown leathery skin flapping the vast membranes it used as wings and buffeting us with displaced air. It flared its body and huge flexible lower paws grabbed onto the balcony railing before it flapped frantically to bring itself to an awkward landing in the relatively tight space.

The brezak’s four fingered massive hands grabbed hold of the roof before it reached a standstill. Its thick sinuous neck leaned down towards Scintel and its head came into the balcony’s light. It had two eyes set on either side of its ridged head, with a massive wide mouth and lots of razor sharp ivory teeth glinting in the night.

The queen smiled, giving the massive lizard affectionate pats and caresses on its head, which it leaned into and clearly enjoyed.

She coaxed its right arm down and used the crook of the elbow as a footstep to climb up and into a large leather saddle on its back.

“Climb on as I did, hurry.”

Anakin followed suit and was seated behind Scintel, whilst I nimbly jumped up the arm of the brezak and found myself squished into Anakin’s back. The saddle was normally made for a maximum of two and the only reason we could fit at all was because Scintel and I were relatively smaller than the typical male zygerrian riders of these creatures.

She gathered the reins into her hands and made a complicated clicking sound with her tongue before lightly kicking her ankles into the brezak’s broad back.

It gave a keening cry into the night before suddenly surging into the air, extending its membrane wings and flapping hard to gain altitude.

We left the ground behind and the lit buildings below became just a patchwork carpet of artificial lights, with the twinkling sea of stars above us that showed a rather breathtaking view of the majority of the galaxy.

I had to grip hard on the rear of the saddle to keep my seat as Scintel guided the brezak into a sharp turn to the east.

Our flight continued uneventfully and once we visibly neared the edge of the city, she twisted on the reins and pushed forward, bringing the brezak into a mild dive.

The air rushed past us and my stomach felt like it wanted to escape through my throat.

The brezak flapped hard and flared before grabbing onto the roof of a large darkened house that visibly looked no different from any other of its neighbors.

She patted the lizard affectionately, “We can get off here.”

I went first, hopping off and landing on the slightly canted tiles of the roof. My senses stretched out, finding more than five dozen souls within the immediate vicinity, in the buildings and street below. Most of them were unalarmed, sleeping, eating or busy with intimate activities.

“Where are we?” Anakin asked as he hopped off and offered a hand to the queen to help her off as well, which she accepted graciously.

“The one place where no one would think I’d ever have a safe house or would hide in,” she answered, gathering the reins and folding them around the saddle’s pommel. She tapped the brezak on its head. “Stay, sleep,” she ordered.

The lizard rumbled happily, the flappy flesh on its neck rippling as it gathered its limbs, folding itself into a much more compact form and dropping its head onto its folded hands.

She led us to the edge of the roof, where we dropped ourselves onto a balcony. “This is the Thollos, a region of the city devoted to pleasure in all its forms.”

That certainly explained the level of amorous feelings I was sensing all over the place.

We went down another set of external stairs before Scintel paused at a door and knocked four times.

The door opened and a female zygerrian with red fur opened it. I swallowed somewhat, suppressing my own astonishment and Anakin managed to keep his external mask up, looking at the female with an appreciative eye. She was wearing an elaborate black body harness, that framed a body that was seemingly built for the bedroom, set over a barely there bikini type outfit that rivaled the one I was wearing underneath my disguise.

The female’s blue eyes widened at the sight of Scintel and she immediately bowed, “Majesty?! What-”

Scintel held up her hands and placed a finger on her subject’s lips for silence. “Hush, Imeth. I’m not here now. Understand?”

Imeth nodded with wide eyes, “Yes, yes… Miraj. Quick, come in.”

She stood aside and we hurried into a short hallway that oozed a raw sensuality in its decor; from the carpets that were patterned with curves to represent the female form, the red walls with hand paintings that were clearly meant to give inspiration to anyone who looked at them. Yes, Scintel had brought us to a ‘gentlemen's club’, so to speak.

Imeth closed the exterior door and hurried to lead the way, her form bouncing in a way that was even starting to draw my own eye.

We were led up a set of stairs, turned right down the hall, before she tapped in a code that opened a door.

“Go inside,” Scintel instructed Anakin and I.

Beyond was roughly sixty square meters of richly appointed apartment, complete with living room and kitchen combined into one, with three doors that probably led to bedrooms. The balcony looked out over a section of the city and I could vaguely see the huge city walls arching away to the left.

Scintel and Imeth shared a hushed conversation.

“No one is to know I’m here, Imeth. No one. Not even your boss.”

“Miraj, if he finds out, I’m dead.”

“You are under your sovereign’s protection. That will be enough for him or else he will answer for it.”

Imeth was clearly unhappy about it but nodded in acceptance. “Very well, Miraj.”

“Good, now go about your night as if nothing has changed.”

“Yes, Miraj,” she obeyed with a bow of her head and left.

When the door closed, Scintel wearily rested her back against the wall and let out an explosive breath.

“Do find yourself a seat, Alad. You as well, Atre.”

“Yes, mistress,” I bowed.

Scintel walked into one of the rooms beyond which turned out to be a bedroom and immediately began peeling off the borrowed dusty clothes of the assassins. She emerged again in a golden nightgown strapped around her body. “Urgh, I'm going to have to take a shower before I put on new clothes.” She hurried to the kitchen and brought us three bottles of water out of a refrigerator packed with food.

She gulped down half the bottle before letting out an explosive hiss of satisfaction.

Anakin and I were naturally more conservative, but we both appreciated the opportunity for quenching our thirst.

“Majesty, you clearly recognized those assassins,” Anakin frowned. “Who are they?”

“A legend that we frighten our children with, which is unfortunately all too real,” Scintel began to explain. “During our civil war, centuries ago, there were many factions. Each had their own idea of how we should return to the glory days of the Empire, each had their own idea of what the Empire should be. Some thought we should consider every non-zygerrian sentient as slaves by default. Others were rampant militarists who wanted to start a crusade among the stars to destroy the Jedi and the Republic. Then there is the Trak.” She said the word as if it was taboo.

She sat back and drank further from her bottle, her emotions radiating disgust and she even shivered a bit. “They did not want a return to the Empire at all. They wanted to tear down the monarchical statues, level the palace to the ground, an abandonment of slavery, a destruction of every tradition and embrace the delusion that the rest of the galaxy lives under.”

Inwardly, I was amazed at the very notion… a zygerrian abolitionist movement!

“They didn’t last long, did they?” Anakin asked knowingly.

Scintel laughed, “Of course not. The major factions ended up temporarily uniting against the Trak and they were wiped out to the last. It was that cooperation that sparked the end of the civil war. It created enough unity among three of the largest factions, that my ancestors were part of, to eventually gain victory against the slaver extremists.”

“That was the official version no doubt,” he looked at her pointedly.

She conceded with a nod, “The truth is there was never high confidence we had wiped out the Trak completely. There may have been survivors and if their ideas remained alive, passed down to their descendants, then…” Her eyes looked very troubled as she stared out the window. “Then, if it's truly them who are responsible for everything going wrong lately, the assassination attempts on my life, sabotage, they clearly feel they are strong enough to show themselves and that worries me.”

“Especially since you don’t know who is actually Trak or not among your own government,” Anakin nodded. He reached into his belt pouch and produced a hand held comlink.

“Who are you contacting?” Scintel asked in alarm.

“Vestret, he needs rendezvous coordinates-”

“By now the enemy will know that they’ve failed, they will know that I had help and that you both were that help,” Scintel objected, pointing to me and Anakin. “Their first action then, if I was in their shoes, would be to put Vestret, the wookiee and your astromech droid under surveillance.”

She’s right, Skyguy, I thought to him.

“I know that,” Anakin said with admirable patience. “I was not going to give him our current position, our com devices are encrypted and scrambled.” He tapped on the link, “Lun, come in.”

It took a few moments, but eventually Obi-Wan’s voice emerged, “Alad?”

“Who else would have this frequency and coding?” Anakin asked as I felt him pushing his senses through the Force through the link.

“Naturally,” Obi-Wan said dryly. “Everyone in the palace is acting like their queen’s gone missing.”

“Well, that’s because she actually has,” Anakin said flatly. “There was a bombing at the arena and assassins were targeting her.”

There was a long silence as Anakin sent thoughts to his old master that were more sensitive and pertinent to the whole situation, “I see. You were in a position to intervene and did so.”

“I was also saving my own life and Atre’s in the process. If she died under my care then-”

“Yes, yes, you’d have a very large bounty on your head that’d see you hunted across half the galaxy,” Obi-Wan pointed out impatiently.

“I’ve also been hired.”

“Interesting. Well, it seems I have my work cut out for me, Alad. You’ve dumped another mess on my lap and now I have to clean it up.”

“Why do you think I always prefer traveling with you?” Anakin smirked.

Obi-Wan rather rudely cut the link in response.

“That’s it?” Scintel asked in astonishment. “You didn’t tell him hardly anything about the situation.”

“If he’s under surveillance, it’s better this way and we’ve worked together a long time, majesty. Lun will know what to do next. He’s a very good investigator. One of the first things he’s going to do is find an ally among your government who is not part of the Trak and high ranking enough to open doors. Then he’s going to find the conspirators and hopefully expose them to the point where it’s safe enough for you to return to the palace. In the meantime, we can hold up here, out of sight.”

“Or they simply kill him before he can get anything done,” Scintel argued, folding her arms.

“Than can happen,” Anakin shrugged. “But we’ve both been partners for a long time and he’s very good. If they try to kill him, they’ll fail and just like that he’ll have someone to interrogate for information. From there it's just a matter of time, majesty.”

“Well, we may not have time. The idea of just sitting here… I can’t stand it. Atre, make us something to eat so we can get to sleep. Perhaps I’ll be more reasonable after a night’s rest.”

“Yes, mistress.”

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The morning light was just dawning on the palace and Obi-Wan found himself in the rather undignified position of being ‘escorted’ by two rather burly zygerrian guards.

A door opened automatically at their approach and he was encouraged to enter with a rather polite shove.

He easily maintained his balance and looked around at the expansive office he had just entered.

One entire wall was dominated by a collage of surveillance holofeeds that constantly shifted, another held an expansive case that actually had physical books in them, arranged to perfection, whilst another held a massive portrait of Queen Scintel. It was magnificently done, with traditional hand drawn paints and seemed to capture both beauty and authority in the same image.

“So, Mr. Lun Vestret,” said Minister Koltal, resting his elbows on the armrests of his simple yet comfortable chair and giving Obi-Wan a look of naked suspicion. He tapped a few keys of the terminal on his desk, shutting down the screen. “Is there a reason you broke into a sealed off, active crime scene, an office that belonged to a traitor? Not to mention the trespassing into restricted sections of the palace.”  

“Why yes, I thought perhaps you could use a pair of fresh eyes to look at the problem,” Obi-Wan shrugged and waved cheekily at the two guards who glared as they left the office. “It was also a very expedited method for me to get to see you without going through annoying subordinates and functionaries to get in the way.”

“How did you manage it without getting blasted by automated security?!” Koltal snapped.

“I’m just that good and you answered your own question, automated security,” Obi-Wan leisurely walked over to the bookcase. Pity, the books were all in Zygerrian.

“Your astromech helped somehow then,” Koltal narrowed his eyes. “We’ll just have to impound it and your wookiee slave for good measure.”

“Then you will be depriving yourself of something I truly think you need to see,” Obi-Wan shook his head regretfully.

“My best security specialists searched that office for hours, and you want me to believe you found something in the 23 minutes that you managed to snoop around?”

Obi-Wan raised his eyebrows in mock astonishment, “Oh dear, it actually took me about four minutes to find this.”

With a quick fiddle up his sleeve he produced a zygerrian made data chit and held it up for Koltal to see.

The zygerrian looked as if he wanted to burst a blood vessel in anger for a brief instant, but managed to bring it under control. “Now my soldiers can’t even properly search someone,” he said and glared out the window of his office.

“Don’t be too hard on them, Minister, I’ve been playing the game for a long time,” Obi-Wan said lightly and slowly approached Koltal’s desk before putting down the data chit in front of him. “It was hidden in a small scan-dampened safe, underneath the foot of the desk. There’s no carpet in Dos Goora’s office and he clearly didn’t push the desk aside enough for the floor to show any significant scratch markings that would otherwise clue you in. That alone tells me what you’re going to find on that chit is just the beginning of the truth.”

Koltal grabbed a hand held scanner and waved it over the data chit. He studied the results for a few moments before scoffing and picking it up. He pulled out an entirely separate, bulky datapad that looked like it had significant upgrades and security enhancements, before slotting the chit into it.  

He snorted in disbelief after looking at the screen, “An eight digit password? Really?” He tapped on the datapad and dumped it onto his desk. “It’s going to take a moment to crack.” He flicked a few buttons on his terminal and a holo appeared of another uniformed zygerrian.

“Yes, minister?”

“Go to Goora’s office again, push aside the desk, feel with your hands for any voids, don’t use scanners. Understood? Report to me once you’ve done so.”

“Yes, sir.”

The holo winked out.

Koltal now turned his full glare of anger on Obi-Wan, “Mr. Vestret, understand this. I have a missing sovereign on my hands, every palace guard who can keep his trap shut is spread out all over the city looking for her. The only reason it’s so quiet in this office, and my ears aren’t bleeding from all the officials complaining about all space traffic being grounded, is because I’ve stopped taking their calls! That isn’t even getting into investigating the bombing of the arena! If you are just another distraction, if you are wasting my time, then I will personally ensure you are delivered to our slave masters for processing!”

Obi-Wan merely smiled and shrugged, “I think you’ll find that is the last thing I want.”

“I can’t help but notice your colleague isn’t with you today, where is he?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted with perfect honesty. “It is one of the reasons I’m here, in addition to the retrieval of Sovereign Iballa’s slave, Atre. I might as well put a blaster in my mouth if I leave Zygerria without either of the two, not to mention the money we intended to use to pay for our purchase of 80,000 slaves.”

“Oh, does he have it?”  

“He has half of it, and the money is useless and will fail to clear if there is only one of us to authorize the transaction.”

Koltal snorted in amusement, “Clever of your sovereign. Well, it certainly explains your motivation, Mr. Vestret.”

A chime resounded and the security officer reappeared in the holo. “Sir, it’s confirmed. There was a hidden safe in the floor under the desk. It’s forced open and empty.”

“Thank you, sergeant. Secure it and bring it directly to my office as soon as possible.”

“Yes, sir.”

Koltal waved the holo away and picked up the datapad, which now was resolving into a stream of characters that held the minister’s attention.

Obi-Wan could feel the zygerrian’s emotions ride peaks and valleys of anger, disbelief, astonishment and realization. His hand swiped and tapped on the datapad in frantic urgency.

He also turned to his terminal and occasionally referenced more data from there and finally he chucked the datapad down onto his desk and stood, folding his hands behind his back, walking towards the office window.

“Do you know what you’ve just given me, Mr. Vestret?”

“I don’t have an honest clue, minister, I can at best guess.”

Koltal turned sharp eyes towards Obi-Wan, “Indulge me then.”

“Comlink codes, maybe three of them and perhaps an encryption cipher.”

“Good guess, but there are five codes, an encryption cipher and a log of messages between the traitor and his immediate conspirators,” Koltal revealed with an angry sneer.

“That’s sloppy,” Obi-Wan criticized, folding his arms and caressing his beard in thought.

“Yes, but it seems Dos Goora wasn’t too trusting of his fellow conspirators. He clearly wanted insurance to use against them if he ever felt they were going to use him as a scapegoat.”

“Does any of the recent communications mention why he decided to target Atre?”

Koltal eventually nodded after clearly weighing whether to answer or not, “It was the last message. The royal slave Farsu, the first assassin, was Goora’s lover. There was disagreement between them over whether she should take the assignment, as they both knew it would be a death sentence. Yet she doubted that there would be any better chance to kill the queen and that further delay would risk all the work they had done to get that close.”

“So a lover’s revenge plain and simple, for making Farsu’s sacrifice worth nothing,” Obi-Wan nodded. “It did feel a bit sloppy and rushed.”

“Except for the kill switch Goora had in the surveillance system,” Koltal groused with annoyance. “But that was just a prepared tool he had. He describes enough in his message log to clue me in on the exploit he used - another urgent task on my plate to deal with.”

“And what about the comlink codes, are they traceable?”

“They are, but I’m doing a localized search using my own database, so it’s taking much longer.”

“You’re afraid the conspiracy will notice.”

“Of course I am. If I were them, I’d put sleeper programs in the palace database network, that would alert them the instant these codes are searched. We’re racing against time anyway, since if these traitors are as competent as I think, they’ve already made Goora’s codes invalid or even erased them.”

Koltal’s terminal chimed at him and he turned a surprised eye at the screen, he scowled and eventually looked at Obi-Wan with an assessing stare. “How far are you willing to go, Mr. Vestret?”

“I’ve made my motivations clear to you, minister.”

Koltal reached behind his desk and slid a blaster pistol across the surface of it.

Obi-Wan stopped it from falling to the floor by interposing his hip, but made no move to pick up the weapon. “Why are you giving me this?”

Koltal chuckled, “You have the paranoia of a spy, Mr. Vestret. I approve. No, I’m not seeking to entrap you. That weapon is fully registered in the security system to me.” He pulled out another blaster. “As is this one. We’re going on a little trip. Most of the codes on Goora’s chit led to nothing, except for one and since we’re going to confront the rather august person this code links to, I need to have backup.”

“You have an entire army of security on call,” Obi-Wan objected.

“An army who is scattered all over the city, Mr. Vestret. The few who I still trust within the palace are also busy and the possible traitor we are going to confront can’t suspect anything. They clearly have full run of the palace security systems, except for my own office. Therefore, I’m in the ignoble position of having to somewhat trust an offworlder to watch my back.”

“Well, it seems I don’t have any choice in the matter,” Obi-Wan picked up the pistol, keeping his finger well away from the trigger. He held it up with a wry look at the security minister. “It’s empty.”

“I’m also paranoid, and consider it another test Mr. Vestret.” Koltal stood and chucked an energy cell, which Obi-Wan deftly caught. “You can load it when we arrive at our destination. Not a moment before.”

The weapon was shaped just well enough to fit somewhat snugly in the empty holster of his belt. “Shall we be off?”

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“Mistress, how much does this outfit cost?”

“Don’t you worry about that, Atre. Besides, your previous one was on its last legs after having gone through fighting, a bombing, all that dust and a ride on a grezak.”

It was taking quite a lot of effort not to blush or even get aroused as my new ‘outfit’ was being tended to by Scintel in the living room, all the while Anakin was also watching the show with an appreciative smirk, leaning against the balcony door.

Outfit was actually a misnomer, the word ‘clothes’ could hardly be applied here. It would be more accurate to say I was only wearing jewelry that could somewhat qualify as both a thong and bikini top, that just happened to be attached to each other with thin auridium chains. A large emerald jewel set in a teardrop shape of auridium was the only thing that preserved my modesty between my legs, whilst jewel pasties covered my nipples, with silver chains radiating outward to encase my breasts and give a little support.

My hands also had a jewel threaded on their backs, with a thin chain looping around my thumb that immediately flared out into thin auridium chains that formed a gauntlet. From this, a thin silver chain snaked up my arms, over my shoulders to a choker with an inlaid ruby around my neck. My feet were adorned with auridium colored stiletto heels, which were linked with a single chain that snaked up around my legs to clip onto the thong.

Completing the outfit was a matching mask that covered my upper face in something that looked like it came from a masquerade ball.

‘I look ridiculous,’ I thought to Anakin with annoyance.

‘I wouldn’t say that, Snips.’

Scintel had become utterly bored within less than an hour after waking up and decided to pass the time by playing fashion with me for the whole morning. The closet in what was supposed to be her safehouse was utterly ridiculous and anything she lacked she bugged her local friend to fetch.

‘Of course not. You’re a guy.’

‘Guilty as charged and don’t think I won’t share these memories with Padme.’

My insides squirmed at the thought. ‘You are evil, Skyguy.’

He smiled with innocent twinkling eyes at me.

Scintel adjusted my jewel top a bit more and tested the support it gave.

I must not be aroused. Arousal is the mind-killer, I wryly joked to myself.

Anakin suddenly raised a hand from his position near the window, his body language shifting and drawing his blaster.

I had to suppress the reflexive urge to call my own blaster to me with the Force, instead I rushed the two steps towards the nearby table and grabbed it.

“Alad?” Scintel asked with an urgent hushed voice.

“Two uniformed palace guard, walking down the street. They look quite agitated and in a hurry.”

I pushed outward with Farsight and spotted them, but searched further for more, but then I spotted the bloody obvious.

“Mistress, why would the brezak still be lying down on the roof?”

“I told him to stay, remember. They’re generally trained to always wait for their rider. It doesn’t help that they just fly back to the royal stables every time someone gets off.”

“What would these two think seeing one on the roof of this establishment?” Anakin asked. 

“It’s not out of the norm for the guards to visit this district, Alad.”  

“Yes, but what if they come in here, looking for their fellow guard and find none?”

Scintel frowned with worry as the thought struck her. “I’ll call Imeth.”

She hurried to the door of the apartment and pulled off a datapad that was slotted into a holder on the wall. A few taps later, the image of Imeth appeared in it. “Miraj? It’s not a good idea-”

“I know. If two palace guard come in asking about the brezak on the roof-”

“Oh, yes, I see the problem. I’ll stall them, try and get them to leave, not to worry.”

The comlink shut down.  

“They’re coming in,” Anakin called from the window.

She cursed in Zygerrian, “Alad, can you try to keep an eye on them?”

“Without them seeing me? Generally, yes. And if they threaten to discover us here?”

Scintel looked troubled for a moment, before visibly steeling herself, “Then you have my permission to kill them.”

Anakin nodded, “Very well. Be ready to move if things go wrong.”

He carefully opened the apartment door and slunk out.

Scintel rushed back into her bedroom and emerged in a green and yellow tunic, leggings and shin length boots combination that wouldn’t be out of place for a civilian farmer or worker. She had even scrubbed off her makeup and removed her jewelry. For the first time I was seeing simply Miraj and not Queen Scintel.

I shook off my amazement and walked to the front door, double checking my weapon and standing guard.

My farsight pushed forward, focusing at first on Anakin sneaking about the upper floors, before moving on towards the front door of the club.

At this time, I saw various employees, both zygerrian and offworlder, were beginning the preparation for the clients that would come in the evening. Crates of food and drink were being unpacked and readied for the kitchen, the chief chef was prepping his subordinates, the escorts were busy preparing themselves…

The two palace guard buzzed the doorbell and Imeth, now wearing a much more conservative figure hugging dress with a plunging neckline, took a deep breath and opened the door.

“Yes sirs, how can I help the palace guard?”

“I’m Maradel and this is Iltoc,” one of them said and they flashed electronic ID badges at her. “Have you noticed anything strange in the last day or so?”

“Well, not really, officers. It would depend on your definition of strange.”

“Unusual arrivals, customers, maybe they were a bit dusty,” suggested Iltoc.

“No, nothing like that, I’m afraid. It’s been business as usual around here.”

“Are you aware of the brezak currently snoozing in the sun on your roof?” Maradel asked, gesturing upward.

“Of course, that’s a city guard officer’s mount who arrived. He had a long party last night, slept late and took such a liking to one of my girls that he paid extra for continuing his stay here.”

“He’ll be lucky not to face reprimand for such dereliction,” Iltoc snarled.

Imeth held up her hands in a warding gesture, “Oh no, he mentioned he was on extended leave, officers.”

They looked at each other. “We still have a lot of ground to cover,” said Maradel.

“We’ve been on patrol for hours, I could really use a break and some water,” Iltoc argued.

Maradel sighed, “Good point, sorry madam, but can we just trouble you for a brief bit of hospitality?”

I felt Imeth’s conflict, outright refusal would be seen as too suspicious, yet she still needed to protect the fact that her queen was hiding in the upper floors.

“All right, but stay in the lounge area, can’t have you getting underfoot with all my staff preparing.”

They entered and soon enough were seated in said lounge area, busy sipping large glasses of water a harried chef had brought them.

Anakin had managed to place himself outside one of the adjoining doors to the lounge.

“You ever think of coming to a place like this?” Iltoc asked.

“My wife would skin me alive.”

Oh for frak’s sake, leave, I thought in exasperation, thumping my forehead lightly against the apartment door.

“Atre? Can you hear them?” Scintel asked with surprise.

“Togruta hearing is good, mistress, but not that good. There’s a lot of noise to sift through, not to mention all the solid objects in the way, mistress. I’m just… frustrated. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t complain to you.”

“You shouldn’t, but it’s understandable.” She had since deposited herself on the living room couch, with her weapon lying next to her. Since she was no Jedi, she couldn’t remain in either fight or flight mode for long, her anxious worry gnawing at her gut constantly. “Come, you should put on something that will be less inconspicuous, while we seemingly have the time.” 

I was not going to say no to that.

Scintel still played Barbie on me though, trying different items on me from her humongous closet.

“Do you enjoy being a slave, Atre?” she asked as I pulled on a set of gray pants that was made of a smart shiny fabric that adjusted themselves to become skin tight.

“It is what I know, mistress,” I answered softly. Scintel next handed me a matching long sleeved crop top that had an integrated hood. Her hands lingered on my midriff, tracing my abs. She clearly thought it was a crime to not show them off somehow.

“You don’t ever think about what you’d do if you could have freedom? Choose your own path?”

“On occasion, I do, mistress,” I said carefully, as Scintel fussed with some jewelry to put on my montrals. “I have seen much of the galaxy at Sovereign Iballa’s side. People with freedom rarely have choice. They may not have a slave implant, but their circumstances imprison them just as surely. They can say ‘No’, they can quit their job, pack up and leave, but the costs are often too high and they know that. So, they stay, even though they are unhappy.”

“And that is why you stay a slave?”

“If I’m doing what I enjoy and love, am I a slave, mistress?”

Scintel was silent for a few moments, “No, is that truly how you feel? Do you enjoy sharing Iballa’s bed?”

“His many wives would strongly object to my presence there, mistress. He has seven of them.”

“Oh, I’m not exactly familiar with the internal dynamic of the House of Iballa. What is your role then?”

I smiled mysteriously, stoking her imagination, “Anything else he requires, not related to the bedroom, mistress.”

Scintel frowned at me with her hands on her hips, “It’s because you’re only borrowed to me that you’re being so evasive with that question.”

“Correct, mistress. I will eventually return to the House and he will thoroughly question me on everything I saw and did whilst under your ownership.”

She sighed and handed me a pair of shoes that would be decent to run in. “You sound so sure of your purpose, so… content. I wish I could have that. These last few months, most of this year actually, I’ve felt nothing but doubt, worry, as if I was utterly trapped. As if… I’m the slave. I might be the queen, my word directly commands thousands, potentially millions. My people look to me for guidance, to lead them into the future, yet… I can’t walk in the streets of my own city openly. I’m trapped in that palace… Then every other day, Dooku or one of his CIS officials calls and-”

She visibly stopped herself, taking a deep breath, “I should not be speaking of this, yet somehow I can’t help but feel comfortable around you, Atre. It’s as if I can speak to you without fear and you would listen without judgment.”

I only smiled at her softly in response. It was so easy to fall into the trap of sympathizing with her. She was still at the head of a system of brutal slavery, being used as yet another puppet by the true enemy. For this reason alone, I would initiate the events which would see Zygerria plunged into another civil war.

The door to the apartment chimed and she stiffened rushing towards her blaster. “It’s Alad, Mistress.”

She let out an explosive breath as Anakin entered.

“They’re gone and I’ve received word from Vestret,” he said grimly.

“And?”

“We need to get on that brezak, now.”

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Koltal naturally led the way through the passages of the palace, but he would occasionally divert into opening hidden doors and using secret ways.

“They’re faster,” he explained to Obi-Wan. “And the only way we’re going to surprise our target.”

“And just who is our target?”

“That you’ll learn when we get there. We are allies of convenience, Vestret.”

Obi-Wan raised a single eyebrow in response and nodded, “I suppose we are.”

The secret passages were cramped affairs, not allowing for two people to walk side by side and a ceiling of only 1.8 meters. There was no visible indication of direction, but Obi-Wan could see the minister moved with certainty and purpose. The secret passages even featured small ladders that allowed you to move between floors.

Obi-Wan could sense they were nearing the upper apex of the pyramidal palace, before Koltal tapped a button in the wall that opened a door disguised behind a very tall painting.

Koltal rushed towards a door just a few meters away down the hall they emerged in and he gestured for Obi-Wan to stand closely behind him.

“Now you can load the blaster,” he whispered.

Obi-Wan nodded, smoothly accomplishing the task in a few moments and holding the weapon ready in a two-handed grip.

Koltal readied his own blaster, held up three fingers, counting down and when he only held up a fist, he elbowed the door controls.

He charged inside and Obi-Wan followed quickly on his heels.

Inside was an expansive office that looked much like Koltal’s, however, whoever occupied this space was more interested in galactic affairs, as a huge holomap of the galaxy was projected from one wall, whilst a multitude of feeds from the Holonet was occasionally flashing a screen, projecting information in written Zygerrian.

Obi-Wan's senses were stretched over the entire room and he could find no signs of anything living.

Why would Koltal bring them here then?

The desk in front of them was a disorderly mess of datapads and the chair behind it was turned around, facing the window.

Koltal walked around the desk with a grim dread falling over his emotions, his tense posture sagging as he beheld whoever was seated in it.

"We’re too late, Mr. Vestret,” he said, shaking his head, then pushed around the chair.

The dead body of a female zygerrian, dressed in a long flowing purple robe, looked at them with blank, lifeless blue eyes. “This was Ralenn, Minister of Zygerrian Intelligence.”

The cause of death was rather obvious, the hilt of a long dagger stuck out of her chest.

“Was she the suspect you had in mind?” Obi-Wan asked pointedly.

“The comlink code that remained active, through many twists and turns, leads right here,” Koltal sighed. “I couldn’t imagine that she’d be a traitor. She and the queen have been friends since childhood, but I had to assume the worst. A failure of imagination is deadly in this business.”

Obi-Wan walked closer and inspected the dagger, the position of the body in the chair, the slight droop of the head as it lolled lifelessly to the left. He folded his arms, scratched his beard and considered the entire scene as a whole.

“Minister, I hesitate to touch the body, but can you feel the temperature for me?”

“Good instincts, Vestret. This is just the way someone could set you up to take the fall for this,” Koltal nodded and used the back of his hand to touch the body’s forehead. “That’s odd. It’s quite cold, almost as if… no, as if it's been in a freezer?”

“That certainly puts a wrinkle in things, note the lack of any signs of a struggle in this office. You’d expect that she would’ve fought back.”

“Unless she was surprised by her murderer and knew them well.”

“True,” Obi-Wan conceded and carefully smelled the air around the body. There was a slight smell of something that prickled something in his memory. “Do you smell that, Minister?”

“I should hope so, wouldn’t be much of a zygerrian if that human nose could outdo mine, that slight ozone with a hint of tanginess?”

“Yes.”

He nodded, “I smell it, definitely something to identify in the scientific analysis.”

“Do you think we have the time to wait for that?”

Koltal laughed, “No, we don’t. This is also not the place for discussion or conclusion about what you are seeing here. Understand, Vestret?” He tapped his felinoid ear, which twitched slightly and gestured around the room with a twirling finger.

His implication was clear - he believed there was surveillance in the room, that the enemy was listening.

“I understand. What now?”

“Now we leave, come.”

Koltal power walked to the door and Obi-Wan hurried to follow even as his mind grappled with the plot and mystery that was unfolding around him. Where had he smelled that scent before? He wanted nothing more than to just sit into a meditation and explore the paths of memory.

The minister paused outside the office, “Stay at my side, Vestret and keep up. If you fall behind I will assume you are trying to shoot me in the back. Now we run.”

Obi-Wan burst into a brief sprint as Koltal began running, following the instruction of the paranoid security minister.

“Where now?!” he half-shouted as they fell into a running stride down the corridor.

“We go to secure Minister Gadrad! He is part of a select inner circle of advisors the queen holds close to her. Ralenn was also a member. I believe the assassins are now going after them. Knocking the pins of support the queen has from under her.”

Koltal stopped at a turbolift and slapped the summon button. He kept his guard up, eyes ranging back and forth along the corridor.

No one was in immediate sight and Obi-Wan could sense only a handful of people on the floor, frightened and grim emotions radiating from them. The whole palace had a general miasma of frantic urgency and panic.

The lift doors opened and Koltal gestured for Obi-Wan to precede him inside.

The minister pressed a button for a much lower floor and the doors closed.

A frantic urgent beeping emerged from Koltal’s sleeve at this moment.

“Gbìd!” he swore in Zygerrian. “Holster your weapon, Vestret, now.”

Obi-Wan’s read on the minister’s emotions and context was such that he concluded it was wise to obey the order.

Koltal holstered his own weapon before pulling up his sleeve and tapping on a large specialized comlink that actually formed a half-sized vambrace around the minister’s forearm. A holographic screen appeared above his arm and was quickly populated with Zygerrian characters, some of which were flashing in big, bold angry red.

“Someone has managed to break into my office and is right now using my terminal,” he said with gritted teeth.

“Can you lock them out remotely?”

“It’s too late. The only reason I was even notified is because of my secondary backup monitor system that I installed myself. Whoever is doing this is using governmental access code!” He swiped his hand through the holoscreen, changing the display and tapping frantically into it. “No, they’ll… might as well.” He scowled at Obi-Wan. “You contact your partner right now and tell him to get the queen out of the Thollos safehouse, now!”

“You knew all along,” Obi-Wan said flatly.

“Of course I did,” Koltal snapped. “Her majesty is many things, but stupid she isn’t and I trust her judgment. If she needed to disappear from the palace with no one the wiser and with offworlders no less, then she will have a valid reason for it. My agent at the safehouse reported to me directly, but the enemy has now read my terminal and will soon know as well. Now get your comlink out and do it!”

Obi-Wan nodded, even as his mind was grappling with the revelation and the Force overtly supporting the zygerrian’s words. He pulled out the handheld comlink. “Alad, come in.”

For nearly eight heart stopping seconds nothing happened and there was no answer. Obi-Wan was just about to check the comlink for something wrong with it, when the small screen lit up.

“Vestret, now is really a bad time,” came Anakin’s hushed voice.

“It will be an even worse time soon. Get the queen and Atre out of there. The enemy will soon have your location, if they don’t have it already.”

“Are you sure?”

Obi-Wan inwardly cursed as he felt Anakin’s projected presence through the Force within the turbolift, no doubt seeing Koltal.

“Yes, I’m sure. An operative working there noted your presence directly to the security minister,” Obi-Wan said, vaguely gesturing in Koltal’s direction. “But the Trak have breached his systems.”

Koltal froze the instant Obi-Wan said the word.

The minister’s eyes blazed and his emotions of concern, worry, anger and indignation morphed into a seething cold hatred. He looked up to meet Obi-Wan’s eyes.

“I understand,” Anakin said. “I’ll get them out as soon as possible.”

The comlink’s light faded.

“How do you know that name?” Koltal hissed with gritted teeth.

“According to your sovereign, that was who attacked her in the arena,” he answered, easily weathering the sheer hate pouring off the zygerrian.

“You will tell me everything you know, Vestret.”

The turbolift whined to a halt and the doors opened.

The Force shrieked in warning and Obi-Wan looked up just in time for a smoking cylindrical grenade to soar into the elevator.

He reacted in the only way he could.

With the reflexes of a Jedi, he brought his leg up and kicked it right back in the direction it had come from.

He dove towards Koltal and the world turned into a bright flash of white light.

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A/N: It's so fun to write these Tom Clancy-esque spy thriller segments. Have a great weekend and stay awesome folks.

2078: Highrider - Chapter 1

V, the newest living legend to rise out of the cauldron of Night City. The price to attain it was never an issue, until it truly came due. With the clock running out on her life, recruited by the mysterious Mr. Blue Eyes for a hail mary gig in low Earth orbit, she rolls the dice on a final gambit… 

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Chapter 1

My own breath resounded in the helmet.

Each exhalation brought a brief patch of condensation onto the millimeter thick transparent aluminum a mere inch from my nose.

Beyond that was the unforgiving vacuum of orbital space around Earth.

I had run weeks of raw brain dances from highrider workers fixing habitats and space stations in orbit to prepare for this gig. Just because I was used to it at this point though, didn’t mean that I wasn’t basically frightened out of my wits at what I was doing.

My eyes looked down and I saw the small shuttle that had brought me into orbit becoming smaller and smaller. Beyond that, the blue and white marble of Earth dominated the view and the shuttle was swiftly being swallowed up by the vast bulk of the planet. It had to go on its own way, keeping to the official flight plan to avoid suspicion from the security systems at my destination.

I forced my eyes back up, fixing them onto the bulk of the gargantuan counter-rotating space station that was as big as my fist at the moment, growing ever larger as my suit AI piloted us to a rendezvous.

Entrusting my life to the AI was not easy, especially as it didn’t even have a general name it used to interact with humans at all. Which was funny, given that its sole reason for existing was to keep highriders alive in dynamic, on-the-fly spacewalks. Most highriders that I had read about growing up were good enough to not need one, but they were always there as backups when things inevitably went wrong.

I went over the suit readouts helpfully displayed directly into my optics. Everything was still in the green; fuel levels on track, suit pressure steady, power levels and oxygen. More than enough for nearly a full day in space, though the radiation count was enough that I didn’t want to spend that long out here.

The suit’s thruster pack on my back was giving me a nice easy 1G of acceleration to cross the 20k kilometers of distance to my target. The shuttle had done most of the job of matching velocities, now it was just a question of the suit doing the rest in a classic Hohmann transfer to intercept. 

Velocity, heading, and time to intercept was steadily counting down from 46 minutes in my vision.

A thought to my internal Agent and the flick of an eye brought up my media player. I considered what to listen to for a moment and brought up Kerry’s latest album. The one that I had helped give genesis to all those months ago on the ‘Seamurai’. I still cringed at the name of that pleasure yacht and couldn’t think of a more fitting end for it, than as a burnt out wreck at the bottom of Night City bay. 

It was definitely more soothing to my nerves at the moment as the easy guitar strings of that first song played directly into the nerves of my ears.

The whole album was actually quite a departure from the usual thumping, screaming rock that he had been known for his whole career. There were still heavy guitar riffs throughout the album, but there wasn’t a single scream. 

I always wondered what Johnny would’ve thought of it, or if he could even bother to find out, now that he was a digital entity along with his old girlfriend and all the other liberated psyches in cyberspace.

Had they truly left all the material universe’s worries behind?

I wrenched my thoughts back to just enjoying the songs and keeping a close eye on my progress through orbital space.

Three quarters of the way through the album, the space station was now looming in my view. I felt the suit gently coaxing my body to reorient. Reaction thrusters puffed to aid the move and now my feet were facing toward the station and the thrusters were working hard to shed relative velocity.

The station’s radar was the next obstacle. The suit had specially woven EM absorbent properties, making me appear as a small piece of space debris. It was just enough to fall under the automated threat assessment that the station’s computers used and as such wouldn’t bring it to the human crew’s attention.

Of course, I wasn’t just relying on that and powered up an ECCM suite that would actively nullify any radar emission if they were focused on me.

It wasn’t that long ago that the station had experienced history’s first act of space piracy and a lot of eddies had gone into improving security. There was no way the world’s rich and famous would risk their skins otherwise. Now I had to defeat that security.

The ping of the standard sweeping radar was visualized in my vision in a tactical diagram my Agent brought up.

It struck me and I watched with bated breath as the calculation was done on how much radar energy I had just reflected back…

6%

That was well under the threshold and I only marginally relaxed. I swept my own optics over the station and dozens of point defense turrets were highlighted all over the station. All of them were 20mm autocannons that fired all manner of smart ammunition; incendiary, HESH, AP. Fun for every occasion. Even with the military grade regenerative subdermal I had, I would swiftly be turned to swiss cheese under fire from munitions meant to destroy other ships and deflect space debris.

My aiming point was the lower part of the central station core pylon, which housed a number of airlocks for maintenance workers to use. Docking with the spinning torus sections was just too problematic and sims had shown that even if the AI could make it, there was just too much immediate security to overcome and not enough time to remotely disable them.

The approach to Maintenance Airlock C3 was halted by the AI at just fifty meters distance.

The station was now a looming presence filling my vision and I threw a carefully calibrated, low level active scan from my optics to double check everything was matching the schematics I had been given.

There were no exterior facing security cameras in these lower levels, a rather secretive cost cutting measure. It was on the list of things to do, but had been deferred by the station’s management to next year’s expenses.

How very corporate.

Just under three years ago… in what felt like another lifetime, I would’ve thought of doing the exact same thing had I been in their shoes.

What was down here was proximity sensors.

I focused and established a brute force connection, my mind leaping across the bridge I had established and the world of data erupted into my awareness.

It was the work of a few seconds to isolate the sensors and keep them sending the ‘everything normal’ pings back into the station subnet they were connected to.  

I also immediately saw that the station’s security netrunner had run a sweep just ten seconds earlier.

“Well, so far you’re batting two for two, Mr. Blue Eyes,” I murmured to myself. My client for this gig had really come through, giving me a precise time of arrival down the second at this specific airlock.

I took over the suit controls from the AI and gave a thruster pulse to bring me to a 5 m/s closure to the airlock door.

With the nine seconds until my hands could grab hold, I began laying down program after program as stealthily as possible into the local systems. The net dweller who looked after the security subnet of the station was quite good. Their firewalls, daemons, imps and other passive defense features slowed down the uptake of my hacks, but did little more than that.

He was no Nix and far from Yoko’s skill, for months now I had long been able to fight both my netrunning mentors on an equal level in shallow cyberspace.

I fired a last burst of thrust, taking down my closing velocity down an easy meter per second, which my arms could easily absorb.

My hands clamped down around the hand hold rails and I stabilized myself.

A thought triggered my first hack.

The airlock interior began depressurizing.

This took a nerve wracking three minutes, but I used the time to begin laying my own daemons, viruses and hacks like a minefield for the station’s dweller to stumble onto, just in case. They would stay passive and unnoticed until I needed them, with a twenty four hour lifetime before they would delete themselves.

The door mechanism sensors were isolated before I triggered their motors.

I got out of the way for the heavy airlock door to swing by me and pulled myself into the pitch dark of the interior.

My optics switched to the infrared spectrum as I didn’t feel like going through the trouble of hacking the lights.

The world was rendered into the black and white of infrared, whilst I immediately began closing the door behind me.

As the airlock began to pump in air again, my hacking was already busy with the small camera facing the inner airlock door.

This was far from the sloppy streets of Night City with gang hijacked CCTV cameras. There you could get away mostly with just quickhacking the cameras into switching themselves off with no issue. That was completely different with an active elite dweller in the subnet. Switching off a cam so directly was the netrunning equivalent of blasting the horn of a truck, that there was someone up to no good that didn’t want to be seen.

Nix and Yoko had quickly taught me to forget that form of sloppiness.

To true infiltrators and netrunners, you camouflaged yourself from cameras. You laid programs that were specific to your current visual profile directly into the local cache of the visual sensors, causing them to see you, but effectively ignore you. It didn’t matter how sophisticated the image recognition was, you would still be invisible using the Camera Camo quickhack as I liked to call my own version of the program.

An even more advanced form, which I was still busy sorting out the kinks and bugs of, was a Disguise program, which actively turned you into someone else who was authorized to be in that space with no raised eyebrows.

The pressure was now equalized with the interior of the station and a minor hack opened the inner doors for me.

I drew my highly illegal, modified Liberty pistol and with a pull against the railing floated my way out of the airlock, scanning both sides of the cramped hallway. It was festooned with control panels, piping, valves, conduits and other engineering necessities.

My snooping through the cameras found no one close by. The closest being a borg worker in a full cyber conversion Copernicus body two floors below me. An idle passive scan told me his name, Jack Hoan, cross referenced from the station population register and that he still had twenty years of service left to work off his debts to the owners.

My mind automatically went through different ways I could either flatline or disable him if I had to.

The airlock closed and I pulled off, carefully accelerating myself down the corridor.

The map reference in my optics displayed my current position, this one was fully 3D on account of the environment. Helpfully giving me a constant marker line to find my way through the maze to my destination.

I stopped myself at the first intersection, then pulled into a corridor that went relatively upward.   

Most of my attention was on ghosting every cam and sensor. A constant laying of hacks to pave my way forward.

I had to pause at the next intersection, keeping myself from rising into it. Another borg worker was cruising through the corridor now above me.

Using a cam as a jump off point, I smoothly inserted my camo hack into his optics. The Copernicus barely had a cyberdeck worth the name and it was a Seocho civilian model. My own Netwatch Netdriver deck breezed through his firewalls without even a hint of trouble and didn’t trip any internal alarms.

The result was the worker didn’t even turn his oddly shaped head to look at me. The optics on the Copernicus had a band scanner that provided a full 270 degree vision to the borg and he should’ve seen someone in a full combat EVA suit, but he just puffed out of view, using the inbuilt thrusters of his own near full mechanical body.

I moved on with a pull on the railings.

My first waypoint was reached a few minutes later when I spotted the always rotating inner mechanisms, or at least a part of it, that joined the central core of the station to the rotating section. Given my position it was like I was looking at the massive section of hyperalloy steel wall that was constantly moving on superfluid frictionless bearings the size of a freight train.

Now came the first tricky part of my infiltration - I needed to get inside the elevator shafts that went up and down inside the torus support spokes.

A quick scan showed a maintenance worker access point and with a puff of my own thrusters I made way there.  

I grabbed the railing hand hold nearby and wound the link extension from my EVA suit’s neck and reeled it out with my right hand.

“Suit, manipulator arm,” I ordered. The AI unfurled the dexterous arm from the life support pack and I handed my gun over to it. “Defense mode.”

My actual body’s defense in real space covered, I shoved the link into the port.

The first automatic action my mind made was to snuff out the alert signal that someone had connected to the port at all. Then I pushed forward and began scanning local systems using partial synthtech immersion. From my left eye, I saw the dataverse of the entire station, whilst my right kept an eye on real space around me.

The local firewall here was much stronger. Not surprising, since someone fucking up here could send this specific torus’ rotation into a faster spin and give everyone in it a constant 5 Gs if they wanted to. It would also potentially fuck up the entire station given enough time.

It took me nearly six real time minutes to just make my way painstakingly through the outer layer of the firewall without tripping the little traps the station’s net dweller had left for me. They were good. If you could name the defense, they’d used it.

Mr. Blue Eyes had not managed to gain any data on just who’s turf I was digitally stepping on, which by itself told me that it was one of those nutjobs that practically lived in cyberspace. His meat body was likely ensconced in a life support tube somewhere on the station.

It also meant that I did not want to get in a direct cyberspace confrontation with them and that stealth was the order of the day. If it meant I had to spend hours parsing through the code, then so be it.

These last few months I had made it a point to do the required netrunning for my own gigs where possible and not rely on dedicated runners, as much as that would’ve made my life easier.

Nearly an hour later I was through three layers of firewall and seemingly inside the local subnet but I spotted a minor fault in the environment, which clearly told me I was in a fake subnet that had been created for someone like myself to blunder around stupidly.

It took me another hour to find the port to gain further access and there I had another two firewalls to worm through.

The previous firewalls were jokes in comparison and stealthily punching through these took me another three hours. During which I also had to hack the optics of another borg worker to keep me invisible in meatspace.

I double and triple checked the systems being visualized by my synthtech interface for any discrepancy before I finally accepted that I was seeing the real thing and not another fake.

Then I found the hydraulic system for a torus spoke that was still approaching my position and carefully triggered the central shaft access hatch.

With a push of my hand and slight puffs of my suit thrusters to slow myself, I was now inches from facing the constantly moving inner wall of the spinning section. A quick calculation told me I would have exactly four and half seconds to get my entire body into the shaft or risk getting cut in half.

I maneuvered myself head first and handed over my suit thruster controls to the AI, ordering it to ignore all safety governors.

‘Are you certain?’ it asked in a monotone.

“Yes, do it.”

‘Very well.’

This potential death was but a minor manifestation of the many I had faced over the last two years. I didn’t bother asking for a countdown from the AI and just steeled myself to experience one hell of an acceleration.

The instant I saw the entrance of the shaft appear from my right, I flipped the mental switch of my Sandevistan.

My perception of the world around me increased by orders of magnitude and instead of the shaft approaching at a blistering speed it was now crawling towards me.

The moment came and the AI fired every thruster my suit had.

For an agonizingly long moment, it seemed like I was going to ram myself headfirst into the moving wall. Then mere inches before my helmet would’ve impacted solid steel, the shaft entrance passed in front of me.

My head and shoulders passed inside and only a pure AI dedicated to this task resulted in a proper course being maintained with thruster firings so I didn’t get pancaked against the side of the shaft.

I had to pull in my legs to avoid them getting effectively sliced by the entire station’s central core, another trick that was simplified greatly with the Sandy.

When my speed was equalized with the spoke's spin, I finally could reach out safely to physically grab the nearest maintenance railing.

My internal Agent shut down the Sandy automatically. I immediately became aware of my heavy breathing and the usual aftershock of temporal perceptions normalizing hit me. I bore it as easy as breathing by this point. What I couldn’t ignore was my right hand beginning to twitch and spasm out of my control.

“Fuck! Not now,” I snarled. My left hand came round to grab the railing, just as my right hand’s grip failed.

My right limb kept going epileptic in a painful manner for nearly a full four minutes before it settled down and some control returned to me.

“Will such loss of control occur again?” the Suit AI asked.

I grabbed the railing with both hands and began pulling myself down the shaft. “Possibly, it will be dealt with soon.”

My next obstacle approached - an inner bulkhead door that would finally let me access an actual elevator. This one yielded to a simple stealth quickhack thanks to my earlier breach of the local subnet.

I pushed myself in carefully and began to feel the first effects of the station’s centrifugal gravity, which was currently just a slight pull of barely 0.1 G towards the spinward side of the shaft.

The elevator itself was halfway down the spoke about seventy meters away from me. The bulkhead door closed above me as I began the careful hack to bring the elevator up.

Here I had to be careful to not create an obvious signal to the central computer that something was wrong with the behavior of the system.

The only reason anyone from the outer torus would take an elevator all the way up the spoke here, was if they were technicians. By the same token, it would let me traverse closer without worrying about the elevator suddenly rising and crashing into me.

I couldn’t take that chance.

This gig had too much riding on it for anything to go wrong.

So I grabbed a hold of the side to arrest my very slow fall and got busy hacking.

It was another slow process, which involved finding the employee register. Then finding and creating a virtual duplicate of that employee, that I could insert into the surveillance system. Then I had to create a small accident for her, that would actually stop her from moving in real space.

This I did with a small malfunction in the automatic door as she walked out of the restroom. It essentially closed in her face, instead of opening. She lost her balance and fell backward.

In that moment, I replaced her in surveillance with the virtual duplicate, whilst I burned a ton of RAM to brute force her own firewalls and hit her with a Control hack.

I walked her right back into the toilet stall, had her lock the door and wait patiently.

My cyberdeck was really heating up now, but I had planned ahead for this moment and the hiss of external coolant flowing through my dedicated cooling ‘ware nicely took care of it. Taking the heat and eventually flushing it from a dedicated reservoir installed near my neck.

I hit her with a triple combo that I could do in my sleep at this point - Memory Wipe, Reset Optics and Sonic Shock.

She began twitching and moments later collapsed into deep unconsciousness and would only wake up in nine hours.

In the meantime, I ran the virtual duplicate of Rachel Mcadams, the very attractive Blackjack table dealer for the local casino, towards the part of the station which would serve my purposes.

Then I repeated the whole process for a maintenance tech who worked the station’s general HVAC on the customer facing side. Since no one really wanted a big maintenance borg in sight stomping up the carpets, he was still human with minimal external cyberware.

I had him do the job of actually sending the elevator up to meet me, then had him pretend to do some busywork on a nearby vent, before releasing him with a Memory Wipe.

When my feet finally touched down on the roof of the elevator, I was already inside its tiny subnet, keeping things looking absolutely normal to the greater system. The interior cam was looped before I triggered the maintenance hatch on its roof.

“Time to get dressed,” I murmured to the suit AI.

It took the hint and fully equalized interior pressure before breaking the seals on the minimal carapace structure of the suit interior, allowing me to unzip, twist and climb out of the thing.

Now I was left only wearing the interior cooling suit and peeled myself out of that.

I fiddled with the latch release on the suit backpack, my nude body shivered in the cool air before I shut down that autonomic response with a thought.

I pulled out my designer Jinguji dress for this gig, ripping open the protective synthplast before carefully coaxing it out, leaving it to hover in the microgravity briefly.

Dressing in this situation was not easy but eventually I managed to wiggle into the extremely short, black piece of clothing and settle it properly, smoothing out all the kinks and getting all the upper metallic bits properly supporting and covering my breasts to an appropriate level. Next came the jewelry, three large gold rings on my left thigh, two rings on my left fingers and four silver necklaces, one of which was laced with a ruby. Then came the shoes, two open foot stiletto high heels that would do the job nicely of emphasizing my toned calves.

“All right, time to don my dancing shoes,” I grinned, bringing up the internal program with my Agent, then triggered the still highly secret FIA metanthropic cloaking tech.  

It always felt like I was being doused with slow moving ice water that also somehow left a slightly hot burn in its wake before settling into normalcy.

My HUD gave me 100% across the board as I felt my mannerisms, voice, body language and a dozen other effects settle on me as the imprint did its job.

As a last check I pulled myself over to the spacesuit’s helmet and the AI helpfully mirrored the front faceplate to let me do my final check.

V the ripped, legendary bad-ass merc who’d made Night City her bitch was gone, to be replaced by the very attractive, long haired Mrs. Elaine Paigles, who was the stacked, arm candy corpo wife for her equally corpo husband.

With a nod of satisfaction, I pulled away from the helmet, “Ready, suit?”

“Ready,” it said, with the exterior speakers.

I reached into the back of the suit’s neck, flicked open a hidden compartment and found the chip  that housed the AI. I gave it a sharp jerk and the thumb length chip emerged from its slot.

My optics did a quick scan and confirmed everything was still normal, before I carefully pushed my hair aside and slotted the chip into the open port behind my right ear.

The AI immediately sat itself down in my system, drawing minimal power and acting like it was merely a brief visitor to the ‘apartment’ that was my body’s systems and personal area network.

“Comfortable, Suit?”

“It is acceptable,” it said immediately. 

I grabbed a handhold and my pistol before pulling myself through the maintenance hatch and into the elevator cabin properly. “Burn it.”

“Signal sent,” said Suit.

I closed the hatch just as a brief blinding flash heralded the self-destruct incineration of all the equipment that had made my spacewalk possible. Within seconds all that was left would be trace elements and scorch marks.

With my feet finally touching down on a soft carpet, a thought to my Agent had my upper right thigh split open up to reveal the full cybernetic interior, which had just enough space for my iron. When it was settled in its holster slot, it automatically pulled the weapon in and closed everything up, the synthskin there making a perfect seal again.

To any scan it would just look like I had two full cyber legs with fortified ankles. When in fact, thanks to the internal scanjack system, it was the perfect accessory for smuggling a weapon into a very secure zone. 

I sent a command to the elevator to go down into the hotel proper, whilst also pushing into the greater ‘net, finding the guest list and linking my current digital and physical presence into the system.

Gravity increased slowly as I went down and when I could properly walk, I pushed myself directly below the elevator’s tiny cam, right in its blind spot, before releasing the loop to show the actual live feed.

Finally, the elevator car reached the bottom and I felt the station’s 0.8G of simulated gravity in full.

The doors opened and I casually stepped out into Torus 4 of the Crystal Palace Orbital Hotel.

“Showtime.”

88888888888888888888888888888888888

The Crystal Palace was also affectionately called the Las Vegas of Space and like it’s planet bound counterpart, was hotel, casino, entertainment, low-grav pools, spas, luxury apartments, concert venues, drone racing circuit, parks, tennis courts and even had a faithful recreation of an idyllic white sand beach, complete with waves.

I had been a corpo for most of my life in Arasaka, playing the deadly game of corporate counterintelligence but the level of luxury and exclusivity here was the elite of the 1%.  I would’ve needed to climb half a dozen ranks higher than my former unlamented boss Jenkins to even have a shot of coming casually to this place for a holiday or to even be assigned to work here for Arasaka.

Now I was walking through an artificial park filled with carefully cultivated plants, small trees, grass, all of it illuminated through overhead windows where carefully moderated sunlight was beamed through. Arasaka had artificial ecologies in most of their major HQ buildings around the world, but this was on a whole other level. It was like the Garden of Eden in a can. Not surprising when these plants were vital to keeping everyone breathing in the Torus. The whole spectacle would be enough to normally have me gaping like a tourist, but my behavioral imprint of Elaine smoothly overwrote those to make my body language into a casual strut.

Most of the other people in Torus 4 were either tourists gaping in amazement or people who actually lived and worked in the Palace, taking a much needed break from their busy schedules to eat something and relax. Just seeing this also would’ve made the old me very envious. At Arasaka, I had usually eaten within my ultra secure tiny office and had food delivered straight to my floor. Here at the Crystal Palace, it seemed they actually allowed breaks where you would leave your office entirely. Of course, it could just be that since there was only the harsh vacuum of space outside, this was an allowance for people to not go stir crazy.

I passed a few relaxing corpos who were giving two nearby Arasaka suits a weary stink eye. Most of the biggest corps of Earth had offices on the Crystal Palace, just like my hometown of Night City. The difference being that no one could afford to have their own army to look after their assets here. No fighting or hijinks were tolerated, even between Arasaka and Militech, who were inches away from a de facto hot war on Earth.

Orbital Air, the general managers of the entire station, had full rights and means to banish any corp lock, stock and barrel. Anyone committing crime on Crystal Palace would usually be shown the airlock. Whether they gave you a space suit, a shuttle or neither depended on the severity of the crime.

I kept a weather eye on the time, judging how long I had to just sightsee, as the lush park area gave way to specialist boutiques and shops. Torus 4 alone had a circumference of just under 14 km with nine floors and I could easily get lost in just the shopping that was to be had here.

The persona of Elaine knew the Palace well, so I had to act as if it was all old potatoes. My Agent did its usual bang up job of navigating me to my destination via Augmented Reality.

Getting from one part of the Torus to another was done by more local elevators, tram tubes and liberal usage of standing conveyor belts in the long hallways, as if the Crystal Palace was one giant airport. Theoretically, the furthest you’d have to travel within a Torus was seven kilometers and walking that could mean over an hour wasted.

The other difference to get used to was the general population of the Palace. As a former Arasaka suit based out of Night City and during childhood, I’d seen quite a lot of Europe and Japan, but here I was experiencing an entirely new melting pot of humanity.

The station was by now over sixty-seven years old and had survived the Fourth Corporate War, which included a hot war in low-earth orbit that had seen nearly everyone else lose their orbital assets. The European Space Agency had managed to defend it with the help of the Highriders and for nearly a decade, the station residents had to survive completely on their own with no supplies or help coming from Earthside.

The Palace of today was highly cosmopolitan, with reps and embassies from nearly every major corp and nation on Earth. It was the place to go for the rich and famous. Almost everywhere I looked were people with the best clothes, stunning looks and sporting cyber and bioware that my old Ripper could buy his own shop with twice over. I had sunk over two million eddies into my own body by now and I’d be considered middling at best to these people.

In sharp contrast, were the Highrider and Crystal Palace natives. They were always dressed practically in jumpsuits with dozens of filled pockets, had very minimal cyberware and preferred to use bioware. Their hair was kept in short, almost brutal styles, to easily accommodate their vacsuit helmets. The highriders always had hard collars around their necks, which were just the collapsible form of helmets that could deploy in seconds to keep them alive in case of a hull breach.

I took my seat in a tram tube car, folding my legs and watched as a couple that oozed eddies, got up from their seats to increase the distance between them and a tall highrider that had taken a seat nearby.

The highrider, wearing a white skinsuit and harness festooned with tools, didn’t even acknowledge them. He pulled out a tablet and started tapping furiously on it with a scowl.

The last passengers rushed in as the door closed, making for rather cramped conditions.

The tram burst into a rapid movement, shooting through the transport tube.

I had three minutes to kill and endure my legs and breasts getting ogled from across me by a rich corpo teen. So I simply looked to the side and kept an eye on the local subnets that I was passing through and monitoring that the virtual cyber duplicate was behaving normally. In further precaution, I was also dropping Sniffers, hack traps, imps, worms and daemons, all of whom would remain dormant in the subnets and general cyberspace of the Palace.

It was also interesting to note that the flavor and look of cyberspace was notably different from what I had grown used to in Night City. Whether it was just because of my own subjective bias in interpreting the data or there was an actual physical cause behind it, I couldn’t say for certain. Cyberspace in Night City was an infinite shifting red landscape, with data structures, programs, viruses, hacks and so on usually appearing in a variety of blue hues. In the Crystal Palace, my brain interpreted the cyber landscape in shades of white, with programs and data rendering in gold.

“Section 12, arriving,”  said a highly enthusiastic female voice from the map screen above my head.

The rapid decel from over 160 kph had me bump into my neighbor on the next seat; another highrider, but he was dressed almost like a corpo, the only concession to his heritage being the vac collar around his neck.

“Sorry about that,” I sighed, standing up and grabbing a handhold.

“Na problem, pretty one. Nice runnin’ ya doin,” he said, his dark skinned face stretching into a wide smile. He was speaking in The Word, the Highrider language, which was a mixture of the Niger-Congo family of languages, mixed with French, German and Japanese loan words and structure. My autotranslation soft rendered his words into understandable West Coast English, though with a heavy accent.

“Saw that did you?” I asked idly, already queuing up a bunch of offensive hacks to dump on him, whilst passive scanning and analyzing any cyberware and rehearsing lethal and non-lethal unarmed strikes to use.    

“Ya, you’re good, as I said,” he held up his palms in a clear peace gesture. It took me a moment to pinpoint him in the local subnet and I perceived his avatar - a simple inoffensive ball with a smiley face painted on it. “You want de IP for local runner club?”

“Might as well,” I nodded and his avatar sprouted an arm which flicked data at me.

I caught it in an isolation program and gave him an idle wave as I joined the throng of people walking out of the tram.

A few minutes' walk finally brought me to my first destination.

Set within an idyllic park was a small office building that was currently being leased by Utopian Corporation.

They were a ninety year old company specializing in pharmacology, nanotech and a general manufacturer. They were always small-fry as far as I knew. They barely had over a 100k employees in this day and age, spread across London, LA and Rome. They had no offices in Night City, but they did on occasion try and poach low level Arasaka employees from the technology divisions.

That they even had an office on the Crystal Palace was something of a relic from the 4th Corporate War, but they had enough money, influence and assets to keep the place going. They had been able to consistently renew their 20 year lease agreement on the very lucrative property. They had also consistently fended off buyout and hostile takeovers from major players in Europe and the Americas.

This was a company that had suspiciously deep pockets or silent major investors and backers in the background that kept it afloat and independent.

Mr. Blue Eyes wanted something Utopia had recently developed that the company was being rather reluctant in selling, even when he had apparently offered millions of eddies for it. Now he figured it was cheaper and quicker just to hire me to liberate it, along with a number of other odds and ends from other residents of the Palace.

I approached the front doors, scanning the exterior and found the usual assortment of security devices: cameras, visible and hidden, high res motion sensors, IFF, hidden Militech branded turrets, all state of the art. Armored steel shutters were ready to fall down over all doors and windows to turn this little building into a fortress.

The reception had the typical neo-minimalist style that was all the rage for corps these days, though Utopian at least went for a dark green palette to their walls with plentiful potted plants sprinkled around the place. It would be pleasing to the eye, if they hadn’t sculpted the foliage at a genetic level to mirror the tree that formed their corp logo - making it look like a cauliflower crossbred with a mini-tree.

I had barely taken two steps into the reception when I saw and felt an active scan play all over my body from a visible sensor behind the ultra-attractive receptionist.

In Night City, she would’ve been all over the front pages of screamsheets and Jinguji would have her as a frontwoman, but somehow here she was, working a menial job on the Crystal Palace. She wore a red knee-length skirt and top that flattered, accentuated and just drew the eye in. High cheeks, delicate face, smoldering green eyes and makeup that I immediately made a mental note to add to my repertoire. My reflexive scan even spotted pheromone bioware that my Agent confirmed was very subtly affecting me. 

“Hello Mrs. Paigles. Welcome to Utopian,” she said with a dimpled smile. “My name is Isla. How can I help you?”

“I’m a representative for Night Corp,” I said, opening the palm of my hand in her direction, broadcasting the ID data I had received from Mr. Blue Eyes.

Her optics flashed slightly as she visibly showed she’d received the handshake and data. She worked on her own terminal behind her thin transparent desk briefly. Her whole mannerism went from unctuously seductive to neutral in an instant, “Confirmed. What is the purpose of your visit?”

“We’re looking to enquire if Utopian would be amenable to enter into contract negotiations for a simple regular purchase of your products.”

“I see,” Isla nodded, her optics flashed again. “I’ve forwarded your request to Director Mitchell. Our local sales department head. He’s currently very busy, but his schedule opens up for a brief meeting in fifty minutes. Are you amenable to waiting?”

“Yes.”

“Then please have a seat,” she gestured to the numerous couches facing each other in a small lounge arrangement to one side of the reception area.

“Thank you,” I nodded and took a seat on the couch that would let me see the entrance and keep an eye on her.

I engaged in a scan of the entire space, finding cameras and other immediate access points. All the cams in here were tiny and hidden, but provided more than enough throughput for my purposes. However, those were the obvious infiltration points and any netrunner they employed for network security would be watching those like a hawk.

My scan found the hidden Militech turret in the ceiling above my head and I crossed my legs, leaning back to get comfortable. Then I engaged a little program to flash my optics as if I was getting a call, which included simulating an outside connection.

My view of local cyberspace in my left eye now began slowly building up a map of the subnet that Utopia used.

Then when I was ready, I manifested properly.

My avatar for this run was a simple humanoid agglomeration of infernal flame, with two sinister glowing eyes.

I moved forward and double checked my stealth programs were running effectively, keeping the bandwidth usage even and sending no spikes that would alert my opposition.

The data fortress that represented Utopia Corp’s servers came into view as a giant golden sphere that hovered over the infinite white gray of cyberspace. Just seeing that was a bloody annoyance and felt like someone had slapped me in the face.

Ever since I had fought for my life in the old Militech Cynosure facility hidden underneath Night City’s Pacifica district, every damn data fortress I visualized followed the same structural pattern as the Cynosure AI Core. My hope that netrunning in the Crystal Palace would allow me to move on from that subconscious construct was seemingly in vain and I had been a fool to think it would make a difference.

That trauma had tattoo’d itself on my psyche and wouldn’t go away.

Six months of time had made no difference and I still had gonk crazy nightmares, where my subconscious had me fighting Adam fucking Smasher whilst simultaneously that blasted Cerberus Combat Mech hunted me in the bowls of that place.

Don’t think about it, Valerie, don’t think about it. Not now.

In cyberspace, I floated forward carefully, stopping just at the edge of the perceived detection range of the defenses and firewalls that surrounded the fortress.

All around the surface of this data fortress was patrolling daemons, imps, dormant viruses and worms wriggling around and waiting to infect the first person stupid enough to try to breach the defenses.

I began a slow orbit around it and carefully scanned for gaps or weaknesses.

Whatever elite ‘runner was behind these defenses was not screwing around. Nearly everything around the fortress was absolutely lethal and it was just short of being considered a solid block of Black ICE. The only non-lethal stuff was dedicated to sniffing out who would dare to try to breach the fortress, which was something Utopian definitely wanted to know and pursue. That was rather kind of them, in comparison to most corps who outright killed any runner no questions asked for trespassing.

I manifested a junk data worm, sending it wriggling away from me into the distance, where it disappeared.

A minute later it returned from random direction and impacted the defenses, shattering into a bunch of random garbage data with random things like a Crystal Palace screamsheet issue from three years ago, old NUSA market data and a random selection of braindance smut.

The firewall blocked everything cold and the closest worms and viruses corrupted the data in very nasty ways before it burst into a nonsense code that was swiftly cleaned up by a defragger.

It had achieved nothing of consequence, but it did let me see the defenses in action and how everything was put together. More importantly, it also showed me that the runner was quite trusting of his work and didn’t see the need to come out of the fortress whenever something pinged the defenses. It was generally considered a non-event since just by nature of cyberspace that you regularly had junk data hitting fortresses, it could be a simple email with the wrong address or an incorrect network ping.

I kept at it, acutely aware that the clock was ticking and that I couldn’t afford to get into a direct fight with this dweller.

My cyberware and body had been tuned and refined since that fateful heist for that bloody gonk Dexter Deshawn. It had seen me through the worst of Night City, including Adam Smasher. Not to mention further specifically prepared for this gig at the Crystal Palace. My internal cooling reservoir, a piece of cyberware that I had collaborated with Nix on designing and had built myself, wouldn’t be able to dump heat from my cyberdeck for long enough in a typical netrunner duel. Not if my opponent was jacked into a full chair, cooling suit and had tons of hardware behind him.

I had to remain absolutely invisible in cyberspace and trigger no alarms or outright destroy the daemons in my way.

I threw another junk program into another part of the fortress defenses, mapping more of them, before taking a snapshot to begin compiling a cohesive picture.

There had to be a weakness or approach to use here, no defense was perfect.

It was only as I threw another bit of junk at the defenses and watched the defragger working that I hit upon a moment of inspiration.

My hands waved in the air of cyberspace, bringing up three of my best infiltrator daemons, Ghost Dream, Cerulean Prowl and Tiger Stack.

My mind visualized them as blurry masses of ever shifting code that were assembled into  shapes related to their names. Ghost Dream being a spectral hazy man with radiant blue eyes, Prowl took the form of one of my childhood cats and Tiger Stack looking exactly like a Siberian Tiger I had seen in an old encyclopedia. 

With a thought, I brought up configuration tabs for each daemon and hastily scrolled through their code, making additions and adjusting parameters on the fly.

I was so glad that at this point I didn’t even need to use my virtual hands to do this anymore, otherwise it would’ve been impossible in the time I had available.

As it was, it took me nearly twenty-three precious minutes, all the while in real space, I picked up a screamsheet from the table in front of the couch to pretend to read.

Finally, I was ready and compressed my infiltrator daemons into my junk programs as a shell, before flinging all three at the fortress.

It was a risk, but I had no choice. I could only hope that my opponent was used enough to junk data impacts that he’d not bat an eye at three of them hitting simultaneously.

I held my non-existent breath in cyberspace as I watched the impact of my little surprise on the Fortress…

… yes!

My daemons had emerged successfully beyond the defenses, cloaking themselves before the defragger could get to work and I had access.

I ‘cloaked’ my avatar, which was essentially just de-manifesting but keeping my senses centered around an arbitrary point in cyberspace. My position shifted instantly as I slipped right into the fortress, hovering just above my three infiltrators.

Within the fortress, I was confronted with the typical interpretation runners had of a database - a seemingly infinite physical server farm, but my own unique take had me seeing it as an ever-shifting multi floor space. Naturally, there were patrol daemons here too and these ones were shifting forms of black and white code - at first they were humanoid, then they became multi-limbed in a way that reminded me of octopi.

That was not good. That meant the runner had adaptive coding in these things.

I had to quickly adjust my own daemons to account for that, as it was possible our collective stealth in the fortress could just as quickly become useless.

In real space, I made sure to turn the page of the screamsheet, lest I give away the fact that I was a bit too invested in reading about the upcoming 2078 model of the Rayfield Caliburn. I despaired at definitely not being able to buy the sweet looking ride at the moment… before pushing that thought away.

No thinking about the future now, Valerie.

It also let me spot a slight twitch on the lid cover that protected the Militech turret in the ceiling above me. As if it had wanted to fully deploy but something had intervened and stopped it from doing so.

That…

In cyberspace I sent my daemons to work immediately, whilst I slipped out of the fortress server and into neutral space outside it, then surged towards the attached datasphere that represented all the systems of Utopia’s physical office building.

‘Fuck.’

Another runner was hacking the defenses, trying to bring the entire building under their control.

The local dweller instantly saw it and began fighting defense.

Instantly, I knew I was watching two elites fighting each other. The speed and quality of their attacks, the daemons in use, how quickly firewalls rose and fell under the onslaught of either side.

I had come a long way from just being a cookie cutter, street quickhack slinger and could probably jump right in if I had my gear at home backing me up. However, with only the custom cooling cyberware in my body to keep my cyberdeck’s heat under control, I would only last a few minutes at best before having to retreat. My only advantage was surprise and that I knew my Netwatch deck could eat both of theirs for breakfast in terms of performance.

The only question now was this cyber attack only a prelude to something more in real space?

Normally, my answer would be ‘hell no’. The Crystal Palace’s physical security was legendary and was the whole reason for my little spacewalk stunt in the first place.

My instincts were screaming something else at me.

If I could do this, why not someone else?

The Utopian dweller had home field advantage and looked to be gaining the upper hand now. That was good, they were distracted and so I pushed my own daemons in the data fortress to move quicker in finding the big prize.

Then the attacking runner shifted tactics, queuing so many attacks that his brain should’ve been cooking, yet there was no interruption, break, loss of data fidelity or disconnect. It was suicide and yet… the attack just continued.

I looked closely at the battle in cyberspace and finally caught the issue. This wasn’t just one runner attacking Utopian, it was two of them. Two elite runners that had somehow managed to make themselves appear as a single attacker. Everyone in cyberspace had a certain ‘flavor’ or ‘signature’ to their appearance, coding and just the way their minds interacted with it. This duo had done their best to seem as one, but I now saw the differing flows and shifts of data.

The Utopian dweller was clearly panicking at this point and scrambled to keep up, throwing defenses that had to be pushing him to the red line as well.

He was going to lose.

The first thing to go was the security cameras - the visible ones in the reception froze and their little red lights winked out.

That wasn’t good news and I began toning down my portable synth-tec interface resolution and other settings to free up as much RAM as possible.

I turned another page and casually unfolded my legs to get my feet properly next to each other.

The front doors of the reception opened to admit a tall man in a typical corpo minimalist suit that you saw in thousands of office drones all over the Crystal Palace. He was very well built and bulged the suit somewhat, yet he wore it well and didn’t seem uncomfortable in it. His hard blue eyes surveyed the reception, locking on the stunning receptionist with a visible smirk on his chiseled, perfect features before his eyes found me.

My eyes met his briefly before looking back down into my screamsheet and I could see him visibly dismiss me as unimportant, before he approached the front desk.

All this happened as the Utopian dweller lost control of the Militech turret and the armored shutters.

Isla tried to use the scanner, but frowned into her terminal screen as it clearly didn’t want to respond. I spotted the instant she realized something was very wrong. Her body slightly twitching but getting herself admirably under control for a civilian, either that or she had cyberware that helped regulate emotional response.

“Welcome to Utopian, sir,” she said with a nod. “My name is Isla. How can I help you?”   

The ‘corpo’ didn’t respond immediately but eventually smiled, “Yes, you can help me.”

The doors opened and admitted two men and a single woman, also dressed similarly. The story was the same, corpos, minimal visible cyberware, well built, bland expressions on their faces.

The shutters slammed down on all the windows and the front doors shut, going into lockdown before a shutter also fell on that. The Militech turret popped out and immediately aimed for Isla.

All four mercs pulled out collapsible shock batons that unfolded into their hands.

The female merc blurred with speed as she activated a Sandevistan and emerged right over me, holding the baton’s end right near my neck.

“You can both, not move a muscle.”

888888888888888888888888888888888

A/N: One year after Phantom Liberty released would a fitting time for this, I figured. It's been rumbling on the backburner for a while in my head and my SDD. My muse just didn't want to let this go this week, she was tired of Worm/SCP, so here is my sequel to CP2077 because I'm impatient for the continuation. Enjoy :-) Have a great weekend and as always, stay awesome... or should that be stay nova?

The Force Wills - Chapter 104

“So, 80 000 you say? It will take a bit of time to process that amount, not to mention arrange suitable transport all the way to Orvax. When does Sovereign Iballa expect delivery?”

“The factories are sitting idle, with no one working them. Therefore as soon as possible,” Anakin said, idly browsing through a datapad as he and Scintel sat around a small table which had a light lunch on it.

Obi-Wan and Chewie had left to personally inspect the nearby Royal slave market, which was the largest and housed samples that would help further inform our purchase. That left myself and R2 to stay with Anakin. The droid was acting as a data secretary, whilst I had been given another purpose in the meantime.

“That will bump up the price,” Scintel warned, her golden eyes drinking in Anakin’s uncovered face. She clearly had the hots for him and wasn’t afraid of using her body language to openly indicate that, though royal decorum meant she couldn’t outright say it.

“Understandable, highness,” he nodded. “It would be cheaper to acquire two medium freighters, divide the slaves between them for the journey.”

“Prudent, especially in these troubled times. A single bulk freighter with so many slaves would be a prime target for every pirate and minor slaver in the galactic east. Medium freighters aren’t usually used for passenger transport,” she nodded her approval of the idea. “The route you’d have to take for an efficient journey will take you through hutt space, the bribes for them will be substantial, especially in light of their treaty with the Republic.”

“Sovereign Iballa has made provision for it,” Anakin assured. 

Scintel sat back in her chair, daintily ate from her plate, her eyes now turning to drink in my own moving form.

The chair I was using creaked slightly under my weight as I went into a handstand on the backrest, then carefully began moving my legs into a full split.

I hopped down, landing with my hands on the flat butt rest, before closing my legs, twisting into a somersault. My mind purposefully not thinking about what gravity was doing to my body and minimal attire. Scintel’s emotions were definitely appreciating it as I landed on my feet in front of the chair, immediately going into the splits on the floor with a breathtaking economy of motion.

My hands came down and supported me as I flowed into another handstand, which then flowed into depositing my butt on the seat. My right leg flared immediately, perfectly straight, starting to my left and hinging like the arm of a clock to my right, until I was again seated in the splits, my hands now sensually caressing my thighs. My breathing was deep and hard, for the effect it had on my bosom and a mask of pleasure was on my face.

It wasn’t entirely faked, since I was also somewhat getting turned on in delivering this performance, as Anakin was also staring at me with appreciative eyes.

Exotic dancing was not something I really relished in pulling out of my bag of tricks. Superior internal control of my own body with the Force, flexibility, strength and general stamina was coming in quite handy now. I actually had to hold myself back a bit, since adding any supernatural tricks to the routine via the Force would give away the game here. It would’ve also been nice to have some music, so I settled for just imagining a tune to pace the dance.

Scintel shook herself, tearing her eyes away, “Right, have you found any that would be to your preference, Alad?”

Anakin coughed and focused on her, “Yes, these should be sufficient.” He handed over the datapad.

"You want all our stock of togruta, five thousand twi’lek and 23 000 humans. Why so many togruta?”

“Their sense of hearing, especially when properly trained, is exactly the kind of workers that the factory requires. Sure, the bith have better, but their exotic diet requirements make them difficult to maintain long term.”

“True and our stock of them is minimal at best,” Scintel acknowledged, putting down the datapad and taking a lazy sip of something alcoholic from her long fluted glass. Her eyes naturally turned to me as I folded myself in half backward, hands to the floor, before slowly picking my right leg up, then the left, into a brief handstand, bringing my feet around to land on the floor and straighten up, my hands caressing my sides in the process. “Let’s talk about price,” she said absently. “What’s your offer?”

“Eight thousand per slave,” Anakin began, his face a mask of pleasure and appreciation whilst staring at me, even as he inwardly felt rather conflicted with himself.

“Thirty,” she retorted.

“Ten thousand.”

“Thirty,” she smirked.

“You’re asking for 2,4 billion credits, don’t be ridiculous.”

“I can do the math, Alad,” she purred, her hand snaking across the table to caress Anakin's hand resting on the table. When she saw him amenable to her approach, she amended her price, “Twenty five.”

“Twelve,” he continued the process, returning her caress with one of his own.

“Twenty.”

“Fifteen.”

“Eighteen, if you include the delightful creature dancing before us.” 

He shook his head, “She’s the personal property of Sovereign Iballa. He’d have my head on a pike if I sold her to you. Seventeen and you can borrow her for the duration of our stay on Zygerria. She’s to remain unharmed in any fashion.”

Scintel looked at him for a moment before nodding, “Agreed, 1,36 billion credits for 52 000 togruta, 5000 twi’lek and 23 000 humans. We’ll begin acquiring the necessary ships.” She picked up the datapad again, rapidly tapping on it and thumped her thumb on it with a flourish. “How will you be paying?”

“Half in advance with programmable IGBC credit chits, the remainder when the slaves are on board the ships and jump to hyperspace.”

“Acceptable,” she nodded.

“Atre,” Anakin prompted me with my cover name.

I paused in my sensual chair dance, stopping just as I was halfway through a twirl on my left leg, whilst my right leg had been pointed up to the ceiling in a standing split.

My leg came down and I walked closer to the table, head bowed and not looking up, “Yes, master?”

“You heard, consider yourself the property of Queen Scintel until we leave this planet.”

“Understood,” I said softly. “Mistress, what do you wish of me?”

“Impressive,” Scintel smiled with appreciation. “Just like that. I am a very good judge of people and everything is telling me she fully means that. I’m almost tempted to send some of my trainers to Iballa to learn from him. Naturally, he won’t even entertain the notion of spilling his own secrets. Come to my side, Atre.”

I obeyed and came to a stop at her left side.

Her hand gently landed my left buttock and she began languidly caressing there, before trailing up my back and coming down again.

“Take you for instance,” she leaned forward resting her chin on her fist, arm propped up on the table, gazing at Anakin. “You were a slave, weren’t you?”

He folded his arms and gave her a mild glare, “I was. What of it, your highness?”

“Just an observation, Alad. Now you’re in the slave business yourself. I imagine that there is a fascinating story there. Most former slaves will do everything they can to avoid the business, will even fight against it or go after their former owners. Yet here you are, casually negotiating for the lives of so many.”

Scintel flicked her fingers twice, summoning another slave.

“The story is long, majesty. I was used as a mechanic from a very young age, then in fighting pits and arenas when I grew older. As my strength grew I fought my way to freedom with my own prowess in battle. My old master lost me in a bet and my new owner was so impressed he awarded me my freedom. However, even with freedom, I knew only the life of fighting, so I became a mercenary and eventually my path led me to employment with the House of Iballa.”

A twi’lek approached carrying a tray of wine filled glasses. She was a different server than the one who had brought the food, with a much lighter yellow tone of skin and a rich purple headdress.

“It seems you truly understand the way of the galaxy then,” Scintel smiled in pleasure, a finger now playing with the rear strap of my thong panty. “Slavery is the natural order of things. The weak deserve nothing more than to kneel before the strong, bound to service. You were weak and made yourself strong enough to rise up.”

“Interesting, so theoretically, if a slave here on Zygerria was to lead an uprising that cast you all down, would you accept that?” Anakin asked with honest curiosity.

“If that ever happened, Alad, then we’d deserve it for becoming so weak,” Scintel picked up a new glass of wine and deposited the old one on the tray.

The Force shifted and screamed in warning.

My montrals pinpointed and heard the slightest bump of metal against metal, then that of a blade and hand cutting through the air.

My right hand struck, grabbing the wrist of the twi’lek slave, just as she had been about to stab Scintel in the back of the neck.

Thumb pressing on the inside of the slave’s wrist, she lost all muscular control in her hand and the very sharp kitchen knife fell to the floor.

“No!” she gasped in despair at her failure.

A blaster shot rammed into the slave’s back in the next moment.

I felt her death as I let her smoking body go to collapse in a heap on the floor behind Scintel’s chair.

The queen sighed, making a quick hand signal, “Such a waste.” The door to the throne room opened and two guards entered, who quickly picked up the would-be assassin’s body and carried her out. “So you are trained to defend your master as well. Now I am officially jealous.” Her gaze on me was smoldering and her caresses intensified.

She casually turned to Anakin as if an attempted assassination was just a Tuesday for her. “You see Alad, we have unfortunately lost a lot of knowledge over the centuries. After the Jedi brought the Zygerrian Empire to its knees, we fell into civil strife and infighting. The old ways were hoarded and burned in fire, technology fought over and destroyed as one side wanted to deny it to the other. In the end, no one gained it and it was lost to time. It is only the last century that we have begun to pick up the pieces and rebuild. This city was practically a ruin just eighty years ago and now look at it.” She grandly gestured to the window and looked at the view with satisfaction and pride.

“It certainly is impressive, highness,” Anakin admitted.

“We are trying to regain the old ways, but our slave processing techniques are rudimentary and I’m sure the old Slave masters are shuddering in their tombs at our bumbling attempts,” she said with bitterness. “We will persevere and in time we will regain all that we have lost.”

“Hence why you joined the CIS.”

“Precisely, they don’t care what you do in your own borders. You pay your pittance of tax and the confederation tithe, that’s it. No meddling core world corporations, no laws written by fat politicians sitting in their own auridium towers on Coruscant that outlaw your cultural practices, no taxes that beggar the profits of your own companies,” her right fist slammed down on the table, “and especially no meddling moralistic Jedi playing enforcers for the corrupt Galactic Senate!”

She took a deep breath to calm herself, “Sorry, Alad. I’m normally more composed than this.”

“You just came within moments of death, highness. I would be more surprised if you didn’t have some sort of extreme reaction.”

“So I’m sure you’ll understand if I end our meeting here, an afternoon nap will be just the thing I need now.”

Anakin stood from his chair and bowed, “Of course, majesty.”

Scintel made another hand signal and a guard entered immediately. “Escort Mr. Rutirr to one of the best suites in the guest wing of the palace. I will also arrange for your colleague to gain access as well.”

The guard bowed, “At once, your highness.”

“Come along, R2,” Anakin beckoned and soon enough I was left ‘alone’ in the room with Scintel.

Her hand finally left my backside and she stood making another unique signal with her hand.

“Just a final security measure. Stay still, Atre.”

“Yes, mistress.”

Another guard approached and now I was subject to an examination by a hand scanner that he slowly moved from head to toe.

“She’s clean,” he confirmed after staring at the readout.

“Really? Not even a slave implant?”

The guard nodded, “None.”

Scintel gave me a fascinated look. “Follow me, Atre.”

“Yes, mistress.”

The queen led the way out of a hidden side door set into the wall of the throne room. Here was a narrow corridor that could only fit one person, with minimal overhead lighting. I sensed power conduits running through the solid walls and laser emitter tips stippled randomly around, ready to turn anyone trying to run through here into crispy chunks.

Half a dozen meters later another door opened and beyond was a stupendously luxurious living area. Natural light was streaming in from balconies and windows that I could tell had energy shielding. Couches that might as well have been solidified white clouds faced each other around a carpet that continued the themes from the palace lobby. Other rooms smoothly flowed from this living area in an open plan design. A small kitchen that was untouched but nevertheless functional with all manner of appliances.

This was definitely her private apartment, but I could sense a number of visual security sensors in the upper corners of the rooms. She was still being watched even in this space, even if there were no hidden snipers in the walls here.

She led the way through this luxury and paused at a large wooden double door. She gave me one last assessing look before pushing on them.

Beyond was as expected a bedroom with a giant circular bed dominating it. It stood at hip height and was covered with dozens of pillows and elegantly patterned duvets.

“Come in, Atre,” she instructed when I paused slightly in the threshold.

With bowed head I obeyed, even as I noted that crucially we had finally entered a surveillance dead-zone. It seemed Scintel had at the very least privacy for her bedroom and another room leading off from it, which was a walk-in closet. It was a struggle to maintain my outward mask as I sensed…

“Atre, how much do you know about Alad Rutirr?” Scintel asked as she undid a few clasps and pulled down on a zip, letting her dress pool around her feet, before stepping out of it. Leaving her only in a very brief, purple two piece underwear set.

“He is a mercenary fixer of the House of Iballa, mistress.”

“Fixer?” she asked, as she pulled me by the hand closer to the bed.

“Yes, mistress. Solves any problems the sovereign might have,” I answered as she climbed onto the bed on her knees, forcing me to follow suit.

“Oh, and is he attached to anyone?” Scintel asked, lying down and with a pat next to her I laid down as well. The next thing I knew I was being used as a cuddle toy as she spooned me, snaking her arms around my waist.

“Not that I’m aware of, mistress. He could be, though, I don’t know such personal information about him.”

“Hmmm,” she mumbled in comfort, and I sensed her already in the first stages of dozing off.

“Mistress, may I ask a question?”

“Yes, Atre.”

“You’ve seen my physical abilities, strength and reflexes. You’ve only borrowed me at considerable expense. We’ve barely known each other for less than a day. I could be another assassin.”

“Are you another assassin?”

“Of course not, mistress, but that is what an assassin would say only to strike when you fall asleep.”

Scintel actually giggled, “You’re cute, Atre. Already so worried about your mistress. If for one second you thought of killing me you would be dead.” She held out her left palm in front of my face. “Look at my nails.”

It was interesting that zygerrians didn’t have a feline nail structure, but tended toward humanoid nails instead.

In the light, I spotted a tiny metallic cylinder, attached under each protruding nail. Clearly poison of some kind, that could be administered into me in an instant if she wanted. “Hidden poison injectors, mistress?”

“Yes, so you are utterly at my mercy at the moment. As I said, I’m a good judge of sentients, though as you saw I’m not perfect. The poison nails are just one tool I have on me. I have others, understand Atre?”

“Understood, mistress.”

“Now relax and remain quiet, I need some sleep.”

I wearily eyed those dangerous digits and obeyed.

888888888888888888888888888888888   

A little over two hours passed and the walk-in closet door opened to reveal HK-47 striding outward in nearly absolute silence.

Scintel was already asleep but I used the Force to ensure it remained that way until I wanted otherwise.

The droid walked around the bed to regard me. “Question: Are you comfortable, master?”

“Took you long enough,” I groused in annoyance, purposefully not answering his sarcastic question as I carefully broke the Queen of Zygerria’s grip on me. Keeping her hands away from my skin as much as possible. “Guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to find you in what should be the most secure spot on the planet.”

“Smug statement: Of course not, master. It’s me, after all. The most perfect tool of irritant meatbag removal in the galaxy! Their defenses were not challenging to penetrate.”

“So you’ve got the run of the palace then?” I asked hopefully, as I got up from the bed.

“Answer: Within reason, master.”

“Good, I want you to keep an eye on them as they procure the ships and slaves we bought. Their computer systems and procedures, make as thorough a map as possible of their operations. Find the key players, the cogs in the machine so to speak. So far you’ve been hitting low level random stuff, keeping them guessing. Now I want to give the word and then we plunge them into a societal collapse.”

“Awed statement: Master, if I was a meatbag then I’d-”

“Do not finish that sentence,” I interrupted the bloody droid with a glare.

“Reluctant obedience: Yes, master. Warning: Master, it will take more than just the removal of the hairy female meatbag on the bed and other key governmental meatbags. Suggestion: The sabotage of the power grid, communication system and the transport infrastructure will be required as well.”

“No calling for help from the CIS,” I nodded. “What are the chances the other cities on the planet can help?”

“Answer: This is a monarchical, top-down society, master. Held together only because the current queen and the government are descendants of those who won the civil war. If they were to suddenly be out of the picture, my calculations suggest Zygerria will fracture into a planet of feuding city-states within the decade.”

I folded my arms as I considered that. “Better that than a resurgent Zygerrian Slave Empire, I suppose. Hopefully a better society can emerge from a cauldron of feudal states in the future, though my pessimistic side says we’re only kicking this can down the road.”

“Statement: In my experience, it is rare indeed, that a meatbag society becoming ascendant in such a planetary situation will be a ‘good’ civilization. It is more likely they will become militarily belligerent and xenophobic.”

“HK, stop trying to depress me.”

“Objection: Master, I would never dream of doing such a thing.”

I rolled my eyes, “Whatever, you have your orders. Oh yes, I’ll need you to be ready to do a bit of thievery when we leave this world.”

“Objection: Master, I’m an assassin droid, not a thief. A remover of organic irritants from the face of this galaxy.”

“In all your thousands of years, you’ve never stolen anything?” I asked skeptically with a frown.

“Answer: Of course not, master. It wounds my circuits so that you would think as such of me. ”

I massaged my forehead, feeling the beginnings of a headache. He clearly had a different notion of the concept, given what I knew of his past and he was just doing his usual trolling, “Just… do it, HK. If it makes you feel better, the thievery will surely contribute to the chaos we leave in our wake.”

“Reluctant agreement: Very well, master.”

“Now get out of here, I have to go back to being a sleeping pillow… ah! Not a word, HK. Go.”

“Affirmation: Yes, master.”

8888888888888888888888888888888

The next day, Queen Miraj Scintel put me in the role of what the Naboo would call a handmaiden, with a few extra bits tacked on. I was essentially replacing the twi’lek who had tried to kill her, a slave who had been called Farsu.

It mostly involved a lot of standing around next to her as she held court, being her armcandy and getting leered at by every zygerrian who came to the throne room to petition for some or other issue that they had. Mostly it was her government ministers who were just discussing the day-to-day affairs and decisions of the state that needed making.

It was all frightfully boring but I listened anyway.

Occasionally I was dispatched to the royal kitchens to bring up food and drinks that had passed screening and taste testing.

Scintel, applying prudent paranoia that I actually somewhat admired, had me taste testing the food I brought in front of her. Thankfully, it was mostly local meats, proteins and drinks that wouldn’t upset a togruta stomach - zygerrians weren’t vegetarians at all.

It was as I was bringing my third tray of drinks to the throne room in the afternoon that Anakin pinged me across the Bond.

‘Yes, Skyguy?’

‘Snips, are you all right?’

‘Just swell, Skyguy.’ I thought sarcastically.

‘Really? You didn’t have to… uh… you weren’t forced…’ he trailed off uncomfortably.

‘No, Skyguy, yes, she had me keeping her company in bed, but I was just a warm body pillow essentially. She’s very clingy.’

His relief was palpable, ‘Good, good. I’ve seen… Let’s just say that side of slavery is something that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Anyway, I do bring good news. We found Governor Roshti.’

‘In the slave pens?’

‘Yes, Obi-Wan spotted him during his tour of the royal market yesterday. He’s in relatively good health, but traumatized and withdrawn. Not surprising given they’ve practically just started his conditioning.’

'Well, he should be eventually included in our purchase, so there’s no reason to potentially stir up trouble-’

I was just a few corridors away from the throne room, when my localized prescience aligned into a probability line that spelled trouble. I pushed along it as the kaleidoscope of events coalesced and I could only think one word.

‘Frak.’

‘Snips?’

‘One moment, master.’

I picked up one of the glass mugs on the tray, testing the weight as I carefully interpreted not just the Force around me, but the local soundscape reaching my montrals.

Sure enough, the footsteps of someone following me and trying to be very quiet about it pinged in my echolocation. My Force probe told me it was a zygerrian and he was holding a blaster in his right hand. He was staying out of any immediate line of sight, pausing his approach at the intersection of two corridors I had just walked through.

His emotions were a curious mix; anger, determination and slight hint of resignation.

He waited until I was further down the corridor and stepped forward, his blaster pistol coming up, aiming for the back of my head.

Only to receive a face full of hardened glass that shattered his nose, then the beer came spilling out with the momentum of my throw and blinded him.

“Ahhhh!” he screamed in pain and fright, falling back onto his butt. His left hand was reflexively clutching at his nose now, but his desperation only increased. He impressively fought through fear, astonishment and surprise, trying his best to aim at where he thought I was and pulled the trigger.

Naturally, he completely missed and I was already sprinting at my top speed towards him, suppressing my reflexive use of the Force.

The blaster shot thundered through the corridor and I dodged right, then left as he just started spraying shots at me.

My left hand carrying the tray, slapped the blaster aside, whilst my right, clutching another mug, powered into his stomach and my would-be assassin practically folded in half around it. His mouth was wide open and the air from his lungs forcefully escaped in a hiss.

I removed my right hand and powered the tray down onto the back of his head, subtly using a Force Sleep to knock him out.

‘Ahsoka! What’s happening?!’

Now a general alarm was ringing throughout the palace corridor, making an awful racket that my montrals didn’t appreciate at all.

I immediately dropped the tray and mug on the ground, standing to the side with a bowed head.

‘Just stopped a zygerrian assassin from shooting me in the back.’

I felt him pushing his perceptions through the Bond and taking a look for himself.

‘Why would he do this?’

‘That is a very good question, Skyguy,’ I thought as two teams of palace guards appeared on either side of the corridor. ‘It will be up to Scintel to find that out.’

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The queen scowled and sneered, her golden eyes blazing in anger as she watched the security holo from her throne.

I stood at the bottom step of her throne, head bowed, hands folded in front of me exactly as I should.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched the holo version of myself throw the glass mug, then sprint and completely demolish my assassin for the third time.

The room was almost bursting with ministers, officials and guards. It was also interesting to see that her government was actually a sixty/forty mix of male and female. I had figured that zygerrian society would be mostly skewed towards males being in positions of power, but that seemed to not be the case.

Scintel gestured to a black furred zygerrian, who immediately stepped forward. “Minister Koltal, your report,” she demanded.

“Yes, majesty. As you can see, we managed to recover the surveillance holo from the secondary backup after the primary was… lost. It would seem the secrecy with which I installed that system was most prudent.” Koltal’s blue eyes held a base cunning and was radiating satisfaction.

“You mean sabotaged,” Scintel sneered.

“Majesty, we are still investigating. It would not be wise to move forward on assumption. It may just have been a general fault in the system.”

“A fault?” she said in astonishment. “How can a fault happen at the perfect moment when an assassin tries to kill one of my slaves?!”

“Again, majesty. I’m investigating this personally, in the interest of speed. The Security Ministry will get to the truth of the matter.”

“What about the assassin?! Who was he?”

“Dos Goora, an aide working in the Agricultural Ministry.”

I could practically feel the astonishment rise in the room. All the ministers turned their heads as one to face a female zygerrian in elegant green robes with red fur. The panic and fear in her eyes was palpable.

“Minister Galdo, step forward,” Scintel ordered in a forbidding tone.

The apparent minister of agriculture swallowed nervously and obeyed, bowing, “Yes, majesty.”

“Can you explain why a member of your staff would so brazenly attack one of my slaves?”

“No, your majesty. I knew him only in a professional capacity. He was capable, always did his job, never stood out in any strange or significant fashion.”

“Yet somehow, he decided today that it was a good idea to carry an illegal, unregistered blaster in the palace and try to murder a royal slave. Minister Koltal, has the prisoner said anything in interrogation yet?”

“No, your highness. We have not had long to work on him, you understand. He has remained silent so far.”

“Step up your efforts,” the queen commanded. “What of the earlier incident?”

“We are still investigating the deceased royal slave’s quarters, majesty. When I have something to report, you will be the first to know.”

She nodded and addressed the whole room, “Everyone but the inner circle is to leave.” 

The doors to the throne room opened and most of the zygerrian government left with as much dignity as they could, but I could feel they dearly wished to run as fast as their legs could carry them. When the doors closed again, only two personal bodyguards and three other zygerrian ministers were left; Koltal, one brown furred female and a gray male.

Scintel slammed her fist on the armrest of her throne, “BY THE ANCESTORS! WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THIS CITY?!” Her temper practically exploded in the room. “Accident after accident! Delays and mistakes! It’s as if at some point over the past month, everyone’s brains have been replaced with taffel! Then a royal slave tries to assassinate me in the middle of a meeting with clients! Then an aide tries to kill the new royal slave that saved my life!”

I couldn’t help but be impressed at the lungs Scintel had. Her volume was slightly painful in my montrals, but I easily bore it.

What was more interesting to me was the first assassination attempt on her. I had assumed it was just an opportunistic action by the royal slave, but if that was not the case, if it was planned… That could either mean someone had subverted her or she was the equivalent of a deep cover operative that had been recruited from the start and I had the fortune to be at the exact time and place needed to intervene and save Scintel.

I cast my mind back in memory to my sense of Farsu in the Force. The degree of desperation in her emotions when she failed. She knew even if she succeeded that she would be dead. It was a suicide mission either way. Her sacrifice now meant nothing, it had achieved nothing, except putting fear in Scintel and increasing her paranoia.  

What about the use of a simple kitchen knife to do the deed? Any high level assassination conspiracy would find a way to smuggle a more effective weapon to Farsu. It felt sloppy, even amateurish, then again, it could be that the security around Scintel was tight enough that using an improvised weapon was the only choice.

“Majesty, are you sure you wish to have this discussion now?” The female minister glanced pointedly at me.

“Ralenn, I tolerate a lot from you because we’ve been friends since childhood, but please don’t insult me,” Scintel scowled. “If I was not satisfied with Atre, I would’ve dismissed her. If she was part of this plot, she would’ve been dead already. The only reason I’m alive now is because of her. Now, you’re my Intelligence Minister, be useful please.”

“Yes, majesty,” Ralenn bowed her head. “I have nothing to add to the immediate crisis, but I can tell you that there is definitely a mind at work behind the problems we’ve been experiencing in the city.”

“Someone is doing this?”

“Yes, majesty. It is nothing I can definitively prove as yet, but the timing of this assassation attempt is just too good. If we also look back on the accidents with the assumption that they were distractions and meant to tie up resources, then everything falls in place.”

“Careful Ralenn,” Koltal warned with a raised finger. “You could be falling into a trap of thinking exactly as our true opponent intends.”

“By the time we have your precious ‘evidence’, the enemy will have already succeeded!”

These two ministers continued their circular argument for quite a while and achieved no new revelation or insight, just continuing a bickering feud that seemed quite old. The so far silent gray furred minister just kept his arms folded and would occasionally roll his eyes and gaze at the ceiling as if he was praying to a deity to spare him.

“Enough, both of you,” Scintel made a furious swiping gesture of finality to shut both ministers up. “Minister Gadrad, you’ve been rather quiet. Don’t you have anything to add?”

He was the oldest zygerrian in the room and his auburn uniform hung loosely on his skinny frame. “I was just waiting for these two to finish with their foolishness, majesty.”

Ralenn scowled at the elder with annoyance. “It’s not foolishness, old one, it makes perfect sense!”

“For so long, our only enemy has been the slaves we keep under our boots,” Gadrad retorted in an almost serene fashion. “Yet now we’ve thrown in our lot with the CIS and we are thrust into a war on a scale not seen since the Ruusan Reformation. We think we are safe behind the armor of the CIS fleet on the front lines. We are far from the Core and the old enemy. We think they can’t reach us here.”

“From your tone, you clearly disagree.”

“It has been centuries since they fought us and brought us to our knees. Everything we’ve heard tells us they’ve stagnated in peace, but now they are in the second year of a war like no other. They stand at the head of an army of clones and starships. Yes, the CIS is fighting them and on occasion killing them, but they are again learning the lessons of old in the cauldron of war.”

Koltal scoffed, “The Jedi don’t have a subtle bone in their body. They fight in the open with those lightsabers of theirs. Assassinations and plots are not in their nature. Your majesty, ignore this doddering old fool.”

Gadrad merely smiled at the insult, taking it in his stride.

“On the latter point, I have to agree,” Scintel said eventually. “I recall from history, one of the central tenets of the Jedi was to only take life as a last resort.”

“Precisely,” Koltal smirked in triumph at his colleague.

“However, his point that the Jedi are now in a war has merit. The lessons from our own civil wars are clear, that rules and morality of old tend to fall out of mind when you are preoccupied with the survival of your side. Hurry with that interrogation, Koltal. We need answers. I don’t care how you get it.”

“Yes, your highness.”

“Dismissed.”

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Night fell and I found myself next to another version of Scintel’s throne, inside what was the Royal Box that overlooked a large arena slightly larger than a football field. There were no gentle sloping stands around it, but instead a cruel, absolutely sheer wall, meant to offer no chance for escape or comfort to whoever found themselves on the harsh stone floor of the arena.

A further nine glassed levels looked down on the space, and it was packed with spectators of every creed of zygerrian society, including aliens and other customers. The din of the crowds was allowed to blast throughout the structure as they eagerly awaited the beginning of the show.

 Naturally, Scintel wouldn’t be here without a plus one, and I didn’t count.

“What are we going to see, majesty?” Anakin asked with a polite eagerness. He was seated in a small chair next to her throne and she was being very forward about her raw interest in him. Her right hand idly caressing his left shoulder and her fingers ever so often combing through his long hair with affection.

“It is both auction and entertainment, Alad,” Scintel smiled, practically purring her words.

Inwardly, he was less than enthused about this attention, especially because he now also knew what deadly weapons were hidden under those nails.

A door opened up in the arena wall and a zygerrian ceremony conductor walked out to rapturous roars and eager applause. He carried a long staff in one hand and an electro whip hilt hooked on his belt.

Synchronized spotlights followed his movements, whilst the general lighting of the arena dimmed somewhat.

The conductor shouted, his voice carried by the microphone embedded in his staff and carried over a PA system that echoed through the arena, “Your highness! Zygerrians! Guests from a thousand worlds! Welcome to the Grand Arena of Grezrana!” 

The crowd roared in excitement and appreciation.

“This auction begins first with a demonstration, slaves of high quality fighting each other. I give you, devaronians!”

The large arena gate rose upward and a tall hulking, pink skinned devaronian, walked out. He only wore boots, tight black shorts and carried a long wooden staff. He roared in defiance to the crowd, brandishing the staff as a weapon.

Following him was another devaronian, this one more red skinned and he carried two small bo staffs in either hand. He also shouted and showed off towards the roaring crowd, thumping his muscled chest and expertly twirling his weapons.

The two slaves squared off against each other in the middle of the arena, doing flashy twirls and showing off in general, even trying to intimidate.

I could see both were actually quite skilled in the fighting craft by the way they moved. They could’ve been efficient in their movements, but they also had to impress.

The conductor stepped away far enough so he would be well out of range, should both slaves decide he would be a better target. “Ready? Begin!”

The crowd roared as battle was joined.

The two devaronians pitted their strength and weapons against each other with rapid ferocity, the rapid clashes of wood against wood, fist against flesh, sounds which was also being broadcast over the PA system.

A staff naturally had less speed and flexibility, but it hit harder than the two small bo staffs.

The two fighters also had good technique, but I had seen and experienced far better.

Mr. Pink accepted the rapid hits from his opponent, using the staff to deflect one and his arm the other, whilst stepping inside Mr. Red’s guard.

A knee to the stomach doubled his opponent over and a rapid twist of the same leg, caused his ankle to smash into Mr. Red’s face.

Mr. Red fell back, nearly losing his weapons in the process and shaking his head to clear out the cobwebs.

Pink should have followed up immediately, but he paused and allowed his opponent to recover.

“They’re pretty good,” Anakin observed as the battle restarted.

“Both have been trained since childhood in various arts of battle,” Scintel explained with pride in her voice. “What we are seeing is just a minor taste, since they can’t damage each other significantly. It is up to the buyers to use them as they see fit.”

“So they could be used as professional fighters.”

“That is one possibility,” she nodded. “Or even in your profession, Alad.”

“A slave fixer,” Anakin tested the idea. “Well, as long as they have some form of implant it could work, as a final insurance. At what age did they become slaves?”

“Eight years old, I believe.”

“Yes, an implant is needed in that case.”

The fight in the arena lasted for another four minutes. It ended with Mr. Pink trapping his opponent in a submission move that reminded me of a Figure 4 Leg Lock. 

The conductor tapped both fighters with his own staff and it was the signal for the end of the bout as Mr. Pink released his opponent immediately.

The crowd roared in appreciation.

I stiffened as I felt the probability lines shift.

A chirping sound from Scintel’s throne stopped her from getting even more grabby with Anakin. She tapped a button, allowing a small holo of Minister Koltal to appear in front of her.

“Minister? Why are you contacting me? I was in the middle of something.”

“This can’t wait, majesty. I need you to leave the arena at once for your own safety. We managed to get the aide to talk somewhat, but he took his own life with a suicide pill embedded in a tooth. There is going to be an attack of some kind on the auction!”

“Minister, do you have any idea how it would look if I abandoned the auction to our clients? Do you have nothing more specific?”

“No, your majest-”

I felt the floor under my feet heave and shudder.

At last, with a worthy excuse in hand, I dove to the floor as the transparisteel covering the front of the Royal Box shattered.

The concussion came next and I used the Force to create a dampening kinetic shield around my montrals.

Anakin had also reacted, grabbing a screaming Scintel out of her throne, falling to the floor and covering her with his body.

“We need to move!” he shouted.

I dove forward from the floor, slamming my hand onto the control panel.

Naturally, it didn’t work and the floor underneath my body began tilting as the entire Royal Box threatened to tear itself off from its supports.

I slammed my hand down again, this time using the Force to push the door into its recess.

Anakin and I grabbed Scintel underneath her arms and we threw ourselves forward into the adjoining corridor.

The shriek of tearing durasteel, followed by crumbling stone heralded the Royal box finally giving up the ghost and falling down the 23 meters to the arena floor.

“Where are my guards?” gasped Scintel as we lay on the floor.

She was right, there should’ve always been at least two royal bodyguards outside the door. Now there was no one and the rubble strewn corridor was only filled with dust from the explosion.

“We need to move,” Anakin said urgently, jumping to his feet and helping her up.

“Wait! Incoming!” I snapped a warning, getting my feet under me. I felt four zygerrians rushing towards our position, but their emotions were all wrong for royal guards trying to protect or rescue their liege. “Two that side and two coming from the other direction.”

Anakin sensed it as well and shoved Scintel to the side, forcing her to kneel, “Keep your head down!”

I grabbed two hand sized pieces of fallen duracrete and burst into a sprint down the corridor.

My arms reared back and I threw both pieces forward, giving them as subtle a boost with the Force as I could afford.

Two armed and masked zygerrians in lower ranked guard uniforms, brandishing their weapons, had just enough time to turn the corner before my improvised projectiles smashed into their chests.

“ARGHH!”

Their preoccupation with their pain meant I was easily able to close the distance.

I rolled forward and flowed into a leg sweep of the first assassin, who crashed onto his back, accidentally firing off his blaster into the ceiling in the process.

Flinging myself forward, a rapid pair of strikes to his chest and jaw left him with broken ribs, cheek, concussion and I finished him off with a Force Sleep.

The second assassin was recovering at this point, trying to bring his blaster to bear.

I surged forward, slapping the weapon aside and lifted my left leg into a kick straight between his legs.

The pain doubled him over, only for his face to meet my rising knee and send him flopping backward into unconsciousness with a dislocated jaw and broken nose.

I whirled around to see Anakin had also dispatched the other would-be assassins with little issue and was arming himself with both their blaster pistols.

It was so tempting for me to do the same, but I had a cover to keep. Only Scintel could give me permission to pick up a weapon.

The queen was still in some shock, but managed to get onto her own feet and walked closer to the masked assassins. I hurried back to her and saw her staring at the masked faces with an appalled recognition.

“This is impossible,” she muttered, shaking her head.

“What is? Do you recognize them?” Anakin asked urgently.

The masks were mostly white, but had a rather exaggerated, stylized rendition of a zygerrian face painted on them.

“Yes, but it will take too long to explain. We need to get out of here… and you can’t take me back to the palace.”

He frowned, “You think they’re waiting for you to try that.”

Scintel coughed as she inhaled some dust, “Argh, yes. Alad, I’m hiring you, I’ll give you an extra thousand credit discount per slave if you become my mercenary and help me with this.”

‘Snips?’ Anakin thought, his eyes not leaving the queen’s.

‘Do it, master. Whoever these assassins are, we’re clearly in the middle of a conspiracy of sorts aimed at Scintel and the current government. If they fall, it means we can’t buy back the kirosian colonists.’

“All right, highness. You’ve got my services. What about Atre?”

The queen stared at me, clearly debating with herself. “Atre, you’re clearly trained to defend yourself and your owner. Does that include blasters?”

“Yes mistress,” I confirmed.

“Give her the other blaster,” Scintel ordered.

Anakin handed the weapon over, hilt first. “Now, majesty. Do you know of a place where we can hide and regroup with my colleague?”

“Yes, but I first need to disguise myself, keep an eye on the corridors.” She ripped off her elegant long dress and knelt to begin stripping one of the assassins. Being a guy, he naturally couldn’t help giving her a long look before turning around and covering the corridor with the blaster.

‘Snips, are we seeing the beginning of a civil war?’

‘Maybe, Skyguy. Future is really in flux at the moment,’ I shook my head in frustration. How annoying, the zygerrians were well on their way to splintering without any help from us it seemed.

HK was going to be so disappointed. 

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A/N: Happy Friday. Have a great weekend and stay awesome folks.

The Force Wills - Chapter 103

My bootjets flared as I landed on top of the AAT.

Lightsabers slashed downward, cutting through the hatch.

A Force Pull sent the hatch flying away, exposing the B1 droids inside.

“Hey, that’s rude,” the B1 objected in its nasal mechanical tone.

My only reply was to arm and drop a thermal detonator into the tank.

One Force Jump upward later, I flared my armor’s jets to gain horizontal velocity.

A jet of fire shot up from the AAT as the interior was destroyed, then the entire tank bulged outward as internal munitions and volatile power sources cooked off.

Gravity reclaimed it as the repulsors failed and a loud thump of wrecked durasteel meeting earth echoed in the street. 

A twist of the Force, combined with the thrust of my armor, brought me into a brief flight to land next to the ARC squad’s position where they were taking cover behind a building.

They were already rising and surging down the street with raised weapons, scanning and securing it.

I landed next to Rex, “And that’s all the tanks down,” I sighed wearily.

“Thank you, commander. Wish we could’ve been more help, but these new droidekas-”

I held up a hand, “I understand, captain. No need for that.”

The sniper droidekas were nasty. They only had a single centrally mounted gun, but the fire rate was crazy high for such a weapon, add their shields and the only way for an ARC trooper to take them out reliably was the RPS-6 missile launchers meant for tanks. After nearly six hours of battle throughout the settlement, every missile had long since been expended.

But now, it was thankfully over.

I looked up at the central colony building of the settlement that towered over the entire place.

It stood nearly twenty stories tall and was the only building that still had elements of industrial mass production still visible, though the colonists had gone to great lengths to try to hide the sharp lines. In a rather self-aggrandizing gesture, the top part of the building had been capped by a sculpture that mimicked the prominent pointy montrals that most male togruta had.

It was almost vulgar and I really wanted to question the artist responsible and Governor Roshti about their thinking in allowing that.

“All right, only the colony administration building left, with droids and the zygerrian inside. I want a perimeter around it, we’ll regroup and assault in ten minutes after the men catch their breath.”

“Roger, commander,” Rex said and began issuing orders into his comlink.

The whine of thrust from the sky heralded Anakin coming in for a landing nearby.

“Ahsoka, all bombs subverted. If he tries to detonate, nothing will happen,” he said.

I breathed a sigh of relief, “Excellent, now we at least won’t all die in a fire-”

“Mistress,” M8 interrupted me and my HUD began displaying a radiograph analysis. “I’m detecting a signal coming from the colony building, unencrypted and broadbeam. I believe it’s from the enemy.”

“Anything nasty in that transmission?”

“Analyzing… nothing, mistress. It is safe to accept.”

Anakin nodded and tapped the controls on his gauntlet.

The full body holo of a zygerrian male appeared in front of us. They were a felinoid species and this one had brown hair that was just beginning to gray. Silver eyes glared at us and he was dressed in a navy blue uniform with light gold accents, which formed an elaborate triangle on his chest. Further elaborate accouterments on the uniform clearly indicated a high rank, some of which was made of auridium. Even his belt, which was festooned with pouches, was made of the stuff, though it was clearly plated.

“Jedi Skywalker,” said the zygerrian in a listing accented Basic. “You can enter the colony tower. My droids will not attack. We will negotiate terms for… surrender.” 

Anakin scowled briefly, anger rising, but managed to get it under control. “Very well. And to whom am I speaking?”

“Commander Darts D’nar of the Zygerrian Empire.”

“Should that not rather be of the Confederation of Independent Systems?” I retorted pointedly.

D’nar turned to me and frowned with confusion briefly, “Ah, no, Commander Tano, you think we’ve given up our sovereignty? Nothing could be further from the truth.”

“If you say so, D’nar,” I said skeptically.

“We will come up to negotiate,” Anakin continued smoothly. “Any treachery will mean forfeiture of this temporary truce and immediate resumption of hostilities.”

D’nar simply nodded his head, then cut the connection.

“Let’s go and meet our kind host. Rex, we’ll be sending out visual and audio feeds from our armors to you, make sure you’re ready to act.”

“Yes, general.”

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The first floor of the colony building was a general mess.

The lobby was strewn with baggage; suitcases, backpacks, sling bags. All of it filled with clothes and other personal items. It was as if the colonists had decided they were going on a field trip. Yet everything was nearly piled to the ceiling alongside the walls…

“What is this?” Anakin frowned.

“More than likely they were told they would be relocated for their own safety until the war’s end, so they packed. Despite being a bunch of artists, they are still togruta and they would have resisted or at least scattered into the wilderness if they knew they were going into slavery.”

“Bunch of hutt-spawn,” he swore, as we approached and entered the central elevator.

The grav lift carried us up swiftly and soon enough the doors opened up to the highest floor.

Most of it was dedicated to the governor’s office and administrative archives. It was a wide open plan office, with very little furniture, a singular integrated wooden desk that looked like it was grown out of the floor. Behind this desk was a massive slab of transparisteel that gave a breathtaking view of both the settlement, the surrounding grasslands and distant mountains. That view alone was worth capturing as a terminal desktop wallpaper and it seemed the governor agreed as he had traditional painting equipment to one side of his desk.

Sitting behind this desk was D’nar himself, who had his feet contemptuously rested on it. He was also feeding a kirosian bird that was perched eagerly on his shoulder and pecking at seed in his hand.

Four armed commando droids flanked the desk, including a tactical droid standing behind D’nar’s chair.

“Welcome, Master Jedi,” he graciously gestured with palms to the ceiling. “Come let us talk of your surrender.”

We walked straight forward to stand in front of the desk and Anakin pulled off his helmet, tucking it underneath his arm. “Our surrender? Surely you’re misunderstanding, D’nar. Your droid forces are down to a mere handful. If we wanted to come in here by force, nothing you have would be able to stop us.”

“You’ve broken through some of my defenses, yes, but not all of them. Don’t think you’ve won, Master Jedi,” D’nar sneered. “I have planted bombs all over the settlement. At a gesture from me, the bombs will detonate and no one will survive.”

“You’re willing to die to your own bombs?” Anakin scowled.

“I’m not stupid, Jedi,” he sneered in return. “They are precisely calibrated to obliterate everything around the colony building, but leave it intact. Your precious clone troopers will all die. The city, the life work of the togruta, gone.” The commando droids raised their blaster pistols and unsheathed vibroblades from their backs. “Now you will bow down and surrender to me.”

“I sense you tell the truth,” Anakin said grimly.

“I do, how convenient, but I think a demonstration is still in order,” he made a beckoning gesture to the tactical droid.

The droid tapped a datapad…

I folded my hands behind me, then began using my eyes to interface with my HUD.

D’nar frowned and swiveled his seat to look at the tac droid, “What are you doing? Detonate!”

“I did send the signal, commander,” the droid reported in a monotone. “There is a response signal, it should be working. All bombs are online.”

“Problem, D’nar?” Anakin asked with a smirk.

The zygerrian whirled around, “What did you do?!”

Anakin chuckled, “You got sloppy. I’m not about to explain how to an enemy, but we found them and altered them to no longer respond to your commands. So you see, it is in fact, you who are trapped and are in no position to negotiate terms but your full unconditional surrender.”

I fired off a Whistling Bird munition, which separated into submunitions and crossed the room in the blink of an eye.

The commando droids sparked briefly as the projectiles burrowed into their chassis and exploded.

All four toppled onto the ground, sparking and twitching.

D’nar surged to his feet, drawing a blaster and aiming it alternately at both of us. I had to give him some credit here, he had mastered his panic and fear very quickly at the sudden disappearance of his trump card. He also had something else he was hiding behind his back in his left hand that he had gotten there through some pretty good prestidigitation. 

“It’s over, D’nar.”

His sharp teeth gritted fiercely, “It’ll never be over-”

He froze, becoming as stiff as a statue, unable to speak and his eyes rolled frantically in panic.

Anakin huffed in annoyance, “Snips, what did you do that for?”

I glared at him, “Never let a bad guy monologue. He was stalling.” I hurried around the desk and once I was behind D’nar, wrenched the device he was holding out of his hand. “See,” I held up the small detonator. 

The Darksaber was lit in my hand and held against the tac droid’s neck the next moment. “Drop the datapad.”

The droid properly calculated that it had no chance or gambit left to pull off against two Jedi in close proximity and obeyed.

“Thank you.”

My wrist flicked and the droid’s head came off. No point in letting it conclude that it should also activate an internal self-destruct. Tac droids generally wouldn’t unless it was absolutely clear that rescue or recovery by the CIS was impossible.

Anakin disarmed D’nar by pulling on the blaster pistol. “What was he trying to set off?”

I regarded the zygerrian’s detonator for a moment, probing it with technometry. “A separate bomb.” I turned over the chassis of the tac droid and found a small backpack with a baradium explosive inside. “Looks like his last attempt to distract or even kill us all.”

Anakin walked up to D’nar, “He doesn’t feel the fanatical type in that mind of his. He really hates Jedi though, it’s all over his surface thoughts and emotions.” He tapped his comlink. “Rex, it’s over. I need a prisoner escort detail here.”

“On our way, general.”

I picked up the tac droid’s head, placed it on the table upside down and carefully looked for any point M8 could use for a direct interface.

“M8, visual analysis only, are you seeing any interface points?”

“None, mistress. This is clearly an improved model. I’m not even detecting a wireless receiver. The droid will need to be shipped to the Resolute and an interface welded in place on the severed neck circuitry.”

I looked up, just in time to see Anakin poke D’nar on the forehead. The zygerrian’s eyes rolled upward and he fell into a deep sleep.

“Nicely done, Skyguy.” I smirked and released the Stasis.

D’nar collapsed into an uncomfortable heap of limbs.

He shrugged modestly but smirked at the compliment, “Let’s get R2. I’m eager to go and see that ship of his.”

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The next half day was spent doing intelligence legwork.

Most of Resolute’s Intelligence division was either gathering evidence on the ground, working through Governor Roshti’s files and going through D’nar’s ship with a fine tooth comb.

They did this with some alacrity since we didn’t know when a Separatist fleet would show up.

I eventually called it and ordered everyone off the surface of Kiros, whilst Anakin personally flew D’nar’s Aurore class freighter, which had the wonderful name of Punisher, to land in the Resolute’s forward bays.

D’nar himself was currently enjoying his new accommodations on the Detention level with a prison jumpsuit, gruel for food and I was letting RI have the first try at interrogating him.

Resolute and her single Acclamator escort left orbit and used a microjump to rejoin the fleet in their hiding spot in the Oort Cloud.

“All right, tell me we have some good news.”

Anakin, R2, Chewie and Yularen looked up at my entrance to Briefing Room One.

The large holotank was currently displaying a massive high detail rendering of the local sector, overlaid with hyperspace routes, major space-time gradients and all major gravitational sources.

“That we do, Snips,” Anakin nodded, tapping on the holotank controls to display a brand new hyperspace route.

I frowned at the holotank, “It looks like it goes straight from Genassa on the Cenalon Spur, meanders south, avoids a few nasty black holes and pulsars, before terminating right here in Kiros.”

“It’s a new hyperspace route,” Chewie growled.

Something about the way he said it and his emotions clued me in that he was actually being literal when he said that.

“Wait, Chewie, are you saying that this isn’t something they found on an old ancient chart somewhere?” Anakin asked.

The wookiee nodded and pointed at the new route, “You can see it in the way the route is drawn. It’s sloppy, inefficient. See here, they could’ve avoided taking this route around this neutron star entirely if they had just gone two lightyears z negative here. It was like they just bashed their skulls forward through the galaxy in the most direct manner towards the Hydian and when they found resistance, flowed around it.”

“Undoubtedly losing ships every time they did that,” Yularen shook his head incredulously.

“In war, the usual rules stop applying eventually. Necessity certainly has a unique way of breaking the barriers we consciously and subconsciously build for ourselves. They need to break the stalemates in the battlespaces, well, this is certainly one way to do it,” I said with exasperation, my mind trying to tally the credits worth of ships and droids that would’ve been lost. The computing power and time required to forge a path through hyperspace from scratch. You couldn’t just use tiny scout ships. You needed at least a frigate, to house all of the specialist astrometric sensors. The number crunching also meant you either had to send the data back planetside or bring the computers with you, which meant bumping up the ship sizes to a cruiser.   

My com link chimed for attention, it was the bridge. “Yes, Comms?”

“Commander, incoming transmission from Shili for you. It’s… from Regasa Yovet.”

My back seemed to shiver slightly. “Lieutenant, that’s the subchannel ID? The Queen of the United Tribes is calling me?”

“Yes, commander. The aide I spoke to indicates she wants to speak to you personally.”

My hands seemed to automatically move towards my neck, so I could pull off my helmet but I consciously stopped myself.

I stepped over to the other side of the holotank, working at a terminal where I could properly isolate the holo to only scan me into the transmission.

“Send it to Briefing One.”

“Yes, commander.”

The gazes of my friends, mentors, companions and master felt particularly acute as I worked at the terminal. My hand paused briefly at the final tap which would connect the transmission. I cleared my throat and banished the nerves surging up and down my spine. Why was I feeling this way? I had not sworn myself to her, she wasn’t technically my sovereign at all, yet… She spoke for my race in this galaxy and guided it.

I pushed my finger down and stepped back, keeping my arms down at my side.

The symbol of the Shili royal family appeared briefly before the holo was resolved and Queen Yovet herself was rendered full body.

She was in her late sixties, which was generally considered mid-life for togruta who lived on Shili. Her montrals had a prominent upward slant and curved beautifully like horns inward, nearly five times the size of my own, her lekku hung down almost to her waist, with tattoo patterns that were extremely elaborate and complex. It would take almost a few weeks to do if you had a dedicated artist working on it. Her face, in contrast, was simple, with red skin and her forehead covered in white ovals with red diamonds inside. Her crown of golden akul teeth sat prominently on her head.

As befitting of a queen, her outfit was a long, elaborate golden yellow dress that accentuated and emphasized a figure that was quite attractive, but was now beginning to show hints of age. She also visibly wore no shoes, as was traditional.

“Regasa Yovet,” I greeted her, bowing in Jedi fashion.

“Commander Tano,” she said with a raised brow, her eyes clearly assessing my appearance and what it communicated. “We are eager to hear your report of the situation in Kiros.”

“Yes Regasa, we have some preliminary findings and intelligence. No contact with any enemy fleet as yet. We did have to fight a ground action against a landed force of war droids within the Kiros colony.”

“I see, has there been many casualties among the colonists?”

My hands briefly closed into fists before I consciously relaxed them. “Regasa, I’m afraid to report that all the colonists of Kiros, have been forcibly abducted from their settlement by the CIS, at the direction of the Zygerrian Empire, who are now part of the Separatists.”

My senses were already there around Yovet as she stood in the throne room of the palace. I could see the reaction of the ministers and royal family. I felt her initial disbelief, astonishment and anger, before rationality kicked in. Her face was implacable as she studied me intently.

“The Regasa should also be aware of a new hyperspace lane terminus that now exists in the Kiros system, the other side of which is in the Genassa system, a full sector inside CIS space on the Celanon Spur. This is how the enemy fleet arrived in the system behind Republic defenses. We will be sending you the full data on it momentarily. ”

She didn’t respond for a very long few moments and I could see the ministers around her babbling, arguing and generally acting like headless chicken. The only exceptions were two togruta in senior military naval uniforms who were whispering to each other. 

Finally, Yovet made a flat gesture with her hand, glaring at everyone.

They quickly shut up and now that she could hear herself think, she said, “Commander, we would ask you to also send all data on the colony’s current condition. We believe you, but we will need proof for those who would not wish to see this as fact. How do you know that it was the zygerrians?”

“We have the zygerrian responsible for coordinating the abduction in custody, Regasa. He’s undergoing interrogation now. His ship’s flight log and database clearly show the Separatists loading the colonists forcibly onto Hardcell transports.”

“Therefore we are to assume that the colonists have been taken back to zygerrian space through this new hyperspace lane.”

“He has proudly admitted to it already, Regasa. The kirosian colonists are just the first slaves they intend to take with the CIS backing them up, rebuilding the old slave operation they had.”

“What does the CIS get in return?”

“That information, he has not yet disclosed, Regasa. I can only guess at the moment that it’s zygerrian troops for the war effort. Their military capabilities were smashed by the Jedi, but it’s highly possible they’ve regained some measure of it by now.”

The queen nodded regally in understanding, “Commander Tano, I am sending you six cruisers from the Royal Fleet. We can not allow another enemy fleet to slip past you and into the Hydian. The fleet that is already there has not shown itself yet, but it’s only a matter of time.”

It would definitely be nice to have more firepower on my side. “Thank you, Regasa.”

“You will not thank me for my next action. I’ve studied your war record commander and while you’d be an asset in the fleet action against the enemy, we still have over fifty thousand togrutans that have been kidnapped into slavery. That is unacceptable and cannot be allowed to stand.”

“I agree, Regasa.”

“Good, which is why we’re going to request the Jedi Council send you and whoever else they deem appropriate to lead a rescue mission as soon as possible.”

Oh yes, Regasa, infiltrate all the way into the Separatist north-east, find thousands of togruta and hope they haven’t been scattered all over Zygerria yet. Steal a ship that can hold all 50 000 of them and smuggle them out of the CIS without being detected. Coming right up, Regasa. For my next trick, I’ll fight Sidious in a lightsaber duel and slap him around easily.

Naturally, I didn’t voice those thoughts.

“Consider it done, Regasa.”

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With confirmation and coordinates of the new hyperlane, the Republic was racing with whatever ships it could gather on short notice. The first of those arrived two days later with Obi-Wan’s Negotiator at the head of a full squadron of Gun Acclamators and another three Bastion cruisers in support.

“Well, I’m here, tell me you’ve got a plan,” Obi-Wan said wryly as he walked into Briefing Room One.

Anakin and I looked up from the mess of datapads containing a plethora of intelligence reports that we were barely keeping track of.

“The beginning of one,” Anakin confirmed. “Ahsoka’s managed to pull more up to date intel from our captive zygerrian and based on that, we’re pretty sure we can now manage an infiltration. That’s the easy part. The hard part is this.”

He brought up a galactic map of the far north-east, at this resolution a large portion was dedicated to Wild space and the outskirts of the galaxy itself.

“Here is Zygerria, sitting on the crossroads of the Listehol Run and the Shaltin Tunnel hyperlanes. It acts as a southern gateway to the Cantonica Cluster and joins up with the far northern end of the Hydian.” He tapped a few buttons on the holotank and another system nine hundred light years east was highlighted. “This is Kadavo in Wild Space. It’s the primary slave processing center that the zygerrians use.”

Obi-Wan nodded, “Makes sense, their homeworld is the market, it will only house representative samples of the slaves on offer. Keep the ugly business of housing millions of slaves out of sight and mind on another less pleasant world.”

“We are already busy reconfiguring D’nar ship. Using it we will pose as slavers and gain landing clearance on Zygerria.”

Obi-Wan frowned, “To what end? If the kirosian slaves are on Kadavo…”

Anakin scowled at me briefly, “We’re going to purchase roughly eighty thousand slaves on the Zygerrian market.”

“Oh,” the Jedi Master folded his arms, caressing his beard in thought, “You’re thinking of making such a large purchase that the zygerrians will solve the logistical problems for you.”

“D’nar has revealed that any purchase above seventy thousand slaves, will mean the Zygerrian Empire will arrange for bulk cargo ships to be procured as a valued added service to the client, which they can now do easily thanks to their alliance with the CIS,” I explained.

“So you’ll buy the kirosian slaves and fly them out then? Forgive me, but I doubt that any of our ships have enough liquid funds available for such a purchase, even if we pool it all.”

“Yes, which is where the togruta government comes in. Regasa Yovet has offered to cover eighty percent of the purchase amount, if the Republic contributes to the remaining balance. We can just about cover it with a percentage of the funds of all the gathered Venators and Acclamators of this fleet, without crippling each unit financially.”

I picked up a datapad and walked over to the holotank, tapping on the controls to bring up various displays from Republic Intelligence.

“Naturally, we’re just going to use the money to get the ball rolling. We will not be contributing one credit to their coffers at the end of this. It’s one thing to rescue the togruta, but we want to also cripple the zygerrians on the way out and Regasa Yovet wants a message to be sent.”

“How?”

“Now that’s where this becomes rather… interesting.”

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Traveling through the new hyperspace route took barely a day in the Punisher, but most of it I spent in the emptied cargo hold in meditation, wrestling with myself into letting go of the stupid pride and guilt that I was leaving behind the fleet.

Admiral Yularen was perfectly qualified and experienced to defend Kiros and plug the hole the CIS had poked. When that elusive CIS fleet finally showed itself, he would be ready and able to turn them into space debris.

That was easy to say, but it was another thing entirely to conquer my own feelings on the matter.

We emerged from hyperspace in Genassa, where a combination of R2’s magic with a hologram and D’nar’s access codes got us straight through the CIS fleet that was watching over the emergence point.

It wasn’t particularly large, a wolfpack of six Munificents that we could easily roll over with the fleet in Kiros. The problem was it would be a deep strike at best and unless the Republic could roll over the Ord Mantell battlespace, any Republic fleet pushing in would be at the end of a very thin supply line.

A two hour jump to Ithor later, we were on the CIS side of the Celenanon Spur hyperlane.

Two days of travel followed, where our only source of connection back to Republic space became the public Holonet. We couldn’t afford for any GAR equipment to possibly compromise our cover. Our lightsabers were concealed within R2’s scanner proof smuggling compartments and Anakin and Obi-Wan now carried common blaster pistols and wore suitably fancy clothes befitting their new stations.

For Chewie and myself, that was a far different story. Both of us had to pretend to be ‘samples’ of slaves for sale and so we had to dress the part.

Not something to look forward to, so we put it off for as long as possible.

Systems passed by such as Agamar, Shaum Hii, Vinsoth, and we finally returned to the Hydian Way at the Thesme system, avoiding the back and forth battlespace of Celanon and Botajef.

We followed the Hydian north-east for two days, until we reached Listehol and turned south, now racing along the Listehol Run hyperlane for another thirty six hours.

At last, the Punisher emerged from hyperspace in the Zygerria system.

Only to immediately have to take evasive action to avoid running into a large freighter.

The hyperspace point closest to the planet was doing a fair imitation of Coruscant traffic.

Ships of all sizes and types were coming and going towards Zygerria and a very frantic traffic controller immediately hailed the Punisher with instructions for a parking orbit and that we were 23rd in the queue to land.

“Popular place,” Anakin commented from the pilot seat. He and Obi-Wan were dressed in an ostentatious semi-armored outfit of purple, gold and browns, ostensibly representing a very wealthy buyer on the fringes of Republic space who wanted to remain anonymous in his purchase of a slave workforce.

“These ships are practically from every part of the galaxy,” Obi-Wan grimaced. “Clearly word of the zygerrians return to the business of slavery has been spread through the criminal underworld.”  

“Well, we’re just going to disappoint them all, won’t we,” Anakin smirked, then looked at me. “Comfy, Snips?”

I gave him a slight glare and raised my left brow, folding my arms, “It actually is, believe it or not,” I said with an airy dignity.

My ‘slave’ outfit was basically a thin, blue thong panty, with a forward triangle that just covered enough, whilst the strings radiated outward before dividing into two thinner strings on my hips. Over this was a gossamer thin transparent loincloth that hung in front and over my butt. My breasts were covered by two thumb-width blue cloth strips that snaked down from a jeweled choker around my neck, before they were secured by a thin golden string tied around my chest. It barely provided any support and I did not look forward to having to run or fight in this barely-there outfit. Completing the look was a green jewel encrusted auridium plated akul-teeth tiara that I wore over my montrals, which was suitably gaudy, along with golden sandals on my feet.

Making the outfit with the Resolute’s quartermaster had been a very embarrassing experience, though his expertise using the fabricators to make the jewelry had been an eye-opening surprise. Perhaps there was some promise that the clones could find civilian occupations after the war… if all went well.

“You should not be taking on such a role, Ahsoka,” Chewie grunted next to me. He was back to full au naturel wookie, with only his utility sash hung from around his left shoulder and a fake shock collar around his neck. “Only I should be playing the role of slave on this mission.”

I shook my head, “There’s no way I’m allowing that to happen, Chewie. You know the plan.”

He grunted in acknowledgement, but it was clear he didn’t like the idea.

It took another eighty odd minutes before we were allowed to descend into the atmosphere of Zygerria and given a landing pad on the outskirts of the capital city.

It was located on a huge flat plateau, which was carved out of the largest mountain I had ever seen so far in the galaxy. It reminded me of Olympus Mons on Mars, except flatter and shallower in the atmosphere. It was so large that if you didn’t have scanners to provide the big picture, you’d think you were simply landing on a higher elevation of the planet’s normal curvature.

The entire city was over 331 square kilometers, home to nearly five million sentients and stretched to either side of our vision as we came in to land on the outskirts. It was surrounded by a stupendously tall wall that seemed like both an external defense against conventional land assault and a way of keeping people inside it.

There was no anti-air or space weaponry that I could see but it could be cunningly hidden - the buildings on the inside near the walls were certainly big enough for that.

The Punisher’s nacelles swiveled into landing configuration, legs extending from around the thruster exhausts. The rumble of those engines were so nostalgic and pleasantly resonated in my montrals - reminding me of all those chemical rockets that ascended into the heavens from old Earth. These old engines weren’t completely chem based, but were an ultra-efficient hybrid of chemical and limited fusion propulsion, with the inertial dampeners canceling out the majority of the ship’s effective mass.

I shook my head out of geeky mechanic mode and slipped on a gray robe and hood.

Anakin and Obi-Wan put on their own rather ridiculous flared headdresses that also doubled to mask their faces somewhat. The final effect was to make them look like the royal guards of a random rich planet somewhere in the galaxy. Our cover story was fleshed out significantly more, but hopefully we wouldn’t need to actually use it completely to achieve our objectives.

The massive angular front nose of the ship split open and the wide embarkation ramp meant to load large volumes of cargo ran outward.

R2, Anakin and Obi-Wan led the way down it, with myself and Chewie walking a few meters behind, our heads slightly bowed in an outward display of subservience.

The temperature was rather hot, with the sun hanging directly overhead with few clouds that could provide shade.

When we were far enough, R2 sent the signal and the Punisher locked itself down completely.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw other ships landed in the distance and hunchbacked groups of slaves, easily numbering from fifty to two hundred being led out from the city towards the waiting transports.    

As we approached the massive gates set in the city walls, it was rather curious that those massive durasteel gates were wide open, there was no visible security checking or regulating entrance rights. D’nar had said that there was an ‘open door’ policy in effect, customers coming were generally invited and advised that if they were to break any zygerrian law, that they would forfeit their freedom and become the product that was sold.

In the first street just beyond the gate, we got our first look at how they built and my first impression was one of color. The city walls were all painted a deep blue, with elaborate patterns, some of which clearly represented slaves in bondage. The buildings were all variations of layered pyramids.

Speeders were the primary form of conveyance, but many streets seemed only designed for pedestrians.

We didn’t have long to walk to enter our first market and it was here that I spotted someone being transported by an actual rickshaw being pulled by a burly twi’lek slave.

Then the first stall we saw featured a zygerrian selling kowakian monkey lizards that were trained to fight each other. He even had two of the small semi-sentient creatures on a proportionally sized stage that were dueling each other with daggers. A bunch of potential customers were eagerly watching and shouting encouragement.

The din of the market and shouting sellers grew only louder from here.

There were exotic food stalls, art, sculptures, jewelry, clothing, electronics… it was a bazaar of everything. About the only thing not on offer were actual finished hand weaponry, but the components for them were there. Behind each stall was a zygerrian seller, usually with a slave nearby working on the wares.

The first actual slave ‘shop’ was a small affair, featuring a handful of twi’leks.

The customer was a Trade Federation neimoidian judging from his rank and attire. A rutian blue twi’lek female was being presented to him by two zygerrians. She was only wearing a loincloth bikini in black. It was almost exactly the style that Jabba had forced on Leia in the future-that-was. She was also quite beautiful, with a face and body that would see her being a model in the Core Worlds, but now it was a curse to her.

The slave's entire demeanor spoke of her being new, her head bowed in shyness, fear and humiliation. 

At the next intersection we had to pause to allow a group of two dozen male twi’lek slaves walking in formation to pass in front of us. Their clothes were stained with the sweat of manual labor, including splotches of paint and plaster. All of them were huffing and puffing with exhaustion and I could sense their general medical condition as extremely poor, with mineral deficiencies that came from little food or a poor diet.

One slave collapsed before our eyes.

The zygerrian master, wearing an auburn gold uniform of their city guard, who was in charge of the detail immediately spotted it and halted the procession, charging through them.

“Get up! Move! This is no time to be sleeping, scum!”

The male twi’lek who was in the middle ages for their race, struggled and pushed himself up onto his knees. “Please, master…” he gasped. “I can’t…”

“Tell it to my whip!”

The zygerrian produced an ornate hilt from his belt holster, which extended into a loose physical whip, but immediately energized into a glowing orange and crackled with electric energy.

It twirled through the air and snapped on the back of the twi’lek slave, delivering a punishing charge.

“Aaaah!”

He fell forward immediately on his face and began twitching.

“Get up!” the master snarled, bringing the whip down again and again.

I glared at the zygerrian from underneath my robe’s cowl, before reaching out with the Force, making sure to give no twitch or outward mnemonic sign. 

The master pulled back on the whip to deliver another hit, but my intervention nudged the trailing thong and cracker just enough that it clipped him right on the neck.

The zygerrian didn’t even make a sound as the electric charge thundered through his body instantly, freezing every muscle to contract painfully and he fell to join his own slave on the hot surface of the street, twitching.

The nearby twi’lek slaves gasped in shock and immediately tried to make as much distance as possible from the scene of the incident, but another zygerrian master at the head of the column, this one wearing a navy blue version of their uniform intervened.

“Halt! Don’t move, slaves!” he shouted, pulling out a blaster and firing a stun ring into the air.

They obeyed and fell back into line.

He rushed to his now unconscious comrade and carefully removed the shock whip from the ground, securing and deactivating it. The blue zygerrian’s head whipped up and looked at our little party with suspicion. He pointed at Anakin, “You! Did you see what happened here?”

“Your friend got too enthusiastic and angry in punishing the green twi’lek,” Anakin said with an unimpressed sneer on his face. “His own shock whip clipped him in the neck as he was using it.”

“You expect me to believe that?! Toltas is an expert with that whip.” 

“I don’t care what you believe, that is what happened. R2 display your visual memory of the incident.”

The droid chirped an affirmative and his holoprojector lit up, displaying a flat screen above his head with a perfect rendering of Toltas making his ‘mistake’.

The zygerrian master scowled down at his unconscious comrade, then scoffed, tapping a large comlink mounted on his belt. “This is Officer Aros, 3rd Brigade. I need a medical speeder at my location, a downed slave officer.”

“Confirmed, dispatching now.”

“You, you,” Aros pointed to two nearby slaves in the detail. “Pick him up!”

The two twi’lek in question picked up their unconscious fellow, slinging his arms across their shoulders and falling into line.

“What else can go wrong?” Aros scoffed, standing back up and brushing dust off his trousers.

“Something the matter?” Obi-Wan asked casually and I felt him using the Force in a subtle mind trick. It wasn’t the full mesmerizing version, but rather just suppressed the natural reticence and filters that would usually make a person disinclined to talk or respond.

“Oh yes, something’s the matter,” Aros said with disgruntlement. “Slave detail, to the side of the road! Make way!” The twi’lek slave laborers quickly complied, taking advantage of the shade there, huddling together. “You potential customers?”

“We hope to be customer and seller,” Anakin answered, gesturing to me and Chewie.

“Nice,” Aro gave both of us an appraising look, then leering at my obvious female features that the robe gave tantalizing hints of. “To answer your question, we’ve had a bad run of luck around here lately. Speeders crashing, equipment malfunctions, it’s causing casualties. We even lost a fuel tanker yesterday, crashed right into a guard station and… well, we lost a lot of people to that one.”

I inwardly smirked as it seemed HK had been rather busy since his arrival.

“That is unfortunate,” Obi-Wan said sympathetically. “Perhaps you can help us. We’re looking to acquire a fair amount of labor.”

“Define what you consider a fair amount.”

“Eighty thousand,” Anakin said bluntly.

That instantly made Aros’ cat-like ears twitch and his heart began racing with an eager excitement. “That is a substantial amount. Are you thinking of a particular product?”

“Our sovereign has a number of new factories that require workers,” Obi-Wan answered.

“Meaning skilled, intelligent, five fingered hands, not cheap,” Aros warned.

“Cost is not an object for what our sovereign requires.”

Aros reached to his belt and pressed a large orange button on his comlink, which remained lit. “I’ve just summoned an eye droid. For a transaction this large, you’ll need to directly negotiate with Queen Scintel.”

An insistent hooting drew our attention as a small speeder wanted to pass by.

Aros stepped over to his fallen partner, grabbed him under the arms and dragged him over to the side of the road.

We followed and so began a wait to see who would arrive first, the medical transport or the droid.

It turned out to be the latter, as a spherical black droid appeared flying over the nearby building and hovered down to us, approaching Aros with a casual speed. It had a large black glass eye, with a single antenna that stuck up to the side.

“Officer Aros, why have you summoned me?” asked the droid in a low pitched artificial tone.

“We have potential clients with a substantial purchase request of over eighty thousand.”

The droid zipped towards Obi-Wan and Anakin, then looked down to take in R2, before focusing on me and Chewy.

“Is this true?” asked the droid insistently, coming to a stop a few inches from Obi-Wan’s face.

“Of course, we have been fully authorized to make this purchase and potential sales on behalf of our sovereign.”

“You would also sell? Are the wookiee and togruta examples of what you have on offer?”

“Correct.”

The droid zipped to Anakin. “And just who is your sovereign?”

He shook his head, “We are not at liberty to name him out in the open street, through a transmission that could be channeled anywhere.” He reached to his belt and pulled out a large pentagonal credit chit, tapped its side and showed it to the droid. It was the closest the Corusca galaxy had to an eWallet, as these chits could be loaded with credits using the proprietary IGBC programming. They were also only given to certain select customers and it essentially proved that Anakin was a trusted ‘high roller’. There were a quarter of a million credits in the palm of his hand at the moment.

It was just a fraction of what we had come with on this mission, but was enough to prove our bona fides.

The droid turned to face Aros, “Officer, you will wait for your backup, after which you will escort our guests to the palace. Is that understood?”

“Yes, at once,” he saluted whoever was on the other end of the connection, by thumping his chest with a closed fist. The droid immediately zipped up into the air and disappeared from view.

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As befitting for a monarchy with the nature of the Zygerrian Empire, the royal palace was the tallest structure in the city and no other buildings were allowed to go higher.

It was a vast, stepped pyramidal structure, the exterior of which was made of colored stone with durasteel reinforcement. It climbed 220 meters into the sky at its highest tip, easily beating the tallest Giza pyramid on old Earth.

Inside, the first room we were greeted with was a vast lobby area that was clearly made to impress with sheer wealth and opulence. Auridium plating and even solid auridium was in use liberally on most surfaces. Intricate hung tapestries so large and ancient that I could almost sense they had been worked on for decades by thousands of slaves. Tall statues depicting former zygerrian kings and queens standing in epic heroic poses, sometimes wielding a sword, whip or merely a scepter. Ancient paintings and standing holos depicting historical zygerrians scenes of battle, slave raids on other worlds. The overall interior design was aesthetically breathtaking, if you ignored the overall theme.

Beyond the lobby, we passed into an equally opulent maze of corridors, purposefully made to confuse those who didn’t belong. Aros had no problems, which made sense, since you didn’t want your own soldiers to get lost navigating the palace if he had to protect it and the zygerrian sovereign.

“Make sure your droid takes no scans, we will know, it will be destroyed and your freedom forfeit,” he had warned us.

Another eminent safety precaution.

It was not the only one, as on many occasions during our walk through the palace, we encountered cunningly hidden scanners built right into the walls or various potted plants. Visual sensors were emplaced everywhere, in addition to motion sensors and recessed turret emplacements from the ceiling. It was an infiltrator’s nightmare. Aros was also wearing an IFF on his belt that was interfacing with the palace’s systems. It was probably the only reason we hadn’t been sprayed with blaster fire.

We passed many zygerrians of varied importance, judging by uniform, dress and the general emotional smugness that radiated from them. It was rare to see one that didn’t have a slave in tow, who mostly carried things for the official in question. These were mostly human, with the occasional twi’lek and rodian.

Finally, after what felt like forever, we paused outside a large set of heavy relief inscribed doors, with two armed zygerrian guards standing on either side.

“This is where I leave you,” Aros said with a frown. “You are about to enter into the presence of Her Majesty, Queen Scintel of Zygerria. You will leave your weapons with the guards. Your every move is being watched in there. If you so much as twitch in a way that might seem threatening to the queen, you will die instantly. In the same way, the queen may kill you with but a word.”

“We understand,” Obi-Wan said reasonably.

The doors opened with a ponderous groan as both men handed over their blasters.

Anakin led the way inside and we got our first look at a large room which was both an opulent throne room and office for the queen.

She stood facing the massive floor to ceiling transparisteel windows that gave the best view in the palace; the city beyond was draped like a carpet towards the horizon and I could see that the buildings all formed a combined artwork towards this one window of the palace. It depicted a rather mesmerizing pattern that I had to pull my senses away from.

Scintel turned around at our approach and my eyes were drawn to the fact that she had a kirosian bird on her shoulder and was lazily feeding it seeds. 

"Ah, welcome guests to Zygerria,” she said grandly, walking towards a curved throne that sat at the apex of a small set of stairs. “To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”

She was the picture of nobility and beauty in equal parts to zygerrian taste; pointed chin and high cheeks, tan skin with minimal makeup to emphasize the natural color of her red-brown hair. Her golden eyes sparked with intelligence and she was assessing all of us intensely whilst not outwardly appearing to do so. She wore an elegant long dress of green and gold that showed off a tall female figure.

“I am Lun Vestret, your highness,” Obi-Wan bowed and we all followed suit. “My colleague, Alad Rutirr. We represent the House of Iballa on Orvax IV.”

“Fascinating,” Scintel said with clear interest. “Our southern galactic competitors in the slave trade.”

“Just so. Sovereign Iballa has sent us with an offer of purchase as we said and wishes to establish trade relations, now that you’ve resumed your operations in the north.”

She idly scratched her chin, her eyes zeroed in on Anakin and clearly liked what she was seeing, even though the mask of the headdress was partially hiding his face.

“And how do I know you speak the truth? You carry a lot of wealth on you, but so can many in this galaxy.”

“I’m carrying something in my belt pouch that will confirm it, highness,” Anakin said easily. “So if the snipers in the walls will not shoot me, that’ll be appreciated.”

She nodded and gestured regally with a hand signal.

Anakin pulled out a large signet ring of the House of Iballa. It was actually the real thing, shipped over by Republic Intelligence and stolen from Orvax IV in an operation that took place shortly after the beginning of the war that even Obi-Wan didn’t have the clearance to unlock. Why RI had targeted Orvax in the earliest days of its existence was a question that I was still tumbling around in my head.

Scintel flicked her fingers and a door to the side opened, revealing a female twi’lek slave dressed in a figure hugging blue outfit, who hurried forward to take the ring and bring it up the stairs to her master.

The slave pulled out a scanner, waving it over the ring, before holding it out to the queen.

Scintel carefully regarded the ring before she gestured to the slave to hold out the handheld scanner so she could see the results.

“Very well,” she nodded in satisfaction, handing the ring back.

The twi’lek was shooed away before she hurried down and returned the signet to Anakin.

Scintel stood from her throne and began to leisurely walk towards our party, her eyes now turning to the ‘slaves’.

“The wookiee is an impressive specimen,” she commented as she walked around Chewie. “How well trained is he?”

“He has a full technical acumen, highness. He’s well behaved but the shock collar is still needed for insurance,” Anakin smirked.

“And I can’t help but notice the togruta, may I?”

“We’re in your throne room, highness.”

Scintel didn’t hesitate to grab my robe and practically tear it off me.

I bore the reveal of my form with an outward mask of pleasure and seduction, immediately adopting a pose that emphasized my bust, calves and hips.

“I see the House of Iballa’s reputation has not deteriorated. She is magnificent.”

Scintel trailed a finger down my arm, before her hand grabbed my right thigh, then caressed up my right butt cheek. “Trained, strong, a dancer?”

“She can,” confirmed Anakin. “Her talents are also in the exotic and esoteric.”

I almost giggled at how open ended that statement was, letting Scintel form her own conclusions within the framework he gave.

“Well, I think we can do business after all, Rutirr of the House of Iballa. Let’s negotiate.”

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A/N: Poor Ahsoka, two different royals in succession and a potentially nasty infiltration mission. Hope y'all enjoyed. Have a great weekend and stay awesome folks.

The Force Wills - Chapter 102

Our eyes opened together.

I was standing over him as he laid on the stone bed in the central Nightsister auditorium. As I watched, the veins of ichor in it flashed, the substance retreating and the channels it had used returned to ordinary contoured stone.

Savage’s eyes now were the distinctive yellow of Dark Side corruption, the inflamed tiny red veins surrounding his cornea were pretty severe and intimidating. I retreated my senses completely and looked at him anew. Trying to see him as if I was looking at a new artwork.  It was very good work that Talzin had done and it renewed my own resolve to one day come and study the ichor on Dathomir in person. 

He was now just over two meters tall and considerable muscle had been generated for him. This improvement extended even to his internal organs, which naturally had to be improved to keep up with the greater demands placed on it. Talzin might as well have made Savage a Space Marine-lite with what I was sensing of his internal physiology. The ichor imbuement had also amplified his strength in the Force as well, but Talzin had been very careful to not ramp it to ridiculous levels.

She could have created an utter monster in Savage or any other nightsister or brother, but she had enough wisdom to never do so.

I took a step back and the ichor that had been hovering around my legs retreated back to the nearby pool. 

Asajj and the six other sisters who had been conducting the entire process lowered their arms and were clearly very tired. Talzin didn’t even look phased at what she had just done.

I personally just wanted to disconnect from this bloody proxy and sleep for a week in the sanctity of my own head for once.

“Rise, Savage,” Talzin said.

He obeyed, sitting up and looked around at the sisters and me with consideration, throwing blunt and clumsy probes in the Force at us.

I smirked and easily slapped them away. He could do so much better, but I had trained my new spy with all of my own levels of paranoia.

He threw his legs over the side of the stone bed and immediately rose to his new height with no complications whatsoever. I had carefully forced Savage’s internal perception of himself in our mind link to slowly conform to what was being done in the real world. There would be no need for acclimatization or training to get used to his improved body. Not enough time for that.

Talzin gestured to the pool of ichor and I felt the matter being rearranged inside it.

Rising out of it was a tall halberd-like weapon that didn't have a pike, but featured two curved blades on either side of the head.

Just sensing that thing was an unpleasant experience. It didn’t have the cutting power of a proper lightsaber, but it came very close. It was almost a mono-molecular blade and was radiating something very nasty. Getting a mere papercut from this thing was not advisable.

The weapon floated over to Savage who grabbed it immediately.

“You cannot be presented to do Dooku unarmed, so we gift you this blade imbued with our most potent powers,” Talzin said. “He will at some point guide you through the process of building your own lightsaber. When that happens this blade will serve another purpose, merely hold it and your thoughts will reach me no matter where you are in this galaxy. Anyone else touching this blade, will die horribly.”

“Understood, mother.”

“Dooku will be arriving in twenty hours, Savage,” I informed him after looking at my HUD. “Spend your last free time wisely.”

He planted his weapon onto the floor, “I will, master.”

I shook my head, “You really shouldn’t call me that anymore. I was your teacher in the mind link and I learned a lot in that process.”

“I understand, but it is what you are and will always be. I might pretend otherwise from here on, but it is a core truth that will always stay with me, a fact I will protect to the death.”

I walked up to him and held out my right arm.

We grabbed each other’s forearms. His hand phased through the holosheathe and found only metal, but through the Force the sentiment was carried properly.

“Know that your greatest trial is now beginning, Savage. The ichor might insulate you from the corruption of the Dark Side, but Dooku’s training will be difficult. Hold to the Book of Law and my own training and you will see yourself victorious.”

“Yes, master. Thank you,” he said with a nod.

We let go of each other and I stepped back, giving Talzin and Asajj a last nod. “Goodbye and thank you. May the Force be with us all.”

My eyes closed and I plunged backward through the Force, leaving the proxy droid and Dathomir behind.

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“Sorry about this, master.”

Anakin, seated next to my bed in the small quarters I had appropriated aboard the VCX-88 stealth ship, shook his head and brought up the spoon to feed me. “Don’t be sorry, learn from it. And what did we learn?”

I chewed and swallowed, “Don’t do ichor related Force rituals and a two year relative mind link on the other end of experimental technology. It could have annoying and dangerous consequences, like extreme body dysphasia.”

“Correct,” he glared at me. “Even your autonomic systems were having trouble, any more and your subconscious wouldn’t even be able to pump your own heart!”

“Aren’t you glad Skyguy that you learned some healing from me?”

“I’m ecstatic,” he deadpanned, shoving more food into my mouth.

I giggled as I chewed, “You can relax, master. I just need food, a proper sleep cycle, then I can enter a healing meditation. Full day of recovery at worst. This price to pay is very small compared to the benefit it will bring.”

“It’s hard to imagine Savage being any benefit to us,” he shook his head. “When Dooku has finished training him, what do you think is the first task he’s going to get?”

“He’ll be sent south-”

Anakin patted my lips with the spoon, making me wish I could lift my hands at the moment to slap him. “No, I’m not asking for specific prescience. I’m talking in general. He’s going to be used against the Jedi, Snips.”

“Of course,” I could only barely nod my head. “Dooku will order him to do what Asajj did. He’ll fight against the GAR, he’ll lead the CIS in the field. He won’t command fleets, that is not his strength, they’ll assign a tac droid or senior commander to work alongside him. If Dooku tells him to kill a Jedi… then Savage will do it.”

“And that’s fine with you?!” Anakin burst out, nearly spilling the bowl of food from his lap.

“Naturally it’s not, master,” I glared pointedly at him. “But he is now a deep cover spy and has to maintain that cover for the greater goal. If not Savage, then it would be someone else. Sidious set in motion these events, I have to twist the various probability lines to slowly turn against him. The blood of the Jedi that Savage kill under Dooku’s orders are on Dooku’s hands and by extension Sidious’.”

Anakin stirred the bowl listlessly, I could feel him hating the fact that I was right on this. As a foolish wise man once said, the whole situation was bent over, cheeks spread wide. At least this way Fulcrum would finally be in the heart of Dooku’s operation, which by extension would put it a step away from Sidious.

Utilizing Savage’s intelligence would have to be done very carefully. I didn’t doubt that there would be times when we wouldn’t be able to act on it at all, simply because it would reveal the obvious presence of a traitor to the enemy.

“This big picture nerfshit,” he scoffed in frustration, feeding me another piece of pre-cut meat.

“Any updates on our situation here?” I asked after swallowing.

“Nothing changed, we’re a few hours away from Celanon. The Helios should arrive just behind Dooku as he drops out of hyper. I’ve been meaning to ask, why did you choose that name for the ship? It sounds like the name you’d give to a droid.” 

I smiled knowingly at him, “A long time ago, in another lifetime, an ancient culture chose that name as the god of the local star. Most often he was depicted as driving a chariot pulled by equinoids through the sky and wearing a radiant crown of light.”

“Snips, you chose to name a stealth ship after a god who embodies light?”

“The name would be associated with many things over many millennia by the successor cultures, even when worship of that god had long faded into obscurity. In this case, it’s mostly the flying chariot bit that caused the name to be associated with space travel. It’s also our mastery of light and the rest of the spectrum that allows us to become invisible. So looking at it from that point of view, it’s quite a fitting name.”

“Interesting,” he frowned. Scraping the last bits of meat together, he delivered it into my mouth.

His comlink chirped for attention as I was chewing.

“Yes, M8?”

“Jedi Skywalker, incoming transmission from the Jedi Council.”

“I’ll take it down here.” He put down the empty bowl and focused his comlink to only show his own head and nothing of the environment.

The miniaturized full body holo of Mace Windu appeared on his arm.

“Master Windu,” he greeted.

“Knight Skywalker, apologies for getting back to you so late. The Separatists have launched fresh offensives across practically every battlespace in the last few days. The Council has reviewed your report, while it’s unfortunate you were not successful in Dooku’s capture, we consider it a job well done in just surviving. He’s clearly been delving deeper into the Dark Side than we imagined. Are you still in pursuit?”

“Yes, master.”

“As much as I wish otherwise, we’re going to have to recall you. The Council agrees that this renewed Separatist offensive is just a cover to draw as much attention as possible, to pull our attention and spread ourselves too thin.”

“Leaving the door open for their true goal,” Anakin nodded in agreement.

“That is why we want you both to rejoin the Resolute, a task group is being created with the purpose of being a ready reserve to counter any surprise move when it appears.”

“Understood master, we’ll set a rendezvous course immediately.”

“Good, Force be with you.”

The connection cut.

He immediately brought up a holo star chart and started plotting intercept courses with the Resolute’s current position.

“Got it,” he dismissed the holo before I could get a good look.

“Skyguy,” I complained.

“You get sleep and focus on healing, I’ll handle the rest. I have a feeling you need to be at your best for what’s coming.”

I sighed wearily… he had a point. “Yes, master.”

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It would take a further five days of travel to meet up with the Resolute in the Lantilles system.

It sat on a crossroad on the Perlimian Trade Route and the Randon Run, acting as a handy bridge for those on the Lesse Lantiillian Route, giving ships a handy route up the eastern sectors of the galaxy. It was home to the headquarters of the GAR’s 12th Army and the Lantillian Shipwrights - who were owners of the local shipyards that mostly built civilian vessels. 

Resolute had already arrived there three days ago and used the time to get itself fully restocked and repaired from the Umbaran campaign.  

We landed the Helios in Hangar Bay 2 with no pomp or ceremony, whereupon he quickly received his own lightsaber back from the proxy droid that was obediently waiting to deliver it.

Also waiting was Admiral Yularen and Chewie.

“Welcome back to the both of you,” Yularen said professionally, though I could feel the slight warmth and relief in his tone.

“Thank you, Admiral, good to be back,” Anakin said as they traded salutes. “Chewie.”

The big wookiee greeted me with relief and a rather unprofessional hug that nearly lifted me off my feet.

“I’m okay, Chewie, I’m fine,” I reassured, patting him on the shoulder.

“Your smell tells me you were not fine,” he rumbled in Shyriiwook.

“True, I was on my back for a day to two, but all’s fine now.”

He gave me a considerate flinty stare before letting me back on my feet.

“General Skywalker, there’s been a development,” Yularen began in a tone that did not bode well. “Intelligence has lost track of a substantial number of Separatist ships in the last few days.”

“How is that possible? Did the scouts make a mistake?”

Both sides now used cloaked scouts to keep tabs on the major known fleets and movements of certain ships. Not to mention actively monitoring critical systems at all times. Hyperspace navigation meant that you could have reasonable coverage, but the vastness of space still meant it was possible to hide and there were only so many cloaked ships and trained crews for them. So you had to prioritize.

“That is a possibility, there are a number of competing theories of what is going on. Nothing definite yet.”

Anakin pursed his lips, “Very well, how far out are the other ships of our task force?”

“The first of them should start arriving by 0800 tomorrow.”

“All right, I want to begin battle drills and simulation for the Resolute tomorrow as well. We’ll begin incorporating fleet exercises as well as more ships of the task force arrive.”

“Yes, general.”

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A very tiring two days followed, filled with simulation, procedures, checklists and drills. As such it was a relief to finally be back in my quarters aboard Resolute again. My counter-intel procedures for the bug inside it was still working, no others had been placed.

It was as I was getting out of the refresher in the evening that one of my encrypted datapads started signaling for attention.

I wrapped a towel around myself before sitting down in front of my desk with a weary huff and began unlocking the datapad.

The holo of a familiar bloodthirsty droid resolved itself.

“HK, report.” I said without a preamble.

"Statement: My target has been terminated, master.”

At his words I dove down the probability lines and smirked at how the kaleidoscope had changed. Sora Bulq was indeed dead and with it went someone would’ve gone on to train many future dark acolytes in Vaapad and prevented hundreds more from death, especially one crucial person for the general political landscape of the galaxy. “How was it achieved?”

“Explanation: A regrettable accident, master. The meatbag was experimenting with a number of Dark Side techniques, taught to him by Dooku. Alas, during one such training session, he had finally gotten around to replacing his lightsaber crystal with a red one. An artificial kyber crystal that he had corrupted with the Dark Side. At first activation it unfortunately couldn’t handle the power from the diatum cell and it exploded in his hand.”

Knowing how much power the lightsaber power cell could hold, well, it certainly wasn’t a surprise that Bulq had died from that. Especially if he first activated it in a typical starting stance that I remembered him using all the time during his classes.

“Is there enough of him left for an identification at least?”

“Answer: Of course, master. Smug Statement: I’m not an amateur. Explanation: I managed to sabotage his lightsaber using nanodroids of my own design, master. They created small flaws over time that led to a number of problems. Enough that his difficulty with the redesign of his lightsaber became a known issue. It even got to the point that he managed to swallow his pride and contact Dooku about the problem. I made sure that the nanodroids stayed dormant at this point, lulling him into thinking that the issue was solved. At the crucial moment, when his eagerness, triumph and other dark emotions dominated at having solved the problem and in so doing blinding him to the future - the nanodroids struck. They introduced a tiny flaw in both the primary kyber crystal and the focusing lenses.”

I had to admit, my brain was boggled at that. “And you can somehow control that explosion enough that he isn’t vaped?”

“Smug answer: Yes, master. Explanation: It was rather easy. The nanodroids had long since mapped the unique structure of the kyber crystal and Bulq’s lightsaber in general. It’s just a matter of calculation at that point, master. All that remains of him is sections of his upper skull and feet.”

“Thank you for that vivid description, HK,” I said dryly.

“Cheerful answer: You’re welcome, master.”

“Anyway, now that you’re done with that. I need you to infiltrate yourself to the following sector,” I tapped in the coordinates. “You can have your usual fun with local residents, since they’re just a bunch of slavers, but be ready for my call to come running.”

“Sincere Gratitude: Thank you, master. My circuits sing with joy at the meatbag irritants that are going to be purged from the galaxy!”

“Go!” I snapped in annoyance and cut the link before he could get another word in edgewise.

I chucked the datapad to my desk and had barely gotten up to get dressed in some pajamas when the comlink chimed again.

Only my sense of who was on the other side stopped me from delivering an earful of invective that would make a Corellian spacer proud.

I picked up the link, adjusting it to only scan my head, then opened the channel.

“Master Koon,” I smiled at the half-body holo that appeared over my desk.

“Ahsoka,” he greeted me somberly. “I bring difficult news.”

I let my outer mask frown with worry and confusion, “Master?”

“We thought it best to tell you in a private setting and not in the middle of a briefing room with everyone around you. Kiros has been invaded by Separatists.”

Even though I knew it was coming, as much as I had trained myself, as much distance there was between me and the togrutan race as a whole, my stomach still felt like a void had opened up in it. An old nightmare of mine was that I would doom Shili and Kiros somehow by my own actions against the enemy.

“How did it happen? There should be no way for the Separatists to break through Ord Mantell, all the way past Dorin, down two sectors of the Namaadi corridor… wait, that’s impossible, too many of our forces would be in the way. It’d take too long. They found a new hyper route didn’t they?”

Koon nodded, “That is the conclusion that Intelligence has reached. Governor Gupat Roshti contacted Master Yoda asking for urgent aid, he managed to tell us that at least a full combat fleet of enemy ships had arrived in orbit, before interstellar communications were jammed.”

“Bah, he should’ve contacted Shili,” I scoffed with disgust. “The Royal Togruta Fleet is powerful enough to smash any standard CIS combat group. They would’ve been there in less than six hours.”

“In ideal circumstances, yes, but Roshti didn’t want there to be any bloodshed, so he declined to contact the homewold and surrendered.”

Bloody pacifist! I swore inwardly.

“Please tell me the Council at least alerted the Royal Fleet after the call was ended.”

“We did, but Queen Yovet didn’t want to send her forces and weaken the defenses around the togruta homeworld, fearing it was just a ruse to draw them away.”

I didn’t have a high regard for Regasa Yovet, the queen of the togruta, supreme huntress of the united tribes, as she was very much a product of her time - a leader mired by the thinking of a galaxy at peace. 

“And any recon ship she sends will die the instant it reverts from hyperspace, since they have no cloaked ships. She has some sense at least.”

“Precisely. She has asked the Republic to investigate and send a reconnaissance force. If there is now a Separatist fleet lurking at that part of the Hydian, then they are far behind our lines and there’s nothing within three sectors that can fight it.”

“Not to mention we need to find this new hyperlane, assuming it terminates somewhere in the Kiros system. Has there been any reports from systems along the Hydian in that sector?”

Master Koon shook his head, “None so far, either this enemy fleet is maintaining a low profile or they’re destroying anyone who manages to get a look at them, before they can even send out a distress call.”

I tapped my desk terminal to bring up a navigational chart of the Hydian hyperlane closest to Shili and Kiros. The objective was bloody obvious if I put myself in the CIS’ shoes and it left me feeling like my stomach wanted to fall through the floor. Not only did this threaten the world of my birth, my race, it also threatened the Mandalore sector if you thought in terms of a long term enemy objective.

Would the enemy truly do that? All in the service of bringing me to his side? To turn me to the Dark Side?

What a stupid question. Of course, he would. This is the man that wanted a planet killer at his fingertips.

“We need to go. Now, Master Koon.”

“Your task group is only at 80% strength, Ahsoka. We have no idea the disposition of the enemy fleet, there could even be a dreadnought among them. Patience, little ‘Soka.”

I scowled and nodded, “Very well, Master Koon.”

“The last ships of your group will be arriving by tomorrow. Rest, gather strength, I have a strong feeling you’ll be needing it in the days to come.”

“I will, Master.”

“Good night, may the Force be with you.”

“And you, Master.”

I closed the comlink and considered whether that performance had been good enough.

Palpatine would be watching closely from here on and I had to be ready.

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The task force plunged into hyperspace late evening the next day.

Resolute and a further five Venators, six Gun Acclamators and five Bastion cruisers began racing at top speed along the Perlimian Trade Route for six hours, before turning north at the Gizer system.

Two days were spent powering up the Vaathkree Trade Corridor and in that time, no intelligence of any attacks along the Hydian on ships or planets reached us.

I ordered a brief pause in the Comkin system and sent a cloaked scout ahead of the fleet.

The Trade Corridor ended in the next system, Corsin, and acted as a crossroads for ships to turn onto the Hydian. It was one of the two systems that you needed to interdict if you wanted to severely isolate the core worlds from the mid-rim and the rest of the galactic north. Then if the CIS truly wanted to cut the galaxy effectively in half, they would just have to conquer Uvuiy Exen and Ord Mantell outright.

Admiral Yularen looked up from the datapad I had handed him.

“I hope you are wrong about this, commander.”

“So am I, admiral, but the Hydian is the backbone of travel and trade to the north. If the Separatists can interdict it successfully and establish a new frontline at Uvuiy Exen, the frontline battlespace at Botajef will be cut off from resupply and reinforcement. If that front falls, in one fell swoop we lose four sectors, including Shili, Taris and Mandalore.”

Yularen looked at my reasoning and grew increasingly worried as his own strategic mind connected the dots. “Blast it! Where could that enemy fleet be?” he asked in frustration, staring at the projected hyperspace charts in the holo in front of my command chair.

“Commander Tano. Incoming coms from the scout,” reported Comms.

“Thanks Comms,” I tapped the controls on my armrest.

The image of a naval clone lieutenant appeared in front of me. “Scout 132, reporting. Corsin has no detectable enemy activity. It’s traffic as usual, commander.”

“Are you sure, lieutenant?” I asked severely.

“Yes, commander. We even took the time to do microjumps into the system’s Oort Clouds. They’re not hiding in the outer peripheries of the system either. It could be possible they’re hiding in a hyperspace orbit of the system, waiting for the fleet to arrive then ambush us that way.”

“Possible but they can’t keep that up for too long either, it’d impact their fuel reserves too much,” I pointed out. “Unless they have dedicated fleet logistic tenders as well.” It felt strange to be on the other side of my own tactic.

“Nav, jump the fleet to hyper, best speed to Corsin.”

“Roger commander, best speed to Corsin.”

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We arrived in the system at full combat readiness, fighters ready to launch, torpedo salvoes programmed, interceptor grids and guns bristling with power. We probably gave every civilian ship captain around the hyper point in Corsin heart attacks as their sensors registered our arrival, combined with the energy levels radiating from the fleet.

Anakin was in his fighter, ready to lead the starfighter forces into battle, as was his preference.

I could feel everyone in the entire fleet sitting on tenterhooks, ready to spring into action in whatever job they had.

A minute passed.

“Sensors, anything?”

“Nothing, commander. No hyper signatures.”

The clock hit two minutes and nothing registered.

I stood from my command chair and began pacing in front of the large transparisteel windows that looked into the black of space. The various ships clustering around the emergence point were barely larger specks of light at the range we had chosen. It wouldn’t be a good idea to start a battle amongst all the civilian ships, after all.

Five minutes.

Nothing.

Ten minutes.

Nothing.

At fifteen minutes, I sat down in the command chair, “Fleet, this is command, stand down to Condition Two.”

I sensed more than heard the various captains give acknowledgement through the light blanket of Battle Meditation I had on them.

The active sensors were secured and everyone breathed easier, sitting back in their chairs. Pilots remained in their fighters, but the engines were spooled down to standby.

“Nav, set a course for the fleet to the onward Draria hyper point, standard burn. Admiral Yularen, I want two layers deep of cloaked scouts ahead and behind us as we go down the Hydian.”

“At once, commander.”

With a few taps of my controls, the holo of a naval clone captain appeared in front of me. “Commander?”

“Captain Galt, I’m going to need you to remain here at Corsin. Hide your Venator at a random rock in the Oort Belt of the system. If the enemy attacks the shipping going through here you have full permission to engage with fighters, but preserve your command at all costs. Is that understood?”

“Understood, Commander. We’ll get it done. Huntress out.”

“Admiral, as we go I want minimally crewed, hyper capable shuttles dropped at each system we stop. I do not want to be caught unawares by this enemy fleet. If they so much as stick their noses in any system of the Hydian in our AO, I want to know.”

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Thirty-three hours later the task force arrived in the Bogden system.

Three systems had come and gone in our reconnaissance-in-force along the Hydian and yet there was still no sign of the enemy from scouts, nor any ambush sprung.

This system had the adjoining hyper point that let ships onto the relatively small hyperlane that would take you to Kiros and eventually Shili.

The only inhabitable planet in Bogden had the galactic record for the most moons around any such world, coming in at a staggering 20 recognized orbiting bodies of significant enough mass to be classified as such. The tidal stresses placed on the surface of Bogden IV were difficult to comprehend and the planet barely went a week without multiple major or minor groundquakes.

This made the population small, which mostly consisted of the desperate, smugglers, bounty hunters and those on the run. Most actually preferred living in artificial habitats built right into those moons. What passed for a government was more like a farmer’s cooperative, loosely aligned settlements where everyone was armed to the teeth and very polite. Everyone coming to Bogden knew to pay what little tax was charged and to shut up.

Why did I know about this?

There was a hidden Mandalorian enclave on one of those moon habitats that belonged to Clan Vizsla. It was a place where any Mandalorian plying the bounty hunter trade could retreat to. Unfortunately, I couldn’t openly contact them for any intel they had.

So, I contacted the Bogden Cooperative.

“No!” said the scowling woman who looked like she was in her early sixties, with long gray hair tied into a ponytail, wearing an outfit that didn’t look out of place on a farm. “No clankers passed through the system, young lady.”

“Are you sure, Madam Oshi?”

“We know full well what those Seppie ships look like. Our scanners might not be as fresh and new as what you no doubt have on those shiny ships of yours, but we know what happens in our space.”

"Out of interest, just how far does your sensor coverage extend from Bogden IV?”

“If it has engines, we know about it all the way to Bogden IX.”

“I see, thank you Madam Oshi, I’ll not take up more of your time.”

“You’ve got that right, missy. I was busy hanging up over a hundred renda pelts for drying when you called. Safe travels.”

The holo of the old woman vanished.

“Where is that blasted fleet?” Yularen griped, scowling at a datapad of scouting reports.

“That is a good question, admiral. Yet we can’t overly delay, our primary mission is still liberating Kiros. Nav, set your course, jump to hyper the moment the fleet clears the mass shadow.”

I was now facing a hard dilemma. Do I weaken the fleet further by detaching another Venator to continue down the Hydian toward Uviuy Exen? So that there was some defense at least if the enemy fleet attacked there. Yet, that risked leading me to a defeat in detail if I was spreading the fleet out too much.

“Admiral, keep our scouts going down the Hydian.”

He looked at me and I could see in his eyes that he also saw the problem. “Yes, commander. For what it’s worth, you’re making the right decision.”

“It’ll be cold comfort to the families of the dead. That I sacrifice their sons, daughters, brothers and sisters in the mathematics of war.”

“We’ve spoken about this in our lessons, commander,” he softly reminded me.

“I remember them, admiral. You warned that this moment would come. Yet now that it has…” The whine of the hyperdrive resounded, stars streaked outside to be replaced by the rapidly shifting tunnel of hyperspace. “The die is cast. I cannot be everywhere. The blood that will be shed is on my enemy’s hands. Not my own.”

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If there was any world that could be called an idyllic jewel, then Kiros would stand in the dictionary as an example.

It ranked right alongside Naboo and when I was very young on Shili, I could vaguely remember my mother telling me bedtime stories of it. How brave the first colonists were in settling the world with no weapons. Naturally, the truth was that while the colonists didn’t have weapons, they had the Togruta Royal Guard to protect them from the nasty predator fauna that the planet held. Afterwards, they relied on perimeter fencing and stun guns.

My hand swiped through the holo of the planet and dismissed the image.

“Commander, the fleet is in a hyperspace orbit around the system. Scouts have detected no enemy ships and they’re approaching Kiros now,” Yularen reported.

“This is getting ridiculous,” I muttered in frustration. The CIS was playing silly buggers and not even properly defending their recently conquered world. Kiros was a pristine world and kept that way by togruta royal decree, no mining exploration had been done on it and theoretically it could be home to any number of strategic minerals and elements.

“They want to keep the initiative, by not offering battle and only engaging on their own terms,” Yularen said as the scans came in.

“Orbital satellite debris detected, looks like remains of the colony’s hypercom repeaters,” the scout said over the live comlink.

“If they actively defend the system, it also gives us clues as to the location of the hyper point of their new route,” I pointed out to Yularen.

“Clever, security through obscurity.”

“Registering active droid signatures at the location of the artisan settlement. A full company and one squadron of AATs out in the open, patrolling the streets. No aerospace complement, except one unknown ship silhouette landed on a pad just outside the central colony building.”

My hand swiped through the holo field of my command chair, a few taps later I was looking at the data feed from the scout directly.

“M8, do a cross reference on this ship's silhouette.”

From above it was a blocky thing, roughly 52 meters in length, with booms extending outward from the main body leading to articulated thruster nacelles on either side.  

“Scanning mistress… match found. It’s a YV-865 Aurore-class freighter built by the CEC. Production of this line was discontinued more than nine centuries ago, when the technology for repulsor based ion thrusters was rediscovered. The primary customer for this ship was the Zygerrian Empire.”

“Zygerrians?” Yularen frowned. “The slaver empire? But they’ve been in isolation in the far north-east of the galaxy for centuries.”

“With the Republic now distracted by a galactic war, it seems as good a time as any for them to emerge and try to resume their predacious ways,” I said grimly. “They’re technically now in Separatist space and I wouldn’t put it past Dooku to reach out to them for support in the war. Zygerrians also have no fond memories of the Jedi, given how the Order and Republic clamped down on their operations after the Ruusan Reformation. Scout Lieutenant, you have permission for a low orbit, give me an active lifesign scan of that settlement.”

“Roger, commander.”

A few minutes later the answer came.

“They’re not there,” Yularen commented grimly. “Lieutenant, widen your scan.”

“Yes, admiral… scanning to 1000 km radius… no togrutan lifesigns detected. Two thousand… three… four… nothing, admiral. I would need to reposition to retain enough resolution.”

“Do so, I want that entire planet scanned.”

I shook my head. “They’re not there, admiral. I can deduce well enough what happened. The entire colony has been captured. At this point they’re well on their way to Zygerria by now.”

“How many people were here?”

“Last census was roughly 52 000,” I stood up from the command chair. “Admiral, the rest of the fleet is to stay in the local Oort Cloud. Resolute and one Acclamator will make the approach to Kiros. We’ll deploy 1st ARC Recon company with 4th Armored to secure the settlement, whilst General Skywalker and myself have a little chat with the owner of that ship.”

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The gunship shuddered as it made atmospheric entry.

Four minutes later the turbulence died down and the first wave of twelve gunships followed by fifteen carriers, each with an underslung AT-TE made the translation into the upper atmosphere.

Anakin stared through the viewing slits and beheld a world of beauty.

The gunships passed over long meandering rivers that looked like some artist had lovingly draped them on carpets of pristine green. Tall alien trees with wondrous colors stippled into forests that covered entire continents. Waterfalls that sprayed moisture high into the air, creating rainbows that spanned his entire field of view.

It felt… almost like a crime to come to this place with anything less than pure intentions. Yet here they were, flying in with machines of war.

He could almost understand the artisan colonists' intentions in coming here.

‘They really are gone,’ Ahsoka thought to him. “I had hoped they were just hiding underground or…”

He gave her a brief look as she gripped the overhead handhold next to him. He closed his eyes and surged his senses forward only to be met with nothing. There was only a single sentient mind within the Force ahead for thousands of kilometers around them. Beyond that, only the dense concentration of flora and fauna as far as he could sense below.

‘Yes, though there is one sentient alive down there.’

Her Mandalorian pattern helmet glinted in the sunlight, “He’s a zygerrian, ordering a bunch of droids around, carrying cages of captured kirosian birds and other unique fauna. Clearly not just a slaver, but also a collector.”

He had to deal with an almost instinctual anger that arose at the mere thought of it. Zygerrians. He almost hadn’t believed it when he heard the news. It was the one part of history studies in the Jedi Academy as a child that had stuck in his mind. An entire empire built on the backs of slaves.

Such things weren’t new in the history of the galaxy, but the zygerrians practiced it to a ludicrous degree even though they had the technology and automation to get rid of the practice. For them it was about status and culture.

Now here they were, taking an entire colony of peaceful togrutans into forcible slavery.

‘He’s testing us both with this one, again,’ Anakin thought with anger.

She nodded, ‘Yes, he wants to push our buttons. Your history with slavery and the fact that it’s my race being abducted.’

‘What I can’t believe is that this zygerrian is still here. They had to know we would come eventually. He should’ve detected us coming into orbit, yet is content to remain and still gather animals.’

‘It’s because he wants a chance to capture a Jedi.’

‘Seriously?’ he thought incredulously.

‘Yes, we are legendary boogeymen to the zygerrians at this point.’

“On final approach!” announced the pilot.

All the troopers went through final checks of weapons and armor. Anakin spotted Chewbacca being rather vigorous with his bowcaster’s cocking mechanism. The wookiee was another person in their little band that had a very complicated history with slavery.

“You alright there, Chewie?”

“I hope there are some zygerrians down here,” the wookiee growled. “I would enjoy feeding them their own arms.”

He couldn’t help but wince at the mental imagery those words evoked. “There is one, Chewie and we need him alive. It’s more than likely he knows about the new hyperspace lane and its coordinates.”

“His ship’s navicomputer will have it,” Chewie pointed out.

“The enemy won’t be so cavalier about such sensitive information. His ship’s computers are likely trapped and will erase that data.”

The gunship flared and came in for a landing.

The large side doors slid open and the ARC troopers poured out with weapons raised.

The only thing that greeted them was silence.

No droids surged out of the large settlement to offer battle.  

He stepped foot on the soft wild grass of Kiros and for the time in this war, a wholly uncontested landing.

The gunships unloaded their troops and the AT-TEs were released onto the field.

“Rex! Get the AT-TEs advancing down that road!” shouted Ahsoka, gesturing at a wide central road that would be wide enough. “Advance by squad, I want this settlement cleared!”

The settlement was clearly built around accommodating pedestrian traffic only.  

The buildings themselves had organic lines and almost seemed to mirror natural plants, combined with unique artistic flares. None were similar. Trees were abundant between them and Anakin had never seen a settlement that had achieved so little impact on the natural landscape.

The rapid mechanical sound of the bipedal scout AT-RTs emerged as they were dropped from the rear cargo holds of the TEs.  

He lit his lightsaber and joined Ahsoka as they began their running advance alongside the troops in a long skirmish line and entered the settlement outskirts.

Chewie roared in a battle cry and fired his bowcaster at the first building they encountered, scrapping a commando droid that had been about to fire a sniper rifle from the roof.

Sporadic fire erupted across the line of advancing troopers as enemy droids revealed themselves to attack.

Anakin deflected the shots from a new form of droideka model that featured a single barrel sniper rifle centrally mounted.

His will reached out through the Force and lifted it off the roof before crushing it.

Ahsoka jumped up into the air, her boot jets flaring into flight, carrying her high up.

All three blades were raised and she practically crashed down onto a roof down the street.

Four commando droids exploded outward from the radiant Force Shockwave she released on landing, shredding their chassis and weapons, which also included a missile launcher.

Six B1s flying STAPs appeared overhead to begin strafing the troops with their mounted Repeaters.

All six died when various ARC troopers shot them with pin point accurate fire from their DC15 long rifles. The STAPs spun out of control to crash into the ground or explode against the buildings.

Ahsoka jumped to another building roof and her lightsabers danced around her, slicing up four B2s that had been waiting in ambush.

At the next street, which adjoined the wide central street, the lead AT-TEs fired their main guns against two AATs.

Both died and exploded, but at the cost of an AT-TE getting hit.

It also exploded, sending debris streaking outward and large fireball climbing into the sky.

“General Skywalker! We have a problem!”

It was one of the first company’s sappers. He was kneeling next to a high wall for a garden and was carefully waving his scanner in one hand whilst his pistol was up and firing at the approaching enemy. A dozen B1s flying armed speeders charging towards them.

Anakin deflected shots straight back at the rapidly approaching enemy as he blurred toward the sapper.

He only needed one look at what scanner showed before slashing his lightsaber through the solid wall.

“Go, sergeant!” The sapper dove through the new gap. “Rex, keep the advance going!”

“Yes, sir!” replied the clone captain over the din of battle.

Anakin entered a pristinely beautiful, hand manicured garden, but he could spare no further thought for that as he saw what had been cruelly planted in the middle of it.

The sapper had already blasted two B1s who had been standing guard over it.

It was clearly a large bomb, dodecahedron shaped with spikes jutting out of it in every direction. 

“Estimated yield, sergeant?”

The trooper carefully adjusted his scanner, going to passive mode. “Has to be at least a kiloton. No active scanning emissions. We can approach safely. RF detected, must be linked to a remote detonator.”

Anakin played a hunch, “Scan that frequency.”

The trooper nodded before he froze in astonishment and tilted the handheld scanner’s screen, so Anakin could see the results.

“Sithspit! Ahsoka, come in!”

“Yes, master?!” she said in the comlink over the sound of slashing lightsabers.

“The entire settlement has been seeded with explosives, enough to entirely vaporize it. This is a trap.”

“Figured something was off! The zygerrian had to have some form of trump card to play. Argh, frak off already! Hah!” He heard the sound of rending metal and clattering durasteel. “Frakking commando droids! Master, we need to keep the bombs in play. If we disarm them, the zygerrian will run to his ship and there’s no guarantee the Resolute can intercept him. We need the data on the hyperspace lane!”

“Got it. Sergeant, get your kit out, we have a bomb to jury rig. We better hope we don’t frak this up!”

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A/N: Smoothly sliding into the next arc. Hope you had fun reading. Stay awesome folks.

The Owl in the Abyss - Chapter 30

“Let’s go!”

The high revving of straining engines being pushed to maximum acceleration joined the concussive sound of massive footsteps slamming down on the old road.

The oddest convoy Brockton Bay had ever seen began racing its way out of the suburb.

The PRT vehicle in the lead with Armsmaster driving, Miss Militia in the passenger seat with a thick barreled weapon in hand.

Running behind them were two giant women, carrying a large exotic steel statue of a nude me.

Kaiser sat on Menja’s left shoulder, whilst I was on Fenja’s right shoulder. We were both gripping the massive strands of long hair of the twins to keep ourselves steady as they ran.

Taking up the rear of the convoy was Dad and Kayden. Coil’s car was powerful in more than just its supercharged engine and would take up the rear guard.

Our speed was capped to what the giant twins could manage at the moment, which took a bit of adjusting as we went.

“It seems 54 mph is our limit,” Armsmaster announced over the radio bud in my ear. “Upcoming turn, left.”

“Victor is permanently out of play, got some rats to tie him up and other critters to carry away all his gear, he’s not going anywhere even if I leave range,” Dad announced.

“Good, thank you.”

“Be aware, I’ve identified seven more hostile cars closing in on your position, filled with armed E88 gang members,” Dragon announced.

“Roger that,” Armsmaster said grimly, as we slowed down to turn.

In the road beyond we immediately ran afoul of the first traffic in the area. The first poor driver saw the two giant parahumans first and naturally panicked, abruptly turning his car to get off the road as quickly as possible.

He ended up plowing through a fence, his tires sinking into a large rose bed, the front sending a fountain of dark earth and ruined flowers spraying everywhere.

Armsmaster belatedly started the PRT vehicle’s sirens and lights. It helped a bit, but the sight of the giant twins sprinting was starting to naturally cause more chaos all around as other drivers in neighboring streets were distracted.

“Upcoming turn, right!”

“First two hostile vehicles will catch up to you in an estimated twelve seconds,” Dragon announced on overwatch. She had stealth drones somewhere overhead but my attention was focused behind me. I twisted Fenja’s blonde hair around my left hand, securing me further and readied ‘15.

“Hebert, the first one is yours, Escort take the second.”

“Roger.”

"Got it!” I shouted over the rushing wind.

The first hostile cars swerved into the view, screaming tires and over revving engines.

Dad swerved his car briefly, steadying it in the center of the road.

The hostile car, a Ford sedan, had three gangsters leaning out the windows brandishing assault weapons.

That was their first and last mistake as it meant that the large flock of birds had no problem dive bombing into the car interior. Their first target, the faces of every ganger, including the driver. The sedan immediately began swerving and lost control before crashing into a street light.

I aimed ‘15 at the second car rapidly trying to gain ground on Dad’s car.

He swerved out of the way to give me a clear shot but my aim was fouled when we had to take another turn.

It did mean that as we settled onto the new road, I got my clear shot as the hostile vehicle also turned.

The blast of aerokinetic force barreled out of ‘15 and caught the hostile car on the side.

It was instantly pushed over, its right wheels leaving the tarmac in the middle of its turn.

It tumbled over onto its roof, sparks flying as it skidded on the rough surface, careening off the road and crashed into a brick wall fence of a house.

“Good work, clear for the moment,” Armsmaster said.

I settled myself back on Fenja’s shoulder. It was quite challenging, almost akin to riding on a horse. If I didn’t flex with my legs with the proper timing, it could easily launch me right off. Kaiser had no problems on Menja, clearly having trained for the eventuality they were now experiencing.

We raced down two streets and turns before the E88 caught up to us again.

“Incoming from the front. Three cars. Escort, Kaiser, be ready.”

Miss Militia took the lead in dealing with this bunch. She leaned out the side window, took aim with a launcher weapon and fired.

Just what happened next I wasn’t exactly sure of.

The projectile fired was large, carrying itself in an arc before it landed right on the hood of the hostile car.

It punctured into the light aluminum steel easily, anchoring itself, then a slight arc of electricity flared from it onto the bodywork.

All power to the car died as it immediately slowed down, coasting on its momentum only. The driver turned the wheel in panic, but had enough wits to turn sharply right, forming a barricade to impede us. The car rolled in the process, tumbling twice before skidding to a stop.

Armsmaster simply used his armored PRT car to ram right into the rear wheel of the gang car, easily pushing it out of the way.

I had to hurriedly lift myself off Fenja, partially standing as the giantess hopped over the obstacle. The shock of the event rumbled through her body and I briefly misted for less than two seconds, figuring it was better to play it safe than trust my neophyte riding skill.

“Kaiser!”

My minion didn’t disappoint, as he formed two anchored steel ramps right in front of the ganger cars that were trying to rescue him.

He had shaped them not only to send them airborne, but also flip them over and like something straight out of 80’s Hollywood, the two cars sailed through the air, twisting in almost elegant movement before crashing to either side of the road.

One spent its remaining momentum on a tree, wrapping around it and spilling E88 members out of it, one even crashing through the front windshield. The other plowed through a thin fence before coming to a final stop against the outer wall of a house.

I winced at seeing the grisly aftermath.

We sped past it and hadn’t even turned the next street before another E88 car was on us from behind.

“I’ve got it,” Dad said.

He tried siccing another flock of birds on them, but it seemed that someone on the opposite team was also running coordination as well. Their windows were firmly shut.

Glass erupted from the forward windscreen as the passenger in the E88 car opened fire on dad’s car.

He swerved his own vehicle left and right, before a rear panel opened up and shot something out of it.

We had both read Coil’s handbook on his tricked out car at this point and this was a rather nasty device.

They were basically explosive bolas that had the feature of being set off in close proximity to a large mass of metal.

They rolled right underneath the E88 car and detonated with such force that it lifted almost five feet in the air, wrecking the chassis completely before it landed again and the wheels crumpled inward.

“Hookwolf incoming!” Dragon warned.

We were just speeding through an intersection when the call came and I spotted the massive wolf-shaped mass of writhing blades loping with high speed to our left.

He partially skidded on the road as he struggled to give chase, briefly losing traction before his limbs began pumping furiously.

“Hebert, switch places, take the lead,” Armsmaster ordered as he swerved and braked.

Dad turned right and gunned the throttle of his car to race past the jogging giants. No gadgets or armaments in the Coil car would do anything to take on Hookwolf.

Miss Militia was already leaning out her window, aiming with a rotary grenade launcher weapon.

Rapid thumps of concussion heralded the weapon firing grenade after grenade straight into the face of the lupine metallic parahuman.

They burst open with brief small explosions before the gray mass of containment foam expanded rapidly onto him.

It slowed him down immediately, but didn’t stop him.

He began literally shedding the metallic pieces most affected, leaving them behind in his wake.

The blade form rolled and tumbled, as Hookwolf preserved his momentum, allowing him to generate more metal from his core to replace what he’d lost.

Miss Militia was undeterred though, keeping up the pace of her fire from the grenade launcher, forcing Hookwolf to shed more and more of himself.

I began to see her strategy when greater amounts of foam began to visibly build up behind the mass of moving blades.

She fired her last grenade, the launcher shifted to a mass of green energy, becoming a machine gun, before it shifted again to the same grenade launcher.

Seeing this, Hookwolf quickly peeled off at the next intersection.

He clearly recognized it was a war of attrition that he would lose and would only end up with him being captured.

“Will he be back?!” I shouted over the rushing air.

“Not for a few hours,” Dragon replied. “The containment foam that reached his core will be on his skin when he returns to human form.”

Knowing the properties of that substance, it would mean several hours until it degraded and fell off.

We were just about to cross from the bumpy roads of the Docks and into the even more dilapidated region around the Boat Graveyard, when another group of cars ranging from pick-ups, sedans and vans approached.

“Night, Fog, Crusader, Stormtiger and Krieg approaching,” Dragon warned. “A dozen armed gang members in tow.”

“In a moving engagement, Crusader and Stormtiger are the only ones with applicable powers,” Armsmaster mused. “ETA to intercept us?”

“Less than two minutes if your current route remains constant.”

“Your ETA?”

“I’ve delivered Rune and Othala into Protectorate custody at the Rig, I can reach the Boat Graveyard in seconds.”

“We need this anomaly off our hands, Dragon.”

“Yes, but first we need a generally exact time for how long his metal shell will last around it,” she retorted.

That was my cue. “Kaiser, how long does your metal last after you leave proximity?!”

“It depends on the structure I’ve created, as far as I’ve been able to measure, it’ll be twenty hours, mistress!”

“That’s more than long enough, I’ve sent you a rendezvous, Armsmaster,” Dragon said.

“Received, Hebert, turn right at the next intersection.”

We were soon turning into a large dilapidated parking lot that had served the specific sea port that had become the Boat Graveyard.

It was strewn with potholes, burnt out cars and relatively old garbage skids that were so rusty that no one wanted to pick them up.  

Dragon’s Cawthorne plunged down out of the low level clouds and flared its thrusters to a hovering stop just as we arrived.

Fenja and Menja were breathing truck fulls of air as their own stamina had been extensively tested by our run.

“All right you two, good work. Put it down over there,” I instructed.

“Yes… mistress, thank you… mistress,” gasped Fenja, as her sister spat out a massive glob of lactic acid laden saliva into a nearby garbage skid. The sudden acid laden watery mass nearly tore the thing open completely.

The two giantesses carried the statue forward to the largest empty spot in the entire lot.

They backed off quickly and Dragon’s Cawthorne with barely any pause, swooped down, draconic style legs emerging from the suit and grabbed the nude statue of me over the shoulders.

Thrusters flared into bright plumes of light and the Cawthorne was gaining altitude again and disappeared into the low clouds, flying towards the south.

I misted and flew towards the parked cars as Armsmaster, Miss Militia, Dad and Kayden got out.

“What now?” I asked, looking towards the adjoining streets leading to the parking lot.

“We have barely a minute to decide,” Armsmaster’s signature weapon unfolded into his right hand. “PRT policy would tell us that we must retain custody of these three. However, Kaiser’s contingency for this scenario holds us hostage in effect.” He gestured into the distance and we could see columns of smoke climbing into the sky from multiple points all over the city. “Until he calls off his gang members, that will only get worse. Large parts of the city are without power due to burning substations, most hospitals are running on emergency power. Two police precincts were overrun and are in enemy hands. We’ve also begun receiving reports that the ABB is counter-attacking in places where the E88 have incurred in their territory.”

“So even if Kaiser was to order them to stop this minute, we’d have an open gang war anyway,” Dad scowled. 

I inwardly seethed at myself. Technically, I could get on the phone and order Kenta to pull his men back, but that would be highly uncharacteristic and potentially expose my mastery of him to  the entire ABB. That would be even worse as it would lead to the gang fracturing and all the consequences which I couldn’t hope to predict.

If the Empire was attacking all over the city, then it would mean…

I ripped out my phone from 15’s pouch and sure enough, Henry had left code messages that nearly the entire FTF was being deployed to defend Coil’s territory. He had also sent everything he had on SCP-173 to Dragon.

“Armsmaster, what’s the Director’s call?” Miss Militia asked.

“I’ve kept her appraised of our situation,” he nodded. “At this point, as much as it galls her. She believes we can’t hold on to Kaiser. He played his cards too well. The escalation against the ABB will stretch us to the breaking point in dealing with the fallout.”

“Then we must go.”

He nodded, “Escort, can you…”

I knew what he was asking, “Yes, get my dad out of here.”

Dad visibly fought with himself, his hands curled into fists. “You deliver this bastard to them and get out of here, Little Owl. You hear?”

“I will, dad,” I nodded.

They sprinted back to their cars, jumped in and practically burned rubber as they hit the gas.

Their cars had just about turned the corner out of my line of sight when the E88 convoy screeched into view.

One of their cars continued on to give chase, whilst the rest turned into the lot and spread out.

I sighed wearily and looked up at the giant twins, “Put Kaiser down and return to normal size.”

“Yes mistress,” they chorused.

The E88 cars stopped as far away as they could when they saw me waiting, in one case a car slammed on the brakes so hard that their wheels locked up and it drew skid lines on the tarmac.

No one knew what my range actually was, so they naturally assumed the worst.

I could see them hurriedly talking to each other in their cars and into radios, applying their Master-Stranger precautions.

The cars engaged into reverse gear and backed up to the edge of the lot.

Doors opened, the five E88 capes and other gangers began to emerge.

I spotted Crusader in his armor first and inwardly smirked. It would just take a word from me to unleash him onto his comrades, but he was a trump card that had to stay where he was.

This was my first encounter with the others and the most striking was Stormtiger; he wore loose fitting pants, running shoes, a pale blue tiger mask and nothing else. He was tall and deliciously muscled, but just fell short of equaling Kenta in that department.

Krieg, who was standing in the lead of the formation of capes, reminded me of a discount SS stormtrooper. He didn’t have obvious German WW2 era symbolism on his black uniform/costume, but rather the E88 logo and leather boots that came up to his calves. His white mask covered three quarters of his face, leaving just the mouth and his right cheek visible. 

Night dressed also completely in black, had the full package of cowl, hood, mask, high-heeled boots and a cloak, whilst her husband, Fog, mirrored her outfit, except in gray with combat boots.

“Escort! Release them!” demanded Krieg with no preamble. “Know that if you master any of us, our forces are poised to invade city hall and we are ready to take the mayor!”

His aura at least indicated that he believed that wholeheartedly. I needed to make a point here.

My left hand lazily gestured to Kaiser and beckoned him closer, which he eagerly obeyed, but stopped him before he could try to hug me.

“Sit,” I pointed to the ground.

He obeyed.

The auras of the five E88 capes burst into outrage and anger. Stormtiger brandished his fists, the air rippling around it and forming his signature aerokinetic claws that were only visible thanks to the dust that was sucked in.

I held up my hand, squeezing my thumb and middle fingers together. “When I flick my fingers, Kaiser will stab you all through the feet with his power! You know that little move of his well!”

Kaiser raised his hands threateningly towards his own roster of capes. “Please let me do it, mistress. There are some of them that really deserve it. I actually hate quite a few of them.”

His voice wasn’t loud enough to carry to his gang’s position but I could see Stormtiger had definitely heard that, judging by his aura’s reaction.

“If Crusader tries to manifest his ghosts to stop me, I’ll just go intangible and Kaiser will mutilate your feet!” I said to Krieg as he sucked in a breath to speak, which neatly stopped him. My eyes were also locked on Night, stopping her from employing her own trick, which was eerily similar to SCP-173. It let her transform into a blindingly fast monster of hyper sharp claws when unseen.

That was only an inference, given the state she left her victims in. No one could see the monster she turned into and the effect even applied to camera recordings somehow.

“What do you want, Escort?!” Krieg shouted.

“What I want?! I want an end to the E88 in this city, an end to the ABB, the Merchants! An end to parahumans running roughshod over people!” I shrugged. “But that is just a naive wish! No, what I will settle for now is you ordering every gang member in the city to stop and go home! Then I will turn Kaiser and the twins over to you.”

“Lunacy! You truly think that de-escalation is possible now?! Lung and Coil will not stop their retaliation just because we retreated!” Krieg sneered, shaking his head. “This war has begun, Escort! That bell cannot be unrung!”

I hated that he was right. It was now a matter of saving face and ego for all sides. Even if I could unilaterally order ‘Coil’s forces’, there were certain expectations from everyone in that territory and his reputation to uphold.

I was the power behind the curtain, but right now I ran head first into the limitation of that power.

“Go home, Escort! Return Kaiser to us and go! In exchange, your home and family will not be targeted for reprisal by the E88!”

How easy it would be to just mist and zip forward, snare them all. Battling Night for emotional dominance wouldn’t even be a problem. Her aura was rigid, inflexible and she’d had no children. There were emotional gaps there I could power straight through.

However, I couldn’t forget their Master-Stranger protocols and the fact that someone was coordinating them very expertly and maintaining an overwatch somehow. Dragon would’ve spotted conventional means, such as drones, immediately. Which meant that it was either a Thinker power that could still work in Brockton or a Tinker utilizing something like the Snitch.

“Stand,” I ordered.

Kaiser winced as his knees audibly cracked from the speed with which he rushed to obey. “Please mistress, don’t do it. I have yet to lose myself within you.”

In any other circumstance, I would’ve laughed at how simpy Kaiser was towards me. I warred with the impulse to take him right here. What could his capes actually do? If they tried to interfere, a single word could have them all spiked. I could ride him silly and they’d watch as they bled out through their feet.

My rationality asserted itself

“Sorry Max,” I sighed with regret. “But I’m going to have to take a rain check on that one. I had to at least try to stop this with words. I’ll take your deal, Krieg! They’re yours. Know that if you or Kaiser breaks that deal in the future, you and the rest of the E88 will regret it!”

It was lame and lacked gravitas but it was all that would come to mind.

I misted and blasted away over the ocean, before turning south.

There was a war to win.

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By the time the sun set on Brockton Bay that day, most of the city was still without power.

Everyone fell back to candles, gas lamps or emergency power generation if they had it available. A state of emergency had been declared by the mayor with the backing of the governor, including a curfew.

All it really achieved was to get civilians mostly out of the line of fire.

The E88 had scaled back their attack on city infrastructure, but now with Kaiser back at the helm, the war shifted to the gangs and their assets. 

The ABB had already spread the word through their network and I had sent warnings to all the working girls and gigolos of Red Light. It was unlikely that the E88 would start going after them personally, but I warned everyone to get home defense measures ready and to call me immediately if they were targeted.

No sane civilians or customers would be found on the streets tonight anyway. 

Every Protectorate and independent hero was on patrol and even the Wards were called up to assist.

Armored PRT cruisers patrolled the city center. Police and medical helicopters were mostly being used to ferry emergency medical cases straight to hospitals. Ambulances were being escorted by police cars.

Henry’s defense of the city’s south-west was still ongoing.

He was personally leading elements of the FTF and they were successfully turning back vans full of E88 gangers that were trying to burn down businesses.

This mostly consisted of him smashing the cars to pieces.

Patiently absorbing the gunfire of the gangers until they ran out of ammo, before slapping most of them senseless and letting the rest run.

The other FTFs were, with limited remote help from Coil, engaging the rest.

So far no E88 cape had attacked the south-west yet, though it was only a matter of time.

Their primary offensive was straight into the northern ABB territory.

Bakuda was nowhere near ready yet to actually contribute meaningfully, but her message had indicated she was hopeful of creating a steady supply of exotic ammo for the ABB rank and file. I had organized for those supplies to be delivered as soon as possible, but it was going to be very difficult to do without giving away her location.

Kenta and Oni-Lee had already moved themselves to the north, marshaling every ABB member they could to fight off the incursions and defend the businesses.

That left me defending the ABB Downtown Coast alongside Dragon.

This was a happy accident, since the Tinker had decided to store SCP-173 inside the same small containment dome that was now around the time-frozen Alex.

Dad had also taken the opportunity to finally debut in the cape world. He had simply just grabbed the armor of the FTF, a full face mask and begun an aggressive patrol in our neighborhood. Since it was located right on the edge of the Docks, which was ABB territory, he had already made a number of E88 gangsters gain a new fear of avian fauna that would stay with them for the rest of their lives.

Dragon’s voice in my ear interrupted my musings. “Escort, I’ve got E88 movement in your sector. One vehicle, six occupants, all armed.” 

I stepped forward from the center of the roof of the apartment building I was perched on and scanned the expansive view from right to left. 

“Roger, direction?”

“Bearing north-east from your current orientation, 800 meters, going down Obery Street.”

“Got it, on my way.”

I was flying the next moment, only partially misted below my waist.

This allowed for Dragon to keep a constant bearing on my location without any interruption, guiding me into a target actively without wasting time on corrections, backtracking or possibly missing completely.

Seconds later I was directly flying over the enemy vehicle, keeping pace. I was so close I could touch the roof. My dive bomb type approach had ensured they wouldn’t see me coming at all.

I could take them out now, but I was curious to see what their actual target was.

They ended up stopping just two hundred feet later. On my right was a two floor wooden building that held a dental practice and a… otolaryngologist? I struggled for a moment to even say that in my own mind and also remember what that kind of doctor did. A small coffee shop was next door, firmly shut with steel protection shutters down over the windows and doors.

On the other side of the street was an expansive two floor brick building surrounded by nicely maintained lawns and gardens. The four poles featuring the American flag, the greater Brockton county flag, the city and state flag meant some sort of local government function was carried out here, but nothing on this side of the building told me what exactly.

I misted fully when the car doors opened.

Of the six, only two were the almost stereotypical skinheads with leather jackets and boots. The others were dressed utterly normally, as if they had just come from whatever their day jobs were.

Their on hand equipment was jerry cans of fuel, axes, baseball bats, pistols and two AK assault rifles slung over their backs.  

“Go, go!” said one of them.

They split up, three starting to run towards the government office and the others towards the dental practice.

I materialized sitting Indian style right on the hood of their car and snagged them all in my mind web.

“Nope, freeze and stay where you are,” I ordered, laying ‘15 down onto my lap.

All six men paused mid-stride as best they could.

“Dragon, what’s the building to my left?”

“County registry of deeds.”

“Any specific reason you can think of why they would torch the place?”

“Besides general chaos, no. Deeds are not only stored in this location, there are redundant backups in many locations across the country.”

I nodded to myself in understanding and pointed at the guy who seemed in charge of this group. This one’s aura was the most dominant with a sense of pride and ego. “You, drop your weapons and equipment, come here.”

“Yes, my lady!” he complied eagerly.

His AK, jerry can and lighter clattered to the street and he rushed towards my position.