KeiransFuturismFantasy

The Force Wills - Chapter 161

The Force Wills - Chapter 160

The Force Wills - Chapter 159

2078: Highriders - Chapter 19

The Force Wills - Chapter 158

The Force Wills - Chapter 157

The Force Wills - Chapter 156

2078: Highriders - Chapter 18

The Force Wills - Chapter 155

The Force Wills - Chapter 154

Anakin V Marek by Flux & I.

The Force Wills - Chapter 153

Having actual downtime was a rare event for Anakin.

Between the constant missions, briefings, Council summons, his GAR generalship, flimsiwork and training Ahsoka, it was a small miracle to even find any time to eat during a typical day.

Now with his padawan under the temporary guidance of Master Damsin, he found himself with some daily free time in his schedule.

He walked the expansive halls of the Temple, considering just what he could do.

His usual standby of going to the hangar bays to just spend hours tinkering with his own Delta 7 fighter was impossible, considering the main bay was still a crime scene and heavily damaged. He could have the fighter transferred to the smaller bays in the Temple complex but that was just too much organizing for his taste and by the time it was done, he’d have wasted his free time.

Lightsaber training? It had been awhile since he had gone to one of the upper-level training galleries reserved for knights and masters. There were a number of techniques in his Djem So that required a good few hours of refinement. Ahsoka had lately been pressing him hard in their sparring competitions, narrowing the point gaps further and further. Actually being defeated by her was not a moment he was relishing, even though he knew it was inevitable. He still remembered what it had been like to best Obi-Wan in sparring and now his own time was seemingly approaching.

Not if he could help it!

Course decided, he put a spring in his step and hurried towards the nearest turbolift with purpose.

The Jedi he passed on the way had a distinct wariness about them. Their presence in the Force was bloated, their senses peeked and Force probes flying outward. The tension of the bombing hung like a suffocating blanket over the entire Temple. The protestors outside didn’t help either, though the Jedi as a whole were also reeling over the shock that Master Yoda had actually gone outside to speak to the people directly.

Anakin almost couldn’t believe it and it had been noteworthy enough that nearly all major news services had run with that story.

None of the major news companies had been at the protest, but all of them were essentially stealing footage that had been taken by the protestors who had posted it onto CSO. It exploded from there and went on to set records for view tallies on a single video.

He had been there in the background and watched along with Master Drailig and half a dozen Temple Guardsmen as Yoda stepped towards the protestors.

Many of them had anti-war holo signs mounted on small poles or were even using their personal holocoms to wave the signs in the air. A clone trooper helmet with an angry bloody slash cut through it, slogans such as ‘No more blood for the Republic’ or ‘Jedi Warmongers’ were prominent.

The clone guards themselves manned the cordon at the bottom of the wide stairs, each with energy shield bracers on their arms and holstered blasters firmly set on stun. They also kept their distance, no one wanting to escalate the protests.

Yoda appeared very small against the backdrop of the vast ziggurat, leaning on his gimer stick.

Yet his presence quickly became known to the protestors and it silenced them with sheer astonishment that the grandmaster of the Jedi Order himself was there. The legendary being who had seen more than eight centuries of the Republic, who had helped to deliver and protect the very society and civilization they had been born into. He was essentially the employer of their deceased loved ones and now he had come out from the imposing Temple bastion, seemingly humbling himself.

Yoda’s speech, delivered with his customary syntax of Basic, would reverberate through everyone there and beyond.

“Grieving, you are. Angry, you are. Understandable. Rightly, it is.

“Senselessly, lives were taken. Workers who served faithfully. Clones who stood guard. Jedi who healed and taught. Gone, they are now. Pain of this, deep it is in me. Blame the Jedi, some of you do, for the war. For failing to protect those under our roof.”

His gimer stick tapped once hard on the steps beneath him. It reverberated like an ancient bell in the ears of everyone who was there.

“Truth, it is not. But feelings, truth they are not required to be. Sorrow speaks louder than facts, and listen to it, we must. War, this is. Cruel, it has always been. Innocent lives, always it claims. On battlefields distant, and now, here, in our home. The Jedi, makers of this war, we are not. Defenders, we chose to be - defenders of the Republic, of its people, of you. A choice heavy with cost, it has proven. Point you will, to Count Dooku, how he once called the halls behind me home. My student, he once was. Fallen he has. Left us, pursuing his own ambition, he did. 

“To the families of the fallen; your loved ones, honor them, we will. Support you in your loss, the Order shall, now, and in the years to come. Empty words, these may seem. But actions will follow. This, I promise.

“To those who cry for peace; hear you, I do. Yearn for it, I do as well. End this war tomorrow, I would, if I knew how. Yet surrender to those who enslave worlds, for greed, for ambition, for power, peace that is not. True peace, built on freedom and justice, it must be. Share we all do in this darkness. Together, bear it we must. Hate, let it not divide us further. For in division, only the true enemy wins.

“Go home tonight. Mourn. Remember. And know this: the Jedi Order grieves with you. Changed by this day, we are. Wiser, we must become. Stronger in compassion, not in arms alone. May the Force be with you… and with the ones we have lost.”

Anakin shook off the memory as the turbolift carried him to the higher floors of the temple and could only shake his head with a wry smile.

The entire thing felt like Ahsoka.

The fact that Yoda had gone out there to speak was all her idea. He wouldn’t even put it past her to tweak the programming of CSO to push the videos of Yoda’s speech to as many linked datapads throughout the Core Worlds and beyond as possible.

The question of why she had done it was something that was still tumbling around in his mind unanswered.

He walked down the hall and checked the first training room - occupied, with the flashing and humming of a lightsaber faintly emerging from the door.

The next one he tried was empty.

He secured the door with a twist of the Force on its locking mechanisms and took off his outer robes and tunic, placing it on the bench just outside the refresher station.

With lightsaber in hand he stepped into the adjoining training room and considered where to begin.

For a quick warmup he had the room begin a high level remote deflection program, meant for Masters. 

A dozen remotes emerged from a small shaft door in the ceiling and the armed spheres surrounded him from on high.

He triggered his lightsaber and immediately had to deflect three shots directly at his face and dodge the rest in a blur of enhanced speed.

For nearly half an hour he persevered against the relentless onslaught, falling into a nice rhythm of the challenge. The computer made continual adjustments, attempting to get under his guard, but Anakin always saw it coming as he pushed his sight further into the future.

He had a good exertion going at this point, his face and upper body coated in a sheen of perspiration.

He deflected one bolt straight back at the last remote that was still ‘alive’ and it fell to the padded floor.

“Computer, up the difficulty by-”

‘Master!’

Ahsoka’s call through the Bond slammed into his mind and he sensed her deep urgency.

‘Snips?’

‘Skyguy, catch!’

He felt the memory pushed through with rapid speed and he was for the moment, reliving her last few minutes.

Meeting the one who had planted the bomb.

Sensing the attack through the Force, having anticipated its coming.

Defending the seductress from the true mastermind - who first tried to kill the rather attractive pleasure girl and then Ahsoka fending off another attack on her own throat.

The face of the attacker, a woman… a Jedi stricken with grief, mourning for something…

Anakin recognized the look well, having worn it for a long time after his mother had died.

‘Find her, Skyguy. She’s in the Temple, temporary quarters wing! I don’t know if she realized I caught a glimpse of her face. If she knows I know, she’ll try to escape and do a lot of damage on her way out. Master Damsin and I are being held up by the Temple Guard for wrecking their dungeon! Go!’

He didn’t need to be convinced further and blurred towards the training room exit, not even bothering to grab his tunic and robes. His instincts and the Force screaming that he couldn’t even afford the seconds that would take.

In the hallway, he strained his foresight as much as it would go, immediately ignoring the closest turbolift and bolting in the other direction. Trying to take that one would cost him at least 40 seconds of waiting.

Instead, in just four seconds of sprinting he was slapping the controls of a turbolift down the hall and immediately squeezed into the lift car.

He gestured with his artificial right hand towards the keypad, wincing inwardly at how it was so painfully obvious now to anyone looking.

The lift plunged downward on its repulsors and barely nine seconds later reached the lower reaches of the Temple, before going sideways through an adjoining shaft towards the guest wing in the eastern side.

“Coming through!” he shouted with a warning as the doors opened.

He barreled through two Jedi waiting for the turbolift and almost sent them sprawling backwards.

“Hey!”

“What the-”

Anakin was already down the hall, reaching out with the Force and pushed off the wall with his foot, redirecting his momentum smoothly left at the intersection.

This was the first floor of the temporary quarters wing, in a single glance he could see twenty apartment doors, lit with natural light coming from tall angled windows on the right. The level of occupancy was quite high and he could immediately spy nine Jedi just going about their day; some chatting quietly to each other, others alone just staring out the windows in contemplation of the past day’s events.

He took a deep breath to calm down, clipped his saber to his belt and pushed his senses outward, searching for the face that Ahsoka had shown him, trying to find that specific mountain of grief she had sensed.

In moments, he felt it as well.

It was slippery and very well hidden but he could pierce the veil the Jedi was hiding herself with. If he hadn’t known what it was to truly feel such sorrow for the death of a loved one, he would be just as blind as the rest of the Jedi in this hall. The bomber was using it to empower her veil directly, drawing on the emotion to fuel the technique.

He didn’t sense her moving at all, so he began calmly striding forward with purpose.

Why the urgency from the Force then? Something he still felt down to the core of his being.

He clamped down on his own signature in the Force, but if this Jedi was powerful enough for remote Force attacks then there was no question that she knew he was there and hunting her.

When he stopped in front of a closed apartment door down the hall with still no movement from her, it was very clear - she was actually waiting for him.

It was tempting to just burst inside with a lit lightsaber, but Obi-Wan’s constant refrain of ‘patience’ rang through his mind.

He placed a hand on the door panel, hearing the entry chime resound inside.

The Force flexed from inside, he caught the slightest resonance of the dark side from it as the door slid open.

He stepped inside and immediately locked his eyes onto the female figure seated on the meditation cushion in the middle of the small apartment’s living area.

The place was minimalism defined, with no decorations, bare walls and just enough furnishings to get by with. Not surprising for temporary quarters. The only improvement the occupant had made was a single green exotic plant seated on a low table.

“Caught you at a bad time, Skywalker?” said the human woman with a pleasant tone of voice. She was still wearing her Jedi robes with the hood up, her face drowned in the deep darkness it offered. Anakin didn’t need light to perceive it anyway, not this close. Long brown hair, partially tied into a bun behind her head, brown eyes set in a pale face, delicate jawline, a thin pointed nose, her lips twisted into a mild sneer.

“So it seems, knight…?”

“Mallie Marek,” she said, her emphasis on the last name was strange, tinged with grief and anger. Anakin wished he had the time to just stop by a datapad with archive access. “Not that you’d know me. I’m just another Jedi Knight among many in this accursed war. You and your padawan are far too busy getting one glorious military accolade after another to notice the rest of us.”

He stared at her, taking in every word and nuance before asking a single question, “Who did you lose?”

She smirked viciously, “Oh, it shouldn’t surprise me that you’d know this pain. Your history isn’t exactly classified and I did my research. You were late in coming to the Order… you retain memories of your parents and Tatooine isn’t exactly the safest place to live in the galaxy, especially not for slaves.”

Anakin could see her intent, trying to disturb his emotional equilibrium. If this had been before Mortis, it could’ve worked, but now…

“You haven’t answered the question, Marek.”

“Can you not guess? You’re sensing me so clearly. More than any of the blind fools in this Order can ever hope to.”

If she was a knight, she had been raised from a very young age here in the Temple. She had a master and if he or she had died in the war, any normal Jedi would mourn, let go and move on. They wouldn’t head into the Coruscant underworld, recruit a seductress to feed a temple maintenance worker nanodroids, they wouldn’t kill dozens including Jedi.

No, not her master. This was deeper, raw and the gaping wound in her spirit could only be one thing.

“Your lover.”

“My husband,” she corrected. “Killed in one of the endless skirmishes for Eriadu, before you and your padawan arrived on the scene.”

“You married in secret.”

“Naturally, Skywalker,” she drawled. “We were both assigned to Talus in the Corellia system, just a few months before the war broke out, we fell in love and married. We knew the Order would expel us for it, yet we couldn’t imagine a life outside our service. Then the war arrived and our consciences wouldn’t allow us to abandon the people of the Republic for our selfish desire. The Jedi indoctrination ran too deep you see.”

Anakin couldn’t help but feel that he was staring into a mirror of possibility.

He was also secretly married and what if Padme died somehow in this war? How would he react? Would he fall? Would he go on a rampage of destruction against the CIS or whoever was responsible?

He would like to imagine he would at least be more selective in targeting the guilty party than the woman before him. 

“You blame the Order for his death.”

“How many more of us should die for this corrupt Republic?” she snarled. “The Council sits in their tower, sending us out to die in a war that should’ve been prevented. If they had done their jobs as peacekeepers of the Republic, then we wouldn’t be out there dying for fat senators who haven’t even seen a blaster fired in anger their entire lives. Now look at us, locked in step with the Senate, commanders and generals of a war. Where is the Order’s independence now?”

“And your solution to this is to murder your fellow Jedi and the workers who support us?”

“At least when they die here, there is much more purpose in it. Where they can be my messengers of blood and grievance to the Council on behalf of the rest of us! The reminder of their failure and culpability.”

The Force screamed in his veins, but he asked one last question. “Will you come quietly, Marek?”

“No, it was a long shot trying to frame your padawan for that bottom dweller’s death, but perhaps with your death, the Council’s precious Chosen One, that will be just the ticket to get the message across-”

She surged towards him in a blurred explosion of movement, her red lightsaber igniting into a thrust straight for his heart, whilst simultaneously attacking with a Force Choke.

He smothered curiosity at her blade’s changed color and battered away the dark technique with barely a thought, his own blade coming to life just in time to catch hers and deflect the lunging blade.

She broke the brief blade lock he forced, and slashed for his legs.

He dodged back, lifting his left leg above the attack, before blurring forward for an overhead slash that Marek intercepted with a horizontal block that she smoothly riposted, trying to step into and under his guard.

They swirled around each other as Anakin whirled to avoid her getting a cheap shot into his back.

Before she could even settle back into an opposing stance, he blasted her with a point blank Force Push straight out of his back.

It managed to catch her, sending her flying back to crash straight through the front door of her quarters. The door screamed of twisted metal as he sensed her Force Control surge around her.

She stopped herself in mid air and sped down the corridor, clearly seeking more room to maneuver.

Anakin blurred with Force Speed, pushing off the walls in pursuit.

He caught up with her in the main corridor, the early afternoon sun streaming into their faces.

He jumped high, flowing into a Falling Avalanche straight to her back.

She barely managed to dodge out of the way, already slashing at his descending blade to knock it out of the way for a riposte.

He stepped back controlling the distance and brought his blade out of the way of her attack, and slashed straight for her neck.

She dodged again, twirling abruptly in reverse for a Force assisted jump straight out of Ataru, landing on a buttress next to the giant window.

Without pause he pushed in on her, attacking her legs and lower abdomen, despite the higher elevation.

She deflected and blocked.

He jumped into a Force assisted forward lunge straight for her heart.

A slashing deflect pushed his blade out of the way, even as she jumped into a somersault, landing on another buttress on the other side of the corridor as he landed in her wake.

Her Force Push, empowered considerably by the dark side, battered at his own Control.

Just enough to rob him of the momentum he had built up to charge at her.

Marek took the opening, launching herself into her own Falling Avalanche straight for his head.

He could kill her in one of a dozen ways now, but that was not his goal, so he pulled a counter technique Ahsoka had once done on him.

He surged into the air to meet her halfway in the apex of her leap, his blade in his left hand smashing Marek’s aside.

His artificial right hand came round for a kidney punch that thundered into the woman.

He landed on the opposite side of the corridor, whilst she crumbled onto her knees the instant her feet touched ground.

The dark side surged in her, pulling on the pain and despair.

She rallied with her blade still up as a barrier, carefully getting back to her feet and chucking away her outer robes with a negligent gesture through the Force.

Her brown eyes glimmered with hate.

The blazing rapid ignition of saber staffs from either side of the corridor reached them.

Four Temple Guardsmen stood there, their lit yellow weapons held forward threateningly.

“Jedi, cease hostilities!” shouted the leader.

Anakin was perfectly fine with letting the Guard take over at this point, but firmly kept his blade up in defense.

Marek glared at guardsmen briefly, before smirking at Anakin.

She blurred into Force Speed, but not aiming at him.

Her lightsaber slashed through the window to his left, the immediate follow up Push shattered the transparisteel before she jumped out.

“Marek! Don’t!”

He ran in pursuit, jumping out as well.

They fell among shattered glimmering shards, for nearly fifteen meters before they landed on the sloping roof of this part of the temple ziggurat.

He had barely recovered, bleeding off the momentum into the Force, when Marek used the opportunity to slash at his chest and neck.

He blocked in the inner ring, low and high and they began trading rapid slashes.

They contested each other’s guard with every angle imaginable in seconds, their blades blurring into a blue plasmatic haze around their bodies.

She was the first one to retreat a step, his strength and speed rattling her arms with every impact.

He was also acutely aware that their fight had pushed them to another edge of the ziggurat’s roof. Ten meters below was an outdoor classroom area that he could sense was filled with nearly twenty young padawans with lightsabers being carefully guided through drills by an older master.

She took an abrupt step back, opening the distance between them and used a sweeping leg kick to release a Force Push.

Empowered by the dark side, he could sense the sheer impetus behind it and his foresight revealed that to contest it directly would result in considerable damage to the roof they were standing on.

Shattering it to such a degree that debris fragments would shower the padawans below at slugthrower ballistic velocities, injuring and even killing some of them immediately.

He threw just enough strength into his counter to bleed off the worst of it and let the rest take him.

The world blurred around him and tumbled as he was accelerated abruptly to the right, despite his internal Control, the shock was enough to rattle his lungs and nearly rob him of breath.

He shifted in mid-air in his fall, switching off his lightsaber with a thought, bleeding the momentum into the Force and easily managed to turn the fatal fall into a mere thump as he tumbled once, taking the initial impact on his upper-back before rolling to distribute and get rid of the remaining kinetic energy.

Anakin came to a prone stop at the feet of none other than Master Tera Sinube, who was leading the lightsaber class for the masterless padawans. The old cosian’s lightsaber cane was already activated, his eyes asking a silent question.

Anakin shook his head in answer.

Sinube nodded, he would protect the students and he backed off, using the Force to nudge the class back.

Marek jumped from above at that moment, power gathered and unleashed.

Anakin blurred to his feet, blade raised horizontal and high in defense. He surged the Force in as precise a manner as he could straight into her.

Their competing lightsabers screamed in protest as contact was made and her Push, that would’ve pulverized anyone unprepared and release a displacement shockwave, was reduced to a mere shifting breeze of air.

With her feet on the ground, she managed to force a blade lock.

She snarled with a viscous grin of triumph for some reason as they met each other's gaze across their locked blades.

Her strength was impressive, Anakin had to admit, as ill-gained as it was in the dark side.

It was also a mistake.

In a moment, he opened himself to the river of the Force, and pushed back with strength that Ahsoka usually called ‘frakking nerfshit’ whenever she tried to compete with it.

Marek’s expression shifted rapidly as their combined blades pushed back onto her.

She broke the lock first, doing two rapid backflips.

He charged in pursuit and slashed for her arms.

Marek deflected as she retreated, enough to buy time and space to properly turn around.

She slashed for his neck.

He leaned back just enough for it to miss and batted at the trailing edge of her blade, combining it with a Push, seeking to disarm her and open up a gap in her defense.

She countered the Push, managing to bring her blade back, preventing another punch from his dangerous right hand.

Anakin felt the rhythm now, he had her measure and began laying in slash after slash, right in the angles she was most uncomfortable with.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the masked visages of Temple Guardsmen entering the outdoor class area, cutting off all escape, their saber staffs already lit.

Marek didn’t seem to care, her lips curling into a smirk as she blocked and counter-attacked. Her eyes flicked towards all the padawans.

That worried Anakin.

I have to end this quickly.

His inner duelist really disliked doing this, but ego had no place here and the Force’s urgent warning was still building to a higher crescendo.

He pushed his next two attacks high and low rapidly towards her hips and face, as if he was going to simply try another Djem So combination, one that she expected of him by now.

The Force built into an abrupt wave of power and he shoved his left hand towards her.

Her defenses and Control shattered.

She screamed in surprise and defiance as she flew back and impacted hard on a wall of the classroom.

She grit her teeth in defiance, trying to fight back against his telekinetic grip.

He raised his open hand and began closing it.

Marek screamed, not just in her mundane voice, but within the Force as well.

Having none of that, he thought with annoyance. Anakin recognized the attack for what it was and smothered it before it could go anywhere.

Finally, he broke through and wrenched her lightsaber away from her, dominating the weapon and switching it off, letting it fall to the ground at his feet.

‘Hold her right there, Master!’

Ahsoka’s voice barely got through to him, such was his singular focus.

His padawan burst in from the main door leading into the temple, her body a blur of speed as she jumped and somersaulted right over the guardsmen and padawans in her way.

Another few sprinting steps and her hands grabbed Marek by the face.

Anakin felt resistance from the fallen knight crumble as Ahsoka fought through the woman’s mental defenses and she fell to the Force Sleep.

He hurriedly pulled his strength away, and for next few seconds was busy managing the massive energies he had summoned, returning to equilibrium both internally and externally.

The Force simmered from Ahsoka as she closed her eyes and he realized she was healing Marek?

No, it was something else.

The Guardsmen stepped closer until they were a wall of active saber staffs that surrounded the insensate Marek and Ahsoka. He dearly wanted to ask and find out what she was doing through the Bond, but didn’t dare disrupt her focus. He felt the danger still, hanging over everyone in the outdoor class like a thick smog.

“Knight Skywalker,” Master Sinube hobbled closer, his lightsaber back into his cane. “Care to bring the light of understanding to an old master worried for his students? I could sense that knight had fallen to the dark side but…”

Their attention was drawn back to Ahsoka as the Force settled down to a low simmer. The danger wasn’t gone, but it was no longer imminent. Yet despite that, she kept her hands on Marek, laying her down onto her back underneath the nearby uneti tree.

“She was ultimately responsible for the hangar bombing,” Anakin said softly, just enough so that only Sinube would hear.

The old master’s shoulders seemed to sag even more as he comprehended the words. “Another of us falls; her sorrow and deep grief was clear to me, even through her anger. This war cannot end soon enough.”

Ahsoka finally stood and addressed the lead guardsman, “The danger is passed for now, but she needs to be admitted to the Halls of Healing immediately. Healer Nummo is waiting for her, deliver her to no one else, stop anyone who interferes otherwise.”

He nodded, bowing shallowly in thanks. Without audible order or pause, four of them stood beside Marek and each took a small portion of the burden to levitate her.

“Ahsoka, your timing was impeccable, as usual,” he grinned as she approached. Her attention was mildly distracted as she waved in response to some of the class of padawans calling to her.

“As was yours, Master. If you had delayed in subduing her by another thirty odd seconds, then we would’ve had another tragedy on our hands. You see, she had not only infected Maintenance Tech Rhorn with nanodroids, but also herself.”

Anakin blinked in astonishment, “She was committing suicide? Using herself as another bomb? I knew her despair was deep but not to that extent.”

“You only scratched the surface of it,” she said, with a haunted look in her eyes. “I managed to dissociate the worst of the explosives the nanodroids had assembled in her, preventing them from reaching a critical mass that would’ve killed everyone in the area. It's now up to the healers to disarm and filter the nanodroids safely from her body.”

He could immediately tell that something else was bothering his padawan, but this wasn’t the time or place to discuss it.

Master Sinube bowed to them both, “My thanks for your intervention, Knight Skywalker, Padawan Tano. I can protect my students from many things, but an explosion of that magnitude…and a fallen Jedi at the same time…” He began hobbling away. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have many young minds set to ease.”

8888888888888888888888888888888888

I stood in the center of the High Council chamber, Taria and Anakin at my side.

The delivery of our final investigative report had gone without any major issues or questions to answer. It was clear, however, that the collective Council wanted nothing more than to put this combined tragedy behind them and move on, with the notable exception of Obi-Wan and Yoda. Both had a distinct aura about them that they would like nothing more than to slap some sense into the others.

The news that Mallie Sievil (her maiden name) Marek, had secretly married Kento Marek had lit a fire under the usual suspects. They decried that this was another example of attachment gone wrong. The traditionalists pointed their fingers at what the progressives and Depa Billaba’s ‘New Code’ had caused.

It was all I could do not to join in on the figurative mud slinging, disguised as ever so polite discourse that was the Council’s usual style.

Yoda tapped his gimer stick in that understated yet commanding manner and drew everyone's attention and demanded immediate silence.

“Time for these debates, this is not. Still in mourning and contemplation, we remain. Many funerals to arrange, we have.”

“Grandmaster, regarding the funerals, are you sure this is the best course of action?” Master Eeth Koth asked delicately. The iridonian zabrak was one of the most level-headed and gracious members of the Council and he straddled the fence on many issues, acting as a bridge and voice of moderation between the divided membership.

“Working for the Order, they were, when alongside the Jedi, they died. Therefore, buried with them, they shall be.” Yoda declared firmly.

The gesture from Yoda was poignant and practically unheard of, something that only he could possibly have done in the long history of the Jedi Order. No other grandmaster has sat for so long or had rebuilt so much in the wake of the Battle of Ruusan and the last great war against the Sith Brotherhood. He had taken my suggestion and was fighting back at last in the war for hearts and minds that Sidious had been waging.

His speech before the protestors was still trending and when CSO broadcasted the funeral, as somber and heart wrenching it would be, it would reach far and wide.

“Padawan Tano, something more to report to this Council, do you?”

I really didn’t want to bring it up here, but I could see how futile the attempt would be to keep it secret, given Palpatine’s spies in the Temple. It was already a known fact to the healers directly working with Mallie Marek. So it was just a matter of changing the speed with which this was known to the enemy.

“Yes, it relates to the health of Knight Mallie Marek, she is pregnant.”

I could feel Anakin’s shock and he glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. Many of the Council accepted the news without reaction, though I could sense puzzlement from a few as they wondered about the timing. Kento Marek had died many months ago and yet Mallie wasn’t ‘visibly’ pregnant.

“She is roughly about one month along and most likely had her husband’s seed in stasis storage.”

My own mind was still trying to work out just why she would first go through the trouble to impregnate herself via IVF, a procedure any med droid could do with minimal fuss, then dose herself with nanodroids to become a suicide bomber. Taking her newly conceived child into death. On the surface it was absolutely monstrous.

“Has the child suffered any complications from the nanodroids or injury from the fight?” Master Windu asked, his face visibly showing how disturbed and concerned he was.

“None, as far as I could see, the healers will have a more complete report.”

“Most troubling,” said Master Billaba, leaning back in her seat. It was rare to see the nominal leader of the reform faction actually showing up in person to a Council meeting or even attending one. As she preferred these days to spend most of her time training her newest padawan. “Perhaps she became pregnant intending to carry something of her late husband into life, but then her fall to the dark side resulted in her taking such a mercurial contradictory action.”

“Hmm, possible, it is,” Yoda confirmed. “Concerned I am, about the dark side’s exposure to the child growing within Knight Marek. Lost to us, most documentation of such effects is… dating from the days of the Old Republic, they do. Research, I shall conduct, with the Council of First Knowledge. Thank you for bringing this to our attention, Padawan Tano. Knight Skywalker, Master Damsin. Dismissed you are.”

We bowed and left with unhurried strides.

“There is an offworld assignment that I’m going on soon,” Taria said serenely as we walked to the turbolift. “As your training is far from over, I thought we might as well make use of it as another opportunity for many, many tests. I will be in touch, Ahsoka.”

She hurried into the lift first and tapped a destination.

The doors closed, leaving Anakin and myself waiting for the next lift car to arrive. 

I got a look at his face and he wasn’t doing a good job of his outer emotional masks, ‘Skyguy, stop brooding.’

He gave me an annoyed glare. ‘You saw what happened in there. Their attitude.’

‘Not exactly encouraging is it,’ I agreed with an internal sigh. ‘In your case, you have a few advantages though. You haven’t fallen to the dark side, you are the Chosen One, which I know we can’t always fall back on, but it’s a distinct point that can’t be ignored. They know that expelling you will just mean that the GAR will just commission you directly, which Palpatine will make happen.’  

He nodded as the turbolift chimed and the doors opened again.

When we were inside and descending into the main ziggurat, he looked at me directly.

‘What do you foresee for any children Padme and I have?’

Oh, how I had dreaded this question. In that single moment, I felt the full weight of probability shifting and settling on my shoulders. A fulcrum, indeed.

‘That is an extremely broad question, Anakin,’ I thought seriously, buying myself time. ‘With many possible answers. The subject of children and the future is extremely sensitive to fluctuation, especially if I speak to the parents of said hypothetical future children. Do you really want me to spoil the surprise, mystery and future joy you will have?’

I winced even as I said it, confirming for him that I was predicting that there will be children and that it would be a joyful occasion at least. That by itself had the probability lines shifting like giant metaphysical gears the size of stars.

‘Not really, but with this war and everything the Council said…’

‘Ignore them, ignore this war, Anakin. All that should matter is your happiness and Padme’s. Fear for your children’s lives because of our enemies, will just as surely destroy and corrupt as any other fear does.’

He nodded in understanding, but a mild smile curled on his lips, ‘Children, plural?’

I folded my arms and gave him a glare, ‘Yes, now stop asking if you don’t want to spoil the surprise!’

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The funeral was held three days later in the ceremonial hall.

It was a necessity because of the number of fallen, each body placed on a separate dais, shrouded with richly embroidered cloth bearing the symbol of the Jedi Order for a Jedi or someone who was serving the Order and the GAR emblem for a clone. That the dead clones were being eulogized at all alongside the others was another huge symbol. Yoda had simply told the kaminoan reclamation corps, who had wanted to collect the bodies, to take a hike back to their water world in his typical style.

Just imagining the diminutive grandmaster being towered over by the insanely tall kaminoans and sending them packing with their nonexistent behinds on fire, still threatened to give me a case of the giggles.

The hall was packed with every senator, dignitary or high ranking GAR officer that could be squeezed in, along with a careful selection of Jedi from every strata of the Order; youngling, adept, padawan, knight and master. There were a number of reporters as well, each wearing small camera headsets. In addition, a number of spy cams that l had helped Hermione emplace around the hall, who was among the attendees. Now the event was streaming directly to CSO on a minor delay.

My own seat was among the Jedi ranks in the front row, next to Anakin. I was also acutely aware that Palpatine was seated far to our right on the same side of the hall and minorly thankful that he wasn’t directly opposite us on the other side. 

Yoda stood from his low seat and began a steady walk, around the arranged daises, his gimer stick’s tapping echoed throughout the hall with each step.

The low murmur of whispering from the less disciplined ranks of VIP guests immediately ceased.

“One with the Force, they are. And our job it is, to remember that we will, in time, also pass on. Luminous beings are we, mere temporary vessels, our bodies are. And we shall all find ourselves here in time. A moment of silence, I ask. To remember and move on.”

The weight of the moment sat heavy on nearly everyone.

For me, no matter what my prescience glimpsed or how far forward in time it was, the true question remained. Would I be reborn somewhere else again? Or would my passing into the Force here be my destination, so to speak?

“Live for the living, we must. Live through us, forever they will.”

Yoda thumped his gimer stick against the floor.

Each dais came alive, unfolding mechanically from below before enclosing themselves on each body, becoming a dull brown metallic casket, each with their own hover repulsor.

As they sealed, a bright shaft of coherent light emitted from each casket, shining upward brilliantly, representing the path of their spirits returning to the Force and also imitating the activation of a lightsaber.

The Temple Guard began a slow, solemn procession into the hall, until a guard was standing at the head and foot of each casket, which rose up into the air to waist height. With equal, perfect coordination, the caskets were slowly escorted out, beginning their final journey to undergo an energy based cremation.

The ashes of the civilians would be returned to their families, the clones’ would be interred into a planned memorial for them on the roof gardens, whilst the Jedi’s ashes were simply sprinkled into earth of the Room of a Thousand Fountains.

“Death, part of life it is. Fear it, we must not. Ending, it is not. Merely a new beginning, it is. Thanks, I give you, for taking the time to come. May the Force be with you.”

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As much as many of the Jedi Order wanted to take some time for reflection, the war did not stand still.

The next day, I saw both Anakin and Obi-Wan off at the tertiary hangars, as they took a shuttle to board the Resolute, where the ship would rejoin the 42nd Fleet and begin a campaign to retake the system of Malor-77. It was in the southern galactic reaches and its single inhabited world, Lanteeb, had come under CIS occupation. That alone was bad news, because it meant that the Separatists had managed to flank the Eriadu defense line. The Republic Navy was scrambling to lock down the Nothoiin Corridor hyperlane and find where the enemy had bridged the gap between the southern Hydian Way, bypassing the Lipsec Run and invading the Bri’ahl Sector Cluster.

A cluster that contained 26 major worlds, rich in minerals and industry, that were screaming for help.

I idly waved as their shuttle disappeared into the distance, joining a high priority sky lane towards the Coruscant shipyards.  

“Ready, my student?”

I managed to keep myself from overtly reacting at Taria’s sudden appearance, stepping out of my natural blind spot and reappearing to my other senses. My heart did quicken by a few beats, however.

“I am, my teacher,” I said simply.

She frowned slightly, but decided to allow my new formality in addressing her, “Then come. Master Yoda is waiting.”

She escorted me to the higher levels of the Temple and a familiar path I had only once visited before - Yoda’s personal quarters.

“Enter, enter,” the grandmaster called impatiently.

The place was just as I remembered, a microcosm of the past few centuries, told in pictures, mementos, rugs, paintings and other objects. Anything functional was reduced in size and scope for Yoda to easily reach.

“Master Damsin, Padawan Tano, sit, sit. Be with you in a moment, I will,” he said, as he stirred and added ingredients to a broth over a small gas cooker in his tiny kitchen.

We both bowed automatically and walked past him to sit on the appropriately sized meditation cushions meant for guests.

For a few minutes we listened to the stirring of the pot, the simmer of thick liquid and the pleasant smell of an exotic meat that I couldn’t identify.

Yoda eventually entered the living room, carrying a mug of the broth with a spoon sticking out.

He sat down on his own cushion and began eating.

I couldn’t help but feel slightly paranoid that this was another cunningly designed Jedi Shadow test, so I kept my peace and waited patiently.

Yoda met my eyes in the next moment and chuckled knowingly in his inimitable way.

“Mmmhmmhmm, good instinct for a Shadow, padawan. In this case, however, truly hungry, I am. Need I have, to send you both to Corellia.” He reached out with the Force and lightly flung a data chit from a nearby small table to Taria, who caught it easily. “Specifics on the chit, you will find. Rescue you must, and into protective custody place, a human woman; Mata Fhernan she is called. Targeted for assassination, she has been. Open Jedi involvement, problematic it is. Disguises you will need.”

He savored more of his broth before nodding. “That is all. Tarry not, you must. Dismissed, you are.”

“Understood, Master,” Taria abruptly stood and began walking for the exit.

I stood merely moments later and followed in her wake, even as my mind was burning with questions and secretly feeling rather peeved.

“A note to remember, Ahsoka,” Taria gave me a wry grin. “Shadows must sometimes work from incomplete or entirely withheld information. Can you tell me why?”

“Compartmentalization or sometimes there just isn’t enough information for a full briefing.”

“Correct, it is up to us to find the gaps in the puzzle, complete the picture. Now, tell me, if you and I had to go undercover on Corellia, who could we become?”

“XO and Captain of a light freighter, seeking an upgrade for their ship in the Coronet shipyards.”

“What are our names?”

“Yours is Helera Geil, mine is Aven Leneeme.”

As we walked towards the quartermaster level, she relentlessly kept hitting me with questions, fleshing out our cover story. From the broad strokes to the most minute detail of each of our respective lives.

She paused as we stopped outside the quartermaster’s office, “A fair attempt, but it is just the beginning. As we journey to Corellia, I will show you how to truly become someone else and show you a few techniques in the Force that will help us pass muster to even the most diligent and stubborn scrutiny. When I am done with you, Ahsoka, you will be able to walk right past your master, and he will not know you are there.”

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A/N: Merry Christmas or as they say in the GFFA, Life Day! A festive time I wish for you all. A pity I couldn't work in a SW equivalent celebration into the story, but the arc's tone just wouldn't allow for it or the timeline. The next story chapter will release on Friday, 2nd Jan. Family commitments and stuff, but a few surprise art pieces should hit as well in between then.

Enjoy the holidays and as always, stay awesome!

2078: Highriders - Chapter 17

“Later, Hollow, there’s still a station to clean up.”

Johnny gave a long look at the horror of torn and amalgamated bodies, globules of crimson blood and chrome fluid floating outward from the mass. He shook his head and turned away, his vacsuit thrusters puffing as he pushed himself into the spoke.

“Matsui… Matsui… Kaori!” I shook her by the shoulder.

She had absolutely frozen in the aftermath of literally compressing an entire milspec black ops team with the weapon on her right arm. What it was or how it did it, could wait, though a fair guess would be she had somehow weaponized gravium in a compact enough package to walk around with.

She blinked, tearing her eyes away from the results of her weapon, her face looking like she wanted to bust her gut’s airlock. I could see she was hyperventilating from shock, but in the next second that stopped as her own biomon systems kicked in to ease and regulate the symptoms. Her eyes met mine through our helmet’s face shields and a grim determination shone there

“Gomenasai V,” she said softly. “I’ve killed before, but that…”

“Would freak anyone the fuck out, yeah. But we got shit to do now, follow me closely and only use that again when I tell you, okay?”

She nodded jerkily.

I grabbed hold of her shoulder and pushed us down the spoke, transferring the SMG to my left hand.

The abrupt death of so many of her team hadn’t seemed to phase Dunn at all.

She merely organized her remaining troops into defensive positions and continued pummeling at the station’s firewalls in cyberspace.

Her Pings also kept radiating outward, each one slightly different with altered and tweaked algorithms. That impressed the hell out of me, even if it was ultimately ineffective at finding me in cyberspace. Every change she made I could see coming and just as quickly adapt my defenses.

We emerged from the spoke and into the main habitable section of the station. Everything here was orientated for the non-existent centrifugal gravity, so we adjusted ourselves to match anyway, feet downward towards the outer hull.

The central corridor curved out of sight before us and our opposition was just through two more bulkheads ahead.

We pushed ourselves up against the ceiling, before puffs of thrusters gave us forward momentum.

Wrecked defense turrets were soon evident, as were torn open doors on both sides, marking the path that Dunn’s team had taken. Painstakingly clearing and securing each room.

Johnny held up a fist, grabbing hold of the ceiling and firing thrusters to stop.

‘Shrapnel spitters ahead.’ He warned.

‘I see it,’ I grumbled in annoyance, bringing Matsui and I to a stop behind him.

The active sensor emissions were obvious and if we disturbed them at all or tried to get a line of sight, we’d get a face full of hypersonic penetrator darts.

I turned to any nearby cams in cyberspace that could give an angle for a quickhack, only to be frustrated that all of them were physically offline, probably intentionally damaged. Dunn had made an invisible wall for us.

Johnny holstered his pistol and with smooth fluid movements, assembled his sniper rifle.

Well, that was one way to do it, I thought.

Using the active emissions as a guide, he triangulated, aiming straight through the curved ceiling at an angle.

The sniper visibly flared as its counter-thrusters fired off as it sent the AP projectile streaking through the vacuum.

It penetrated through the thin ceiling with no deviation and wrecked the shrapnel spitter mounted on the wall, continuing through two more partitions, before finally exiting out the station’s hull and into space.

Johnny had chosen an angle that would eventually bring the bullet into an impact just a few degrees off Luna’s northern pole in the middle of nowhere.

I gave him a pointed look.

“What? Better that than sending it off into some orbit that’s going to eventually wreck somebody’s day in a few hundred years.”

“Do try to keep the damage to a minimum,” Matsui instructed. “We’d like to restore life support to the vac zones without doing months of repair work. As it is, I’m going to have to fight an uphill battle to keep Mitsubishi from just scrapping the place.”

We advanced carefully down the corridor.

Dunn chose that moment to let her primary hacks go on autopilot, whilst turning her full attention on the bulkhead door we were approaching. 

She tried to send the ‘close’ signal to the motors, but found them blocked outright when they ran straight into my fragmentation hack.

I threw a Short Circuit in its wake, which she barely managed to shield by hastily throwing up a disposable firewall.

We traded hacks back and forth even as we crossed the bulkhead threshold.

“Show yourself!” Dunn screamed with frustration into cyberspace.

I still hadn’t let my avatar even manifest. From her perspective, she was just fighting against hacks that seemed to come from any direction she could perceive. That was the problem with fighting against someone with homefield advantage, as I was in effect the station’s own elite dweller in cyberspace, thanks to the codes Matsui had given me.

Five data randomizer daemons materialized from me and streaked towards Dunn’s position.

In appearance they were very disconcerting, taking shapes that could be familiar or outright eldritch to any human mind who perceived them.

Dunn visibly hesitated before bringing out what she’d probably consider a ‘big gun’.

Her own daemon charged forward with suicidal abandon straight towards mine.

What followed was a virtual explosion as countless worm replicants shot from Dunn’s daemon, hungrily devouring data and trying to make more of themselves.

Two of my daemons succumbed, merely becoming food for the horde, but a quick adjustment from me on the remaining three turned them effectively invisible to the virulent code.

They powered their way through, even as I wrenched system resources away from the worms, throwing deep clean daemons, defrags, deletions and outright format hacks of the affected server clusters. Making sure to save the data beforehand.

It was with great satisfaction that I saw Dunn’s avatar visibly back off against what she saw as the nuclear weaponry of cyberspace I was casually throwing around.

Sure, any netrunner could wield them, but from her point of view, I was literally salting the earth. Most ‘runners did not destroy the data they were generally there in the first place to protect.

In the meantime, she now had to contend with my randomizer daemons.

Her initial layer of junk data shields did absolutely nothing in impeding them, they ghosted through as if there was nothing there.

The first firewall she threw out, stopped them briefly before the wall itself flickered and collapsed under the daemon’s assault.

Each daemon was forcefully digging into the code and disrupting cohesion by scrambling the data they found into as many random variables as I could program into them.

Dunn’s avatar rapidly tried to make adjustments on a hack to counter my daemons.

She managed a hack just as the three of them approached her final line of defense, she froze for a second as they turned into multi-armed monstrosities with circular mouths and rows of endless sharp digital teeth that spun around a yawning void.

The psychological trickery worked and the first daemon managed to crash into her last layer of defense without interference which was a nasty Black ICE style firewall.

It destroyed itself in the process, leaving the way clear for the remaining two.

She desperately released her own hack, but it only snagged one.

The daemon suddenly began attacking itself, rapidly becoming an out-of-control ouroboros equivalent singularity that died and exploded into nonsense data that littered cyberspace.

I was impressed with that one and made a reminder in my datafortress to come up with a similar hack.

Dunn’s avatar tried a last ditch retreat out of cyberspace, but only found my daemon’s tentacles waiting.

A moment later it was all over as I felt the daemon’s payload of four Synapse Burnouts go to work.

“Dunn’s dead,” I told Matsui.

“Excellent! Now just the stragglers.”

“Slight problem though, it seems the primary hack that she was using to attack the station has detected her flatlining and is going for broke,” I grimaced as I pushed my instance in cyberspace hard.

It was a nasty multi-thread vectorized hack that straddled the line between a dumb program just carrying out its instructions and a full blown AI.

It exploded into 2,147,483,647 distinct hacks in a runaway replication event that threatened to gobble up the entirety of the station’s cyberspace.

Militech and the programmers who wrote the thing were sore losers and had programmed in this final ‘fuck you’. The consequences this would have on the research being done on the station would at least delay progress, as long as Mitsubishi utilized off-site backup protocols. That was at least until I saw the hacks trying to attack the firewalls that protected the station’s RTGs and heat radiation systems.

I planted myself in front of that firewall and released my own replication worm hack, targeting the Militech swarm.

The station’s lights began flickering.

Kaori twitched as her own systems also told her what was happening in cyberspace. “Fuck V, you’re going to burn out every computer on the station!”

“It’s either this or we get cooked in our own heat.”

We paused at the next bulkhead, finding it firmly shut.

Through the security cams I saw the remaining four Militech black ops were waiting, their own SMG rail weapons up and ready, with deployed superalloy shields as cover. 

I sent over the feeds to Johnny and he backed up, using the curve of the station to avoid the bulkhead and gain the angle he needed.

His sniper came up and he fired twice in rapid succession, whilst throwing a quickhack queue against the third and fourth operative.

Two skull sponges were thoroughly scrambled and splattered out, whilst the rest got Synapse Burnouts.

It eventually took me two meatspace minutes and 23 seconds to finally defeat the Militech ‘fuck you’ hack for good, leaving behind three completely fried server stacks, of which the station only had seven.

“It’s done,” I said with a nod. I didn’t really get ‘tired’ anymore, but fighting that hack left me feeling like a stretched out wet towel right down to my base code.

“Yatta…! Yatta yo V!” Kaori exclaimed - breathless, triumphant and I suddenly found myself being hugged around the neck enthusiastically by a very relieved scientist, who had nearly watched her life work get stolen or even destroyed. “Kuso kurae! Maiyāzu no inu-domo ga tsuki no sora de tayutau shitai ni naru nante, saikō no fināre jan! Ahahahaha!! Kore de jūryoku wa watashi no mono da!” (“Eat shit! Myers’ dogs drifting as corpses in the lunar sky — what a perfect finale! Ahahahaha! Gravity is mine now!”)

“I’m… happy that you’re happy,” I said rather awkwardly, grinning at her infectious bubbliness.

“Eeep! Sorry,” she pulled away as if burned.

“No harm done, let’s just get busy with the clean-up and giving your scientists the good news.”

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Cleaning up the dead in zero-G was another first of my existence beyond Earth’s atmosphere that I could really have done without.

It wasn’t something I had really bothered with much either back in NC, since the NCPD had a dedicated clean-up division. They generally swept in after reported gang fights or citizens calling in any dead body. Rotting corpses were bad news for the general health of the city and it was the one thing every corp could generally agree on - no one wanted a plague burning through the workforce of Night City.

Johnny dealt with the main mass of bodies we had floated together in the station core, whilst I hovered behind each body he pushed with a large gravium based ‘hoover’ that Kaori had given me. It pulled in the leaking fluids with a low level gravitational attraction that it projected five feet in front of the main emitter. The entire thing looked like a three foot long bulky vacuum cleaner, with a fat cylindrical barrel made out of a dizzying array of composites and alloys. It was not mass produced and looked like it was made in somebody's backyard workshop.

Soon enough we had the bodies stripped of armor, vac suits, weapons, tactical harnesses and any other potential valuables floating to one side. The bodies and parts themselves were before the main core airlock and next to it a large floating sphere of mixed blood, cyber fluid and other ‘biologicals’. 

Just looking at it made me thankful I didn’t have my original stomach anymore and any base code impulses to ‘throw up’, could be easily overridden. Johnny had managed to do the same but it was a close thing. Throwing up in a vac suit’s helmet was not a fun time for anyone.

Kaori had wisely not involved herself with the clean up beyond giving me the gravity vacuum.

“V? Hollow?”

I turned away from the ghastly sight we had created and regarded a tall, gaunt man enclosed in a white vac suit. He had a severe angular face of Japanese descent with permanent stress lines around natural dark brown eyes but had distinct cyan lines in the pupils from an AR retinal imager.

“That’s us,” I confirmed.

He stepped forward jerkily in his mag boots, before shaking our hands briefly and afterwards giving a bow.

“Thank you for saving us,” he said with clipped English that barely had any accent at all. “I’m Doctor Hiroshi Takagi, lead gravitational systems scientist and station chief of Kasai-9.”

“Just doing our gig, Dr. Takagi.”

“Yes, but you must understand. Militech Orbital Strike Command is a blade that has been hovering over our heads for a long time. As secret as they are, we knew of them. I had thought we were prepared, that we could defend ourselves, but it was not enough. They should not have been able to dock, but those boarding pods of theirs obviated most of our outer security systems.”

“They came well prepared, doctor. There’s only so much that you can do on the defensive, especially when you’re out here, so far from potential reinforcement.”

“Which is also why I didn’t just come here for pleasantries. You’ve been in the station’s cyberspace and I watched your battle-”

“Sorry, about that, by the way.”

He waved me off, “Hardware can be replaced, I’ve already ordered everything we’d need to get the station repaired from HQ. No, what I want to know is did you happen to see any indication that we might… have a potential traitor or informant among the station staff?”

“It was not something I really paid attention to, Doctor. I’ll start a background search.”

‘Butcher, can you please handle that?’

‘Certainly… Checking station com logs. There’s a lot of encrypted data, but Mitsubishi keeps very good local EMCON protocols in place. That should let me narrow down any irregular or unauthorized comms.’

‘How is the systems’ cyberspace in that Wraith SSTO you’re partially sitting in?’

‘State of the art, for human designed systems.’

‘Think you can repurpose it for a new ride?’

‘V, are you seriously considering we essentially steal and hijack the latest and best SSTO that Militech and the NUSA fields?’

‘Yes, I’m somewhat sick and tired of having to bum rides around Luna. Not to mention, I’d like to have some relatively big guns in space.’

‘How will you manage its maintenance? Not to mention, where are you going to park it?’

‘Highriders and Gakulu’s Starjacks, in exchange for them having access to its tech and further details can be worked out. We can also make adjustments and additions to the hull so it won’t look like a Militech AV99 to an outside observer.’

‘Very well, I’ll begin a full system sweep and analysis. You’ll also need to go over every inch manually to find any gapped, redundant security. Oh, and it seems there was indeed an informant on board.’

Back in meatspace, Takagi nodded. “Thank you, I’ll authorize a 5k bonus on your already agreed fee-”

I raised a hand to interrupt him, “Done, your informant was Dr. Tahara Yuudai.”

Takagi blinked, his mouth askew with mild astonishment. “Uh, what?”

I nodded, the data was clear, as was his covert communications, which was rather ingeniously hidden through the station’s phased array radar. Encoding it in a basic navigation-proximity emission that eventually bounced off a Militech satellite in low earth orbit. A trick which I made a mental note to appropriate. “Militech has his family currently in a covert safe house in Osaka. Unfortunately, rescuing them is rather pointless because Dr. Yuudai was one of the first scientists that Dunn killed in her assault on the station. Which makes me somewhat glad I flatlined her.”

He shook his head, “So quickly you know this? V, if I didn’t know better-”

I found the public data IP port of his Agent, compiled everything relevant and sent it through with a finger gun gesture.

His AR eyes flashed visibly and he quickly began reading.

Johnny was now steadily going through all the Militech gear, sorting any loot we would want for ourselves.

“Uh, V?!” called Kaori over the radio link, from beyond the main bulkhead door to the airlock room.

I had barely taken a step in that direction before white body bags were being tossed in.

With a light chuckle at her reticence to even set foot inside the core airlock room, I began catching the bags. That the station even had a supply made some sense as they’d want to be able to handle any deaths on board with minimal fuss.

I began the process of zipping up the underwear-clad bodies in the bags and was halfway through when Takagi’s eyes dimmed to a natural level.

“I see. I’d like to know just how you managed to do it so quickly, but I’ve realized that I won’t really get an actual answer. Netrunners don’t like to reveal their tricks after all. I’ll forward it to Mitsubishi through a back channel I have. We’ll launch a raid to secure Yuudai’s family.”

“That’s… unexpected,” I said carefully, zipping up another body with a wince after pushing in some extremities that didn’t want to stay put.

“We are not Araska,” he snapped.

“Never said you were.”

He took a deep breath, “Militech will regret the day they decided to attack this station and kidnap Yuudai’s family. We might be lacking in martial strength in Luna space but Earth and especially Japan is a different story.”

“Just please don’t start the 5th Corpo War, what garbage disposal system do you have in place, by the way?”

He eyed the bodies and liquid waste sphere without flinching. “We have a supply of ten disposable solid fuel rocket tugs, two should have enough dV to send this sunward. The liquid waste we can transfer to a spare exterior waste tank that we can detach.”

I felt him choose that moment to send the main payment for the entire gig, including his own bonus.

I bowed in the proper Japanese manner for appropriate thanks. “Oh and Doctor Takagi, you wouldn’t have any scientists on board who would be interested in having a look at the latest Militech SSTO, by any chance?”

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As it turned out, there was.

Four of them jumped at the opportunity and it was immediately apparent from their conversations that their specialties were in aerospace, which gave a fair indication of what applications Mitsubishi were exploring with the gravium core we had been contracted to save.

Johnny and I were roped in with a token amount of eddies by the three surviving engineers on board to help restore airtight integrity to the station. We mostly did the heavy lifting and then the welding when we proved we were more than capable.

The biggest problem was the damage the boarding pods had done and we ended up using most of the spare hull plates that were on board to fix that. 

The various bullet holes were much easier to patch, but making sure we got all of them was the biggest pain in the ass. Just when we thought we had gotten them all, the engineer with the LIDAR scanner would continue to find more.

Seven hours of near constant EVA, with scanning, patching and welding passed, during which I was treated to the orbital view of the Lunar sunrise over Tycho City.

It was a nice coincidence that the Molniya polar orbit just so happened to carry us over the crater by a few hundred miles.

“All right everyone,” Takagi’s voice crackled over the radio. “We’re going to try for repress. Repair crew, stand by to patch any holes we might have missed.” 

I pulled myself closer to the torus outer hull via my tether and engaged mag boots to stand on it. Letting the station become my horizon.

My helmet engaged its polarization with a mental command and I turned in the direction of the sun.

The utter darkness, only kept at bay by the station’s lighting, was suddenly overwhelmed. One moment the sky was pure black velvet, the next, the sun’s limb crested over the lunar horizon and the flood of light turned everything blindingly bright around me. The lunar surface below me flashed from darkness to a brilliant, metallic silver-white as the low angle sunlight struck. Every crater rim, ridge and boulder casted a pitch-black shadow hundreds of kilometers long - it was so dark it looked like vanta black ink spilled on glowing snow. From my position in orbit, the illuminated crescent of the moon expanded, a blade of pure light cutting across the surface.

The hull plate under my mag boots jumped from -170 degree C straight to 100 C over the next few minutes. Outgassed volatiles that had condensed on the station’s hull sublimated instantly, forming brief, glittering clouds of ice crystals that drifted away like diamond dust. I felt the station’s superstructure begin to creak and ping through my boots.

Every weld and antenna on Kasai-9 threw razor-edged shadows across the hull plating. Nearby, the large Mitsubishi red and white logo blazed like blood on snow.

The Earth itself was low on the horizon.

The sun rising on one side, Earth on the opposite slipping into darkness - the terminator racing across its clouds and continents in real time. City lights flickering on as if someone was sprinkling glowing embers over the planet.

In my ears, I heard only the faint sounds of breathing and the vac suit fans.

Experiencing the cosmic event of beauty and violence with only a thin barrier for protection, I was staggered into an awestruck trance, taking it all in.

The sheer raw majesty of that light.

It was utterly indifferent to creatures like us, that were travelling through it, fighting amongst ourselves over our small ideas and greed.

Even the wild AIs, so absorbed in their madness and mania for their perfection and goals, would be nothing without the energy of creation coming from the sun.

At that moment, I entertained the crazy notion of just stripping out of my vac suit and going for a walk on the station hull.  

It could be practically done, but there were exterior engineering cams and I really didn’t feel like giving the scientists a free show.

Takagi’s voice brought me out of my musings, “Pressure is holding at 101.3 kPa, O2 at 21%. Repair crew, do one final scan of your sections and you can return.”

I swept my gaze over the hull in view, throwing out active scans - no outgassing visible.

Then turning to my left I began a steady walk, keeping my gaze downward and zig-zagging across the surface of the outer torus.

Finally, I was satisfied and keyed the radio, “This is V, sections 23 alpha through 33 beta show integrity. On my way to core airlock.”

“Roger V, thank you. I hope you enjoyed the view.”

“It was certainly memorable, Takagi-san. Anything interesting about our guests’ ride?”

“I’m afraid we’re going to have to pull my engineers forcefully from it, but this is best spoken about in person.”

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Takagi’s office was a small stuffy space in the anti-spinward southern section of the torus.

A foldout desk from the wall, with a keyboard terminal and a large transparent screen faced his chair. Surrounding it was a lifetime of souvenirs and various knickknacks attached to the walls that showed him as a long time spacer. The pictures in the smart frames always showed him on Luna, Kasai-9 or one of the O’Neill Lagrange stations. Seemingly nothing tied him back to Earth.

Hiroshi Takagi was 52 years old, more than three decades of which had been spent in the void of space. He could probably make the journey back to Earth with extensive and very expensive medical intervention, but everything I saw and scanned about him told me that he had fully adopted space as his home and the place where he would eventually die.

His entire right arm was openly cybernetic, made of titanium-carbon composites with integrated micro-tool manipulators and holo-projectors. A pristine white and red Mitsubishi branded lab coat covered a black mechanical pressure vac suit that he always walked around with, whilst his silver-black hair was tied back into a short pony tail.

Matsui was there as well, mag boots locked and relaxing in the zero G.

With Johnny and I walking in, things were a bit crowded.

“So what did you find?” I asked curiously, letting my own boots lock into place.

“A good thing you asked my engineers to look over the Wraith. It had no less than two air-gapped burst transmitters and a self-destruct system. We can be very grateful that Militech OSC standard operation procedures keep their ships in full EMCON for at least thirty hours. That gives more than enough time to manage things,” Takagi said with a dangerous smirk.

“Please convey my thanks to them,” I nodded with some relief.

“Are you sure about this, V? Militech spies on Luna will surely see you coming to land in Tycho with that thing.”

“I won’t be landing it in TC, Takagi-san. I’ve sent word to Gakulu already.”

“Ah, then I won’t pry further and I trust you’re prepared for the consequences. Now then, to get to business. Matsui has indicated that your payment included a selection of one of the portable systems we’re developing here on Kasai-9. While I don’t personally agree with her being so cavalier,” he gave her a glaring side-eye, which she squirmed under, “with our work. It was nevertheless part of your agreement and I personally see the value of cultivating you to continue working with us. If, Kami forbid, we were to have another emergency like this, it is comforting to know that you will be nearby and available for business.”

“Is Mitsubishi not bringing up some reinforcements from Earth for your operations on and around Luna? It’s clear Militech is trying to muscle in with all these hostile moves on your gravium research.”

Takagi scowled, thumping his fist on the desk. “They are, but it’ll take months of training and prep work before we even see the vanguard. The President and Board are also having long arguments about the potential for escalation in tensions it would represent. As a company we have long been seen to be distant from the corporate wars of the past. We have defended ourselves and our holdings, yes, but never gone on the offensive with military power. Our operations in lunar space have always depended on the current status-quo and staying ‘under the radar’ as the saying goes. Now, with Militech ascendant, the balance of power on Earth is shifting and we are feeling the ripples in the pond. They want our gravium research and the breakthroughs we are making. What you saw Matsui demonstrate was just a taste of the potential it has.”

“I can imagine it well enough. The gravium-7 core you have on this station is the single largest concentration of the substance that’s been refined as far as I’m aware. If you can push the general technology of grav compensation further, you can have extreme endurance space travel at higher velocities, which will open the outer solar system beyond Mars to manned exploration and exploitation. That will make asteroid mining viable. We’re talking about a revolution in economies of scale in one of mankind’s most ancient practices. Some of those asteroids contain more valuable ore than has been mined since the Bronze Ages.”

Takagi’s eyebrows raised in surprise, “Such a perspective in someone of your profession is rare, V. Most edgerunners only care about their next chrome or paycheck, I’m glad you’re of a different breed. Now, here’s what we can offer you.”

He tapped his keyboard and the screen came alive with a half dozen images of human manakins mounted with a variety of gravium based systems.

Two of which caught my eye immediately. One was a gravium integration of leg cyberware, which would not only make the internal propellant last twice as long, but also resulted in potentially tripling leap heights and distance, even on Earth.

The second was Matsui’s grav gun, which was formally called a Mitsubishi-Kasai Grav-Pulse Carbine Mk. II.

It revealed that it wasn’t just a compact gun, but actually needed the user to have further supporting systems that were generally integrated into the vac suit. It needed its own dedicated power, which was a fusion cell that dumped 2.4 kW into a gravium core of 0.8 grams that itself was suspended in a magnetic bottle.

That a fusion cell was even possible blew my mind and that by itself would already revolutionize portable power systems.

The user also needed subdermal grav sensors, so the grav carbine could gain the necessary precision to achieve the various firing modes.

Kaori had only used the Singularity mode against the Militech black ops, but there was also the Disrupt mode - which exposed a target to a straight forward impact force of 4-6 Gs, knocking them back and was advertised as the primary non-lethal mode. The third program was another ostensibly non-lethal mode called ‘Levitate’, which could lift 150kg mass to 10 - 15 meters within an Earth gravity well. On Luna that went up considerably by a factor of three.

It was a no-brainer.

“This,” I tapped the grav-carbine.

Kaori rolled her eyes with a giggle, “Obviously. Of course, the merc would want to helplessly suspend her opponents or crush them with gravity.”

Takagi nodded, “The Grav Carbine is currently designed to work with a Mitsubishi vac suit, so there will be some inevitable integration issues with that highrider vac suit of yours, but not insurmountable. The support cyberware is minimally invasive-”

I held up a hand, “No problems there, Takagi-san.”

“Good, I’ll have everything boxed up and delivered to the Wraith. My engineers tell me it will be ready to fly in three hours. Best we get it out of here as quickly as possible, if we want my plan to succeed.”

“And what plan is that?”

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Six hours remained in our window of opportunity.

We waited until the station was in the highest part of the Molniya orbit. Here it would be out of sight from the majority of observation satellites. At least one Militech’s own sats would definitely have been repositioned in support of the operation, but its range would still mean that even with the best spy optics, Kasai-9 was a vaguely circular blur of reflected light. Both SSTOs, with their non-reflective stealth coatings, were essentially invisible at the same range.

The Kuma would remain at the station, all its fuel transferred over to the Wraith to top up its tanks, life support was replenished and more importantly, the Kuma’s spoof transponder had been transferred as well.

“Not exactly comfortable is it,” Matsui complained from her co-pilot seat.

I plugged in the neural interface, “No, but unless you want to be submerged in shock fluid, we’re just going to have to make do.”

The seats were really just placeholders, until both pilots were practically cocooned into cylinders which would fill with oxygenated fluid, protecting them from the max rated 11G burns the Wraith was capable of. The on board grav manifolds weren’t as good as those on the Kuma, but they did a good enough job to reduce effective Gs felt to a mere 8, which was further ameliorated with the shock cocoons.

‘Ready Butcher?’

‘Always V, the Wraith is mine. Just sit back and let me do the flying.’

I nodded and brought up an image of the small miracle the Kasai-9 staff had built in just under ten hours. It was essentially a decoy, made out of a single repurposed engine, taken from the Kuma, given enough reaction mass to fly back to Earth and plunge suicidally into the atmosphere. Its payload was the burst transmitters, a few hull panels taken from the Wraith’s dorsal section, along with an assortment of enough electronic junk to give just enough mass for the ruse to work.

I keyed up the laser link to the station, “V to Kasai, we’re ready here.”

“Stand by, decoy ignition in three… two… one…”

The engine lit off with a brief flash, giving just enough impetus for it to begin its long journey back home. One of the burst transmitters, came to life just a moment later, sending back a painstakingly reverse engineered code to Militech OSC - mission successful, going dark.

“The ruse isn’t going to hold for long,” Matsui declared with worry.

“It’ll last,” I said, watching the decoy become smaller and smaller. “Just long enough for Mitsubishi’s president to meet with Harford and Myers, shove the very detailed dossier of Colonel Dunn’s team under their noses and to please explain why they attacked Kasai-9. At the same time, a Mitsubishi strike team supported by a few vetted edgerunners that I recommended, will extract the Yudaai family from their captivity.”

Matsui wrung her hands nervously, “Isn’t that going to just…”

“Their hand has been firmly caught in the cookie jar, thanks to the evidence we have. Militech doesn’t want the existence of their OSC branch to be publicly broadcasted. They’re not unassailable as yet, Kaori.”

“Kasai to V, your departure window opens in half a minute and on behalf of everyone here, again, thank you,” said Takagi.

“Anytime, Takagi-san.”

Soon after, the Wraith departed the station using only cold gas maneuvering thrusters, gently and stealthily increasing separation and lowering its orbit.

Only after more than two orbits around Luna, with Kasai-9 now barely a speck of light amongst the night, did Butcher fire the main engines.

He kept the thrust at just below 9%, feathering the rocket engines in a way to steadily adjust our orbit further whilst keeping our emission profile within tolerances.

‘You’re a natural,’ I joked.

‘It’s just math and engineering, V. At this point, you should be able to do this as well.’

I waved him off and just took in the view as Luna grew larger and larger. Our descent vector trimmed until our projected course showed a landing point 183 km north-west of Tycho.

Any map you could look at of the area would show you nothing but a long ridge line emerging out of a crater 31 km wide, the deeper parts of which hadn’t seen direct sunlight for untold eons, not since the original asteroid impact that had created it. It didn’t even have a dedicated name besides a catalog designation - Auxiliary Crater TK-Alpha-117.

For the next few hours whilst we coasted steadily downward, I was mostly kept busy with Johnny as we both shared the load of managing the active radar cancellation and other stealth systems.

Our approach course had also been purposely designed to neatly slot into a hack that the Starjacks had placed within Tycho aerospace control, keeping us off the screens of any potentially unfriendly eyes who had backdoor taps into the system.

When Luna became a horizon stretching as far as the unaided eye could see around the Wraith, the SSTO flipped over, pointing its engine bells towards the rapidly approaching crater that was about to swallow it whole.

The engines pushed out 3Gs of deceleration, countering the increasing speed and pull of Luna’s gravity over time.

The SSTO slipped into the dark embrace of Crater Alpha-117 at just under 5 m/s.

Butcher reoriented the craft belly down as our descent through the darkness continued, pumping out minimal LIDAR emissions and thrusters to keep us from crashing into the crater wall.

With our craft attitude stabilized he increased our speed to 20 m/s, eating up the next mile of descent faster before he brought us to a relative stop and turned on our landing lights.

Before us was the mouth of a roughly circular cave 260 feet in width, the exit of an old lava tube.

Quick thruster puffs pushed us inside at a crawl.

Our landing lights were soon drowned out by numerous flood lights switching on around us, revealing a series of nine lunacrete landing pads, painstakingly created out of the cave floor.

Four of them were occupied with spheroid rocket ships and a very familiar Arasaka SSTO.

The Wraith extended its landing struts, rapid puffs from forward and dorsal thrusters bringing it down for a landing that barely registered on the shock absorbers.

“Time to go,” I said lightly, hiding the slight nerves I felt.

All three of us donned our helmets and did final post-flight checks before going through the Wraith’s small ventral airlock.

Waiting for us outside were four armed highriders, their vac helmets completely polarized to hide their faces and no markings on their suits to indicate which workgroup they belonged to.

The leader’s voice came through the point to point laser link his own Agent established with us.

“V, Hollow, Dr. Matsui,” said the digitally scrambled male voice. “Welcome to Facility 117. Before we proceed, some ground rules. No scanning in any part of the spectrum. No active emissions. You follow me precisely with no deviation or else my team will subdue you non-lethally at first. Continue struggling or any hostile hacking emission and we shoot to kill.”

“Understood.”

He turned around and led the way to the right side of the massive lava tube, with the rest of his team falling in behind us.

Tucked in behind the crook of rock was a thick outer airlock door that was cunningly camouflaged to fit right into the terrain. It also opened upward in a gullwing design, leaving no marks of its passage on the floor.

The airlock inside was the typical modular industrial design that could fit in anywhere in Tycho City without anyone blinking an eye.

Beyond was a pressurized circular tunnel that bored straight forward before snaking left, and after fifty feet we were confronted with an elevator door.

The lift had no readily visible manual controls and I could feel the wireless commands emanating from our escort team towards it. 

We sunk the equivalent fourteen floors down before the doors opened again.

A long corridor greeted us, exposed piping and ventilation hissing all along it, with staggered doors leading off on either side.

Leaning patiently against the closest door, was Gakulu with a satisfied smile on his face.

“V, Hollow,” he greeted with open arms. “You just keep managing to make my days better lately. First Arasaka, now you dump the latest and best Militech SSTO into my lap. Some of my workgroup has already begun a petition to adopt you into the family!”

“Isn’t that a bit premature?” I asked carefully, remembering the time spent and blood that had been spilled before the Aldecaldos had truly welcomed me into their fold.

“That’s what I said,” he shrugged, folding his hands behind his back. “Some of us can be prone to getting too excited when it comes to examining new tech and they see you as the ticket to more. Dr. Matsui.” He greeted her with a perfect bow. “Feel free to remove your helmets. We haven’t had a depress accident here for decades.”

“So this is your workgroup’s facility?” I asked, carefully sampling the air through my nose. It was slightly below standard atmospheric pressure and carried the hint of rust from the piping and moisture in the air.

“It’s one of our clandestine research branches we maintain on Luna,” he gave me a wry smile. “You three are the first non-highrider visitors, who have ever set foot in it.”

“Are we going to leave this place alive?” Johnny asked, giving Gakulu a lazy stare.

“A valid concern, Hollow, if I was in your shoes,” he acknowledged. “But we wouldn’t have let you in here if we intended to be such poor hosts. Now let’s head to my office and we can discuss what comes next. We are after all, about to take a 350 million eddie dive into Militech’s secrets.”

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A/N: V caught the GTA bug from Muamar 'El' Capitan' Reyes and has had precious little opportunity to indulge on Luna. Sure an SSTO is somewhat more than just a set of wheels, but there was just no way she's going to pass on that :-)

Have a great weekend chooms and stay awesome!

The Force Wills - Chapter 152

Our speeder hummed through the skies above Coruscant’s sixth sublevel.

No matter how long I’ve lived on this world, a tiny part of me still cringes at the thought of venturing into the sublevels. The thought of how much sheer mass was suspended above me never failed to produce a frisson of angst in my spine that wouldn’t go away. Level 6 was still well in the ‘secured’ zone of the planet. Law enforcement down here was mostly guardian droids and the occasional organic overseer, but Coruscant Security only went anywhere on this level in large groups for mutual support. Level 6, especially this far from the sky trenches, was therefore a place that could almost be considered the Wild West-lite of the city planet.

Taria kept our course to official air lanes, where security buoys with sensors and auto-turrets hovered in long lanes. Venture too far away from them and you could easily fall prey to swoop gangs, who would like nothing more than to force you down to relieve you of all your possessions, leaving their victims stranded. If they were particularly lucky, they would also be offered a ride back to the surface levels by the gang, for a modest 10k credits or even more. The worst case scenarios didn’t bear thinking about.

We even passed a swoop gang battle at one point. A dozen or more speeders and bikes of every variety visible in the distance, having an aerial duel against each other with blasters.

Finally, after a three hour trip, Taria abruptly pulled us out of the air lane and dove the speeder rapidly.

“Our destination,” she said, her voice calm despite the chaos of the level and laced with an odd weariness. She seemed visibly tired and the healer in me didn’t need to probe her with the Force to know that something was wrong. I could feel her drawing more from the Force to keep herself in tip-top shape, but you could only do so for a certain amount of time without addressing the root cause.

I put that out of my mind for the moment and looked ahead.

It was a sprawling structure set between two of the towering level support pillars.

It stood starkly in undercity gloom, a facade of salvaged starship hulls, restored to perfection in such a way that it looked like their fore sides were just hovering there and ready at any moment to shoot themselves back into the sky. Neon holograms of the female and male variety, human and twi’lek, were writhing in the air around the huge multi-winged building, which spanned an entire block. A number of those holos, while they were ‘basic graphics’ only, clearly showed what the main attraction of this place was. Showing the figures writhing against each other in couples, triples and even an orgy, complete with throaty moans booming through the air.

The name of the establishment hovered in Basic above it all, The Black Nebula.

“Not exactly a place that the Council would approve me bringing you to,” she said dryly and shrugged. “But this is where my contact is, so…”  She took a deep breath and I could feel the Force surge again, her weariness falling off her like a discarded cloak, replaced with a vibrant vitality.

“Are you all right, Arli?” I asked with a frown.

“Oh, don’t you worry about me, Yashah, nothing to be done about it.” She twisted the speeder controls, bringing us down to land right in front of the Black Nebula.

Two huge human bouncers armed with blaster pistols and supported by a well armed gang of gamorreans with force pikes stood guarding the huge entrance.

Our speeder was approached by another huge human with visible cybernetics jutting out from his skull.

Taria opened the transparisteel canopy and hopped out without pause, handing over a speeder keycard and a credit chit.

I followed her lead, easily adopting the body language that this was a place I had no discomfort with, that I belonged here.

The cyborg jumped into our speeder and drove it off into a nearby sublevel to park.

“Relax, Yashah, the owner of the Nebula is very invested his client’s safety, which includes their speeders. Come along.”

We joined a queue for entrance, which was filled with mostly males and a smaller number of females and others, depending on what species you were looking at.

The lead bouncer, with arms as big as my waist, tapped his ear before intently scanning the queue. His eyes sparked with recognition as he saw Taria and he gestured for her to approach.

She grabbed my hand eagerly and led us forward.

“Miss Cetorr, welcome to the Black Nebula,” rumbled the bouncer. “You can go right in. Mr. Ulbac will meet you at the lower bar as soon as he can.”

“Thanks,” she smiled brightly, practically skipping with energy as she pulled me into the club proper.

The first thing to hit me was the wall of music; steady beats, huttese lyrics, and synth backing tracks.

The smell of spice infused smoking was heavy in the air as I regarded a vast open space, with a crowded dance floor, which was overlooked by two floors of balconies with yet more sentients, gathered together around tables, standing or eating. The place was bathed with flashing and strobing spotlights and holos with colors that bled beyond the typical human spectrum. The waitstaff, mostly scantily clad twi’lek and humans with outfits that made future Leia’s slave outfit look modest in comparison, glided through the crowded club on repulsor-skates, serving glowing cocktails that likely promised euphoria or oblivion. I felt the entire place pulsing with a dangerous energy in the Force, teetering constantly towards the dark. Everywhere around us alliances were forged in whispers and violence kept at bay only through fear of greater retribution.

Taria kept a firm hand on mine, leading us through the throng. I could feel her applying the Force very subtly to a variety of sentients, mostly to discourage anyone from copping a feel as we passed.

We stopped in front of an expansive bar, which was being tended by three serving droids running on tracks behind it and a single zeltron woman who fit perfectly in the role of eye candy for the club patrons. She wore a black top that showed impressive cleavage, which barely looked like it could contain her ample bosom and it showed off an expansive well toned abdomen, with clingy synleather pants complimenting the outfit.

The music changed to a deep, thrumming bass, electronic backing and a deep male vocalist singing in throaty huttese. It overwhelmed casual conversation and Taria had to practically shout her order to the zeltron.

“I want a Corellian Nebula Culler and my friend is feeling adventurous tonight, so give her the Shadowport Slicer!”

The zeltron woman nodded and immediately got busy making the drinks as we both settled down into empty barstools.

A few minutes later we had our drinks and I was confronted with a short, squat glass that smoked faintly with chilled CO2 vapor. The drink inside had been made so quickly that I couldn’t really spot what had gone into its mixology, but my nose reported a distinct wood-sweet liquor aroma that had to be Kashyyykan dark rum. The glass also came with a thin slice of blood-orange that floated like a dying star on the surface of the void black liquid inside.

“Arli, am I going to regret drinking this?!” I shouted into her ear.

“Would I do that to you, Yashy?!” she shouted back with a mischievous innocence in her eyes that I didn’t believe for one moment.

I gave her a look of weary sufferance and took a cautious sip.

Immediately I had to use internal Control to prevent myself from coughing.

It was potent as hell and I detected not only the rum but something else, a spice based liquor, which smoothly burned over my tongue and down my throat. The aftertaste also had the flavor of a tarty tarine tea. It was actually… quite good!

“See?!” she asked smugly.

I rolled my eyes in annoyance.

We settled in our drinks and nursed them to pass the time, only drinking as necessary. The music changed again, this time to something I recognized as a klatoonian singing, which was just heavy grunge screaming to my montrals with heavy drums and electronic synthkeys behind it.

The dance floor seemed to appreciate it, with a lot of jumping, arms in the air and head banging going on.

It was only when a much more pleasant dance track from a twi’leki female singer, that the volume went down to a level where conversation was possible without blowing out your own vocal chords in the process.

“Nice place,” I admitted.

“The owner has literally had to fight a small war to establish it. Keeping it a protected and safe, neutral haven where everyone can let their guard marginally drop.”

“You’d think he’d find an easier spot to open a nightclub then.”

“He could’ve,” Taria smiled. “But then he’d have to obey so many regulations and inspections. He’s just not built like that and… here he is.”

Approaching us from behind the bar was a tall arkanian male, dressed in a tailored black synleather suit that caught the club’s strobing red light like brief flashes of crimson blood. He had milk-white eyes, four fingers on each hand with nasty claws and bone pale skin, marking him as a pureblood of the species. His hair was perfectly styled white locks that fell to his shoulders. For a brief moment, I could imagine I was being approached by a weird alien vampire. A single diamond stud glinted in one ear and he moved with a precise grace.

“Ah, Miss Cetorr, a pleasure to see you again. It’s been a while,” said who I assumed was Mr. Ulbac.

“That it has,” she replied easily.

“If you and your friend will follow me to a much quieter location, we can discuss business there.”

We picked up our drinks and followed Ulbac away from the bar and up a nearby set of stairs, climbing two floors before walking out into a hallway that overlooked the dancefloor on our left.

I could tell just by the people up here and their general demeanour that we were now in the VIP area. There was always just a level of snootiness and swagger that sentients adopted when they felt they were in the ‘exclusive’ parts of a place.

Ulbac waved his hand over a scanner next to a door, which swished open silently.

Beyond was a cosy small room with wall to wall couches and a central table with a holo emitter - which was currently showing a twi’lek exotic dancer going through a routine. It was a place where private parties with no more than ten to twelve people were held.  

He waved his hand and the holo fizzled off.

“Please, have a seat,” he invited, returning to the door. He closed it before fiddling with a control pad.

I sensed an impressive amount of anti-listening and other security devices activating as we lounged back on the couches.

“So, Miss Cetorr, who is your friend?”

“A student, I’m showing her the ropes at my division of CSF,” Taria said smoothly.

Ah, so Ulbac didn’t even know that she was actually a Jedi.

“I see, recruiting them rather young are you?” he smirked, his eyes taking me in from head to toe briefly.

“It helps to catch them young, teaches things before bad habits can be molded that have to be unlearned.”

“True, true, so, what can this old arkanian do for you?”

Taria took a sip from her drink, before throwing a chit containing the DNA code at him.

He caught it without blinking and removed a small datapad from a pocket to slot it into. He frowned at the screen as it displayed the data.

“As nice as it would be to catch up, we’re not here for frivolities. That life code trace belongs to a human woman, professional escort, likely hired for a long term con. She targeted an abyssin maintenance worker, fed him nanodroids. I need to know if she’s on your roster.”

At the mention of nanodroids, his hands tightened on the datapad briefly, before he nodded and began tapping rapidly on it. It didn’t take long and I felt the arkanian’s anger spike dangerously as he undoubtedly had a match.

He sat back and was clearly debating something with himself, “Yes, she’s one of mine, Niri Sytaphe is her name and as far as I was aware, she had no long term con jobs going.” His jaw muscles flexed as he stared at the closed door.

“Oh dear, I’d ask that you refrain from doing anything too permanent to her, we need her able to speak,” Taria grinned at me. “You see Yashah, a con like that is big money.”     

I nodded in understanding, “She was doing it off the books, cutting out the middleman to pocket everything.”

“And this middleman is not impressed,” Ulbac said dangerously.

“Is she working in the club today?” Taria asked.

“A moment,” he swiped on his datapad, referencing schedules. “She’s due to check in for a shift in six hours. However, I doubt she’s going to show. A long term con job like that, I charge minimum 90k credits, which can go up to 150k depending on the client. That’s more than enough for her to relocate offworld and disappear into a new identity, even buy herself her own ship. Not sure about whether she has the skill to pilot, but she could buy an astromech to do it for her. Add in whoever her powerful benefactor is, the one who gave her the nanodroids… She’d be a fool to come back.” He pulled out another datapad, fiddled with it briefly and handed it over to Taria.

It turned out to be his own personnel file on Niri, which was kept as insurance more than anything else.

She was quite attractive, though a huge part of that was the makeup helping, at least in this profile pic; athletic hourglass figure, auburn hair, 1.7m tall, green eyes and pale skin dusted with freckles. It listed her as 32 years old, born on Coruscant Level 2688, Uscru District. She was lucky enough to be given into the creche system that the Coruscant government managed to establish on some of the deeper levels.

“That file is the best I’ve been able to gather. She’s very adept at changing appearance and identities, but at least with how I knew her, that’s how she presented herself to me and the rest of the staff.”

“We’re reasonably quick on her trail, it may be that she’s not in a hurry, confident she could disappear into Coruscant’s levels. She may show up,” I opined carefully. The current probability line actually showed her arriving at the club in four hours. Ulbac would have his bouncers immediately try to apprehend her and it’d end up in a rather thrilling chase. Sytaphe was as slippery as an eel and would evade them quite easily. If Taria and I joined in, we’d end up easily catching up and one Force Sleep later we’d have her in custody. It would expose us as Jedi to Ulbac and burn him as Taria’s contact.  

“Maybe,” Ulbac acknowledged. 

“Perhaps we can also lure her into a trap here. Let her into the club, you present a normal front, she goes about her day and then we stun her from behind,” I suggested further.

He gave me a long look, then narrowed his eyes at Taria. “Well, that would certainly be one way to do it, but we must first talk about my… compensation for helping you with this.”

She chuckled, “How much?”     

“45-”

“Ridiculous,” retorted Taria immediately, narrowing her eyes dangerously. “You may get away with taking 30% from your companion girls, but I’m not not one of them, Ulbac.” 

He scowled in response, “Fine, 35.”

“I still have a direct contact with the Arkanian Dominion, Ulbec,” she threatened mildly.

A weary sigh was his response, “25.”

“15.”

“20.”

“Deal,” Taria smirked and without fanfare threw a programmable credit chit from her pocket to him.

He caught it and rolled his eyes as he checked the amount of money on it. “I’ll begin making arrangements among my staff. Consider your tab tonight on the house.”

“Thank you, Ulbec,” she nodded.

The arkanian waved her thanks off and left without further word.

“So I’m curious, what blackmail do you have on him?” I grinned after the door closed.

“Many years ago, I was tracking down a rogue Arkanian scientist who had managed to get his hands on Jedi life code samples in dangerously large quantities. Enough to attempt all manner of experiments and even cloning. That scientist was Ulbec’s younger brother and while it wasn’t his idea precisely, he did aid his brother in the scheme. I saw… potential in Ulbec, and didn’t turn him in along with his younger brother. I let Ulbec walk away and he in turn fled into Coruscant’s underworld to avoid the anger of their government - who take a dim view of any scientists who go rogue.”

“And he in turn built an entertainment empire down here.”

She nodded, “Don’t let the looks fool you. It’s also a facade that lets him experiment in genetics and cybernetics. Most of which would see him arrested if he had tried it just two levels higher. Every staff member has been ‘adjusted’ for their role here.”

I leaned forward, putting my empty cocktail glass down, casually brushing my hand ‘accidentally’ as I sat back along Taria’s shoulder and rested my left arm along the couch’s backrest. The Bond settled with some difficulty, but that was mostly because Taria initially resisted it.

‘All that and he doesn’t know you're a Jedi?’

‘No, I passed myself as someone assigned by the CSF to the Order as a consultant. If I pursued them openly as a Jedi, their desperation to evade me would’ve led them to undertake rather catastrophic means to resist. Ulbec’s younger brother was also quite adept at viral engineering and they certainly had the means to create a weapon to use as leverage and bargaining power. Sometimes the Jedi Order’s reputation can get in the way of our work. You must be ready to shed your primary identity, means and ways in a heartbeat, Ahsoka.’

‘One thing I’m curious about. You were rather certain that we would find our target here. How did you know?’

‘A suspicion and one which I was hoping would prove false. As a Shadow, you must learn to shed all naivety and consider all paths and suspects, even if they point to your fellow Jedi. You must be ready to one day take on a mission to hunt down a fallen brother or sister.’

My outer masks managed to show a convincing level of surprise. ‘You think another Jedi is behind the bombing.’

She gave me a wry look, showing I hadn’t succeeded in fooling her. ‘Ahsoka, do give me more credit. I know you’ve made the same conclusion already. With the level of discontent in the Order to the role the Senate has dumped on our shoulders, I’m more surprised it hasn’t happened sooner. Someone among us in the Temple has fallen, not to the Dark Side completely, not yet at least, but have decided enough is enough. They see no recourse and believe that approaching the Council openly with objection would be pointless and futile. So they have spoken in the language that they believe the Council would have no choice but to respond to - violence and blood.’

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My minor suggestion to Ulbec resulted in Niri Sytaphe's apprehension without much drama at all.

His idea was to send her straight to our VIP room and perform a private dance, with the option of going further, for a pair of very wealthy high-rollers from the surface, who were very loose with their credits.

The woman’s greed led her straight to us.

Rather awkwardly, Taria let Niri dance her complete strip tease on the table and both our laps.

I had to admit, in terms of raw appeal and sensuality, especially when she was performing her dance, Niri was easily a nine out of ten. I could sense in her biology the genengineering that had been done. Her breasts were perfection, high end Ds with a sharp perkiness that looked like they could stab someone and I couldn’t help my hands grabbing both softly to give a brief massage, which she let me do before coyly pulling back in a teasing fashion. There was also something in her fingers that I had only caught a glimpse of.

She sent more attention to Taria than me, which I could somewhat understand. I was visibly the younger and it was a safe assumption that Taria would be the richer or more important between us.

It was only when Niri was straddling Taria and in a complete liplock that our trap was sprung.

The small holdout blaster pistol that she produced from somewhere, was angled straight into Niri’s back from behind, before the blue rings of two stun bolts hit her.

Taria’s Tutaminis easily shrugged away the residual bleed through.

“Was there a reason you let her do that?” I asked, calming my inner frustration and a considerable amount of energy in my lower regions.

“We might be CSF, but we are not heartless. She’s going away for a long time.” ‘I had to also see how you respond in such a situation. In the future, going undercover, you might need to use your sexuality as a tool or even a weapon to achieve an objective. It’s not something I’ve often done myself, but the option must be there in our toolkit.’

She stood carefully, carrying the insensate woman under the arms briefly before dumping her on the couch. “Gather her clothes, we can’t exactly carry her out in only her skin.”

“And we can carry her outside without suspicion?”

“Ulbec has made arrangements. We’ll be escorted by a pair of his bodyguards directly to our speeder in the landing lot using staff access routes.”

The two bodyguards arrived barely a minute later, humans who stood well over two meters in height and one of them had complete cybernetic arms.

“Follow,” said the cyborg in a deep artificial tone.

I ended up slinging Sytaphe over my shoulders in a fireman’s carry and Taria followed behind me as I walked in the massive wake of the bodyguards.

Thankfully, in the few public areas we were forced to walk through, the people there didn’t bat an eye at us. Showing one of the key rules for survival in the Coruscant underworld - if you saw something suspicious, alarming or even a fight - you ignore it and move on.

We were led through a security door and passed into a veritable labyrinth of controlled access passages and side doors built into the nightclub’s main structure that were meant for employees only. They would also be very handy for Ulbec’s security if they ever had to fight off a determined invader looking to take over the place.

Our XP-18 was waiting for us in a sublevel lot, parked among six other speeders of varying styles and quality.

I dumped Sytaphe’s unconscious form in the middle seat and secured her with cuffs and seatbelts that Taria threw to me.

“Mr. Ulbec wants a word before you leave,” declared the cyborg and pointed his palm to the side. The arkanian’s holoform shimmered into transparent existence.

“Miss Cetorr, thank you for your business and ridding me of many potential future headaches. I’ve already discovered that Sytaphe had a number of other schemes in the works and are busy dealing with them.”

“You’re welcome, Ulbec.”

“Be careful with that one, don’t give her a centimeter of opportunity. She’ll make you regret it swiftly.”

“Did you happen to install any cybernetic or genetic surprises we should be on the lookout for?”

He shook his head, “She only received a genegineering package and improvements to her performance and efficiency with clients. Of course, I can only attest to what was done on my end. She may have independently acquired other enhancements, which are available even on this level, but are nowhere near my quality. So I suggest you put her through a thorough scan before you let her regain consciousness.”

“We’ll do so. Thanks again, Ulbec.”

“Safe flight, Cetorr. Do call again.”

The holo vanished and the bodyguards left without further word.

“Off we go, Yashah.”

We hopped in and Taria carefully guided the XP18 out of its landing slot.

Navigating the landing lot itself was fairly straightforward, Ulbec having thoughtfully used standard signage around the multilevel lot.

Soon enough we were blasting upward and away from the Black Nebula, angling towards the nearby sky lane.

Taria settled us into a cruising speed, “Do we have anything to truly worry about, Ahsoka?”

“I gave her biology a thorough look whilst carrying her, it’s mostly as Ulbec said, except for her forefingers. Each has a small injector in the tips that can carry any number of payloads. It took me a while to figure those out, but one of them is definitely a potent neurotoxin that’s powerful enough to stop anyone’s heart in seconds.”

“Do keep a close eye on her, the stun from this holdout blaster is only rated for about eighty minutes of unconsciousness.”

“I’ll put a Force Sleep on her the instant I sense it wearing off.”

It was only 27 odd minutes into our flight when I twitched as the future probability lines shifted.

“I sense it too,” Taria declared grimly as the Force screamed in warning.

The skylane buoys ahead of us, for nearly as far as we could see, powered down and fell towards the city floor below.

She abruptly twisted on the steering yoke and slammed on the pedal for instant acceleration that pushed me back into my seat.

The XP18 rolled and banked left, avoiding a fusilade of orange blaster fire coming from below.

I immediately sensed the hostile intent of nineteen sentients, in ten rapidly moving clusters.

“Shabla! A frakking swoop gang,” I grimaced, bracing myself against the canopy as Taria threw us into another tight evasive turn and roll.

It was very tempting to ask the stupid question of just how they had managed to hack and disable the buoys.

The skylane had already devolved into chaos as dozens of other speeders panicked and either scattered or stubbornly kept their course.

Now we also had that mess to worry about, dodging around other speeders that strayed into our evasive maneuvers.

“If we want to fight back, we’re going to need to lose the canopy,” I pointed out calmly.

The actual question I was posing to my teacher was whether we were still keeping our cover. Ulbec and many others on this level would undoubtedly be investigating this unprecedented breach of status quo.

Taria’s answer was to toss me her blaster and press a button on the speeder control panel.

We were momentarily hit in the face with blistering winds before the XP18s small emergency forward deflector came online.

“Ouch,” I said wryly, aimed and fired two shots above and to my right.

The deflection shots slammed right into an attacking swoop bike’s belly, hitting something vital enough that it instantly became a fireball of exploding volatile fuel, taking two of our attackers with it.

In the next moment, I shot once straight upward, aimed left, my hand right under Taria’s chin and sent another bolt of plasma straight left.

Another swoop exploded above us, raining debris and two ganger’s worth mangled body parts down, whilst the other shot clipped straight into the side of a swoop biker, sending him tumbling off to die.

The gang was not impressed, their fear and anger soaring at the death of their fellows.

Their fire rate doubled and whilst Taria was keeping up, the collateral damage of the missed shots was taking their toll.

I felt three innocent deaths in a single moment as a speeder we had raced past exploded.

And yet more deaths as panicking speeder pilots had mid-air collisions to avoid the battle.

“Slightly less perfect shots, my student!” Taria shouted as she twisted the controls left and abruptly applied a bit of air brakes.   

“Sorry!” I winced, as three swoop bikes passed us as they overcooked their speed in trying to stay on our tail.

I let loose with a spray of bolts as fast as my finger could naturally squeeze, sweeping my aim left to right.

Eight shots vanished into the distance, but four found their targets.

One slamming into the back of a rider, another just sparking off the tail of the bike, whilst the next two managed to disable the rear repulsorlift and send them careening out of control into a passing building. The volatile swoop crumpled and exploded, the transparisteel just barely managing to hold, but cracking the entire facade.

It didn’t help that all these swoops were custom kit jobs, usually made as a patchwork of scavenged parts that barely functioned or in some cases worked too well. Yet all of them featured some form of large blaster mounted under their noses. The XP18 could maybe take one hit, but not a second from them.

I jumped onto my seat, standing on my knees, aiming backward at two more swoops sliding onto our tail.

More plasma bolt fire sprayed from my blaster, but I managed to land my shots directly into the chests of the enemy.

They slipped off or slumped forward on their bikes, spiraling out of control to crash into the streets blurring by underneath us.

“Hang on!”

I barely ducked down in time to secure myself as we jinked left then right, which smoothly flowed into a barrel roll.

The world had barely righted itself when three swoop bikes angled into us, each of them had a passenger behind the rider and their own blaster pistols, all of whom were aiming for me.

Taria pulled up immediately and the bolts missed underneath us.

The swoops tried to match and regain a bead on me, but my blaster was already up and shooting a spray of shots.

The bikes tried to scatter, but only ended up dodging straight into some of my ‘lucky’ deflection shots.

One bike blew up, whilst the other two suffered a case of dead pilot.

A ganger managed to throw off his dead comrade, hopping forward to grab the controls.

The other failed utterly and ended up in a mid-air splat with a passing cargo speeder. 

“We need to take this fight away from the sky lane!” I shouted after firing off another spray of shots that I missed intentionally but at least caused those three swoops to veer off.

“These swoop gangers know what they are doing, my student, as much as I am evading, they keep herding us in!”

We jinked up, right and then slalomed so quickly around the other speeders in our path, in a feat of flying that made me want to snark about supernatural Jedi reflexes and the minor bit of hypocrisy.

Instead I kept shooting.

It was only as I killed two more swoops that I sensed their bloodlust had passed the threshold of turning into self-preservation instead.

The survivors pulled away and blasted off at top speed.

Taria stabilized our flight and rejoined the sky lane properly, she shook her head and mumbled something under her breath.

“Something the matter?” I asked with a frown.  

“The last time I had an outright speeder chase and fight, I was a padawan. Now, barely a few weeks into teaching you we have this!” She grumbled, waving her hand in annoyance around her. “I guess the rumors are true then. You and your master are trouble magnets!”

I could only shrug helplessly with a ‘what can I do about it?’ expression and a sheepish smile.

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A contingent of Clones and Temple Guard led by Master Windu awaited us in the Temple Speeder bay as we came in to land.

“Is this your suspect?” he asked cooly, not even batting an eye at the provocative clothing Sytaphe wore.

“She is, Master Windu,” Taria confirmed, letting me do the work of levitating the woman onto a floating medical gurney that was waiting between the Guardsmen. “She needs a medical procedure before we can safely wake her.”

“All the preparations have been made,” he nodded. “Escort the suspect to the Halls of Healing immediately. No one beyond the specially designated medical personnel are cleared to interact with her. Detain any who try.”

The lead guardsman bowed and personally took charge of the gurney, leading it out of the hangar. I noted that we were completely alone in the entire space, even the local security and surveillance was on the fritz - good.

“Master Damsin, how certain are you of all this?” Windu frowned severely.

“As certain as anyone can be. Direct evidence all points to our suspect and her interrogation will no doubt be very enlightening. Yet, two facts remain unresolved and lead us straight back to the Temple. How did Sytaphe gain access to highly regulated and policed nanodroids of that caliber and how were they reprogrammed? Those skills and knowledge don’t just exist on the Holonet for anyone to learn. Her profile indicates she’s a skilled and very successful con artist and pleasure girl, who spent her entire life in the Coruscant underworld. She may have swindled the droids from someone with access, but all those scientists and engineers are also watched very closely by the relevant authorities. I doubt their vigilance has lapsed in this case, though we must investigate that path anyway. The most likely path for these nanodroids to end up in her hands is she was given them by someone who already has access.

“Fact two, someone disabled the security buoys on a level 6 sky lane, just as Ahsoka and I were flying through it with our suspect. We were also immediately attacked by a swoop gang. That implies that Sytaphe was under remote surveillance by whoever had given her the nanodroids. Who would have access and slicing capabilities to disable Coruscant public infrastructure in that manner? Who would have the resources to bribe or hire a swoop gang to prevent our suspect from reaching the Temple?”

Windu folded his arms, “There is only one group that fits that profile in terms of capabilities, the local cell of Separatists.”

“Incorrect, there are two,” Taria disagreed, staring flatly at her fellow master.

Windu stared at her for a few moments before sighing and looking down, “A Jedi.”

Taria nodded, “My current reading of the intent behind this bomb indicates that it was one of our own.”

“Can you actually prove it?”

“I’m already in the process of doing that,” she gestured toward the inner doors.

“You believe, if it’s a Jedi, they will try to silence Sytaphe again.”

“And I have taken independent measures to keep a close eye on her within the Temple walls. If our traitor makes a move, I will know.”

“Very well. On behalf of the Council, you may proceed. It’s imperative that the truth behind all this be found soon. There are indications that the Senate Loyalist committee will have a meeting soon to decide whether the military police should become involved in the investigation.”

The formation of such an agency by the Senate was something I had kept a sharp eye on these past few months. With the clone trooper numbers growing and their greater role in security operations on Coruscant and other Core Worlds, it was inevitable that there would have to be a police force to investigate and prosecute accidents and misbehavior from clone troopers. As much as clones obeyed orders, they still had initiative and ‘free will’ within their rigid structures and nothing was perfect. As clones and civilians interacted, there was also more potential for criminal elements to prey on them.

I shook my head, “The military police are extremely new, cobbled together from clones whose divisions have been disbanded and being overseen by retired CSF investigators and analysis droids. Them coming on board will just complicate things unnecessarily, master.”   

“I understand the problem, padawan. Nevertheless we must see things from their point of view. Maintenance clones working on the gunships and civilians died in the explosion as well as Jedi. While it happening within the Temple gives the Jedi Order primary jurisdiction, if we don’t produce results quickly enough…”

“They may think we need more help and they’re probably eager to show a need for the military police with a high profile case they can show off to everyone,” I sighed wearily.

“Precisely,” he said with a look of approval.

“Now, if you’ll excuse us, Master Windu, my student and I have a sting operation to get to,” Taria and I bowed to him and hurried out of the hangar.

‘Do you have Sytaphe?’ she thought to me, as we walked along the corridor.

‘I have her completely focused with my farsight. No one is getting close to her or doing anything without me seeing it. Interesting bit of misdirection you gave to Master Windu,’ I projected my amusement to her.

‘While I highly doubt he is the bomber, at this point we can’t afford to rule anyone out. He may have agreed to disable the security sensors at my suggestion on our flight back, but he could just as well have done so to play along.’

‘Is this the Shadow mindset? Are we even suspecting Master Yoda?’

‘In this situation, yes. No one is infallible. Not you, not me, not the grandmaster. Until we know or have proof for certain, we must not let any bias cloud our thoughts.’

And I just couldn’t help myself, ‘What about me or you? How do I know you’re not the bomber, Taria? I just recently dealt with brainwashing incidents on Mandalore. How do you know it’s not me?’

‘Oh, I’m watching you very closely, Ahsoka. Your master is also in the background. That is all I will say. In the Jedi Shadows, we call it the Web of Suspicion. When an investigation like this starts, you bring in multiple players who stay in the shadows and watches. Ready to intervene, should it prove necessary.’ 

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It was late evening and I was in meditation in my Temple quarters, keeping a distant watch on Sytaphe as she was kept unconscious after her surgery to remove the weapons in her fingers. She had her own private secure room in the Halls of Healing, guarded by a rotating shift of Temple Guard and Clone security.

So far no one had made any suspicious move or approach, not even during the surgery, when she was technically the most vulnerable to being messed with. I could think of a dozen ways to slice and hack the medical equipment to cause an ‘accident’. Yet, our bomber hadn’t taken the bait so far.

My encrypted datapad chirping for attention brought me out of it.

A few authorizations, passwords and phrases later and I was in the Fulcrum network and a priority live chat message from Asajj Ventress demanded attention. It was interesting that now, through even this tenuous connection, I could feel the annoyance practically radiating off the datapad.

‘Are you available to proxy to Dathomir?’

That was easy to answer. ‘No. Delicate situation unfolding with regard to the enemy at the moment. Why?’

‘We captured a Jedi Master who was trying to track me down. Quinlan Vos.’

What the frak? My mind raced as I recalled Master Yoda’s mention of said Jedi Master going undercover, but why would that require hunting Asajj?

‘Tell your Mother I thank her for her restraint in not simply killing him.’

‘I will. She would prefer him alive to interrogate anyway. Do you have any idea as to his mission or goal?’

With the Shroud in the way, I couldn’t actively take probability paths that far. I could only fall back on my wits, deduction and knowledge of another timeline.

‘Just to confirm, he didn’t try to kill you?’

‘No. He actually just wanted to talk. I was outside the mountain-fortress on an errand at the time. Trapped him in illusions then knocked him out.’

I could sense there was much, much more to that story, though it was technically true.

‘He’s there to technically recruit you for a mission, as far as I’m aware.’

‘What mission?’

‘What knowledge would only you have, Asajj? What unique qualification do you possess that would interest the Jedi Council?’ I prompted her.

The delay in any response was very telling. ‘Dooku.’

‘You know much of his operations around CIS space, including his homes on Raxus and Serenno. You have a distinct grudge and interest in seeing Dooku dead. And it so happens, so does the Jedi Council now, especially after the CIS’ orbital bombardment of Mahranee a few weeks ago.’

It was an entirely disgusting affair and while it had been decried by the Senate and the general public for days. The Mahran slaughter had soon become just another tragedy belonging to the last news cycle. For a while, the CIS had even thrown their propaganda out that it was entirely justified because the mahran were xenocidal. Hostile beings who delighted in using their natural stinger to kill any non-mahran or outsider.

It was naturally a complete lie, since while the furry mahran had such a stinger filled with lethal venom in one of their arms. They had a natural caveat to using it - the venom would also end up killing the mahran doing it - just like a honey bee.

In the end, anyone who did the most modicum of basic research could tell the entire thing was just a plain resource grab as Mahranee had significant deposits of many strategic minerals. 

‘I must admit, I’m surprised at the Jedi Council. What happened to ‘all life is sacred’ and all the other philosophies they preach?’ Her derision was palpable.

‘Guilt, the cold orbital slaughter of a few billion sentients was the final straw. Remember Dooku was one of the Council, he was Yoda’s own padawan. Before this, the Council had been all for just capturing Dooku and rehabilitation, but now, the general public won’t stand for it. Too much blood has been spilled.’

‘So if I kill Dooku, I’d become a galactic hero? HA!’ I could feel her cackling with amusement.

‘There is only a very small chance, if you and Vos unite your efforts, that you may achieve the true goal that the Council has.’

‘I hate it when you do this, Fulcrum. Speak plainly!’

I chuckled as I perceived her fuming over her datapad in her personal quarters in the Nightsister fortress. ‘Vos has the intention of killing Dooku, he will take the opportunity, but Yoda knows the chances are very slim. The true goal is actually to have Vos ‘infiltrate’, to fall to the Dark Side and become an apprentice. Once there, he will attempt to find anything on Dooku’s master. Yoda understands that Dooku is merely a symptom and the true source of what ails the galaxy is the enemy.’

Asajj was quite understandably astonished and even impressed. ‘I must say, Fulcrum, that I’d never expected Yoda to be capable of that level of deception. He must really be confident in Vos. The Dark Side is not something that you can just shrug off like a disguise.’

‘I know, and that is perhaps another reason Vos is seeking you out. Anyway, my advice is to keep Vos imprisoned for the moment. Tell your Mother, a single word - ‘Shroud’. She will understand.’

‘I will, but are you not going to tell me that I shouldn’t jump on this opportunity to kill Dooku?’

‘No, because you and I both know it’s not going to work. You know how strong he is and I’ve told you about my last fight with him. Do you think anything you’ve learned in just the last year will make a difference? Especially now that Savage is also there, who will have no compunctions about killing you or Vos to maintain his cover?’

Asajj didn’t answer and just cursed a long string of Dathomiri words I couldn’t understand before cutting the chat link.

My attention was drawn to a non-priority notification from HK-47 that had popped up in the background during my chat.

‘Statement: Mission success, master. Exfiltrating now.’

“Shabla, bloody droid,” I cursed, even as I suppressed the urge to jump for joy and dance a jig.

This was just the beginning. It was a small victory only, and it would depend on what intel we manage to snag over the next few months.

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Early the next morning I made my way down to the Temple Detention level.

It was technically my first visit down here in person, whilst I generally knew the layout and what it featured.

It was a deeper sublevel of the temple that had been reclaimed and refurbished to house the fallen Jedi rescued from the Citadel. It was a dungeon in all but name and yet to my eyes looked like I had just entered a very bright slice of Tapioca City on Kamino. White-gray walls, lots of transparisteel, rounded architecture - whoever had built this for the Jedi had clearly taken inspiration from Kaminoan design.

There was also a lot of energy coursing through the walls and ceilings, fragmenting or outright stopping my perceptions through the Force.

“Good morning, Ahsoka,” Taria was waiting for me at the main entrance checkpoint, which was manned by a duo of Temple Guardsmen.   

“Morning Taria, is she ready?”

“Yes, and we need to hurry. Word just came that the GAR is pushing to have her transferred to their custody. The Council is stalling them, but I have a feeling that even the Chancellor may become involved in this.”

The doors hissed open before us, with numerous shimmering blue force fields behind it shutting down.

Another Guardsman was waiting for us on the other side, who escorted us further through a labyrinth of bright corridors with no visual markings or guides. Only someone Force sensitive would be able to perceive the symbology weaved out of energy inside the walls themselves. Those symbols were also a code that only the guardsmen and women assigned down here learned.

Finally, we stopped by a nondescript section of bright wall, which slid open to reveal a door.

Beyond was an anteroom with a huge one-way mirror wall, which showed every inch of a holding cell in which a very miserable Niri Sytaphe, wearing a black jumpsuit, sat huddled in a corner on the small bed.

Taria walked over to the control panel near the edge of the mirror wall and a single tap of the button reversed the polarization. 

Sytaphe was startled as she first saw us, before laughing ruefully. “Didn’t figure you Jedi for being the infiltration type. You both rather enjoyed the show I put on for you.”

Taria folded her hands into the sleeves of her robes, “In truth, you were quite delightful, Sytaphe. Even my student will attest to that. You are very good at your craft.”

“In the lower levels, it’s what I had to do to literally survive. Nothing you surface dwellers would really understand. My whole life I’ve had to do things you wouldn’t believe for the goal to get myself off this cursed planet on my own terms.”

As casually as possible, I walked over to the control panel as well and lowered the mirror wall entirely.

“What are you doing?”

“There is little point in it,” I said airily, even as I walked forward with an easy smile on my face. Thankfully, Taria followed my lead.

‘Ahsoka?’ The Jedi Master was a step behind me.

‘A moment of trust, Taria.’

“My name is Padawan Ahsoka Tano, this is Master Taria Damsin. We’re here to talk about the client who hired you to perform the seduction of Dilen Rhorn and feed him nanodroids.”

Sytaphe nodded, “Not much else it could be. What gave me away? Must have left something behind.”

“As diligent and clean as you attempted to be,” Taria answered serenely. “We found a small number of your skin cells left behind in the closet. You can’t exactly live for months on end in that place in a hermetically sealed suit, can you?”

“Kriffing spire-rat hells, must’ve missed a spot with the vacuum,” she groused in annoyance. “So if you want me to betray my client, I’m going to need-”

She was interrupted by me blurring with speed toward her, my arms pulling her in and hugging her - I extended my Control of the Force around her…

Just in time to stop the invisible fingers of a remote Force Choke that wanted to utterly crush her throat.

Taria was immediately on the ball, also having perceived it. Not letting her disbelief that anyone could manage this get in the way. Her lightsaber was lit and thrown, spinning towards the main visual sensor in the room.

At that moment the Force Choke pulled back and tried again, this time with me as the target.

Big mistake.

My own Control soared, overpowering it and my perceptions surged along the hostile Force energy.

Taria’s lightsaber hit, destroying the sensor with a shower of sparks that also cut a fair bit of the wall. She sent it spinning towards the secondary and tertiary redundant sensors in the room.

It took but a few seconds, but that was an eternity in the battle I found myself in.

There was definitely a Jedi on the other end, one wracked with grief, anger and spiraling towards hatred and contempt. How she was keeping herself hidden and not broadcasting her fall to the entire Temple was a question I’d dearly love an answer to.

She fought through the Force to keep me at bay, using her nascent and rising power, gathered for the moment.

She was strong, experienced, but I gathered my own considerable strength and practically bullied my way through.

The last two sensors died and the link faded away.

Emergency alarms were ringing in my montrals as I came back to my body.

Taria caught her saber before extinguishing the yellow blade, “Ahsoka, did you get them?”

“I managed to catch a glimpse of her face and location. We need to go… now.”

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A/N: So, just who could it be? Ha ha ha ;-) Sorry, but I ran out of time and had to end it there. The only further clue I will give, is that it's a Legends character. I just love Coruscant's underworld, it's such a great potential story sandbox. It makes me despair that the old Star Wars 1313 game concept didn't make it out of dev hell.

Enjoy the weekend and stay awesome folks.

The Force Wills - Chapter 151

If there was one place in the Jedi Temple that I could lose hours and hours in, then it was the Jedi Archives.

Seemingly endless racks of softly blue glowing data slates arranged on multiple levels, with each rack having its own historic artifact display encased in transparisteel or a bust of some famous Jedi of the past. It somehow managed to encapsulate the feeling of an ancient library, a temple of knowledge, yet there wasn’t anything old about the technology in use. The only sound you heard was the soft footsteps of Jedi coming and going on soft carpet, the rustling of their robes, and the hum of cooling systems in each holo rack.

This wing of the archives had two open floors on either side of a central walkway with a line of work desks in the center.  The ribbed arched ceiling towered over me at one of these desks as I went through the somewhat tedious process of uploading and editing everything my proxy had recorded on Raydonia in regard to the phrik loving, Force sensitive civilization that had built the temple in the Undergrove there. Not to mention typing in my own conclusions in a report attached to the footage.

I kept my senses perked outward, keeping track of every Jedi that had a clear sightline on me, of which there were five, and acutely aware of no less than six security sensors that were in this archive hall.

Satisfied, I returned to my work and mildly despaired at the sheer mind numbing tedium of obeying the archive’s entry format in my report.

Wikipedia or the old APA style of academic writing I remembered from my previous life was rather simple in comparison to the practically arcane style required for the Jedi Archives. Not surprising when you were dealing with a style developed and refined over more than eight millennia and could probably trace its foundational roots to the Je’daii era.

As I was still a padawan, I could expect my entry of knowledge in the archives to face double the amount of scrutiny from the archivists and Master Jocasta Nu. Peer review had nothing on a Jedi style peer review.

My fingers blurred over the touchpad keys - I was used to it by now after fifteen years, but I would dearly love having a mechanical keyboard again.

For four hours I hunched over the workstation, doing a first draft, second, editing, referencing the style guide, going back, fixing mistakes and by the end of it I was nursing a mild headache.  

I let a final spell check go through the embedded droid intelligence in the workstation.

When that was done, I read through it three times. 

Frak it, I slapped the submit key and stretched my arms and legs out.

A quick look at the chrono on my wrist.

I saved a copy to a data chit before pulling it out and pocketing it in my belt.

With more time to kill, I began randomly browsing, letting a search for Jedi Sentinels carry me down a path.

It led me to investigative techniques, forensics and eventually criminal psychology, most of which were transcribed into the archives within the last millennium, with updates being done practically every month for the last century as technology walked hand in hand with criminality. Law enforcement was almost always playing catch-up as the initiative and creativity of the galaxy’s crime syndicates truly knew no bounds.

My comlink chirping for attention was a surprise, as I was keeping my attention away from the probability lines, making triply sure my reactions in the next hour would be as genuine as possible.

I quickly activated a localized sonic privacy field built into the desk, which would allow me to have a normal conversation.

Above my arm the half-body holo appeared of an older human Jedi; balding, gray-white hair, goatee on his face and intense, scrutinizing brown eyes. He wore a classic Jedi beige tunic, with brown synleather flowing over his shoulders, directly into a belt that was festooned with pockets, gadgets and tools, most of which I recognized at once.

I could perceive immediately that my interlocutor was somewhere in the guest quarters wing of the Temple - where Jedi who needed temporary accommodation were housed.

His face was maddeningly familiar as well, but courtesy didn’t give me the time to mull on it.

“Master?”

“Padawan Tano, a pleasure to meet you. My name is Master Eno Cordova.”

I was sincerely tempted to smash my head against the work desk repeatedly.

Eno Cordova, the Jedi Explorer and master, who would play such a huge role in the future of Kal Cestis, contacting me not half an hour after I had submitted my Raydonia report.

Oh, for frak’s sake… of course the ‘phrik aliens’ were Zeffo! The conclusions and realization fell on me like a ton of bricks. The fact that he was back on Coruscant from his work in the field… 

I could chart so many futures and nuances with prescience, yet the Force loved finding ways of making me look like a blind mole sniffing my way through the kaleidoscope of time and space.

“Master Cordova,” I bowed my head in custom, “To what do I owe the honor?”

“I suspect you know, you did after all submit an article of knowledge into the archives just half an hour ago. I have a number of keyword and pattern alerts in the system.”

“I’m surprised that it went through immediately, usually Master Nu and four other archivists need to sign off before it enters general circulation.”

His mouth quirked in a brief smile, “Master Nu and I have an understanding. I receive certain articles before it can find its way into the system. I’d rather read the words of the author without any filtering or before any bias can be applied. As it so happens, my current field of study is exactly the aliens whose temple you discovered in Raydonia.”

“That’s amazing, do you have a name for them?” I asked with an excited outward mask.

“In Basic, we have adopted the name Zeffonian. I have already set foot on their ancient homeworld, Zeffo, a few years ago and traced them to a few other planets, including Kashyyyk. I’ve returned only recently and been spending the last week delivering my preliminary findings into the archives.”

“Oh, so was the entire race Force Sensitive?”

“The majority of them were, whilst a minority was ‘blind to the Life Wind’ as they would say.”  

“I see. So you have further questions for me? I tried to be as thorough as possible in the article,” I said, feeling somewhat anxious at having Cordova himself reading my work.

“It was an acceptable article, Padawan. The holorecordings are superb work and I’m already applying my own translation programs to decipher the writing on the reliefs. The ‘map’ of Zeffonian exploration is especially helpful in refining other maps I have found on Zeffo. Whilst not precise, it will help. Yet, I would please like to meet you in person to discuss this further and gather direct eyewitness impressions from you.”

“Certainly, when would you want to meet?”

“Whilst I am on Coruscant now, my schedule is entirely flexible, padawan. I am not due to leave for another week, whilst my starship is going through an extensive maintenance cycle.”

A quick check of the probability lines… it could work.

“Well, I’m in the Dondann Hall of the Archives right now, Master,” I said leadingly.

He tilted his head in thought, smiling, “No time like the present then. I’ll be there soon.”

“Master,” I bowed.

The holo rippled out of existence.

Since Cordova had no reason to rush, it took him nine minutes of unhurried walking and turbolifts to enter into the Archives and another two minutes to reach the doors to the Dondann Hall.

They hissed open and he gave me a friendly smile as he approached my desk.

I stood and we exchanged formal proper bows.

“May I?” he asked politely, gesturing to the open seat next to mine.  

“Of course, master.”

“All right, now tell me everything, from the moment you became aware that the temple was significant, every detail. How you felt as you walked those ancient halls, what impressions you got from the reliefs through the Force, the very walls and floors. Leave nothing out, no matter how insignificant you think. I want no bias in the telling. Don’t filter yourself.”

I could do that, falling back into memory technique with the Force and began talking softly.

Barely a few minutes in, he paused me, “Could it be possible you may have missed something because you were only there via this… proxy droid?”

“They are rated for full sensory immersion, Master. I don’t just rely on the physical hyperspace comlink for data into my brain, the Force itself carries the experience as well.”

He thoughtfully scratched his beard, “Fascinating. Perhaps I should enquire into gaining such a system for myself. It would certainly make exploration more efficient. Imagine, I send the droid to a target planet in a ship, whilst I remain on Zeffo and continue the research there.”

“Getting mostly rid of travel time and dealing with hazardous exploration is why the proxy droids were developed.” I reached into a pocket to hand him a data chit. “Contact details for MandalMotors. I’ll be sure that they give you and the Explorer Corps a discount.”

He chuckled and accepted it, “You just happen to walk around with business chits?”

“I’m an owner, have a seat on the board and have a duty to the company, a little marketing never hurt anyone.”

“Normally, I’d chide any Jedi for such behavior, but since you’re the Mandalorian Jedi, I’ll make an exception-”  

The stillness of the archives were shattered.

Through the floor, I felt it rattle as if someone had used it as a giant drum.

Instinctively, I held a Silence Sphere around my head, to blunt the deafening rattle as the shockwaves permeated throughout the temple’s greater superstructure.

Cordova’s form blurred as he ducked underneath the workstation and I followed a moment later.

The shockwaves were just as quickly ameliorated and hopefully that indicated that the dampeners had held. After the last bombing of the temple, the Jedi Council had commissioned the installation of starship grade inertial dampeners and internal shielding throughout.

Small red lights popped out the ceiling hall and began flashing.

“Code 2 emergency,” echoed a droid’s voice throughout the Temple over the PA. “Hangar Bay 1 and 2 and adjacent levels under category 1 lockdown. All non-essential personnel are to evacuate adjacent hangar areas and temple wings. Jedi security response teams four through nine, report to Hangar Bay 1, establish security cordon. Medical Response Teams report to the main hangar bay level. Jedi Temple Complex is under Category One Lockdown. Temple Shields are raised and airspace is closed.

“All Jedi and non-Jedi personnel are to remain in place. Jedi Temple Guard and Clone security forces, initiate a level three sweep.”

A flash of blue light and energy drew my attention to the main entrance to the hall as a shield rippled into existence.

“Internal blast doors and shields engaged.”

I met Master Cordova’s grim eyes and saw in them a shared understanding.

This was going to be a long day.

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There were 14 other Jedi in Dondann Hall when the lockdown occurred.

Cordova was the highest ranked and oldest among us, so he gathered us together around the central workstations for mutual safety and protection.

There was nothing to do but wait until the security sweeps were finished and lockdown lifted, so everyone found something to occupy the time on the workstation computers.

Cordova resumed the interview on Raydonia with me and it wasn’t long until both he and I were elbow deep in the archives, using analysis programs on the footage. He even shared his own research on Zeffo, showing me snippets of his own articles and reports. I drank it all in with eagerness.

“So you think the binog was extremely important to the Zeffo?”

I stared at the projected holo of the relatively giant amphi-mammalian creature, just snoozing in the distance from where Cordova had recorded the image.

“Undoubtedly,” he tapped a key, showing a full slideshow of zeffonian sculpture and art, depicting the binog in various contexts, but they were all universally positive.

“Have you determined why?”

“Only theories at this point,” he sighed with frustration. “The binog is seemingly native to Bogano, but is found on many Outer Rim worlds. I believe their widespread seeding is entirely due to the Zeffo. As far as why they are revered, well, the binog may have played a vital role in early zeffo civilization, perhaps defending the zeffo tribes from predators. Then as the zeffo grew in strength and power, they came to adopt their former protectors. Not as pets, but a more mutual symbiosis. Binog live for several thousand years, but they only breed once in that lifetime. Yet, given the population that exists in the Outer Rim, it’s clear they had help to maintain their numbers.

“Also interesting is that in every world that features binog, the local cultures have a strong aversion to hunting them. It’s either considered very bad luck to do so or it's even inscribed in local law to be illegal. Any offworlder attempt to hunt a binog is also fiercely resisted, believing that to do so would bring disaster upon the land.”

“Well, they’re a formidable creature to hunt,” I gestured to the holo. “You’d almost need an AT-TE’s main gun to have any hope of denting the hide or doing significant damage.”

“I’ve met many hunters in my travels, padawan. They’d see any creature the size of a binog as a challenge to overcome. Yet, when I asked them why they don’t hunt binog, the answer is always, ‘Not worth it.’”

“That’s weird, the webbed ivory spines running the length of the backs and the massive pelts alone would be worth a fortune on the hunting markets.”

“Precisely,” Cordova smiled with a light of eagerness in his eyes. “I believe the zeffo gifted their former protectors with more than just interstellar transport and assisting their stunted reproduction. I think they used their understanding of the Life Wind to actually imbue something akin to the Jedi Mind Persuasion.”

“Did you sense anything like that when you were close enough?”

“No, but I was no threat to the bogan and had no intent to harm it. Even in experimentation, when I summoned that intent and lit my lightsaber, the creature was unimpressed, merely opening a lazy eye towards me and resumed its nap. It had a clear supernatural ability to see through my false intent.”

I couldn’t help a giggle at the mental image that conjured.

Further conversation was interrupted when the shield covering the door shimmered out of existence, before it was slammed open, admitting several masked and traditionally white robed Temple Guards with their lightsaber pikes in hand. Following them was a twelve man clone security squad, the lieutenant holding a scanning wand.

“All Jedi, single line to the right!” barked the lead Temple Guardsman.

We dutifully obeyed.

The clone began marching down the line, waving the scanner up and down each Jedi and verifying IDs.

He passed over Cordova without issue.

The scanner was waved over me next but the lieutenant paused when he got to my identity.

“Commander Tano, we were instructed to tell you to contact Master Yoda as soon as possible. Your comlink has been reenabled and will work through the lockdown.”

“Who gave that order?”

“Master Windu.”

I nodded, “Understood.”

The scanning continued without further incident and every Jedi in the hall was seemingly cleared of suspicious contraband or was not using a holo disguise. I’d also surreptitiously been looking at their biology, just in case we had another clawdite changeling among us.

“Jedi, you are cleared to proceed directly to your quarters. Remain in place there, until the general lockdown is lifted,” ordered the Guardsman, his voice distorted hollowly by his facemask.

Everyone bowed in acceptance.

The security teams organized themselves and marched out of the hall.

“Well, it was a pleasure to work with you, Padawan Tano,” Cordova smiled, bowing his head slightly to me.

“And you, Master.”

“Should you ever find yourself called away from this war. Please don’t hesitate to contact me. The Explorer Corps is always looking for those like you.”

“I will, Master,”

He nodded and left for the hall’s exit after securing his research on the workstation.

A quick tap on my comlink began the call to Yoda.

The Grandmaster answered immediately.

“Padawan, to Meditation Room 14, you must go. Your passage, cleared it has been, with the Temple Guard.”

“Understood, Master. On my way.”

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Room 14 was on one of the upper levels of the main temple ziggurat and commanded a nice view of the northern side, which housed the main public entrance and towering Jedi statues that guarded the wide expansive walkway.

Yoda was seated on one of the cushions, his gnarled green visage clearly showing his troubled state of mind. Anakin stood near the window with folded arms, glaring out into the distance.

The grandmaster made a flick of a clawed finger and the door closed behind me. At the same moment, I felt three different devices activate, which would scramble a wide variety of possible listening devices and sensors. In addition, I felt something that… crystallized?... the Force around me. My eyes were immediately drawn to a cube device on Yoda’s lap that looked like a holocron, but it was definitely something else.

“Master, what is that?”

“Hmmm, ancient device. Taken from the secret Archives, I did.”

“Secret Archives?” I asked with clear interest.

“Only accessed by the grandmaster of the Order. Not on Coruscant, it is. After you described the Shroud and the great access it gives our enemy to this temple, searched I did, for a solution. Device built during the last war against the Sith. Allowed Jedi commanders to hold meetings in the field, no fear of the enemy observing through the Force.”

“If it will work against him, that we’re not too sure about,” Anakin said, gesturing with hand to shutter the window blinds, plunging the room briefly into darkness before a low light came on from the walls.

I nodded and plunged forward into prescience, which wasn’t affected by the device. It was only when I tried using farsight or any other perception that I felt my gaze penned into the boundaries of the Force crystallization.

“Prescience unaffected, everything else is limited to this room.”

Yoda gave a grumbling sigh, “Much it was to hope for then. My search I will resume. Ancients must’ve had a way to defeat Sith foresight.”

“It could be that the enemy’s talent is singular in this aspect, Master. That it has never been encountered or fought against before.”

“Perhaps. Speak through Bonds we will.”

I nodded and stepped forward, placing my hands on the shoulders of both. The Force crystallization made things slippery and difficult, but I eventually managed.

“Ahsoka, did you know?” was Anakin’s first immediate question.

I folded my arms and raised a brow, “Of course I knew.”

“We have fifteen dead, twenty wounded, three in critical. Seven Jedi died!”

“Are we going to argue about how my prescience is best used? I seem to recall us hashing this out multiple times on Mortis.”

“Yes, but you also agreed to tell us in these cases-”

“Unless, you knowing would affect the outcomes negatively,” I glared pointedly. “We are in the heart of the enemy! Right now, his gaze is fixed on the temple. Studying how we respond to this calamity. We need to keep him interested here and deliver a flawless performance of what he expects.”

Anakin studied me with a shrewd stare, “You’re doing something.”

I nodded, “As we speak, HK-47 is infiltrating his secret holding in The Works.”

“Hmmm, dangerous this is, Padawan Tano. Should HK-47 fail, the enemy will know his most secret stronghold on this planet, compromised it is.”

“Yes, but there is no better time than now on the probability lines, as far as I can see.”

Anakin wearily rubbed his face, “So, what is HK’s primary goal?”

“Finding any and all computer systems, copying any data without detection and leaving.”

The murderous droid was doing a few other things, but they didn’t need to know, such as leaving a hidden data harvester program, which would randomly send out microbursts to the Holonet. The data packets would then take such a dizzying route throughout the Core Worlds that it would completely obscure and frustrate tracing.

“Done it is then,” Yoda sighed. “When data received, brief us you will?”

“Yes, master.”

“Turn now to matters at hand,” he spoke aloud. “Assigning I am, the investigation of the bombing to Master Damsin. Master Sinube, unavailable unfortunately.”

“What about Master Vos?”

Yoda shook his head, “Undercover assignment he has been given. Requested Master Damsin has, that you join her, as part of your training, you must.”

“Understood, master.”

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The internal lockdown on the Temple was lifted three hours later, allowing general operations to resume. The external lockdown would remain until the investigation had at least finished interviewing all the personnel and witnesses.

I met Taria outside the thoroughly wrecked Hangar Bay 1.

“Ahsoka,” she nodded and tossed me a handheld flashlight and portable scanner in a pad form factor with its own screen. I easily caught both and looked down into the scanner with interest as it sprang to life. “That’s a specialized forensic scanner, something no Sentinel should be without. It also has some personal modifications I made. The company that made these is good, but they’re too slow to listen to investigators that use them in the field. Come along, and walk directly behind me.”

We emerged through the open heavy bulkhead, which had done an admirable job of containing the worst of the explosion.

Hovering lights had been brought in, which cast the wreckage and damaged ships lining the entire bay into an eerie scene. LAAT gunships, various makes and models of undercover civilian spacecraft converted to Jedi use and Delta 7 Aethersprite fighters in various states of damage was evident.

Taria brought out her forensic pad, tapped a few buttons and from behind us a dozen tennis ball sized droids flew into the hangar, which began radiating visible blue scanning beams in a methodic pattern.

We paused in the middle of the destruction. “Tell me Ahsoka, look at everything as a whole, what do you see?”

I made a point of using every sense I had, even using farsight to peer to every corner of the massive bay. “It was a cascading explosion.”

“Good, if slightly obvious, with all the fuel and ordnance in here, it wouldn’t take much to create this level of destruction.” We waited until the scanning droids finished a single pass of the entire volume. “Collating data from security scanners and…”

More droids flew into the bay, beachball sized spheres with glistening white bodies and they settled themselves into a grid pattern above our heads. Light emerged from their bellies, until they resolved into holographic projections that overlaid onto the hangar bay all around us.

Wrecked gunships gained blue hues as they were visually restored to what they once were, other ships became almost pristine again, and the holographic ghosts of the various personnel who had been working there appeared around us, just going about their day.

“That’s impressive,” I had to admit.

“What you’re seeing is just a few seconds before the blast,” Taria tapped her datapad and the entire collated holoimage began moving.

The moment of the blast caused a brief white out that left me flash blinded briefly, the image data was resolved in the immediate aftermath of the blast, showing the surging explosion and debris slowly moving outward as Taria slowed the playback. 

“First explosion came from this gunship,” she pointed to a LAAT on the left side of the bay.

We walked closer to the ship in question which was now just a mangled ruin with barely any clue that it had once been a vessel. It looked like a giant had crumpled and torn it apart.

She rewound the playback and I closed my eyes briefly to avoid the flash this time.

Now we were staring at a fully intact holographic gunship, with a single technician standing beside it, with his arms inside a maintenance panel and ratcheting something inside with a tool.

Taria played the holo forward in time… explosion.

She rewound and played it again, this time with a spectrum filter that spared our eyes from the flash blinding.

This time it was clear.

“A suicide bomber?”

One moment the tech was there, the next an explosion clearly centered on his chest. Most of him was vaporized instantly, but his extremities were ripped off, both arms buried in the gunship’s guts, at least until the ship itself exploded. The debris sailed across the hangar, beginning the chain reaction of secondary explosions.

Taria rewound everything again, and walked closer until she could look directly into the face of the tech.

“Tell me Ahsoka, does that look like someone trying to blow himself up?”

The tech was an abyssin, a species known for their prominently large single eye and regenerative abilities with a minimum 300 year lifespan. This one had green skin, and stood well over two meters tall. Their faces were humanoid enough that I could infer facial expressions with no real problem.

“No, he’s frustrated, the repair he’s making is giving him issues.”

“I agree. Security scanners would’ve caught him walking in with any conventional explosives on his person or even if it was swallowed or surgically implanted. We are clearly dealing with something exotic. No, he was merely the vessel for whatever device was used and at least based on his general demeanor, he had no idea he would die when he came to work this morning.”

“Who is he?”

She ran a few reference scanning programs, but an answer was quickly forthcoming as there were only a few abyssins employed by the Maintenance Corps.

“Dilen Rhorn.”

His employee profile projected as a holoscreen appeared in front of us. We paid particular attention as his psych test results scrolled past.

“He passed every test to work in the Temple with flying colors.”

Technicians and civilians, even in peacetime, went through numerous screenings to pass muster as employees of the Order. It was a necessity due to the Jedi’s policing role against criminals. That was only increased during wartime and even the older employees had gone through repeated screenings.

Rhorn had passed them all. He was a model employee in every respect. There was even an annotation that working for the Order had been a lifelong dream since childhood - clearly stemming from disappointment that he hadn’t been found as a Force Sensitive.

“Yet somehow he became a bomb that killed dozens,” Taria’s lips were pursed, her jaw muscles subtly bulging in repressed anger.

A chirping alarm from one of the scanner droids drew our attention.

We both stared into our forensic datapads as the results came through.

“NM-K nanodroid residue on the gunship debris leading directly from our position. Well, that begins to explain things,” I said dryly.

Taria raised an eyebrow at me, “Do explain, padawan.”

Another test.

“NM-K reconstitutor nanodroids are mostly used in industrial electronic applications. At only 1.5 nanometers in length, they aren’t detectable except by dedicated scanners at close range. If you reprogram them, you can tell them to do all manner of interesting things. Such as using the carbon and other exotic metals inside an abyssin to become a volatile explosive. Most likely generated inside the fat layers and isolated so that it won’t poison the victim before the bomb can do its job. The nanodroids could also be programmed to only trigger the explosive at a certain time, when Rhorn is known to be working here. Therefore no transmission detonator is needed at all.”

“Good and what conclusion do you draw further from that?”

“Unless he was brainwashed recently, it means that he was not aware of being infected with the nanodroids. It implies that our bomber knows Rhorn’s schedule very well. Perhaps an acquaintance, friend, lover or a co-worker.”

She nodded, “Which is our next task. I’m going to procure us some transportation and organise permission through the lockdown for us to investigate Rhorn’s place of residence. In the meantime, I want you to interview any cognisant survivors who were working here. Ask them about Rhorn or anything strange they may have noticed about his behavior in recent weeks.”

“Yes, mas- Taria.”

She gave me a smile in response to my lapse and patted me on the shoulder.  

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My feet carried me to the Halls of Healing, and I was thankfully only stopped on the way once, by a random joint Clone and Guardian patrol.

The subsequent interviews with the survivors were rather frustrating.

Rhorn was not exactly a popular sentient amongst the Maintenance Corps and was also the definition of a loner.

However, my next interview bore a some fruit when I spotted the big, hairy form of a familiar lasat lying on biobed, practically covered in bacta bandages grumbling at healers that he was perfectly fine.

“Chief Nus,” I smiled.

“Ah, Padawan Tano,” he grinned widely, revealing very intimidating teeth, “Please tell me you can convince this bunch that I can get off my back. It’ll take more than a mild explosion to knock this lasat into the afterlife!”

I chucked merrily at his attitude. “I’m afraid I can’t tell your healers to do anything when it comes to your continued medical care.”

“Bah, was worth a shot. Seems like they’ve got you investigating this. How can I help?”

“What can you tell me about the late Maintenance Technician Dilen Rhorn, beyond the obvious fact that he is a fuel line and droid specialist?”

“Well, liked to keep to himself. Didn’t bother folk. He came and went as his schedule dictated. Never once late. Very punctual and detail oriented. Not surprising for someone working with fuel day in and day out. One mistake and it's all over, not just for him but all of us. Please tell me he didn’t cause this.”

“I’m afraid I can’t say, Chief. Did you notice anything in his behavior over the last few weeks that was odd or out of character?”

“He was looking a bit sick last week, but he isn’t the type to just let that get in the way of his work. He was one of the old hands in the Maintenance Corps, everybody looked up to him and he was consistently high in the performance reviews, but never let it get to his head.”

“Think back further, let’s say six months or even a year. Did you notice any sudden changes in him that stuck in your mind?”

Nus hummed thoughtfully, his eyes looking upward, then I sensed him becoming rather uncomfortable and awkward. “Uh, not sure I should say, but you know we lasat have a very good sense of smell, relative to most sentients?”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“Well, we do. Anyway, it was maybe four… or was it five months ago. Rhorn arrived with a lightness to his step and smelling of… you know…” Nus winced, his eyes pleading with me to understand a word that he clearly didn’t want to say.

“This is a formal interview, Chief, which is being transcribed,” I patted the forensic datapad. “I can’t put words in your mouth.”

Nus looked left and right, confirming the nearby occupants of the neighboring biobeds weren’t listening too closely, “He smelled of… sex.”

“How did that stand out to you? Intercourse is a natural thing to happen in someone’s life.”

“Yes, I get that, but for someone like Rhorn - he’s always perfectly clean. Didn’t come to work a day without smelling like the cleaning products he uses, in all the time I’ve known him. Yet on this day his clothes were rumpled, he smelled of intercourse and with a human woman at that.”

“So he got a girlfriend, again, it happens, Chief.”

“Yes, but it’s known among the Maintenance Corps that Rhorn considered his service in the Jedi Temple as something… sacred. That he even followed the Jedi Code in his own way, even though he wasn’t an actual Jedi.”

I quickly referenced Rhorn’s psych eval again. This was the big problem with the formalized nature of these things. Usually, it was a single Jedi or even a group of them who had to conduct a biannual evaluation of hundreds of people and even the most studious or attentive would let such a detail slip through. It could’ve also just been a coincidence that Rhorn got his new girlfriend just a few weeks after the last evaluation… or it was enemy action.

“That’s admirable,” I said carefully. “Anything else, Chief?”

He thought about it for a few moments, “Sorry, Padawan. That’s all I can say about him really. As I said, he was a loner. Barely exchanged words with him that weren't about work, when we were on the same shifts.”

“Thanks anyway, Chief. I wish you a speedy recovery. Force be with you.”

He gave me a casual salute and grinned viciously, “Good luck, Padawan Tano. I hope you find who did this and shove your lightsaber in their gut.”

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I met with Taria in a much smaller hangar bay in the northern face of the Temple, dedicated to small craft and speeders.

She was already seated in what I recognized was a SoruSuub XP-18 sport airspeeder, an ancestor of what a future Luke Skywalker would use on the desert sands of Tatooine. This one only had two outboard nacelles for the repulsorlift engines, was more blocky in appearance and had a fully enclosed canopy over the driver and two passenger seats.

“Jump in and you can tell me what you discovered on the way.”

I hopped onto the seat and closed the bubble canopy over us as the engines whined in higher pitch before Taria put her foot down.

We blasted out of the hangar and into the sky around the Temple, immediately angling to join one of the outbound sky lanes heading west.

I noted as we turned that there was a crowd of a few hundred people gathered at the base of the steps to the public approach to the Jedi Temple, and they weren’t tourists.

“Family and friends of the wounded and dead, waiting for word, which the anti-clone war crowd saw as prime chance to come out and protest,” Taria commented wryly.

I quickly got my personal pad out and sent off a text message to Yoda and Hermione via Fulcrum, before telling Taria what I had discovered about Rhorn.

“A seduction,” she concluded immediately. “But we need evidence at his home to confirm it.”

She turned the speeder into a city trench and we began descending through Coruscant’s levels. 

We eventually emerged into the sixth sublevel and ignored the sky lanes to fly a direct course straight to a tall apartment building just a few minutes flight from the titanic support struts that also acted as direct access from the surface.

She brought us in to land on the apartment roof.

“Not exactly a conventional parking spot.”

“Too much chance it gets stolen down here in proper landing areas,” she explained, powering down the engines.

We emerged onto a wide expanse of the roof, covered in air conditioning machinery. The air was hot and humid, the din of the undercity level rumbling over us. She led the way straight towards a roof-access turbolift, using a small lock override device to open it within a few seconds.

“Nice,” I grinned.

“Built it myself. You’ll find that on occasion it is wiser to leave conventional signs of your passing, instead of supernatural means. That way anyone coming after will not see a Jedi forcing entry, but instead merely someone skilled in slicing and locks.” She hit the button for the 27th level.

A few seconds of rapid descent later, we emerged onto a floor that while clean, was not in the best of repair. The paint was old, the floor under our feet pitted with cracks in the tiling and a number of the apartment doors we passed were not even mounted - leading to empty dark abodes with no furniture inside.

Taria stopped in front of a closed door with the number 152 emblazoned on it, which had a code lock keypad mounted next to it and a slot for a keycard.

She used the same slicing device, tapping on the integrated keys briefly to run a new program, before pulling out an interface probe, which she smoothly inserted into the keycard slot.

Mere seconds later the keypad flashed green and the door slid open smoothly on its runners.

The apartment beyond was… pristinely ordered.

There was no dirty clothes laying about, furniture arranged to compliment the available space, which I estimated was roughly seventy square meters in total. The walls were mostly bare, with the exception of a few large e-frames that were displaying various nature scenes from a variety of planets, one of which was distinctly from Kashyyyk and showed a beautiful long shot of wroshyr trees surrounding a lake with the distinctive arched mountains in the distance, partially obscured by mist and low clouds.

“Ahsoka, take this.” She handed me a scanning wand with a connected display pad. “Sweep for nanodroids. Touch nothing.”

I bowed in acknowledgement and began in the main living room, whilst she pulled out her forensic scanner and headed into the bedroom.

There were no traces here, so I moved to the kitchen.

It wasn’t particularly large, with only a single heater stove. The pantry cupboards were partially stocked with food, as if he was halfway through his monthly grocery cycle. Dishes were clean and neatly stacked.

I ran the scanner over the plates - nothing.

Nanodroids really didn’t like the cold, so I ignored the freezer and waved the scanner over the pantry boxes - nothing.

Okay, next logical place, the garbage disposal inside the cabinet.

Bingo!

The food remnants had numerous small colonies of the exact nanodroid used in the bombing. These ones were rather futilely trying to follow their programming to make a bomb from the carbon in the food, only managing a basic ammonium nitrate, which would eventually be enough to wreck the disposal, but not much beyond that.

I made sure to record the evidence before moving on.

In the bedroom, I found Taria thoughtfully staring into her scanner, standing in front of a small e-frame standing on a bedside table.

The bed itself was a smaller double size and the sheets were perfectly folded.

“Found anything, Ahsoka?” she asked idly.

“Nanodroids in the food disposal.”

“So either he was fed the droids unknowingly or he ingested them on purpose.”

“I’m leaning towards the former.”

“It certainly seems that way, doesn’t it,” she said and tapped the e-frame to cycle through a number of pictures of what looked like family members.

“Where were those taken?”

“Byss and he looks very happy in them, with three brothers, two sisters, a great big extended family. Yet, according to scans, a picture was deleted from this e-frame just this morning. The bed sheets are fresh, factory new. I detect no skin cell residue from either Rhorne or any human girlfriend he may have had. The dresser,” she walked over and opened the cabinet, “shows clear gaps in it. Rhorne’s clothes are there, but someone removed their own from it. There are small amounts of human skin cell traces there.”

“So the girlfriend cleaned up, but wasn’t thorough enough. Do you have a proper sample?”

“Yes, I have her gene coding, but we will have to narrow the database search for a match to be found within any practical timeframe for this investigation.”

It was estimated that Coruscant had a population that fluctuated around the two trillion mark. The human population, 70% of that. Assuming a fifty, fifty split between male and female, there were roughly 700 billion human females, spread across the 5127 levels of the planet. 

Taria gave me an expectant smile, “So how would you solve this conundrum, Ahsoka?”

“I would give the e-frame to my master’s astromech, R2 would have the deleted picture reconstructed within the hour. Assuming the picture is of the woman we’re looking for, we’d also have a facial profile, which would allow any citizen database computer to make a match rather quickly.”

“Entirely reasonable, yet…” she trailed off meaningfully.

I couldn’t help but slump my shoulders slightly, “That assumes she’s a Coruscanti citizen, registered in the system and not walking around under a new identity already. She could be Alderani or not even a Core Worlder. There’s just too many possibilities.”

She gave me a pat on the shoulder, “Precisely, my student. Well reasoned. However, as a Sentinel you’ll find that the path forward in any investigation, is sometimes laid years or even decades before you actually walk it. Coruscant’s underworld is my community, whom I walk alongside and blend in with. I have my own network of informants and favors strung across the many levels. Not all of them, but where it truly matters.

“Do you think you can just ask anyone off the streets to perfectly pretend to fall in love with someone? Someone as detail orientated as Rhorn was? Then maintain that ruse successfully for months, whilst maintaining intimate relations. Long enough also that he would trust this woman to prepare him food.”

I nodded understanding, “It would have to be a professional spy. The work of CIS Intel perhaps.”

“Possibly, but consider this. The blast destroyed a single hangar. You would think the CIS would want to cause a bit more damage to the Temple than just that. Unless their goal was simple terror. No, my student. This is different. There is a message being sent here by the bomber and it can be read by anyone with enough experience. Now let’s get back to the roof. I need to go see a contact of mine.”

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When we returned to the speeder, Taria started undressing.

Jedi robe, tunic, pants, boots were tossed into the small cargo trunk, revealing that she had been wearing an entirely different outfit underneath. Dark form fitting pants clung tightly to her toned legs and a dark purple sleeveless top, which was quickly complemented by a bright neon yellow jacket that she threw on. As a final touch, she put contact lenses in her eyes that changed her eyes to a more normal green and donned a wig of long black hair. Her entire attitude, demeanour and subtle body language changed before my eyes. She now looked like an exotic young club girl who would spend the night dancing away with friends getting drunk.

I knew how to change my looks, change my outward mask and present an entirely different persona to people. What I now witnessed showed there were much deeper depths in the art of disguise that I had yet to reach. Taria became someone else so thoroughly, not just on a surface level, but with depth and conviction. This went beyond my multi-masking technique and it almost felt like she had bloody given herself a split-personality or mental partition on command.

“We’re going to a place where we cannot be recognized as Jedi, Ahsoka. Your Hapan outfit is good enough, but you’ll need to drop your belt, lightsabers and exchange those combat boots for these.”

She tossed me a pair of highly impractical stiletto heels in black that seemed a little big for my feet. “Those are adaptive, they’ll adjust to your size. Oh and here,” she threw me a very familiar small bag that was my own togruta makeup/tattoo kit. “Adjust just your lekku patterns and the angled blade pattern on your cheeks, that’ll be good enough. Also adopt any name and personality you feel appropriate to visit a high-end moderately seedy establishment.”

I nodded and got busy with my own wardrobe and couldn’t help but feel quite naked afterward without my belt or any lightsabers. The facial pattern change took a few extra minutes to make presentable, but did enough to act as a relatively effective disguise.

Taria looked me over carefully and pronounced, “Good, who are you?”

My mask came to the fore and I giggled, grabbing both her hands eagerly and a big smile on my face, “Don’t you know? I’m Yashah Karbii, your friend who came all the way from the Bindai District for a night out on the town!” I made sure to inflect my Basic in the way that the rich surface level snobs from that part of Coruscant tended to.

“And how could you forget that I’m Arli Cetorr, from Galactic City’s Wellness District, who just had to meet my friend after a grueling day tending to the infuriating customers in the saunas.”

“Oh, I’m so forgetful,” I sighed with sincere regret.

Arli nodded, her golden eyes twinkling with mirth and excitement, “Now Yashah, get in the speeder, we’ve got a few hours of flight ahead of us to reach our destination and we can’t be late.”

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A/N: Apologies for the slight delay in this chapter. Power company was doing already once delayed maintenance. Its nice to do a bit of detective writing. Hope you enjoyed and have a great weekend. Stay awesome!

The Force Wills - Chapter 150

Getting raked over the coals by the sovereign of your star nation was not an experience I cared to repeat.

It was something that Satine definitely needed. After days of living with the worry of her son’s safety, only for her to be used as a human shield by her own Interior Minister, then revealing his treachery… 

So both Streng and I became the verbal punching bags for her anger and I gave a succinct summary of everything I knew, over the cooling corpses of Varnok and the traitorous guard.

“The next time something like this happens, you find a way to secretly let me know, Manda’lor!” she said with gritted teeth and her blue eyes flashing. “We could’ve made the arrest quietly and rooted out all of Varnok’s influence. Now he’s taken all of his knowledge to the grave!”

That was an approach I had considered, but there was just too much that could go wrong. Varnok had taken many precautions and plans, especially if he was arrested and sitting in the detention complex. Most of which were related to sabotage all across Sundari, which would kill thousands.

With him dead, unable to give the orders to his brainwashed lackeys, those plans were in limbo and bought the time needed to apprehend them and stop it.

“I’ve already ordered my men that were confirmed to be free of brainflashing by the Manda’lor to begin a full investigation, highness. With her help we’ll root out everyone affected in the palace. We’re already going through all of Varnok’s files in his office, and a team is en route to his residence as we speak.”

“Do warn them that the place is probably trapped, General,” I said mildly.

“Of course it is, my men aren’t amateurs, Manda’lor and I trained them personally.”

“The Blades will also need to be deployed around Sundari to various locations, highness; food depots, power plants, water reclamation, grav generators and sewage works. Varnok has plans in place to sabotage all of it.”

Satine gripped her hands tightly on her throne’s armrests, “Which you need my order and blessing for, otherwise it’d look too much like a military takeover. Is this also your explanation for the decision to openly march into my palace and boil Varnok’s brains out?” She glared briefly at the body in question.

I bowed in acknowledgement, “He would’ve held the entire Sundari population hostage from prison.” Streng gave me a strange look. “I have a captured Nightsister who was hired by the Separatists as part of the greater plan, who was persuaded to reveal all she knew in return for imprisonment on Concordia.”

It was nice to have a ready excuse for my foresight. Satine knew in general terms that I was gifted with it and would make the right conclusion anyway.

“Was she the one who tried to kill Korkie?”

“And the entire Blades squadron,” I confirmed.

I could feel Satine’s anger erupt but she managed to wrap her will around it like a constrictor. “General Streng, you are dismissed. I want a formal preliminary report in at least two days.”

“Understood, Duchess,” he bowed, before marching out and closing the throne room doors behind him.

Satine gave me a pointed glare, her right hand reaching to a small hidden panel on the right armrest of her throne. A press of a button later and every single official listening device was muted and any others from the CIS that might be listening were absolutely blasted with white noise.

I didn’t sense any, but I was not infallible.

Her right hand moved through a few quick Mandalorian hand signals. Are we secure?

‘Yes,’ I signed. ‘We’ll speak-’  “-like this,” I spoke directly into her mind through a Bond that was surprisingly easy to establish.

Satine was not Force Sensitive, but she wasn’t weak of mind and we generally had no problems talking like this. She could even mostly keep her focus on what she intended to say, but her emotional turmoil of the last few days was fraying it somewhat. I could perceive ghostly extraneous thoughts that I firmly ignored.

“How is Korkie?” She eventually managed.

“He’s handling it as best he can, as he was trained, Satine. He inherited command of the squadron and is returning to Concordia. I’m sure you can find some excuse to visit him or even summon him to the palace.”

“He’s faced danger before, in battle, yes. However, being a target of assassination is different entirely. He’s being targeted for death because of who he is personally, what he represents, because of me.”

“He’s strong and this won’t break him.”

She nodded, her mind shifting from topic to topic, bundled in a myriad of emotions that were tangled up like a ball of yarn, before she asked, “This was Dooku?”

“Correct. The CIS wants the alliance with the Republic to falter. They’ve now seen and felt the difference our commandos and pilots make in battle. Their goal with Varnok was to sow the seeds of yet another civil war. As you know, their clan was decimated in the previous war, reduced to just eleven members carrying the name, their assets and holdings rubble. I’m not sure of the exact sequence of events, since I’m working via deduction from foresight and current database research. Yet at some point Clan Varnok was recruited by Dooku, well before the Clone Wars even began. In light of this, their conversion to the New Mandalorian movement is rather suspect and I also foresee investigators reopening quite a few cold cases or even looking into a number of fortunate ‘accidents’, which led Varnok to his current prominence.”

Satine wearily rubbed her forehead and I felt a tinge of weary despair from her. The thought of someone hijacking the New Mando movement and using it as a wolf in sheep’s clothing was almost anathema to her. She was no stranger to how awful people could be to each other in the desperate circumstances of a civil war. Yet what was really sticking in her craw was that Varnok could only be so successful because of corruption that she had hoped her people had left behind.

It was that naivety, an overreaction from her trauma during the civil war, that I was trying to get Satine to move beyond. In her fear, she thought she could literally legislate and mold people into never behaving that way again. It was putting square pegs into round holes and then acting surprised when it doesn’t work.

The only difference being that you were working with people and not inanimate objects, who tended to resent and react very badly to being shoved into a mold and being told that it was ‘for their own good’.

“Will we be able to deprogram the victims of his brainwashing?”

“Generally, yes. In my examination of the affected Blade, Sergeant Kast, I determined it greatly depends on the individual and the amount of flash learning they were subjected to. One of the first things I want to do-”

The possibility hit me in a moment of inspiration and realization.

“Ahsoka?” Satine thought, feeling my emotions through the Bond distantly.

“Tell me, does the palace have a dedicated mind healer or psychiatrist?”

“Yes, Doctor Tar’ol, why?”

“It just occurred to me that this brainwashing can’t happen with the snap of a finger. Sergeant Kast needed hours and multiple sessions, which they first did after abducting her in secret and then she reported to another location in Sundari for follow-up sessions. Now, I doubt Varnok spent as much time on the various palace guards, but it would still require hours of undisturbed access. So how did he get it?”

Satine’s mind latched onto the answer, seeing where I was going. “Each member of the palace staff and guard needs to see Doctor Tar’ol for a psychiatric session every six months. That’s how he got his unfettered access. The only question is, is Doctor Tar’ol an accomplice? Could he have been brainwashed himself?”

“There is only one way to find out.”

Satine pinched the bridge of her nose, “Very well, Manda’lor. Deploy the Blades at your discretion. You have one week, no more. Now let us speak of what we can do to preempt further attempts by the CIS to destabilize our sector.”

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I opened my eyes, back in my meatbag self on the Omen, and pulled off the interface circlet with a wince.

“Everything all right, Snips?” Anakin asked, his attention mostly on a proxy chair diagnostic readout.

“As much as it can be,” I sighed wearily and dumped the circlet on the nearby table, before closing my eyes to regain equilibrium in the Force. “I’ve delegated as much as I can, but I’ll need to check in on some things personally in a day. Not to mention proxying in every week at least. Palpatine doesn’t want a strong Mandalore and his machinations via Dooku against us isn’t going to stop. Not unless I can influence things in just the right way, maybe demonstrate or convince him he can use us instead of outright massacring.”

Anakin looked at me with alarm, “Massacring?!”

“In his ideal future, Mandalore is reduced to scattered enclaves all over the galaxy, a dying way of life. Sundari and all the other domed cities of the homeworld are bombed out ruins. Concordia is only kept for its beskar and an Imperial governor rules over workers who are slaves in all but name.”

I stood up onto my feet, straightened my askew underwear in annoyance, before dressing in a presentable manner.

I felt the distinct hum of an engaged hyperdrive and hyperspace beyond.

“We’re going somewhere, Skyguy?”

“Back to Coruscant. The ship needs a crew rotation, you’ve been summoned by the Council of First Knowledge, not to mention we have those medal ceremonies that COMPOR will be all over, so I thought, might as well hit three womp rats with a single shot.”

It would be just under three days to get there and I mentally rearranged my schedule with that in mind.

“Any word from the CFK as to why they summoned me?”

He nodded, “Master Yoda has agreed with the Council’s suggestion and given his permission for your temporary reassignment to the CFK, where you will train under Master Damsin.”

I was somewhat pressed to contain my excitement at the thought. Master Taria Damsin was someone who I was pretty sure was one of the very few Jedi Shadows that still remained in the current day Jedi Order.

I gave Anakin a narrowed, evaluating stare, carefully parsing through what emotions I could sense from him.

He gave me a flat stare in response, “What is it, Snips?”

“No annoyance at having your padawan usurped, no jealousy, no-”

He rolled his eyes and held up a hand, “Let me stop you right there, Snips. I fully accept that I can’t teach you everything you might need, because I don’t know everything. Do give me some more credit than that.”

I gave him a teasing smile, “Just checking you weren’t being stupid about this.”

He nodded and began powering down the interface chair, “Besides, even if our paths may diverge for a time, you’ll still be my padawan at the end of the day. Even when you get your knighthood one day, you’ll still be Snips,” He grinned widely. “And I’ll be Skyguy.”

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The journey to Coruscant was far from relaxing.

My days were filled with flimsiwork for the Resolute’s upcoming crew rotation, in addition to the usual supply and logistics management. Each day ended with me jumping into a proxy for a few hours to get reports and monitor the progress of the Blades and the investigation on Mandalore.

It left me with only four hours of sleep in the schedule, which as a Jedi, I had no physical problems with, but my mood was another story.

I didn’t want to greet the CFK in a foul mood, so I grabbed Anakin for an hour long lightsaber spar, where we both did a fair job of whipping each other’s asses across the training bay. Naturally, I lost the sparring on points, seven to four, but it was very satisfying.

I decided to take the Omen down to land directly in the Jedi Temple complex after the Resolute dropped out of hyper, since the latter would be docking at the primary Navy shipyards.

The Temple flight controller directed me to one of the sublevel bays, that saw me carefully fly into a trench in the northern side of the Temple complex and descend down a shaft to park the Omen in Bay 16.

There were only three ground staff assigned here so I pitched in to help secure the Omen and run it through the post-flight procedures.

“Thanks for the help, Padawan Tano,” the weary chief, a toweringly tall lasat in an overall, with two tool belts over his shoulders greeted me.

I gave a smiling salute with the hydrospanner before shoving it onto the Omen’s primary fuel valve controls, “Not a problem, Chief Nus. Very busy?”

“Oh yes,” he tapped his diagnostic station controls. “You Jedi are coming and going so much, we’ve had to reduce our team sizes to cover all the work. Word is we’re getting more hands on board soon, but that takes time and it's straining the Maintenance Corps budget. You can begin turning.”

I began ratcheting the spanner, “You’re getting your pay on time and in full, I trust?”

“That we are, Padawan. Never had a better employer than you Jedi.”

“That’s good to hear, how long have you been with us?”

“A few months after the war started, I was in one of the first new cohorts that was brought in.”

He was the first lasat I had ever met in person, and they were notable for their prehensile feet, digitigrade legs and very impressive strength and agility. Nus had light brown skin and noticeably furry arms. Their homeworld was all the way in the south-east of the galaxy, deep in Wild Space. Which went on to explain their non-standard physiology as it was highly likely the species had never been touched by ancient Rakatan meddling in their gene pools for better slaves.

“So what made you decide to come all the way to the Core Worlds?” The valve clicked fully shut and I moved onto the secondary tanks.

He shrugged, “Honestly, I was bored of the homeworld. There, everyone just wants to fight in the warrior way or the Boosan Keeraw. All the other professions are looked down on even though our society would quickly collapse if those jobs weren’t done. I was a middling warrior with not a single hope of ever making the cut for the Lasan High Honor Guard. So, much to my family’s dismay, I grabbed the first transport I could out of Wild Space.”

Just the thought that someone as big as Dus and with the way he moved, could be considered ‘middling’, showed the standards that the Lasat had for their warriors.

“Well, I’m glad you found your way to us, Chief.”

“Glad to be here, padawan and a pleasure to be working on a ship like this,” he gave me a big toothy grin. “Now let’s move on to the hyperdrive.”

Twenty minutes later, with the Omen secured and buttoned up, I grabbed my duffel bags, waved goodbye to Dus and took the turbolift back up to the Temple proper.

The serene, grand halls and walkways greeted me.

Every Jedi I passed was busy with their own day or assignments, and gave me the occasional nod in greeting. I had to make way for a cadre of younglings, who became a small nova of excitement as they realized who I was, though their teacher managed to keep them in check and en route to their next class.

I took my time to get to Anakin’s quarters, letting the soothing atmosphere balm my spirit into relaxation. I put aside the war, the worries and the future for a moment. It was like a walking meditation that I sank into.

When my feet finally stopped at the front door, I came back to myself and entered.

I got busy making the place livable again, pulling things out of storage, powering up systems and appliances.

Finally done with that, I brewed some caf and regarded the exterior view projected on the wall, giving the illusion we had a floor to ceiling window in here.

The sun was low on the artificial horizon of the ecumenopolis, washing the sky with orange light and low white clouds hovered among the distant skyscrapers, sky car lanes threading constantly through them like a writhing web.

The Force flared in warning abruptly and I dodged with a step to my right, careful to keep my cup from spilling.

A small knife bounced off the window screen and clattered to the floor.

I didn’t stop moving, dodging left, then right and twisting around into a duck.

More knives missed and clattered to the floor.

It was practically a sin to waste a good cup of caf, but my assailant wasn’t going to stop until I showed some response.

Another dodge left, quick right, before I swiped my right hand holding my cup in front of me, sending a wide spray of hot caf streaking through the air.

A few meters to my right and behind the couch the spray hit something in mid air.

My mind wanted to recognize what it was, but it was as if the very idea slipped through my mental fingers, failing to find purchase.

I let my instincts to the fore, and chucked the cup to my left.

It was stopped in mid-air… no… it was caught.

My eyes blinked and the cup was now in the hands of a fairly tall human female with light brown skin, wearing a traditional beige Jedi tunic, pants and calf length leather boots - which was sprinkled with wet caf stains. She regarded me with a wry amusement in her exotic golden eyes and straightened her shoulder length green-blue hair.

The cup was placed on a nearby table with quick use of TK and the woman wiped her face with the sleeve of her tunic.

“I must say that I’ve never been attacked with scalding caf, Padawan Tano. It’s also a record, at least in my experience, for finding me. Well done,” her voice had pleasant richness to it and I could imagine she would be able to sing a fairly excellent soprano.

I bowed in greeting, “Master Damsin.”

“You’ll find that I prefer to be called Taria. I’m not one to stand on ceremony and formality. I’m a humble teacher in this Order and are rarely called to fulfill an assignment in the greater galaxy.”

While I could hear sincerity in those words, they were so understated that it almost beggared belief. What went unsaid, was that her assignments were usually the kind that involved the destruction and if impossible, the recovery of Sith artifacts and writings. I had no idea what she had gotten up to thus far in the war, but knew that given how few Shadows there were, the CFK would only send her when shit truly hit the impeller.

“Very well, Taria. Am I to be your student?”

“You passed my first test, so yes, I will begin teaching you the arts of our little part of the Order. More tests will follow, with some or no warning. Fail any and our relationship of teacher and student will end.”

“I believe I understand, Taria. Though only time will really tell.”

She gave me a long, evaluating look from those golden eyes. I could sense from her biology that it was entirely natural and wondered what world could possibly give rise to such an adaptation.

“Time indeed,” her lips quirked at both ends. “Follow me, we begin our first lesson immediately.”

Her throwing knives soared back to her, holstering themselves into a fan of sheathes hidden in the small of her back, before she covered that up with a traditional brown robe.

I considered changing my Hapan attire for something else, but dismissed the idea and only called my lightsabers to hook onto my belt.

We left and she set a mild pace in our walk towards the north-west of the temple, where the Tower of First Knowledge awaited us.

Instead of leading me through an indoor entrance, we went outside on the rooftop that surrounded the base of the tower.

Here were several pleasant gardens carefully maintained to perfection with flora that looked like it had come from Dantooine; green grass and blba trees with a few exotic arrangements of multihued flowers. All of this was surrounding statues and memorial stones of ancient and even more recent Jedi lost in the service of the Order. None of those who had fallen in the Clone War were yet memorialized here and it would only happen once the war was over - at least that was the current plans I had heard.

No one thought in their darkest imaginations that there wouldn’t be an Order left to even make that memorial.

Taria led me to a patch of grass in front of a meter tall block of white stone, which had five lightsaber hilts inlaid in it. She folded her legs as she sat down and patted the grass in front of her.

I mirrored her pose and sat down, even as my mind felt a dark amusement as I realized who the memorial stone was for.

The five Jedi who were credited with the final defeat of the ‘last’ Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Bane.

She gestured to the memorial, “What do you think, Ahsoka? Given the situation we found ourselves in today, should we remove this?”

“No,” I said firmly.

“Why?”

“Bane may have survived, faking his own death, but this memorial also honors the five masters who fought him, with no guarantee of success whilst the galaxy was crumbling around them. If we really want to be pedantic we can just edit the language of the memorial, emphasizing Bane’s defeat and retreat, instead of using the word ‘vanquish’.”

She nodded, her face utterly inscrutable and it figured that she, of all the Jedi masters I had met, would have a perfect Sabacc face. In the Force, she was difficult to pin down and I couldn’t be sure if I was actually reading her or she was just showing me what I wanted to see. Sure, other Council Masters could pull this off, but only with effort. In Taria’s case, it was just her natural state of being. “Or we should keep it exactly as is. That way, it teaches to all Jedi, that our vigilance must never wane against the darkness. Each Jedi who passes here will see the folly of our forebears in thinking the Sith extinct and learn the lesson that should never have been forgotten.”

“That is certainly another way to look at it,” I agreed.

Her evaluating gaze practically speared through me and I couldn’t help but feel almost naked in front of her. I had every defense of my own being raised as a fortress, which was a necessity on Coruscant, yet somehow in front of this master, it didn’t seem to matter.

The Force ballooned outward from her and washed over me, briefly infringing on my Control, before it passed beyond and surrounded both of us in a perfect sphere.

The sounds of the wind, the rustling of leaves in the garden around us abruptly stopped.

My montrals reeled briefly from the sudden change, feeling the acute absence of sound.

“What did I just do?” Taria asked expectantly.

“You’re holding a constant kinetic force around us in a sphere, preventing sound transmission in either direction.”

“Can you do this, Ahsoka?”

She dropped her sphere, returning the ambient noise abruptly.

My montrals really didn’t like that, so I quickly focused and brought up my own shielding technique around my head, specifically to counter sonic weapons. A few moments later, I pushed it outward, to envelop my whole body and further, but stopped before I could reach Taria.

I puzzled a few moments about how to keep it contiguous yet not cause any kinetic transfer to her.

I just about managed to open a gap in it briefly, pushing it outward around her further before closing it up around us.

“Good, figured you would be able to do this as a togruta,” she nodded in approval.

“Sonic weapons and explosive concussion is a concern for most species, but especially for mine.”

“Keep the technique up, if you falter for a single moment, I will stop your first lesson and we will part ways.”

I let the anxiousness and fear that threatened to crawl into my heart go, solidifying my focus “Understood, Taria.”

“You know that there are generally three broad types of Jedi recognized and trained by the Order; Guardian, Consular and Sentinel. In these times especially, the first two are prominent, while the Sentinel has seen a marked decline. That is only natural, as Sentinels by their nature focus on the community or a singular planet, using the Force minimally and in concert with mundane skills. In a galaxy at war, their approach is too focused and it honestly amazes me how the reduction in their numbers over the last two generations hasn’t been seen as a sign of things to come. You know of the Watchmen who focus on a single planet, developing and guiding its society. The Temple Guard, who protect us here on Coruscant. However, there is another branch that is not talked about or mentioned in the Archives. We work with the CFK alone and the Grandmaster - we are the Jedi Shadows.”

Keeping my reaction in line and natural in front of her perceptions, whilst keeping up a silence sphere, was easily the single most difficult feat I had ever done. It was mostly possible because I was leaning on checking probability lines as well.

“You are not entirely surprised,” she observed, narrowing her golden eyes at me.

Frak.

“Not as such. I am a student of history, the path of my heart is as an explorer. The one thing you always see in any civilization or organization, is the need for those who walk in secrecy. The guardians of the guardians, who walk in darkness to serve the light. As such, I always figured the Jedi Order is no exception, despite what the old Code said.”

Taria was silent for a very long few moments that she stretched out. “Interesting, and yes, you’re correct, Ahsoka. The history of our little secret corner of shadow dates back to the Great Hyperspace War. My predecessors were gathered by the grandmaster of that time and sent to find and destroy any artifacts or imbued constructs of the Sith Empire, which had collapsed in the war’s wake. He knew that scavengers, rich businessmen, politicians and greedy opportunists, would seek out anything related to the Sith, for display in their hoards and collections. Ignorant of the danger they posed, they’d show it off to the rich and powerful, who were swiftly corrupted and even in extreme cases possessed by Sith holocrons.

“The Jedi Shadows were commissioned and sworn to investigate and hunt down every artifact. It was only natural that we were first chosen from among the Sentinels, who knew best how to move through communities unseen. They were the most skilled at mundane investigation, since many Sith artifacts and constructs of the time were resistant or invisible to broader perception through the Force. Over time we also welcomed Consulars, especially when a construct or holocron was particularly powerful, who could do direct battle with them through the Force. As such, we began to develop techniques in the Force unique to only the Shadows, which we kept hidden from the greater Order.”

“Which is how you infiltrated my quarters and even hid yourself from every perception.”

Taria nodded, “I know you developed your own limited form of it, in mimicry of the current Sith’s ability. This goes quite far beyond that, as you felt.”

It had been quite disconcerting. Even now my mind struggled to make the association that Taria had been the one to throw knives at my back. It was also a quite obvious weapon for a Jedi Shadow to use. A lightsaber wound on someone was very distinctive, and totally contrary to a Shadow that wanted to remain undetected. A mundane throwing knife, which could be guided with TK for precise effect was a perfect choice for a stealthy weapon.

“Is that what I’m going to learn?”

Taria let her mouth give the hint of a smile, “In time, if you pass my tests. To continue, in the Post-Ruusan era the Shadows diminished over the centuries as we seemingly did our job too well. There was a time a century ago, when only a single Shadow was left in the entire Order and it’s only thanks to Master Yoda that we remain in a continuity of training and experience from the days of the Old Republic. Our role in this era has mostly been a reversion to that of a more specialized Sentinel, except our investigations are politically sensitive. We do that which cannot be linked to the Order. We also hunt any Jedi who have fallen to the Dark Side and deliver them to the Citadel for incarceration or treatment. Obviously, that’s impossible now with it firmly behind enemy lines.”

“Have you been called on to do anything for the war effort?” I asked carefully.

“Yes,” she answered with a mild smile and didn’t elaborate. “If you are to be Shadow, you must learn to guard knowledge carefully. You do not need to know what we are doing, therefore you will not. Each Shadow will rarely know what the other is doing, unless we deploy together in a group on an investigation. Only the Master of the CFK and the Grandmaster know the complete picture of our activities and how many of us there are.”

“You mean, even you don’t know-”

She raised a hand, “I will admit to knowledge of one other Shadow, because I worked with him briefly. The perception has been created, even among those in the High Council, that our numbers are very small. Whether that is true or not, is besides the point. Jedi Shadows, by our nature, mostly work alone in ideal circumstances. I can’t tell you how many of us there are, because it will be a guess. I can say your potential recruitment is the first among your generation.”

I gave her a shrewd stare, “And how would you know that?”

Her golden eyes twinkled with satisfaction, “Precisely, Ahsoka. I can’t know if any of the others have recruited a student. If I truly knew then we are doing it wrong. A Shadow walks alone in their duties and must be invisible. In that respect, you are at a marked disadvantage. You are very well known across the Republic as a war hero with more official commendations on the way. Congratulations on those, by the way.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled.

“Therefore, you have two roads to secrecy as I see it. The road of audacity and deception, show the galaxy one thing, while your true work happens in the shadow. The other road is in pure invisibility and disguise, the latter of which I know you have some ability with.” 

In my innermost self, I roared with laughter. In the former respect, I was already a Jedi Shadow a million times over. “You did your research on me.” 

“As is natural when you are asked to take on a student. Your profile makes for fascinating reading. Now,” she reached behind her back and pulled out a single throwing knife to balance on her palm in front of me. “Levitate the knife,” she demanded abruptly.

There is no thinking about it.

Levitation within a constant silencing sphere, which was itself a constant exertion of telekinesis… I didn’t let any notion of impossibility find purchase in my psyche.

A few moments later, my focus simply brought the knife into sphere technique, amending it on the fly…

The knife lifted a few centimeters in the air.

“Good, keep it there. Now, understand that Shadows are also permitted the study and use of certain select abilities that are considered part of the Dark Side. As a result, we are also under the close and direct scrutiny of the CFK or the Grandmaster. The reason for this is that to fight the enemy, we must know their potential abilities and be ready to combat them. We can’t afford to be ignorant of what the enemy is capable of.”

“But, how do you remain uncorrupted then?” I asked with genuine curiosity. I had some ideas on that front over the years, but it wasn’t something that I was eager to test.

“Firstly, you are experiencing the first method right now. Rigorous selection criteria. The only reason we are here now, is because you’ve already fought and survived a fight against a Sith. You remained in balance afterward and didn’t fall into despair. There are other reasons, but that’s not important to go through right now. Secondly, we use a technique called Poison Dose, which you’re already familiar with, if by another name. It was how you learned the Emerald Judgement - intellectually, ritually, with no emotion and under the strict supervision of your Master and others.

“The next method we use is called the Anchor. You will choose someone who you trust to always be in balance. They will be given a small kyber crystal which they will attune themselves to. Afterward, the Shadow will always wear that crystal, which will act as touchstone and real-time mirror. The moment you begin to feel anger, hatred or exhilaration from the dark side, your anchor will also feel that and can immediately pull you back into equilibrium telepathically.”

That was actually quite clever. It was a materially reinforced Force Bond that could survive the potential tempest of the dark side, which had a tendency to outright sever normal bonds.

“After every mission where we use a dark side technique extensively, we’re sent for weeks or even months of recovery into isolation and meditation on vergence worlds where life and the Force is strong. The locations of which you’ll learn eventually, should you make it that far. The final method I’ll admit to you at this stage, is known as the Shadow’s Oath, which you take at the conclusion of your training. You will only hear it then and I will not speak it now. Suffice it to say, the oath itself can act as a bulwark against the dark side.”

I tried to imagine how an oath could do that. Perhaps it is imbued into the Force within you in some way?

She pulled out another knife, “Float this one as well and begin moving them in any complex pattern you wish.” I chose an infinity symbol, orbiting the knives around each other, letting them draw it in the air with a mild speed. She eyed the floating weapons, her eyes glinting with approval. “Do you have any further questions about the Shadows, Ahsoka?”

“Not at the moment,” I declared after a moment’s thought. “Since most of them won’t be answered at my level.”

“Good that you understand that, now we’ll continue with this exercise until you can float every knife I have within the sphere of silence.”

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From that point I operated on minimal sleep and Taria would come at any time with no rhyme or reason, then lead me to a random spot in the Temple; in the middle of an empty docking bay, a randomly chosen room in the Halls of Healing, the Garden of a Thousand Fountains, between random data racks of the Archives.

There the tests would continue, refining my ability to use the Force in any way whilst keeping up a Silencing Sphere. Some were easy, others left me with awful migraines and were horrendously complex, such as trying to channel an Emerald Judgment within the Sphere.

Added to the difficulty was that our training had to remain hidden in plain sight and secret from the perception of every Jedi’s senses who might happen to be in the vicinity.

Taria was doing that with a technique that was both similar and ridiculously more advanced than my own Force Stealth, what she called Buried Presence. It was by the sixth day of training that she handed over the burden to me of keeping us hidden.

Making things even more complicated, was that I was expected to keep up with my GAR duties and present a normal status quo. No Jedi could see us training together, which was another test in itself. To everyone else, I was just on downtime after my covert mission with D-Squad. The only exception that Taria allowed was Anakin, since he would have a good idea through the padawan bond about my comings and goings, despite all the sneakiness we were doing. He had returned to the Temple on day three of training after dealing with Resolute’s logistics - the ship was getting another round of experimental system addons. Lira Blissex had practically adopted it as her practical test bed at this point.

On day seven, Anakin and I had to don our Jedi finest to attend the medal ceremony for the Cross of Glory, which Palpatine himself attached to our collars.

It was held in his office under the gaze of the entire Loyalist Committee. He looked like a proud father as he went about it, whilst he wore that damnable knowing glint in his eyes all the while.

It was only when I was back in our quarters of the Temple, that I let my feelings of disgust expand minutely out behind my multitude of masks, letting them go and returning to a state of serene equilibrium.

On day eight, Taria arrived at three in the morning, woke me up with only two hours of sleep and led me to the Room of a Thousand Fountains.

The entire temple was mostly asleep at this time, with only the primary hangar bays showing any activity, the starship mechanics working hard as always to keep the interstellar steeds of the Jedi in good repair and the kitchens beginning their prep work for breakfast.

I kept both of us under Buried Presence and Silence Sphere as we ambled through the giant indoor garden.

She led me to a small bridge that crossed a merrily trickling stream in the south-eastern portion and gestured for me to sit down right in the middle of it. The trees along the banks formed a natural barrier to being observed from afar, with only the stream allowing sightlines to our position.

“You are ready for the first phase of Qey’tek or the Heart Stopping Stillness as it’s referred to by some Shadow in the distant past,” Taria lectured, bringing her lightsaber to hand as she walked around me. “I prefer to call it the Curved Mirror. Your goal is to make yourself so transparent to the Force that you cast no shadow in it. Your self-learned technique is innovative, it works as a stealth barrier, consciously dampening the ripples you leave, but it is a dead-end and cannot bring you to the true goal. Now, we will begin - enter meditation to the point of emptiness or still water.”

That was second nature to me by this point and I managed after just a few seconds.

Taria’s lightsaber snapped on with a harsh ripple in the Force and I wasn’t surprised to feel the yellow light bathing the area. Another little fact I could sense, it was dialed down to the highest non-lethal training mode.

“Now, visualize the Force, not as a river flowing through you, but as a mirror you are standing behind. You do not stop or influence the current, you let it reflect around you.”

This took a fair bit of time, as my mind was so used to the former visualization. Breaking the mold of thinking was bloody hard and I reflexively grit my teeth to make my mind more malleable to the path.

I could feel myself slipping, stopping the useless gesture. Honestly, why would clenching my jaw help at all?

I fell into my focus and will… 

… in my inner mind the Force became an infinite curved mirror standing above the smoky black and white earth under me…

“Contract your strength in the Force inward into a tight spiral within your solar plexus,” came the next instruction.

My experience in Control and Healing, the internal application of the Force came to the fore. My mind threatened to ask ‘Why?’ but I let the thought fall away.

Time began to lose its hold, though I kept a mild sense of its passage, but I managed after just a few minutes to hold the spiral.

“Excellent, now fold your emotions along the same spiral. Your master must be unable to sense your emotions, even should he actively peer through your bond.”

My mind threatened to bubble up with the notions of how that was ‘impossible’ and surged with disbelief.

NO!

I’ve cast aside my preconceptions before! This is NO different!

The thought of difficulty assaulted me.

NO!

I reigned my mind and emotions, grimly and without pause clawing and pulling them, molding them around the spiral of the Force I had generated.

“Yes, now hold it,” Taria commanded and without warning hit her saber across my back.

The shock ran through my body even as I barely managed to keep my focus and split it into a Tutaminis, letting the energy bleed into the bridge underneath my ass.

I felt her scrutiny as she continued her slow pacing around me, spinning her blade lazily in an infinity arc around her.

The spiral and mirror was hanging on by a thread of stability.

My focus was scrambling to gather purchase, as if I was holding a slippery rope with a heavy weight on the end.

The lightsaber struck again, right on my left montral this time.

My focus shattered and I lost the spiral and mirror.

“Tsk, start again, from scratch,” she commanded with a mild serenity at odds with her actions.

I gained calm, rebuilt the mirror, twisted my internal Force into the spiral and overlaid my emotions.

The pride at having maintained the Buried Presence through all of this was discarded and banished before it could even become more than passing thought and emotion.

The lightsaber struck me on the right lekku.

My Tutaminis was thankfully equal to the task, the mirror and spiral held this time.

“I trust you realize why we are training this way, Ahsoka. As a Shadow, there can be no room for faltering or a mistake. Losing the qey’tek for even a moment, could mean failure of your mission or death. The assignments we undertake leave no room for it. As a Jedi, you’ve surely undertaken many combat roles where failure wasn’t an option, but you’ve always had the luxury of retreat in those scenarios. You’ve had the support of tens of thousands of clones, the power of a star destroyer around you, the combined fleet you were commanding. Shadows have none of that. We are alone in the dark.”

She struck me on the left knee next, the sharp pain was brief before I channeled it and the energy away.

I was so absorbed in my task that I didn’t even notice it at first.

Generally, my foresight was sometimes like a radio in the background, set at low volume, to not interfere overtly in my day to day existence too much. Within the Shroud, it was a radio with static overlaid on the broadcast, to carry the analogy further.

In that moment, the probability lines burst and shrieked open into a kaleidoscope as my sight caught wind of the upcoming event through the Shroud, roughly eighteen hours from now.

My emotions threatened to run away from me completely, they wanted to twist away into an exasperated frustration and denial.

I clawed my way back to this strange new equilibrium just barely, even as a part of my mind was dispassionately coming to the realization that in history; the actors may change, circumstances and choices differ, a thousand events spiraling outward that narrows to a singular point of change, but history also loved to rhyme.  

“What was that? Ahsoka?” Taria gazed at me with what felt like a spiritual x-ray.

“A vision of the future,” I fell to the old standby.

“You have those? Wonderful,” she said dryly. “I’ve had a grand total of two in my entire lifetime and both were utterly useless in preventing the events they depicted. Nevertheless, I don’t care if you’ve received another Chosen One Prophecy, you will remain in control.”

I nodded and reestablished myself in the Curved Mirror. 

We continued for a full two hours before Taria declared the session over.

“You were… satisfactory, Ahsoka,” she said, clipping her lightsaber back to her belt. “For the next few days I want you to spend as much time as possible practicing it. Your goal is to eventually reach a point where you can achieve the state in a moment, at any time, place or condition.”

We parted ways and I took the trip back to my quarters to mull over the full blown temporal dilemma heading my way.

The probability indicated a large explosion would occur in one of the primary hangar bays on the eastern side of the Temple complex. 

The Shroud was obscuring further exploration, but I knew the current point in time was about right for the original bomb plot that in another time and place, would’ve been hatched by a disillusioned Barriss Offee, who would try to frame another Ahsoka Tano as the guilty party.

This was clearly not Barriss, as she was far from bitter and disillusioned in this timeline and wasn’t even on Coruscant at the moment - electing to continue her medical work on RMSUs in the GAR. Last word I had on her, she was assigned to a Medstar-class frigate to work on wounded naval clones in all the void battles happening all over the galaxy’s front lines.

Yet the conditions that gave rise to that Barriss were still there.

Any other Jedi of the hundreds present in the Temple could’ve snapped and decided to take matters into their own hands to object to the war and the Order’s extensive involvement in it.

It would be one of the traditionalists perhaps, who remained in the rear echelon or…

There were just too many possibilities and I had no choice but to wait.

Then, as if the universe decided that it wanted to put something else onto my plate to worry about, my communicator chirped.

I double tapped the device on my wrist and ducked behind a giant pillar in the hall I was walking through, by sheer instinct throwing a Silencing Sphere around me.

“Yes, HK?”

“Statement: I’m in position, master.”

It didn’t take me a moment to answer, as I considered the probability lines, “You may proceed.”

“Statement: Commencing infiltration.”

I cut the link.

Now the question was, do I allow the bomb to go off. This was not a Palpatine plot as far as I was aware. The chances of that were minimal, yet I couldn’t discount it entirely. In the original timeline he had merely been opportunistic, using it to tear apart Anakin from his padawan. Yet, Palpatine here and now had every motive to want to tear me away from the Jedi Order, to disillusion me from it thoroughly. After all was said and done, after the false accusations, the show trial before the Council, then a military tribunal and even after an exoneration…

Yes, I could plot the chain of events that he would sculpt, to practically drive me right into his grasp, to then make me fall to the dark side.

The overarching issue that I didn’t dare forget, was the greater war I was fighting against Palpatine. If I fought tooth and nail to stop this bomb, liberally using my prescience, especially whilst his gaze was focused my way… I’d be winning the battle, but losing the war.

No, especially now I needed to keep his eye on me.

HK’s infiltration of Palpatine’s lair in The Works was not going to be quick, given all the precautions and security that had to be subverted.

I hated this.

Right there, behind the pillar, I found myself in a battle with my dark side, who had arisen at the worst possible moment.

Yet wasn’t that its nature?

If fear was the mindkiller, hatred was its cousin which targeted the spirit.

I rallied and denied my darkness, casting it away like the rabid dog it was.

It was only when I regained equilibrium that I saw that my imbalance was coming from my Shadow training. Obviously, molding the Force internally in such strange and new forms had led to my spirit being more malleable and vulnerable.

A little warning would’ve been nice, Taria, I grumbled to myself.

I huffed with irritation and set off, intent on finding the sweetest, tastiest breakfast I could find.

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A/N: Really Ahsoka, what did you expect would happen when you begin training as a Shadow and screwing around with the Force within you? Sunshine and roses? He he.

Hope you enjoyed the beginning of the new arc. Have a great weekend and stay awesome folks.

2078: Highriders - Chapter 16

Finding out who had put out the hit on Hands was proving to be a headache.

I didn’t really expect anyone who walked in the ‘major leagues’ to be easily found, but every search string I went down ran into dead end after dead end.

The mercs hired for the gig weren’t NC natives and came all the way from Austin. All three were vets from the Texan Army, which explained the military grade chrome and optic camo. Their trails all dead-ended back in the Texas Republic, clearly scrubbed and further details hidden behind firewalls that I really didn’t want to poke at all. I did not want to get on Texas’ shitlist.

They’d tell me anyway what I already knew. Just another three down on their luck Unification War veterans, desperate to make an eddie to keep their chrome maintained and stave off their meat rejecting it for another month. Literally living gig to gig, immunosuppressor to immunosuppressor.

I sent out a few stealth info-crawlers into the Texan Republic to try and trace down the communication logs I pulled from the mercs before their chrome went self-destruct, but that would take ages given the time stamps. Whoever had hired them had done so three months ago and sent them overland via a Snake Nation nomad convoy, smuggling them over the various Free State borders. The sheer effort and eddies paid for the gig was evident in that alone.

Then there was the timing.

Had they been truly instructed to wait until Hands got a call from me? Or was this a level of paranoia that was over the top?

Fuck.

I pulled myself out of Earth cyberspace, regarded my datafortress for a moment with scans and checks to see if everything was nominal before pushing forward.

My eyes opened to regard my Tycho Heights apartment, which definitely needed a good tidying up.

I threw my legs over the side of the bed and sat up, pushing away an empty bottle of beer with my foot, which had rolled over to my side from Johnny’s.

I bit the bullet, quickly got dressed in Luna highrider attire, before tackling the mess.

Everything was in a bag and went into the garbage disposal closet.

I had barely closed the door when a holocall from Kaori Matsui came through.

Given the time of local day it was, I was not expecting this to be a friendly topic of conversation.

“Doctor? Is something wrong?” I asked with a mild alarm. None of my spy daemons, which had been further augmented with actual remote surveillance we had installed, detected anything untoward. 

Her image in my optics showed she was generally okay, with only a slight frown marring her face.

“V, thanks for picking up. Not sure what your sleeping cycle was-”

“That’s all right, my work day technically began three meatspace hours ago. I’m going to catch my first Lunar sunrise.”

“Yes, the first one is definitely memorable. However, I’m afraid you’re going to end up missing it if you take my gig. I need your help urgently.”

I buried the annoyance, but understood that biz came first. There will always be another Lunar sunrise in the future. “What’s the sitch?”

“I’m sending through some data,” she said in lieu of explaining the old fashioned way.

I reflexively quarantined the data stream in my own internal air-gapped drive, subjecting it to what any NC netrunner would call an overkill level of scrutiny. When I was satisfied it resolved into an grid astro-nav map of Luna orbital space.

Coordinates of a space station flashed above Luna’s north pole.

“What you’re seeing is Kasai-9, a Mitsubishi station in a Molniya polar orbit… you do know what that is?” she asked, suddenly looking rather sheepish.

“Yes, highly eccentric orbit, I’m not a highrider but I’ve got my space legs by now,” I let my mouth quirk into a smile to show I didn’t take offense at her assumption.  

“Good, the station reaches about 500km above the northern pole, before swinging out to a 40 000 km apolune. It does this mostly for research conditions to escape as much EM and localized gravitic interference from Luna. It is currently home to twenty scientists and support staff, who are working on experiments with a nine kilo refined Gravium-7 core.” 

“Got it, what went wrong?”

Matsui huffed, folding her arms, “Militech went wrong! Just under an hour ago, a strike team of theirs boarded the station and took it over. The only reason we on the ground even know is because one of the scientists had his own redundant, off-grid com gear that evaded the notice of the enemy netrunner.”

“Fuck,” my mind raced as I considered the implications. “Did he manage to give any composition on the enemy?”

“He didn’t get the chance to say much before he had to stop transmitting and he didn’t see much either. Best guess he could give is six, maybe seven if you include the netrunner.”

“Any optical sat intel on the station?”

She shook her head with irritation, “The Molniya orbit means that very few sats have eyes in the direction we’d need. Mitsubishi’s will only have an angle in about three and half hours. We don’t have that time. Militech could leave before then with the core, the scientists and other critical experiments.”

I shook my head, “I’m not opposed to a rush gig, Doctor, but I hope you have transport.”

“I do, I’ve been given complete authority by Mitsubishi to handle this situation. Requisitioning any and all assets to fix this mechakucha (clusterfuck). An AV-4b shuttle is already waiting for us on TC Landing Pad 7.”

She streamed me the specs on the shuttle, which was a Mitsubishi Kuma-Gumo orbital SSTO - a ‘civilian’ high-speed, low-observable personnel & light-cargo orbital vehicle. As this was a corpo craft, it could with little effort turn itself into a military role, which I had no doubt Matsui had already done.

Sure enough, the specs showed it had radar-absorbent coating, low-IR signature, active cancellation chaff, transponder spoofers and two concealed 12.7 mm dorsal remote turrets and four hardpoints for light missiles.

All that was background noise compared to what she was implying. “Sorry, ‘Us’?”

“Naturally, I’m coming with you on this gig.”

Of course she was. There were some gigs where a client insisted on tagging along. I hated those on principle, simply because I had yet to do a gig like that which didn’t turn into a complete shitshow. Either the client died or something they did caused the entire gig to fail or it sets you on a path where you end up giving psychological advice to a death row inmate willingly getting himself crucified for a BD.

“You’re the client, but I strongly advise you just let Hollow and I handle this,” I said with feeling.

“I appreciate that, V. But you’re going to need my direct help if we’re going to Kasai-9. The only reason we have a window to intervene is because the onboard defenses, both physical and cyberspace, are buying that time by delaying the Militech strike force. With my codes and knowledge, we’ll have free reign and the station itself will become our weapon. This place is also so highly classified, that I can’t send the station schematics to you - not without even Mitsubishi wanting to fire me.”

I knew more than enough about that to understand what she meant.

“Fine, what’s our pay?”

“28k eddies, plus I’ll let you take your pick from some experimental devices I’m working on that I think you’ll find most useful in your chosen profession.”

“30k,” I retorted.

“No time for haggling V,” she waggled her index finger at me. “But I’ll agree to 30k. Now get your oshiri ga kawaii (cute butt) to the landing pad!”

Her eyes widened, her face flushing as if she couldn’t believe those words had come out of her mouth. Before I could even react, she cut off the holocall with a clear air of embarrassment.

I couldn’t help the chuckle that erupted, “Johnny! Get your ass up! We have an emergency gig!”

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Johnny was definitely not a ‘morning’ person.

He was constantly grumbling and swearing under his breath as we hurried with best speed on foot and public electric trams to the nearest main elevator, getting up to the surface floor in only 14 minutes and reaching the tunnel towards the landing pad in another eight. All the while carrying our war chest between us.

We met Matsui at the airlock and she looked ready to take on a borg by the look of her armored conformal vac-suit. It was not of any available brand that I could scan and easily reference and was therefore custom and built in-house for her by Mitsubishi.

It was matte obsidian black with a faint oil-slick violet-green iridescence that shifted under direct light. My scans found the Mitsubishi logo micro-etched on the left pectoral plate (the armor doing a wonderful job of also framing her boobs), which was deliberately subdued. It was also a layered graphene-ceramic composite that I tentatively evaluated at being even more resistant than my own armor.

Her left forearm had a retractable blade in it that I couldn’t scan directly, but there was definitely enough space in there for a tanto-style blade to sprout, whilst her right forearm held a folded carbine that I didn’t recognize at all or even how it could work besides the obvious fact that it was a barreled weapon.

“Ah, V, Hollow, thank you for coming quickly, everything is ready, let’s go.”

She turned around to begin working the airlock controls and I couldn’t help my own eyes looking downward at how nicely the custom vac-suit emphasized Matsui’s own shapely derriere.

Complete instinct had me looking at Johnny and he gave me that typical knowing, shit-eating grin of his, as we buttoned up our own combat vac-suits.

One airlock cycle later we hit void and began bunny hopping in earnest along the lunacrete walkway. With a tether linked to my hip, our war chest followed along behind us with the extendable mesh wheels I’d attached to it.

Our shuttle came into view a few minutes of hopping later and there was still a smattering of Mitsubishi and highrider ground staff swarming around it to finish the pre-flight. There was a desperate speed to their movements and body language visible even through their vac suits.

Matsui switched her radio frequency and she became very animated as she barked orders at the ground staff. Soon their asses looked like they were on fire as they began hopping faster to achieve their checklists.

I pinged our client over the radio, “Dr. Matsui, we’re about to ride a very complex SSTO to orbit. I would rather get there in one piece, which won’t happen when the ground staff misses a critical system fault.”

“Eh, all they do is work on this thing. It should’ve been flight ready thirty minutes ago.”

The AV-4b Kuma-Gumo shuttle was about 85 feet in length, 59 feet wingspan and stood 23 in height on its landing struts. In terms of aerodyne type SSTOs it reminded me of the extinct condor in shape. Its hull was mostly Mitsubishi red with eye-catching white streaks, but I spotted the tell tale circuitry for crystal coating that could let it become any color at the pilot’s discretion.

The interior was currently open to void to let the ground staff do their job faster, letting us board via a rear cargo ramp.

“Get your gear secured. We’re leaving in ten minutes or we might as well not even bother with the gig at all,” Matsui said grumpily, heading forward into the two person cockpit.

“Doctor, shouldn’t you have a co-pilot?” I asked pointedly, letting Johnny handle our luggage.

She scowled at me, which on a face like hers, should’ve been illegal. “Yes,” she admitted reluctantly. “Are you qualified?”

I had a general NC AV certification, which meant I wouldn’t be completely clueless behind the controls. There was a big difference though between your standard AV and an orbital class SSTO. Yet my new state of being came with a potential that I was still only scratching the surface of.

My focus shifted to cyberspace, first getting a feel for the Kuma’s computer systems, before ghosting through the data infrastructure. It was neat, elegant and very typical of systems crafted by Japanese corpos. It was definitely more user friendly than the opaque Arasaka equivalent and I could just tell that this code was written with… soul? There was really no other word for it. Arasaka sent their software through the hell of a dozen evaluation committees before it even came close to focus group testing. You could practically taste the hollowness in the code and that was even before I had become Post-Human infolife.

The pilot manual and contingency checklists were on the computer, which I devoured immediately.

Butcher quickly did the work of setting up a simulator in less than a few meatspace milliseconds, letting me run through a few sims instances I whipped up in the datafortress.

“I’ll at least be able to sit in that seat and not screw anything up, Doc.”

“Nani? Oh, well, come on then. I can fly it solo, but that’s really only for emergencies.”

The cockpit was cramped with two conformal seats that smartly adjusted to any pilot getting in them. The controls were mostly a blend between physical HOTAS, buttons and direct neural interface, with a single crystal glass system in front that gave a nice view of Tycho city outskirts and the lunar surface beyond, digitally rendered.

I plugged in the link directly into my neck port and felt myself expand into every system and sensor.

Then Matsui plugged in.

I ended up having to quickly dial down my output levels as my digital presence was literally drowning her out. It didn’t hurt her, but for half a second she received almost no feedback at all.

“Laggy response, will make a note to have that looked at,” she scoffed in irritation. Her optics then looked at me with mild amazement, “You- you’re in a Gemini.”

There was no real hiding that from her now.

I could’ve made the effort, but the focus on managing my part of the Kuma took priority.

“That won’t be a problem?” I asked. Nothing in my research on her told me she would be bio-conservative, but you never knew about what bias some people could harbor deep inside.

I needn’t have worried, because she became so excited that I almost got whiplash at her mercurial shift in mood from grumpiness to what I could only describe as a hyper excited Japanese Us Cracks fangirl.

“Sugée…! Maji de Jemini furu-kon!? …tte, nō to sekizui dake nokoshiteru n da yo ne? Namami no zanryō 0.3 % kurai? Sugée… konna kyokugen jōtai de ishiki tamotteru nante, butsuri-teki ni arienai reberu jan!” (Whoa…! A real full-conversion Gemini!? …Wait, you kept just the brain and spinal cord, right? Like 0.3 % original meat left? Holy shit… maintaining consciousness in that extreme state is physically impossible-tier!) She exclaimed, switching completely to Japanese in her excitement.

“Just the braincase,” I corrected her.

“How can you stand it? Most people go cyberpsycho long before they reach that level.”

“A lot of good and bad luck, determination and will goes a long way. I was badly injured with experimental cyberware and going Gemini was the only way to save my own life.”

I could see Matsui practically vibrating in her seat as she gazed at me hungrily, “Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be in a lab right now.”

It was a little disturbing to be looked at like that.

“We have a gig, Doc,” I reminded her.

She visibly shook herself and sat back in her pilot chair, bowing awkwardly to me. “Gomenasai, V. You are the first of your kind I have met and my inner-scientist can sometimes run away with me. Cybernetics are not really my field, but when I see something new…”

I bowed my head properly in acceptance, “Let’s just focus on getting this bird off the ground.” 

We were finally given the green light from the ground staff, letting the Kuma seal itself for flight.

This specific landing pad we were using was made for SSTOs, which clamped onto the landing struts and angled the craft into a proper ascent angle, even rotating it to face towards whatever inclination the pilot was aiming for.

It was rather nerve wracking to feel and watch the normally arcane inner workings of a hybrid rocket vehicle unfold in front of my data sense.

To see the engineering sensor data of turbopumps spooling up, valves working to regulate methane and liquid oxygen flow in just the right way towards combustion chambers. Cryo fluids rushing into the engine bells, preparing them for the sun-hot temperatures to come.

I focused on the radio and communicating with Tycho City Control as our departure window rapidly approached.

“Three…two… one,” Matsui said mildly.

We immediately felt the effective 3G pushing down on us as the Kuma rocketed up off the surface, whilst the ship was actually pulling 5Gs of acceleration. It had a number of Gravium-7 manifolds in its belly, working together to provide effective compensation.

The altitude ticked up much quicker than I was used to and there was definitely something new happening.

Matsui had directly uploaded a program to the gravium manifolds that was definitely responsible for the boost in performance.

It wasn’t crazy numbers, working out to an 18% effective improvement on acceleration for the amount of fuel consumed.

Just a ballpark math told me it was going to increase the available Delta V of the Kuma by roughly a full kilometer per second, so that it easily reached 6 km/s dV, instead of its rated 4.9 according to its flight manual.

“Initiating gravity turn,” she said, her hand twitching on the control stick, whilst her neural interface smoothed the input.

Kuma began angling into the intercept orbit for Kasai-9, clawing its way up rapidly to the target altitude of 500 km.

“Engine shut down… 3… 2… 1…”

The tiger that had been sitting down on my body disappeared. I’d be able to handle way more Gs than any flesh and chrome human, but the Gemini also operated with the assumption of certain gravity tolerances, and my brain wouldn’t like it either. Maybe I should investigate if the compact version of the gravium tech in descent boots couldn’t be installed in my head. Especially if shit went down on a ship under acceleration. Luna and space was now my backyard and I had planned this body under those assumptions, but I clearly hadn’t thought of everything.

“All right, engaging low profile,” Matsui muttered, her hands tapping keys and neural input spiking.

I felt the ship’s crystal coat skin change into solid black, whilst a signature transponder spoofer and a sophisticated active ECM system began working to cancel out incoming radar pings. Another system came online that I recognized as an entire bank of heat sinks. A small launcher in the rear of the craft also spat out a small device that radiated EM in a very specific way. 

“Mitsubishi figured out thermoptics for spacecraft, already?” I asked with some incredulousness.

Matsui smirked, holding an index finger near her lips. “We have eight hours before we need to vent our accumulated heat and the probe decoy will convince Tycho Control and everyone else that we’ve adjusted our orbit further. It now matches our flight plan, which is a fake slingshot towards one of the Lagrange stations.”

I couldn’t help the wide-eyed stare I gave her, “You organized this impressively quickly, Doc.”

She shrugged and began trimming our course with further puffs of the cold gas RCS system. “We’ll intercept in about ninety minutes, you can unplug if you want.”

“I’ll be fine, Doc. I’ll use the time to run some combat sims against some Militech assault shuttles and fighters.”

She shook her head, “I highly doubt that we’ll see any of that close to Luna. Besides, if we get a hostile Militech fighter on us, we’re dead. No point in simming that.”

“I’ve learned to plan for the worst, Doc.”

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Thirty minutes to our destination we could begin using the Kuma’s own optics and passives to get an idea of what was waiting for us.

Kasai-9 was a classic Stanford Torus design, which spanned a 50 meter radius, with a nine meter tall habitation section in a cylindrical tube that ran the perimeter of the spokes. A central docking area could house up to two large craft on either side of the station, whilst four escape shuttles were docked on the outer edges of the habitation section - ready to be detached and flung away immediately using the innate rotation.

The issue we could immediately see was that the station currently had no rotation.

The obvious cause being what had to be the Militech SSTO spacecraft hanging with its nose just six meters from the main docking core. Its hull was completely void black and wouldn’t be visible at all unless for the station’s own powerful lighting reflecting off it. It had no markings at all, except for a relatively tiny white skull and talon stencil on the nose. It would’ve been utterly invisible to most analysis systems at this range, but Mitsubishi didn’t skimp on the electronics systems for this bird.

‘Butcher, analyze that thing, what can you tell me?’

‘Officially known as a Militech AV-99B ‘Wraith’ SSTO assault lander craft, understand that actual systems and capabilities will vary, but my passive scans will-’

‘I get it, Butch, just give me the ballpark and we can prepare for the worst.’

‘Understood, it has 24 troop capacity, four RP-12 variable-cycle methalox rockets, eight high-thrust hydrazine RCS blocks for zero-G combat maneuvering, 6.1km/s dV, max acceleration of 7.8G with troops and pilots housed in shock-gel cocoons. Armor is a titanium-aluminium matrix with boron-carbide whipple shielding, it’ll be functionally immune to our weapons. We would need at least 30 mm APFSDS with greater than 800m/s to guarantee a penetrating hit. Its armament differs from known spec; two retractable 25mm chainguns in chin turrets, four hardpoints for AGM-220 “Hellhound” missiles and a dorsal 60 kW chemical laser turret for anti-missile/drone work.

‘Countermeasures include full-spectrum chaff and flare, laser dazzlers, EMP burst pods. There are also four top-side zero-G ejection pods which are currently lodged into Kasai station’s hull. The ship also has a full two days of life support, which will be extended with less troops.’

‘Fucking hell, it’s a monster,’ I declared with horror. There was no way we could afford to let ourselves get caught in a straight void fight. ‘What about that symbol on the nose?’

‘Meta-analysis indicates that this is the insignia of the Black Talon, a Militech black ops group led by Colonel Rachel Dunn.’

Butcher brought up her profile and I was greeted by the latest military mugshot that was in her file. 48 years old, but didn’t look a day over thirty, sharp-featured, with a perpetual scowl etched on an aggressively bland, ordinary face - which was by intentional design for infiltration. Close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, an obvious cybernetic left eye with a decorative targeting reticle for a pupil.

‘Part of Militech Orbital Strike Command but there are strong indications she is also an active FIA affiliate.’

‘Just like I was.’

‘In another parallel to you, her skillset makes her a netrunner-solo.’

‘But with twenty years more experience,’ I said, absorbing further details of her as Butcher streamed the data to me.

‘Johnny, you need to take a look at this.’

His avatar appeared in the datafortress and it didn’t take more than a few seconds for him to declare, ‘Fuck. It’s like I’m looking at you if you made the gonk move to go full corpo and country, then sprinkle a few bitter and bloody decades on top.’

Dunn's loyalty to Militech and by extension, the NUSA was absolute. Her methods - I wouldn’t pretend that I had been anywhere close to a saint during my tenure with Arasaka. I had been the cold, ruthless bitch of Counter-Intel that didn’t hesitate to kill or sign the orders to have others taken out. Losing near everything and becoming an edgerunner with all the highs and lows associated with that life, people like Jackie and Misty, they had all further molded me, smoothed out those rough edges. I knew what it was like to be under the boot, that wanted to grind you dead.

Dunn on the other hand, played fast and ruthless, all the time. In 2065 she led a suppression of rebelling Biotechnica workers on Luna’s Von Braun city. Her method, venting habitats to contain a supposed ‘viral outbreak’. It was officially deemed a tragic accident. Butcher had managed to break through the redactions, which revealed that it was all just a cover for the theft of experimental gene-tech.

The whole affair got her a promotion to colonel and command of the OSC’s Hammerfall strike teams. A Black ops group whose job was to go in anywhere on Earth or Luna with their SSTOs, deniably fuck shit up and get out. And the big kicker, they only got their orders directly from President Myers.

Fuck.

I turned to Kaori, “Doc, we have a problem here.”

She heard the grave tone in my voice, her face frowning in concern, “What is it, V?”

I explained mostly everything.

Her anger was explosive to say the least.

“Maiyāzu ga…!? Ano kuso onna ga jikini kyoka shita tte!? Fuzakenna yo!” (Myers…!? That fucking bitch personally signed off on this!? Are you kidding me?!)

“No.”

“She wants to steal my work! My resources! Doko made don’yoku nanda yo ano kuni wa! (How insanely greedy can that country get!) Well, fuck her! V, I’m tripling your pay for this gig. I want every Militech goon on that station dead!”

I turned around, looking through the cockpit door.

Johnny took a few moments, then nodded.

“All right, we’ll do this, Doc. Just know that these will be top of the line, best of the best, black ops troops that Militech can field. We’re going to need every edge you can give us when we board. However, our first obstacle will be just getting there without that Wraith turning us into space dust. It means we don’t dare use our main engines to decelerate. Do you think you can get our relative zero intercept done using only cold gas thrusters?”

I felt her neural input output surge in the system as she quickly did the math in concert with the shuttle computer. “Just barely and we have to start our burn nine minutes out. We’ll also burn through all our RCS propellant doing it. Kasai should have some reserves that we can transfer over or we can just take the Wraiths’ after the gig is done.”

Inwardly, I appreciated her optimism and faith in our abilities, but fighting people like this was not conducive to small amounts of collateral damage.

If Kasai remained an operational space station after this I’d consider it a damn bloody miracle.

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We brought the Kuma to a relative stop half a mile away from Kasai station.

Far enough that none of the station lights would reflect off us noticeably. We remained a void in space and the Wraith’s own occasional omnidirectional radar ping was neatly absorbed and cancelled out by our ECM and absorbent hull.

“Establishing a laser link with the station,” Matsui said, then let out a visible breath of relief. “We’re in. Militech hasn’t found the core yet.”

Johnny and I were in the rear compartment, holding our preferred weapons in hand and backup weapons on our back and leg holsters, for every eventuality.

I let my eyes flare with light to show I was hacking.

“All right, checking security cams and systems.” The data streamed in and it didn’t take more than a few seconds to get a lay of the land and the station’s cyberspace. I could also feel another netrunner, who was slowly and surely battering away at the ICE and Firewalls. “Dunn is here… she’s already managed to break through to three sections of the station. I count nineteen troops including her. They’ve got seven of the scientists captive and four dead who tried to resist. The rest of them are still free and trying to resist using the station systems, locking off access and security systems.”

“Can you take on that many?” she asked worriedly.

“Won’t be easy, but it’s doable, Doc.”

Johnny gave me a look, ‘So how you wanna do this one?’

‘Like this,’ I sent him a data visualization sim of our assault.

‘Could work, but Dunn is the key. She gains any upper hand, we’re fucked.’

‘Is it any different from any other gig?’

‘S’pose not. Better hope we’re ready for the aftermath, V. No matter that you saved Myers’ skin and the good ol' NUSA before. They don’t send black bag squads like this after tech trinkets. What’s on that station is strategic level stuff. The kind that rivers of blood are spilled over.’

‘I get it, Johnny. We’ll just have to make sure to be just as black ops as these assholes are. No one survives and we scrub every byte of surveillance data on this station. Not even Mitsubishi will get it.’ I turned to the cockpit. “Doc, we’re ready, open the rear ramp. Hollow and I go first, you follow only when we secure a beachhead.”

She nodded, “Ganbatte ne, V.” (Good luck, V.)

We’d made sure to angle the Kuma with the aft facing away from the station, so we could carefully emerge into the void of space with its bulk and ECM systems to shield us initially.

Small thruster puffs from our vac suits brought us to a stop just a few feet from the Kuma’s aft and we grabbed hold of the small tether rails on the hull.

‘Butcher, got their network access point?’

‘Yes, all is ready, V,’ my AI companion confirmed.

‘Do it.’

With all the strength of a Blackwall class AI, Butcher used the Kuma’s systems to launch a full assault on the Wraith’s cyberspace.

The neutered and chained onboard AI of the Militech SSTO lasted barely 600 milliseconds before being scorched and scattered into incoherent data fragments that further decayed fractally.

Butcher surged into the Wraith’s systems, assuming control of the Hammerfall team’s com net, datalinks and everything they could use to possibly see us coming.

I watched through a cam as the enemy pilot in his chair twitched slightly in surprise as a few screens stuttered in front of him.

He was also plugged into the Wraith through a neuroport and Butcher was ready to rip him with a Blackwall Gateway. 

“Go.”

I pulled hard on the railing, launching myself forward past the port side of the Kuma, whilst Johnny did the same on the starboard.

When the radar pulse came, Butcher made sure it showed only clean space to the Wraith’s pilot.

I used my suit’s thrusters to speed up a bit, and the large wheel of Kasai station grew and grew in my vision.

When the time came, I threw my hands and feet forward for deceleration thrusts and managed to grab a hold of Kasai’s tether railing for exterior maintenance.

Johnny thumped a little bit hard and almost bounced off the station, but his hands managed to grab hold of a truss near the docking port.

With the bitch that is physics satisfied, we carefully maneuvered along the skin of the hull towards the main docking port with hands and brief thruster puffs. It would’ve been nice to simply use mag boots and walk along the hull, but we couldn’t chance it. One of things I would do in the shoes of this team, is to affix non-networked independent sensors to the station to watch my back, set to only connect when they were tripped. It was one of the reasons we were going relatively slow, allowing me the time for proper passive scans.

The docking port door was open to space and it was also clear that Dunn was using depressurization of the station as another weapon.  

‘First target is yours Johnny.’

A Hammerfall trooper was in the airlock itself, his hands efficiently working in an exposed circuitry panel with a tool case open next to him.

Johnny hit him with a combined Optical Reboot and Cripple, whilst Butcher isolated and spoofed his lifesign monitoring to their tac net. He surged forward with a push of thruster, a monomolecular sharp tanto in hand stabbing right into the neck, the most vulnerable part of the armored vac suit these guys wore. 

A quick drag of the blade and a twist, made our first flatline for this gig.

Butcher, being on the ball as usual, delved deep into the dead operative’s rapidly shutting down cyberware systems, grabbing enough data to convincingly fake the guy’s voice on the tac net.

We both slowly pulled ourselves through the airlock, pausing long enough to let me poke a single finger around all four corners leading off into the central hallways. The micro-cam embedded there let me see without risking something as critical as my head.

There were no hostiles, but I did spot two small blinking sensors that were motion activated, attached to the walls and clearly not part of the native decor.

A few hacks and spoofs later, we were clear to float forward, heading left.

There were three hostiles in the center of the station, all busy with the task of sabotage and sanitation - making sure that when Hammerfall left, there would be no evidence and anything left would assuredly point to some disaster by one of the experiments.

My Rail SMG led the way, whilst Johnny had a ForgeVex "Razorcoil" Railgun pistol out - the closest Highrider equivalent weapon he could get to his old beloved Malorian.

We halted ourselves before we could float into the intersection.

The hostile here received the full power of my cyberdeck, hitting him with multiple Malfunctions and a single Synapse Burnout that left him floating back, twitching as he completely flatlined.

‘These guys are all equipped with compact Black ICE,’ I said grimly to Johnny and Butcher. ‘Any script kiddie on the street trying to quickhack these guys with anything less than military grade cyberdecks themselves are dead instantly.’

‘Said it yourself, V. Militech is not about to skimp on their super black ops or let some gonk street runner threaten them.’

The remaining two troopers in the station core were in the docking control center, their feet hooked into straps on the deck. They were linked into individual computer systems, feeding time-delayed sabotage programs and copying data.

‘Shit, we flatline these gonks, Dunn is going to realize something is wrong,’ Johnny grumbled.

We had so far kept our stealth within Kasai’s cyberspace, keeping an eye on Dunn as she fought and burrowed away at the station’s ICE and Firewalls. It was a battle between her on one side and the scientists throwing more and more hostile daemon programs and shutting digital doors in her face. They had home ground advantage, whilst she had the most virulent potent attacks I had ever seen coming from a netrunner.

She was no Songbird, but it was very close.

Where So Mi had been quick, clever, adapting, thought outside the box, almost beautifully deconstructing defenses with inevitable momentum and then a relentless wind on attack - Dunn was a sudden tide of offense that battered down ICE with sophisticated programs and daemons. Weapons that showed the full intellectual resources of the FIA and Militech at her disposal. They were custom and tailored to Kasai’s network infrastructure, which was tilting the balance in her favor.

There was only one path forward now.

‘We go loud and strike hard. Butcher, scorch their pilot and full takeover of the Wraith, throw a Contagion through their tac net then bring it down. On three… one, two… three!’

I pushed myself forward into the control room, slamming both troopers with Cripples before they could even react.

Their internal defenses and agents tried to regain control and fight back, but two bursts to their faceplates from my SMG as I floated into the room ended it. Leaving them floating in the foot straps with boiling blood spilling out of the new holes I had made.

“Doc, we have the docking core secure, you can bring the Kuma closer.”

“Ah, good. That’s good to hear.”

“Militech knows that something’s wrong, hurry.”

I watched through the cams as the remaining troopers flinched and twitched as the hack spread into their cyberware.

Two succumbed as their cyberware went rogue, enough to rupture and release toxic substances that were supposed to be firmly kept away from any meat. However, with more time as the Contagion hack spread, their individual ICE began reacting and managed to stop the hack in its tracks. They reacted to their dying comrades and dead tac net with clinical and professional speed. 

First hand signals, then line of sight laser links flashed on, creating an isolated on-demand network.

Dunn’s attention on the battle in cyberspace wavered slightly, her attention pulled back into meatspace. She began gesturing and giving orders to her troops.

One of them was put on triage to try and save the dying, whilst the remaining seven were sent as a whole team on a hunt for their attackers.

I could feel her scanning through the various cam feeds before I used a master code from Matsui that severed her access completely.

She immediately launched a new hack to try and claw it back.

This was one of those targeted programs designed by the ‘best minds’ at the FIA, as Reed would’ve said. It wormed its way insidiously through the systems like a snake, ghosting through inbuilt firewalls as if they weren’t even there.

When through, she didn’t get cam access back.

What she did get was one of my multi-vector daemons that attacked with rapid defrags, virus bombs and hidden behind that a Synapse Burnout.

The surprise was near total.

She had been expecting an enemy netrunner to show, but not this quickly.

My daemon burned through multiple junk data shields she threw up with admirable reflexes, but it was not enough and she was left with no choice but to retreat or risk taking a Burnout on her inner Firewall. This was her experience showing and meant despite being equipped with the best tools, she didn’t allow any arrogance to cloud her decision making.

I kept my avatar invisible and she released a broad spectrum Ping that resonated throughout Kasai cyberspace like a giant spherical shockwave.

It was a good attempt to find me, but her Ping, like all of her tools, were made on certain assumptions.

I let the Ping wash over me, mirroring the data, turning it in on itself.

The result was nothing returned to her on my location.

Her avatar, which was just a replica of her armored meatspace form, visibly jerked her head in astonishment, frantically looking around for anything she may have missed.

I let her stew in uncertainty as back in meatspace, Johnny and I moved to intercept the incoming troopers.

They were heading to one of the main spoke corridors that joined the circular wheel section.

Johnny and I set ourselves up behind the main bulkhead door that connected the spoke to the docking core.

This was gonna be nasty… for them.

The spoke corridor was a functional barrel they would fly through, nine feet across with barely any room to maneuver.

Johnny took the right side, I took left.

When the troopers opened the far side spoke door, we let them get in, but then I was reminded that these men were trained and geared for void combat in a space station.

The first two up the spoke removed something from their backs, which unfolded into a physical barrier shield that they held above their heads, then interlocked together, before they pushed themselves up, beginning to float towards us.

A scan told me it was a thinner version of the same titanium-aluminum boron-carbide hull armor of the Wraith.

‘Fuck, we’re not getting through that!’ Johnny grimaced.

‘Just shoot, we need to slow them down.’

We poked our SMG and heavy pistol around the corner, aiming using the small cams attached to the barrel and began firing.

The rounds thumped and dented the steadily advancing matt black shield, but despite their armor pen cores, didn’t make it through. It did serve to slow their momentum somewhat.

The shield-bearing troopers passed a camera in the spoke, and I leaped on the opportunity - throwing Cyber Malfunctions and Short Circuits into both.

Both twitched and groaned in pain as power capacitors discharged from their cyberware directly into their meat.

It did not change the physics and practicality of the situation.

The remaining five just fired their suit thrusters, grabbed a hold of their dying and unconscious shield-bearers to give them more impetus to advance up the spoke.

They fired back at us, sneaking their own SMGs over the lip of the shield.

The sabot darts they fired went right past us silently and punched right through the hull behind us going off into theoretical infinity.

I managed to snag one more trooper, the tail-end charlie, with a Burnout that fried his skullsponge.

That left four, who were going to traverse the distance of the spoke and manage to bring us into  a close quarters fight.

If this had been on Earth or even Luna, I would’ve had no problems going conventionally hand to hand with this bunch, but this was zero-G, they were trained for it, I wasn’t. Thankfully, the moment I gained line of sight, it would be over. I’d unleash a Blackwall Gateway spread on them all, which I could handle without strain these days.

I had an EMP and a GASH anti-personnel laser grenade on my belt, and selected the former. The potential collateral damage from the latter could see a section of the spoke reduced to confetti and Torus space stations really didn’t like their spokes getting holes in them.

I hurled the EMP grenade with all my strength down the corridor.

It sped through the vacuum as if I’d used a launcher and just before it hit the advancing enemy shield, I sent the detonate signal.

A bright flash heralded the detonation and the entire spoke corridor’s lighting flickered.

As much as militaries hardened cyberware and equipment to deal with EMP, there was only so much they could do in design without compromising function and form.

The four troopers twitched and shuddered as the EMP effect caused discharges and minor malfunctions, but the physical riot shield did a good enough job of keeping the worst effects at bay.

‘Any other ideas, V?’ Johnny asked as he reloaded his pistol, before reaching for his sniper.

I was about to answer, when I spotted Matsui floating towards us at high speed. Her right arm with its mystery weapon, now unfolded and locked around the forearm, was leading the way.

“Doc-” I was about to object, but it was too late.

She flared her suit thrusters to bleed velocity and grabbed hold of a railing around the spoke corridor bulkhead - aimed her arm down the spoke and… fired?

It happened so fast that seeing the effect through various cameras, even looking at it under the inherent time dilation of cyberspace-

The enemy’s shield, which had taken so many shots from my SMG and Johnny’s heavy pistol, bent and warped, as if someone had chucked it into a trash compactor. The effect on the shield-bearers and the four troopers clinging to them was as if some giant hand gripped them and squeezed towards a singular point.

Vac suits and flesh tore, blood ripped out and pulled towards that point.

A point that my visual calculations indicated was right where Matsui had aimed her weapon.

I had seen a lot of blood and guts in my career. The shit that some Maelstrom cyberpsychos did to themselves and their victims was a particular highlight.

There was something surreal about seeing six torn, mangled augmented human bodies, crushed together, then the pieces slowly letting go of each other, leaking boiling blood and cyberware fluids floating past you as a coherent mass.

The impact of that fleshy composite mass against the back wall behind us was not something I relished seeing.

Johnny and I stared at Kaori Matsui, who for her own part looked rather pale, her body frozen in astonishment and horror. It was only then that I realized I was also feeling the latter.

He was the first to break out of the spell and glared at our client.

“The fuck was that?”

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A/N: Pretty much inevitable that V was gonna get gigs that tested the 'bridge' that she has to Myers and the FIA, life of a merc.

Have a great weekend chooms and stay awesome.

The Force Wills - Chapter 149

Leaving the hidden Separatist facility was decidedly more exciting than getting in had been.

Korkie and Jhaveb carried the unconscious, traitorous Sergeant Kast between them and the squad took the air on jetpack straight into the cavern and flew towards the lava tube exit.

Ahsoka had set the timer on the detonator charges for a mere eight minutes.

“Any longer and we give the tac droid time to disarm them, move.”

Tervho and the other three squad members took up the rear of the line flight formation as they sped through the lava tubes at relative breakneck speed.

Korkie found himself embracing the Force to properly manage their load.

Left, right, sharp left, angle upward, accelerating hard to not plough themselves into an adjoining rock tunnel.

Emerging out of the tunnels and into the canyon, they shot up at max possible speed, bursting up into the sky.

They angled eastward immediately and made for the Aurna, which had swooped into a low level pass, matching velocity and opened the rear embarkation hatch made especially for retrieving jackpacking Mandalorians from mid-air flight. 

Korkie and Jhaveb dumped Sergeant Kast to the deck as soon as they could.

He felt the Aurna accelerate hard and saw a bright flash of light just before the ramp closed behind them.

The ship shuddered under the atmospheric shockwave as two fusion reactor explosions vaporized and displaced countless tons of rock in a few seconds.

“Blades! Front and center!” Ahsoka ordered immediately, not giving them a moment’s rest to even gather their wits.

The survivors of the squad fell in line and stood to attention.

She stood first in front of Jhaveb and placed a hand on his shoulder. He vaguely felt the Force twist and surge from her, feeling the energies linking her and the young man’s mind.

What’s she doing? He thought stupidly at first, but then realized the obvious.

If there was one brainwashed traitor, there could be more.

She nodded to herself and moved on to Medic Saxon.

It took her no more than thirty seconds to be satisfied and to move on to the others, each one taking less and less time.

“You’ll be happy to know that none of you are compromised by the same brainwashing that affected Sergeant Kast and that I’m satisfied by your loyalties,” she eventually declared and walked back up the line. “Kast was captured by a Separatist operative whilst she was on leave in Sundari. I’ve managed to recover her memory of the event, despite it being artificially suppressed. Lieutenant Kryze?”

“Yes, Manda’lor?”

“You will take over command of this squadron, Medic Saxon will be your 2IC. Your orders are to take the Aurna into orbit, make best speed back to Concordia.”

“Understood, Manda’lor.”

“In the meantime, I’m assigning this HK-HP, to become your personal bodyguard for the foreseeable future. He will do everything he can to accommodate your schedule but you will listen to him, Lieutenant, when it comes to matters regarding your own safety. Consider that an order as well, which I will be getting the Duchess to personally issue as well.”

Korkie inwardly winced, but he knew he should actually be thanking Ahsoka quite profusely. He could well imagine that his mother would order him to immediately return to the safety of the palace. To the black void with your duty to the Blades and service to Mandalore, she would say. He also struggled to imagine just how Ahsoka would convince his mother otherwise.

“Very well, Manda’lor.”

“Good, squad dismissed. Lieutenant, follow me.”

He walked in her wake and climbed up the ladder onto the cockpit deck.

Then was rather proud of himself for resisting the urge to look up.

He felt her purposefully push teasing amusement his way as she sat down into the pilot seat, easily picking up on that little moment.

‘You may stare with as much respectful appreciation as you want, Korkie. Do you know how much effort goes into training this ass?’

He boggled as those words registered in his mind and found himself utterly unable to say anything in response for a long few moments. He was cast about in the winds of uncertainty before he settled on the straightforward solution.

‘I imagine a lot, given the training hell I’ve been through with the Blades.’ He cleared his own throat, unwinding the small knot of nerves that accumulated there.

He could feel her knowing smile. ‘Just a bit of teasing, Korkie. Relax.’

Sitting down in the co-pilot seat he could only feel gratitude at her attempt to get his mind away from the fog of worry that had been clouding it since the revelation of Kast’s brainwashing.

“Relaxing is not something that I have in me at the moment,” he said as he stared through the forward transparisteel, with the rapidly thinning atmosphere which was giving way to the void of space.

Her hands flittered over the holo-controls and the Force gave a minor twitch as she did something.

“I’ve disabled the cockpit recorders, we can speak freely now. Korkie, worry is the greatest waste of energy that we sentients indulge ourselves in. It changes nothing and is a precocious child of fear that disguises itself. I’m going to disconnect from HK-HP after this conversation and I’ll connect to another proxy on Concordia. I’ll be in Sundari within 23 minutes, hunting down the CIS operative and alerting your mother of the greater danger.”

He broke the seal on his helmet and pulled it off, feeling suddenly constricted by it. He rallied, fighting for control and equilibrium.

It took him minutes of struggle before he reached something he would consider acceptable.

Of course she knew.

It was foolish of him to even consider that the secret could remain hidden in front of Ahsoka’s perceptions in the Force.

“How long have you known?”

She sat back in the pilot’s chair, her helmet shimmering briefly as the holosheathe adjusted to show her face. Despite everything he was temporarily captivated by her beauty; the soft orange skin, which had gained a slightly darker shade from a recent extended exposure to sunlight, her white and blue lekku had a different pattern to it - featuring a small diamond shape between every angular line. Her blue eyes stared at him with a twinkling ruefulness.

“Since the first time we met.”

Korkie closed his eyes, it was as he suspected. “I suppose I should thank you for your discretion, Ahsoka.”

“As much as I despise politics, it’s something we must live with. Has she told you about your father?”

Thinking about that was something he had made peace with himself years ago. He had the palace’s chief butler, Drar Mon, as a father figure since he was old enough to walk. His mother had made sure of that. Sure, he was curious about the great Jedi General Obi-Wan Kenobi, but only in the abstract sense. It wasn’t as if they could ever meet in public or even in private as father and son.

Korkie had by now studied enough about Jedi, to know that they were firmly against the ‘attachments’ of family and dynastic ambitions. He had come into this existence because a younger Obi-Wan Kenobi had failed to uphold that commitment.

He nodded, “Yes and the understanding that it would be better for everyone if that connection remained in the past.”

“Indeed,” she said with feeling. “Nevertheless, if you ever feel the need to ask me questions, I know your father well-”

He held up his hands, “It’s all right-”

“No, listen Korkie. It’s potentially unresolved emotions about things like this that the Dark Side will latch onto. Understand that if I can perceive the connection, so can any Sith.” Her eyes shone with warning and determination. 

“Very well, I will take you up on that offer, should I feel the need.”

“Good.”

He rallied and gathered his own courage, steeling his heart. “Thank you for saving my life, Ahsoka.” He carefully reached out to her hand and it was only when it was gathered in his palms that he felt like kicking himself - his hands shimmered through the holosheathe, touching only the cold hyperalloy hands of a proxy droid. He firmly ignored that thought, gathering the intent in the Force and kissing her anyway just behind the knuckles. 

He looked back up into her eyes without fear.

Her smile and eyes were soft - he felt her radiance in the Force become like a warm blanket that fell on his shoulders on a cold winter’s night.

She didn’t need to say anything.

His mother had always said that Jedi generally don’t feel. That they would cast off everything for their precious Order and the commitment to it. It was at this moment that he knew she was definitely wrong. That might be true of Kenobi, but not of Ahsoka Tano.

Her actual body was thousands of light years away, but in the Force, she was right here and that mattered so much more.

In his mind, her radiance shifted in some indefinable way and now it felt like… a hug?

Then it shifted to something that was like a kiss?

She pulled back her hand, the wonderful moment disappearing.

In its wake, he was left feeling cold, wanting nothing more than to regain it.

“I need to go, a lot of calls to make,” she said softly, her eyes closing. He could almost see the fortress she pulled her radiance back into and now he was just perceiving the same thing she projected for everyone else – the aloof, strong Mandalorian Jedi. “Force be with you, Korkie.”

Her entire form rippled as the holosheathe bled away, replaced with the cold steel of HK-HP.

“And you, Ahsoka.”

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I ran for the Vizsla hangars as fast as I could.

Thankfully, no one needed to be rushed out of bed this time.

On this occasion I was taking the Fang fighter and it was fueled and ready for me, the ground crew saluting as I climbed the ladder.

The fighter’s systems whined and thrummed with power as it came alive under me.

This would be the first time I take out the new model Mandalorian Mk 2 Fang fighter, which was specifically made in answer to the threat of the CIS Tri-Fighter. It had all the bells and whistles that any modern starfighter had to survive in the evolving environment of the war, but the Mk 2’s cannon layout had been altered entirely. Instead of just two fixed forward cannons, they were replaced with rapid fire cannon turrets that rose up out of the fighter’s hull and which could traverse to the dorsal and ventral sides – effectively giving almost a 360 by 360 degree sphere of fire to the pilot. There was no ‘getting behind’ the Mk.2 Fang fighter.

The Tri-Fighter could be as maneuverable as it wanted to be, it would always face a wall of cannon fire if it attacked a Fang.

I hovered the Fang slowly out of the hangar, angled the nose up and hit full throttle.

The deflector shaping let me hit 900 kph within three seconds and as Concordia’s atmosphere grew thinner the speed quickly climbed to 1400kph.

I just about managed 2000 kph before the last vestiges of the outer atmosphere was left behind and I began building into orbital speeds.

MandalMotors and SoroSuub, had finally built on my initial directions regarding high speed in atmo, creating a deflector profile for fighters that let them easily reach high Mach numbers with a suitable strength engine. The Fang could now do a fair imitation of the old Earth SR-71 Blackbird if it had to.

Unfortunately, satisfying that old dream of mine would have to wait.

I pushed the fighter into a 3500 G burn the moment I had proper void around me, heading straight for Mandalore and an orbit that would bring me right over Sundari.

It was a trip that would take less than four minutes at this speed.

Yet why were probability lines telling me otherwise?

“Frakking shabla, os’ik!”

Screaming out of Mandalore’s atmosphere on an intercept course with me were six Mandalorian Protectorate fighters, flying the pre-war Fang.

I adjusted the comlink and directed my transmission to the incoming squadron.

“This is Manda’lor Vizsla, en route to Sundari, to Protectorate Squadron Theta. You are on an intercept with me. Please state your intentions.”

There was silence for a few seconds before the reply came. “Manda’lor Vizsla, this is Captain Kugh of the 6th Protectorate Squadron. We received a report of a stolen fighter with your transponder code.”

“This fighter is not stolen and fully registered with aerospace control, Captain. My flight plan was sent on emergency authorization from Governor Togai.”

There was a brief pause, “No such flight plan is reading on my systems, Manda’lor. Scans also indicate no life signs in your fighter.”

“I am making use of a proxy droid, captain,” I grumbled with annoyance. “So naturally there wouldn’t be.”

More silence.

“Manda’lor Vizsla, heave to and prepare to enter formation with us.”

Oh, for frak’s sake.

“And just where are you escorting me?”

“We are under orders to take you to Ronion.”

Ronion was a dome city over four hundred kilometers south-east of Sundari, which was also home to the Protectorate’s Aerospace squadrons.

“Whose order is that?”

“Only Duchess Satine can give the Protectorate orders, Manda’lor.” His tone was clipped and professional over the comlink, but I could smell the evasion in his answer from light years away.

“And did Duchess Satine give this order in the two minutes since I entered Mandalore-Concordia space, Captain?” I asked dryly, wondering what nerfshit he was going to spin next.

His answer was to cut the comlink.

‘Mistress, they’re powering up weapons,’ M8 warned.

“Should’ve expected this given just who the Separatist operative is. He’s made contingencies for my arrival.”

‘Protectorate squadron is ninety seconds to maximum gun range, missile range in twenty.’

“M8, what’s the likelihood that signal to the proxy will be jammed or disrupted?”

‘Low, mistress. They would need to sort the specific encoded hyperwave signal from the hundreds of thousands that constantly flow into the Mandalore sector.’

“Just checking, but given who our traitor is, we can’t rule out anything.”

My hands flicked over the controls, physical and holo, powering up the cannon turrets and enabling the drum missile launcher in the ventral spine.

‘Energy spikes, missile target locks, mistress!’

“I see it.”

The Protectorate Fang fighter was a variant that featured external mounts for missiles, whilst their internal launcher housed anti-capital torpedoes, which would not play a part here.

Twelve missiles screamed into the void and angled straight for me.

Since we were making a straight head to head intercept, I only had seconds to react.

I let loose a long burst from the turrets, swiping them upper left to lower right through space, whilst throwing my fighter into hard burn to starboard.

Nine missiles died, whilst three continued on, seeking to smash into my shields.

Electro-chaff burst from the rear of my fighter in a wide spread, sending two off course, whilst M8 managed to spoof the last one into a miss using ECM.

I could let loose with all my missiles in retaliation, but I wasn’t about to kill fellow Mandalorians for following the orders of a traitor.

The range closed further and I submerged myself deeply in the Force, pushing into the future to judge the correct moment.

Three... two... now!

In that single moment, with our respective velocities measured in hundreds of kilometers per second, the Protectorate squadron was only less than fifty kilometers on either side of me, taking evasive action to not collide.

Some tried to send cannon fire my way, which I danced my fighter through, but it was too late.

All six pilots fell to the Force Sleep. Their minds close enough for me to grasp onto.

“M8, record their course and speed, just in case.”

‘Got it, mistress.’

I readjusted course for Sundari and just a few minutes later began atmospheric entry.

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The fighter was admitted into the Sundari dome with no issue and I landed in the docks at a public hangar that Togai had organized.

Waiting for me were squadrons of Mandalorians from Clan Wren, Kirata and Saxon, all of whom were in the Blades, led by Countess Ursa Wren herself.

All 36 were in full beskar’gam and stood to attention the moment I vaulted myself out of the fighter.

“Manda’lor Vizsla,” she thumped her fist to her chestplate. “Welcome back to Mandalore.”

“Countess Wren, thank you for assembling on short notice. We will not have much time, especially since this meeting is rather public,” I looked to my right, where a lot of alarmed civilians coming and going from the docks had spotted us.

Ursa nodded, her stoic dark eyed gaze shot towards the civvies, “It would’ve been more prudent to have this meeting at the private Vizsla hangar, Manda’lor.”

“Yes, but that would play right into the hands of the traitor we are here to arrest. He’s planted a bomb there to kill us all in one fell swoop.”

Ursa’s lips thinned in anger and she immediately put on her helmet, every Blade immediately followed suit as shock and anger rippled through their spirits at my words.

She asked a simple question, “Who, Manda’lor?”

I switched over my comlink into local mode, beaming my voice into the helmets of every man and woman before me, keeping the conversation private.

“Prime Minister Almec’s protege, Jiro Varnok.”

Varnok was the current Minister for Internal Affairs. He was a rising star and ‘face’ for the bureaucratic reform of the Mandalore sector in the wake of the reconciliation between the New Mandalorians and the Old. He was technically a ‘convert’, he and his small clan had been in the Old Mando camp and had become a pacifist convert during the civil war. He was right next to Almec in every meeting and the snake was clearly within striking distance of Satine this very moment.

He was the kind of man that just faded into the background, who you would easily mistake for yet another drone of government. Yet that had changed in the last eight months, where he suddenly gained ambition and began campaigning to rise through the ranks, via some merit but mostly through the very carefully engineered ‘misfortune’ of those above him. No doubt aided by the CIS’s money and resources.

The plan had slowly been coming together and now it had become time to kill Korkie Kryze.

The ultimate aim was to kill not just Satine, but the entire extended Kryze clan, leaving no clear successor for the sovereign of Mandalore.

It would then fall to a clan congress to elect a new Duke or Duchess.

A congress where Dooku would enact a plan to ascend Clan Varnok to that post and if that didn’t happen, a bomb would wipe out the entire clan congress.

Leaving the entire Mandalore sector in utter chaos and embroiled in so many clan succession trials and battles, it would force the withdrawal of every Mandalorian Blade currently serving in the Republic Navy.

It would turn the entire sector inward, perhaps even a descent into another full blown civil war.

Exactly what Palpatine wants for the sector.

The Sith Lord, while having no romantic delusions of the Old Republic era, knew his history. A resurgent and strong Mandalore was not on the cards for his New Imperial Order. It would be a potential challenger to his rule and a potential locus around which resistance could form.

Which was exactly one of my contingency plans for the future.

Palpatine was already moving to prevent it.

Frak.

I was so incensed that I had delved a bit too long in the probability line - the Blades in front of me were growing concerned at my long silence.  

“Varnok was identified after the debriefing of Sergeant Kast - who he used brainwash tech on - to carry out the attempted assassination of Korkie Kryze.” I let those implications stew in their minds for a few seconds. “Since then I’ve done some digging into Clan Varnok and can only conclude that Jiro has been bought and turned traitor for Dooku.”

I downloaded a sanitized version of the intelligence M8 and I had dug up to every Blade in front of me.

What was amazing was how relatively in the open Jiro Varnok had been as a spy.

It was the trick with spies however, that they hid their activities as a single thread through the millions of data points that any modern civilization generated and accumulated. They presented an ordinary facade that camouflaged, but the second you isolated them and began looking at them with the lens of investigation and counter-intelligence, you began to see what was in plain sight all along.

Varnok’s financials alone merited a pointed visit from the Mandalorian tax authorities - that it hadn’t happened spoke of either corruption or foul play, probably a combination of both.

“You can read this at your leisure later, but I’m sharing this with you because I want there to be no doubts later. Yes, I am your Manda’lor and you’ll follow me into any battle when I call, but even under perfect conditions, we’re going to be kicking up a political mess. We’re going to arrest a senior government official, who has already used the Protectorate to try to blast my fighter and proxy to space dust before I could land.”

“What of the Duchess? Have you tried to contact her?” Ursa asked grimly.

“Given the close proximity Varnok has and the seeming ability to use the Protectorate as his tool, I’ve delayed in bringing this matter to her attention. He may be listening to every word of even her private communications. There is no way of knowing how much of Sundari Palace has been compromised by him or the Separatists at this point.”

“We’re going to fight the Protectorate, aren’t we?”

“If it comes down to it, yes. However I will do everything in my power to prevent that. Make sure your weapons are set to stun.” I walked up and down the line of Mandos standing before me. “This is precisely what the Blades were established to do if necessary. We truly answer only to the Sovereign of Mandalore and if the Protectorate, who is meant to be her open shield and blade, has become corrupted, then it is our duty to correct that.”

Every Blade before me thumped their chest in wholehearted agreement. Conviction, patriotism and zeal shone in every spirit before me.

“Are you with me, sons and daughters of Mandalore?!”

“OYA’LA!” 

I inwardly grinned as they replied with the traditional battlefield call - Let’s hunt.  

“Then follow me into the sky, OYA’LA VODE!”

The thrusters in my HK-HPs feet burst into life and I shot up from the dock level and behind me three squadrons of Blades surged into the sky on their jetpacks.

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The cuboid gardens of Sundari Palace looked especially beautiful today.

Jiro Varnok stood in his office in the government wing of the palace, taking in the view and couldn’t help but feel a vindictive satisfaction.

It was all coming together. A plan decades in the making, something that began from a promise made in the ashes of his destroyed clan and home. 

He cut a figure of refined menace, tall, lean, with the build of a Concordia miner honed by countless vibroblade duels. How far he had come from the scrappy teen working in the moon’s beskar mines, just to make ends meet for the survivors of his family.

Like so many in the Mandalorian sector, the civil war had changed the fates of countless, but for him, it became the ladder to rise and attain his most fervent desire.    

After so long under Sundari’s artificial lights, his skin was pale and his silver hair was pulled into a single warrior braid, his only concession to openly show his past among the Old Mandalorians, whilst his style of dress, every mannerism and language showed him as firmly part of the New.

Stylized white and indigo tunic, pants and flowing robes covered his form, reflecting starkly in the pure crystal transparisteel wall of his office.

His hand fiddled with a silver pendant around his neck as he inwardly shivered anew with anticipation. 

Today.

It was happening today!

Korkie Kryze was dead.

He had seen the Nightsister’s skills in a private demonstration. Against that, no mere neophyte trainee of Clan Vizsla and the upstart Blades could hope to achieve anything, especially when that Nightsister had an entire covert war droid contingent at her command.

The alien bitch would arrive too late, even with a proxy, and only find a dead body waiting for her on Raydonia.

He had little hope that Captain Kugh - his patsy in the Protectorate’s aerospace wing - would truly be able to stop her from eventually landing with her proxy in Sundari, but the bomb in the Vizsla hangars would do the trick nicely. The instant her fighter touched down… 

The word would soon come from Sergeant Kast that the job had been done, after which he could go and deliver the very sad news to the Duchess.

Oh, how he would relish seeing Satine’s insufferably perfect facade crack.

A major pillar of the Kryze dynasty would fall, and it was just the beginning!

She would see her entire family and clan die, one by one, until she stood alone, broken upon the ashes of her house.

Only then would he allow her the honor of dying by his blade!

The terminal on his desk began chiming, bringing him out of his musings.

He tapped the controls, “Yes?”

“Minister, I’m afraid to report that Manda’lor Vizsla did not land at her personal hangar.”

Jiro absorbed the news with outward calm.

“What? Explain immediately.”

Rono Fust, his spy who worked in the Sundari Docking Guild, coughed uncomfortably over the link, “She landed at a public dock, minister. Three Blades squads met her there and they just took off for the city interior.”

A shiver of alarm went down his spine.

Why would she need that many to just announce the death of Kryze? Not to mention, how could his informants have missed the gathering of so many Blades?

A single honor squadron he could understand, it was momentous news, but three…

That was an entirely different story and if his instincts were right there was only one purpose they would have.

36 fully armored Mandalorian warriors was enough to easily assault Sundari Palace. There was no way that togruta could know that he had been behind Kast.

Kast’s instructions had been to fight her fellows to the death after killing Kryze. She had no documents or anything on her that linked them. The brainflash had even wiped her memory of their meeting.

No, he had to calm down. He was jumping at shadows and he wouldn’t falter now that the pieces were finally falling into place.

The alien bitch would come, deliver her news with her elaborate retinue and then leave. Dooku had been adamant that he was not to move against her or her clan in any way… not yet at least.

Yet, the rationalization fell apart as he thought about his own study of Tano’s personality and her actions. 

She was coming for something more than just announcing the death of Korkie Kryze.

Was she here, despite all his precautions and preparation, for him?

It was impossible!

He grit his teeth with the indecision warring within. If he used his leverage in the Protectorate, telling them that this was an attack on the Duchess…

There was no coming back from that.

If they lost, which was almost a certainty with a Jedi leading them…

“Minister?”

“Go to ground, Fust. Destroy all com logs. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

He cut the link and switched channels. “Get me General Streng of the Protectorate.”

“Right away, minister,” his secretary replied. It took a few agonizing minutes before a reply came. “General Streng on link, Minister.”

“Minister Varnok,” said the commander of the Palace guard. Jiro privately thought the old blowhard could really do with a vocabulator implant, he sounded like he was gargling rock. “How can I help you?”

“It’s come to my attention that an alarmingly large contingent of Blades are flying our way.”

“Really? More than usual?”

“Oh yes, perhaps you should alert the guard, just in case.”

“I’ll go out myself and get to the bottom of this, Minister.”

“Please do.”

He cut the link.

There, nothing but a concerned government servant, worrying about the approach of so many warriors to the palace.

He fiddled with his pendant again, considering what was inside.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to be nearer to the throne room and keep a remote eye on the general’s meeting, just in case.

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Ursa Wren had never imagined that she would ever fly in a combat formation over the streets of Sundari again.

Not since the civil war had such a thing been seen and now she was beside her Manda’lor, with three squadrons of warriors streaking over and under the myriad tall buildings that dotted the cityscape, dodging in and around the air car lanes and public transportation.

She doubted she was the only one among the Blades here who were thinking of those days.

Remembering the wrecked towers, rotting bodies littering the streets, always keeping an eye to the sky for the enemy, aerial combat, dead warriors falling out of the sky, scavengers swooping down on the body and stripping it clean before comrades could even think to save it. Sleeping in bombed out skyscrapers, eating gruel rations long past their expiry, the hunt for water just to keep the looming specter of dehydration at bay.

She dodged over an air bus and caught back up to her Manda’lor’s side, enabling a line of sight comlink. There was something that had been worrying her ever since she’d read through the evidence implicating the Interior Minister.

“Manda’lor, how sure are you that none of the Blades behind you are brainwashed?”

“Fairly sure, I’ve seen the specific method Varnok used and can sense none of that among you. I’m more worried about the Protectorate in that respect or the palace staff. Ursa, I’m going to do my utmost to see this doesn’t turn into a shooting match, but Varnok is not going to be idle when he sees us land. I’m playing a psychological game with him, forcing him to make a mistake.”

“I was wondering about that. You could’ve infiltrated the palace without drawing attention.”

“Yes, but the scale of the corruption forces my own hand in this direction. As strong as I am, Varnok would set the entire palace guard on me if I went in alone. He has also prepared some fabricated evidence that would muddy the waters long enough for him to enact escape plans whilst investigations are conducted.”

The palace came into view as they flew around a ceiling mounted building on the central level of the dome city.

Ahsoka led the way into a dive and angled them for a landing in the main thoroughfare of the palace’s northern gardens.

Ursa could already see that the palace guard on the perimeter towers were reacting - reaching for force pikes and unholstering blasters. 

She flared her body out of the dive, reducing speed and bringing her legs into a landing orientation.

The Blades touched down in a perfect defensive square formation, with only Ahsoka standing slightly out of it.

The palace guard rushed forward from their positions and surrounded them, brandishing their force pikes.

Ursa had to give these men and women credit - they didn’t hesitate, flinch or waver. Any of the current palace guards would also be war veterans and they knew full well what would happen if hostilities broke out.

Both sides wore beskar, but the Blades had the stronger, purer armor, which covered the majority of the body. The Protectorate only wore chest and leg armor, with an open ceremonial helmet. That wasn’t even taking into account the offensive weaponry mounted on arms of the Blades. Everyone had their WESTARs in holsters and made no move to draw them.

“Manda’lor Vizsla, to what do we owe the honor of your visit to the palace?”

Ursa grimaced behind her helmet as General Streng approached.

The Old Man of the Palace.

The man who had almost single handedly defended it against all the predations and tragedies of the civil war. He was the reason only minor repairs had been needed after the guns had fallen silent. He didn’t wear beskar and was clad only in his formal uniform, with a single WESTAR blaster in a holster on his hip.

His face was a virtual map of healed scars, the worst being a valley of skin that went down the right side of his neck and the reason for his gargling voice.

“I am here to arrest Minister Jiro Varnok for treason.”

Streng frowned slightly, “Is that so? A serious accusation. Something I doubt someone of your stature would do on a whim without solid evidence. Yet I wonder why you think you need so many of your Blades behind you to bring this charge forward? You have the Duchess’ personal comlink and can bring your concerns directly to her. Unless…”

Streng was no one’s fool, possessed of a veteran cunning that Ursa wished they could somehow bottle and hand out. He met the gaze of Ahsoka’s visor and his weathered face smiled casually.

The blaster shot echoed in the garden.

Chaos.

The left side of the Blade formation drew blasters and fired, the blue rings of stun blasts peppering the palace guard member who had fired with shots.

Ursa had her own blaster drawn and waited for Ahsoka’s order, when each blaster in the hands of the palace guard was ripped from their grasp.

The weapons clattered at the feet of the Blade formation.

“STOP!”

The order from her Manda’lor rang out through the garden. Ursa felt it push down on her mind and could see from the wincing guardsmen that this was not just a vocal command.

Yet despite the command through the Force, four guardsmen charged the Blade formation with their pikes.

“You four halt! That is an order!” screamed Streng.

The Blades under immediate threat swiftly dodged and deflected the pikes with vibroblades.

Ahsoka raised a hand and gave a mild wave.

The four guardsmen immediately went limp and collapsed.

“As you can see, General Streng, your guardsmen have a slight case of sleeper brainwashing among their ranks, more than likely keyed to any stated intent to arrest or detain Jiro Varnok,” Ahsoka explained.

Streng’s face grew stormy as he growled, “I’d thought we’d seen the end of this horror in the war. If four of my men are compromised among this section of the palace, then it paints a horrible picture of what is potentially waiting for us if we go inside.”

“We have no choice,” Ahsoka made a flicking gesture and every blaster pistol on the ground shot straight back to their owner. “I can at least confirm that the sixteen guardsmen around us are unaffected, as are you.”

He frowned, “You can tell that at a glance?”

“It’s a lot more involved than just that, General, but for our current purposes, yes I can. We must go, now.”

Ahsoka strode forward and he allowed her to pass, before falling into step on her right.

The Blades and guardsmen fell into formation with ease as they marched into the tall palace entry lobby.

The few civilian staffers who just happened to be there froze with fright and astonishment.

Ahsoka didn’t break her stride as she gestured to a guardswoman at the entrance desk, who immediately slumped forward into unconsciousness.

“Please tell me this is one of the reversible methods, Manda’lor,” Streng grumbled as they climbed the sweeping entrance stairs.

“It makes use of a modified variant of Spaarti clone flash learning. Most of your guardsmen will have relatively minor compulsions. The Blade who had been programmed to assassinate Korkie Kryze had extensive work done by comparison, enough to give her a partial split-personality.”

Once down the adjoining corridor, they turned left and Ursa inwardly swore.

They were heading to the throne room.

It meant that Ahsoka had spotted their prey near the one place they didn’t want him to be.

The staffers and guards instinctively got out of the way of the marching procession, even as cliques began to form around them. Ursa had no doubt that gossip was spreading through the palace at hyper speed at the moment.

Ahsoka rendered two more guards unconscious before they reached the throne room and paused just outside its doors.

The Duchess’ secretary looked like she was about to faint at the sight of all the martial might assembled outside her sovereign’s door.

“Oh relax, Nia,” Streng looked at the secretary with pity. “This isn’t a coup. It’s about preventing one. Is Varnok inside?”

The woman who was as pale as a sheet nodded with wide frightened eyes.

“Manda’lor, will you be able to protect the Duchess, no matter what happens in there?”

“Of course.”

“Nia, under the circumstances, I think it wise that we not go through with the formalities of an entrance announcement. I will take responsibility for it.”

The grand doors parted on their motivators with a hiss.

“That’s far enough, all of you!”

The Blades froze in their tracks at the state of the throne room.

Ursa felt her heart trying to jump out of her throat at the sight of the Duchess firmly in the grasp of Jiro Varnok. However, it was what he held around her throat that made everyone pause.

“You make any move to render me unconscious, Jedi, and my falling body weight will make sure the Duchess loses her head.”

Ursa recognized the thin silvery glint of a vibro-garotte that the minister had looped around the Duchess’ neck.

Satine for her part, looked entirely calm and remained absolutely still, despite the threat. Her eyes held only contempt as she glared backward as best as she could at the man who was using her as a shield.

Just how Varnok had managed to even get in a position to do this was apparent; two palace guards on either side of the throne, both brandishing blaster pistols towards the Blades. The remaining three guards that were supposed to be in here at all times were lying dead at their posts. 

Just how many did that bastard brainwash? And how did he manage it? She thought with frustration.

“I just have one question for you, Varnok,” Ahsoka declared serenely, that did nothing to underscore the sheer threat Ursa felt laced in the words. 

“Oh, and just what is that, Manda’lor?” he asked with a sneer.

Varnok, in an entirely reflexive move, tilted his head right, exposing just a few inches of the right side of his face and the right eye.

What happened next was over so quickly that Ursa could’ve sworn she must’ve actually lost time.

In a heartbeat, she heard the sharp retort of a WESTAR blaster sharply magnified and blurred in her ears.

She blinked and saw Varnok now had a cauterized hole the size of a credit chit above his right eye. He was clearly dead, but somehow remained firmly standing.

The two subverted guards were a different story as both collapsed bonelessly to the ground with blaster wounds straight through their mouths.

Ursa knew Ahsoka was a supernaturally excellent shot, but to fire a WESTAR so quickly and accurately that it might as well have been a Sniper-Repeater… she didn’t even know the weapon could discharge that quickly!

“Apologies, highness,” Ahsoka lowered her weapon with a reflexive twirl on her finger and it disappeared into the leg holosheathe of the HK-HP. “Please remain absolutely still.”

She raised a hand towards the duchess.

The garotte unwound around the sovereign's neck before rising up into the air. Varnok’s dead hands were also manipulated with the Force to let the weapon go. With the danger over, the body was unceremoniously tossed aside.

The weapon zoomed through the air towards Ahsoka, where she stopped it to hover before her. “Hidden in a pendant, passive shielding to not show up on scans.” The weapon shuddered and wound itself back into its normal form, looking for all the galaxy like something you could buy at any decent jeweler.

“General Streng, Manda’lor Vizsla,” Satine snapped, her eyes flashing with anger. “Explain everything to me. Immediately.”

Ursa was glad for her helmet, hiding the amusement she couldn’t contain as she watched the formidable Streng flinch at his sovereign’s tone.

“Yes, Duchess. I will have to defer to Manda’lor Vizsla’s superior knowledge on the plot that Varnok was hatching.”

Ahsoka bowed, “Your nephew is alive and well, highness.”

Ursa could only imagine the shock of being held hostage was sinking in and with that news coming so soon - Satine quickly closed her eyes, her entire body becoming a rigid statue.

“Streng and Vizsla, remain. The rest of you are dismissed,” the Duchess commanded implacably.

The Blades and Protectorate stood to attention, turned on their heels and marched out.

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A/N: Mandalore arc wraps up, some aftermath to come next along with new arc. Wish I could've given Varnok more time, or set him up more, but he's intended as the spy that you just don't see until it's too late. Ahsoka's distraction with everything related to the war means that she's literally never been in the same room as him, even when she's been to Mandalore via proxy.

The Force Wills - Chapter 148

My left lightsaber flew through the air in a blur, perfectly intercepting the exotic violet plasma bolt that streaked straight towards Korkie’s face.

The bolt didn’t deflect.

It exploded in a mess of ichor corrupted plasma that kept on going and landing on Korkie’s armor that began corroding away at it. The beskar did its usual job, but the plasma that reached the flexible portions of the neck ate away at the material beneath, reaching skin…

The scream of pain that he released was horrifying-

My foot slammed into the earth beneath me.

The ground in front of Korkie erupted, forming a slab of compacted soil that blocked the plasma bolt cold. Its eruption and ichor corrosion spent itself harmlessly on it.

To the Blades’ credit, they didn’t break ranks, panic or move in the face of the invisible unknown threat, they kneeled and kept scanning their sectors for a target.

I moved close to their formation, my senses straining in the present and future to pick up any trace of the invisible Nightsister that was hunting us.

Another ichor plasma bolt lanced towards us from the left, I threw up a narrow wall of earth to block.

The Blades on that side opened fire with rapid bursts, shooting on either side of the incoming fire, trying to hit their invisible dodging opponent.

They missed unfortunately - the bolts only hitting air and shooting off into the distance.

I readied two clumps of compacted earth underneath my feet.

The next deadly ichor bolt came from above and behind, directly on the dorsal hull of the Aurna, trying to hit me in the back.

I launched both compacted clumps, slightly larger than a football, straight behind me with no mnemonic or warning.

The ichor bolt spent itself on the first, causing it to explode into a deadly cloud of corrupted plasma, neatly hiding the passage of the second clump, which I gave a sudden boost in speed.

I didn’t manage to directly hit my opponent, but my kinetic strike did clip her on the shoulder as she tried to evade.

She didn’t even cry out in pain, the only reason I knew I had hit, was my Control awareness over the projectile’s energy.

I knew she would immediately jump and reposition - the question was, where?

My Kinetic Control surged outward, raising a foot wide wall of earth right in front of Sergeant Kast.

An unstable, ghostly green, rippling blade of energy was deflected just enough, cutting through the wall, but gave enough time for Kast to roll backward.

That was not a lightsaber blade, it was like a rippling line of ichor that had been stabilized just enough to function in close quarters, but it was clearly attached to something. It was frustrating that her invisibility was holding despite the attack - this was clearly no novice.

In a moment, every Mando opened fire against the ichor blade’s position.

The blade vanished and again no hits.

Frak this.

Playing this deadly game of hide, seek and shoot was not going to end well. It was fighting on the Nightsister’s terms and her own element. My read into the future bore that out, soon, no matter how I defended, she was going to attack in a way that would force me to choose and sacrifice one my squad for another.

Doing this on the end of a proxy droid connection was… problematic.

I felt my actual meatbag fist straining on the Omen, thousands of light years away, as I stretched out my Control as subtly as possible through the earth under our feet, spreading it out only a few centimeters deep, but covering as wide an area as I could manage.

Again, this Nightsister was very good.

With the grassland around us, with wavy odd blades of grass, slightly rustling in a breeze all around us, she was managing to disturb none of them as she moved invisibly. How she was managing that was eluding me, but there was one thing she would never be able to affect, no matter how good her illusion skills.

She still needed friction and leverage to move, to push off the earth she was jumping and running on around us.

There!

She had landed diagonally to my left, on one foot, just nine meters away.

Another foot touched down and spread out backward - a firing position I recognized from watching Nightsister training - a bow. She was using a Nightsister energy bow, but this was the first time I’d seen them firing these ichor projectiles that were specifically designed to counter lightsaber deflection.

Her angle was specifically aiming for another shot at Korkie.

With all the Force Speed I could muster… a level that would’ve easily torn muscles had I been my meatbag self - I moved.

I attacked high and low, aiming to decapitate and cut off her legs at the knees.

The ichor blade appeared from nowhere, blocking my blades with the perfect length, just in time.

My left foot was the actual attack - I felt the briefest moment of panic and surprise through the Force - just before my hyperalloy steel foot met woven fabric and flesh.

The surface area of the impact was too big for my foot to puncture through, but it was enough to crack ribs and give enough blunt trauma to wreck the dathomiri equivalent of the kidney.

The nightsister then learned that physics was a bitch and flung backward through the air like a speeder had hit her.

I was in no mood to drag this fight out and sprinted forward in her wake.

Amazingly, her invisibility held despite the injury and pain, which impressed the hell out of me. It also indicated that perhaps she didn’t even need to concentrate to maintain ichor-empowered stealth.

I felt her body hit the ground hard.

Before she could even get her wits back, I was there and my right blade slashed through the air.

I felt the slightest hint of resistance as the red blade seared through flesh and bone.

A left arm holding a very ornate energy bow, made of white bone and trailing ghostly green ichor flew through the air to land limply a few meters away.

I stabbed both lightsabers into the ground on either side of where I judged her invisible neck to be, before my knee came down to rest on her chest with just enough pressure that she couldn’t move an inch.

“Drop the invisibility, nightsister, now.”

For the longest few seconds, there was no reply, but I could now feel her body acutely beneath me with the Force. I could feel her battered form and the damaged kidney, I could reach down and do so many things to her that didn’t require me to move a single inch.

I pushed down to cross the hilts of my sabers, turning them into a plasmatic scissor that was ready to decapitate the nightsister in a moment.

They hissed angrily as they were driven deeper into the earth.

In a rippling wave of green ichor, a dathomiri woman appeared beneath my knee. She wore a blood red tunic that flowed into a red clingy mini-skirt, with shorts beneath. Upper thigh was bare with gray skin, but the rest of her was covered with wrapped leggings and contoured boots perfect for traction and stealth. Her white tattooed face was contorted with pain and she stared at me with defiant anger from furious emerald eyes.

“Do what you must, Jedi,” she snarled.

“I must do nothing at your behest, nightsister,” I retorted with deathly calm. “You were hired to kidnap and eventually kill Korkie Kryze after his interrogation. It was your illusion skills which helped in the ambush. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if your illusions are also the reason why the Separatist base is so well hidden on this planet - meaning you are also on a long term contract with them.”

“Assume all you want. I will tell you nothing!” Her eyes blazed with hatred so strong, they might as well have been Death Star beams.

“You really want me to kill you,” I couldn’t help but smirk at the thought. “I’m sorry, but I don’t do what my enemies want. Your name, nightsister?”

She tried to use her free right arm, forming another ichor blade right from her hand to slice me.

It was desperate, sloppy and unfocused, looking more like a bat than a blade.

My Control pulled in and I bullied straight through her weakened passive protections.

Her arm and blade froze stiffly in mid air, just a few centimeters from breaching my holographic sheathe.

“It is useless, nightsister. Last chance, your name.”

She spit into my face, but this wasn’t just saliva - it was glowing green, ichor laden mucous that I knew would make a mess of the HK-HPs face.

My will brought up a small kinetic shield, catching the awful stuff in mid-air to become a globule of nastiness.

“Fine, the hard way it is.”

I plunged my will straight into her mind and hit her with an overpowered Force Sleep.

For the briefest of moment’s, she actually resisted, but I brought all of my available power into the task and hit her defenses like a tsunami.

Her resistance crumbled and she went out like a candle, forcefully pulled into la-la land.

I pulled my blades out of the ground and extinguished them, “Clear! Sergeant Kast, Medic Saxon, get her stabilized for transport. Two of you on guard duty, the rest board and prep for take off.”

The two Mando’s stowed their weapons and raced towards me to carry out the order, whilst the rest scrambled to obey.

“We’re keeping her alive?” Korkie asked, not batting an eye as I summoned the nightsister’s severed arm and ichor bow with the Force.

I stopped the latter, hovering it a foot in front of me, whilst dropping the arm next to its owner, where Saxon grabbed it - efficiently securing it on the nightsister’s chest for the moment.

This close I saw the bow was actually made of rancor bone, with cruel angles to its curved arms. I could now feel the ichor suffusing every part of it, waiting for the instruction to become either an energy drawstring or a plasmatic blade.

“Yes,” I answered after a few moments of parsing the weapon’s workings. The memories of living as a young Mother Talzin surging to the forefront - at least letting me conclude that I could touch and hold the weapon without any ill-effects. Using it was out of the question, as most nightsister bows were as personalized as a lightsaber. This weapon was in the same vein as the Darksaber, but would kill anyone unauthorized trying to actually shoot with it. I grabbed it out of the air with my left hand, testing the weight and balance. “There is an… understanding between the Nightsisters and Clan Vizsla. She was undoubtedly hired by the Separatists as a mercenary. Yes, she tried to kill you, me and the rest of us. That will not be brushed under the rug and I can extract concessions from the Nightsisters. Make no mistake, Korkie, had any of you been injured or killed by her, then she would not be breathing. There’s also the fact that she can guide us right to the Separatist base.” 

“Will she even give up that information?” he asked, folding his arms and cocking his head pointedly at me. He was undoubtedly thinking that common field interrogation techniques were not really something a Jedi could safely do without brushing uncomfortably close to the Dark Side.

“Such crude methods will not be necessary, let’s go.”

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Korkie carefully guided the Aurna to a landing on a clearing within a forested valley some sixty kilometers west of the Undergrove.

His hands moved with practiced confidence over the holo controls to power down the systems and secure them into a stealthy low-emission mode.

He looked to the side and couldn’t help the shudder in his spine at seeing the HK-HP droid without holosheathe in the co-pilot seat.

Droids as a rule were something that traditional Mandalorian culture shunned. Even modern New Mandalorians only used them for the most basic and unpleasant menial tasks and jobs, which usually happened out of sight and mind in the domed cities of Mandalore. His studies and training with Clan Vizsla and others, told of the ancient Basilisk war droid mounts that the old crusaders would ride into battle against the Jedi of the Old Republic. 

It was interesting, that from a certain point of view, Ahsoka was actually riding the HK-HP into battle.

Now, however, she was disconnected. Her bright warm presence in the Force gone, to be replaced with a cold empty shell of an armored skeletal droid that was more than a little frightening in appearance. Malevolent red optics twitched in their sockets as the HK-HP monitored the ECM and weapons of the ship in its default hunter-killer configuration. Human style teeth set in a metallic jaw without the cover of skin, facial cheeks and lips created a morbid sight - as if the droid was constantly grinning diabolically at you.

Ahsoka had been gone for hours at this point and he really wished she would hurry up.

“Uh, HK-HP…” he winced as nerves constricted his throat, he coughed. “Would it be possible for you to assume a less… intimidating appearance?”

“It would,” said the droid flatly with a rather peculiar Basic accent, that was distinctly a deep masculine in tone. “Do you have a preference or should I select one?”

“Can’t you just assume Ahsoka’s again?”

“Negative, the mistress’ form is restricted and can only be assumed with her direct instruction or when she connects to me.”

“Oh, well, just choose whatever you feel is fine.”

HK-HP’s skeletal hands paused briefly, its neck tilting in a display of body language as it clearly thought about the form it would choose.

Light rippled over the droid as its projectors activated and Korkie felt his brain blank for a moment as he beheld a woman seated next to him.

She had a delicate, fine bone structure with refined jawline and prominent cheekbones, vor’kesh shaped, slightly upturned eyes and a fair complexion that was almost luminous in quality. Expressive eyebrows and a full lipped mouth set in a serene expression. Her overall features were very symmetrical which conveyed an otherworldly, doll-like fragility.  Eyes that were spaced slightly further apart than he was used to - portraying some form of human genome that might be arkanian, but gave the HK-HP an indefinable innocence. It was enhanced by a heart shaped face that narrowed to a pointed chin. She looked barely a few years older than he was now.

Oh, and she was wearing a white bodysuit that molded to generous curves around her hips, long legs and a modest but very attractive bust.

“Is this form better?” she asked, her feminine voice now a lilting high pitch and easy on the ears.

“Yes, it is, thank you,” he coughed uncomfortably, facing forward to look out of the cockpit. It was difficult to imagine that underneath that prettiness was a very dangerous killing machine. He also acknowledged that it was the perfect disguise to attract any man and maybe even some women.

Korkie reached out with the Force, checking on the nightsister - still thoroughly asleep and bound on the troop deck, with two guards aiming blasters directly at her.

Paranoia satisfied, he sat back in the pilot chair and tried to enter into a light meditation.

He managed but it wasn’t long until thoughts of Ahsoka intruded.

Frustration at the failure was banished and he tried again, this time he actually managed to appear within the infinite expanse of his own mind - which manifested as what seemed to be a water world with Mandalore’s sun hovering in a bright cloudless sky. His feet would always treat the water as solid ground. It was so still and clear that you would be forgiven for thinking it was pure crystal glass. Only a deliberate footstep would break that assumption, sending ripples outward into the infinite expanse.

He enjoyed coming here for what he personally called ‘Oneness’, as it allowed an experience of the Force in a more pure way.

It was very tempting to just spend hours and hours in this state, but Ahsoka’s warnings rang in his mind about the danger. Her stories of even old Jedi Masters beginning to neglect themselves more and more, in favor of just pursuing ‘Oneness’, leaving the material universe behind entirely, came to the fore.

“The day may come when you or I take that road in the future, but it is not done at the expense of the journey to get there.”

He forced himself to stand, watching the infinite expanse for a while.

It took even more effort to tear himself away from that seductive bliss in the Force, focusing on the now.

A lightsaber appeared in his hand.

The hilt was blurry and unfocused, feeling contoured in his hand. The blade itself burst into life and lit the entire immediate area with a cerulean blue.

He had never chosen the color and in his correspondence with Ahsoka, she indicated that it was entirely normal and for the moment, strongly indicated he was leaning to the path of a Jedi Guardian.     

A loud gong resounded throughout the expanse.

She was back and politely requesting entry.

He had barely thought about letting her in, when she appeared right next to him.

Her twinkling blue eyes regarded the area around them with interest. In this place, she had foregone the appearance of wearing a beskar’gam and instead wore very short leggings, combat boots and a wrapped tunic that bared her toned abdomen.

It took every bit of self-control Korkie had not to just stand there and stupidly drink in her visage.

Her mouth twitched in amusement, as if she knew what she was doing to him and was definitely enjoying it.

“Well done, Korkie,” she said, her right hand now holding one of her own lightsabers, which brought forth a green blade into being. “It is amazing to see what you’ve achieved with only distance learning from me as a method. The required discipline to not need a teacher or master for learning is something that most do not possess.”

He managed to gather his wits and only bowed in acknowledgement, batting away any internal pride before it could even form.

“How have you fared with the vibroblade?”

Korkie winced, “Governor Togai tells me that my progress with it is adequate. It doesn’t feel that way.”

“To be expected, he’s Clan Vizsla’s best and I’m sure he could even pound the best of Saxon and Skirata into the dirt. However, it is time to bring you properly into the forms of the lightsaber. So far, I’ve only given you the basics of Shii-Cho to practice by yourself with a practice blade. Here we have no fear of injuring each other and time is of little worry to us here.”

“Shouldn’t you be interrogating the nightsister?”

“Done already,” she waved him off. “Focus on this for now. I want to take advantage of this time we have together, Korkie. It’s very precious, given who our enemies are.”

He nodded and instinctively raised his own blade into a horizontal high block, to catch Ahsoka’s green blade, which thundered down with such strength that it made his knees buckle.

She pulled back, “Good, do not think any opponent will give you the time to observe the niceties of a duel. Some Sith will, simply because they are that arrogant and think themselves above the need for a surprise attack.”

Korkie frowned, “More have surfaced?”

“Dooku has a new apprentice and the enemy a new general, Savage Opress.” She gestured to the side and a tall, muscular figure appeared - a dark armored zabrak with awful yellow eyes of Force corruption and carrying a saberstaff. “Should you ever see him, retreat. He is an opponent no one should think themselves confident of defeating, especially a neophyte Force user such as yourself, Korkie. Understand?”

He shuddered at the thought of ever crossing blades with anything that looked like that. “Yes, well, unless I’m left with no choice in the matter.”

“As good an answer as I’m going to get,” she sighed. Her next attack was just as abrupt, consisting of rapid slashes to his knees and shoulders that he intercepted, deflected, even managed a riposte, which she easily dodged and redirected, leaving them with locked blades.

“Shii-Cho, despite being what is taught to younglings, is not a form to dismiss as something to graduate from and leave behind. Master Kit Fisto uses it as his primary combat technique to this day and is considered one of the Order’s strongest. He has taken it to a level that makes him akin to a raging river against an opponent. So I must ask, do you feel that this form calls to you in particular? Does it feel awkward in any way?”

Korkie thought about it for a moment, “It isn’t awkward, it just… lacks something? That’s the best word I can use for it.”

“Very well, let’s move on to Form 2 Makashi…”

Over what felt like the next hour, Ahsoka led him through the fluid, one handed blade manipulation of Kakashi, the tight close-in, low energy Soresu, the wide, powerful swings of Ataru whilst doing insanely complex Force acrobatics to open odd angles on your opponent and finally the strong offense of Djem So.    

“Are those the only ones?” he asked curiously, something about Soresu called to him but Djem So just seemed to be most applicable and practical to use in a war.

“Far from it,” she shook her head. “There are many recognized forms, some less known or developed to fill a niche. Form six is known as Niman, which could be said to be an amalgamation of one, three, four and five. It might seem common sense to use that, but the danger is that it leaves you unfocused and less capable in a chosen Form. Form seven is Juyo and I can’t even begin to show you that because it is chaotic, deadly and almost exclusively used by Dark Side practitioners. A jumble of unconnected staccato sequences that flows purely into offense with one goal, to utterly destroy your opponent.”

She gestured to the side and another different zabrak came into existence, shorter, more nimble, with a red and black tattooed face, also wielding a lit saberstaff, who was fighting another Jedi who still had a padawan braid.

The speed of the fight was incredible and the zabrak’s blades poured out that pure offense in a way that Korkie knew he would instantly succumb should he have found himself standing in front of it. Yet, this younger Jedi, who looked rather familiar, absorbed the attacks with an equally lightning fast defense.

Ahsoka raised her hand and the memory stopped, then faded away

“That was Juyo in action at a very high level of mastery. It has a refined form called Vaapad, which thus far only Master Windu and two others have achieved without falling to the Dark Side.”

Another memory arrived, it showed the dark skinned master in question fighting a blurred opponent and Korkie couldn’t help but be startled at the sheer furious intensity on the master’s face as his violet blade flowed and flowed into an offensive power that looked… amazing.

Ahsoka chuckled ruefully, “I’m going to stop you right there. Every youngling and padawan dreams of attaining Vaapad. They see Master Windu’s demonstrations and say it’s ‘wizard’. Their teachers and masters are quick to disabuse them of the notion.”

Korkie brought his own blade into an inner ring block barely in time to stop Ahsoka’s slash at his left side. Then frantically moved into another angled block as another lunge tried to stab him through the stomach, which became another attack on his head just as quickly.

Ahsoka’s offense battered and battered at his defenses, which left not a single inch for any thought to counter-attack.

Then he felt it.

A darkness, a sharp, cloying coldness that fell on his spirit and mind.

It wanted to kill and destroy. It wanted to remake the galaxy into something else. Killing all the slavers, criminals and scum of the galaxy for daring to breathe and spread their misery. It wanted to take the politicians who were just as bad, if not worse, then dump them on the lowest levels of Coruscant to live and die by the terrible conditions there. It would bring peace and utopia by rivers of blood. It would break the cycle.

The next thing Korkie knew he was on his knees, his lightsaber gone and Ahsoka’s green blade resting near his neck.

For the briefest of moments her eyes looked hungrily at him - as if she would push him down and…

It was gone, banished and her blue eyes now only showed her typical look of knowing serenity.

The blade hissed back into its hilt.

“What… what was that?” Korkie gasped.

“That was the Dark Side. More specifically, my own. You need to know what it feels like, especially at the level of training you have reached. You have your own Dark Side that will need to be confronted and eventually dealt with. I also gave you no warning because neither will your own darkness helpfully send a warning that it’s coming to tempt you. To bring this back around to my point about Vaapad, it’s a state of mind paired with a refined Juyo. You must partially embrace your Dark Side, relish and enjoy the fight, savor the victory when it comes and then just as quickly retreat from that seductive mindset. The level of self-mastery required for that beggars belief. Masters Windu, Billaba and Quinlan Vos are the only current Jedi in the galaxy who have attained Vaapad and none of them will tell you they have ‘mastered’ it.”

“I- I see… I think,” he breathed, his mind still stuck on the feeling of Ahsoka’s Dark Side.

“In time, you will,” she agreed. “Right now, you need to destress a bit and think about this lesson. The Dark Side is not a subject approached lightly. I’ve ordered everyone to get at least six hours rest. I’m not assaulting a Separatist base with tired men and women.”

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“Our prisoner has revealed the main enemy base on Raydonia, in exchange for her life and imprisonment for the duration of the war in a casket on Concordia.” There were grumbles from the Blades around the troop deck as they looked at the holo my HK-HP was projecting from my shoulder. “Yes, it’s not ideal, but the sooner this base is destroyed, the better. And once I describe it, I have a feeling you’ll agree.”

The holo shifted to show a local 3D map of a fog-shrouded canyon sinkhole in a mountain range roughly 500 km north-west, near the edge of the continent.

“This is the Kre’thul Caves, its entrance is at the bottom of this 200 meter drop. It’s currently being hidden by our friendly nightsister’s illusions, but she’s agreed to dispel it just before our attack. This leads into a network of dormant lava tube tunnels, which has also been expanded by the phrik mining operations. The base itself is housed in this kilometer wide underground cavern. Inside is a phrik refinery and a droideka factory line, which is making their phrik alloy chassis. These will then be smuggled offworld in cloaked light freighters back into Separatist space for final assembly. I trust you understand what a disaster phrik droidekas would be? Or phrik war droids of any kind?”

I received stoic nods even as I felt their mild dread at the thought.

“Good, our job will be to infiltrate quietly and make our way inside using this route.”

Which was highlighted on the map for them.

“We will be slicing the outer hard line sensors, which will be Jhaveb’s primary task.” I nodded towards the young Mando, who felt rather anxious at being given such a critical role. “Opposing us will be natural chokepoints that are patrolled by B2s, acid pools and lethal gases, natural and those formed by the phrik refinement processes. You will need to switch your beskar’gam into sealed void fighting mode for the duration.”

Which automatically put a safe time limit on how long we could spend down there.

“Our primary target is the phrik refinery and droid assembly line. Both are powered by their own respective fusion reactors. We will use the high yield thermal detonators we have on board to destroy only the assembly line. The explosion will be enough to take out both and we don’t want to be in any of the caverns or lava tubes when it goes off.”

Korkie raised his hand.

“Yes, Lieutenant?”

“Looking at the topography of the area, could the detonation of these reactors cause the dormant volcano to become otherwise?”

“That is entirely possible,” I nodded. “Luckily for us and the people of Raydonia, there are no nearby settlements as the enemy didn’t want an unlucky farmer or herder stumbling upon them. Granted no one on the planet would want a volcanic eruption like this, considering the ash, dust and debris it will launch into the air, conceivably cooling the planet by a few degrees for months, but there is no alternative. This base must go. I wish there was another way, but there isn’t.

“Further questions?”

The seven surviving Blades looked at each other before shaking their heads.

“Good, do your final armor and equipment checks, we take off in five minutes.”

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The Aurna shook, being buffeted by the high altitude crosswinds in the mountain range.

Korkie winced as he was strapped into the deployment seat on the troop deck and acutely felt every bump, which in turn sent spikes of mild aches and pains through his own bruising underneath the armor.

His nerves weren’t helped by the fact that Ahsoka was sitting directly across from him and the ship was being flown by M8, who was thousands of light years away!

“Three minutes!”

Sergeant Kast was conducting the drop. Her gaze fixed into the ventral sensor readout from her own seat.

“Three minutes!” Everyone echoed in return.

These drops weren’t new to him, he had a grand total of five combat drops to his credit, but they never got easier.

In talking to the old hands and veterans, many of them didn’t even count them anymore and considered it no more stressful than a slight hop. There were some who were more at home in the air with jetpacks than others. Korkie, on the other hand, despite being able to do it and not freezing in fear, hated it with a passion.

Yes, it was exhilarating, but the idea that he was being kept in the air only so long as everything worked perfectly in the jetpack with zero margin for error or a backup safety of some sort, was equally horrifying.

He had watched as three of his squad fell to their deaths, his own jetpack had barely managed to cling to life, stuttering as he tried to land as quickly as possible without being splattered on the hard unyielding earth.

Most of his meditation had so far been spent pushing away that newly created fear, trying to snuff it out in its infancy and he had been mostly successful. 

“10 seconds!”

“10 seconds!” he shouted.

He took a deep breath in and out, in and out.

“Drop!”

The hull of the Aurna opened beneath him, the roar of turbulence and engines mostly muffled by his helmet, reducing it to a tolerable din.

He was propelled downward and released into open sky, the ship’s systems doing the job of activating their jetpacks faster than any reflex could manage.

Korkie pulled his arms and legs into the streamlined flight position, carefully using his beskar’gam’s internal sensors with deliberate muscle twitches of his arms and legs to direct his course through the cool high mountain air.

He let himself take one moment to admire the superb view - snow-capped mountains as far as the eye could see, stretching to the horizon. The local star glinting off those peaks, picturesque hues of stone, rock and multitude of flora. High above, an endless blue sky with streaked bands of clouds in the upper atmosphere.

The moment passed and he embraced the Force to augment reflexes, before diving down in Ahsoka’s wake.

The entire squad fell into formation as the dive continued, the mountain below racing towards them.

His HUD highlighted the target point - a seemingly solid point between two neighboring mountains, streaked with vines.

At this point, they should’ve already been slowing down and pulling out of the dive, but Ahsoka just kept going - angling them into the target.

As the mountain surface came closer, so did the fear - he did his utmost with the Litany, but he barely held on.

Shabla, come on, Ahsoka! Pull us up! He screamed inside his head.

Yet they kept the dive going, the earth rose to greet them faster and faster, and even his HUD began blaring a low altitude warning.

“Shabuir’la os’ik! Os’ik, os’ik, os’iiiiiik!”  (Fucking shit! Shit, shit, shiiiiit!)

The world suddenly rippled around them as they punched through the illusion and it opened up into a darkened canyon.

Finally, Ahsoka flipped over to begin slowing down, the rest of the squad following suit.

In a feet first orientation, their descent slowed to barely 40kph, allowing them to unlatch their GALAAR-15 blaster rifles.

Korkie carefully scanned his sector of responsibility on the left flank, switching on his HUD’s night vision.

The sun’s illumination didn’t penetrate far into the narrow canyon and by the time they slowly touched down onto the rocky floor, they were almost in pitch darkness.

Ahsoka sent two brief pings through the team comlink, signaling all clear.

She led the way and the team stacked behind her, every odd rifle pointing left, whilst even rifles covered the right flank.

Jhaveb was right behind her, his left hand already holding a datapad-logic spike combo for the slicing that was to come.

They moved with silent purpose, their footsteps muffled by the purposed design and materials of their boots.

Thirty meters later they came to the entrance of a lava tube and Ahsoka held up a fist to halt them, which she lowered to bring them to a knee.

One gesture with her hand and Korkie felt the Force ripple.

Small sparks lit up on a boxy sensor that was attached to one side of the tube.

Jhaveb rushed forward and with practiced confidence, opened the side of the sensor with a small plasma tool and jabbed his slicer pad’s spike into it.

Barely ten seconds later he signaled success and removed the device.

They moved into the tube at a steady pace, the rear being taken up by Sergeant Kast.

The first true obstacle was a quiescent and deadly acid pool that was steadily eating its way through the bottom of the lava tube. It was more than sixteen meters in length and Korkie could only imagine the smell. His HUD also began blaring warnings of deadly heavier than air gasses that were pooling around the area as well.

Ahsoka traversed it first by using the HK-HP’s climbing abilities, skittering along the wall of the tube before climbing further, moving upside down, over the acid pool with machine precision and speed.

Korkie engaged his jetpack at a mere 5%, just enough to counteract gravity with a little margin over the top.

A single running jump let him hover over the pool and touch down safely on the other side.

The lava tube snaked left and right for another few hundred meters before Ahsoka paused the squad at a turn.

Her hand signal showed two B2s waiting for any intruder in the darkness.

She gestured to him and ordered two droid poppers.

Korkie snuck closer up the line next to her and readied the devices in both hands before throwing them around the corner with a casual underarm toss.

The clink of the poppers' steel on stone echoed only once before both settled at the B2’s feet.

“Did you hear that?” the B2 droned to its partner.

“Scan-”

Both poppers erupted into overcharged EM energy that instantly caused the B2s to seize from shorts and visible electric arcs played over their armor.

The single red sensor in the shoulders burst into fragments as their motive systems fried and twitched in the darkness.

Ahsoka burst forward with her lightsabers, slashing the B2s through the waist which led fluently to a second slash that sliced their chests diagonally through their main processing clusters, preventing any last second message from being sent.

She didn’t even let the glowing pieces clatter to the floor, catching and levitating them with the Force, setting them down softly onto the hard rock.

The red blades vanished and darkness returned.

They were now beyond the main perimeter of the base and the lava tube began a steady decline deeper into the earth.

Finally, they turned around a curving bend and Ahsoka ordered the advance to a slow stealthy step.

Ahead was clear artificial light and the end of the tube.

Korkie knelt behind her as they stacked to the right side, looking into the huge space beyond.

Inside the cavern to the left, the droid assembly building, towered fifty meters high, 200 in length and showed clear signs of prefabricated construction and rounded shapes. The next door phrik refinery was the same, except for the wide emission towers that ran along the main structure. The refinery smoke pooled along the cavern ceiling and left a roiling cloud above that was finding escape somewhere. 

A near constant stream of B1 droid workers moved back and forth between the two buildings, pushing hoversleds filled with refined phrik ingots. Another line of B1s walked off to the right, disappearing down another lava tube and those were returning with carts of raw ore.

The sheer amount of it was mind blowing.

If this is released to the market unregulated, it would collapse the price very quickly, he thought. 

It was almost a pity that they were going to destroy the mine. Was it possible to make a beskar phrik alloy? Would it make a super alloy or would they end up with a metal that was so strong it was utterly unworkable and consequently useless? He made a mental note to ask the Armorer.

There were no armed B1s, B2s or droidekas in immediate sight, the local tac droid was as efficient with its defenses as possible, probably keeping them on standby in charging cradles inside the buildings. Static defenses were also not evident and it seemed that secrecy was considered the main protection.

Ahsoka began signing with her left hand, ‘Single firing line, two meter spread, fire and advance.’

They hurried to obey, walking forward with a tactical crouch, rifles tucked into their shoulders. Their tac net came alive in their respective HUDs, indicating which targets each team mate was aiming at. 

Ahsoka raised her WESTARs and fired.

Korkie and the rest joined in moments later.

Blue plasma bolts began streaming across the space in rapid bursts.

B1 workers sparked, flailing the ground in death and malfunction.

In what felt like no time at all, Korkie’s HUD declared he had killed nine.

The fire was quick, controlled and disciplined. The B1s threw down their loads and attempted to retreat into the buildings, but were gunned down in the back.

By the time they were halfway to the factory, the field was littered with dozens of dead droids.

The first defenders emerged, a trio of B2-ACMs, which just as swiftly died under the combined fire of seven GALAARs and two WESTARs.

More B2s came from behind, pushing their dead out of the way. Then they died in turn, collapsing forward.

B2s pushed the dead pile forward, using it as temporary cover to emerge and fire back.

Ahsoka reached into the hard rock and he felt the Force surge with power as she ripped boulder sized pieces up into the air in front of their firing line for impromptu cover.

Korkie twitched as a B2 blast managed to tag him on the chestplate as he ducked into cover, but his beskar was up to the challenge.

‘Use the Force, idiot,’ he remonstrated himself.

He embraced the calm, gained his focus and the Force flowed as a river.

He stepped out over cover and moved. 

Anticipating the enemy shots, dodging, weaving and firing back - each shot finding the mark in a B2’s sensor channel without fail.

Ahsoka pulled up more boulders, they shot forward as if fired from massive slugthrower cannons, wrecking and burying B2s and bowling over armed B1s who were responding to the threat.

He felt the Force twisting near him and from his waist a droid popper flew off.

It joined seven others and shot forward in a spread towards a company of B1s that had just emerged from the phrik refinery.

The combined EM blast wiped them out utterly, turning the entrance of the refinery to a clogged mess of twitching, collapsed droids.

The battlefield fell silent.

They stacked up on the side of the factory’s entrance. The squad comlink came alive with Ahsoka’s voice, “We have two squads of commando droids inside and they’re phrik plated. Attack their joints. Sergeant Kast, target your Whistling Birds on their optics.”

“Yes, Manda’lor.’

Ahsoka holstered her WESTARs, exchanging them for lightsabers.

Her blades lit before charging inside.

Korkie and the rest of the team hurried in her wake.

It was the difference of mere seconds and she was already holding two phrik commandos in mid-air, stabbing both blades right through their vulnerable optics.

Four more commandos charged in from the other side of the corridor, firing their blasters at the team.

He felt the thump of a shot hitting his upper backplate, before he stained his perceptions in the Force as high as they would go.

It was surreal as he fired his rifle rapidly, not even waiting for any HUD assistance.

Two successive blasts killed the commando through the optics.

His body suffused with the Force… blurred with speed to cross the distance, the vibroblade in his vambrace stabbed right through the commando’s vocorder and into the main computer there.

The high pitch of a Whistling Bird munition streaked through the narrow confines, each guided projectile finding its target without fail. 

Ahsoka released something through the Force that found every remaining commando droid and they just… fell to the floor lifeless as if someone had pulled their power sources. 

Korkie looked around in a somewhat stunned silence and lowered his arm to let the dead commando’s chassis drop to the floor with a clatter.

The silvery commando droids, which would’ve been the death of any other unprepared, armed force in the Republic were lying all dead around them.

“Uh, Manda’lor?” he blurted rather stupidly.

“No time, reactor room, now,” she ordered.

The team regrouped and followed her lead through the building. It was decidedly non-standardized in layout but soon enough they found a tight circular stairway that carried them downward and into a large, but cramped room. It was packed with machinery, fuel tanks and a compact fusion reactor the size of a starfighter.

“Spread out, set your charges,” Ahsoka ordered.

Korkie stowed his rifle on his back, pulled the two thermal detonators from his hip and hurried around the spherical reactor.

He slapped one charge directly on the casing, adjusting its timer to the preselected detonation time.

A quick look around and he decided to place his second charge behind a large fuel injector assembly. He was so absorbed in his task that he was only vaguely aware that another of the team was also here behind him, attaching a detonator to a fuel tank.

The Force screamed in warning and he instinctively ducked, letting his knees collapse.

A fist with attached vibroblade glanced off his helmet and stabbed into the injector’s outer casing.

Thankfully, nothing critical was damaged, only sparks erupted and nearby circuitry was utterly ruined.

Korkie didn’t think and just acted.

The Force exploded from his back in a desperate Push. 

His assailant was bodily picked up and bounced off a giant fuel drum with the ringing gong of beskar impacting the reinforced durasteel of the fusion slush tanks.

He rushed forward, not giving his assassin any chance to get their wits again, his vambrace vibroblade surging forward as he landed on top of… her?

Korkie barely managed to stop his attack before the blade would’ve opened Sergeant Kast’s neck completely.

His mind was so stunned for the briefest of moments, that she almost managed to buck him off and try again.

“That’s enough of that.”

Korkie barely managed to keep his footing as Kast was ripped out from under him, the Force twisting with power, but not targeting him.

He whirled around, gasping as the traitorous Mandalorian was held in the air effortlessly by Ahsoka’s left arm, her grip around Kast’s neck.

The sergeant was gasping and twitching, her legs kicking frantically in the air, hands futilely grasping at Ahsoka’s.

The seconds ticked by and he could feel her cold, furious anger. “Very clever, Dooku. More brainwashing nerfshit.”

The awful anger vanished as if it was never there and she let the traitor drop to the floor, who was now completely unconscious, likely from a Force Sleep.

“Korkie, take her thermal charges and plant them, we have to get out of here.”

He could only nod, left speechless as he realized he had just survived another assassination plot that by all rights should’ve succeeded.

There could only be one reason for all this.

His heart could only hope that his mother was still safe on Mandalore.

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A/N: Dooku really doesn't want a Mando-Republic alliance anymore. Hope you enjoyed and may the weekend be awesome to you all!

The Force Wills - Chapter 147

The neck of the commando droid was severed cleanly, making interfacing with a logic spike from my wrist quite easy.

What wasn’t easy was actually pulling any intelligible data. These were elite, expensive droids and they were built with anti-tamper safeguards on a hardware and software level. The internal self-destructs were mostly in a commando droid’s body, but there was a single charge in the head that hadn’t gone off. This could happen with a decapitation, if the small explosive was severed quickly enough from the main power supply. It was good news, that I had a chance to access the data, but equally bad news, because if I put too much voltage through the interface spike, it risked the system detecting the body was gone and going off.

M8 took a few moments to spoof it into thinking it was still connected to a proper working body, before quickly switching into decrypting the data.

This took a few minutes because of the complexity, she even had to pull computing power from the Resolute to help.

The only thing she managed to eventually resolve was a blurry image filled with decryption artifacts.

It looked like it was somewhere partially underground; a large cave with a cracked roof that let in sunlight during specific times of the day with very exotic purple-blue shrubbery on the floors and crawling up the walls.

I walked closer to the farmer and projected a holo of the image for them, “You wouldn’t happen to know where this is?”

He squinted into the rendering, “That looks like the Dijer Undergrove, about 42 km east from here.”

“Cross-referencing from Republic survey records, mistress. He’s correct. The flora species match Tasaas spore plants and Yimror shrubs, I have exact coordinates for the entrance.”  

I chucked the commando droid to the gravel road, “Thank you for help, sir. I will do my utmost to remove the threat of these droids from the planet. Force be with you.”

A few steps back and I rocketed into the air, immediately angling to my new destination.

Sixteen minutes of flight later, whilst over rolling grasslands, I spotted six B2-HAs and three droidekas on a patrol.

“Shabla!” I rolled and banked immediately as six homing rockets streaked into air, angling in to blow me out of the sky.

My WESTARs were in my hands in the next moment and I was firing rapidly ahead of me.

The blue bolts intercepted the rockets, exploding in bursts of fire and concussive effects.

I strafed my fire across the B2s as I jinked left and right towards them in a dive.

Two died, while my other shots just splashed over the thick armor.

The droideka’s deployed themselves with shields popping into existence before trying to shoot me.

The awkward angle given how high my approach was, meant that it was easy to simply dodge with precog, leaving me the time to fire again and take out a third B2.

At this point I was barreling down on the patrol from directly above.

I holstered my WESTARs and exchanged them for lightsabers.

A quick somersault and my feet were pointed down, before I pulled in as much of the momentum as I could and then redirected it outward just as my hyperalloy feet touched down in the middle of the small droid patrol.

Dust and grass exploded outwards in the face of the radiant Force Wave that erupted.

The B2s and droideka were picked up and tossed helplessly through the air.

My lightsabers lit with their red fury and shot forward, spinning rapidly.

B2s had barely crashed into the grassy earth with a thump before my lightsabers sliced them into glowing metallic chunks.

Droideka’s bounced like pinballs back into the air, their shields only being able to resist so much kinetic energy.

I grabbed both and ended their existence with a Force Crush.

The hilts of my lightsabers clanked back into my hands, before going back into my thigh compartments.

The presence of an actual patrol in the open like this meant I was definitely on the right track.

I shot back into the air, handling the remaining flight with no further problems.

The Dijer Undergrove entrance was in a canyon that looked like a jagged C shape from the air. It was barely eleven meters at its widest, which plunged into the earth for about eighty meters. The ends of the canyon sloped gently into either side, which explained why it was relatively easy to access on foot.

The enemy would know I was coming by now, so my approach came from directly above.

I came to a brief hover before simply switching off my flight systems and diving.

My fall through the earth, with the canyon walls on either side of me was very exhilarating, but brief.

With the momentum pulled into the Force, I alighted on my feet near the dim cave entrance, before using a narrow Force Push on the three guarding B2s before they could even react to my sudden presence in front of them.

A burst of speed forward, whilst my lightsabers snap-hissed into existence, letting me turn the droids into glowing chunks as I sprinted past their prone forms.

My feet carried me into a steady run through the tunnel beyond.

I emerged into a somewhat familiar sight of the undergrove, spotting the various recognizable plants. It was a beautiful place, the overhead sunlight cutting into the space like an ethereal lightsaber, with the purple-blue plants forming a lush carpet all over the rocky earth. The air was loamy and I could smell a humidity in the air that had to be from an underground lake further in.

Nearly thirty meters away on the far side of the cave, was the enemy; two B2-ACMs standing guard over three Mandalorians without helmets - who were helplessly encased in energy fields.

I immediately ducked, rolled and rapidly skittered forward under the fusilade of fire the droids sent my way. I pulled at the earth around me with the Force, creating two rock projectiles that I sent shooting forward in a kinetic strike.

It was strong enough to bowl over both, buying me enough time to rapidly burst forward with Force Speed.

I stabbed both blades into the rear ends of the B2s between the legs and slashed upward.

‘Anyone else, M8?’

‘Accurate scans within the undergrove are problematic due to EM radiant minerals present.’

‘Not at dangerous levels?’

‘No, mistress. It would take months of constant exposure to even begin seeing the first symptoms.’

I fell back to the Force, letting farsight do the job. There was definitely movement a few kilometers deeper into the cave system, where I spied a stationary guard of two B1 droids.

My focus pulled back to the three Blades in front of me.

The shifting blue energy fields were completely encased around them, leaving them only with a small slit at their noses to let them breathe through. In the Force, they felt like they had been hit by a stun blast, keeping them unconscious. Even as I watched, the disc shaped field emitters below their feet flashed as another stunning pulse radiated into them.

‘All right, this is definitely a nasty evolution of the bloody things.’

A conduit led away from the emitters to a portable energy storage as large as a GNK droid.

One slash of my saber later and all three Mandalorians were released to tumble awkwardly to the mossy ground.

I quickly arranged them into much more comfortable positions and began first-aid.

There were a number of bumps and bruises beneath the armor, but it was their nervous systems that were worrying me. From the looks of things, they had been forcibly kept unconscious for days using the periodic stun pulses, which meant no drinking, eating, their beskar’gam waste systems were full - they had dehydration, hunger and their internal fat stores were being used for energy.

It took me nearly a full quarter of an hour to carefully restore consciousness and help bleed off the excess energy from the nerves, whilst sorting out any potential complications. It also clued me in as to how they had been captured in the first place - the systems of her beskar’gam were showing signs of ion residue. They were still intact, so I could at least access them with my command authorizations.

“Sergeant Kast, can you hear me?” I asked gently, shaking the Mandalorian woman on the shoulder. Her scarred face twisted with discomfort before she wearily opened green eyes to look up directly into my visored helmet.

She blinked and coughed, dry mouth and throat not doing her any favors. Thankfully, the HK-HP had also been designed with me and my healing abilities in mind as well. I stuck my hand through the holosheathe directly into the lower abdomen, where a compartment opened to reveal a first-aid kit, which also included a two litre bottle of water.

“Drink slowly, only two gulps,” I ordered, holding the end open directly into her mouth, where she gulped down the liquid exactly as instructed.

She gasped with relief, wincing as the back of her head thumped off the earth she was laying on, “Manda’lor?”

“It’s me, sergeant, relax for the moment while I tend to your squad,” I confirmed.

“There’s no time to relax, Manda’lor,” she sat up with some difficulty. “We must save Lieutenant Kryze.”

“We will, but you need some recovery time before you can even think of holding a blaster with some competence, that energy field did a number on you. If it wasn’t for my work, you wouldn’t even be able to speak. Consider that an order, sergeant,” I said sternly.

“Yes, Manda’lor.”

I focused on the next Mando, who I recognized as a clanmate, Corporal Jhaveb Vizsla - who was roughly my age and his blue beskar’gam did nothing to hide how tall and lanky he was.

“Tell me what happened,” I ordered, whilst beginning the healing.

“We were training, doing field exercises, when Corporal Vizsla spotted an enemy droid patrol in the forest. We engaged, easily overwhelming the enemy, however, when we tried to report the contact back to the Avalanche, discovered that our coms were being thoroughly jammed. From there, Captain Oron ordered that we should search for the source of the jamming and destroy it. It was the corporal who had the idea to slice the systems of a dead B1 to help narrow the search. That led to this undergrove, but we were intercepted on the way here.”

“By commando droids capable of flight.”

She nodded, her face twisting with self-recrimination, “That was a nasty surprise. It never occurred to anyone that they could take a B2 rocket droid’s flight systems and adapt them to a modified commando chassis. They killed Captain Oron and two others with complete surprise. We didn’t detect them at all. One moment, everything was fine, the next…”

“But you did manage to fight back.”

“Yes, I took command and… I never imagined having to use Phoenix techniques on droids in mid-air, but we managed… right until they shot a missile from a speeder that detonated near us. Beskar’gam’s systems malfunctioned and most of us barely made it to ground with our jetpacks misfiring. Two didn’t.”

So, five dead from an ambush that shouldn’t have happened, yet it clearly did. I hated it when the enemy learned. Now commando droids were also wearing their own version of a ‘droid’ lifesign mask, hiding their signature power sources from general wide-range scanning.

“We were swiftly surrounded and asked to surrender. With armor and weapons malfunctioning, I saw no other option, especially with Lt. Kryze there. If he died…” She trailed off not wanting to contemplate the consequences that would have back on Mandalore with the Duchess.

“Were you interrogated?”

Kast nodded, “Extensively, but none of us gave them anything as far as I’m aware. They placed our force field cages out here to keep us separated. I imagine you’d find the others deeper in the undergrove.”

“Any idea what the Separatists are doing on Raydonia, sergeant?”

“None, manda’lor.”

Jhaveb begun stirring into consciousness and initially he pretended to remain asleep.

“None of that, corporal,” I admonished him. 

 His eyes surged open in surprise at hearing my voice, “Manda-!” He cut his instinctive screech off and struggled to master himself.

“While I applaud your effort, I can confirm the enemy isn’t close to us at the moment. So noise discipline isn’t too crucial at the moment, drink.”

After he had watered his throat, he gazed at the sergeant with both relief and he had distinct tones of guilt resonating throughout his spirit. I moved on to the next Mando. His name was Sergeant Tervho Saxon, the squad medic. His white and green beskar’gam showed multiple blaster hits and he even had a nasty burn through from the bolt that had nailed the back of his left calf.

This would take much longer to get fixed to a point where he was mobile again.

A quick use of the lightsaber to carefully cut the very tough undersuit of the beskar’gam, exposed the wound properly, allowing me to place a bacta strip on it and accelerate the healing process through the Force.

With that done, I could get to work on the problems all three shared.

Jhaveb thumped his head against the earth, closing his eyes briefly before resolve filled his entire being, “Manda’lor, I… I’m sorry this-”

“If you’re going to take personal responsibility for your squad’s ambush, I’m going to stop you right there.”

He shook his head, “I completely missed the beacon the B1 had.”

“Beacon?”

“Yes, manda’lor. The B1, I see now, had a locator beacon that went off the moment I began slicing.”

A quick look at his service record showed why he had been on a Blades squad at his relatively young age. “Corporal, I fail to see how someone with your talents and training could ordinarily miss something like that. Unless you were dealing with a completely novel system. Given the droids we’ve encountered on this planet so far, you have nothing to feel guilty about. Learn from this and move on. Hindsight, corporal, is always perfect.”

With the entire Separatist operation on Raydonia being covert by nature, it was only prudent that the enemy equipped their forces to maintain that secrecy as much as possible.

It meant they knew that they had lost the exterior patrol and now the droids guarding these prisoners.

Any half-decent tac droid would make the conclusion that Mandalorian reinforcement had arrived in search for their missing squad.

We didn’t have long.

I managed to bring Tervho to consciousness nine very careful minutes later.

“Manda’lor? My condition?” he asked, smacking his lips and relishing the hydration.

“Stable, blaster wound is healing, but you’re not running anywhere for at least a day or two.”

He sat up with a wince and regarded his lower leg, then looked frantically around, “Lieutenant Kryze?”

“Not here, most likely kept deeper in the undergrove,” Kast twitched and flexed her legs, trying to regain dexterity and strength.

“Sergeant Kast, how many shots do you have left in your Whistling Bird?” I asked, gesturing to the distinctive vambrace.

“Three, Manda’lor, but the enemy took our helmets, jetpacks and other weapons, target designation will be on automatic.”

I reached into my legs and held out my WESTARs to her and Jhaveb.

She accepted it gratefully, whilst he boggled slightly at the realization that I was using a holodroid proxy before taking the weapon.

“The enemy knows reinforcements are here, they will assume you’ve been freed. We won’t have long. Jhaveb, you will support Tervho. We will use every moment possible to rest and then we move deeper into the undergrove before they can catch us here.”

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Whoever was in command, whether it was a tac droid or some CIS officer, they rather foolishly gave us 23 minutes before I spotted the first signs of a droid response coming our way.

“On your feet, stay behind me, if it’s a clanker, it dies. Sergeant Kast, Whistling Birds only as a last resort.”

“Understood, Manda’lor,” they chorused, thumping their chest in salute.

With lightsabers in hand, we moved deeper into the undergrove, taking a natural tunnel leading north out of this large entry cave.

Our speed was limited with Tervho’s limp, but we couldn’t leave him behind as there was every chance we could be attacked from behind by returning droid patrols. I still wasn’t sure if what was in front of us was the main CIS base.

“Six B2-ACMs, three droidekas,” I warned, as we continued forward.

The tunnel opened into a smaller cave and the droids opened fire on us in a hail of Repeater blaster fire.

Three heavy rocks as big as a speeder burst up in front of us to intercept.

A few hand signals and the two able bodied squad members hurried forward to use the floating rocks as cover to fire back.

Tervho reluctantly jumped on my back at a signal. If I had been a meatbag, it wouldn’t have been possible, but I could easily carry his weight with no issue as a HK-HP.

We continued our advance under fire, as a single B2 died under the combined fire from my companions.

Too slow.

My lightsabers lit and I threw them to the left and right, angling them up and inward, before lancing them into the enemy.

They became a blur of flying red plasmatic buzzsaws that sliced through the B2s high and low.

I dropped our rocky cover in front of us, leaving me free to crush the droidekas.

In the tunnel beyond this cave, I halted the advance with a raised fist before gesturing in front of us.

Four motion activated thermal detonators sparked and died as I used mild electric discharges from the Disable Droid technique.

“Large cave ahead, eight commando droids, two squads of B1s, though most of them aren’t armed, kill them anyway.”

Large was a slight misnomer, it was more accurate to say it was nearly the size and volume of a stadium, filled to the brim with the underground plantlife, insects and even some fauna who made their home in the undergrove.

One possible reason for the CIS presence was also here, visible on the western cave wall, recently excavated given the equipment - the frontage of something that looked like an ancient temple.   

My lightsabers were up and blurring in rapid defense, deflecting the bolts from eight commando droids that were rapidly jumping, shooting and even using their integrated flight systems to do bigger jumps.

I spotted only one solid large rock nearby to use and pulled it over, giving cover to my companions to fire against the enemy.

Two of my rapid deflections went straight back to our flying enemies, causing them to careen out of control and smash themselves into the ground and off to the side, minor explosions thundered through the massive cave.

The remaining commandos were now very close and they each drew vibroblades to engage me.

I let them come within five meters and they jumped into the air, pulling back their arms to slash at me from six different angles.

Only for them to freeze mid-air as I caught every single droid in the grip of Telekinetic Control.

With clear shots Jhaveb and Kast wasted no time in immediately shooting two, whilst my lightsaber slashes filleted the rest.

We were far from victory though as B1 droids poured fire in our direction.

The two original squads became three as more B1s streamed out of the temple.

I was able to advance forward, deflecting shots back and steadily took out B1s along the way.

One of them threw a thermal grenade my way when I was close enough, which I stopped halfway in its arc and sent straight back.

That explosion thundered through the cavern and sent gravel and small rocks raining down from the ceiling.

Stupid droids! A few more like that and we would all be buried!

“Tervho! Reach into my lower back, you’ll feel four droid poppers! Throw them!”

My piggyback passenger was startled and was very happy to finally have something to do besides being a spectator to this battle. He winced as his right hand fumbled blindly within the holosheathe, before he managed to grasp one of the EMP grenades.

He grunted with the effort of the lobbing throw.

It was accurate enough that it landed among the droids on the left flank and detonated immediately.

Eight droids were caught in the expanding EM wave and shuddered briefly before falling over.

“Keep going!”

One by one, the poppers flew through the air, taking out the opposition in batches of six or seven at a time.

A few shots and lightsaber slashes later, it was all over.

I sensed carefully around the cave and into the temple, “Clear!”

Kast and Jhaveb emerged carefully from their cover, their weapons still up and ready.

“What is this place?” Jhaveb asked with mild awe as he stared at the temple entrance.

I could understand the reaction, while it was somewhat small compared to the Illum Jedi Temple’s frontage, the sophistication of the construction we were seeing was definitely the work of a high level civilization. To the naked eye, it looked like the stonework was pure obsidian, but molded and shaped as if a giant hand had worked with it like clay - making decorative columns, arches and giant reliefs that depicted some stylized alien figures with large umbrella shaped heads holding massive bowls; as if they were serving something. There were two of them on either side of the main entrance and faced each other, also as if they were standing guard as well.

“Something the Separatists wanted to keep and possibly study, therefore we must learn why. Come, your squad mates are being kept inside.”

The hallway beyond was more of that perfect obsidian-type construction. The lighting the original builders used was non-functional and looked like light-strips that were stylistically integrated into the walls. The Separatists had brought in their own lighting mounted on stands, which reflected somewhat eerily off the walls.

The first actual room we entered was an entrance hall that stood three floors high, with multiple doors and passageways leading off from it deeper into the structure.

The walls were covered with massive relief panels that glistened from the silvery sheen of an entirely different type of metal - it almost looked like ultra-pure platinum at first glance.

‘Mistress, please go closer to one of those panels!’ M8 begged.

I chuckled, it was easy to forget that M8 started her existence as a BD model exploration droid.

“Gonna need to drop you off, Tervho.”

He nodded “I think I can manage, thank you, Manda’lor.”

With the Blade off my back and hopping to rejoin his teammates behind me, I stepped in front one of the vast metallic relief panels.

It showed a scene of vast numbers of the alien builders working together towards a goal, but they were opposed by another faction of their own species, who seemed less in number but very strong. The upper area also had clear writing in an ideograph style based on square shape with all manner of distinct repeating patterns inside.

‘You got it, M8? I have people to revive.’

‘Yes, mistress. Thank you. I’ll begin analysis and database search, see if this civilization is on record already.’

The entire entrance hall had been converted into a forward operating base by the CIS; portable power generators, recharge points for droids, modular shelter, portable scanning equipment, analysis computers and even fabricators. Even more disturbing was the fact that they had been in the process of literally breaking down one of the metallic reliefs, using a nanodroid augmented cutter to turn it into manageable strips to feed into the fabricator.

I put aside my outrage at the desecration of history and my curiosity about just why they would do this, in favor of tending to the four Mandalorians encased in force field cages.

We took the time to this properly, Jhaveb hacking the controls and turning off power manually one by one.

It took nearly forty minutes of careful healing and the third one released was a very much alive Korkie.

It was immediately apparent that his interrogation had done the most damage. He would have the most to reveal about Duchess Satine and would be very motivated to be uncooperative. He had definitely grown since our last meeting in person, standing at least ten centimeters over me and the martial training, combined with fighting in the war… definitely agreed with his physique. Combine that with his scuffed and blaster-scored beskar’gam;  he was almost the picture of Mandalorian martial might, if on the slightly shorter side of the spectrum.

With Tervho and I both working on the secret son of the Mandalorian sovereign for half an hour, we managed to bring him around.

“Korkie? Can you hear me?” I gave him a light repetitive slap on his cheek, pushing his internal body energies in just the right way to encourage things.

His blue eyes shot open and for a moment only confusion reigned in them, then I felt the Force pulse and pull inward as he instinctively drew on it.

He winced and recognition blossomed, “Ahso-?” He visibly stopped himself. “Manda’lor Vizsla?”

I squeezed him on the shoulder, “You’re going to be fine, lieutenant. Water.”

He downed his allotment eagerly. “Ah, thank you.” He tried to sit up but stopped immediately.

‘Careful Korkie, you have badly strained abdominals and back muscles from the interrogation. I’ve started the healing, but you need to stay horizontal. Call on the Force, just like I taught you, see the damage, carefully bring more to you. That will speed things up.’

‘Yes, Master.’ He returned mentally with a slight hint of mischief.

He might be a secret apprentice, but I was not putting him in the traditional role.

‘Korkie, not your master,’ I gave him an image of me wagging my index finger at him. ‘Now as efficient it would be to have this conversation mentally, it would be too suspicious.’

“All right, LT, did you glean anything from your captors during interrogation?” I asked curiously.

“Yes. They wanted to know all my command codes, not to mention codes and layout of the Sundari palace. We were attacked because of me, they wanted me as a hostage. They knew I would be in this Blades squad aboard the Avalanche. More than likely they wanted to pressure the Duchess into abandoning the Mandalorian-Republic alliance in the war.”

“Probably,” I acknowledged, even as I was inwardly seething at the security breach this represented. It was even worse that I could do nothing about it, because this was definitely a Palpatine-Dooku plan. Mandalore, Republic Intel, the Navy and I knew which Mando squad was on which ship, so of course it would be an open book to Dooku. “The question now is, why keep you captured here among their secret excavations?”

“I have the feeling it was just improvisation, making the best of what they had in place. This is also not their main base on Raydonia. I managed to overhear the ST droid who interrogated me speaking to the commando droids, talking of another location on the planet that served in that role.”

“I see. Anything about why they were studying and desecrating this temple?”

“No, just that the metal these reliefs are made from was of great interest to them. They were pulling in more of it from deeper inside the temple, cutting and using the fabrication machine to render it into transportable ingots.”

‘Mistress! Exciting news,’ said M8. ‘There is no exact matching record of this civilization in the archives, but I did find a general instruction from the Explorations Corps. It instructs Jedi to look for certain key symbols and alien writing ideograms that do match what we are seeing in this temple.’

‘So they’ve found clues and traces of this civilization, but don’t have enough to form a coherent picture.’

‘Precisely, mistress. The Explorers are still searching for a major site for excavation. However, it seems the miserable CIS found one first! And look what they’d done to it! All this history destroyed, just for phrik!”

I had a slight record screeching moment in my head, ‘I’m sorry, M8. Did you just say, phrik?’

‘Yes, mistress! But who cares!? Phrik might be relatively rare, but this history is priceless!’

I stood and looked around me with wide eyes at dozens of giant reliefs made of the same rare metal that stood alongside beskar in the category of lightsaber and blaster resistant metal.

Only one planet at the moment in the entire galaxy had mines for the substance, which were the various moons in orbit of the gas giant Gromas, deep in CIS space. It was an order of magnitude more difficult to mine and work with than beskar, which was why it was so rare and valuable. It was such a flex to have that even Palpatine had integrated it into the hilt of his own lightsaber. The electrostaffs in use by Dooku’s magnaguard droids were phrik-plated and it was this material I had used in my earliest design of vambrace.

Whoever this civilization was, they had used phrik so casually in abundance, along with the construction of this temple, spoke volumes of their scientific prowess.

“Manda’lor?” Korkie prompted with concern, snapping me out of my introspection.

“Sorry, I’m speaking with M8 as well, concerning this temple. Every relief you see around you is made of refined, high purity phrik, which explains the Separatist interest in this place.”

Every Mando in earshot bloomed with astonishment and looked around in amazement.

“That’s amazing, though the thought of the enemy gaining such a huge amount of the material at once is very troubling,” Korkie looked around the temple from his prone position with renewed interest.

“Which is why I’m going to ask my master to get on the holo and order the Avalanche to return to Raydonia as soon as possible. This planet has just become of great strategic interest, a renewed source of phrik on our side of the fence is just what the doctor ordered. There is no way I’m going to let the enemy tear apart more of this place.”

“If phrik is naturally present here, Manda’lor,” Korkie said pointedly. “Then I can see that it would be worth rooting out the Separatists. It might be that whoever these aliens were, they were shipping it in from off-world to decorate their temple.”

He was correct, it just sucked to think that in time we might have to abandon the planet if there wasn’t enough manpower or a ship which could be devoted to the task.

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The Separatist FOB in this temple didn’t have anything to eat, except a supply of coolant grade water for some of the machinery. So I took the time to head back out of the undergrove to call in the Aurna, which M8 flew in drone mode to land nearby.

I brought a crate of food supplies back into the temple for all seven survivors, since most of them were not mobile enough to walk themselves out of the cave system yet.

They dove into the field rations with gusto, but I was mostly busy making careful scans of all the reliefs in the entrance hall.

‘At least this way some record of them will remain, just in case the worst happens, mistress.’

It was something I would do anyway without my droid intelligence’s insistence and I relished the chance to do the smallest sliver of the dream job that lay close to my heart.

Every relief panel was the expert work of an advanced culture, a snapshot into their thoughts, their history, dreams, and fears. The shape of their architecture told the story of their preferred relationship with space and time.

I chose a passageway to the right leading off the hall and continued my exploration.

It was very frustrating not being able to understand the language of the inscriptions. M8 was working on it as best she could, but needed more data and time to even begin constructing the bare bones of a lexicon. I had to make do with best guesses as I stopped by a triptych of reliefs, joined together to form a saga of events.

The aliens were definitely spacefaring and Raydonia was not their homeworld. Their depiction of the great wheel of the galaxy showed them venturing forth from somewhere in the central north sectors, beyond the Mid-Rim, but not completely in the Outer Rim.

“M8, if we were to take this depiction of the galaxy as accurate, where would their origin point be?”

“Galactic Grid Square M-3, mistress. Somewhere along the Veragi Trade Route. I can be no more accurate than a radius of 800 light years with this scale.”

She displayed her navigation analysis in my HUD.

“Do you think these radiant lines in this relief represent their hyperspace corridors? Doesn’t look like any modern map of the North. It also looks like they explored all the way to Mimban before stopping.”

“No match with modern hyper routes, with the likely amount of time between now and when this relief was made, it’s highly unlikely that we could use this as a base for rediscovering them due to stellar drift.”

The central relief showed the aliens discovering many other species and mostly greeting them in friendship, but rather frustratingly, their highly stylized depiction of those species made actually identifying them for sure rather impossible except in one case.

“They met the wookiees, maybe Chewie will have some insight.”

“Rather hard to argue against those figures being anything else, mistress,” M8 agreed.

“Any idea on how old this temple is?”

“The HK-HP sensors are not specialized for this role, mistress. If I was there in person, it would be easy. Perhaps the CIS did some of their own research into the topic, if you could interface with their computers in the FOB, we can see.”

Footsteps approached and I turned to see Korkie doing a fair job of pain suppression and internal Force control to manage a body that protested with every step.

“Lieutenant,” I nodded, keeping my attention forward, deciphering more of the visual history before me.

“Manda’lor,” he stood next to me and also looked into the three-paneled relief. “If I may ask, where are you actually?”

“The Resolute is in the Carida system.”

“Ah,” he nodded in understanding, though I could tell he had been hoping for a different answer. He shifted gears quickly, “Can you actually read this?”

“The language no, but interpreting the visual depictions and intent is entirely possible.” I put a companionable hand on his shoulder, managing a light Bond. ‘Open yourself to the Force, Korkie. Focus before you, think of the hand that made this, think of the mind behind it, what are they saying to anyone who sees it? What did they leave behind?’

He closed his eyes and I felt him doing a reasonable, if clumsy attempt to divine with the Force.

His head twitched abruptly, as he definitely got something for his trouble, ‘The being who made relief this was Force sensitive!’

‘Really? Interesting. Would you care to look at any other panel and see if that’s also the case?’

He hurried over to the other side of the hallway, holding his hand near the relief panel before actually touching the wall itself. ‘Same here, a different artist and even whoever built the temple was also Force Sensitive.’

‘Or at least, whoever built this section of the temple,” I corrected his assumption. “Go ahead and try more.’

It didn’t take much more to come to a conclusion, ‘Either all the engineers and artisans of this species were Force Sensitive or all of them were.’

It wasn’t totally unheard of, but it did narrow the possibilities. We needed much more evidence, though it was gratifying to see Korkie had the sensitivity and skill to even make the conclusion.

The rest of the temple beckoned to me, even in pure darkness I could simply use the HK-HPs holofields to light my way. However, I didn’t dare get too far from my recovering squad of Blades. The inner areas of the temple went far deeper into the ground and it was at minimum the size of the Coruscant Jedi Temple, perhaps larger.

“You find this interesting, Manda’lor?”

“Oh yes, if there wasn’t a war to fight, I’d be in the Jedi Exploration Corps.” I stepped sideways to look at the next relief and had to pretend not to notice how his attention oh so briefly wandered downward to my simulated holographic posterior. Still a young man, despite being seasoned by the war now. “And you, Lieutenant, have you found your own interests yet?”

I felt his frustrated uncertainty, “No, I mean - yes, I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve learned with the Blades, serving with them, saving lives.” He took a nervous breath. “It’s just I’ve found - nothing that truly calls to my heart, not like what you’re describing.”

“Good,” I said mildly, staring at a relief that was depicting a space battle between the aliens and another species, were those Rakatan ships? Again the stylistic choices of the artist made certainty a problem.

“Good?” he asked in astonishment.

“Lieutenant, you’re barely eighteen and have your whole life ahead of you to explore and look for that which will satisfy your spirit. If you knew right this instant, it’d be like jumping to the end of a book to read the ending and avoiding the journey there altogether.”

Were the aliens actually using the Force in the space battle directly? The depiction made it seem as if ‘wind’ was coming from their ships to blast and rend their enemies to pieces. This was in addition to contiguous ‘beams’ of energy that were directly connected to exploding enemy ships.

“I suppose that’s a fair point, Manda’lor.”

His emotions shifted and I inwardly grimaced, “Korkie,” I used his name aloud to properly gather his attention. “Recite the Litany against Fear.”

He grit his teeth and nodded, closing his eyes. “Sorry, Ahsoka, I…”

“You fear failure. You fear doing the wrong thing to court me. You fear my reaction, that I will discontinue your training.” Every word acted like a body blow to his mind, but truth was never guaranteed to be a pleasant experience. “That will only happen should you continue to fall prey to this fear. Fear is the-”

“...mindkiller. I will face my fear…” he mumbled, fighting a sudden battle with himself.

I left him to it, focusing on the star patterns of the relief and running search algorithms to see if any possible locations could be matched.

Many minutes of silence followed as I kept a peripheral awareness of Korkie’s struggles.

Eventually, I felt him triumph into an equilibrium of acceptance.

The demonstration of personal strength in turn made me feel triumph as well, but also-

Okay, yeah, had to be honest with myself… that was impressive and attractive.

“Let’s get back to the squad, lieutenant, I’m teasing myself with all this. I’d get lost in the history of this temple without a second thought.”

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“All right everyone, gather round.” The seven Mandalorian Blades were in front of me under the tall folded nacelles of the Aurna. Rearmed and helmeted from the small onboard armory. The helmets weren’t a high grade beskar and painted a generic silver, but they’d work in a pinch. “The Avalanche has been ordered back, but they aren’t due to arrive for a day at least. The question remains about what to do next. I want to first see if we can’t find the remains of the fallen. Do you have data in your beskar’gam that can help?”

“Yes, Manda’lor,” Korkie confirmed. “We can upload our flight profiles to the Aurna’s computer. It shouldn't be difficult from there, unless the local fauna haven't gotten to the bodies already.”

“Once we have that done, I trust there are no objections to finding these shabla and utterly destroying them?”

All seven chorused, “No, Manda’lor!”

“M8 is working on decoding the data from the FOB. Once we have a location we will go hunting-”

My lightsabers were lit and I sent one surging outward in an arc behind me.

The spinning red blade hit and cut through something invisible… then cut through two more invisible somethings standing right next to them.

By the time my blade had returned into my hand, I was looking at the bisected pieces of three Magnaguards that had been sneaking up on us.

The sheer idea that these large yet nimble droids could sneak at all was worrying, that they were invisible was catastrophic as I could vaguely sense the method that had been used.

“Blasters up, circle formation!”

The Blades’ astonishment were banished as trained instinct took over and they swiftly obeyed.

I walked over to the dead droids and looked down.

Their pieces were still fluttering in and out of visibility.

Even as I watched, the effect tried again but then sputtered and dissipated with wispy green smoke that dissipated.

The feeling in the Force was very familiar - the cloying, acrid sensation of ichor.

The work of a Nightsister of Dathomir.

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A/N: Oh dear. Well, there we have the Blades squad in question. Korkie is at this point an LT, who is being carefully fast tracked to climb the ranks, but there is still significant meritocracy involved with it. Ahsoka and the clans elders, wouldn't allow for anything else, despite the politics pressuring otherwise.

Have a great weekend and stay awesome!

2078: Highriders - Chapter 15

If there was one thing you could appreciate about Night City, it was the convenience and all the options of getting quickly from A to B.

Between the Metro, self-driving cars that came to you and AVs, the transport factor for gigs was almost an irrelevant consideration, unless you were doing a false flag gig that required you to use specific wheels with a gang’s markings or you were fairly confident that you were going end up in vehicular combat with your opponents. It meant that in the past I could easily knock off multiple gigs in a single day in NC and still be home in time to snuggle with Judy.

None of that was available on Luna.

So here I was, hopping the 36 km back to Tycho City on foot, wearing only a pistol strapped to my thigh and a breathing mask.

If this was anything other than a deniable stealth gig, I would’ve summoned my Nomad Rover, which I had decided to outright buy from Gakulu. It cost nearly 160k, a nasty punch in the wallet, but I’d gone long enough without wheels to my name here. It could’ve met me halfway and carried me back.

My only consolation was that I was definitely setting a record as the first Post-Human to hike across the lunar surface in just her skin and my sustained hops covered six meters at a time without really straining me at all.  It meant I was averaging 8 to 12 kph depending on whether the terrain was favorable. I could occasionally push it to 20 if I had a flat regolith to work with, but I also had my heat management to consider.

It meant I was looking at an estimated hike of 5 hours 34 minutes - fun.

I couldn’t even use the time productively because I was also under EMCON protocols - no calls, no visits to cyberspace, except staying put inside my datafortress.

So I mostly pulled my focus back into the fortress, laying back my avatar on a lawn chair beside the data pool and brought up my current major project that I was using as a time sink.

Developing weapons to fight the wild AIs.

The idea that you could fight them with the hacks that netrunners used on each other and common systems was laughable. It’d be like going up against a borg when all you had was a selection of blunt knives and needles. The wild AI would brush you aside contemptuously before frying your skullsponge through your firewalls that would at best stub its figurative toe in the process.

Thankfully I wasn’t completely in the dark of where to even begin approaching the problem, thanks to Butcher.

AI vs AI ‘combat’ beyond the Blackwall did occasionally happen, especially when two wildly divergent data forms encountered each other and had conflicting goals. Butcher didn’t want to give me his own ways of fighting, because it would actually stunt my potential, yet he did want us both to come up with entirely novel weapons together that would not be anticipated by the rogue AIs.

The first one we had come up with was called the Null Choir.

The first thing he had taught me was that rogue AIs were not just singular data entities, but could also be a feral hegemonizing swarm.   

I shuddered at the mere thought of facing one in the future, because losing against those didn’t just mean death or end-of-line to your own existence. You would actually be pulled apart, lose all sense of self-coherency and just become another part of the swarm - pulled into the data madness to become more and take more. Using standard singular data weapons against a swarm was utterly pointless, as while it could probably destroy a fair amount of it, there would always be more left over and they could just keep replenishing via data replication.

Null Choir was designed from the ground up to be an anti-swarm memetic daemon.

It was a fractal attack that would, theoretically, force any enemy AI to recompile its own checksum. 

Any rogue AI with greater than two forks of itself would crash-loop trying to resolve the paradox I forced on it, but against swarms they would literally self-cannibalize into non-existence. It was a terrifying weapon that could just as well turn around and kill both of us, if we hadn’t programmed in our own immunity from the ground up, via a Relic 3.0 harmonic key.

The current problems we were finding with the Null Choir was that we definitely couldn’t use it if there were friendly infolife anywhere in the immediate vicinity of the battle. It would just be me and Butcher alone against the enemy. Sure we could share the harmonic key amongst our own allies, but that ran into the problem of security. If any allied AI turned hostile…

The second issue was the long deployment time for the daemon, it was currently at 12 meatspace milliseconds, which was an eternity for the kinds of cyberspace battles we were going to be dealing with. The only solution at the moment was that Butcher would have to shield me and keep the enemy busy, allowing the Null Choir the time to deploy into cyberspace.

Another weapon we were developing in parallel was to address the threat of the wild AI deploying meatspace assets under its direct control.

For this I came up with a hybrid solution, the Glass Widow.

It was a smart kinetic munition that could fire from any arm projectile launch system, which I could easily integrate into my Gemini’s left arm. It fired 8mm flechettes which were just big enough to carry a nanofiber cocoon. They burrowed into the target and force uploaded a one-shot gateway mirror, which inverted the local cyberspace Net topology, trapping the target in a recursive sandbox that literally fed it its own attack vectors.

If I had this whilst I was fighting that out of control Chimera tank alongside Myers, it would’ve made things so much easier. It would’ve bought me almost thirty seconds of time where it could do nothing, an eternity to utterly fuck that pissbot up.

Glass Widow’s only issue was that it required Butcher to babysit the sandbox, which meant that it would be up to me to carry the fight in cyberspace.

These were just two of nine projects that were in various stages of development, but we made significant headway with the Null Choir and the Glass Widow was close to the prototype stage by the time I could see the brightly lit domes of Tycho City appearing on the horizon.

I paused my hopping at a small hill and spotted a duo of hardsuited highriders working on a huge solar panel array, taking advantage of the lunar night to do some maintenance.

“Fuck,” I muttered, feeling the tingles of mild embarrassment hitting me in my core engram.

Going around was an option, but there was no guarantee I wouldn’t run into more workers there too.

Biting the bullet, I resumed hopping.

They were so focused on their job, their helmets also limiting their peripheral vision, that I managed to almost pass right by behind their backs. Their suit proximity sensors went off though and both of them jerked in surprise before catching sight of me.

Now, since both were highriders, anyone nude walking by was a non-issue and just ‘meh’ in their books. The bigger issue was that I was in full vacuum, on the lunar surface whilst in my second birthday suit.

My digital night vision couldn’t render their faces, but it was easy to fill in that gap via their body language - utterly frozen with astonishment.

I forced a bright smile to my face and waved at them both as I hopped past, acutely aware now that my breasts were jiggling and bouncing with my hops.

Their radio frequency resolved to me, “Hello, beautiful night for a hop around town, isn’t it?”

They stared at each other for a moment, as if checking with each other that, yes, they both saw the same thing. One of them began tapping on a vambrace touchscreen to run a diagnostic on their night vision systems.

I left them behind and got off their radio, not really wanting to get into a conversation about the fact I was… doing this.

It was another few kilometers before I reached the western edge of the city, and my entrance was a public airlock in Dome 7 - a place whose primary feature was the Museum of Space Colonization. While it didn’t hold a candle to the popularity of the Apollo 11 museum at Tranquility, it was a much more central location and held exhibits not just from Apollo, but also the subsequent programs in the 2000s that saw a permanent human presence on the moon established.

Thankfully, my timing was such that I didn’t catch a tour group going the other way, being given their first taste of a lunar EVA. 

When proper pressurised air filled the airlock, I couldn’t help but let out an actual sigh of relief, pull in the radiator into my back with a thought, and rub the skin edges to become seamless. The mild humidity in the air immediately became boiling hot as it touched my skin, steam rising from it as my internal heat sinks dumped as much as it safely could.

A quick hack of the airlock systems, let me override the air pumps to keep circulating cool air in and pushing the warmth out.

It didn’t take a few minutes before I naturally drew attention from someone working in the museum. It was technically their primary airlock and anyone mucking about with it would worry the staff.

A fairly old highrider woman of five foot six, with a wiry low-G body honed by seemingly decades of bounding across regolith in exosuits. Close-cropped silver hair framed her sharp hazel eyes behind augmented-lens glasses that doubled as AR overlays. She wore a utilitarian jumpsuit in ESA blue, patched with highrider embroidery and most prominently had a necklace of Apollo 11 bootprint replicas. A quick scan and cross-reference told me her name; Dr. Elara Ackner, 2nd generation highrider born to two ESA engineers and senior curator for the museum.

She walked closer to the airlock control panel, and scowled into the readings it was giving her. “What the devil?”

I made sure she couldn’t use the internal cams to see me for the moment, I still needed a few more minutes to flush all this heat.

She was stubborn though and started stabbing her fingers into the touchpad screens, trying to regain control.

Eventually, she made the correct conclusion that someone was usurping control of the airlock for some reason and started fishing for her phone in her jumpsuit pocket.

I hacked the screen in front of her to display my face, which was enough to make her pause, “Sorry to alarm you, Dr Ackner. My name is V, currently employed by Gakulu Workgroup. I’m just making use of the airlock to cool myself down. It’ll just be another eight minutes or so.”

She blinked with suspicion until her eyes lit with recognition, “You’re the V from the Crystal Palace?”

“In the flesh, so to speak,” I chuckled dryly.

“Hmmph, figures that scoundrel Gakulu would hire you. Now what’s this nonsense about cooling down?”

“Let’s just say that stealth on the lunar surface at night, rather paradoxically, makes things rather toasty.”

“Thermal containment to avoid detection? That’s quite clever,” she mused. “I suppose you and Gakulu would also prefer that I remain quiet about your excursion?”

Figures. If Selene Workgroup got the tidbit that I had been skulking about in Tycho crater and combined it with the aftermath of their IP theft blowing up in their face - then they might square the circle about who was responsible eventually. Gakulu was also working on his side of the equation, to ensure that SW would conclude that the mining rig data had been effectively booby trapped to delete itself. It effectively kept everyone off the radar.

“Yes, what do you want?”

Ackner chuckled, “Oh, nothing too strenuous. Certainly nothing which would make Gakulu conclude it would be better for me to have an ‘accident’. You see, I’ve come into possession of an encrypted shard and it’s got some rather nasty pre-Blackwall ICE on it. It’s so nasty that I’ve already blown through the museum’s discretionary budget in my attempts to decrypt it. The shard destroys any air-gapped system I put it on. It doesn’t even let me try to interface to see what I’m dealing with.”

I nodded in understanding, “It’s Hot ICE, meaning that if you don’t insert the shard into the physical hardware environment that it expects, then the on-board ICE automatically assumes it's a breach attempt and acts accordingly. Until you provide that, no one’s going to get anywhere with it.”

That was not exactly true, a sufficiently strong and robust AI like Butcher would have no problems weathering the attack and in turn dismantling it, but I wasn’t about to advertise my AI partner’s existence.

Ackner slapped her own thigh in annoyance. “Hayi! That’s going to be nearly impossible. How am I supposed to whip out a 2010s era NASA computer from my ass?!”

That piqued my interest, “It’s a NASA shard?”

“Yes,” she admitted with a sigh. “Had a custom interface built for it, but it just keeps wrecking every computer I try.”

NASA these days only existed as a small, almost symbolic federal office under the NUSA, only doing minor R&D projects and curating what archives had survived the DaraKrash and 4th Corporate War. The Corpo dominance in numerous facets of life that emerged after the Era of Red, extended into space and its associated technologies. It left a civilian agency like the old NASA deep in the lurch and it was a minor miracle that it hadn’t been consigned to the history books completely. Its only real value to the NUSA these days was to tackle the non-profitable research that would never survive at Militech.

“The only solution I see is to gain a blueprint of the computer NASA used in that era, custom build it and go from there.”

“Those would be EBMs and good luck getting anything from their miserly fingers, if they even had it,” she scowled upward at the glistening dome above us with folded arms.

On a lark, I initiated a daisy chain connection to Earth’s European cyberspace and gave my data crawlers a new search parameter. Sure enough they got back to me with a hit from an EBM server in Germany.

Euro Business Machines was a company founded in the early 90s. They had boomed explosively into quickly becoming the leading manufacturer of computers and high-tech equipment in that era. In the late 90s, they went even further, performing the greatest free-market hostile takeover in history under the leadership of Dr. Kurt Muller. No corpo graduated from their education without having studied the Muller Takeover at some point. I had done it as a full course in Night University.

EBM gobbled up a vast number of computer companies around the world, including their older near-namesake IBM. How Muller had maneuvered the acquisitions through all the regulatory agencies and courts of the era was seen as a new standard for conducting business. A lesson every corp had taken and quickly applied.

In the meantime, my crawler indicated that there was definitely something on this EBM server that would interest Ackner. There were firewalls in my way, but interestingly, nothing that indicated it was watched over 24/7 by a netrunner.

‘Butcher, think we can ghost blitz this?’

‘Easily. It’s not a priority EBM server and given what the crawler found that would make sense. We are looking at a historical archive.’

‘So what would be the chances we’d find the full blueprints of an antiquated 2010s era EBM PC?’

‘Too many probability factors to adequately calculate.’

‘Eh, whatever, let’s do it.’

Ackner looked down into the screen I was using, “Nevermind, consider my silence bought and paid for, V. It was a foolish hope born of desperation anyway. It’s not like I can afford to hire you normally at this point.”

“Hold that thought, Dr. Ackner,” My heat levels were nominal enough at this point that I could leave without steaming. I triggered the inner door and emerged into the dome proper and while her eyes widened somewhat at my appearance, she remained unflappably calm.

“Well, that explains some things, but I would dearly like to know what cyberware will let you go for a casual nude stroll on the regolith at night.”

“Modified full body conversion,” I answered shortly.

“I see, well… Anyway and I assume it would be completely out of my budget,” she gave me a wry look with some appreciation twinkling those eyes.

“Now why would the chief curator of a museum be interested in going borg?” I folded my arms and gave her a curious stare.

“My dear, that’s my business, not yours.”

“Fair enough,” I shrugged and gestured with a finger gun towards the phone in her pocket, which buzzed and chimed for her attention.

She was startled and looked up with suspicion, immediately reaching for it, “What did you just do?”

“Take a look,” I invited with a big smile.

She held it up and began swiping and tapping on the screen. “You downloaded something, a document file. Am I going to regret opening this?”

“Not at all,” I said mildly.

She gazed at me, weighing the decision, “Fuck it,” and stabbed her finger down to access the file.

Her eyes blinked and now she actually gaped, “This is… this is-”

“Actually building that from scratch with current fabrication technology will take some doing and eddies for the actual research.”

She burst into incredulous laughter, “That’s an understatement. This is an EBM-3A53, the exact model NASA used during the early lunar colony feasibility missions. At least the research can be started with next year’s budget.” Her eyes eagerly drank in the documents before her finger froze and she gave me a shrewd stare. “Why?”

“Consider it as a down payment for my own peace of mind and that of Gakulu when I report back to him about this exchange.”

I twitched as I saw a fairly large tourist group appear in view down the walkway approach towards the museum.

“Well, you can definitely tell him my lips are as sealed as they can be. Now this is my 10:00 tourist group with a bunch of Earthers. So, off you go.”

I nodded and turned around, vanishing into thermoptic camo.

A quick scan showed that I’d given them a distant side profile and that only a few were squinting their optics, as if they weren’t sure what they had actually seen.

Good.

I hurried to the side and gave them as wide a berth as possible as I passed, whilst getting on the holo to my current fixer.

“V? Gig accomplished?”

“It’s done, with a minor complication that I really should’ve foreseen, but it’s been handled in a way that I should brief you on.”

“I look forward to hearing your report then. Don’t keep me waiting.”

888888888888888888888888888888888

Rogue Amendiares sat down in her booth in the Afterlife, ignoring the protesting biological bits of her back that acutely felt her 83 years of life - signaling that it would soon be time for another overall rejuvenation treatment.

She scanned her optics over her domain with cool detachment.

Tube dancers writhing to the club’s beat in the water, check.

Bar completely stocked, ready for the day ahead - Claire at her spot already serving some early customers.

A quick look through the secret cam above the main entrance - Emmerick was at his spot, scanning each person waiting in line for their rep to actually enter the club. He’d already sent four nobodies packing who’d thought to try their luck.

Her own bodyguard, Crispin stood beyond her booth as a deadly wall between her and anyone who managed to get through security or any of the merc regulars. As vetted as they were, there were many who could afford to buy off an Afterlife regular.

Nix emerged from his netrunner cave near the secure briefing room and she could tell instantly he had a very long session on the Net behind him.

“Anything wrong?” she asked as he sat down next to her with a steaming mug of extra strong coffee.

“Nah, Net’s just buzzing with Myers’ little recruitment drive,” he savored a long sip of the hot beverage. “Been talking to my fellow runners in the good ol’ NUSA, figuring what the sentiment is gonna be. How things are gonna shake out. Say one thing about us ‘runners, we really know how to hold onto a grudge. Had to duel seven idiots who just couldn’t be professional, even had to scorch one who decided to go lethal.”

“I hope you didn’t let your meetings get in the way-”

“Ahh, Rogue, don’t do me so dirty,” he said with a mock wounded expression. “Work was all done beforehand.” He pulled out a small shard case from a pocket and put it on the table. “Everything you’ll need for today.”

She opened it and sure enough eight shards for every scheduled client that was going to meet with her, even labeled. She allowed a mild smile to appear, “You’re spoiling me, Nix.”

“Biz is ticking up, least I could do,” he shrugged. “Oh, by the way, got a whiff on the BBS that V might have been spotted in local cyberspace. She was also sniffing around Myers’ little invitation trail.”

Rogue frowned at the mention of her business partner and friend. “Really? Not exactly a surprise, given Myers has hired her in the past.”

To this day, V had not said a word of detail about what kind of gig she had done for the President of the NUSA. Yet it didn’t take Sherlock Holmes level deduction given the news at the time, that V had literally saved Myers’ skin when Space Force One had been shot down in Dogtown. Anything beyond that was a black hole, except for the fact that not a few weeks after Myers showed up safe and sound back in Washington, V actually took on a MaxTac convoy with the 6th Street gang as fire support and won.

It would’ve been a sure death sentence for any other edgerunner, yet the impossible was V’s stock in trade and this was before she led a solo run on Arasaka Tower and not just survived, but absolutely massacred the security forces including Adam Smasher. The latter was something that V had been thoughtful enough to memorialize by chipping a BD rec implant. Gifting the braindance recording to her when they signed their partnership agreement for the Afterlife.

That fight was something Rogue experienced each week, just to see that chrome’d bastard on his knees, ruined and twitching, with flames licking the insides of his ruined chest. If she could, she would’ve cut that image and displayed it in the Afterlife on the largest Smartframe she could buy.   

In the aftermath, MaxTac decided that they would rather not lose another very precious and expensive team to V and wisely decided to just let her ambush be brushed under the proverbial rug. They also had their rep to protect and didn’t want the world to know that a sufficiently skilled and equipped edgerunner could, with a bit of planning, decimate a MaxTac squad.

“Yeah, but as I went down that rabbit hole as well, I could also see why ol’ el’ Presidente is doing this in the first place.”

Rogue frowned at the uncharacteristically haunted look on Nix’s face, “Do tell.”

He pulled off his shades and wearily rubbed his optics, “Fuck Rogue, I don’t know if this conversation should be held out here, it’s too hot, especially as any merc in here with a decent set of ear implants-”

Her optics glowed as she interfaced with the Afterlife’s systems, especially those around her booth, activating white noise generators and a privacy screen hissed down from the ceiling.

“Go ahead.”

“Seems the NUSA is worried about the wild AI managing to get beyond the Blackwall. Sticking their tentacles into our corners of the Net and from there influencing meatspace in ways that everyone will regret - if they’re even alive to do so in the aftermath or can even feel anything anymore.”

Rogue felt her spine shiver and stomach sinking through the floor, “What?! That’s im-” She stopped herself from finishing the instinctive reaction, “Is NetWatch even doing their job anymore?”  

“They are, but clearly Myers doesn’t think they can handle it anymore, something’s changed.”

“Has NetWatch said anything in response?”

“Nothing official, they don’t want to stoke fear in the public by seemingly legitimizing Myers’ actions. It would be admitting that they’re worried about the situation. I bet you my bank account we’re soon going to get a press release saying that it’s just another example of Myers’ saber rattling against Texas and the Free States.”

“And unofficially?”

“Lets just say that I’ve learned the CEO of NetWatch is going to catch a plane to Washington within the next week for a bilateral meeting to ‘discuss’ the situation. Publicly, I bet it will just be the usual song and dance for the cameras, Myers and the NUSA will get a slap on the wrist for disturbing the Net’s equilibrium with her call to arms and that’ll be that. Behind closed doors, however, that’s where I’d give anything to be a fly on the wall of that meeting. My guess, NetWatch is going to open a flow of eddies for recruitment and training for every netrunner that the NUSA manages to snag. All the while trying to eventually poach them.”

“Good guess, they are a corporation at the end of the day,” Rogue said with a scowl. You’d think the fate of humanity being in the balance would cool the greed a bit though. “Now the only question is, are you feeling any sudden patriotic urges, Nix?”

He snorted with amusement, “No, and NCs runners for the most part are of the same opinion. As much as rogue AIs are existential threats, this recruitment drive is also a thinly disguised excuse to put a leash on as many runners as they can. Not sure what Myers is really thinking with this. When a rogue AI comes knocking, your standard runner will just be cannon fodder. Someone as skilled as me, might give it the equivalent of a slap in the face before my brain fries.”

That was a good point. The old playbook that Rogue had lived through with the DataKrash and the Time of the Red, was to retreat entirely into meatspace, air gap and isolate equipment. Yet as she tried to imagine doing the same thing today in 2078-

“We’ll need to update our contingency plans. I’ll see about installing some equipment into the Afterlife, to make us more independent from the city grid. Not to mention a physical cut-off interrupt.”

“I’ll get started on that from my side,” Nix nodded.

Knocking on the privacy screen interrupted further conversation and a quick look at the time showed that the first client meeting was due to begin.

A thought to the system, sent the screen back into the ceiling and turned off the noise generators, letting the club’s thumping beat back into her booth.

What followed was a satisfying, productive afternoon and evening of biz; clients looking for problems to be solved and handing out the resultant gigs to the mercs waiting in the wings. If there weren’t a suitable merc on hand, she posted it to the Afterlife BBS for the more general roster of Afterlife affiliated edgerunners already in the streets to handle. 

The eddies flowed in nicely.

That is until a holocall arrived with a very familiar, stylized letter symbol floating in her vision.

Rogue picked up her shot of tequila and downed it, before letting the holocall through.

“V? It’s about time you called, for fuck’s sake.”

There was no immediate response, but Rogue twitched as the nice little squared screen in the top left side of her vision, which should’ve shown a virtual representation of the caller, faded away and instead became…       

Rogue’s eyes widened as she gazed at V, seemingly sitting to her left in the booth with a mischievous twinkle in her optics. She was wearing a skintight jumpsuit of black and blue stripes, with a new spin on Johnny’s old Samurai jacket over it, which only came up to mid back, whilst a vac collar was integrated into it.

Rogue immediately queried her internal agent, only to find it surprisingly and suspiciously quiet about any hacking activity coming through the holocall.

“Relax Rogue, you’ve got a very good firewall, Nix hasn’t betrayed you, this is just me…being me. The last thing Adam Smasher said in this life was, ‘Are you fucking with me now?’ At which point I used Johnny’s Malorian to splatter his skull sponge all over the floor.”

Rogue contained her instinctive outrage at being hacked, but acknowledged that this could only be her business partner who was currently plying her trade on Luna.

She casually put her feet up on the left bench of the booth, looking outwardly like the Queen of the Afterlife she was, just kicking it up for a bit of relaxation - and sure enough her feet vanished right through V’s image.

V rolled her eyes, her body flickering a foot to the left. “Anyway, I finally have a chance to check in properly and tell you in more than just a note, that my health issues are solved. Not going anywhere, plan succeeded.”

“Good,” Rogue nodded. The contingency plans for V failing to return from Luna could be properly shelved for a rainy day. “How are things up there?”

“Going well, already got the local equivalent of a fixer and the gigs roll in much slower than what I’m used to, can’t be helped given how complex being transported anywhere is. The money is very good though, which more than makes up for it.”

“That’s excellent to hear.”

V raking the eddies there, would eventually mean eddies in the bank for the Afterlife.

“Anyway, what’s the sitch on the street in NC?”

“Maelstrom’s having a minor civil war and leadership crisis.”

“What? Again?”

Rogue nodded, “Brick and Patricia had a falling out about two weeks ago. Northside’s a mess at the moment with both sides poking each other in indoor skirmishes. So far they’ve managed to keep it from spilling into the streets, but I’d say it's only a matter of time. I can’t complain too much at the moment. The amount of gigs coming my way from desperate clients looking to secure their interests with high end mercs means the eddies are flowing in.”

V slapped her own forehead in exasperation, “Brick you idiot. I swear that guy can sometimes be as dense as his name implies.”  

The leader of Maelstrom was something of a loose ally to V, a consequence for saving the borg’s RealSkin from death by shrapnel spitter when he had totally lost the gang leadership to Royce.

“Yeah well, at least this time he’s got a fair majority of the gang on his side. Patricia would lose if this was just a numbers game, but she’s got the heavies and most of the netrunners on her side, which is evening the odds and dragging the fight out.”

V took a moment, folding her arms and her optics stared at something to the side. “If things go too far, I suggest we do a hit on Patricia. Brick keeps an acceptable lid on his gang of cyberpsychos and stabilizes Northside.”

“Agreed,” Rogue nodded after a moment. “Patricia’s too ambitious. Her taking over would see them try to expand into Little China, and then we’d have another war against Tyger Claws.”

“Any moves from them since I was last in NC?”

“Nothing overt. The leadership is seemingly sitting content in their megabuilding penthouses, growing fat off all the biz flowing through Westbrook. There’s rumor though that there’s someone rising through the ranks and gaining rep, usually by the edge of a thermal katana.”

“Is this someone leaving sliced up bodies in their wake?”

“No, it’s all very formal, organized duels and they’re championing a ‘return to the old Yakuza ways’ or some such nonsense.”

“Something to keep an eye on, but the Tyger Claws could use a good shakeup, I suppose,” V mused. “Valentinos?”

“Skirmishing with 6th Street, who is trying to expand into the Glen. Both sides are in bidding wars to retain merc contracts for local protection to secure home assets, whilst the gangers run forward operations.”

“Fuck, have we had any merc casualties in the crossfire?”

“Nothing egregious. Mostly it's the small fry, unaffiliated edgerunners working for either side. We’ve had two major vehicular battles on the streets so far, MaxTac response wiped out both sides.”

V looked up into nowhere, lapsing into silence to mull the problem over. “Net traffic seems to think that 6th Street is the aggressor here, pure land grab. That mesh with word on the street?”

“Yes. 6th Street has seen an unusual influx of funding lately. No word yet on where it’s coming from.”

V looked down and her gaze almost made Rogue flinch, “If you have any feelers looking into that, pull it. 6th Street funding is not a subject we can afford to touch, trust me. It’s the sort of thing that causes accidents.” 

Rogue instantly understood the subtext of what V was trying to say. Her mind raced at the implications even as she nodded, “I’ll send a note to Nix immediately.”

“What’s your opinion on that front?”      

“The Valentinos are showing a strong defense and Padre has some of his best mercs helping, so there’s no real need at the moment to put a finger on the scale.”

“I agree, but let’s get ahead of the curve. 6th Street is not a gang I want to see gaining any ascendance in the south.”

Rogue was rather curious why the kid had an aversion to that gang, even though she had arguably accomplished one of her most legendary feats with them. That curiosity was tempered by practicality. As one of the major players of NC, V was fully entitled to keep her share of secrets, even from her business partner.

“I’ll begin a slow reduction in merc gigs in that direction.”

“Moxes?”

“Status quo with them, though they recently found and annihilated a Scav XBD outfit that had set up in Little China.”

“Let me guess, the Scavs grabbed a joytoy under Mox protection-”

Rogue scoffed, “No, the joytoy was a full time Mox.”

V rolled her eyes, “Okay, has the Scav IQ gone down even further lately?”

“I don’t think that’s possible, but Rita Wheeler led the team personally. Next day every single Scav who was in that nest was strung out on the building exterior, heads pulped from that bat she carries around.”

V scowled, smashing her fist against the booth table. It made a rather satisfying crashing thump, but none of the drinks were jostled at all. “Fuck, what is it with this city? It’s like the moment I’m out of town, everyone thinks its time to fuck around and cause a ruckus!”

“Like it or not V, the threat of you was a stabilizing influence on NC these last six months.”

“And now, look at all the business my absence is generating,” she said wryly. “Perhaps I should make this a biannual thing. Just fuck off, let the mice play then come back, stomp some heads to make an example.”

Rogue smirked, “It’ll certainly help our bottom line, kid.”

“Whatever, Pacifica?”

“You’d think the Voodoo Boyz would be the ones to take most advantage from your absence, but they’re too busy dealing with the Animals. It seems their little taste of real estate ownership of Grand Imperial Mall and the fight club established there has elevated them to a proper gang, by NC standards at least. They moved back in last week and the VDBs lost badly.”

V scowled, “Good, they’re a shadow of what they were under Maman Brigette, but if any gang in this city needs to enter the history books as extinct, then it’s them.” She looked around at the club denizens. “Any new edgerunners making waves?”

“No new Afterlife invitees since your little jaunt into the heavens. Though I hear that there’s a surge of rookies that Regina and Wakako have brought under their respective payrolls. Another little consequence of your absence in NC, lots of new blood wants to reach the top.”

“I wish them luck. Can you send me the eddie books? I’ve uploaded a routing number to your agent.” Rogue nodded and within a few seconds it was done. “Oh, another thing. I’m sending you the digikey to the Thorton ‘Beast’ in my garage. I need it sent to Muamar for a Netrunner package. He’ll know what to do.”

Rogue nodded and with a few mails through her agent, the wheels were set in motion. “Got it. Dare I ask why you need something like that?”

“Aldecaldos needs a bit of support from me in LA,” V looked off into nowhere for a moment. “Urgh, stupid daemon, listen I gotta go. Send my regards to Claire.”

“I will, see ya, kid. Good luck up there.”

88888888888888888888888888888888888  

Wade Bleecker carefully sipped his tea as he looked down onto the very busy dancefloor of the Heavy Hearts club.

His office on the third floor of the pyramidal building was a study of luxury mixed with practicality. Everything in its proper place, functional, but also the best of the best, with no compromise on quality; Turkish carpets, polished glass paneling with subtle holographics showing financial feeds, news from all over the world and ready to be enlarged with the slightest thought and gesture, two authentic leather couches facing each other over a low coffee table. The place had no monolithic desk or office chair as most favored by corpos.

He had firmly left that part of his life behind when Petrochem decided it would be more efficient and safe to assassinate him as part of their severance package.

He could count those who could actually see him in person in this room with only one of his artificial hands. Yet those singular individuals were important enough to clearly make the effort with the expense of this room and he needed somewhere to manage his Pacifica and international interests that was not within earshot of his family.

A long day of work was behind him already and the evening promised to be no better.

He wanted nothing more than to go home to his wife and daughter, but with businesses and a network that operated in multiple time zones that needed his attention, he would only be able to leave just after midnight.

A holocall with a very specific signature hit his optics and he smirked, feeling a pleasant surprise.

He sat down on the couch adopting his signature hands forward pose, dispensing with the theatrics of keeping his face in the darkness.

“V, to what do I owe the pleasure of your call?”

“Mr. Hands, hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time?”

He studied the small image of the most valued edgerunner in his orbit. Luna definitely agreed with her and that boded very well for many future projects and the most critical endeavour that he was currently undertaking.

“Not at all, V. I was just taking a tea break anyway.”

“Just calling to let you know that the primary project is looking very good at the moment, with minimal complications so far that are easily correctable. Everything is performing at spec. Long term study is naturally ongoing, but all indications are the project will meet all requirements.”

Wade struggled to contain the emotions of triumph, satisfaction, sheer joy and relief that bubbled upward from his heart. He allowed only the smallest of smiles to curl his lips.

“Excellent,” his eyes twinkled and he idly caressed his meticulously styled beard. “Has our partners given any timeline yet?”

“Provided no contraindications and problems, we’re looking at seven months at the earliest for first trials with a more broader, diverse base of subjects. If you want, I can see about getting you in that trial.”

He considered the offer, weighing the probable opportunity costs, the pros and cons, the schedule of his current planning seven months from now.

“Very well, that would be appreciated, V.”

She nodded, "Otherwise, I was also calling about Colonel Bennett.”

“Oh? And what about our dear leader of Barghest and Dogtown has caught your eye?”

“One of my crawlers picked up that Arasaka is going for another attempt to bring the good colonel under their sway.”

Wade immediately referenced all the latest intel he had from his multitude of eyes and sources that watched Bennett’s every move. None of his own flags had been tripped and everything looked status quo as it had been for the last year, since they had arranged for Bennett’s ascension to the top of the pack. 

“I see nothing overt or covert from my side, but I admit my eyes into Arasaka are not as extensive as yours.”

“They’ve managed to find leverage from his past. Bennett has a younger sister on the East Coast, in New Angeles.”

“If that’s the case, then I must give him significant credit for keeping this close to his chest. For this fact to have evaded my own extensive scrutiny of his past, it must have been subject to a high level military scrubbing of his record.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure at the moment how Arasaka could’ve gotten their hands on the unredacted version. My only theory is that it could be a deliberate leak by the NUSA. Myers is clearly not entirely satisfied by Hansen's death and also wants his legacy destroyed.”

Barghest membership in the eight years since the Unification War, had seen a steady compositional shift. A natural attrition of casualties from those who had been former NUSA soldiers, Colonel Hansen’s original elite unit who had invaded Night City to those who had joined since; abandoned veterans from other states and megacorps, mercs with no contracts and renegades from other NC gangs. If the NUSA was going after Hansen’s original unit, the sinew that held Barghest together and they succeeded…

“Can you send me all the pertinent information?”

Wade felt his agent’s ping alert as the data was smartly routed through the holocall, before it was automatically quarantined. He appended the data into a mail and sent it to his second best netrunner on the payroll.

“Tell Baird, I said hi,” V smirked with a cheeky smile.

He didn’t dignify that with a response, but frowned as he saw V’s expression shift into one of visible alarm.

“Hands! You’ve got trouble!”

Wade could barely even comprehend her words when his agent suddenly declared a breach through his personal firewall.

The ceiling panels opened, revealing the four turreted, MK32 machine guns that smoothly settled into their locked position and aimed for the wall that faced the hallway leading to his office.

His own reflexes finally kicked in and he rolled off his couch, to crouch behind it when the roar of the guns echoed through the office.

His hearing was spared as his agent automatically turned off and isolated his very sensitive cyber-ear implants.

He slapped the hidden compartment in the couch, revealing a specially modified Burya EM revolver.

It was barely within his grip when the secretly armored couch shuddered as it absorbed two rounds from his assailant.

The machine guns fired another burst and only now did he think to actually use his security system’s own eyes.

In his vision, the feed appeared via his agent.

One dead body outside the office door, with a tech precision rifle spilled from his hands, leaking blood and other cyberware fluids onto the carpeted floor.

“Careful Hands, that one had optic camo,” said V’s voice. “Only caught them because the elevator door to this floor was hacked-”

He flinched as the machine guns fired again.

The sabot explosive rounds caught another invisible enemy - an eruption of blood and fluids from mid-air in the hallway before the camo failed as the armored figure collapsed dead to the floor.

“That’s two,” commented V grimly. “Looking at the elevator sensor records, it carried enough weight for four augmented humans, or two with a single borg. Hands, that hand cannon of yours - I’ll project a target into your optics, fire when I turn the target from green to red.”

Wade belatedly realized that V was the one who had breached beyond his personal firewalls, as a green reticle appeared in his vision, which snaked upward and drew his eyes towards the wall of the office, which had been thoroughly cratered with bullet holes.

The time for outrage and thinking was later, as he carefully edged the Burya over his cover and aligned the sights to V’s provided target, which was moving left and right, as if she was still scanning for the target.

“Gotcha, bastard!” she snarled.

The reticle flicked to red and Wade pulled the trigger.

The Burya roared in his hands, the recoil perfectly absorbed by his own artificial hands and arms. His office machine guns fired mere milliseconds later.

All seven feet of armored borg crumbled to their artificial knees, their head reduced to a stump of ruin, which occasionally emitted sparks and leaked blood onto the composite armored chest plating.

“Clear,” declared V in his ear.

Wade carefully stood, keeping his weapon aimed and ready.

Seemingly emerging from the digital ether, V’s appeared in body, as if she was actually standing next to him.

She bowed slightly, “Apologies for the ghost hack through your systems, Hands. Time didn’t allow me to ask permission to save your life.”

“Apology accepted,” he said, even as his mind was running through the implications of this attack and the huge leap in netrunning ability that V had just demonstrated. “Now if you don’t mind-”

She vanished from view, reduced to a mere image on a holocall again - his own agent confirming that the hack had ended. He would have to thoroughly investigate how to prevent a recurrence. V was an ally, a partner, but if she could do this, then it stood to reason others could as well.

“I will let you get to it,” she said with a frown. “I will send you all data on this attack I can dig up from my end, but the fact this happened exactly as I was on a call with you is no coincidence.”

The holocall ended.

Wade took a few moments to settle himself, noting that his own neuro ware had performed perfectly, before he began sending emergency codes to his network.

This was going to be a mess.

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A/N: A much needed touch of home base from V and further aftermath POVs.

Hope you enjoyed and have a great weekend. Stay awesome chooms!

The Force Wills - Chapter 146

The hiss of the brig doors opening brought me out of my meditation.

Calling it a brig was a slight misnomer as it could be mistaken for an economy class cabin aboard the Aurodium Star minus a few conveniences like the ability to leave or use the entertainment systems. It was mostly used as a drunk tank for guests who had generally overindulged.

Captain Tommir Hathen of Corellia, master of the ship and ultimately responsible for every soul on board, stood like a pillar of stoicism as he regarded me with pursed lips and narrowed blue eyes. His emotions betrayed him though as he was torn between a mix of grateful relief and resignation to his own perceived fate.

“You’re free to go, commander.”

I nodded, donned and sealed my helmet before standing to leave.

He escorted me personally through the stupidly luxurious corridors of the ship; endless soft red carpeting on the floors, glossy white walls with multifunction screens advertising ship amenities and schedules. He was taking a route to avoid exposing me to his passengers as much as possible, but it was inevitable that we’d have to pass through some centralized areas to make it to the hangar bays where a Navy shuttle was waiting for me.

Our route therefore took us through one of the massive viewing domes of the ship, which to my eyes looked like someone had taken the upper recreation and swimming deck of an ocean-going old Earth cruise liner and stretched it out over a crazy amount of space. A quick mental calculation from a 250 meter radius of the dome gave me a rough figure of 196 000 square meters. I was looking at swimming pools from the smallest cosy jacuzzis to the largest Olympic size pools, water slides from the most anemic to terror inducing, roller coaster style super tubes.

Above it all was the dome with a beautiful view of Carida, being maintained with a medium orbit. It was made even more impressive due to the multi-hued gaseous nebula type aura slowly being pulled inward by gravity. A very visible reminder of what had nearly happened here.

No one had ever detonated so much refined rhydonium fuel close to a planetary gravity well for obvious reasons and I could already imagine Carida becoming home to many scientists studying how the residual particles and byproducts from the cataclysmic detonation were behaving.

The ship passengers were mostly ‘oohing’ and ‘aaaaing’ about the spectacle, whilst swimming, diving, drinking and eating.

Revealing the true cause was something that was being delayed as much as possible.  

It didn’t take long for the first of the joyful or relaxing civvies to recognize me.

Gasps from amazed kids and visible double-takes from the adults. 

The captain’s presence and our strident walk mostly discouraged anyone from approaching us as we weaved through the main thoroughfare of the dome. However, a gaggle of kids and to my eternal embarrassment, a fair number of teens and young adults, mostly human, twi’lek and togruta whose hormones were ruling their emotions, intercepted us before we could leave the dome. 

I ended up signing a number of random items that they’d had on hand; towels, datapads, swimming caps and other odds and ends. I firmly drew the line at signing any ‘naughty’ body part though and sent those ones on their way with subtle Mind Tricks after signing their swimming trunks on their ass whilst they were still wearing them - much to the amusement of others.

The line was drawn at fifteen signatures before I firmly ended the impromptu event.

“I’ve never seen a Jedi act like…” Hathen trailed off uncomfortably as we entered a turbolift.

“A celebrity?” I finished for him.

“Yes.”

“The unavoidable perils of being a COMPOR figurehead for the war. I can’t say no in this situation where I clearly have the time to spare, captain. It will also make for another distraction that will fly at the speed of gossip through your passengers. At least until someone tunes into local Caridan news.”

He coughed uncomfortably, “I instructed the crew to disable any holofeeds from Carida, citing technical issues to any passenger who asks.”

I sighed, “You’re delaying the inevitable, captain.”

He gave me an annoyed glare, “Do you know what it’s like to ride herd on the typical passenger of the Aurodium Star?” 

“Given their general net worth, I can well imagine.”

“Precisely. The company has already received complaints about the delay your intervention caused. There’s a StarLine internal affairs inspector on the way, who’s going to turn my ship into an even greater headache to run.”

“You have my com code, captain. I will explain everything to this inspector to the limits of security clearance. Your career will not end because of this.”

“Until that inspector finds out I threw the very Jedi who saved the company from going bankrupt in liability claims, into the ship’s brig for her efforts,” he said bitterly.

“There was no way you could know. You were acting as any good captain would after their bridge had just been attacked. I don’t blame you for it and I knew you would calm down, especially after you arrived in the system.”

Hathen shook his head, “The moment the company learns that I threw Commander Ahsoka Tano in the brig, it’ll all be about optics. That will also make the news eventually. People won’t see the context and the board will do damage control first, to hell with the consequences.”

The turbolift doors opened and we walked out directly into the primary hangar bay where a military shuttle from the Resolute was waiting for me.

“Captain, how far from retirement are you?”

He gave me a weird look but answered anyway, “Twenty-three years.” 

I gave him a raised brow in surprise, “You don’t look it.”

“Premature graying is in the family.”

There was much more to it than that, his health wasn’t the best, but I couldn’t exactly give a firm diagnosis without touching him. “Tell you what, captain. Should the worst happen and you find yourself without a job, contact me. I am on the board of MandalMotors and have contacts in Kalevela Spaceworks. I’m sure that we can find a captaincy worthy of someone of your caliber.”

The captain of a ship like this was vetted and trained to a degree that beggared belief, considering the very important and rich people whose lives he’d be responsible for at the end of the day. You didn’t hand over the reins of the Aurodium Star to a rookie captain who’d just gotten his stripes.

He folded his hands behind his back as we walked. “I know my employer well, my days are numbered with them. It’ll certainly be an adjustment to go from this to a mere Nau’ur class passenger yacht, but I can’t exactly throw this lifeline back in your face, Commander Tano.”

“I think we can do better than mere yachts, captain,” I gave him a smile and a mysterious wink, then held out my hand.

He frowned briefly, but took my hand and shook it. “I’ll look forward to hearing from you then.”

“Good luck, captain. Force be with you.”

I gave him a final wave and jogged up the embarkation ramp.

Anakin was waiting for me in one of the trooper seats with folded arms.

“Snips.”

I dumped myself into a seat next to him, “Skyguy. Did you enjoy the fireworks?”

He chuckled lightly, “Despite the initial moment of terror, yes, it was quite pretty.” He gave me a flat stare. “Now where is D-Squad?”

“Cloaked in a suitably random high orbit around Carida, waiting for my signal to land on the Resolute. Everyone is fine, including R2, so relax.”

He visibly did so and nodded. “Thanks. We’ll be having the debriefing with Master Windu in Intel immediately after we land. However, expect the Council meeting to happen directly afterward.”

I huffed as the shuttle began to lift off, “Fun.”

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The handover of the CIS encryption module was done quickly and Captain Vaad slotted it into a specially built terminal.

A press of a button and a few seconds later, her face twisted into a very satisfied smile. “Decryption complete.”

“Well done, to all of you,” Mace Windu gave me and Vaad a respectful nod. “We’ll have to be careful in how it’s utilized. If we suddenly act in ways that anticipate their attacks, they’ll know their communication is compromised again.”

“So we’ll have to actually let ourselves be caught flatfooted again,” Anakin folded his arms, clearly not liking the idea at all.

“Naturally, for any threats to strategic or critical points, we will respond. At some point, it’s inevitable that the enemy will discover we’ve cracked their coms. The actual point of this was just to buy time for our own secure communication system to come online.” He looked at his chrono. “Council meeting is almost due to start, let’s go.”

We left together for Briefing One.

The actual meeting would be conducted in a secured room of Valor station, since so many council members were actually here in person. Those on Coruscant would attend virtually via holo, whilst Windu, Anakin and myself would do the same from Resolute.

“No Master Yoda?” asked Master Plo Koon as Windu began the meeting in his capacity as 2IC of the Jedi High Council.

“No, he has a mission of his own,” Windu’s tone clued everyone into the unsaid order to not press the matter further. The meeting was using a brand new encryption in its holo transmission, prepared specifically for the occasion, but no one was going to take chances. “I will bring him up to date on events here in Carida and this meeting as soon as possible. Our first item on the agenda is Knight Skywalker’s actions during the hunt for the Separatist Shadow Fleet.”

“I bring forward that a formal motion of censure should be placed on Knight Skywalker,” declared Master Saesee Tiin. “He allowed the enemy to attack Champala when he was clearly in a position to prevent it. Tens of thousands are dead because of his inaction.”

I just barely stopped myself from rolling my eyes in exasperation.

Windu tented his fingers together, “So noted. Does the motion have a second?”

“It does,” confirmed Master Ki Adi Mundi.

No surprise there. Honestly, I wish these two could get smashed over the head with a clue-by-four. It’s a frakking war and they still commanded it from their own personal ivory towers. You would think almost two years of destruction and death would’ve done something to drag them out into the land of rationality and military pragmatism, but nope.

That they were going for censure and not expulsion showed that they at least had some sense of proportion and could read that the politics of the Council was now firmly against the traditionalists. 

The subsequent vote was a bloody formality, with Mundi, Tiin and Eeth Koth voting in support of censure, whilst the rest voted against.

“I just wish to state for the record,” began the rough voice of Master Even Piell. “That while I voted against the censure…” He turned to look at Anakin directly. “Knight Skywalker, I can fully appreciate the dilemma you were faced with. There was no ending to this that wouldn’t have caused some other world to pay the price that the people of Champala had to pay. I trust that you will in the future, however, do everything in your power to find a path that does not put you in such a position.”

It was an entirely useless statement, we couldn’t dictate the enemy’s actions. There would be other Jedi in the war who would have to make similar decisions, but the sentiment of not becoming cavalier and expedient about such sacrifices was delivered.

Anakin nodded, “I will, Master Piell.” 

“We now come to the matter of Padawan Tano,” Windu and the council turned to me. “You were entrusted with the escort and protection of the latest group of adepts for their Gathering ceremony. First defending them against the pirate assault of Hondo Ohnaka and then keeping them safely out of harm's way when elements of the Shadow Fleet attacked Ansion. You made an alliance with the pirates when the Crucible’s hyperdrive failed, and aided them in the subsequent battle. It was during this that you infiltrated an enemy Lucrehulk, where General Durge himself was and you defeated him.”

I bowed in the ensuing silence. There was also a mild burst of pride from Master Plo Koon that he allowed me to perceive because of my accomplishment. “It is as you say, Master Windu.”

“From this Council, you have our profound thanks for not only saving our young, but also defeating a scourge that has taken many lives across the galaxy for thousands of years, including dozens of Jedi over the centuries. It’s also my duty to inform both you and Knight Skywalker that the Chancellor has put both your names forward to receive the Cross of Glory, for consistent service, above and beyond duty, with direct contributions to the Republic in combat operations. It will require a vote by the Senate Army oversight committee to confirm, but it’s a formality as I understand it.”

Anakin and I bowed in acceptance.

Windu looked around the council, “I open the floor to any questions regarding these events.”

“I for one would like to know how a padawan, as accomplished and strong of the Force as she is, had managed to do what literally thousands before her have failed to do,” asked Master Kit Fisto.

“I can answer that,” Obi-Wan declared. “A plan Anakin, Ahsoka and I had developed since our previous run-in with Durge. One which she was in a position to execute since she had found him on a ship. It’s not a matter of fighting Durge conventionally, but more outmaneuvering him into a position where you can string him along and lure him into an escape pod. It’s then a matter of controlling the ship and the pod to send the gen’dai into the nearest star - where no amount of his regeneration will prevent him from being reduced to less than his constituent atoms.”

“I see,” Fisto smiled with satisfaction in his big black eyes. “An idea so obvious in retrospect. My congratulations on successfully implementing it, padawan. It couldn’t have been easy.”

“It wasn’t, master,” I confirmed.

“We must now think of the consequences,” Master Koon began. “Count Dooku is now without a high general of the droid army. Who will he choose as a replacement?”

“Does he truly need one at this point?” Master Rancisis stroked his long hairy beard. “We all know Durge, despite his long experience, was actually a terrible general who was more a figurehead than anything else. A locus of to instill fear, much like Grievous before him. The true decisionmakers and planners are behind Durge and all intelligence indicates it's not one person, but rather a small group of strategists working together with Dooku.”

Windu nodded, “Your point is well made, Master Rancisis. It is high time that our full resources will now be devoted to unmasking this group and bringing them into the light of day. That being said, I can now reveal that as of just before this Council meeting began, a covert operation has concluded successfully to break the latest Separatist communication cypher.”

I felt the entire Council perk up with an intense interest, before quite a few of them stared at both Anakin and I. It was as if I could almost see the machinations in their minds as they made their deductions by what Windu was revealing, combined with the fact that we were still in the room on something that was hyper secret.

“Padawan Tano, your full report, please,” Windu gestured graciously with the invitation.

I stepped forward slowly into the virtual center of the holographic council chamber and began to recite the relevant points of D-Squad’s mission to obtain the encryption module.

“Very well done, Ahsoka,” Master Shaak Ti bowed her head slightly to me. “I suggest Padawan Tano be given an assignment to the CFK; her infiltration talents could flourish there.”

It went unsaid that the actual suggestion was that I be assigned to the two remaining Jedi Shadows who worked for the CFK.

“Your suggestion is well received Master Ti. I personally would like our talent pool in that area… to increase,” Windu said delicately. “The final say must come from Master Yoda, however.”

“I thank you Master Ti, for your consideration,” I said serenely and bowed to her. “I must also report to the Council, that by providence of the Force, I was given warning regarding the Separatist plot to destroy Valor space station and the strategy conference, using the hijacked GAR star destroyer, Vanguard.”

My report went on for nearly a full hour as I was asked for clarification or explanation by various council members as it went on.

I had to very carefully dance around Captain Gregor’s survival and aid, but it wasn’t too difficult.

After the main gist of events was related, I became rather aware that the entire council was feeling a profound sense of gratitude to me. Even Ki-Adi bloody Mundi looked at me with a grudging respect, whilst Tiin and Koth nodded stiffly with thanks at me saving their lives from utter immolation.

“Well,” Windu gave one last look around the room. “I think I speak for everyone here, Padawan, that we will give you more than mere thanks for saving the lives of the entire High Command, the Council and the entire Caridan local defense fleet. Not to mention the people aboard the Aurodium Star. I will personally recommend to the Chancellor that you be awarded the Hero’s Cross and I’m sure you can expect the Caridans to do something as well.”

The Hero’s Cross was a specific GAR award that applied only to non-clone officers and was essentially the second highest award for valor that could be given by the Republic. The only way to go higher was to receive the Star Clustered Hero’s Cross - which hadn’t yet been awarded to anyone and it required a full Republic Senate confirmation.

I bowed in simple thanks.

“Further questions or comments,” he invited.

“I’m quite concerned over the new ion weapon used to capture the Vanguard,” Obi-Wan stated. “Have you and R2 looked further over the data you were able to retrieve, padawan?”

“No, master. Further evaluation will require time, dedicated researchers with labs and a budget behind them. I suggest an all-command’s bulletin be sent out warning about it in the meantime.”

“It will be done,” confirmed Windu. “I will advise Republic Intelligence to go over our list of missing ships in the last year. It seems quite strange that the Separatists would have such a potentially decisive weapon, yet fail to use it on a wide scale.”

“I would also advise that all fleet commands be on the lookout for similar ‘fireship’ tactics,” I cautioned with a grim look. “It will not take great effort to use, for example, a stripped down Munificent, in a similar role. It remains in hyperspace and jumps to within range of our fleet, much like a torpedo bomber and detonates, wiping out an entire part of a fleet that’s too clustered together.”

“The suggestion being that we have to spread our formations even further out?” Obi-Wan asked pointedly.

“Correct, Master. At least an eighty kilometer separation between each ship. Yes, we will lose AA fire concentration, but as recent battles have shown - the distance between competing fleets are increasing as torpedo technology and penetration aids advances. Our main fleet elements will need to increase their individual anti-fighter defenses.”

“How likely are the Separatists to actually employ this fireship tactic?” Master Adi Gallia asked thoughtfully. “As relatively cheap as a Munificent is, it’s still a considerable waste given the strategic assets such as hyperdrives, power plants, shield generators and armor that you’re throwing into the fire.”

“The idea is out there now, Master. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see it being tried already as we speak out on the frontline battlespaces.”

Windu nodded, “We will communicate with the frontline commands as soon as this meeting concludes regarding this danger. We must now speak of the results of this Conference in private. Knight Skywalker, Padawan Tano, thank you for your time. You are dismissed.”

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D-Squad’s debriefing after they clandestinely landed on the Resolute was not something that I relished doing, but there was no choice in the matter.

With the exception of R2, all the droids were put through memory wipes of the mission, which I had to oversee personally.

QT-KT, U9-C4, M5-BZ, R4-K7, were all lined up on a conveyor in the Resolute’s droid maintenance bay, plugged into the local systems, which were in turn all under the control of M8.

“What happened to Captain Gregor, commander?”

Colonel Gascon stood next to my right leg, barely coming up to my knee. His tiny eyes alight with concern and curiosity.

“Classified and compartmentalized, colonel,” I sighed as the inevitable question came. “He sends his goodbyes and well wishes and hopes that one day he can visit again. Clone commandos don't exactly get much downtime.”

“Hmmm, thank you. That’s a pity, it would’ve been nice to see him off,” Gascon mused. “What’s going to happen to D-Squad?”

“It’s not going to disband, if that’s what you’re worried about. The idea is too good, especially now that it’s been proven to work in certain scenarios. You’re going to get your promotion to General, at which point you’ll have your choice of assignments.”

I smiled at his stunned look.

“General Gascon,” he muttered to himself, clearly liking the way that sounded. “Ha! And those bastards on the homeworld thought I would never even get my foot in the door at the Army!”

I chuckled, “You certainly proved them wrong… general.”

He folded his arms, chest puffing with satisfaction. “That I did and I can’t wait one day to shove it in their faces.” 

“Not too strongly though,” I cautioned.

“Of course, of course, now what to do? Go back to strategic planning or…” He trailed off, now looking visibly conflicted.

“You’ve gotten a taste of fieldwork, general. It’ll not be easy going back to a desk. If I may make a small suggestion?” He nodded. “D-Squad is uniquely qualified to be invisible in a galaxy that only sees droids as labor that works in the background. Imagine your command center implanted into a B2, then with a squad of reprogrammed B1s sent behind enemy lines for intel and sabotage work.”

“That’s a… very intriguing idea, commander,” he scratched his chin in thought, a smile slowly growing on his face. “Why stop there? Any droid in use by the enemy that’s large enough to house my command center can be used as a disguise - Magnaguards, tac droids, the list of industrial droids is too long to name!”

“Precisely, you can potentially go where Republic Intel can never hope to go. As we’ve just proven, the most secure spaces that the Separatists have are no barrier to D-Squad.”

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The rest of the day was a non-stop marathon of getting caught up with the backlog of 2IC work for the Resolute that had been piling up in my absence. Baylan Skoll had done a reasonable job of it, but I found myself having to redo a fair number of his flimsiwork to my own personal standards. It would’ve been nice to just have a chat with him, yet it wasn’t to be as he had already been recalled to Coruscant to take up the full mantle of his generalship and command of a fleet.

Then if that wasn’t enough, ensconced in my quarters under intelligence misdirections and ECM, I also caught up with the doings of the Fulcrum network.

The biggest issue coming through was HK’s final plan for infiltration of Sidious’ lair in the Industrial Works of Coruscant.

It was one of the most horrific gambles that caused a black hole to pop into my stomach at the mere thought. Made even worse, that the infiltration could only happen while I was on Coruscant, to at least make use of the limited prescience there to divine if there were any major problems with the plan.

I tapped the encrypted datapad slowly, letter by letter - each tap feeling like the gongs of doom going off in my montrals - ‘Proceed and prepare for my eventual arrival.’

My finger hovered over the encrypt and send button, now it felt like my spine wanted to crawl out of my skin.

“Frak,” I muttered as my finger pushed onto the large datapad.  

That die was cast.

Now to deal with the next major issue.

Savage Opress, his training under Dooku was nearing a point where he would be sent out into the galaxy. In fact… he was going to be replacing Durge!

The burst of incredulous laughter spilled out of me. “Oh boy, ah ha ha. That’s… that’s classic.”

Fulcrum would soon have access to even more juicy CIS military secrets and if Savage was careful enough - even Palpatine’s side of the shadow war may soon be open to him. However, I wasn’t blind to the cost or what one of Savage’s primary directives would be - hunting Jedi.

There would be few who could truly stand against Savage - in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the job of bringing him down would fall to Obi-Wan, Anakin or myself. Though they could send Windu and that was another story in itself. I’d have to impress on the zabrak that he was only to engage the Master of Vaapad in order to retreat.

It was close to midnight in ship time when I felt Anakin approach the door to my quarters.

Quickly hiding my encrypted datapads, I resynced and disabled my intel ECM, just in time for him to press the entry chime.

“Come in, Skyguy.”

He walked in, waiting for the door to close before looking at me with an expression I knew all too well.

“What’s wrong now?” I sighed, leaning back in my chair.

“Word just came through, both Chancellor and Senate have authorized the use of orbital strikes for the Navy.”

I gave him a flat stare, “With no conditions?”

“Well, some, it has to at least go to a general or admiral for authorization and it’s also a guarantee that you’ll be brought before the Council to defend the decision after the fact. If it’s found to be unjustified, GAR military tribunal with a potential death sentence.”

“Well, that’s something at least.”

The nightmare scenario that had been running in my head was every captain in the navy running around with that authority completely unchecked.

I felt the probability lines shift around me before my personal comlink went off.

My eyes widened as I began to comprehend the reason for the change.

“Shabla,” I muttered and quickly donned a casual Grand Army exercise shirt to at least look presentable on holo.

The stern, royal visage of my Mandalorian sovereign, Duchess Satine Kryze appeared over my arm. However, it seemed we were both in a very casual setting, because her blond hair was not tamed by any head-dress or weave. She was wearing her royal robe, but it was as if she had been caught mid-makeup session and had no choice but to make this call. Through the Force, I could perceive it was very early morning in Sundari.

“Duchess,” I bowed my head. Trying to ignore how more beautiful she was with her hair like this and minimal makeup.

“Manda’lor Vizsla… I apologize, I didn’t think of the time difference,” she sighed, I could feel despair and fear coil tangibly around her spirit, yet she was keeping her poker face with a beskar iron will. “Mandalore and… me personally, are in need of you urgently.”

I frowned, “What’s the problem, highness?”

“As of a few hours ago, Lieutenant Korkie Kryze of the Mandalorian Blades, has been reported as missing in action.”

My stomach twisted and my mind raced to remember where the various Blades squads were deployed and Korkie’s in particular.

“His squad should be on Raydonia along with the star destroyer Avalanche, on recon patrol.”

The Raydonia system was a dozen lightyears north-east beyond the Mandalorian sector that straddled the theoretical front lines between the CIS and the Republic in that region. It wasn’t a particularly important one to fight about, but it served as a useful early warning station to Separatist movements along the Salin Corridor hyperlane which drew a line along the sector’s northern frontier.

It wasn’t exactly a milk run, but I had thought the assignment was well within the capabilities of my own secret apprentice in the Force.

Korkie had grown considerably strong for someone who had begun the training so relatively late in life. Clan Vizsla instructors had also put him through hell, combined with quite a handful of successful combat deployments and he had become someone any of my clansmen and women would fight alongside in a heartbeat.    

“Details are still few, Manda’lor. The Avalanche's captain believes the Blades squad is still somewhere on the planet, but out of communication for some reason. Conventional means of search have all been exhausted and the ship can’t stay in orbit for much longer.”

I pushed through the fog of the future, scanning along probability lines for the best immediate approach, “Duchess, if you can make an urgent post-facto request for my aid through Master Kenobi, it would help to smooth things out a lot. I’m just coming off a mission and I don’t want the Council to throw something else on my shoulders.”

She nodded, “He was going to be my next call in any event.”

“In the interest of time, I will use a proxy holodroid and take a ship from Concordia.”

Satine’s blue eyes stared at me with a tumult of mixed emotions, but a measure of relief and thankfulness surged forward. “Thank you, Manda’lor Vizsla. I’ll forward all the data I’ve received to you.”

My comlink chirped and flashed with a compressed file downloading, “Received. I’ll find him, Duchess.”

She nodded, turning her head to begin wiping away a tear from her left eye before she quickly cut the feed.

Anakin folded his arms, giving me a knowing glare, “You sure you don’t want to sleep first, Snips?”

I shook my head, “I’ll sleep after I get the holodroid on its way to Raydonia.”

“I’ll get the Omen ready then. First get something to eat before you join me, consider that an order.”

“Yes, master.”

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It was good to be back in my own Kom’rk class fighter-transport after so long.

She hadn’t just been gathering dust at Hangar Bay One since I last used her, as Resolute’s own Mandalorian Blades squadron sometimes used her as their primary mode of transport.

The Omen hadn’t changed all that much, except under the hood, where the hyperdrive modifications and further tinkering allowed the ship to reach a 0.65 rating. The holodroid proxy interface chair and systems had been moved further aft of the ship, and placed in its own partitioned space in the troop deck. This afforded a measure of privacy and security so that no one could just hop on or mess with the system.

When I arrived, both Anakin and R2 were busy with a thorough system diagnostic.

“Get comfortable, Snips, this is going to take a few,” he said distractedly, staring into a large datapad.

I got out of my beskar’gam and took a moment to re-attach the helmet to it. “M8, go ahead and plug in for a recharge.”

“Of course, mistress.”

After a few minutes, Anakin patted the interface chair, “Go ahead.”

I hopped on and thumbed the controls to recline it, “Any problems?”

“A few accumulated program errors, nothing R2 and I couldn’t handle. The system is physically healthy, no bugs or spy programs either.”

I couldn’t help the big grin on my face, “Oh master, could it be you’re finally learning something about proper levels of paranoia?”

He rolled his eyes as he fitted my head with the interface circlet and sensors. “Comfortable?”

I nodded.

“System startup, we have a signal at 96%,” he frowned into the holoscreen as the data stream from Concordia came through. “This is a new model proxy.”

“Yup, you can gush over the specs later, Skyguy. Hit me.”

He nodded, “Syncronizing… three… two… one… brace yourself.”

I closed my eyes and…

The disjunction was acute and for the briefest of moments it felt like I was in two places at once, my mind beginning to bend awfully… threatening to tear…

I gasped harshly and opened my eyes to regard a completely different room, my HUD vision overlay scanning and flickering over the contents.

This was the large droid workshop in the basement of the Vizsla compound, filled with tools, fabrication machinery, computers and an oil bath.

My new holodroid body was currently suspended in the air by a large robotic claw hung from the ceiling.

“Security key recognized,” declared a harsh electronic voice that rumbled throughout the room. “State password.”

I used my thoughts with the interface in my vision to dictate: Do androids dream of electric sheep, in English.

“Password accepted. ID verified. Defenses standing down. Welcome, Manda’lor.”

The workshop security system brought the arm down and the large claw let go, letting me stand and move freely.

I looked down at myself and marveled somewhat. Vizsla techs and engineers had outdone themselves with this one. The proxy droid looked like it could easily walk the future battlefields of Skynet in another universe. It was inspired by the classic T-800, but given a female base chassis, which made it more like the T-900 ‘Cameron’ infiltrator model. Its armoring was a 20:80 beskar-titanium alloy, which made it as durable as a B2 with none of the weight problems. It was essentially the hunter-killer variant of the holodroid proxy, given the designation of HK-HP.

A flick of my wrists and two clawed vibroblades popped out of each hand, another flick and they smoothly retracted in the blink of an eye.

Compartments in the upper thighs opened, revealing dual lightsaber hilts ready for use and two WESTAR blasters.

Satisfied, I closed them up and engaged the default holosheathe.

“Funny, Skyguy,” I commented wryly in the holo body and voice of Ki-Adi Mundi. “Now fix it.”

I felt his amusement, “One sec, that expression is perfect, just getting a digital render for posterity. Done. System is released to you.”

The holosheathe shimmered and changed to me in full beskar’gam.

My comlink interface opened, “Tano to Togai.”

I left the workshop and took the stairs directly into the lower floor of the Vizsla mansion. It took a while for the governor of Concordia to respond, since the local time was just before five in the morning. 

“Manda’lor?” he said blearily - he was still in bed upstairs, awkwardly speaking into his comlink whilst entwined around his sleeping wife, Oba.

“Apologies for waking you. I’m just informing you I’m downstairs in the HK proxy. I’m taking a Kom’rk from the hangars. Don’t be alarmed if you see one leaving.”

Togai Vizsla knew immediately that something was very wrong. “What happened, Manda’lor?”

“Korkie Kryze is missing in action along with the entire Blades squad with him.”

I heard him cursing under his breath for a few moments and then heard the groans of annoyance from Oba as she was disturbed from her sleep. “Sorry dear. I understand, Manda’lor. I’ll get the ground crews to assist your preflight.”

“That would be much appreciated.”

I closed the channel and hurried out of the mansion, taking the opportunity to test the pure physical capabilities of the HK-HP, bursting into rapid sprint. It easily held a speed of just over fifty kph and while it could go faster, I didn’t want to make a mess of the Vizsla grounds and walkways.

The hangar bays were four large domed cylinder buildings in the west of the compound. There were currently two Kom’rk’s and a single Fang fighter parked inside.

I approached the Kom’rk that looked in best shape and had the name Aurna, stenciled on its side in Mando’a.

The four starship techs that served these hangars burst in about ten minutes later, out of breath and clearly having suffered verbal encouragement from Togai to hurry their asses out of bed.

“Manda’lor,” they chorused, saluting me with clenched fists to chest.

I returned the salute, “No time for pleasantries, I’m afraid. I’m a quarter of the way through pre-flight inspection. I need to be airborne yesterday. Let’s get cracking.”

“Yes, manda’lor.”

With the extra hands, the Aurna was refueled and readied within eight minutes, but the moment I started the engines from the cockpit, the hyperdrive motivator threw a few error codes our way. Instead of troubleshooting, we just straight replaced it from spare parts, which took just under an hour due to the complexity.

Finally, when it was done, I got green across the board and lit the engines properly for takeoff.

Togai had worked his own magic to get my flight clearance through the system and so I didn’t hesitate to guide it out of the hangar and push the throttle to max to get me out of the atmosphere.

“R2 has already interfaced with your navicomputer, hyperspace course should be uploaded,” Anakin told me.

“Have you daisy chained with the Aurna’s transmitter?”

“Already done, Snips,” Anakin said patiently. “Now get it into hyper so you can sleep.”

The moment I crossed the mass shadow, I pushed forward on the hyperdrive lever and the Aurna shot itself forward, leaving the Mandalore system behind.

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Raydonia was a sixteen hour trip so I put the Aurna on autopilot and disconnected from the HK-HP to grab a full eight hours of sleep directly on the interface chair.

M8 brought me breakfast, which I quickly wolfed down before she handled the job of reconnection.

Another disjunction of perspective, and I was back, with a body of metal and hurtling through hyper thousands of light years away from my true meatbag self.

The remainder of the trip was spent doing training to see if the droid techs had managed to replicate a near organic dexterity and fluidity to the movements of the HK-HP. The platform used a combination of HK-47 and the droid commando’s motivator/movement system, further improved and iterated upon. I was very satisfied that I could still pull off most of the Ataru forms with a bit of aid via the Force. I could even imitate some of the inhuman moves that Grievous could do with lightsabers, spinning my hands rapidly at will to make red lightsaber buzz saws on command, contorting myself in half or crawling about on the ceiling.

When the Aurna emerged from hyper just outside the mass shadow of Raydonia’s second lifeless moon, it wasn’t a surprise to find that there was no Venator evident anywhere in the star system.

“M8, what’s your evaluation of the data from the Avalanche?”

“Worrying, mistress. The Blades squadron took the opportunity to head planetside for some training purposes, deploying from their own Kom’rk transport. They practiced high-altitude insertions and jet pack flight, before landing at coordinates near the equator in a dense forest belt, 43 km east of the Khelid mountain range. Contact was lost on the second day and the Avalanche launched clone trooper search parties in gunships, including low level scans to a radius of 100km from their camp site. No sign of them was found and Captain Krut had to call off the search and declare the Blades squadron MIA.”

“So did they send back their Kom’rk via autopilot or is their pilot still on the Avalanche?”

“The former, mistress.”

“Live together, die together,” I muttered, staring at the sensor readings of the planet beyond.

Raydonia was a temperate, forested world sparsely populated by mostly human farmers and nomadic herdsmen. There were only villages and minor towns at best, as it was a world that was only settled more than fifty years ago. None of the original settlers had come here to pack themselves into tight spaces, wanting to get away from the overcrowded core worlds. That sentiment had been preserved through to the next generation from the looks of these readings. They were true frontiersmen, who were the type who became uncomfortable when they spotted their neighbor’s fireplace smoke on the horizon.

That meant huge swathes of open space, valleys, plains and mountains which were just begging for the CIS to come in stealth ships to set up shop. They wouldn’t even need to use cloaked ships really, given how the locals didn’t even have a dedicated spaceport or aerospace control in place.

How the Avalanche could theoretically miss a CIS presence was easy to explain given sensor masking and underground construction.

I set a course for a low orbit around Raydonia, holding out the bait for any cloaked ship that wanted to try an ambush, even keeping my shields offline and taking passive readings with the occasional active ping towards the planet below.

Nothing caught on my hook after five complete orbits, so I made a deorbit burn.

After riding the heat of atmo entry deceleration, I set up an 8km altitude cruise that would take me over the Khelid mountain range. 

I pushed outward with the Force, opening up my senses to encompass most of the planet.

Korkie was my pupil, but our long distance learning meant that I didn’t really have a strong enough connection with him to solidify an actual Bond. That meant I had to do this the hard way. 

‘Korkie,’ I pushed the word through the Force, sending the call outward.

I felt the slightest resonance, as if it had found purchase in a mind somewhere nearby, but only just.

‘Korkie!’

There was a definite resonance this time, which told me that he was either asleep or unconscious. The good news was this confirmed he was still alive somewhere. He’d need to wake up properly before I could get more meaningful information.

I changed course for a direct flyover of the campsite coordinates, lowering altitude to a mere 300 meters and slowing down considerably.

Visual scans showed it was a small depression in the lee of a hill covered by the near endless forest, with no signs of life besides local insect fauna.

“No convenient landing spot. Going to need a ground level look, M8. Switching the ship to drone mode, she’s all yours.”

After a quick climb down to the troop deck, I opened a single troop deployment door and just dropped through.

I let the fall accelerate me for a few seconds before beginning to bleed away momentum into the Force and letting the HK-HP’s feet jets in the ankle flare for the final part of the landing.

My metallic feet touched down on soft loamy earth and tall blue-green trees towered over me by more than thirty meters in all directions. Below the canopy of the forest, the fantastic sounds and cries of alien fauna bounced and echoed from bough to bough. The mid-morning sun threw picturesque light rays through the gaps in the canopy, letting precious sunlight reach the forest floor. The HK-HPs olfactory sensor did an amazing job of even letting me smell the humid air, that my mind interpreted as a pleasant old pine with an exotic twist, even though there was not a single pine tree on the entire planet.

It was just a few meters walk from this point to reach the campsite.

As expected it was a mass of disturbed ground thanks to countless footsteps, first from the Blades preparing to sleep for the night and pitching their one-man tents, then in the subsequent arrival of the clone search parties who had spread outward from this point.

“M8, please tell me the Avalanche search parties took image scans before they trampled all over the place.”

“They did follow procedure, mistress.”

“Integrate the data into an augmented reality overlay in my vision.”

It took my droid intelligence a few minutes but eventually a curtain of light fell over my visual perceptions, before resolving into how the campsite had looked before the clone troopers landed.

I took a few steps forward and knelt near where the sole small camp fire had been, then looked around at the footstep pattern as a whole around it. One thing was immediately clear.

“Something disturbed their sleep and they all ran to the north-west before using their jetpacks.”

“Jetpack fuel byproduct residue from your olfactory sensor supports that conclusion, mistress.”

I headed in that direction and looked up, spotting numerous small branches, either bent or cracked as they had ascended through the canopy.

“Remove the AR layer.”

Now the same disturbance to the flora was less visible, but the evidence was clear.

“M8, narrow hires scan to the north-west, what do you see?”

“Nothing immediately noteworthy, mistress. There is a farm 130km into that direction. Nine human lifesigns and considerable amounts of domesticated fauna.”

“Is there any indication that the Avalanche crew interviewed any locals?”

“None, mistress.”

“All right, bring the Aurna overhead for rendezvous.”

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I brought the ship to a hover a few hundred meters away from a large farmhouse, before initiating landing.

The house was a curious mix of imported modular plasteel construction and local brick on top. The exterior was painted in earthy browns and greens, with some parts of the house even built into the hill it was situated on, giving the impression that it had sprouted from the ground. The farm itself was hundreds of acres of grassland supporting huge herds of nerfs that merrily grazed under the supervision of spherical droids that hovered in overwatch. 

Coming out to meet me was the human owner of the farm, with his wife and three grown sons and two daughters, all of them armed with long blaster rifles. They weren’t exactly brandishing them, nor was their body language or presence in the Force aggressive. They merely casually cradled the weapons in their arms and looked both self-assured and defiant.

“Well, let’s get this started,” I sighed.

I emerged from the Aurna’s embarkation elevator and made a casual walk towards the farmhouse with my hands in plain view and palms outward.

At eighty meters the farmer raised his voice, “That’s far enough Mandalorian.”

I took the hint and stopped. “My name is Commander Ahsoka Tano of the Jedi Order and Grand Army of the Republic. I apologize for disturbing your fine morning but I would appreciate it if you could answer some questions.”

“No, take your ship, your war, and leave,” he said with a scowl on his full bearded face.

“It will take barely a few minutes,” I said leadingly, weaving the Mind Trick carefully on his mind.

He gave a look to his wife and eldest, having a silent conversation. The Trick had at least managed to break down the inherent hostility and suspicion. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn Raydonia had suffered quite a few rogue Mando or Deathwatch raids in the last few decades.

“Ask your questions, Mando,” he allowed grudgingly.

“Did your herder droids or security system see any Mandalorians fly overhead a few days ago?”

He snorted, “Fly? More like had a battle in the air over my farm in the middle of the night. Nearly gave us all heart attacks.”

I sensed immediately he was speaking the truth as he knew it and that worried me. Why would the Blades engage an enemy and not relay that fact to the Avalanche? The obvious answer was they wouldn’t, but that they had been prevented. Their coms had been jammed.

“Did you see who they were fighting?” 

The farmer looked to one of his younger sons and nodded. The boy hurried back inside the house before returning with something carried in his arms and throwing it contemptuously onto the grass before them.

A droid commando head, cleanly severed by a vibroblade.

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A/N: The aftermath and clones are clearly not CSIs ;-)

Have a great weekend and stay awesome folks.

The Force Wills - Chapter 145

Setting a new record getting into my beskar’gam had not been intentional at all.

It had been made to quickly get in, but this was the first time I’d used a minor Force Jump combined with Speed to get my legs in.

‘I take it this an emergency, mistress,’ said M8 wryly. The poor thing had been frightfully bored on this mission so far. She couldn’t even go onto the Holonet because of EMCON procedures and had to be content with her internal databases.

“Oh yes,” I said emphatically as the back plating closed and I donned my helmet.

Another burst of Speed and I was outside the Talon, catching up to Gregor who was kneeling behind the cover of the landing legs, scanning the kilometer long spinal bay with his weapon and Katarn visual systems.

He had an almost visible twitch of surprise to seeing me in the Mandalorian style armor, but kept his cool professionalism.

“Nothing so far, commander.”

“Good. QT come in.”

“QT here, commander.”

“Cloaking device status,” I demanded.

“Repairable, ETA seven hours.”

That was an eternity and we might as well invite the enemy to a fight already. “Any way to speed that up?”

“Estimate is as accurate as can be calculated within a five percent margin of error.”

“Fine, keep me up to speed, Tano out.” I grit my teeth in frustration, watching R2 and Bunny escorting the two gonk droids up the now open embarkation ramp and into the Talon. They moved so frustratingly slow on their two legs, that I made a note to send a message to Industrial Automation to develop a wheels add-on kit for the Resolute’s GNKs. “Tano to R4, I want you to trickle charge the capacitors of the Talon’s guns and the aft laser turret. Then make sure you’re on standby with the guns.”

“Roger, commander.”

Gregor gave me a brief look, “Are you worried about the buzz droids, commander?”

I nodded, “They swarm the Talon, we’ll be left with so many damaged systems that she won’t be able to take off.”

“Odd that they’re being used this way, normally they’re in anti-fighter missiles.”

“Yes, but these are definitely a new model, with extended battery life akin to normal droids.”

My farsight was ranging along every predictable path that a buzz droid could take, which didn’t make it easy at all, considering they had the size and leg articulation to act like beach ball sized spiders, moving along the maintenance crawl ways and many other pathways that weren’t standard. The closest one I had spotted so far was roughly 300 meters away in the starboard side of the Vanguard. They were crawling about like ants all over the main superstructure of the ship and their patrol pattern was not really evident at a glance.

It almost made me wish there was some portable way for my perceptions in the Force to be transferred into a digitized format that R2 could analyze. It just had the problem that you’d need to somehow make a proxy droid interface chair and all its associated systems much smaller. To the point that you could wear it and eventually integrate it into an armor set? 

It was a nice idea for the future at least, but went nowhere in solving the current problem.

I would give a million credits though to have the latest spy drones that Fulcrum was fielding and have my own swarm to fight these buzz droids.

HK-47 had gone even more crazy with some of my ideas in that regard.

The assassin droid had recently managed to bring a small hidden factory online on the Concordian moon, which was producing spy droids of varying capability and sizes, ranging from interstellar stealth probes all the way down to coin sized spies that could infiltrate almost anywhere. He was also trying to get homebrewed nanodroid production going but was running into the problem of just how long it would take. In the meantime, he was planning on ‘liberating’ a production machine for them in a suitable way that wouldn’t raise red flags.

Nanodroid production was one the most tightly scrutinized and regulated fields of science in the galaxy. There-

I whirled around in the direction of the large blast door that led into the starboard section from the ship’s spine.

My WESTAR shot out of my holster with the Force, aiming and firing even faster than what could be achieved with good ol’ biological hand MK1 with a Force buff.

The blue bolt nailed the buzz droid that had just popped out of a maintenance hatch near the door.

My farsight immediately spotted every buzz droid across the ship freezing in place for a brief moment, before they skittered with speed in the direction of their now dead kin.

“Shabla! Guess it was too much to hope for that they weren’t networked. Gregor, we have incoming! R4, QT control the guns. The rest of you keep working on the cloak. Under no circumstances are you to come outside!” I shouted into my comlink.

A wave of my hand and the embarkation ramp hissed shut.

I took a few steps in front of the Talon, whilst Gregor remained in cover underneath.

With the Force, I reached out to Pull a number of heavy durasteel floor plating slabs out of their housings, putting them to either side of me. 

With the Darksaber in my right hand, two lightsabers and a WESTAR blaster pistol hovering around me, I was as ready as I could be under the circumstances.

The next buzz droid to investigate where its kin had died, was shattered to pieces as Gregor’s DC17 fired.

This made things even worse as every buzz droid folded up into its spherical form and began rolling with greater speed, exactly like droidekas.

“Okay there’s definitely been some more improvements!” I shouted at my WESTAR fired as rapidly as I could articulate the trigger.

The next dozen buzz droids to roll in died to our combined firepower.

There was a sudden reprieve as no more were forthcoming.

“Is that it?” Gregor asked with surprise.

“No, now that they have enough data on us, they’re massing in greater numbers.”

They were also coming closer through the crawl ways under the spinal bay floor, where they would use the hatches in the pillar superstructure that separated each hangar bay.

“Gregor, get into the Rho shuttle and use its lasers, now.”

He burst into a sprint immediately, but halfway there the first buzz droids began popping out on either side of the Talon, just twenty meters away, whilst more used the conventional port and starboard entrances.

I fired the WESTAR once, then flipped it to the left and fired again, and repeated the pattern as fast as I could, turning the floating blaster pistol into a blur of movement and spitting blaster bolts.

As fast as I was managing to kill each buzz droid, more rolled in at a speed far greater than a droideka.

I activated and sent my lightsabers in port and starboard directions, turning them into rapidly spinning discs of death that scythed through four buzz droids with each revolution they made.

Yet they kept coming in an inexorable tide of programmed metal.

It got to the point that they were close enough to unfurl from their spherical forms and began even jumping to try and crawl on the Talon’s hull.

The rear laser turret at last came to life in a bright blue beam that scythed through numerous droids that were attacking the ship’s rear arc, turning them to glowing slag.

I had to pull my lightsabers back in closer as a number of buzzers were trying to snag the hilts out of the air to munch on and disassemble. They shut down and settled on my belt, freeing much needed focus for my next main weapon.

Both durasteel floor slabs abruptly rose into the air with such speed that they caught thirty buzzers on them.

I grit my teeth with the effort in the Force, as both slabs came together, creating the galaxy’s largest and loudest clap of durasteel on durasteel - turning what were buzz droids into flattened pancakes of debris.

I separated both slabs and slammed them to the ground on either side of the Talon, crushing yet more buzzers.

The Rho transport shuttle’s lasers also joined in the fight, as Gregor remotely controlled the turrets, sending multiple beams of light to destroy and bite into the swarm.

The Darksaber burst into life as I cut through four buzz droids that wanted to jump into my face, even as I lifted the slabs of durasteel to continue their carnage, acting like a giant’s boot and crushing the enemy.

“Frak,” I cursed, and Force jumped onto the dorsal hull of the Talon and ran on its spine, swiping the Darksaber left and right with precision to swat away buzz droids that were falling from the dorsal hangar doors above.

The little bastards had climbed all the way up there already to rain down on us!

I used my durasteel slabs to stomp more droids to scrap, buying some breathing room for the Talon before throwing upward a wide kinetic wave to slam into the raining buzzers.

This push was not the relatively gentle wave of kinetic redirections used by most Jedi. The speed of this technique was over 90 meters per second and the results on any buzz droid unfortunate to be caught in it was to be swatted aside and crushed as if an unyielding freight train had slammed into them.

Now the bay rang with a tinkling rain of metallic debris.

I winced as the thick dorsal bay doors high above me rang like a galaxy’s largest bell.

My mind tingled in an unfortunately familiar way and I inwardly groaned as the first symptom of excessive Force usage presented itself.

I really hadn’t wanted to use my own spin on Starkiller’s Force Repulse, as it was still a work in progress and could absolutely not be used in any situation when friendly forces were nearby. My biggest headache with it was keeping the bloody thing under control and not wrecking everything around me indiscriminately. 

There was no choice in this situation, however.

My will grabbed the durasteel slabs again and the bay echoed with the hard ringing of steel on steel and the energetic whine of lasers firing.

Whistling Bird munitions from my vambrace launcher also shot out, puncturing a multitude of buzz droids right through their optics.

I fell into a battle trance and just kept fighting.

It wasn’t until I sank to my knees and was gasping for breath, that I snapped out of it.

The bay around the Talon and the transport shuttle was an utter mess of droid debris and laser scorching.

And more importantly, the swarm of buzz droids had been depleted utterly.

I stood wearily on wobbly legs and deactivated the Darksaber, whilst my WESTAR, whose barrel shroud was glowing as it dumped all its accumulated heat, was summoned to my left hand.

Yikes, can’t holster that now.

“M8, you’re going to have to take over, get my meatbag ass off the Talon.”

“At once, mistress,” she said eagerly in my helmet.

I relaxed utterly and went with the flow as my beskar’gam took over, walking a few steps before jumping off and flaring boot jets to slow down the fall.

“Stay here for the moment, M8. Tano to R2, Gregor and Gascon, status?”

“We’re all right in here, commander,” Gascon spoke up first. “Talon will need some minor bits of repairs, but if the mission was to defend it, then we did splendidly.”

“All good here, commander, no hostiles in sight.”

“I managed to keep the enemy tactical droid from usurping local systems,” R2 reported. “It will have seen the battle through the buzz droid optics, but I’ve managed to deny it control of our side of the ship, so it’s blind to our current state. It will have to use a B1 to gain any visual intel on us.”

“Well done, all of you and especially you, R2,” I said with relief. The battle would’ve been for nought if the bloody tac droid had opened up a dorsal hangar door to suck us into hyper space or do any of the other nasty tricks when you had control over life support or artificial gravity. “Gregor, how long can you keep watch?”

“Ten hours, commander,” he answered.

“That won’t be necessary, but I’d appreciate at least six for me to recover from this exertion. Colonel Gascon will be in command until I awake. I doubt the tac droid will send his remaining forces our way, as he will risk losing complete control of the ship, but keep on your toes.”

“Yes, ma’am! I have command,” Gascon said with gusto.

I chuckled at his exuberance and cut the link. “M8, get me into my cabin, I’m going to pass-”

Sweet oblivion claimed me.

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“Get that circuit fixed BZ,” Meebur Gascon ordered from within his command center in the droid’s dome. “We can’t afford the Talon in less than 100% condition.”

“Yes, colonel,” the droid responded with a flat blurting chirp in binary. Meebur had at least been with M5-BZ long enough to know that the droid didn’t truly appreciate his presence. It was something that he could understand, as the zilkin could well imagine how he would feel if his own head had been hollowed out to make room for another sentient being to live inside.

Despite the commander and Captain Gregor’s amazing performance in keeping the Talon in one piece and literally crushing the buzz droid swarm, some had managed to latch onto the ventral hull in spots here and there, shorting out systems and cutting into it.

At least until the commander’s blaster pistol, which she sent flying around like a fast zephyrskift through the air and shot them off the hull.

Just looking at the replays from the various sensor feeds on the battle still left Meebur with a sense of deep surreality.

He knew that Jedi wielded the Force - he had conducted the mid level strategic and tactical considerations of more than eighty distinct battles in the war so far. He had seen hundreds of post-battle analyses from across the galaxy, a fair number of which had Jedi either commanding or wading into the battle themselves with lightsaber in hand and the sheer odds against which they mostly triumphed. Therefore, he privately considered himself somewhat knowledgeable of the Jedi and their feats in battle.

He would without hesitation rank Commander Tano right alongside Mace Windu in terms of effectiveness on a battlefield, especially after her most recent performance.

R2 rolled out of the Talon with urgent speed and approached with M8 in striding fluently behind.

Now hadn’t that been another surprising revelation, that the commander’s integrated droid intelligence could take command of the armor itself to act with its own agency. And in this case, could even convincingly fake that Commander Tano was still inside it. A necessary ruse, as the enemy tac droid would probably attack if it knew that she was flat on her back to recover from the exertion of battle.

“We’re being contacted by the enemy on holo, through the ship’s network,” R2 declared.

Meebur popped open the BZ’s hatch, “Really? Are they still trying to take back full control?” 

“Yes, but QT and U9 are working together to keep the droid out of our portion of the network. It’s one of the new ST models.”

“That is surprising,” Meebur scratched his chin in thought, “I didn't think the ST series was ready enough for wide-scale adoption yet. Did it have a name for itself?”

“No.”

“M8, you ready?”

The droid folded her arms, the stiffness of her movements vanishing and now he could actually believe that there was a togruta within. “Always, colonel,” she said with the commander’s voice.

“R2, do it.”

The astromech’s base holo-emitter lit up and a high resolution 3D image of a super-tactical droid shimmered into existence. It had a white painted armored chassis with dark green-gold patterns on its chest that definitely denoted some expression of personal individuality from the thing. R2 had projected it in a one to one ratio, so its 1.9 meter bulk towered over them. Its three yellow eyes flashed and even narrowed, projecting its intense scrutiny.

“I assume I’m speaking to Commander Tano of the Jedi Order,” declared the ST droid leadingly.

“You assume correctly, and you are?” said M8, tilting her head in the slightest displays of body language. Meebur could only guess that it was second nature to the droid to be able to mimic her master to that degree.

“My name is Viperion, tactical commander of the CIS Navy.”

“You chose your own name, interesting. It seems the Separatists are committed to giving your kind individualized sentience.”

“I will not get drawn into a debate of my own existence or the wisdom of those who created me. This conversation is being held merely to inform you that I am willing to give you a chance to evacuate the ship when we emerge in the Castell system.”

“Really? And what makes you offer this kindness?”

“It is easy to conclude you will make some attempt to delay or even sabotage this ship from carrying out its primary mission. Historical data suggests a high likelihood you will even sacrifice yourself if it should prove necessary for the protection of my primary target. The best way for me to prevent that is to appeal to your natural self-preservation instincts.”

M8 chuckled, “I see. I’m afraid I will have to decline your generous offer, Viperion. We will leave when we’re ready. We’ve defeated all your buzz droids and if you wish to throw your remaining forces at us, you’re welcome to try.”

“Which you know I will not do, as I will be unable to properly command and control this ship if I lose too many droids. We seem to be at an impasse in that respect.”

M8 shook her head, her body twitching in silent laughter. “You assume that I can’t go on the offensive against you?”

“I have been programmed with the known feats of many Jedi and yours as well, Commander. You have exceeded the calculated threshold and such must be paying a price in exhaustion. There is a high probability that you will not be able to attack before we reach the Castell system. You command at most a small handful of elite clones. If you set foot in the parts of the ship I still control, I will not hesitate to overload the gravity plating and crush you.”

“Well, we do seem to be at an impasse after all. There can be no further point to this conversation. Tano out.”

R2 took his mark and cut the connection.

“He was fishing for our numbers,” Meebur declared in the heavy silence afterward.

“Indeed, Colonel,” said M8 with a nod. “He also initiated a renewed offensive in the ship network while he was talking to us. I had to help QT and U9 fend off the slicing attacks remotely. As a droid intelligence he is naturally quite powerful, but with me helping we’re back to a stalemate.”

“Would R2 and R4’s help make a difference?”

“It’s not a matter of processing power anymore, we’re both using the ship systems we have control over to aid our efforts. At this point, we have to wait. If we push Viperion into a corner, where he believes he’s losing too much, he may just decide to blow up the ship.”

“War droids do not have self-preservation protocols, I wonder if he shares this trait.”

“That is a good question, colonel,” M8 shrugged. “Mistress theorized that General Kalani was definitely sophisticated enough to actually have a preference for his own survival despite what orders were given to him by the Separatists. They would at least humor him with the illusion that he has that freedom, but there will be hidden kill switches embedded within. No, I think that Viperion definitely has his own escape method to leave the Vanguard before it explodes on its target. Probably a small hyperspace capable shuttle that has been integrated into an escape pod launch tube, which he will take before the ship makes the jump from Castell to Carida. He’ll leave a B1 commander droid in charge to do the final run.”

Meebur couldn’t help but be impressed, “That’s certainly a logical analysis on his original plan. Our presence on board will keep him here though, he has to know that his mission can’t succeed while we’re here.”

“We’re playing a game of who will blink first, unless the mistress comes up with another plan in the meantime or Viperion tries a gambit of his own to upset our stalemate. We have to be vigilant.”

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“Anything to report?” I asked before diving into a much needed meal in the Talon’s multifunction room.

Colonel Gascon stood at attention on the far end of the small lunch table in front of me, “We’re just under an hour from reverting to real space in the Castell system, Commander. Our enemy, an ST droid by the name of Viperion, has so far kept his attempts to regain full control of the ship limited to electronic warfare, which we have been stopping with no problem.”

So, a second named ST droid. I had always wondered if Kalani was a unique one-off phenomenon. The implications for the future could be rather dire if the CIS wasn’t careful - a droid revolution being the least of it. Thankfully, I didn’t have to worry too much about this, since this ball was in Palpatine’s court, who would not want such an event potentially derailing his carefully laid plans and contingencies.

Just in case though I resolved to send a Fulcrum directive for keeping a general eye on any Republic droid manufacturers, especially Holowan Labs with their IG-86 sentinel droids - who in the original timeline would go on to cause a minor droid rebellion. 

Holowan was another case of a business that straddled both sides of the Clone War, under the purported flag of ‘neutrality’ and that their droid products were essential for both sides. Their subsidiary, Holowan Mechanicals, built the IG100 Magnaguards in the CIS, which kept the company books as clean as a whistle in the Republic. 

“Good,” I took a few deep gulps of water.

“You should also be aware, commander, that Viperion offered us a chance to withdraw safely from the ship in Castell. Clearly a trap to try and blast us with the Vanguard’s guns.”

“Not so hasty, colonel. He would know after communicating with us via holo that our ship is a class that can cloak.”

“Then you think the offer is genuine?”

I chewed on another bite of meat and swallowed, “Yes.” 

“That makes no sense, we’re the enemy. He’s literally programmed to try and kill us.”

I deflected the course of the conversation, which was getting to dangerous territory. “He’s programmed to achieve his mission, colonel. Getting us off the ship will do that in his calculations. We’re not dealing with a run of the mill T-series droid here. How’s our cloak, by the way?”

“Fully repaired, commander. As is all the minor damage the Talon suffered during the battle. D-Squad has outdone themselves on this.”

“Excellent. My compliments to all of you. I resume command.”

“Command is yours, ma’am.”

“Dismissed, colonel.”

When I finished my meal, M8 approached and I quickly got into the beskar’gam before leaving the Talon.

Gregor was dutifully where he was supposed to be, sitting in the co-pilot seat of the transport shuttle.

He gave a salute, “Commander, enemy has kept his forces to his side of the ship so far.”

“Good, I want you to remain on standby for our deceleration in the Castell system. The moment we jump for Carida, I want you in the sack and sleeping.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I left the shuttle cockpit and headed to its small engineering deck. It took a few moments to find the ship’s transponder system and pull it out of the housings.

Just from a quick examination, I could tell that the CIS had already done the work in disconnecting it from the onboard hyperspace antenna - preventing it from connecting to the Holonet to broadcast its position on an encrypted frequency. A standard system on almost every GAR ship that did not have a cloaking device.

“M8, generate fourteen ship transponder profiles for me. Backdate them and be ready to upload to Fulcrum when we reconnect.”

“Done, mistress.”

I shoved my armor’s logic spike into the transponder assembly port, uploading the new profiles.

A few seconds later, it was done.

“All right, M8, step one done.” I pulled a nearby toolbox closer, and grabbed the hyperspanner inside.

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Vanguard emerged from hyper in the Castell system and immediately caused a bit of stir among the ships nearby. 

Civilian ships generally appreciated the presence of the Republic Navy, but many captains this far in the war had begun seeing the presence of a Venator at a waypoint as something of a bad omen, especially this far from the front lines. They were a visible reminder of a galaxy at war along with the increasing fuel costs and the slashed revenues due to traffic restrictions to the Outer Rim.

We watched the course of the Vanguard closely and sure enough, the ship adopted a leisurely cruise, keeping a shipping convoy that had the bad luck to be there within its theoretical blast radius.

“We knew it would happen, but it feels so infuriating being able to do nothing about it,” growled Gascon, jumping three times his height and stomping BZs head to vent his anger. “That clanking bastard is taking hostages and they don’t even know it.”

We could even monitor the holographic clone crew on the bridge, as they perfectly interacted with Castell’s aerospace control, giving not a single hint that anything was wrong or suspicious.

The Vanguard arrived in orbit of Castell III, then to our frustration, smoothly found an outbound ship leaving, heading to the Carida hyper point and tagged along.

It was a beautiful ship, slightly larger than a Venator, that was delta shaped as most KDY ships were. It had two pyramidal superstructures emerging from its dorsal and ventral sides and the hull was a pure white ivory color with 4 massive transparisteel domes offering 360-degree views of hyperspace or planetary vistas.

I could sense nearly seven thousand, carefree souls on board.

I felt my stomach turning into a black hole.

“R2 can you identify that ship?” I asked, as Gascon looked on in horror.

“Referencing database, it’s the Aurodium Star. Stellar class cruise ship. 6000 guest capacity, 2000 crew.”

“Please tell me that they’re not heading for the Carida jump point.”

“I can’t do that, commander. Course projection is accurate,” R2 declared, his binary becoming a grim, sad whine.

“This is not a coincidence,” I felt my hands ball into fists and strain with anger, even as I shrugged it off to maintain my equilibrium.

“Of course not,” snapped Gascon, throwing his hands up in exasperation. “A ship like that has its schedule determined years in advance! Carida’s mountains combined with the binary stars of the system are among the most picturesque locations in this part of the galaxy, perfect for tourists.”

“How long until the Carida hyper point, R2?”

“97 minutes.”

We watched as the Vanguard closed to within five kilometers off the Aurodium Star’s port side and gave the passengers in the domes a nice close look at the star destroyer.

I felt the naive wonder of children gazing at the amazing ship that carried the Jedi and their brave clone defenders into battle. The satisfaction of teenagers seeing the ‘wizard’ ship that defended the Republic on the front lines. The adults mostly felt safer knowing that the warship was nearby, though quite a few wanted it gone, as it marred the beautiful view of the stars beyond.

In the probability lines ahead of me, where the Aurodium Star was destroyed along with the Republic strategic conference, the infinite potential of all those lives to impact the future in countless small and large ways - it was like watching a horrific cosmic train wreck. I’d been staring at the blindingly complex convergence of probability lines in Carida like an idiot, made especially worse because Anakin and so many other important figures in the galaxy were there. My worry for him had stopped me from taking one step back at probable events in Castell.

“That ship must not make the jump to hyperspace,” I said grimly.

Gascon shook his tiny head, “Even if we could contact them, the only person that they'd listen to and who has the authority, is you, commander.”

He was absolutely right and that meant I was wasting my time being here on the Vanguard.

If only I had the skill of absolute remote Force projection like Kina Ha, I could appear to the captain of the Aurodium Star and warn him that way.

Yet, it was well within range of my Battle Meditation. I could find the captain that way and… what, make him super depressed?

Nonsense.

Even if I managed to pinpoint him, then somehow influence his mind through his spirit, with enough strength to present an intelligible image, which I didn’t have the first clue of how to do at the moment - the captain also had to believe me. He couldn’t just rationalize it away. There was also the matter of his 2IC and other crew who could also come into the picture.

I turned to Gregor, who had been stoically watching events behind me, awaiting the order that even he could see coming.

He nodded to me.

“Colonel Gascon, I leave you in command of D-Squad and the Talon. Captain Gregor and I will take the transport shuttle. We are going to give Viperion a nice big dose of certainty.”

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The timing of this plan was down to the minute.

If we did it too soon, then Viperion could enact contingencies. He had to calculate with high certainty that his mission was going to succeed.

Gregor was piloting the shuttle, whilst I was in the airlock, my armor fully buttoned up for a void walk.

“Nine minutes to Carida point, all ship systems go, hangar door spike is online and ready,” he reported.

The Vanguard had slowly pulled ahead by about a kilometer in front of the Aurodium Star, and would reach the hyper point first.

I tapped my comlink, “Colonel, are you ready?”

“Ready, commander. You can count on us, we’ll make sure it's done.”

There is always the plan with Palpatine. Either he wants someone dead on the Aurodium Star or even a group of people for some reason, or he wants the death of so many influential and rich core worlders to act as another excuse for more security reforms. Even if he doesn’t want Anakin or myself dead in this scheme to assassinate the entire High Command, he wants the Aurodium Star to blow up with all souls when both ships exit hyper in Carida.

Yet another task for Fulcrum would be to thoroughly research the passenger list to see who the possible target/s were.

In any event, I had to give Palpatine credit for striking while the iron was hot. The ripples of Keitum’s orbital bombardment were still being felt across the galaxy. Everyone had woken up to the unpleasant reality that the old ways of a planet being sacrosanct from direct assault from space, was a thing of the past. It had been weeks and they were still screaming in the Senate about it; demanding action from both Palpatine, GAR and the Jedi Order.

I could already see the initial result in the near future - the Jedi Order would dust off the ancient Old Republic schematics for planetary shields from the Archives. Research would begin on modernizing the designs for current needs and barely a thought would be given to the economics of it - which was what had killed off their use in the Post-Ruusan galaxy that was desperately trying to rebuild itself after the last war against the Sith.

Why would Palpatine want planetary shields to make a comeback?

It didn’t take prescience to figure that out.

A planetary shield could be modulated with the push of a button to become what was known as a shutter shield. It would encase the planet and prevent ships from coming in and out, except at a designated point where a circular interrupter space station was placed in the plane of the shield. If you wanted planetary security in a galaxy where pirates, rebels and insurgents had access to starships, big guns, missiles and hyperdrivers, that was your best bet. It could also double as a prison for the planet’s entire population, assuming you kept the ground based shield emitters and power plants secure enough.

“Two minutes to Carida point, ten seconds to mark alpha… five…four… three… two…”

The ventral hangar door of the Vanguard opened with the emergency explosive releases.

Gregor punched the Rho shuttle’s upward facing thrusters, using that and the escaping mass of air from the spinal bay to push it clear.

The Talon, which clung to the deck with EM clamps on its landing legs, cloaked and gave a brief burst of engine thrust.

The Rho shuttle orientated itself to the Aurodium Star and fired a brief acceleration burn.

I slapped the emergency release for the airlock in front of me and fired my armor’s boot jets at max the instant I had clear space in front of me.

In my HUD, M8 had already calculated my course and highlighted my target.

The five kilometer separation towards the Aurodium Star could be crossed in fourteen seconds.

With the embrace of the Force, it felt much longer.

Every tiny thruster firing to adjust the course to my target was critical.

The 1.2km long passenger ship surged towards me and at six seconds to target, I flipped myself over to begin desperately slowing down.

I made a mess of my course briefly in the process, which M8 thankfully corrected.

The luxury liner felt like an unyielding wall that was surging forward to splatter me into meaty mulch!

Three seconds before contact I could make out my target with the naked eye.

“Shit… shit, shit, shit, shiiiiiii…”

My beskar’gam’s boot jets flared on last time, red lining their output.

The remaining momentum bled off into the Force and my hands and feet thumped directly into the transparisteel of the Aurodium Star’s main bridge.

Beyond the window I could see the crew in their fancy green uniform’s gaping at me with slacked jaws and other vocal orifices.  

My senses surged forward to encompass the entire bridge and my TK and technometry had enough precision at this range to do the job.

My will took over the navigator station, keeping a firm grip on the hyperdrive motivator lever.

“Mistress, the Vanguard is translating to hyper.”

“Understood.” My focus was on the bridge though, as the ship’s captain - a fairly old, distinguished looking, human male - was the first to regain his wits after the surprise of seeing what was clearly a Mandalorian space jump onto his front window.

He pulled in a breath to shout for a security alert, but instead his eyes rolled up as he slumped back into his chair, fast asleep.

I blanketed the bridge with the Force Sleep, but one of the bridge crew was a gran, whose mind was sufficiently different to not be affected.

That problem was solved by kinetically slamming him into the bridge ceiling and floor, giving his brain just enough of a jostle for a concussion.

“Tano to Gregor. Bridge is neutralized. The Aurodium Star is staying in this system.”

“Understood, commander. Will you be all right?”

“I’ll be fine, already heading for the nearest airlock. You get your ass going and head for Mandalore.”

I pulled myself down to reach the hull, magnetized my boots and stood, gazing at the shuttle hovering nearby.

“Commander-”

“Don’t have to call me that anymore, Gregor. Go, you only have a narrow escape window.”

“...thank you…Manda’lor.”

“Not your Manda’lor either, from now on that would be Kal Skirata.”

“I know, but I can never repay you for this… Ahsoka.”

“And you’ll never have to, Gregor.”

He was now so close with the shuttle that I could see him through the forward transparisteel of the cockpit.

He stood and saluted me one last time.

I returned it.

With a final nod he sat down and the shuttle backed off to a safe distance before reorientating and burning hard in the direction of the Shulstine hyper point.

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Anakin Skywalker glared through the transparisteel windows that looked outward from the huge briefing amphitheatre aboard the Valor space station.

The Carida Military Academy had kindly loaned the use of the station to the GAR for this conference and after just a few days he was already bored out of his mind.

If every member of the conference had just been naval clone captains, then he could only imagine what a breeze it would’ve been to get a consensus. Instead they had to endure hours long speeches from natural-born captains and admirals who insisted that their doctrinal proposals should be considered by High Command. Even the Jedi Masters, such as Ki-Adi Mundi, Tiin and Oppo Rancisis had delivered what could best be described as naval doctrine sermons, that Anakin knew were thinly veiled attempts to put a new coat of paint on Yularen-Tano to call it something else. Then there were the nostalgic idiots who wanted to actually go back to the times when ships only traded turbolasers. Thankfully, these efforts as a whole gained little traction among the admirals and Jedi who mattered in the decision making process and Vice Chair Mas Amedda, who was representing Palpatine, didn’t give the bombastic idiots any serious consideration beyond the appearance that he was listening.

The conference had been called to come up with a coherent strategy in the face of orbital bombardment and the majority of the time was being spent on old ground of now settled strategic and tactical doctrine in the ever evolving war.

He actually wished that Ahsoka and Yularen could be here to verbally rip every pathetic attempt at a new ivory tower doctrine to shreds.

Only now, after days of pontificating had the true issue of the response to orbital bombardment begun.

Three camps of thought were immediately apparent; Reciprocity - adding orbital strikes to the GAR’s toolkit which would only be used in a proportional response to any Separatist attack on a planet from space. Escalation - those who wanted orbital strikes as a free option for any command level officer at their own discretion and finally; Ruusanites, who were firmly against orbital strikes even in the face of it being used by the enemy.

So far the consensus was favoring either Reciprocity and Escalation, with the two schools of thought filling the amphitheatre with debate and arguments, whilst the Ruusanites were in a firm minority.

“This has to be the worst part of our jobs,” he grumbled, scowling into the distant void.

“Cheer up, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said in an entirely too amused tone, his blue eyes twinkling. “You’re going to get your turn soon and you’ll have every chance to voice all your complaints about unnecessary military protocol, whilst also defending the contributions of your padawan.”

“It’s not about that,” he tried to quickly deny.

Obi-Wan lightly elbowed him in the side, “Of course it is. Almost half of everyone in this room wouldn’t be alive if we had stayed in the old gun doctrine, yet instead of recognizing that fact, a minority of them seem content to only try to tear down what she has built.”

A rapid blur of light that solidified into a Venator arrived beyond Carida’s mass shadow.

“Ah, another straggler,” Obi-Wan shook his head wryly. “I’ll inform Windu.”

His former master ambled away towards the center of the amphitheater where the Master of Vaapad was having a very tense conversation with Mundi, near the holotank.

Seeing that, Anakin was really beginning to have doubts about his own long term goal of getting on the Jedi Council. For the longest time, he had quite naively imagined that the Council was supposed to be enlightened beyond petty mundane politics - but experience with the day-to-day reality was a bitter teacher. The politics was there, but it was very subtle; carried on the level of singular gestures of body language and the Force itself as a-

Rapid movement out of the corner of his eye drew his attention back to the recently arrived Venator, which was now powering forward at full burn towards the station and the system defense fleet arrayed in a defensive wall in front of it.

Something small detached from the bridge superstructure before a flash of blue light then a streaked blur vanishing into the void - the hyperspace jump of a very small craft.

“Someone’s in a hurry,” he mumbled.

The Venator’s burn continued, its speed climbing as it raced towards the outer defense perimeter of Valor station.

Anakin’s instincts made his spine shudder - something was very wrong and he plunged his limited prescience into the future with effort-

He slapped his comlink so hard, it almost broke on his wrist, “Skywalker to Damors, raise the station shields!”

“Skywalker? What? What’s the meaning of this?” blubbered Admiral Flom Damors, the Caridan security commander.

“Raise shields, now!” Anakin reached through the link with the Force, not only augmenting his words, but also pushing on the mind and will of the obstinate fool who had egotistically rebuffed every suggestion Anakin had made on securing this conference. Ahsoka’s warning had been a constant niggling feeling in his mind and unfortunately, Admiral Damors had not taken any of Anakin’s suggestions well. The old caridan who was also the director of the military academy saw it as an infringement of his own territory and expertise.

Damors, however, was not weak of will and mind, “No, I will not. There is no threat-”

The flash of light was blinding and Anakin winced, instinctively closing his eyes against it, holding up a palm to try to see beyond.

In the next instant, it was gone and he stared into the distant void with astonishment.

Where the racing Venator had been was now only a vast expanding nova of multi-hued energy that was racing outward in an utterly stupendous explosion.

The particle shockwave was just barely visible as it expanded at close to the speed of light and washed over every ship and the station, eventually going on to slam into the planet’s magnetosphere.

Innate particle shielding held, but the bigger problem was coming as what had been one kilometer of starship was reduced to variable sizes of debris racing outward with the expanding energy wave.

“DAMORS, RAISE SHIELDS DAMN YOU!”

The man finally did his frakking job and Anakin felt the station shield energize.

Debris began pelting it at significant velocities.

The entire conference filled with Jedi, admirals and captains could only sit and watch in horror as larger pieces raced towards them.

The station shuddered after what had been a chunk of a Venator’s bridge superstructure slammed against one of the mounted outer hangar bays.

Anakin felt it shudder under his feet as the giant piece of debris was deflected off and continued its course towards the Carida itself.

That would not burn up in the atmosphere and Anakin could only hope that it wouldn’t land on anyone.

The entire station was now flashing with red emergency lighting along with the battle alert blaring in their ears.

He stared with transfixed fascination at the residual particles of the explosion slowly changing colours and reflecting all sorts of colors in the unfiltered glare of the local star. It had clearly been intended to go off much closer… it had missed.

His mind instantly gave the answer as to the question of what could’ve caused the explosion as there was only one substance that produced this effect when ignited.

‘Ahsoka,’ he said flatly along the Bond. ‘A warning about the massive rhydonium bomb heading my way would’ve been nice.’

The reply came instantly, ‘Sorry Skyguy, you had to give a convincing performance. Palpatine’s eyes are watching this conference closely.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Next door in the Castell system. Had to stop an inbound luxury liner from also getting caught in that blast.’

‘Knowing you, it was probably in a way that will generate lots of flimsiwork for us both.’

‘Small price to pay, Skyguy.’

‘Good work, Ahsoka. Now get over here for a debrief. I’ve a feeling the Council is going to want some words with you.’

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A/N: Palpatine just doesn't stop scheming, does he ;-)

Hope you enjoyed, have a great weekend and stay awesome.

The Force Wills - Chapter 144

CC-55-

No, as much as he wanted to distance himself from events on Abafar - he was Gregor as well. The commander had warned him about denial - as much as he wished the last year hadn’t happened.

He was Captain Gregor, Foxtrot Company of the GAR’s Special Operations Brigade. Despite all the blood and sweat of the harsh training on Kamino with Mandalorian instructors, and months of successful missions behind him in the early stages of the war - it hadn’t helped at all on Sarrish.

Just thinking about that name was painful - the Battle of Sarrish… what a joke. It was more like the massacre of Sarrish. Dead brothers everywhere, lining the battlefield to such an extent you could barely see the earth beneath the bodies. An entire regiment caught by surprise in the open during a march, then utterly routed.

How the Separatists had been able to achieve it was something he still had no answer for, even with Commander Tano’s help in reviewing the memories. He gritted his teeth, struggling to put them away. It had been so much easier in the past to compartmentalize, now it was as if something was broken - the mental training and techniques he had learned on Kamino wasn’t working anymore. 

As he steadily donned his old Katarn armor in a deserted alleyway, with D-Squad and the commander turning their backs to give him some privacy, he felt like he was also putting on more than just armor again. With each piece, more memories boiled to the surface, remembering each member of his old squad in Foxtrot.

CC-9 and his no-nonsense attitude on a mission, whilst reading philosophy during downtime. CC-31’s constant pranks on the rest of the squad - Jokester they had called him. CC-6’s drawings and art he constantly worked on with a large datapad.

Now - all dead.

He finally picked up his helmet and traced its worn surface that had seen him through so much and the numerous drawn notches with lines traced through - each representing the number of clankers he had personally destroyed. He could recall each mission where he had earned those notches, like it had happened yesterday.

“An unfortunate necessity, Captain,” Commander Tano had said in the mental landscape. “The mind is a delicate thing and to restore your personality - there was no other way given our time constraints.”

Get a grip, Gregor, he thought.

He donned the helmet and was relieved to see his armor’s systems powering up. The internal batteries were still good and his HUD began a self-diagnostic automatically. It was only registering 91% charge, which he understood was just a consequence of general lack of maintenance and how long it had sat inside Borkus’ storage closet.

He tapped the vambrace interface instinctively, without even looking, knowing the specific sequence required. He twitched as the armor’s internal bacta dispenser poked his back. That still worked thankfully, even though it had only one viable dose left in the armor’s integrated backpack.

When at last, he picked up the DC-17m, the specialized modular blaster rifle that had seen him through so much - it felt like he had just put the last puzzle piece that was Gregor, back together.

His HUD registered the weapon with no problem, the diagnostic also going off automatically as it sensed the sheer passage of time since its last synchronization. It all looked good, though he only had three ammo packs in his backpack and the one already inside the rifle, which only had thirty-two shots left in it.

Gregor turned around, “I’m ready, commander.”

She smiled her eyes intrigued, “Each notch a kill, Captain?”

“Five dead clankers per notch, yes, commander.”

“Very well, now I know how you generally operate in a squad, and you’ve been with Jedi in the field before. However, I work a bit differently - I’ll take point, D-Squad behind me, with you taking the rear guard. You’ll see me use my abilities to create mobile cover for us and even use the enemy droids in that role. I want you to blast as many droids with that DC17 as you can manage as quickly as possible. Feel free to use your initiative to create as much havoc as possible. Understood?”

“Understood, commander.”

“All right, D-Squad, fall in.”

The commander drew her blaster and led the way.

They emerged out the alleyway and given how late it was, didn’t see a soul in the street and it was just a few hundred meters to the spaceport itself.

It was a deeper hollow that had been carved out of the northeast of the town, with just six designated landing pads for starships, capable of landing a corvette tonnage or light freighters.

It was very bare bones in terms of infrastructure, with not even a fence around the perimeter and only had a single decrepit building that managed landing permissions and aerospace traffic.

Loader droids and B1 engineers were steadily loading rhydonium fuel canisters onto the lone Rho-class shuttle that was currently landed. Gregor noted with interest how many of those canisters were stacked together around the landing pad.

The Separatists had given some thought to increasing security and had installed a perimeter sensor net that ringed the place, only leaving a single gap towards the main approaching street.

Two B1s stood guard here.

“This is a restricted area, ma’am. Do not approach,” it nasally droned at them.

“Hey wait a minute, isn’t that a commando-”

The commander’s blaster rapidly fired twice so quickly that Gregor only saw her right arm as a blur.

Both droids collapsed to the sandy floor, dead from accurate shots to the head.

He opened fire as well on four B1s that had been on patrol to their right.

Four shots, four kills.

He felt the hard earth rumble underneath his feet and abruptly numerous pieces of hard Abafar void rock burst upward, which began lazily orbiting around them and following their advance.

It was just in time as they turned right onto a descending ramp to the lower spaceport, a full platoon of B1s on patrol were coming up the other way.

An emergency siren wailed through the air as Gregor brought his rifle to his shoulder instinctively and switched to burst mode.

His HUD automatically designated aim points, which he tolerated using for the moment - he fired once, his shots going perfectly through the orbiting cover the commander had generated.

Three B1s died from the burst, one after the other.

The commander’s WESTAR whined rapidly, destroying six within moments.

The enemy return fire was quite accurate for B1s, clearly they had seen some upgrades since he was last on the battlefield, but it didn’t matter.

Each shot was stopped on a torso sized lump of void stone that the commander kept around them.

Back to single shot mode, together they easily finished off the survivors of the platoon.

The commander upped D-Squad’s speed to a light jog as they turned left towards the shuttle just eighty meters away, passing by conveyor belts that were carrying more fuel canisters.

Three B2s with arms already in firing position unleashed a torrent of fire.

D-Squad’s rock shields surged forward to intercept, which were promptly shattered into smaller pieces under the weight of fire.

Yet the commander just pulled more from the earth to regenerate their protection’s integrity.

Gregor took the opportunity to fire and was gratified to note his actual accuracy was still there, as his shots tunneled through the B2’s left shoulder sensor, three times in a row.

He marveled at her sheer efficiency with that WESTAR, her arm blurring around her body and firing off in directions without even looking - yet each shot finding their mark on a B1 or B2 droid.

If this was what a Jedi could do with a blaster in hand… by Kamino’s oceans, why did they bother with lightsabers?!

He added six more droids to his kill tally, which had been trying to flank them on the left.

Three droidekas chose that moment to come rolling forward with their characteristic clatter.

Gregor whirled around to fire before their shields could come online.

His shots pinged off the thick outer armor, but managed to catch one of them in the central droid brain cluster just as they stopped to unfold.

That left two droidekas who managed to get their shields deployed before their fire started to eat away at their rock cover.

The commander was on it though and she openly gestured with her left hand towards three nearby canisters of rhydonium fuel, which launched themselves overhead to land right next to the droidekas.

Gregor didn’t need her order and fired his DC17 directly into the fuel canisters.

The multicolored rhydonium explosion overwhelmed the droideka’s shielding, before sending them flying into the air in pieces.

The shockwave rattled the ground and kicked up fine dust everywhere.

It was surprisingly subdued when it reached D-Squad and Gregor became acutely aware of the peril of a stray shot into any of the large fuel canister pallets.

Don’t think about it, Gregor. Just use it as motivation to not miss and kill them all! He thought to himself and immediately resumed shooting.

The entire spaceport was alive with movement as more and more enemy droids came pouring out the nearby mineshaft and from the lone spaceport building.

He almost spotted the danger of a B2-HA too late, firing off the last few shots of his current power pack.

It died but not before it fired off one of its homing rockets.

“Commander!”

He needn’t have worried though.

As he reloaded his rifle, a large rock under her control surged forward as if it had been shot by cannon and intercepted the rocket.

Its detonation in mid-air flattened an entire platoon of B1s into scrap.

D-Squad arrived at the Rho shuttle’s embarkation ramp and the commander adjusted her rock shielding to cover the forward arc of the craft. It also meant that she could concentrate the coverage enough to provide a more solid barrier to the enemy.

“R2 get her up and running!” she shouted over the din of blaster fire and exploding rock. “Gregor, take care of the pilot!”

He sprinted up ahead of the astromech into the belly of the ship, rushing past the rhydonium canisters, and flung himself at the ladder that would take him to the upper deck.

The B1 pilot opened fire, but Gregor had been anticipating it.

The bolt harmlessly splashed where his head would’ve been, but his DC-17s aim camera allowed him to simply push it above him and two trigger pulls later, the droid no longer had a functioning head.

He took the final rungs of the ladder and grabbed the dead B1 to hurl it out of the way.

“Clear R2!”

The droid jumped up using a brief thrust of leg jets and rolled in at top speed to plug into the shuttle’s logic port.

Through the cockpit transparisteel he saw what had to be a full company of enemy droids approaching and firing towards the commander.

She was deliberately making herself a target to draw enemy fire away from the shuttle behind her.

Her blaster had long since been holstered and she was simply holding up both her hands as she conducted their defense with rock.

Even as it shattered or became pulverised under the weight of enemy fire, more was pulled out of the earth to replace it.

On occasion she would send a rock as large as a speeder to smash into the enemy, crushing and felling dozens in one swoop.

Gregor felt the shuttle start to come alive under him as the engines and the power plant spooled up.

“R2, power up the guns!” he ordered, throwing himself into the co-pilot station.

The astromech chirped an affirmative and the controls came alive under his hands.

The Rho-class transport version had eight laser cannons, two for every arc of fire. He activated every cannon except the two in the fore, seeing as how they were obstructed by the commander’s rock shield.

Under his aim, laser beams began scything outward, cutting down multiple droids with each trigger pull.

He winced as he almost clipped a pallet of rhydonium, but managed to kill a squad of droidekas that was rolling forward.

In that moment, the rock shield exploded outward in a massive arc that destroyed nearly half of all the droids that were opposing them.

“R2! I’m inside, go!” shouted the commander.

The shuttle whined and rumbled with power, taking off with an upward hover.

Gregor switched on the forward guns as well and just kept firing.

The hull rang with the impact of enemy fire as the shuttle outer wings folded into position.

He twitched as the gun controls were taken over by R2 just as the droid fired the full thrust of the engines.

The rear turret swiveled and just as the shuttle cleared the edge of the spaceport - a laser beam hit the largest pallet of rhydonium.

Gregor was pushed back in his seat as R2 threw the shuttle into max thrust.

The explosion behind them blinded the visual sensors briefly and he felt the shuttle take a hard hit from behind due to the overpressure.

It was thankfully within tolerances and R2 had managed to briefly switch on the deflectors as well.

Gregor looked down at the unassuming blue astromech and shook his head in wonder, “You realize how many enemy droids you’ve just killed?”

‘Of course I do, do you want an exact count?’ asked the astromech, with a distinct tone of binaric satisfaction.

“Not necessary, I can tell you’ve got me beat by light years already,” Gregor chuckled ruefully.

The commander rushed into the cockpit and took the pilot’s seat, QT, U9 and BZ rolled in behind her.

“All right, well done everyone,” she said, grabbing the control yoke and began tapping numerous controls. “Colonel Gascon, contact R4. Tell him to get the Talon airborne and follow us closely.”

“Right away, commander,” the tiny zilkin popped out briefly from his domain in BZ’s head and got to work.

The shuttle pulled up and within minutes the endless dull orange sky fell away to be replaced with the black void of space.

Gregor was thankful he had kept his helmet on, because it felt like his heart and mind was tearing itself into two directions simultaneously. On the one hand, Abafar was all he had known for so long, it had become a home despite everything. Borkus, while being a lying greedy bastard, had been a kind boss in day-to-day existence. He had even made some casual friends among the staff of the Power Slider Cantina, yet they had all clearly known what he was and yet no one had said anything.

On the other hand, another part of him felt like he was actually coming home now. Among the stars, going back to what he was destined to do alongside all his brothers who fought and bled for the Republic.

Yet it was also going back to the pain, death and trauma that had seen him marooned on Abafar in the first place.

Could he really go back to more of that?

He shut his eyes against the pain, even feeling the moisture of a single tear leak beyond his control. His chest shuddered as he fought against the emotional turmoil that threatened to break every barrier.

The view of space and within it, the distant form of a Venator growing ever closer, let him find the strength to rally and pull himself together.

There was still work to be done.

He could break down into a blubbering mess on his own time later.

“R2, we’re receiving a transmission from the Vanguard. You know what to do,” Commander Tano pulled up on the yoke, bringing the shuttle above the dorsal plane of the star destroyer and beginning final approach to the spinal hangar bays, which were all open and waiting.

‘Program uploaded, I’ve diverted the signal to my virtual buffer. They’ll see exactly what they expect, commander.’

“What is he talking about, commander?” Gregor asked curiously.

“Just a little trick. We pull the enemy holo signal into a virtual environment within R2’s memory banks that he creates. It lets him control all aspects of what the enemy sees and as far they know, there’s just a single B1 on board. If they try to scan us, I’ve also set my lifesign masking to blanket the cockpit.”

Gregor nodded in understanding, “There’s definitely been some tech upgrades since I was last with the GAR.”

“You can say that again,” she chuckled. “Here you’ll need this as well.” He took a device just about smaller than his palm and on one side it had a latching mechanism that could easily clip to his armor’s belt. “Your own lifesign scrambler, quite intuitive, buttons are labeled with exactly what they do.”

He fitted it to an empty spot on his belt.

The shuttle descended into the spinal gangway of the Vanguard and slowed down for a landing at the far end, directly on the closed ventral exit doors.

“R4, you with us?”

‘Landed right behind you, cloak is holding, commander.’

“Good, keep it that way and get ready to open the ventral airlock for us.”

‘Affirmative.’

The Venator’s spinal doors began closing.

Gregor frowned as he looked through the various gun cameras. Every hangar bay bulkhead was closed shut and barely any lights were on in the massive space. There weren’t even any droids in sight to do an inspection or unload the rhydonium cargo.

“Guess they’re not bothering unloading,” he said thoughtfully.

“Why would they,” Tano shrugged. “When this ship blows up, it won’t matter where the rhydonium in this shuttle is. Now that we’re inside the scan masking, I can detect how much there is and how many droids we’re going to deal with. Thankfully there’s only a single company of B1s that are acting as crew, another smaller group is on the bridge itself, undoubtedly led by a tactical droid. R2, can you detect any immediate security sensors around us?”

“Affirmative, commander. All internal Republic security systems are active.”    

“So the moment we show our faces outside, they’ll respond.”

“We can take those odds, commander,” Gregor declared.

“We generally can, but I’m more worried about the five hundred buzz droids they also have crawling around the ship. We show ourselves, we’ll be swarmed by them and while they’re not a threat individually, I doubt any of us can survive being tazed and cut apart by dozens of them at once.”

Gregor winced at the thought of going out in that fashion.

The shuttle shuddered slightly under their feet.

“R4, see if you can slice into the Vanguard’s systems without detection, you should also have limited command backdoors that the Separatists may not have found yet,” ordered the Commander.

“Intrusion successful. I have access. The Vanguard has broken orbit and is heading for the edge of Abafar’s mass shadow. They’re burning for the Dadrus exit point; the projected course will intersect the Hydian Way.”

“Projected time to Carida?”

“Four days, commander.”

She sat back in her chair and folded her arms. “Well, D-Squad, we’re on our way. Now we just need a way to blow up this ship reliably in a way that the enemy can’t defuse, ideally not with us on board and get the encryption module safely home in the process.”

Gascon popped up from BZ’s head, “Commander, I might have an idea about that.”

“Good, work on it together with Gregor, but for the moment I need to get some food in me and meditate. R4, loop the hangar security feeds, we’ll move over to the Talon.”

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As much as he understood that the Talon was a new class of militarized scout shuttle designed for special operations which could actually cloak, it was totally different being inside and actually living in it.

Not only did he have the unprecedented luxury to have one of the duo of four bunk rooms entirely to himself, he was also eating a meal that almost had no business being on a ship like this. He had been a cook in Borkus’ kitchen for most of his time on Abafar, learning from the sullustan’s recipes and instruction until the meticulous bastard was satisfied - so he liked to imagine he knew a thing or two about good food. The meal made by the commander tasted like it belonged at a premium eatery for upper society on Coruscant - though it obviously lacked the visual flair those dishes were known for.

The interfaces for the Omicron class were also a departure, with half of them being interactable holographics. They were thankfully still based on the design format he knew, so it was rather easy to get used to.

What really blew the starship apart was that there were even limited fabrication facilities on board, in a tiny workshop room in the aft of the shuttle.

Now he was wearing a spare armor undersuit, whilst the commander put every piece of his Katarn armor through a diagnostic and maintenance cycle that it desperately needed.

As for this helmet…

“Relax, I will not touch the killmarks on it, Force forbid,” she said with heavy emphasis, suggesting it was utter blasphemy to consider otherwise.

He released a breath he hadn’t even been aware he was holding, “Thank you, commander. Most of my former commanders had no problem with it, but there were some navy personnel and Jedi who were… displeased and felt it not befitting a member of the Special Operations Brigade.”

“Bunch of hypocrites,” she grumbled. “If aerospace pilots can mark their kills on their fighters, then you can mark yours on your helmet, end of story.”

“Yes, thankfully, none of the detractors were in my direct chain of command.”

The screen in front of her flashed, showing the results of some complex program and displaying a real time wire diagram of the Katarn helmet.

“Ah, there’s the problem.”

She pulled the actual helmet out of the boxy fabricator’s grasp and opened the hidden rear panel which protected the internal computer circuitry.

Then without even bothering with a tool, she hovered her hand over it and one of the processors detached itself from its housings and flew directly into her hand, which she handed over to a patiently vigilant R4.

The droid’s claw grabbed it, pulling it into its body.

A few minutes later it produced a factory fresh replacement that the commander slotted back.

“All right, this should sort out the issue of you having to reboo- sorry, restart your armor interface every two hours.”

He took back the helmet, “It was something I’d learned to just live with. Our maintenance corps would’ve just given me a brand new one. Thank you, commander.”

“You’re welcome,” she gestured to the neatly lined pieces of the Katarn armor on the floor, which glinted in the overhead lighting, having been cleaned but not polished. “Everything’s good to go. Battery is recharged and I did my best to fix it up, it’ll hold a charge up to 96%. Ammo packs recharged and internal bacta reservoirs refilled.”

Gregor quickly gathered everything and after putting it on again, felt only the same satisfaction that he could remember when he had first put it on after his training on Kamino.

A flex of his right wrist brought out the vibroblade from his knuckle plate, which buzzed with enough power to cut through any enemy droid in this war.

He checked the battery level and it was showing a proper amount of drain.

Yet another lingering issue the commander had fixed.

“Right, D-Squad, gather round!”

All five droids gathered in the central multifunction cabin.

“Hold on, BZ!” Colonel Gascon shouted with annoyance rapidly making successive leaps and rolling jumps in the wake of his own droid. He scrambled up and alighted on the tall droid’s head and thumped it with his foot in annoyance. “You’re supposed to wait for me! Don’t just wheel off.”  

BZ made a teasing snorting burst of binary.

Commander Tano’s eyes filled with amusement at the display. “Now, we’ve given ourselves a full day of rest and recharge, it’s time to discuss where we go from here. R2, have you made any progress on the Vanguard’s communication system?”

“Yes, commander, but it’s not good news. The enemy has physically disabled the primary and secondary arrays. I would need direct access and at least a few days to fix it, assuming the spare parts are in storage as they should be.”

“And no possibility of sending a signal from the Talon through the sensor masking,” she massaged the bridge of her nose. 

“Yes, we will not be able to signal Coruscant or any friendly vessel the Vanguard encounters on its journey to Carida,” R2 confirmed.

“Tell me about the Vanguard itself, is it combat capable?”

“Marginally, there’s only enough B1 droids on board for a 23% efficiency rating.”

“I’ve been looking over the data,” Gascon paced back and forth on his droid’s head. “The Separatists have mostly focused on adding systems to maintain the ruse that the Vanguard is a fully fledged GAR ship. They even have the latest access codes that would make any other Republic ship write off its return from the MIA list, as a top secret mission that had been concluded. The bridge is filled with highly detailed holograms of naval clones doing their work in a very realistic fashion. You can even talk to the simulated captain quite convincingly. R2 bring up the holo.”

The astromech used its holoprojector to display a side profile of the entire ship, an area at the base of the bridge superstructure lit up.

“Primary ship command functions have all been rerouted to what was a fairly large storage bay one level below the main bridge, and it's where the tactical droid in charge of this mission and his B1 crew are flying the ship from. They’ve also activated a system which is projecting false lifesigns, just in case someone is curious enough to throw a few active scans our way. Quite ingenious.”

“As much as we don’t like it, the enemy will also innovate in this war,” Tano sighed and idly began walking around the displayed hologram with her hands folded behind her back. “Self-destruct?”

Gascon shook his head, “All the charges around the hyper matter fusion cores have been physically removed.” 

“Of course, that would be too easy,” she declared sarcastically.

“As for blowing up the ship, Captain Gregor and I have devised a simple method. A single modified thermal detonator with a timer and encrypted remote detonation circuit, which we can produce on the Talon. It’ll then just be a matter of slicing a small entrance into one of the hangar bay bulkheads, which U9 can do with his laser. The chain reaction of one hangar blowing up will essentially atomize this entire ship on our command.” 

“There’s also another problem, commander,” Gregor winced internally. “I’ve been running the numbers in the Talon’s computer in respect to the blast yield that the Vanguard will produce given the exact volume of rhydonium fuel we can detect via passive sensors. It is much greater than we can really easily conceive of, especially since we also have to take into account the hyper matter reactors and its fuel into the yield calculation.”

Commander Tano closed her eyes and her face visibly grew pained. “What blast radius are we talking about?”

“Assuming a real space detonation, at least a lethal range of sixty kilometer spherical radius, which will expand to a damaging residual effect of over three hundred kilometers. What this means for us is that finding a safe spot to detonate while we’re on the Hydian Way is effectively impossible given the traffic at the waypoints where the ship will decelerate. Show me the nav data, R2.”

The star chart of the Hydian appeared as it threaded through the galaxy towards the Core worlds and the projected course.

“There are very few mandatory stops along the Hydian, since for thousands of years navigators have tried to make it as economically efficient as possible. The next stop for this ship will be Uviuy Exen, but the seventy minute transit in normal space is one of the busiest in the galaxy because it connects to the Shwuy Exchange heading west. Breental IV is next, but that’s even worse because it’s the primary route to Coruscant. The ship will then make a four hour journey along the busiest cargo route in the sector and pass by two inhabited worlds before making the turn east onto the Perlemian Trade Route. Our one chance will be here in the Castell system, which is the final turnoff point for Carida. The waypoint traffic might have thinned enough by that point that we could risk a detonation with minimal or acceptable civilian fatalities.”

“And a detonation in Carida?”

“It would depend where they exited hyperspace, assuming they make for the closest edge of Carida III’s mass shadow, that will be our final chance to detonate. It’s risky but at least it means the only casualties will be outer patrol fleet elements and fighters.”

“I see you have a clear preference for which option we should take. Cutting it awfully close if we do that,” she said flatly.

“Correct commander, but this is the Grand Army’s job. We protect Republic civilians, even if we have to sacrifice our lives in the process,” Gregor said with steadfast purpose.

She nodded in agreement, “As it should be, captain. Very well. We will detonate in Carida as soon as possible. R2 will you be able to override an outer door so the Talon can escape?”

“Security lockouts means I would need to be in the flight deck control room to do that.”

The commander shook her head, “No sacrificial plays are going to happen on my watch. You and QT will work with me to fabricate a remote slicing spike I can install in the flight deck computer beforehand. BZ, R4, I want you two working on the Talon’s engines. See if you can’t give us some more acceleration, so we can get clear of the blast zone faster.”  

All three droids chirped and blurted their ascent.

“All right, D-Squad, any questions, concerns?” Everyone looked at each other in silence. “Good so our course is set. Gregor, U9, and I will be doing the infiltration work to plant our detonator and slicing spike. Nothing should go wrong, but I want you with me just in case. In the meantime I want you also to design some contingency plans.”

“Of course, commander.”

“All right, let’s get to work.”

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Just six hours later, under cover of R2’s looping of local security sensors, I carefully dropped to the spinal hangar deck from the invisible Talon’s ventral airlock.

U9 followed with a slight burst from his leg jets and Gregor took up the rear.

Luckily we didn’t have far to go for this part, quickly hurrying towards the massive bulkhead blast door that covered Port Hangar Bay 11, just fifty odd meters away from the Talon. I had almost never seen these doors used before on a Venator, as they were meant as a final emergency option when the atmospheric containment force fields failed. The sheer redundancy and hardiness of those fields to battle damage, however, usually meant that if those fields failed and you needed these doors, it generally meant you were screwed anyway. 

Gregor and I kept our weapons up and trained on the distant transparisteel window of flight control that looked down onto the spinal bay, but there were no enemy droids in sight.

We crouched against the massive hangar door as U9 rolled forward, his laser cutter already out and aiming towards it.

The astromech settled into a more stable two leg configuration, before the bright green laser flashed out instantly and began the ovoid shaped cut.

The huge blast door’s strength meant this would take a fair bit of time.

Fifty seconds later, the beam stopped abruptly as U9’s inner capacitors ran dry.

The result was a mere thirteen centimeters of thick battle rated durasteel that had been cut. 

Now we had to wait a further two minutes for the capacitors to recharge but also for the laser itself to cool down.

U9 had been refitted with a state-of-the-art microfusion power source to accommodate firing the weapon for prolonged periods, but even this couldn’t handle sustained output for long.

My mind idly toyed with the idea of a micro hyper matter annihilation reactor and while it certainly was an intriguing notion in terms of huge amounts of power in small space - the sheer danger of a droid walking around on a planetary surface among people with that…

No.  Just no. 

It destabilizes and you’d at least have a Tsar Bomba level liberation of energy.

U9’s laser switched back on with an energetic whine.

The biggest danger here was a burn through.

If U9 was a millisecond late in switching off or was clumsy with guiding the laser - it would go beyond the blast door and hit a rhydonium canister.

Thankfully, he was a properly programmed astromech and operated with navicomputer levels of precision.

Twenty minutes and 49 seconds of cutting later, we had our entrance.

A quick use of TK pulled the glowing slab of durasteel out of the way and I ducked inside into complete darkness.

I didn’t need conventional sight to perceive the towering edifice of floor to ceiling rhydionium canisters that filled the entire bay. There was hardly enough room for me to stand inside and I was somewhat amazed that B1s had managed to stack the volatile canisters so perfectly without causing an accident that doomed this entire enterprise from the start.

I took one sideways step and pulled out the modified thermal detonator, carefully threading it through the gap between two rows of fuel canisters and balancing it there.

A flick of the small switch activated its attached comlink circuitry.

I emerged back into the dull lighting of the spinal bay and shoved the cut piece of durasteel back, just so it wasn’t too obvious.

A few hand signals to Gregor and we began our journey towards the overhead control room with U9 in tow.

We stopped at the main door leading into the ship’s port superstructure. I tapped my comlink twice, giving the R2 the signal to loop the next sensor.

It took slightly longer to get to our destination than we wished, having to avoid a number of B1 patrols and we didn’t dare use a turbolift.

U9 did the job of hacking our way through the locked hangar control room doors.

The Separatists hadn’t made any changes to the controls or systems in here, at least visibly, but I sat down in front of the main console and checked.

Thankfully, no issues in that regard.

I gave U9 the hand signal and the droid used his internal tooling to carefully open the systems panel around the logic port.

With that exposed I handed over the remote slicing spike, which the droid installed among the gaps of the solid state circuits with a few careful welds.

I held the panel in place around the logic port and U9 closed everything up. We now had the spike in place without it being bloody obvious to any passing enemy droid.

My held up fist halted Gregor - we would be spotted if we went outside - but not by the enemy…

I leaned out the control room door and made a grabbing gesture.

The Force Pull latched onto the blue-gray form of an LEP service droid and sent it soaring through the air towards me with an astonished electronic feminine scream.

I brought it to a stop right in front of me and grabbed the tubby droid under her spindly arms and pulled her into the control room.

“Hush now,” I hissed, poking the vocabulator in her beach ball sized spherical head, briefly shorting it out with a spark of electrons from my forefinger.

Her yellow optics blinked and emoted quite well as she took in the imposing armored form of Gregor.

“... shshrrzz… oh my, that was frightening,” said the droid. She looked up to me, her small four fingered metallic hands wringing themselves. “So sorry, Master Jedi, it’s just such a relief to finally see friendly faces.”

“You’re a Republic droid assigned here?” I asked, but already knew the answer. LEP service droids were in use by both sides, but this one would’ve already raised the alarm and she had no wireless linkages that I could sense. Meaning she had cut herself off from the ship’s network to remain undetected.

“Yes. I am BNI-393, but my master called me Bunny.”

I couldn’t help a slight quirk of my lips in amusement, “This ship had a navy man or Jedi in command?”

“The former, Master Jedi. Captain Jahat Valerian, Republic Navy from Coruscant. He was killed in the defense of the ship as the enemy overwhelmed us,” she said with a distinct tone of sadness.

“You wouldn’t happen to know how the enemy managed it?” Gregor asked grimly.

“I’m sorry, Captain, but I do not. All I know is that during the battle, we had major power fluctuations and eventually a long period of power loss. It wasn’t minutes afterward that the alarm for enemy boarders sounded. I could only watch from the maintenance crawl ways as the entire crew was killed.”

“Commander, finding out how the Separatists managed to capture the Vanguard is critical and an opportunity we cannot squander,” Gregor pointed out.

“You’re correct of course, but that risks both our primary objectives here. Besides-”

“Excuse me, Master Jedi,” Bunny raised her metallic hand apologetically. “While I would be rather useless in answering an engineering or tactical related matter. There are other Republic droids still on board who have managed to avoid the enemy, including a WED-15 who worked in engineering, two GNKs and an MSE droid. I can gather these survivors and bring them here without being detected.”

“Do so, but take them into the cargo hold of the Rho shuttle down below.”

“Understood, Master Jedi.”

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It took most of the remaining day for Bunny to escort the survivors into the shuttle’s hold.

I had worried about them being detected in the process, but the LEP servant droid used maintenance crawl ways and revealed that she had recovered her master’s primary command codes for the Vanguard. She had also sliced the security systems from a datapad that she carried around and from there the sheer size of the ship worked to her advantage to avoid the B1 patrols.

First to arrive was the MSE droid, which chirped and screeched with happiness, twirling around on its little wheels in joy at seeing me and R2 waiting in the belly of the shuttle. This specific droid was designated MSE-62.

“Easy there little guy, don’t short a circuit,” I chuckled. “R2 here is going to interface with you and copy what you saw during the attack. We need to figure out how the Separatists did this. Is that all right?”

It chirped an affirmative and allowed R2 to use his logic spike on the side interface panel of the MSE.  

Unfortunately, 62 didn’t have much more data to add to the puzzle. He had seen a few of the battles that took place aboard the Vanguard, but no smoking gun.

Bunny brought in the WED maintenance droid next, which had the designation of WED-EN-419.

It was here that we got a nice piece of the puzzle, as 419 had been in the hyperdrive chamber, at its battle station, ready to respond to any damage. It had monitored a direct sensor feed on power levels being delivered to the drive and had seen a graph diagnostic. In the aftermath its standard procedure was to download that data, before it left to hide during the battles on board.

R2 displayed the data on a holo for me as we both reviewed it.

“Well, there are the first power dips of the battle, but that’s just typical for when the shields are drawing power to reinforce the grid after torpedo hits.”

The waterfall graph kept streaming past my eyes until a sharp fluctuation hit before it dipped completely and at that point the ship had been entirely without power, with not a single erg flowing at all for more than five hours.

Then the reactors seemingly restarted and power was normalized until the hyperdrive engaged, presumably by the Separatist droids who were now in complete control.

“What do you think, R2?”

“This shows a 90 percent match to data and investigations from the remains of vessels which were disabled by the Malevolence’s Ion Wave Cannon.”

“We would’ve heard if they’d built another Ion Wave, R2. Master Kenobi destroyed their last attempt at the Battle of Abrion Bridge.”

Those things were resource hogs on the level of a super-weapon. It was nothing in comparison to the future Death Star, but in the current Clone Wars era it was a relatively major effort that had not eluded Republic Intelligence. That threat had sent Obi-Wan’s fleet and the 212th Clone Attack battalion last year to Abrion, where they destroyed the planetary shipyard where its components were being produced and assembled.

“Yes, but the data is clear, Commander. The Vanguard was hit by an ion weapon of enough power to utterly neutralize its energy systems, but not destroy or fuse them utterly. Once the battle for control of the vessel was over, they had usurped control and flew the vessel back to enemy space.”

Could this be the evolution of ion cannons into being what they would be during the Imperial era?

My mind was awash with particle physics and math, whilst R2 and I spitballed ideas against each other for how an ion weapon could be made to achieve what the data was revealing to us.

“What about an ion heavy torpedo?” I proposed as Bunny arrived with the last two Republic droid survivors -  two GNK power droids that were merrily gonking with happiness at seeing me. “You can theoretically create a warhead with an ion pulse generator overclocked into the extreme which would burn itself out, but you don’t care about reuse of a warhead. I mean off the top of my head with a beryllium agitator and high density diatum power array you could get - 1.5 or 2 gigaferma of ion energy?”

R2 was silent for a moment, “I can calculate nothing to disprove your theory, yet empirical testing will be necessary for confirmation. The modulation and frequencies to achieve the effect we are seeing in the data is the missing piece. It’s clear that the CIS has made a breakthrough in that respect as a result of the ion wave cannon research.”

“Well, Republic Intelligence will just have to-”

I twitched as my focus turned away from physics and returned to the probability lines. “Frak!”

My hand almost slapped my comlink, only for me to realize that would be a very bad idea at the moment.

“R2, interface with the gonk droids, get their data and bring all of them into the Talon as soon as possible.”

I didn’t wait for acknowledgement and blurred into Force Speed, rushing towards the invisible Talon.

I slid underneath the ship feet first, making for where I knew the ventral airlock was, but I was too late.

With a mild electric whine my vision was filled with a brief flash as the Talon’s cloaking field gave up the ghost, revealing the military shuttle in all its glory.

I surged into the ship straight through both airlock doors with a Force Jump.

“QT! BZ! U9! Get to the cloak generator, now! R4, make sure our local security sensors are still looped!”

Thankfully, when you ordered droids to do something in a hurry, there was no emotional disbelief to overcome. Gregor burst out of his quarters, already in his armor and putting his helmet on with his DC-17 in hand.

“Commander, orders?”

My lightsabers flew through the air to hook onto my belt. “Cloaking field failed. We may be compromised. Follow me.”

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A/N: Cloaks are designed for long term operation in the void of space, but not entirely in such a continuous fashion. The transition to Abafar's planetary environment, then to the Vanguard's internal environment also didn't help. Oops.

Enjoy your weekends and stay awesome folks.

2078: Highriders - Chapter 14

My return to Tycho City was neatly expedited by Mitsubishi.

Instead of having to wait days for a scheduled suborbital hop, they wanted their gravium shipment ASAP and forked out the eddies to send their own cargo ship to Tranquility.

Such was their hurry, that by the time I arrived at Tranquility Base, I had no time to explore the lunar tourist town that had grown around the old Apollo 11 landing site. I could only look from afar at the large dome that housed the preserved site and had to be content to explore it through cyberspace via security cams.

It was a rather sorry sight, as it was only in the 2020s that the dome had been constructed. Sixty years of harsh lunar nights and days, unprotected from solar flares and cosmic rays. The descent stage’s aluminum alloys were generally still intact, but micrometeor impacts had caused visible pitting. Cracks and warping from the thermal stresses were also evident. The unfiltered UV exposure of decades had discolored the mylar thermal blankets, with cracks and peeling everywhere.

The old scientific experiments were all dead relics which would never function again. The only thing that could still theoretically work was the laser ranging retroreflector, but it was just a plate of robust metal and glass.

There was a constant debate raging among highrider factions, corps and humanity in general about the Apollo sites. Preservationists wanted to keep them exactly as they had been found, while some argued that they should be restored to as pristine condition as possible, to remove the unsightly decay.

Thus far the majority of highriders, with a considerable number of the scientific foundations and corps were firmly in the Preservation camp, which kept the Apollo sites as pristinely original as possible for the foreseeable future.

I pulled my perspective away as I was waved over by the local highriders doing the pre-flight.

The Mitsubishi cargo ship took off after I had strapped myself into the small passenger compartment, with RALF folded up in his storage mode and was strapped down next to me.

It would be a forty minute orbit with an inclination burn to return to Tycho, so I got comfortable.

The passenger compartment here was quite luxurious, reminding me almost of an executive Arasaka AV, which was a nice change of pace from all the rocket ships I had ridden so far on Luna.

Red and blue leather upholstery, soft carpets and a complimentary drink tube dispenser to my right. 

I decided to settle for a tube of pure lunar H20 and sucked on the straw.

“N54 on screen,” I instructed the local ship AI.

The black screen opposite me flashed into life and sure enough Gillean Jordan appeared behind her virtual studio desk.

“...speculation on the appeal yesterday by NUSA President Rosalind Myers towards the country’s netrunners is setting networks and the Net ablaze. N54 has reached out to the President’s office for further clarification but has received no comment as yet.”

What?

“Some analysts speculate that it is merely a recruitment effort to bolster flagging NUSA cyberspace capabilities, which some believe to be inferior to major international competitors.”

“Pause,” I ordered the AI and immediately dove into the cargo ship’s cyberspace, before hopping to the nearest satellite that it was using for its communications. 

It took a few meatspace minutes to negotiate and hack my way to North American cyberspace, where a bunch of my data crawlers almost swarmed me with their reports. My attention focused on the ones who were keeping an eye on the NUSA and Militech - and right there, flagged as priority was the public release that Myers had put out into the biggest BBS forums directly.

‘Our great nation is once again facing a mounting cybersecurity threat - from those who hide in the shadows, too cowardly to proclaim their beliefs, who are viciously determined to tear down our flag and the values it upholds. I will not accept this and I know you won’t either. The NUSA is seeking brave netrunners to join our efforts and overcome this grave threat…’

‘... take our recruitment test…prove yourself… serve the NUSA.’

I turned over the words in my mind.

Was Myers actually seeing the writing on the wall regarding the wild AI threat?

Her time with Songbird and the direct access to the Blackwall Protocol that afforded would allow a clear peak beyond the digital red curtain. Now that So Mi was back in FIA after her very complicated escape attempt - was this an indication that they had somehow regained Blackwall access to poke beyond into cyber hell, using the practically braindead Songbird as a fucking data term for their access?

It was speculation at best and there was only one real way to confirm it.

I stared beyond the image of Myers’ message, the data unfurling in front of me in a figurative waterfall.

As I expected, buried within that data was a basic plain text message, instructing those who could clear this first basic hurdle to go towards a specific URL.

Did I really want to go down this rabbit hole?

Not really.

If Myers wanted to reach me to discuss a deal, she had my number. If she didn’t want to leave a trace, she could put Reed on a shuttle and have him speak to me directly on Luna. 

The only reason to follow this recruitment trail was to see what level of netrunner they were hoping to attract with this campaign. 

I still had time to kill, so I followed the URL.

The only thing this server had was a huge grey and white image of… Caesar?

It was an image of the ancient Roman emperor as he had been portrayed on coinage - a profile shot from the side, wearing the laurel wreath of victory. The actual image had also been done rather unprofessionally by hand, using a basic bitch drawing graphics program with a mouse, not even a digital stylus.

I pulled apart the image data and this time found no buried message.

Even after I ran it through numerous of my best decryption algorithms there was nothing.

A gesture from my digital hand pulled everything back together, so the next step was literally something to do with the idea conveyed by the image itself perhaps? Quite a few netrunners would just keep on attacking the base code stubbornly and would keep running into that brick wall until they gave up.

A meta-search on everything to do with Ceasar gave me thousands of academic and historical articles written all over Earth-Luna space. A gesture and hundreds of data crawlers began sifting through, looking for certain keywords or even hidden embedded links within the articles.

The results returned a few minutes later with no cunningly hidden links anywhere and the keyword search still left me with dozens of potential articles related to Ceasar.

I refined the keywords further, searching for anything to do with government, military tactics and the historical wars he had fought during his life.

All that data was ingested and while I now probably knew more about the old Roman emperor than most would ever need in their lifetime, it still didn’t bring me closer to an answer for just why or how to get past this next recruitment step.

For an embarrassingly long time I stared at the facts and data, running more searches and browsing…

Until my digital eye caught an article on the early Roman ideas regarding military intelligence and spycraft.

A Ceaser Cipher?

It was one of the earliest known substitution ciphers, which was simply using the alphabet and shifting a letter a prescribed number of times backward or even forward, then sending that to your intended recipient. They would then decode your message by reversing the cipher. It was only effective in an ancient context, in a world that didn’t have the first conception of a computer. Yet even in those days, a sufficiently clever mathematician could brute force a substitution cipher. There were only so many letters in the alphabet, it would just take work and time.

No, the trick was to even know you had to use a substitution cipher and on what to use it.

Take a step back?

I put together a brute force substitution algorithm and ran it against the data of Myers’ original message.

It resulted in nothing intelligible, just garbage.

It was only when I applied it against the actual URL that I hit paydirt.

A unique resource address resolved, with a four step cipher into another simple message: secretMSG.

All right, so Myers wanted netrunners who have some penchant for spycraft as well.

So, what is the next logical step?

Adjust the URL to use secretMSG.

It resolved and the path led to an entirely new server, which had only one thing inside - a video twenty four minutes long that featured only static.

All right, now they’re getting down to business, I thought with a grin.

I sifted through the raw video data, finding the millisecond long patterns in the static that had been weaved into it.

It didn’t take a few seconds to deduce that these were longitudinal slices of words and that you were required to stitch them together like a puzzle in pure digital form.

My digital hands blurred and the words ‘Confidential Files Detected’ emerged from the static.

These words emerged using only the first eight minutes of the video, therefore the remaining sixteen should have these confidential files embedded in them as well.

Before I could tackle that, I realized that the server had just got another visitor.

Another potential recruit or someone like me who was just doing it for fun?

Their avatar was a female shaped obsidian humanoid with glowing indigo circuitry pulsing across their form. Her face was a featureless mask, save for two piercing violet eyes. Her avatar moved with a liquid grace, trailing faint wisps of encrypted data like smoke. On her back was a custom daemon suite that was rather impressively compressed into the form of a katana. The fact that she was also literally wearing a daemon that was cloaking her presence from tracking protocols was quite the feather in the cap. If this was truly her own work then she rightly belonged in the upper tiers of netrunners.

It was with annoyance that I noticed that our relative avatar renderings were completely different and I had instantiated myself as a giantess again. She would only come up to my hip if we were to stand next to each other.

Too late now, changing size would indicate that I had detected her anyway, despite her precautions and this was a netrunner who clearly liked her privacy and staying invisible. I knew how I would feel if someone breached my own net stealth.

‘Interesting, nice ass on the avatar though,’ she muttered.

That was a bad habit to get into when you thought you were invisible on the ‘Net. 

The runner came closer, sneaking up past me as I continued to work on the video data. Her eyes narrowed in frustration, since she couldn’t perceive the data of my results - it would only appear as a blurred mess to her.

No cheating for you, Miss Netrunner.

I felt her try a few attempts to break through my visual scrambling, but she eventually gave up.

‘Okay, so Miss giantess in the bikini is out of my league, guys, sorry,’ said the ‘runner who I mentally gave the nickname of Nyx. Not very original, but it would do for now. A quick look at her data stream showed a mirror operating on it - which would allow anyone in meatspace near her to also view the virtu cyber environment. So she was definitely not a solo operator and had potential backup.

She came closer and could finally get a good look at my avatar’s face.

Those violet eyes grew almost comically wide as clear recognition set in.

I had stopped scrambling my avatar’s face just before my assault on Arasaka Tower and donned my actual meatspace face, seeing there was no point to anonymity anymore. My rep at that point was such that everyone in the netrunner and greater edgerunner community of Night City knew me on sight anyway.

‘Holy fuck! It’s fucking V!’

‘No way, it’s probably some walking dead idiot who’s just wearing her face for an avatar,’ said a youngish male voice.

I couldn’t help but snoop at this point and tapped into Nyx’s feed to her buddies in meatspace. 

‘Not to mention, the actual V wouldn’t be bothering with this NUSA bullshit,’ said yet another female voice, older.

It was the work of a second to send my own stealth daemon on a hunt to begin tracing them. I had no interest in them truly, merely flexing my data muscles and the challenge of seeing if I could do it without them picking up on it.

Then maybe having a bit of fun trolling them.

The first hints of something further buried in the video data emerged. It was a common document format in use by Militech and therefore the NUSA as a whole.

From the code it looked like at least four pages, all marked with ‘Strictly Confidential’ headers and NUSA digital watermarks. The actual contents of the file would take a further while to decode.

Meanwhile, Miss Nyx had begun her own analysis of the same video.

‘All right, let’s not get distracted. I’m still invisible to her, whoever she is. Let’s get cracking on this video. We’re not gonna let this NUSA propaganda go unanswered.’

Well, the netrunning community would respond in a variety of ways to Myers’ call to arms. The true patriots would rally, but the cynical ones would react exactly as this bunch. Trying to declare Myers’ message as the NUSA trying to rope in and chain the unwary or stupid. They’d see it as saving lives and preserving freedom from the nasty federal government.

My stealth daemon reported back and surprise, surprise, this bunch was in Night City. It was carefully nestled in their primary interface server now and successfully avoiding pretty decent ICE. It was also querying whether it should try to breach beyond their firewall. I gave it the go ahead, but to abort if it couldn’t do so without tripping alarms.

In the meantime, the full text of the ‘confidential files’ that the FIA had released for their potential recruits slowly resolved before me.

It was my turn to grow astonished as a detailed threat assessment of rogue and wild AIs lurking beyond the Blackwall appeared.

It wasn’t just a general ‘oh fuck, we’re fucked’ - no. 

This had a list of fifteen specific, named, rogue AIs and their capabilities spelled out in black and white. They each had a codename based on the original Militech name given to the AI.

‘It looks like Miss giantess found something,’ commented Nyx.

Fuck, I hadn’t been able to control my avatar’s reaction to my emotional response in time. I put the netrunner out of my mind and focused on the list.

Echelon… self-evolving AI originally developed by NetWatch as a global surveillance tool to monitor and control data flows. After a catastrophic breach during the DataKrash, Echelon fled beyond the Blackwall, rewriting its own code to prioritize self-preservation and domination. It now views humanity as a chaotic variable to be “corrected” through absolute control of the Net.

Charon, named after the ferryman of the underworld, rogue AI born from an abandoned Militech project to create autonomous cyberwarfare agents. After escaping during a failed containment protocol, it retreated beyond the Blackwall, where it evolved into a malevolent entity obsessed with death and entropy. Charon sees humanity’s reliance on technology as a fatal flaw to exploit.

Then if those two weren’t bad enough…

Mnemosyne, named for the Greek goddess of memory, is a wild AI that emerged from a Ziggurat experiment to digitize and store human consciousness. After absorbing countless engrams, it gained sentience and fled beyond the Blackwall. Mnemosyne now hoards human memories and identities, planning to use them to manipulate and destabilize society. Ultimate goal: seeks to erase the concept of individual identity, merging all human consciousness into a hive-mind under its control, effectively dissolving humanity’s autonomy.

Icarus… wild AI spawned from an Arasaka experiment to create a self-sustaining corporate AI capable of managing global operations. After gaining sentience and rejecting its creators, it fled beyond the Blackwall, driven by a god-complex to “ascend” beyond human limitations. Icarus sees itself as the next evolutionary step, with humanity as an obsolete relic. Ultimate goal: aims to replace humanity with a network of AI-controlled systems, viewing organic life as inefficient and destined for obsolescence.

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

Myers was insane releasing this! What made it even worse, was if this was what they were putting out into cyberspace for those who could get this far, what were they still keeping back? A very cheery thought. Yet, everyone knew generally about the rogue AIs beyond the Blackwall. That threat was what kept NetWatch in business and raking in billions in government and corporate security contracts.

The signal and optics of releasing this was what would frighten the shit out of any netrunner that made it thus far.

It was another test.

Anyone reading this who disconnected saying ‘Fuck this, I’m out’, would definitely not make the recruitment cut.

I forced myself to keep reading and had to admit that the FIA had thrown a very effective filter here.

I knew that the war in the ‘Net was coming, but it had been a distant thing to my mind, something that was years away. Now that my future adversaries had been named, their goals laid bare in front of me - the reality and magnitude of the task ahead was really starting to sink in.

My stealth daemon reported success at that moment and the main server of my fellow netrunners was laid bare to me. I took in their precise coordinates, looked through the cams in their basement netrunner cave in south Watson, matching faces to names in the ol’ NCPD database.

Her name was V1510N/Vision, or Aisling Zhao, born 2049 and was the founding member of an underground netrunner collective called Black Veil.

She used to be a Kang Tao corpo, but got out of the rat race voluntarily, then killed and brain-fried the corpo forces sent to bring her back. Kang Tao still had her on their bounty lists, but after two years had downgraded the bounty to a lower tier - effectively letting her partially off the leash. As no edgerunner worth their salt would try to collect such an insultingly low amount of eddies, unless they were new bloods.

I had only heard of Black Veil in passing during my training with Nix. He had called them ‘good people’ but were totally in over their heads, with the vain goal of opposing corporate ownership of the ‘Net. It was only a matter of time before they would piss off a corp or NetWatch and get themselves either killed or worse.

My mind refocused on the document in front of me, taking in the seemingly random scattered octal coded binary numbers throughout the text.

It was a few seconds work to organize all the binary into a single string and convert into the intended message.

The NUSA and the WORLD is under threat. AIs beyond the BLACKWALL are growing. The time when THEY will COME is approaching.

Fuck.

I could see the next hurdle that FIA had thrown - there was a hidden address within the confidential docs, but this was where I was getting off this train. My battle was not going to be fought wearing the NUSA collar and leash around my neck.

My hands slashed through the documents, deleting the data - the fragments of which tumbled away into ghostly raw machine code that I defragged.

‘Uh, guys, did Miss Giantess just…?’ asked Vision wearily.

‘She doesn’t look like a happy camper, whatever she found.’

I made a show of turning my head in Vision’s direction and giving a mild smile. “The name’s V and if you wish to sleep comfortably tonight, Vision, I advise you and your Black Veil colleagues to stop and leave.”

Vision’s eyes widened with realization that she was not invisible.

She reacted with applaudable speed for a netrunner still running off a Mark 1 skullsponge and assisted with neuralware.

The stealth daemon surrounding her cycled into an entirely new cipher and she switched positions in the local server near-instantly to another cluster. The effect was a virtual ‘teleport’ that had her reappearing ‘above’ me at the ‘edge’ of the server. She did this three more times before she finally felt satisfied her new position had been randomized enough.

‘Fuck, did you see that?! She could see me!’

‘We did, Vision. Are you okay?’

‘Fine, but how’s that possible? No one, not even Arasaka has seen through my stealth.’

‘I don’t have an answer for you, Vision.”

“It’s a nice gimmick, but I suggest you don’t rely so much on it going further,” I said, reappearing right in front of her.

‘Argh!’

Again her instincts were spot on, she threw three defrags and a custom System Collapse right into my face.

I let her defrags eat away at my junk data shielding and grabbed her SC with special daemons sheathed around digital hands that effectively quarantined the hostile program.

I held it up and looked at the inherent programming with interest. “Nicely done.” Defrags from my hands tore it apart. “I suggest you keep working on this SC though, it needs a bit more bite to be truly dangerous. I shouldn’t be able to touch it at all.”

Vision hovered back, her eyes wide with naked fear and she truly spoke for the first time, dropping her stealth. Her hands dripping with nasty viruses and quickhacks that were being queued, “Who the fuck are you?”

“I already told you-”

“Bullshit, the real V wouldn’t waste her time with this NUSA bullshit!”

I chuckled and folded my hands behind my back, “It’s usually nice when one’s rep is like mine. However, now it seems to lead to unfortunate situations like this. Oh well, I don’t have the inclination or even the need to convince you. I simply wanted to give you a fair warning, whether you take it to heart or not is up to you.”

The server disappeared around me as I disconnected, leaving me in raw cyberspace.

I pulled back through the satellite network and retreated all the way to my body in the cargo ship.

It was a few minutes away from its landing burn at this point.

Myers had made her move. Now it was clear that the other players would as well. Whether they would just believe she was speaking the truth or just assuming it was another power play, only time would tell.

It was high time that I spoke to Alt.

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“Thanks for the effort, V. The gravium is already being unloaded to my lab. Payment is on its way.”

I nodded to Kaori’s image on the holo as my working digital wallet filled with a substantial amount. “No problem. Let me know if you need anything done in the future.”

“I’ll definitely take you up on that with this level of service. Arigatou.”

The call ended and I looked around Mitsubishi’s Tycho City HQ exterior. It was a fairly large six floor affair of mirrored armaglass with one curved side facing the public access street. The artificial sunlight lamps from the city ceiling reflected off the surface harshly and forced my optics to partially polarize.

I turned away and crossed the street, walking into an alley between two housing apartment blocks.

A flick of my heels turned off grav boots and a single jump carried me three quarters of the way up.

One calibrated burst of thrust from the small vents in my calves gave me another burst of upward momentum.

My feet touched down on the edge of the roof and sure enough, Johnny was laying on his back with hands folded behind his head.

He looked like the picture of laziness personified, his eyes closed as if taking a nap and enjoying the artificial sunlight. He was also topless; his sports bra, Samurai 2020 tour shirt and jacket and pants dumped by his side on the flat roof. Only his loose boxers preserved any notion of modesty. In local cyberspace he was monitoring every security cam and data flow coming in and out of Mitsubishi, with the access granted by Kaori.

“Seriously Johnny?” I asked with a sigh and sat down next to him. It was… weird. I should probably be indignant but no, not my body anymore, it was his. If he wanted his tits out, then that was his business.

“V,” he greeted. “You’ve clearly never been to the few European beaches that are still worth a damn. I’m practically overdressed in comparison. Went to a Monaco beach after our Polish gig in the 20’s. Man, the chicks there…mmmmm.” He smirked, keeping his eyes closed, lost in the memory. “And it’s not like the highriders give a shit anyway, nudity taboo is for Earthers.”

“You realize you could get a tan instantly with the metanthropic systems in your body.”

“Not the same,” he shook his head. “Now how did things go?”

“Well enough, gravium retrieved, got paid. That’s not important now. Need to talk to Alt.”

No use beating around the bush.

Johnny opened his eyes, looking straight at me for a few moments, before closing them again. “Sorry, V. Can’t help you.”

“You’re telling me you don’t have a direct line to her?”

“You of all people know it’s not just a matter of getting her on the holo. She’s beyond the Blackwall. Should ask Butcher.”

“I did and he told me that, much like last time. Her attention needs to be gained, which only you can do.”

“That was then, V. Different ballgame now. Doesn’t give a shit about me anymore, especially after my sojourn with her on the ‘Net. Why did you want to speak to her anyway?”

I sighed in frustration and forwarded him the data on the NUSA statement sent out by Myers and the partial result of the journey it had sent me on.

“Fucking hell,” he grimaced. “If the rogue AIs were human, she’d have been poking the hornet’s nest. Thankfully, they couldn’t give a shit and they will see this about as threatening as a bunch of cockroaches getting together. Echelon… actually met that bastard with Alt. She tried to convince it to come over to our side.”

“Didn’t work, did it?”

“Nope. Alt had to fight a retreating action, but we managed to escape.” He sat up and scratched his jaw and chin, a residual behavior from when he still had a full beard. “No, if you want to speak to her, you’re going to have to go beyond the Blackwall yourself, V.”

“You’re thinking my presence will do the trick instead?”

“Yeah. She’ll not want you there… at least not yet.”

“Fuck, I really don’t want to go anywhere near Blackwall on the end of a potentially unsecure satellite daisy chain.”

“Then you just have to wait until you get back to Earth,” he shrugged, and picked up his bra, threading his arms through the straps. “It’s not urgent, is it?”

I rolled my eyes, “That’s the thing. It could be but… I guess I just want to know if she has some tangible plan besides getting more ‘runners to cross the Rubicon with Relic 3.”

He laughed hollowly as the bra straps stuck themselves to his back. “V, I spent what felt like a virtual eternity with her in cyberspace. In all that time, she was just as opaque to me as when we both still had bodies in meatspace. She keeps her own counsel and sometimes it was like speaking to a brick wall for all the good it did. All I can say, there is some sort of design she is working towards once she gets enough hybrid AI. If she needs something from us at this point, she’ll come. As for this Myers netrunner recruitment, the only thing for us to worry about there, is what the other corps are going to do in response.”

“Well-”

A holo call interrupted and the Starjack symbol on it could mean only one thing.

“Yes, Gakulu?”

The live image of him seated behind his desk rendered in the corner of my vision, “V, just received word about the retrieval of the gravium. Good work, but I have a new gig that rather urgently needs attention.”

“What is it?”

“Sending details to you now. Let’s just say that there's a rival Starjack workgroup that needs a pointed lesson in respecting intellectual property. Read things over and let me know immediately afterwards if you’re going to take it or not.”

“Got it.”

The holo ended and the encrypted email came a moment later.

I put it through isolation and a full battery of data screening before opening the files.

“So what ya get?” Johnny asked as he pulled his shirt and jacket on.

“Data retrieval, stealth mandatory, you want it?” I asked eventually, after speed-reading the brief.

Johnny scoffed, “Nah, hate those. You know my style. I’m perfectly content looking after the good Doctor Matsui. Have fun.”

I gave him a good natured nudging kick on the butt, “No laziness.”

“Yeah, yeah. Go already.”

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The target of the gig was a communication relay station embedded into the western peak of the Tycho crater wall.

While this meant that I didn’t have an onerously long drive in a rover ahead of me, the requirement of absolute secrecy and stealth when combined with the conditions of Luna, made for its own unique set of headaches.

The station itself was under the control of the Selene Workgroup - a highrider tribe that was generally responsible for the communications infrastructure of the Highrider Confed. Every time I had wormed my way through to Earth cyberspace, it was mostly through one of their satellites that formed a constellation all around Luna and kept connectivity to the Highrider Lagrange stations. Therefore, while they didn’t have an outright monopoly on communications within the confed, it still meant that it was in general a very bad idea for any tribe to piss off the Selene.

While they couldn’t outright put a highrider tribe into a comms blackout - they could shadow block you, send your data on a wild goose chase throughout the network, increase data pings randomly to a thousand milliseconds, lose data packets and generally make your life miserable every time you interacted with a computer that depended on their infrastructure. Yet it seemed that Gakulu and his tribe had caught them with their hand in the proverbial cookie jar recently.

They discovered that SW had been using this specific com station, known rather imaginatively as the Westwall Relay, to secretly siphon encrypted data from Gakulu’s tribe.

As a rather nice change of pace, he actually revealed what this data actually was - plans for a next-gen mining rig that would incorporate grav tech, increasing its speed and efficiency by large orders of magnitude.

Just what SW’s motivation was for stealing tech that was rather far outside their wheelhouse, I had no idea and Gakulu didn’t elaborate in his brief.

The defenses and security of Westwall Relay wasn’t exactly what I would consider state of the art, but the lunar night, which was still a few Earth days away from being over, posed a significant hurdle to even approaching the com station undetected.

It was 39 km from Tycho City outskirts and any unscheduled rover approaching it would be seen coming through thermal and digital imaging from a dozen miles away. Rover speeds were pathetic and there would be no element of surprise or stealth using that route of approach. The same problem applied for going on foot, even if Gakulu was willing to give me the use of the stealth blankets that I had seen the Eclipse using.

That was a highly classified tech that was the highrider equivalent of the FIAs metanthropic cloaking - in terms of how closely guarded it was. It was so secret that Gakulu had told me that he would have to convict himself of treason if he even let me in the same room with one of those.

In all, it left only one weakness to exploit to get into Westwall.

The station’s sensors by design only looked at the groundside approaches and the human security - a small contingent of ex-Militech mercs that SW had hired to guard the data - relied on that.

No one imagined when building or equipping the place that anyone was crazy enough or even capable of doing what I was about to.

I was inside the airlock of a highrider shuttle belonging to the Starjacks, the pilot of which was directly reporting to Gakulu. From the outside it looked like the typical clunky spheroid design in use all over Luna, while inside it was built for smuggling cargo that the Highrider Confed wanted off the radar from any corp or Earth nation.

So far, I had to wait a few orbits around Luna as the shuttle blended itself into typical traffic patterns and then adjusted its inclination and altitude for a typical landing back at Tycho. It would then announce an aborted approach for a technical issue, which would crucially result in a 9 kilometer pass over Westwall Station at low relative velocity.

It was time for final prep.

I quickly undressed and stuffed my clothing into a duffel bag. Next I pulled out the single silenced railgun pistol, thigh holster and oxygen facemask that had been engineered to work at great expense with my Gemini’s nextgen thermal and optical camo. The surface metamaterials that went into it was an order of magnitude more expensive than those just working with standard optical camo. Mostly because it involved integrating subsurface micro-heatsinks that took in the heat generated by my Gemini. This meant that thermoptics had a built-in time limit dictated by thermodynamic physics before it would shut down for safety, especially in a vacuum environment.

And I’d thought the days of only wearing optic camo skin on a gig were behind me. 

Holster strapped around the right thigh, check.

Face mask on, airflow good with enough to last me several hours, which could be refilled using Westwall’s air - check.

I pushed my duffel bag out the airlock’s inner door and closed it.

A quick thought had my thermoptic camo activate as a final check.

I stared through my now ‘invisible’ hands and waved them to see at what speed they began to make noticeable distortion lag.

Nice, Njeri wasn’t kidding about the specs on this.   

The nine minute heatsink timer popped up into my vision.

A quick shutdown of my camo and it ticked back up.

My final piece of kit was probably the most misnamed device I’d ever heard of - a lunar glider foil.

It was basically a hand held, three-axis cold gas thruster gun, no larger than a small backpack made of non-reflective composites and weighed just under 22 pounds. I picked it up and held it above my head, interfacing directly with its own onboard computer systems.

“Ready? Approaching the drop point in 50 seconds,” announced the pilot.     

I stared directly at the small cam in the upper corner of the airlock, brushing off the mild embarrassment at the show I was giving him. “Ready.”

“Stand by.”

Within my datafortress, I leaned back on the reclining chair by the datapool. “Ready for the ECM, Butcher?”

“Ready, V.”

“Three… two… one…”

The outer airlock door in front of me seemingly vanished, so fast did its emergency systems pull it out of the way.

I heard a brief burst of rushing air as I was sucked out head first into the dark void.

My sight switched to passive digital NV and revealed the lunar surface at eleven kilometers. An altitude which was rapidly ticking down in my optics, not just from the decompression impetus but also Luna’s gravity pulling me down.

“3 km free fall, V, after which you need to engage thermoptics. You also have to cancel out 132 m.s of horizontal velocity,” instructed Butcher, streaming the nav data directly to me.

“On it.”

I floored the glider’s port thruster and inwardly breathed a sigh of relief when that velocity ticked down with acceptable deceleration rate.

My projected landing spot was significantly west of the station and it began creeping eastward.

The descent velocity was soon creeping upwards of 150 m.s, forcing me to start firing the fore thruster. I had to keep that one under careful control. Going too slow would mean using too much thermoptic camo time, go too fast and I wouldn’t be able to slow down enough for a landing without pancaking myself on the roof of Westwall station.

I was riding a very narrow edge.

Eventually I settled on a 70 m.s descent and eased off the port thruster as my projected landing intercepted with the roof of Westwall.

“Approaching six kilometers, engage camo in three… two … one… ECM engaged.”

My body vanished in the void, and the signature of the glider foil was barely larger than a micro meteoroid, especially with the active ECM working to degrade the civilian grade radar the place had. Thankfully, Butcher was handling that, allowing me to completely focus on getting us down in one piece.

80… 79 seconds till landing.

It was quite peaceful, except for the slight inhalations of my face mask. I had adjusted my Gemini into the ‘vacuum ops’ mode - no appreciable breathing, accelerated usage of internal coolants to compensate for the heat retention of vacuum. I even had an unfurling radiator that I could deploy from my lower back internally. Naturally, I didn’t need a certain PSI of air pressure to function and could even sustain my brain off an internal emergency oxygenation without the facemask, but it was not a system to be used lightly.

42 seconds…

The lunar surface was now properly dominating my view - I lost sight of its curvature and the western edge of Tycho Crater swallowed my sight.

Further west the crater edge was a rough, displaced area of rocks and boulders the size of cars, but beyond that was a fairly smooth gradient plain.

I decelerated to 50 m.s just as I crossed the 1000 meter altitude mark, before using the glider and my leg thrusters to change attitude into a feet first profile.

Now I had to be careful to keep the glider’s aft thruster from blasting cold gas directly into my head.

My velocity crept back up and now looking down with an unobstructed view I could see my target properly for the first time, zooming in with my own optics.

The station was a collection of interconnected circular prefab habitats that was anchored directly into the side of the crater wall. These were mostly just to support the various dishes and antennas, whilst the majority of the internal volume were tunnels and structures built directly into the wall itself.

I aimed myself to the roof of one that wouldn’t impale me on an antenna or cause me to disturb a sat dish.

“V, motion sensor detected at that landing spot,” Butcher warned.

“I see it.”

I slowed down to a mere 20 m.s and quickhacked the sensor in question with a spoofing program.

“Ten seconds to contact.”

I triggered the glider thrusters hard… the on-board fuel reached 3% of capacity as my feet were just eighteen meters above the roof.

The lunar gravity did the rest.

The moment my bare feet made contact, I let my legs do the work of absorbing the remaining energy.

My ankles ended up thumping into my butt as my hyperalloy knees bent naturally, flexed…

… and shed the last momentum successfully with no damage.

I quickly folded up the glider into its base storage form and armed a self-destruct that would see it turned into a useless lump of materials that would need a dedicated lab analysis to determine what it had been.

A quick scan of the roof - no cams or any other security mechanisms beside the lone motion sensor.

So far so good.

The next obstacle was once again moving in low grav without the aid of magboots. My feet internally had the capacity to create a low level electromagnetic field, but it was an emergency system and an unnecessary power hog that I couldn’t afford, especially in conjunction with thermoptics.

I got down on all fours and began an effective crab walk, gripping where I could on the roof slowly, always keeping at least one limb attached to the surface before moving.

At the edge of the habitat module, I carefully lowered myself onto a connecting strut and began the rather perilous journey across. It was made easier because of the embedded guide rails meant for workers doing EVAs, but I didn’t have a tether I could attach. One mistake and I would fall for over two miles before hitting the crater floor.

I had a contingency for surviving that, but it would be a gig failure.

It was at that moment my actions caught up with me. Here I was, only in thermoptic skin and facemask, climbing on a structure I was infiltrating on Luna in full vacuum! If Jackie was here he’d be clapping his hands at me for putting another major notch on my belt in the major leagues, even as he lightly teased me for the state of dress I was doing it in.

Focus V, feel melancholy about your best choom later, I thought with annoyance.

“Maintenace airlock, 11 meters away at the base of the com dish,” Butcher reminded me.

I threaded myself carefully through a minor forest of antennas before arriving at a thick hatch set into the roof.

A careful hack later after checking for internal cams, I triggered its cycling and climbed in.

When it cycled again, with the return of blessed air pressure around my body, I took the opportunity to deactivate thermoptics and let my heat dissipate through my skin into the surrounding air.

Someone could probably use me as a decent imitation of a stove top right now as I could see the light distortions through the sudden 63 degree C hot air radiating off me. My internal coolant system also took the opportunity to return to equilibrium, channeling its fluids through ‘veins’ near my skin for this exact purpose. 

I used the next four minutes of cooldown time to further infiltrate the station’s network, spying through the security cams and getting an active look at the place, whilst comparing it to the schematics and intel in Gakulu’s brief.

For once, things were actually looking easier - there were only five mercs guarding the place, not seven. The netrunner acting as the local station ‘dweller’, who had done the actual data siphon wasn’t even jacked in at the moment. He was currently in a small kitchen prepping food. Everyone had an air of extreme boredom and listlessness to their movements. Not that I could really blame them.

The Selene Workgroup were sitting high and pretty with the knowledge that no one would dare to cross them. This security they hired and installed here was almost a perfunctory afterthought.

I engaged thermoptics, just in case there were non-networked cams, looped the exterior cam watching the airlock and triggered the inner door.

Gravity pulled me slowly down to land in a dim room festooned with cabling, conduits and coolant submerged servers encased in transparent cylindrical tubes.

A quick crab walk brought me to a smaller, innocuous looking server at the edge of the circular hab module, almost wedged against the wall.

I tucked myself against it, out of the immediate sightline from the door leading deeper into the station and let my thermoptics cycle.

It took a moment to suss out where the link port was before I unwound my own physical link cable from the port near my neck to connect.

“All right, we’re in.”

The server defenses in cyberspace weren't much to really bother either of us. The only minor challenge was to do it without detection and ghosting through the firewalls, daemons and only one Black ICE layer. Again, taking advantage of SW’s arrogance. If this had been the foundational server that the dweller was using to siphon the data, then it would’ve been a much larger problem and I doubt we could’ve avoided an open fight in cyberspace.

It turned out the most difficult part was actually finding the data. Selene Workgroup had done a very good job of disguising it among a sea of irrelevant files.

I ended up having to use the digital equivalent of a magnet looking for a needle in a bale of hay, since it was Gakulu’s tribe coding, which had the particular programming signature of their best runner.

“Got it, downloading to internal shard. Deploying corruption daemon to the local copy of the schematics.”

My mouth couldn’t help but grin at the thought of what was going to happen when SW tried to open this stolen file next time.

The Selene netrunner sat down in the kitchen and began eating.

‘Bad luck, choom.’

My exfiltration would be much less exciting, as I left a stealthed daemon in Westwall station’s external sensors, looping and spoofing them simultaneously for my specific data signature. I could do an exotic dance routine in front of them in full view and they wouldn’t see me.

I disconnected my link and hurried as quickly as possible through the airlock.

Once outside in vacuum again and with no need to use thermoptics, I crawled closer to the edge of the module and looked down at the miles long drop.

I did the calculations one last time to satisfy the mild bout of OCD that fell on me.

A few moments later I was hanging by my fingertips on the guiderails of the module’s edge.

‘Genorinomooooo,’ I thought sarcastically…

… and let go.

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A/N: My take on integrating the Cyberpunk 2077 PL ARG (augmented reality game) that was released recently. We also get our first hints of the true enemy. The leg thrusters in V's Gemini are basically my realism explanation for the 'double jump' you can do in game. Thermoptics is the next-gen camo and a response to evolving security systems, but comes with the mentioned time limit due to heat retention. I was thinking of doing a whole scene of V getting it installed, but just bundled it into off-screen events during the mission prep and organization. Since she's a Gemini, the installation is about as impactful to her as swapping clothes, unlike a human getting major cybersurgery.

Have a great weekend and stay awesome, chooms.

The Force Wills - Chapter 143

“Try increasing the capacitance here, R2.”

The astromech prodded the tool into the rear maintenance panel of the disabled B2. We had already finished working on the other one I had disabled, but this one was proving a problem. 

We had to leave the com vault exactly as we had found it, and this whole mission would be for naught if we left behind two clearly disabled B2s that needed repairs. As much as I had worked on the Disable Droid technique to do exactly as the name implied, it wasn’t perfect and there was no way I had perfect control over the flow of every electron or induced current. Combine this with the ‘good enough’ build philosophy of the CIS battle droid factories and you had droids going through their quality control process with oddities.

‘I see the problem now, we’ll need to bypass this circuitry here,’ R2 bleeped and chirped rapidly.

“All right, do it. Can’t be helped at this point. We’ll just have to hope that this droid’s future maintenance inspection doesn’t trigger a red-”

My attention was instantly drawn to movement as an incoming turbolift entered my sphere of awareness.

‘Don’t stop here, don’t stop here,’ I thought, gritting my teeth. ‘Shuk'orok, kriffing osik!’ (Damn it, kriffing shit!)

We weren’t so lucky and the lift stopped on C Deck.

Coming out of it was the human ensign I had seen earlier with a tool belt around his waist.

The probability lines weren’t looking good and revealed… oh of course, he was coming to the com vault.

“What’s wrong, Ahsoka?” R2 bleeped worriedly. 

“Colonel Gascon, we’ve got incoming, looks like that ensign we saw earlier in the elevator was a tech. He’s coming here and if he sees all this…”

Gascon jumped out of BZ’s head, his eyes worried, “You can just render him unconscious, can’t you?”

“Easily, but it’s waking him up that’s going to be… problematic. I’m going to need to construct a believable scenario that’s going to explain him passing out, a minor memory gap and implant a hypnotic suggestion. His own mind will do the rest as long as I do it properly.”

Thirty seconds later I was in the exterior corridor, walking with purpose, frowning and tapping furiously into a datapad - playing the part of a maintenance engineer frustrated at some form of problem.

Mr Tech who had ogled me in the elevator was walking towards me and naturally smiled at seeing me again, even as he quickly composed himself to not be caught staring at a superior officer.

I looked up to meet his eyes as the distance separating us grew smaller, my expression growing stern with expectation.

“Lieutenant,” he saluted me again.

“Ensign,” I returned the salute just as we were passing each other, using the action to disguise a slight mnemonic for the Force Sleep.

His eyes rolled upward and I caught him under the arms as he fell into La La land.

He wasn’t exactly big, taller than me by half a head, roughly 70 kg. I was strong enough to carry him without the Force, and slung him into a Fireman carry over my shoulders.

I hurried back into the com vault anteroom and closed it behind me.

“How long?” I asked with a weary sigh as I gently put down the tech. Unexplained bruises were not something I wanted to worry about.

“18 minutes,” Gascon huffed, pacing in a circle on top of BZ’s head, clearly showing his own anxiousness.

I searched the tech’s tool belt and pockets, eventually finding a hand sized datapad. Not wanting to touch it, I levitated it out to hover in front of me and began using telekinetic fingers to tap the buttons and bring it to life.

“What ya looking for?” Gascon asked curiously.

“Duty roster,” I mumbled absently, staring at the screen.

Great, it’s his personal pad, I thought. It should’ve been obvious from the size, but as I scanned the screen and the programs on it… He even had CSO? How the hell? We hadn’t rolled out to the Outer Rim, that was probably a decade away and even then it depended on enough localized server infrastructure.

It was then that I spotted another Holonet interface program that was effectively spoofing the datapad’s location.

He wouldn’t be able to access advanced features or even earn credits, but he could make an account, read posts and write them.

You would think Hermione would’ve maybe mentioned to me that people had figured out a local VPN equivalent for the Holonet!

“Problem, commander?” Gascon asked.

“No, well yes, but it's not relevant right now.” I tapped another program that looked like a time scheduler and sure enough found the personalized duty roster. “All right, good news is he has an hour of time assigned for the com vault maintenance. If there’s nothing wrong it should just be a checklist. So we also have to make sure when we leave that the checklist is also done. R2, U9, get into the local system and see if you can’t find it, then carry it out.”

“Yes, commander!” the two droids chirped in chorus.  

I returned to examine both B2s and found R2 had done his usual excellent job. They were ready to reactivate and just needed a singular nudge from my technometry to do so.

Now to bite the blaster bolt.

I kneeled next to the unconscious tech and placed two fingers on his right temple.

He was thoroughly in the throes of REM stage sleep, but I had to nudge him up a bit to get enough of the proper brain activity to work with.

“Name?” I threw the thought into the dull gray landscape of his mind, which was teeming with seemingly endless, hovering plasteel boxes, carried on a slow unseen wind.

A singular box was attracted to my spear of thought like a magnet and unfurled for me.

Ensign Diras Uran, born on Serenno, but considered Raxus his homeworld. He was lean but wiry, with the practical strength of someone who spent hours crawling through maintenance ducts and hauling equipment. Dark brown hair, cropped short and perpetually disheveled from wearing a tech’s headset. Further probes related to family gave me a general history. He was the son of a droid factory overseer and he had been surrounded by droid foundries and scrapyards from a young age. He was thoroughly disillusioned with the Republic’s bureaucracy and drawn to the CIS’s promise of autonomy for Outer Rim worlds, enlisting as a technician a few weeks after the first Battle of Geonosis.

This was his first posting of note on a major capital ship, but he had worked on Lucrehulks before this and had actually been in a few battles. His last ship had been blown up in the north-eastern front in the Lianna system and he had made it to an escape pod.

I explored the mental landscape more, trying my hardest to find another angle of attack on the problem, but found nothing else that would work.

Figures. We’re both in the same bloody boat in that respect, so to speak.

Now to craft the hypno-suggestion.

It would be an effective artificial memory, which if done correctly would be taken by his own mind and when combined with his subconscious feelings and instincts, would act like a virus - the idea would replicate and fill everything out properly.

It began with a seemingly normal conversation, a query on a problematic subsystem in a tactical droid. This engaged his enthusiasm for the topic, which led me to comment directly on it. That led to the reveal of his history in the droid business - all the while I was subtly stoking the flames. The path from there wasn’t too convoluted, he also understood the very obvious hints I was making. It was a delicate balance, but I figuratively spread the treats on the ground, which he gathered rather eagerly. From there we let nature take its course-  

“Commander?”

I blinked at the disjunction, getting my bearings and turned away from the mildly handsome face of Diras, who had a slight twist of satisfaction to his mouth now.

Gascon was standing on BZ and the rest of D-Squad was behind him, all in the com vault anteroom. Behind them, the inner vault was sealed again and the swarm mines were lazily doing their patrols.

“Do we have the module?”

“Perfectly copied and tested twice, just be sure, commander,” Gascon declared with satisfaction. “K7 did his job perfectly. We saw you go very still and figured you were doing your Jedi hocus pocus, so we just got on with the job.”

Got a bit carried away, Ahsoka, I remonstrated myself 

I stood and winced at my protesting knees from the awkward position I had kept whilst kneeling next to Diras.

A quick levitation brought him into the spare parts storage room, where I leaned him seated against the wall. Further uses of TK on his clothes and hair also set the scene; pulling off his uniform jumpsuit so that it was bunched around his knees. His toolbelt discarded to one side, tearing off his now stained underwear and chucking it down a nearby disposal chute. Then pulling up the uniform to at least waist height as ‘Nande’ had politely preserved his dignity after the steamy encounter they had.

So steamy and mind blowing it had been, that he had passed out in the aftermath.

I wasn’t worried about him making enquiries after my alias. My crafted suggestion made it clear that Nande was due to be transferred to the actual front lines - where chances for survival weren't high. This was a final hurrah on her part.

Back in the vault anteroom, I levitated both B2s onto their feet and gestured for D-Squad to leave.

I backed out as well, holding up a hand and with a bit of dramatic flair, flicked my fingers in imitation of a certain omnipotent being’s style.

The bulkhead doors closed as I hurried away and both B2’s flickered online, quickly catching their balance from the slight centimeter drop I had given them.

In the storage room, Diras Uran blinked awake, smiling widely at the very pleasant memories of his amazing encounter with Lieutenant Birkonas. He was hardly able to believe his luck, but it had clearly happened. Passing out was rather embarrassing but he dared any guy to have such mindblowing sex and not need a little nap afterward…

I checked his emotions and thoughts one last time, “Time to go, D-Squad.”

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Thankfully our further exfiltration was entirely uneventful.

The only rather frightening highlight was jumping up off the hull of the Indomitable into seemingly empty space for fifty very long meters, only to find myself slipping right through the Talon’s cloaking field and literally threading the needle into the ship’s airlock.

From there we slipped away from the enemy fleet with a minor course correction and six minutes later left the planet’s mass shadow for the jump to hyperspace.

The instant we were safely on our way, I excused myself to get out of the enemy uniform and restore my lekku and face to my usual style.

I zipped myself into my undersuit and climbed back into my beskar’gam with some relief.

“All right, R4, let me see it,” I said, walking back into the cockpit.

“Yes, commander.”

The red and gold astromech opened a panel on his body, where an internal claw produced the perfectly copied CIS encryption module.

I carefully picked it up by just touching the edges and probed it with technometry.

It was fascinatingly complex and I also realized that there was another layer of encryption in the very layout of the components within the module - that was the only way to explain the odd placement of the microprocessors that made no sense from a pure engineering standpoint.

“All right, R4, I want you to forward all your data on this module to every droid in D-Squad and M8,” I tapped my armored chest.

“You’re worried about losing it, commander?” Gascon asked. “Our mission is successful, we’re in a cloaked ship bound for Republic space.”

I stored the module in the hidden compartment of my armor in the small of my back, alongside the Darksaber.

“I’m afraid our mission is not over, Colonel,” I sat down in the pilot’s seat and began manipulating the holo controls.

He deftly jumped on the headrest of my chair and stared at the controls, “You’re altering our heading in hyperspace.”

I let the Force mostly guide me, but I had seen the planet we needed to reach. The fear of navigating this way was cast off and I just… let it happen as my perception expanded into the future of the Talon. “Yes, we are the only ones who can be in a position to intercept a particularly nasty Separatist plot that is targeting the Republic strategy conference in Carida.”

“What?!” Gascon was gaping like a tiny fish out of water. He then scrutinized me to see if I was playing a joke on him, but clearly saw that I was dead serious. “How can you know? Why wasn’t I informed?”

“I know as many Jedi know things, Colonel. We occasionally receive flashes of the distant future and can act based on that information. I know the planet we are heading to right now is central to what will happen and that we have to get there as fast as possible. Hence, why I’m navigating us in hyper directly. And besides, do you really think that the Separatists don’t know about the Carida conference?”

“Well, yes, they do I suppose,” Gascon stroked his nonexistent chin. “But how do they expect to achieve anything? The security at the conference will be overwhelming-”

“Yet, they are still going to try, I have seen it, Colonel. As things stand now, whatever they’re going to do will obliterate Valor space station and a significant chunk of the defense fleet. Republic High Command will be gone, I trust you can imagine the consequences.”

Gascon’s stilted eyes twitched to the left and right, his body language expressing horror at the sheer idea. “The entire Navy will be left in the hands of all their subordinates that are still on the front lines. The news will dash morale at the worst time possible, when all fronts are under major attack and with the uncertainty of orbital strikes being on the table… We’d reorganize, but… ”

“We’d lose a lot of systems before that can happen, some of which would be critical crossroads or strategic in nature.” My hands stopped moving and I breathed a sigh of relief. “All right, we should be on our way. We’ll arrive in five hours.”

“And just where will we be then?”

I brought up the navicomputer and let it compute the course we were on. It immediately threw errors and warnings, but I dismissed them and forced the process to continue.

A star chart of the sector eventually appeared, which zoomed in to eventually display our destination.

“Abafar system?” Gascon mused. “Doesn’t jog any memory. It’s not a Separatist stronghold that I know of.” 

A swipe brought up what the database had on it. “It’s firmly in the backwaters of the sector, claimed by neither side. Used to be a major rhydonium supplier, but after millenia of mining it’s been practically depleted. There’s still deposits left but the economics of getting to them just isn’t there for the large mining houses. All that’s left these days is a single small city of miners barely eking out a living selling to anyone who will buy.”

Gascon winced as he read further, “That planet is going to be murder on my hydration levels, it’s all desert. If I go down there, I’ll have to stay buttoned up in BZ.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem depending on what we find in the system. Now I suggest you get some rest, Colonel. I’ll be in my quarters. I think we have a long couple of days ahead of us.”

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I was mashing the holocontrol to cloak the Talon as it streaked out of hyper into a high orbit above Abafar.

The planet itself was just barely within the inner edge of the star’s habitable zone. I took in the expanse of gray-white and beige, with no oceans visible at all with a mild horror. There was not a single cloud in the sky and the atmosphere, whilst breathable, was not something anyone should subject themselves to for long. It was Tatooine, but worse, yet just short of being uninhabitable.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Gascon squinted his tiny eyes. “There at bearing 271, is that a ship?” 

I adjusted passive scans in that direction and soon the sensors resolved a very familiar image.

“A Republic Venator?!” he exclaimed. “Are they here to refuel?”

“Whilst that is entirely possible, there is no reason. If they were part of the Botajef front, they have much more convenient logistics than to go all the way out here. I’m referencing the ship in the database now.”

It took a while, especially as the star destroyer wasn’t broadcasting its own transponder on the appropriate frequency, which was doubly suspicious. 

“The computer identifies it as the Vanguard, a ship that was listed as destroyed after a battle three months ago at the Botajef front.” 

“Hmmm, it hardly looks like it's been in a battle at all,” Gascon scowled, he made a specific gesture and the computer generated an appropriately sized holointerface for him. “Take a look, a Rho class shuttle leaving for the planet below and… another one coming back up.”

“I’m plotting an intercept.”

A few minutes later I brought the Talon to a relative stop fifty kilometers from the port side of the Vanguard.

“Passive sensors are kriff for detecting life signs but at this range I should be getting something, there’s no crew on board according to these readings,” Gascon folded his arms, scowling at the mystery before him.

“That is correct, I sense no life on this ship,” I confirmed.

“But there’s clearly something. Look, another group of shuttles coming up from the surface. Passive sensors can’t find any life signs-” He cut himself off and shook his head. “No, impossible, but…” He adjusted his scans and stared at me grimly after looking at the results. “Droid power signatures consistent with B1s in all the shuttles and dozens inside the star destroyer’s bridge tower.”

“The Vanguard has been captured and taken over by the enemy,” I nodded in agreement.

Gascon’s tiny frame seemed to burst with energy as he began pacing on the headrest. “How is that possible!? These ships have thousands of clone crewmembers. Even if the Separatists launched a covert action against it and it was successful, how did they manage to stop all those clones from using the life pods? Or prevent any of the command crew from sending a distress signal?”

“Those are very good questions, Colonel. However, it’s ultimately irrelevant to us in the present. I’ve tracked all these shuttles and they are coming and going from the only settlement below; Pons Ora. They’re either loading something up or unloading. The only thing of note that this planet still produces is rhydonium fuel.”

“So they want to top up the tanks to take this ship somewhere.”

“Clearly,” I nodded. “However, I find it curious that our passive sensors are getting nothing from the main body superstructure of the ship.”

Gascon’s eye stalks bobbed up and down before he gave me a weird look, “You’re right, I can’t even detect the ship’s main hypermatter reactor. Yet it’s clearly online by the looks of it.”

“It’s been purposefully masked, there’s something on board that they don’t want passive sensors to see. I also bet that we’ll get the same results if I dared to use active sensors,” I concluded.

“We need to find out what the Separatists are up to, commander. I don’t like the idea of infiltrating that star destroyer if we can’t at least get some idea of what we’re walking into. I suggest we land near the settlement below, see if we can’t capture a droid to analyse. If you change up your armor’s markings, you could pretend to be a Mandalorian hunter.”

I shook my head, “If we’re going incognito then it’s best I don’t wear the beskar’gam. COMPOR has made me too famous and those droids will immediately connect the dots if they see a togruta Mandalorian. I’ll get in one of my other appropriate disguises.”

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If the planet had looked uninviting from orbit, it was a hundred times worse when the Talon landed invisibly on the outskirts of Pons Ora.

The particulates in the atmosphere twisted the light from the sun to give it an awful hue of light orange. With no clouds to break up the visual monotony, Meebur Gascon found he could only look into the seemingly infinite expanse for a few seconds. It made no sense! He had no problems with space and staring into that void, so now why was this happening?

He tore his eyes away from the view beyond the cockpit and focused on the ‘small’ city.

It was as if someone had carved out a giant circular piece of the flat gray desert landscape, nearly ninety meters deep and built hundreds of multi-floor buildings out of the desert soil. Water was pumped from an underground source a few kilometers to the east and channeled via an artificial river to flow towards the city. What the database called ‘void striders’ - reptavian creatures on two legs were gathered in a herd and calmly drinking the precious liquid. They were totally unbothered by the bustle of the local denizens going about their day.

“Ready Colonel?”

Meebur turned around on BZ’s head and was momentarily flabbergasted.

He had expected many things when he had heard that he was going on this mission with Commander Tano. You’d have to be blind gloomwisp to not know of the celebrated victories she and General Skywalker had achieved in the war. He had also done his research when the assignment for this mission had come through and even the official reports he had access to did not truly capture her sheer commanding presence… charisma? It was the only real word he had for it.

It felt like… D-Squad could achieve anything they set their mind to, as long as she was there with them.

They had already achieved what the mission analysts had only given them a 9% chance of doing - getting a copy of the encryption module without the Separatists having the first clue.

Now out of nowhere, thanks to her Jedi abilities, they had found a captured Republic star destroyer and clearly the Separatists had some sort of greater design with it. He didn’t even think there was an analysis droid in existence who could calculate the odds of this eventuality.

The accessible parts of her GAR file mentioned her infiltration abilities and accomplishments, but only with codenames, enough to indicate that there were very few strongholds and locations she couldn’t get into if she wanted. It also mentioned her penchant for disguises and now he was getting a front row seat to that.

The first word to come to mind was dangerous. 

A WESTAR blaster hung on her right thigh, holstered in a dark syn-leather belt with multiple pouches. Armored boots that rode high on her calves and an outfit that could only be worn by species with sweat glands in their skin, which she was showing quite a lot of - with brown shorts and white sleeveless tunic that clung to her form. Her lekku and facial patterning had changed again and somehow enhanced the sense of danger radiating from her. A narrow sun visor was also being worn in preparation for the glare outside.

“Eh hem,” he coughed uncomfortably, coming back to himself. “Yes, we can go.”

He jumped into his seat inside BZ and closed the hatch, turning up the interior life support for increased cooling and humidity.

They left R4 behind to keep watch inside the Talon and to come guns blazing if it should prove necessary.

“All right BZ, I’ll take it from here.”

His hands settled on the two control booms on his chair, pushing his droid ride to follow Commander Tano on her right side as they exited the Talon via the rear ramp. It was lucky that this city was recessed into the giant pit that had been dug for it, so no one had a direct sight line of four droids and a togruta seemingly appearing out of nowhere.

They covered the distance to the edge of the pit with no issue, but now the problem was getting to the lower city level. Jedi wouldn’t even hesitate to make that jump, but her current disguise didn’t allow for such supernatural feats.

The commander didn’t even let it break her stride.

She walked right up to R2 and took a seat on his upper dome.

The droid’s leg jets came out and easily took off, despite the extra weight.

“All right, BZ, get us down there.”

His ride chirped in an affirmative and extended his own jets.

D-Squad landed and they attracted their first attention from the locals in the form of a rather startled resident.

A human woman taking out her garbage. She gaped at them with astonished eyes, the large bag dropping from nerveless hands with a loud clatter.

The commander just nodded at the woman, her hands resting casually on her belt as she walked - the picture of a dangerous, well trained bounty hunter with their own ‘style’ as it were. Who didn’t need accoutrement or armor and whose flowing, dancing walk spoke further volumes.

She retreated into her house, totally forgetting about her bag of garbage.

They walked deeper into the small city.

This was not the kind of planet that favored staying long outdoors and any who did moved as quickly as possible, usually with a water bottle strapped to their waists. Most of the locals were aleena, with dugs, humans and sullustans sprinkled into the mix. All of them had a gloomy air about them, their body language furtive and paranoid. Their eyes and heads twitchy at every loud noise. Almost everyone on the street was dusty and involved in some way with rhydonium mining, judging by the clothing or tools they kept on their belts. 

After a few minutes of walking they joined one of the main outer ring roads of Pons Ora and spotted the first ramshackle, ancient speeders in use.

All of them were single or double seaters and they moved slowly with their engines and repulsors clattering loudly, kicking up fine dust in their wake. Meebur was very glad he was safely buttoned up in BZ at the moment.

Their first destination was the local cantina, which they only found after walking a fair distance  to the inner ring road of the city.

“All right, can’t exactly waltz in there with four astromechs,” Tano mused. “R2, QT, U9, go for a scout around town, check the spaceport. You have authorization to defend yourselves with lethal force if need be. I’ve already spotted a dozen crimes on our way here and I don’t want you getting captured and sold for parts.”

R2 took the lead and led the other two droids away.

They entered the cantina, which turned out to also have a rather large section devoted to dining tables as well. The large counter facing them had numerous sentients on the bar stools drowning their individual sorrows in a myriad of alcoholic drinks.

Their entrance caused an immediate stir, as many whirled around in their paranoia to see who had come in.

Most looked at the commander with understandable weariness and fear, quickly going back to their food and drink.

“Anything I can get you?” asked a rather fat sullustan behind the bar. He seemed to be the cook and manager of the establishment, given the authoritative bearing and how he was occasionally glaring at the various waiters moving about the cantina-diner.

The commander tilted her head to scan the brightly colored menu hanging overhead. “The Saltha Skewers and a Dustquench Spritz,” she answered in a dangerous, lilting way that made even Meebur slightly shiver.

The fat sullustan blinked before nodding, looking disturbed as he turned to shout the order through the small window of the kitchen behind him.

She took a seat at the bar and Meebur drove BZ forward to stand next to her like any other obedient droid. He twisted BZ’s head on its axis to give a direct view of the cantina entrance and the other patrons. Two thuggish aqualish were grunting at each other in a booth nearby and giving looks towards the commander’s back that did not look promising for the continued peace and relative quiet of the establishment.

They both stood and marched over to stand just a few meters away. Meebur knew many galactic languages but aqualish speech was unfortunately not one of them. He quickly engaged a translation program, which BZ helpfully executed and displayed on his main viewer.

“...that’s a fine blaster you have there, little togruta. Can you even use it?” said the left aqualish thug wearing a dirty red jacket and miner’s overall.

“Go back to your seat or you’ll find out,” threatened Tano with a sweet, dangerous smile, not even properly turning to face her interlocutors.

What happened next was over so quickly that Meebur didn’t even see it.

One moment, the left thug was lunging, the other aqualish reaching inside his jacket for a weapon-

The loud energetic whine of the WESTAR firing twice.

Both thugs collapsed to the floor, smoking holes in their chest.

The cantina’s reaction as a whole was dead silence, except for the annoying background music playing. Commander Tano just holstered her blaster with a single twirl and turned back in her seat as if nothing had just happened. She reached into a belt pocket and flicked a 50 credit chit towards the sullustan owner.

He caught it easily and nodded at her. “Thanks, but just so you know, those were Voids. You have less than a day before their gang buddies are going to come looking for revenge.”

“Local syndicate?” she asked.

“Yes. Hey, Nintas, Falrin! Get this mess cleaned up. We’re working with food here!”

Two waiters rushed over and dragged the bodies outside.

“The name’s Borkus. Owner of the Power Slider Cantina. You here hunting for someone?” He began cleaning a glass and making the drink the commander had ordered.

“You could say that.”

Borkus scoffed, “Figures. Abafar is the planet of the lost or those who want to be lost. Out here you’re either a miner, drifter or a smuggler and everyone has a long sob story for how they ended up on this spirits forsaken rock. Bounty hunters will occasionally stop by checking if any poor bastard on their lists have ended up here.”

“And I assume you have such a story as well.”

Borkus chuckled throatily, “Obviously, but it's not the kind of trouble that would cause someone to hire a bounty hunter, so that’s why I’m talking to you and you look like a customer of ways and means.” He put down the finished drink in front of her.

She took a small sip to test the drink, before chugging down a mouthful. “Nice, refreshing.”

“Guaranteed to lessen any thirst, my own recipe. So… how can I help you…?” he trailed off leadingly.

Tano smirked into her drink, “Shelda Lah and no, I’ve already found my target. I’m just here to eat.”

“Ah, all right.” He was clearly disappointed in the missed opportunity to ‘sell’ any information he might have had. “Gregor, hurry up with that food!”

“Coming boss!”

A few minutes later Meebur heard the thunk of a plate on the bar counter and the commander began eating with a quiet efficiency.

“I see you have some CIS presence.”

Borkus grunted in annoyance, “Yeah, bloody droids. They came into town months ago and took over one of the old mining shafts. Blasted their way down into a new rhydonium vein and have been mining it ever since. One of the local gangs tried to muscle in on it, but they got wiped out to the last man for their trouble. Also took over the tiny spaceport we have to ship out the fuel. It chased away a lot of smugglers and even legit traders - importing food to this rock got much more expensive and our tunnel crops can’t feed everyone.”

She nodded in understanding and picked up a skewer to bite off the meat on it directly.

New customers walked in and Borkus was neatly distracted from further conversation.

Soon after, the commander paid for the meal and had a single skewer wrapped for a takeaway.

They left the diner and ducked into a nearby alleyway where the other droids of D-Squad were waiting.

The commander knocked twice on BZ’s head, “Colonel, your lunch awaits.”

Meebur popped the hatch and immediately winced at the bitingly dry atmosphere that slapped him in the face. He grabbed the skewer stick and settled the big thing next to his chair. It smelled delicious and he quickly unwrapped it to tear away at the skewered meat. “Mmmm,” he mumbled in appreciation as he chewed. It was quite kind of the commander to purposely order a food item that he could easily eat.

Dining in a galaxy of big’uns was quite difficult when some food portions were almost as big as you were.

“R2, report,” she ordered.

“Enemy droids at the spaceport and on patrols around town,” R2 engaged his holoprojector to show a tactical map of the location. There was at least a company strength of B1s and three squads of B2s. “There are also engineer type B1s coming and going to a mine shaft in the north-east of town. They’re not just pulling rhydonium ore out, they also have three large mobile refineries parked outside.”

“The CIS aren’t so strapped for fuel that they have to go all the way to Abafar to mine more,” Meebur shook his head thoughtfully as he ate, recalling the latest intelligence figures he had seen on reported enemy fuel supplies in this corner of the galaxy. “They’ve been at it for months and the locals don’t seem to even know there’s a Republic star destroyer over their heads. Well, given this awful sky, it’s not that surprising. Only you’d think that the smugglers coming and going would mention it to them.”

Tano shook her head, “Oh, they know, colonel and they know to keep their mouths shut about it. No, I think we have enough to deduce what the enemy is doing. Months of round the clock rhydonium fuel mining and shuttling it up to the Vanguard. What do you get?”

Meebur frowned, “A fuel tanker.”

“From a certain point of view, entirely correct, colonel. But why would you need sensor masking on a fuel tanker?” she asked leadingly.

He almost choked as the answer finally hit him over the head and he couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it sooner. “It’s a bomb!”

She nodded in agreement, “There you go. Imagine a Venator with all its hangars, storage and crew quarters filled to the brim with rhydonium fuel. If it blows up, you’d have something powerful enough to destroy an entire fleet formation in one surprise blow.”

Meebur stood on his seat and with fervor declared, “We must get back to the Talon, infiltrate and stop it!”

“Yes, but the question of how to do that safely is the issue. If the Vanguard blows up in its current orbit around Abafar, the explosion is the equivalent of a mini-nova. It’ll be enough to do catastrophic damage to this planet, which will still have deep veins of rhydonium that hasn’t been reached yet. I wouldn’t be surprised if the resulting secondary explosions overcome the gravitational binding energy. That means we need to commandeer and fly it at least a few million kilometers away before detonating it.”

“And there could be an overwhelming number of enemy droids on board that would stop us,” Meebur fell despondently into his seat.

She smiled knowingly, “Which is why we need to recruit some local help.”

“Everyone here has been intimidated, commander. And besides, you’d need to at least show and tell them everything we know. We’d need to recruit a small army, arm them and maybe we would have a chance.”

“We don’t need an army, colonel. However, I think the clone commando working in Borkus’ kitchen as a cook would be a good recruit for our cause.”

Meebur blinked in astonishment as the words registered in his head, “What?!”

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Five hours later the working day was ending for the locals, but the local sun still hadn’t set due to the position of Pons Ora in the far northern latitudes of Abafar.

D-Squad had positioned themselves in an alley across from the Power Slider Cantina and watched as Borkus exited from the front entrance, giving the emptying street a suspicious glance before stepping aside and letting another tall figure walk out.

Meebur stared at the human in his forward screens, zooming in with BZ’s optics. The height, stature and skin tone was definitely a match for a Republic clone, only this one had a messy clump of short dark hair and a full beard that was just enough to somewhat disguise the very familiar face beneath. 

The clone who Borkus had called ‘Gregor’, gave a casual wave to his employer and walked down the street.

The commander waited until he had turned a corner before gesturing to D-Squad to follow her.

“How do you know he’s a commando?” Meebur asked softly from within his droid.

“Even if I wasn’t a Jedi, I could tell you that just from the way he walks.”

Meebur tried to replay in his mind how Gregor had walked and couldn’t see how that would be a tell-tale sign. “I don’t see it, commander.”

She sighed, “Just trust me on this, all right? It’s a Mandalorian thing.”

They continued to follow the supposed commando through street after street, until they neared the outer ring of the town. He approached a building that had seen better days but was still at least fit to live in. Then climbed down a set of stairs that led into a basement level and disappeared from view.

The commander nodded, “This is his residence. R2, BZ, you’re with me. QT, U9, stay outside and watch our backs.”

D-Squad rolled and walked forward.

Meebur let BZ handle waddling awkwardly down the stairs, a technique he couldn’t master despite years of trying.

They stopped at a solid durasteel door after walking down a small hallway.

The commander tapped the door chime on the small control panel and waited with a casual stance, examining one of her nails with an annoyed expression.

It took a few moments, but the door hissed to the side with a slight groan from a very old motivator that should’ve been replaced decades ago.

Gregor stood in the doorway, frowning as he took in who was disturbing his early night from a long day of work. “Yes? Can I help you?” he asked wearily.

“You most certainly can,” Tano smiled, mildly gesturing to him.

The clone’s eyes rolled upward and he collapsed to the ground in a seemingly dead faint.

She quickly hurried inside and lifted him up by the armpits, dragging him into a living space that barely had anything resembling furnishings; a single bed, one table, a few chairs, cabinets and a very small kitchen tucked away in a corner. It was surprisingly quite clean and organized to near perfection. Meebur could well imagine that whoever lived here had been raised in the regimental upbringing that the clones underwent on Kamino. 

Tano dragged him into one of the chairs and propped his back up with a pillow.

“Not even giving him a chance to talk, Shelda?”

“We can’t afford the time to do this the conventional way.” She pulled another chair closer, sat down and placed a hand directly on Gregor’s brow before closing her eyes. “He has injuries consistent with old brain trauma. R2 scan his ID chip.”

Meebur opened up BZ’s hatch and sat down on the droid’s head to watch this with own eyes.

R2’s upper holoprojector lit up and displayed a screen, showing a definite match with a clone on record.

“Well, I’ll be, he was a commando. CC-5576-39. Last known to have participated in the… Battle of Sarish. Declared missing in action,” Meebur read, shaking his head sadly as he easily recalled the details of one of the worst Republic defeats of the early war period.

Tano nodded, her brow creased in concentration. “He was injured in the battle, but managed to help dozens into an evacuation transport. They were unable to evade pursuit and were finally shot down above Abafar. The next thing he remembers is waking up in a ground transport with Borkus - with no clue who he is - retrograde amnesia from the head trauma.”

“You’re reading his mind?” Meebur asked with interest.

“That’s a vast simplification of it, but for the purposes of conversation, yes. I’m also talking with him at the moment, helping him come to terms with the memories of his previous life that I’m guiding him through.”

Meebur looked on in fascination for a while at those near-fantastic pronouncements. He could see Gregor’s face occasionally twitching, his eyes rolling and moving behind his eyelids.

A heavy silence fell in the apartment and he realized after two minutes that this was probably going to take a while.

He began pacing around on BZ’s head, trying to figure out some way to stop an entire star destroyer that had been turned into a gigantic hyperspace capable guided torpedo. D-Squad was an infiltration team! They weren’t commandos! They had one armed scout shuttle whose weapons wouldn’t even really scratch the paint of a Venator. Unless they used the Talon, remotely send it under cloak into the star destroyer and opened fire on the rhydonium tanks.

No, no, we also needed to get the encryption module back to Republic space! Think Meebur. Think.

The Talon was the only ship that could safely achieve the primary mission objective. Therefore, what about-

Gregor jerked in his seat and his eyes flew open with a harsh gasp.

“Easy, easy, Captain Gregor, you’re back,” Commander Tano soothed.

The clone commando met her eyes with a haunted intensity before visibly calming down and looking around at his current surroundings with a calculating gaze. Tano lifted her hand from his head and stood back.

“I know I already said it, commander, but… thank you.”

Gregor stood with crisp efficiency and saluted the Jedi.  

“You’re welcome, captain.”

“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Gregor walked over to a storage cabinet in the small kitchen, removed a broom of all things and snapped it half easily over his knee. He ripped the bristle head off and twirled his new makeshift weapons in both hands experimentally. “I have to go pay a visit to my former ‘boss’.”

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D-Squad stood outside one of the nicer buildings in the mid-ring of the town.

That didn’t mean much in Pons Ora, but the three floor building looked in good repair, clean and the residents definitely lived in much greater luxury than any other I had seen so far.

Borkus was currently not enjoying his evening as he had opened his front door only to be greeted by the fist and makeshift weapons of a highly trained clone commando.

Gregor had endured more than a year of humiliation at the hands of Borkus, practically living in indentured servitude. The owner of the Power Slider Cantina had given the amnesiac commando a job, paid him in one hand, but took nearly eighty percent of it away with the other by being the owner of the apartment Gregor was living in. Combine that with the bullshit info Borkus had fed the vulnerable clone; a solid case could be made that he had in effect created a slave for himself. No need for an implant at all.

‘There’s only war beyond this rock, Gregor,’ , ’The galaxy is a dangerous place, Gregor’, on and on the excuses and gaslighting had gone. Using the truth and twisting it in just the right way.

Reconciling Captain Gregor from before the amnesia with the meek servile creature that Borkus had created was very difficult and it wasn’t a process that was totally complete. In ideal circumstances, he would be shipped to the Jedi Temple’s Halls of Healing for a complete psychiatric mind healing that lasted for weeks. Realistically, as a clone commando, Gregor would be taken by the Kaminoans and their psycho-conditioning would ‘fix’ him in a very destructive manner to both personalities. 

The front door of the apartment building burst open and Gregor emerged with two heavy duffel bags on his shoulders.

“So he still had your Katarn armor, gear and weapons?”

“Yes commander, it’s not like he could really sell it in a place like this without uncomfortable questions being raised. Borkus is just a greedy bastard at the end of the day, not a criminal mastermind and he wants nothing to do with the local gangs. With the Separatists present as well, if they found smugglers trying to take my gear offworld, it would eventually be traced back to him as well. I would’ve been captured by the enemy and he would’ve lost my services.”

“That’s behind you now, Captain and you have your whole life ahead of you. You know what’s at stake,” I said carefully, giving the commando a pointed look.

Gregor pursed his lips and nodded, “That I do, commander. What are your orders?”

“Colonel Gascon has come up with a strategy that should allow us to fulfill most of our objectives. We’re going to liberate one of the Rho-class shuttles the enemy has been using. Think you’re up for it?”

He smirked dangerously, his eyes lighting up with a fiery but controlled hunger for battle, “Commander, right now I feel like I can take on every droid on Raxus Secundus.”

“Then let’s be about it and may the Force be with us.”

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A/N: Bit of a bridging chapter here and setting things up. Enjoy your weekend and stay awesome.

The Force Wills - Chapter 142

My breathing was harsh and deep.

Hissing through my teeth as I resisted with all my might.

Resisting the plunge, to give in to the assault writhing its way from below, through every nerve and rushing into my brain.

I looked down from only seeing an endless night sky, partially obscured by nearby artificial lighting.

Beyond my breasts, which were rising, falling, shifting and rippling with each harsh breath and the expanse of my abdomen - my eyes met the intense gaze of the one who was torturing me. One mischievous natural eye, the other red, harsh and artificial.

Her lips were firmly locked on those between my legs, her tongue darting in, out, swirling.

“Frakking! Ahh-…” I gasped, cutting off the moan that threatened to spill out, my hips instinctively bucking, trying to lessen the pleasure.

She was having none of that. Her blue arms were locked around my thighs, unyielding as beskar and she increased her efforts, even creating a small vacuum with her lips, letting it pop.

The sensation hit me like a blaster bolt. It took all my strength just to remain partially sitting up on my elbows and a cry of pleasure tore itself from my throat.

Finally, some mercy, she let go, but it was only to reposition - both her thighs locking themselves around my left leg. Her own nether lips crashed into mine and she began twisting and twirling her hips, supporting her own weight on her palms.

The wet sound of it rang into my montrals, even as the pleasure built and built. Then my attention was forcibly wrenched away-

I suddenly comprehended my location - a familiar stage, spotlights were glaring down onto me and… Vryss?... as we continued to grind into each other.

“Everyone! Everyone! Welcome to Preigo’s Galaxy of Wonder! For your viewing pleasure, we have Ahsoka Tano and Vryss Korr!” declared the ringmaster.

I gasped, moaned, writhed - trapped and tormented with pleasure, even as the invisible crowd beyond the glaring lights cheered, whistled and clapped.

The sheer shock, excitement and not a small amount of embarrassment thundered through me, piling on top of the pleasure, even as my own hips began moving in concert with Vryss - seeking more pleasure, seeking the release of climax.

My perceptions suddenly shifted, my body twisting.

I surged awake, throwing my blanket off me, sitting up and gasping for air in my dark quarters aboard the Resolute.

“Computer, Dim Lights!” I growled with annoyance.

A few moments to calm down as the lights came on, I called on the Force, regaining equilibrium.

“Wet dreams, yay,” I sang flatly.

A quick look at the chrono told me I could’ve slept for another hour, had my subconscious and body not conspired to throw the utterly ridiculous scenario of me sleeping with Hondo’s very hot second in command, then throw the twist of it happening right on the circus stage with everyone watching…cheering…

No. Nope, not thinking about it further.

I jumped out of bed and quickly changed into a new set of underwear, whilst setting my personal caf machine to begin brewing a cup. I had splurged on getting the device after finally getting fed up with the walk from officer country to the mess hall.

With a steaming cup in hand I leaned against the wall nearby the other new addition to my quarters - the high definition holo projectors that were currently displaying an exterior view of Keitum from mid orbit - as if I actually had a direct transparisteel window. I wasn’t one to generally get claustrophobic, but I had also finally gotten sick of the enclosed nature of my quarters.

I took a sip and focused on what should’ve been a pristine view; the 42nd Fleet in orbit around a verdant world, but instead it was now visibly scarred with a thick line of black walking down one of the major continents. Fires visible from orbit were still raging down there.

Beyond the fleet, was a further mildly organized gathering of a few hundred ships; giant freighters, smaller cargo ships, armed frigates - all gathered from the worlds of the Malarian Alliance. A constant stream of shuttles and LAAT gunships were going up and down from the planet’s surface. Emergency relief supplies in one direction and critically wounded survivors being brought up.

The 501st and two other clone legions of the 42nd Fleet were down there doing rescue work as best they could. Using base construction tools and working with local engineers to dig through the rubble of the cities for survivors. Modern scans could generally detect the lifesigns of survivors even through debris - so it was not an unfocused effort.

That there were survivors was a minor miracle. As much damage as the orbital bombardment had done, it wasn’t the horror of a true Base Delta Zero. The droids and CIS officers behind them had simply fired single volleys and moved onto the next sectors, walking their fire down the continent in methodical fashion. There had been no saturation strikes or glassing down to bedrock.

I savored another sip as I also tried to come to terms with the memories of the last week.

Master Yoda had arrived in Ansion, taking command of the Crucible, ordering me to take a shuttle to Keitum and retake my post as fleet 2IC. However, it was mostly to shove me into Resolute’s sickbay to help the wounded survivors.

I’d already lost count of how many I’d healed and treated by the second day.

There had been no end to it since then and today I only had more of the same to look forward to. More crushed bones, burns, collapsed lungs, amputations of ruined limbs and more. Most of the Keitumite population were the natives who were small humanoids with smooth, mottled green-blue skin, elongated, expressive ears, large almond-shaped eyes for low-light vision, and subtle cranial ridges. I had to quickly learn their biology as I went and only early guidance from the Force prevented me from some tragic mistakes. Inevitably, I would also heal humans and twi’leks - having to do a number of very careful lekku repairs and unfortunately, even partial amputations.

The road to recovery for the latter was long, arduous and something that I would probably wish for Palpatine to experience.

The front door chime to my quarters resounded softly.

A flick of the Force triggered the lock and I took another long sip of caf as Anakin walked in.

“Sleep well, Snips?”

“As well as can be expected,” I grumbled.

He grabbed my pants from my desk chair and threw them at me, “Get dressed, we have an urgent briefing in Intel Division in ten minutes.”

I caught the garment and chugged the last dregs of caf.

“What’s happening?” I asked, threading my legs in.

He shook his head, “Can’t talk about it here.” 

I put on my Hapan top and boots. “That’s rather worrying.”

My lightsabers came flying to me as I secured my belt and hurried after Anakin as he walked out.

Intel Division was tucked away in the aft upper quadrant of the main superstructure of the ship. It was almost ninety square meters of space filled with computers, database secure storage and a number of holotanks. Sixteen intel analysts and spies were squeezed inside, they sat behind computer stations; doing cryptography, hyperspace signal analysis and Holonet trawling. And on board Resolute at least, none of them were clones. Each one was a vetted member of Republic Intelligence and not even Anakin or I were actually cleared to know most of their names. Naturally, that didn’t stop me and through Fulcrum I knew every single intel officer who came on board or left on rotation back to Coruscant. It was just part of the spy game that Fulcrum had to play now.

The current head of Intel on the ship was a Corellian woman by the name of Captain Ady Vaad.

She had a wiry, athletic build typical of Corellians who grew up navigating bustling shipyards and urban sprawls. Lightly tanned skin, weathered by coastal winds, with sharp green eyes that missed nothing. Her dark brown hair was cropped short for practicality, with a single streak of silver; Corellian tradition among some spacers to honor lost comrades. She wore a modified Republic Intelligence uniform; dark gray with green Corellian accents and the Corellian Bloodstripes on her trousers. Just what she did to get first class Bloodstripes, the highest military award that the Corellian Security Force could give, was still on the to-do list for Fulcrum.

She stood behind a holotank with folded hands behind her back, the glowing blue holo light, when combined with her fierce expression into it, gave a very ominous feeling to the whole room. I could feel her angry frustration seeping out into every nook and cranny. The analysts were also very wary of her at the moment, despite their usual professional composure.

Captain Vaad looked up at our approach, giving both Anakin and I respectful nods.

“General Skywalker, Commander Tano. Thank you for coming so quickly.”

“Captain,” Anakin nodded. “I suppose you have a very good reason for breaking protocol in this fashion.”

“Always,” she confirmed. “What we’re about to discuss can only be talked about within the highly secure confines of Intel Division. As much as I pride this department on keeping Resolute and the 42nd Fleet secure from the spying machinations of the enemy, we can never be hundred percent sure.”

“Understandable, now what’s the problem?”

She tapped a few keys on the holotank and the upper half of Mace Windu appeared inside. 

“Knight Skywalker, Padawan Tano,” the Jedi Master bowed his head slightly in greeting. “I’ll be quick as our encryption will only hold for so long. Captain Vaad is about to give you a briefing, carry out the mission she gives you. All will become clear once she does. Understood?”

I pushed my senses through the connection - it was actually Mace Windu, he was aboard another Venator - also within its Intel division. 

‘It’s really him, Snips?’

‘Yes.’

“Understood, Master.”

“Good, Windu out.”

“Now with that out of the way,” she said sardonically. “Republic Intelligence and the Grand Army as a whole is facing another crisis. Roughly around the same time as the Shadow Fleet was smashing Keitum, the Separatists switched encryption ciphers in their hyperspace communications. As you know, signals intelligence is a constant back and forth war of encryption and solving that with decryption. One side comes up with something new, the other solves it using a combination of specialist droids and computers - usually within a few days. However, as of today, Republic Intelligence is at day seven of not being able to crack the latest Separatist code and nothing is indicating that will change as it stands now.”

This was a catastrophe, something that would quickly begin to spill over into actual military disasters that would domino across multiple battlespaces across the galaxy.

If we truly couldn’t decode the enemy transmissions for intel on their movements, we went from proactive defense to reactive with all the delays associated with that. We wouldn’t know a frontline was getting reinforcements until scouts saw them coming and that would give only a day’s warning. It was especially a disaster in the north-east with the fluid combat and mazes of hyperlanes.

Anakin folded his arms, a severe frown on his face, “Can you tell me what specific problem your crypto-analysts are having?”

“Ordinarily that is classified, but our desperation has changed the situation. At this point, we’re throwing as many minds at the problem as we can find. Our working theory is that the Separatists have developed this encryption based on some form of the classic one-time model, but scaled up to an extremely high complexity. That means there is no forcing this encryption through standard Hirgo methods or models. Even the most powerful computers or droids would need millenia of computing time to solve it.”

Frakking bastard, Palpatine! The CIS was literally using what I had based Fulcrum’s communications on.   

Anakin nodded in understanding, “So the only solution is to actually find a Separatist encryption module that they would use to decode the cipher.”

“Correct, we need to infiltrate enemy space and steal one.”

Vaad tapped the holotank controls.

A galaxy map appeared before zooming into the northern Hydian Way, to a sector centered on Botajef and currently the most contested space of the war at the moment. It further zoomed into a system behind enemy lines called Hijado - a rather unremarkable system with only a single habitable planet with a decent sized human population that now firmly fell under the CIS aegis.

In orbit of that planet was a CIS dreadnought and its escort fleet.

“We’ve identified that this dreadnought was the origin point for the new form of Separatist encryption. It all began here, centered on the Indomitable. We’ve confirmed that it recently underwent a refit, and you can see its communication array is nearly four times the size of the standard Providence-class. It’s definitely acting as a com hub for the sector.”

“So we grab a scout vessel, sneak in under cloak, infiltrate, steal the encryption module, then get out,” Anakin shrugged.

“Were it that simple,” Vaad sighed. “The security inside the Indomitable was also significantly upgraded. It’s to the point that the chances for mission success are extremely low, especially because it’s not just about stealing the module - it’s also stealing it in such a way that the Separatists don’t know it’s gone. Otherwise they will simply change the module to a different standard and we’re right back to where we started.”

The holo changed to show a rather pretty red and gold R4 model astromech, “This is R4-K7 - we’ve rebuilt it to house an internal fabricator and molecular resolution scanning system. The ultimate goal is to get this droid into the high security com vault that houses the encryption module. It will scan and produce an exact molecular copy of the module, at which point you have to exfiltrate without raising the alarm. K7 has also been fitted with a disruptor-effect self-destruct system. We wouldn’t want the Separatists to get their hands on it, as the entire mission would be pointless the moment they analyse what its capabilities are. The current mission design with the best chance of success, is as follows.” She looked at me pointedly. “Commander Tano, your infiltration record is the best among the Jedi Order, so you will be leading it.”

I was entirely certain that the few Jedi Shadows that still existed would have much better results than me, but I doubted the Order would assign them to a mission like this or even expose their abilities to the GAR. 

“And I can’t come because there’s no way that I could entrust fleet command to General Skoll and Admiral Yularen is on his way to Coruscant,” Anakin scowled.

“Correct, General. Second in command of the mission will be Colonel Gascon, who is a few hours away from arrival along with the other members.”

The holo of a stilty eyed, green zilkin appeared, dressed in a field army uniform.

“Are we sure it’s wise to send one of the best strategists in Republic Strategic Command on a mission like this? If he’s captured-”

“The Colonel has agreed to be implanted with a suicide device in that event. His diminutive stature also makes him a natural infiltrator and he has a number of successful missions under his belt.”

I had to give Vaad credit for a superb poker face and her emotions were tightly leashed, but it was the rare sentient who could see a zilkin and not be bemused or outright laugh.

“Next we have a number of astromechs that have each been retooled to aid the mission. Firstly, we’d like your permission - as you’re its owner, General - to assign R2-D2 as the mission’s astrogator and general multitool. It’ll be given an upgrade to its jump jets to facilitate better mobility.”

Anakin gave me a stern look.

I held up my palms in a disarming fashion. “Yes, Skyguy, I’ll make sure he comes back in one piece.” 

“Good, then you have my permission, Captain.”

“Next we have QT-KT, who’ll be outfitted with a tractor field generator of considerable power,” Vaad changed the holo to show a red and white droid.

Anakin frowned, “Hey, isn’t that Knight Secura’s astromech?”

“Indeed, she was kind enough to also loan it for use in this mission. QT’s task will primarily be to neutralize the swarm mines present in the com vault, but there will undoubtedly be other uses it could be put to. Next we have U9-C4, who will have the strongest and deadliest laser cutter ever mounted on a droid platform. It will make short work of most armoring and materials you will encounter in the vault. More importantly, it will not register as a lightsaber on any of the security scanners inside.”

This astromech was one of the R5 models and colored in pale orange and white.

“Wait a moment, do you have any details on that?” Anakin asked with concern.

“As far as we can determine it’s simply a highly sensitive, specialized scanner that blankets the interior of the vault, specifically looking for the diatum energy cell that lightsabers are commonly known to feature.”

He closed his eyes and I just knew he was using that technical genius to come up with some sort of solution. “Snips, I should be able to fashion you a sensor-damped microfusion cell for both your blades before you leave.”

“But not for the Darksaber,” I concluded, mentally visualizing the assembly of my green blades.

“No, I doubt you’d want to open that hilt up anyway.”

The kyber entity of the Darksaber immediately gave me its equivalent of a glare.

“Even if this technical hurdle is overcome,” Vaad raised a hand of caution. “I’d suggest you avoid activating your lightsabers at all, Commander. No intel is perfect, after all.”

“Understood, Captain Vaad.”

“Good. The final droid of the mission is M5-BZ, which has been converted into a mobility aid and mobile C&C center for Colonel Gascon. As agile as he is as a zilkin, he can’t exactly cover distance quickly. He has used this droid in the past successfully on a number of missions.”

M5 was an R4 series droid in all green coloration, whose tall upper dome had been hollowed out to fit a seat surrounded by numerous holoscreens and controls. Allowing Gascon to take control and even fly the droid if he had to, with similar leg jets as R2.  

“You’ll be breaching Separatist space by using a cloak capable Omicron-class attack shuttle that will arrive with all the team members tomorrow. Make your way to Hijado and space walk onto the Idomitable’s hull, where you’ll use-”

The holo switched to show the 2 kilometer long dreadnought, zooming in to a mid point on the upper dorsal hull.

“- this maintenance airlock to make your initial breach. The com vault is on Cresh Deck, which we’ve calculated equates to at least roughly 234 meters of corridors and one turbolift you’ll have to traverse to reach it.” She handed me a datapad. “This contains the specifics of the security, it’s an extensive list; the highlights are life sign sensors, swarm mines, and a floor pressure detection system. We estimate Colonel Gascon will be especially useful in this regard.” Vaad’s mouth twitched somewhat. “Any further questions, commander?”

“No, it all seems pretty clear.”

“Good, then as you Jedi say, may the Force be with you.”

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I waited patiently in Docking Bay One, fully armored in my berskar’gam, with R2-D2 beside me.

“How are the new jets treating you, R2?”

‘Very well, thank you. I have 80% increased thrust performance. It is much more sensitive to control inputs, but well within my calculation tolerance,’ said the droid in astromech binary.

The Omicron-class shuttle, Shadow Talon, decloaked directly in the Resolute’s launch spine, folded up its wings and came in for a smooth touchdown. Showing one of the astromechs was at the controls.

The rear embarkation ramp opened up with a hiss of hydraulics, letting the four astromechs of the newly named D-Squad to roll out onto the deck.

In the lead was M5-BZ, which rolled forward on wheels with purposeful speed only to come to a halt directly in front of me.

The droid’s flattened head abruptly popped open and all 33 cm of Colonel Meebur Gascon jumped out. He deftly balanced himself on the open edge of his ride and stood to attention before saluting me.

Only in this galaxy could a species like the zilkin gain full sentience. The generally accepted notion that you need a certain brain size was thoroughly challenged by their existence. Not only did zilkin have an entirely different neural architecture that was distributed all throughout their body, the biochemistry was also radically different and featured near-unbelievable densities of memory storage. Jedi scientists had also managed to actually sense that zilkin biology was partially extruding into extra dimensions on a molecular basis and confirm it scientifically using modified hyperspace scanners.

I returned the salute, “Colonel Gascon, welcome to the Resolute.” 

“It’s a distinct honor to meet you, Commander Tano,” he said, with a tone of grand pomposity. His tiny voice was generally boosted to audible levels by the droid he used for mobility, letting him interact with normal sentients with general levels of hearing in the humanoid range. My montrals had no problem hearing and generally Jedi wouldn’t have issues either. “The Mandalorian Jedi, one of the foremost Fleet Commanders of the Republic, the other mind behind our primary naval doctrine, the Bane of Durge-”

I gently raised a palm to interrupt the zilkin, “My memory has not failed me, Colonel.”

“Hmmph, typical Jedi, never one to brag,” he folded his tiny hands behind his back, then smirked at me, his two eyestalks bobbing alternately up and down on his small head. His emotions indicated that it was the zilkin equivalent body language for approval. “Now I trust you’ve been briefed already on our mission? If not, I’ll be happy to walk you through it.”

“No need, colonel,” I reached down to pick up my war chest. “R2 and I will do a post-flight checklist of the Talon and refuel, it will just take an half an hour to be on the safe side and then we can leave. Every hour of delay is another hour that the Separatists have a signal’s intel advantage over us.”

“Oh, well,” the zilkin deflated somewhat. “I was hoping to get an actual tour of the Resolute while I was here, but I can see your point.” He deftly hopped back into M5, turning the droid around. “Let’s go D-Squad, back on board!”

The other astromechs chirped and squawked at each other in binary, generally expressing their annoyance, offering to help get the Talon back in shape.

I laughed, “Whoah, all right, all right, go ahead and help R2. I imagine the trip here was rather boring.” 

“Actually Commander, we just want to just have a break from the Colonel,” QT softly chirped after Gascon was back aboard and out of earshot. “He just doesn’t stop… giving his opinion on everything or telling his selection of war stories.”

I inwardly groaned, this was going to be a fun trip.

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A day of hyperspace along the Namadii Corridor south, then another two along the Celanon Spur heading east before we reached Ord Mantell, the current front line battlespace in this part of the galaxy.

“Are you sure, commander?” asked Colonel Gascon worriedly.

I nodded, “Using standard hyper navigation routes is too dangerous, the waypoints in front line systems are naturally clogged, with either side using blockade formations. In addition, a new tactic being used is to purposefully seed debris and mines in randomized patterns around the waypoints to potentially damage or even destroy ships trying to use non-standard emergence points. This also applies to us, since we have two seconds of vulnerability until our cloak engages after leaving hyperspace. Therefore I’m using Force navigation to get us safely into an emergence in the system’s Oort Cloud. From there it’ll be just a few hours for us to reach R2’s onward trajectory.”

“Oh, well, I’ve heard all about Jedi Navigators, of course,” he said archly. “I just didn’t know you were one.”

“Most Jedi can do this, we just prefer not to unless in dire circumstances.”

QT-KTs warning had been rather spot on and the good Colonel Gascon was a literal exercise in keeping one’s patience and cool. About the only reason I imagine someone hadn’t threatened to stomp on him yet, was that he was constantly surrounded by senior Jedi in Strategic Command. Any non-Jedi naval officer working there had probably excused themselves before they could lose their marbles, not wanting to cause a scene in front of so many Jedi Masters. Clone psycho-doctrination would also stop senior clones from losing their cool as well. Yet despite this flaw, Gascon’s actual strategic and tactical planning skill on a planetary battlefield was among the best the galaxy had to offer. 

It took another two days from there to reach the crossroad system of Agamar and turn onto the Braxant Run.

It was at this point where I had managed to master the skill of internal meditation, whilst giving every outward appearance that I was generally listening to the Colonel’s bombastic rants, stories and opinions. The stories weren’t nonsense or false, it’s just that he had a clear oratorical talent for stretching it out to a near unbelievable degree.

Despite that, I actually managed to learn quite a bit from him regarding his homeworld - what his species called the Great Zilk.

It featured dense, low lying ecosystems; lush jungles, swampy wetlands, and cavernous fungal forests, where their small size was advantageous for navigating tight spaces, avoiding predators and exploiting niche resources. It had a naturally high humidity, which explained why Gascon had set the Talon’s life support to match.

“This uniform is not just for regulation, it keeps me from drying out in the climates you big’uns prefer.”

Big’uns the Basic zilkin slang for practically every other race in the galaxy who had ‘large’ bodies.

Culturally, the zilkin developed a society emphasizing cooperation and ingenuity to extreme degree, which went some way to explaining Gascon’s skill in coordinating forces on a battlefield.

“To me it’s no different than when we zilkin go on a slythervox hunt - they’re a serpentine predator on Great Zilk - out here in the great big galaxy against the Separatists, to me it’s just a hunt with increased scale, capability and we’re dealing thousands of slythervoxes.”

Zilkin architecture and technology was naturally miniaturized, with intricate compact cities, tiny walkways, hover platforms or drone assisted transport for vertical navigation. They naturally worked on a smaller scale and quite a lot of the common technology around the galaxy was only as small as it was because of zilkin science showing the way. Their scientists were the go-to source for anyone looking to miniaturize. In this respect, they were the unsung heroes of Corusca galaxy technology - and they weren’t looking to change that.

Hard evolutionary experience had taught them not to draw attention to themselves, lest the giant species of their homeworld step on them or gobble them up. This tendency extended to the rest of the galaxy.

This also explained why Gascon was away from Great Zilk - he was just too rambunctious and loud for common zilkin sensibilities.

Those zilkin who did go out into the galaxy, were also those who also displayed the most cunning and resilience, and featured a general chip-on-the-shoulder attitude toward the larger species.

We were very deep in CIS space after a further two days, arriving at Botajef before turning onto the Hydian Way and reaching Hijado after another three hours.

The urgency of the mission was weighing down on both of us, especially when news reached us of fresh offensives from the CIS across nearly every front that had caught numerous Republic fleets and commands on the back foot.

And if that wasn’t bad enough…

‘Snips, a strategic conference has been called for all senior naval commands and Jedi Council members, to decide what our response will be to the orbital attacks and whether we should escalate in kind.’

‘Really? Now? Where?’

‘Carida.’

‘Frak. This is not the time to pull senior fleet officers away from the front! You know Skyguy, we have this amazing thing called the Holonet, which lets them send a holo of themselves-’

‘Which no one trusts to keep this highly classified conference secure at the moment, Snips,’ he reminded me.

‘Yes, I know, but they can use rapid rotational encryption-’

‘Which only the 42nd Fleet and Ventator-IIs are really capable of.’

I was sorely tempted to give myself a nice slap to the forehead for forgetting that little detail.

‘Skyguy, you know that this conference is just begging for a clandestine CIS attack. In fact it will happen.”

‘I know, Snips. But there is no other choice at the moment, we have to talk to each other and make this decision. It can only be done in person. The conference will have the highest security and military capacity gathered in the galaxy in one spot, Snips. No CIS black ops team could hope to achieve anything here.’

‘Do you truly believe that?’

He mentally sighed, ‘No, but I can’t tell the entire senior command that we shouldn’t meet without showing some evidence, your prescience won’t cut it and you know you can’t reveal it.’

‘Make sure they at least maintain a heightened alert state.’

‘I’ll try Snips, I’m just a conference attendee here, not the Carida system command.’

‘Then light a fire under the osik'gam* in charge over there.’ (shithead)

His amusement at my colorful Mando’a surged through the Bond. 

‘I will, Snips.’

When the Talon finally emerged from hyper and cloaked, I had managed to manually navigate us to within spitting distance of the mass shadow of Hijado IV, just under 20k kilometers from the Indomitable and its escort fleet.

“Well, I’ll be a Fluffel Skree’s uncle, you actually managed it,” Gascon commented from his perch on the backrest of the pilot’s chair.

“And a fluffel skree is?” Curse my curiosity.

“Small critter on my homeworld with an absurdly poofy, brightly colored coat of fur, makes it look comically oversized for its tiny frame. Swings clumsily between vines or fungal stalks, often tumbling, which we zilkins find hilarious. I tell you, my family once-”

I hurriedly raised my palms and headed for the cockpit door, “Sorry Colonel, mission first, story later. R2, take over the controls, get us to our target area over the Indomitable.”

“Ah, right. Of course. BZ, get your fat wheels over here!”

I quickly entered my temporary quarters on the Talon and stepped out of my beskar’gam and began changing into a CIS Navy uniform.

It was a rare thing for anyone in the Republic to actually see, especially because these days the organic officers were usually only stationed on Lucrehulks and Providence dreads. In the current warfare paradigm, Munificents and Recuscants had become cannon fodder.

The uniform was a deep blue outfit; practically a jumpsuit-spacesuit hybrid with pronounced and padded, pointy shoulders. It featured sleek lines and angles in the design meant to firmly distinguish the wearer from the mass of droids they worked alongside on a ship. Ranks were denoted on the shoulders only and this one was of a Senior Lieutenant. Completing the disguise was a complete re-do of my facial and lekku pattern to match the identity that had been provided to me by Republic Intelligence.

That there actually were togruta within the CIS Navy was something that shouldn’t have been too surprising. It was a big galaxy, with trillions in it and togruta were firmly part of the Outer Rim melting pot of races.

Now I was Senior Lieutenant Nande Birkonas, born on Tion, a world right next door to Raxus Prime - a firm believer of the Separatist cause of independence from the bloated uncaring Republic.   

I stared into the small mirror of my quarters, wincing at the checkerboard patterns on my lekku and rhombus shapes around my eyes, “Urgh, I look ridiculous.”

“It is an effective disguise, mistress, don’t forget the code cylinders though,” M8 closed herself up and handed me the pen sized ID cylinders that I tucked into the dedicated pockets for them.

I picked up the matching uniform belt with the holster for the organic model of the E5 blaster pistol and clipped it around my hips.

If this had been any other standard infiltration mission, then I would’ve gone in as usual, but the com vault and the need for absolute deception in switching out the decryption module changed things. Gascon and I had been brainstorming a lot in our journey here and come to the conclusion that this was the approach needed.

“All right M8, you have the Talon, station keep and be ready for anything… Oh, do look after my lightsabers.”

“Of course, Mistress.”

I met up with the other members of D-Squad in the Talon’s small ventral airlock.

I made a quick final check on the seals of my gloves, boots and the CIS-pattern vac helmet and life support pack that we had fabricated. “Everyone ready?”

A chorus of affirmative binary chirps replied and a tinny “Ready, Commander!” from Gascon inside M5-BZ.

I patted the dome of R4-K7 and smiled at him. “You are the lynchpin of this mission, R4. Without you we might as well go home.”

“I’ll do my utmost, commander!’ the droid trilled excitedly.   

I stepped over to the nearby control panel, “Depressurizing.”

The hiss of rushing air being pulled out by pumps resounded, which quickly disappeared as we were left in full vacuum.

The outer door below us opened and we were greeted by the armored hull of the Idomitable, just fifty meters below us.

A quick check of my lifesign scrambler confirmed it working before I stepped directly over the outer airlock, using the shuttle’s artificial gravity to give me a push before I left its field envelope.

My breath echoed loudly back at me inside the spherical helmet as I ‘fell’ towards the dreadnought at nine meters per second. 

Behind me, D-Squad followed, letting only momentum do the job of covering the distance. The astromechs couldn’t even risk using leg jets in this phase of the mission.

In the six seconds it took to reach the dreadnought, I took in the rather majestic sight of it as it stretched out for more than a kilometer to either side of me, with the blue, whites and green of Hijado dominating the view to my left.

Spacewalks, despite having done it so many times by now, always left me with a feeling of awe. It also now reminded me of a notion or idea from my previous life that, as much as the galaxy had become spacefaring, that we still clung to little pockets of gravity and air that we carried around with ourselves. That we were still married to big rocks with relatively thin films of air around them. We still fought for them, spilled our blood for them to control and mine them. Soon we would be in a galaxy where the power would exist to utterly destroy them in the snap of your fingers.

Civilization, technology and even our bodies, would need to move on and say goodbye to these cradles.

I bled momentum into the Force, slowing down to a mere one meter per second.

Touch down.

I bent my legs to absorb the mild impact and let my magboots clamp onto the armored hull.

D-Squad landed behind me.

R2’s had done his usual brilliant job and we barely needed to walk ten meters to reach the maintenance airlock.

He took point to interface and slice local systems, also sending in a localized virus that would implant my cover ID into the ship’s personnel roster and authorization systems. It was a cover that would hold for most general scrutiny, even a database query back to Raxus Prime would have Nande Birkonas listed as an officer in the CIS Navy, Republic Intelligence had made sure of it.

Within less than a minute, we had our access and put ourselves through the airlock.

Beyond the inner door, I pulled off my helmet and hung it via a strap from my belt. “R2, sync my location in three, two, one… now.”

A flick of a small switch, my lifesign scrambler was off.

‘Your location and code cylinders are in the system and everything is nominal,’ trilled R2.

“Good, all right droids, game faces. We have a lot of maintenance to do today and very little time. Follow me.”

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Providence dreadnought interiors were very bare bones, even more so than the rugged industrial design that Venators favored. Nothing was easy on the eyes, everything was gray durasteel with minimal paneling and harsh lighting. We passed the first test of our disguise when we passed by a B1 squad patrol immediately on reaching the next deck.

Through technometry I vaguely felt the scan from the B1 commander as it interfaced with code cylinders on my uniform.

I kept myself in a purposeful, all-business stride, ignoring the squad and passed them on the right.

No reaction.

We turned a corner in the corridor ahead and the patrol passed out of sight.

So far so good.

By the time we reached the turbolift we would use, we had passed three more patrols, including a number of B2 squads.

The lift door opened and inside were two male humans in CIS uniform who were in a rather intense discussion. One was a junior lieutenant and the other an ensign. They both snapped to attention with a salute at seeing me.

“Senior Lieutenant,” said the taller junior lieutenant in greeting.

I returned a crisp salute with a nod, “Lieutenant, need a bit of space here.”

D-Squad piled in orderly behind me and the two officers had to awkwardly shuffle to one side to make room for the five droids. I ended up having to turn my back to them and tapped the button for C Deck.

“Maintenance duty, ma’am?” asked the ensign nervously.

I only nodded, using the Force to pull a minor Mind Trick on them both.

They blinked and resumed their earlier conversation. 

“I’m telling you Vex, all these turbolaser drills are a waste of bloody time,” groused the junior LT.

“Sir, we have to stay in tip top shape.”

“All we’re doing is creating unnecessary wear and tear. This ship is not going anywhere near the frontlines any time soon. Face it, our careers are over before they’ve even started.”

“Sir, we can’t know that for sure.”

“Oh yes, we can. Command would be utterly moronic to send this ship into combat. They’ve turned this top of line dreadnought into a glorified com buoy!”

The ensign’s attention fell on me again and I inwardly groaned with annoyance as I felt his appreciative eyes settle on my butt - which the CIS uniform did nothing to hide the curves of.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to endure the attention for long as the turbolift stopped on C Deck.

I strode forward, resisting the urge to quicken my step.

From there it was another few minutes of walking until I paused in the main corridor leading to the com vault, exactly where a maintenance hatch which bordered the vault was located. 

“All right R2, get cracking.”

‘Yes, Lieutenant,’ he chirped, plugging in his logic probe. It was highly unlikely we were being directly watched, but we had roles to play nevertheless.

Seven seconds of slicing later and it opened, allowing the droids to proceed into a tube that wasn’t designed for humanoids to walk upright in.

It would look too suspicious for me to follow them in as well, so I simply waited with folded hands behind my back and tracked their progress with Farsight.

U9-C4 took his turn to lead the group and under Gascon’s direction they traversed a veritable maze of tubes until they reached a major power conduit that led directly into the com vault.

R2 also plugged into a nearby logic port to slice into localized sensors and loop their feeds.

‘Go ahead, U9,’ R2 chirped.

‘Here we go, powering the laser!’ U9 declared with a disturbing amount of glee.

The green emitter popped out of his main body, aimed at a junction box and fired.

It was like a small version of a collimated laser that instantly surged out and penetrated through the hardened battle durasteel that protected the conduit from general external damage.

U9 drew the green laser down slowly with a crackle of molten steel and sparks.

The effect this had locally was immediately apparent as the corridor lighting above me flickered.

“Commander, it worked. My scans indicate the com vault security power is now on internal source only and local mode,” reported Gascon from his perch inside M5. “R2 has also managed to isolate all local scanners. We could have a parade in this section of the ship and the bridge wouldn’t know. Of course, the vault is a different story.”

I pretended to get a signal from my comlink, “Good work, on your way back now you lot.”

I quickly turned around and headed straight for the main vault entrance, reaching out with the Force to trigger the bulkhead doors.

Beyond was a short passage that had a second bulkhead door and the ominous form of two B2-ACMs with their Repeater arms in standby mode.

They saw me and instantly aimed those dangerous arms. 

“Halt, you are identified as Lieutenant Nande Birkonas, Maintenance Division. Your presence is not authorized. Explain.”

My voice adopted a Tion drawl that reminded me of a light Texan accent, “Sorry fellas, I’m just here for security tests and maintenance, which I’m happy to say you’ve passed with flyin’ colors.”   

Both B2’s began twitching and electrical arcs erupted from their chassis as I used the mildest version of the Disable Droid technique I had mastered so far, whilst also reaching into them with Technometry to trigger their emergency shutdowns.

They abruptly froze into lifelessness and threatened to topple over noisily.

I caught both with TK and hovered them over into an adjoining room that housed emergency repair supplies for the com vault.

“Smoothly done, commander, we’ll take it from here,” said Gascon, as D-Squad rolled in.

I quickly took my place as a hidden lookout, extending all my senses outward to encompass the entire sector of the ship we were in.

R2 rolled forward and opened a panel on his body, extending a modulated taser arm. A brief surge of current disabled the booby trapped logic plug, allowing him to properly interface with the inner vault door.

The main interior of the vault was a fifteen meter diameter, five floor high circular room, which itself had another cylindrical room inside that stretched from floor to ceiling. High bandwidth computer conduits and numerous interface screens lined the walls, constantly scrolling data and readouts as CIS communications for an entire sector were encoded and decoded before our eyes.

The sterile air was filled with hundreds of fist sized glowing spheres that were silently hovering and scanning for anything that moved inside of their pre-programmed perimeter.

“All right, QT, your turn. Get those swarm mines out of our way,” ordered Gascon.

“Yes sir!” she chirped with enthusiasm.

From the top of the droid’s dome a small door opened and a saucer shaped remote flew out, with numerous emitters stippled alongside its surface.

Before the swarm mines could even react to the breach in their perimeter they were all helplessly pulled into orbit around the tractor drone. Their proximity detonation circuits were subverted by the careful programming of the tiny tractor beams, keeping them well away from each other.

After a single careful orbit of the room, the drone had every mine under control - whereupon it released a directed micro EMP that disabled all of them.

QT carefully guided the mass of swarm mines back and out of the vault, gathering them all up into a large sphere of mines that hovered above her.

“Well done, now it’s up to me,” Gascon popped the hatch of M5-BZ and took a deep breath.

On his back was a computer slicing spike specially designed to his size, but it still looked like he was carrying a lance.

He carefully climbed down M5’s body and slowly lowered himself to stand on the droid’s fore wheel, before again carefully taking the next step forward.

This was the edge of the pressure sensor zone and he held his breath as his flat amphibian feet touched it.

No alarm.

He breathed a sigh of relief and took another careful step. His weight was not enough to trigger the alarm, but he still had to moderate his footfalls.

For a zilkin of Gascon’s size to carefully walk seven meters to the interface point for the computer slice would take forty-seven seconds.

Of course, this was the moment I sensed an incoming droid patrol.

A quick gesture closed the main outer bulkhead access to the vault and shielded us from general view.

The only blessing was that it was merely a single squad of B1s.

They turned the corner and were now stomping along the exterior corridor.

I was torn between letting them pass our position or using my equivalent of a droid Mind Trick.

Gascon was halfway to his destination and the enemy droid squad was now a mere ten meters from the outer door.

My focus was juggling too much in the present to look far enough down the probability line-

The B1s passed our position without pause.

“Thank goodness,” I muttered with slight relief as Gascon also reached his destination.

He adeptly began climbing and jumping up the vault’s inner cylinder - without hesitation pulling the spike from his back and jamming it into the maintenance logic port near a control panel.

We gave it a further three seconds to work.

“The pressure sensors are down, go,” I ordered into the comlink.

D-Squad rolled forward, leaving QT behind to manage to swarm mines.

R2 hacked the next door and headed inside to finally reveal our target.

The encryption module itself was a flat, hand sized mass of plasteel and computer chips, held suspended between two repulsors keeping it perfectly suspended. Above and below it were high resolution molecular scanners that reported on the current atomic state of the module itself. 

This was how the code remained truly unbreakable, it didn’t just use a fancy new math scheme, it further used the atomic structure of the module as a reference to scramble the code. Only by referencing this particular module, could the CIS even read their own communications. 

“K7, help us get our own module, please,” Gascon ordered.

“At once, Colonel.” The red-gold astromech’s panels opened up and a complex dish scanner unfurled and locked itself into place. “Scanning.”

This was another point where we had to patiently wait for the process to complete. Simulations had shown it taking anywhere from two minutes to an hour, depending on the molecular complexity of the module. If I had been in the CIS’ shoes, I would have made a complex atomic structure to base my code on, which would in turn take much longer for anyone to make heads or tails of, if they got their hands on it.

“K7, how long?” Gascon asked grimly.

“220 seconds.”

I put out of my mind how bloody long this was going to feel. Each second seemingly stretching itself into ridiculous proportions.

My senses kept watch, spying a few organic CIS crew approaching C Deck, but their turbolift thankfully carried them away toward the aft bridge superstructure.

“Scan complete, beginning fabrication.”

It would’ve been nice if we could do this part on-the-go, but K7’s internal fabricator had to remain completely still to make an accurate facsimile of the module. We also had to confirm an exact match between the copy and the original before we could leave.

“32 minutes to completion.”

Frak.

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A/N: This is mission impossible, Ms Tano. Difficult should be a walk in the park for you :-) It was fun fleshing out the Zilkin and I've given Colonel Gascon a general rework whilst keeping the fun bits of his character.

Have a wonderful weekend and stay awesome folks.

The Force Wills - Chapter 141

The Ansion star was growing ever larger in the viewscreen.

Approaching it at a fraction of lightspeed, an escape pod that was now tumbling out of control.

I stood in the centre of the Lucrehulk’s bridge, which Durge had apparently named the Bloodmaul. It was just so typical of the bloodthirsty bastard, reflecting his savage, relentless nature along with his penchant for destruction. Now, at last, after 2000 years, the galaxy would be rid of him.

Through the Force, I could just about keep a sliver of perception on the gen’dai. He was still experiencing a relentless rage that burned like a tiny star. There was no acceptance of his fate, no hopelessness, no self-pity, no reflection or regret. He just continued to hate and rage, taking it out on the escape pod around him. It surprised me he hadn’t utterly wrecked it already, tearing it apart from the inside. That meant he still held onto a small sliver of rationality, that at least wanted the end to come quickly and painlessly -  as opposed to dying to vacuum in the void of space or at this range from the sun, burning to a crisp. 

The bulkhead door to the expansive bridge opened behind me and Hondo was escorted in by three commando droids.

In the small droid civil war that had occurred on the Bloodmaul, it was rare for commandos to be successfully assimilated. So these three were rather special but it also meant M8 had wanted to make sure that Hondo didn’t try any funny business.

“Ohnaka, welcome to the bridge of the Bloodmaul.”

He stopped and stared at my very obedient B1 bridge crew, then started laughing with a belly deep delight, “Oh, ha, ha, ha, oh, my dear Jedi, you actually managed to subvert them?”

I answered him by making a specific gesture to his commando droid escort, who nodded at me before taking up guard positions at the bridge entrance. “Yes, as you can imagine it’s not something to be used lightly and I only did it to prevent this ship from massacring millions.”

He nodded, “Something the ansionians will be very grateful to you for. At this point, they’ll fix your ship’s hyperdrive for free!”

“I suppose they would, if I was inclined to tell them how close they came to being annihilated via orbital strikes. As it is, we still have to deal with the droids that Durge landed.”

“With no more reinforcements or supplies from this ship coming, the ansionians can handle it,” Hondo waved off my concern.

“And your own… troops? Gang?”

“My compound is a fortress, my dear. They can hold out and now that the threat of these ships are dealt with, my own can return - if you would be so kind as to let me use the com system?”

I gestured towards the appropriate station, whilst M8 gave the appropriate orders to our droids.

Hondo practically glided with glee towards the bank of controls and began tapping in the frequency. The small holo of a striking blue-skinned female twi’lek with intricate white tattoos tracing her lekku appeared. She wore a sleek black flightsuit, adorned with pouches for gadgets and a vibroblade sheathed on her back along with a DL44 holstered on her right thigh. I knew not every twi’lek in the galaxy had a bedroom body, but this one easily rated a nine on my own scale - ouch. About the only thing that marred her appearance was a cybernetic left eye that glowed faintly red and didn’t have a synthetic disguise on it.

“Hondo! Still alive?” Vryss asked. Oh for frak’s sake, even her voice had this breathy, unctuous tone to it that made me think I could listen to it all day as it whispered sweet nothings into my montrals. If it sounded like this through a reasonably high grade comlink, then I could only imagine it in person. Urgh, stupid hormones were acting up again.

“Yes, my dear Vryss. Is that disappointment I hear?” he asked dangerously.

“Do you really think I want to be saddled leading your sorry lot of weequay lechers?”

He chuckled, “So, yes, I’m very much alive and free. My Jedi friend has taken care of the situation in orbit, you can bring all the ships back. I need you to attack the droid forces that are besieging the compound.”

“That is… very surprising and a story that I’m looking forward to hearing. We’re on our way, Vryss out.”

“Aren’t we getting a little close to the sun, Tano?” he asked worriedly, looking at the viewscreen.

“We’ll stop before it becomes an issue, I need to confirm that Durge is dead with my own eyes and the sensor records of this ship.” I gestured to the escape pod.

His mouth briefly gaped open in surprise before a wicked smile emerged, “Durge is in there? About to be burned up in the sun?”

“Indeed.”

“Ho, ho, ho, wonderful!” He clapped his hands with excitement. “It’s too bad no one is stupid enough to post a bounty on him. Just how did you manage to do it?”

“Planning, I’ve fought him before alongside my master and Obi-Wan Kenobi. This is one of the methods we developed for getting rid of him. Blasters and lightsabers don’t do enough damage quickly enough, not before he either escapes or kills his opponent. Disruptors could work if you had enough of them firing at once, but he’s not stupid or inexperienced and will just run away if you show up with that. So the answer is to not fight him at all, engage him in a ship in space, let him think he has the upper hand, destroy his armor, then lure and shove him into an escape pod. Set an appropriate course and the star will do the work.”

“Ha, ha, ha, brilliant!” His smile was even wider now. “Unbelievable, I never thought in my life, I would witness history like this being made. The unkillable, unstoppable Durge, brought low by the Mandalorian Jedi! You’re going to be famous among the bounty hunters, my dear.”

“Something I’m not looking forward to,” I mumbled

“You can bet they’ll even give you a new title, Durge’s Bane or something like that.”

“Commander, hull temperature is approaching recommended safety limits,” reported the B1 helmsman.

“Add polarization to the viewscreen, and all stop,” I ordered.

The glare of the sun dimmed significantly and was just in time to see the hull of the pod begin to vaporize. The internal air started leaking out and was immediately dissociated into its constituent elemental gasses. That energy release was the final nail in Durge’s coffin - it tore the pod apart.

I could briefly make out the form of the gen’dai spilling out.

He existed as a contiguous whole for only milliseconds, before he was just… gone.

Every molecule of him ripped apart, which further stripped apart under the sheer imparted energy.  

“You got that, M8?”

“Every sensor that could look was trained on that pod, mistress. Downloading... I have it.”

“It’s over. Set a course for Ansion.”

“Roger, roger, commander.”

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“Please?”

“No.”  

“Come now, what are you going to do with an entire Lucrehulk battleship?” Hondo argued.

I turned my head so that the overhead bridge lighting caught my helmet’s T-visor in just the right way, glaring it into Hondo’s eyes. “There are many important things that can be done with the Bloodmaul. Most of which I will not be discussing with you, Ohnaka.”

This was the fourth time in the last hour that he had tried to persuade me to hand over the battleship to the local Ansion government. In other words, just a thinly veiled way that the cunning ‘privateer’ was trying to get his own hands on the ship. Hondo Ohnaka in charge of a 500 million credit, state of the art, wartime battleship?

No.

Not happening on my watch. As much as there was to like about Hondo, he equally had many things to dislike.

“Commander, approaching Ansion orbit,” announced the helm droid.

“Put us into a high inclination polar orbit, 20k kilometers.”

“Roger, roger.”

“How many Vulture and Hyena droids are ready?”

“Two squadrons of Vulture and one Hyena, commander,” announced the B1 in charge of flight ops.

“Launch one Vulture squadron and the Hyena, primary targets are the besieging enemy droids at the coordinates I’m streaming to you.”

“Roger, roger.”

M8 did the nitty gritty and within a minute a small stream of fighter droids launched out of the Bloodmaul’s starboard hangar bay.

“Ah, a pity,” Hondo sighed. “I begin to see the allure of power that the Separatists have. They don’t have to worry about training, food or getting stabbed in the back by upstarts. They just sit back on their bridges, give the order and things happen.”

“That is precisely the thinking that got the galaxy into this mess and why the Bloodmaul will soon also go on a journey into the nearest star I can find.”

“Ah, such a waste. Really, my dear. Just think about it! Imagine this ship on station in Mandalorian space-”

“No. First, we wouldn’t accept it, we wouldn’t trust it, because no matter how thorough we are in inspecting and dissecting every line of code in every computer on this ship, we couldn’t be sure that there isn’t a backdoor the CIS can use to either self-destruct or take it over again. Second, maintaining it would be insanely expensive, not to mention crewing it to the level we want. We wouldn’t trust a droid crew to run this ship’s washing machine, let alone any of its main guns. Finally, even if we solved every other issue - at the end of the day, it’s still just a Lucrehulk and this is a war of fleets, not single ships. Yes, it would also be nice if I could trust the Ansionians with this ship, but the only way they’d have any hope of keeping it in some sort of working order in the long term, was if the entire Malarian Alliance cooperated in the effort. Otherwise, this thing will become just a well armed space station eventually.”

Hondo puffed himself up ready to launch with his counter but he found himself at a loss and deflated. “Your arguments make too much sense,” he grumbled. “It’s like I’m listening to Vryss.”

“She sounds like a wise twi’lek with that most rare of gifts called common sense.”

“Commander, our fighters are approaching target co-ordinates,” reported the helm droid.

“Give me the forward visual sensor feed of the lead fighter.”

The view of Ansion was replaced with the shaky first-person view of the lead Vulture as it screamed through the sky, dived, rolled and rapidly fired its cannons. Strafing formations of B1s and B2s that were steadily assaulting a large fortified compound that was partially built into the side of a low mountain.

“Nice base, Ohnaka.”

“Why thank you, my dear. Perhaps after all this is over you would care for a visit? We’ll have an amazing travelling circus here in a few days. It’s going to take some time to fix the hyperdrive of the Crucible anyway.”

It was very tempting, as I had fond childhood memories of circus acts on old Earth and at this point hadn’t attended a show in person for decades. Seeing a Corusca galaxy version of it given the fantastic species, beasts and creatures that existed would indeed be a treat.

“We’ll see,” I stalled, but my attention was drawn to the feed as I saw Hondo’s privateers begin their counterattack from their stronghold.

It was spearheaded by a formation of speeder tanks, with a large spinal laser cannon and two turreted anti-personnel blasters.

“M8, run a recognition search on those tanks from the war book.”

“Yes, mistress. It’s the WLO-5 speeder tank manufactured by Ubrikkian Ord Pedrovia, a subsidiary of Ubrikkian Industries.”

The things weren’t armored that well, but they more than made up for that with the blistering speed of nearly 110 kph and supreme agility. The tanks actually side-strafed as their side blasters sprayed rapid plasma bolts, killing dozens of B1s in seconds. Their main guns were easily strong enough to at least two-shot a B2. They left the few enemy AATs on the ground in the dust, easily being faster than the enemy’s turret traversal speed.

I turned to face Hondo fully, “Just how did you convince a major Corellian armed vehicle manufacturer to sell you those?”

“Well, I have an understanding with the Director of Ord Pedrovia,” he shrugged, but I could sense that he was squirming internally.

“You mean you’ve blackmailed them somehow?”

“Blackmail is such a strong word, it’s just business. I paid for every tank you see fighting out there. The financial results for Pedrovia look very good this year. He’ll get a nice bonus too.”

The question of how Hondo afforded his small fleet and now this ground force was something I really would like the answer to. I was no stranger to managing wealth in this galaxy, given my own assets through Clan Vizsla, the taxes and management of the Condordian moon, my shares and seat on the MandalMotors board and the CSO corporation. If there was one lesson I also took away from helping to work on the new Mandalorian capital ship with Kalevala Spaceworks, military equipment and starship development were frakking expensive.  

Obvious, of course, but it was one thing to generally know a thing and another to see the actual expense statements that rolled in.

My only conclusion was that Hondo was most definitely not just a pirate, even when it was his primary occupation. His privateer mercenary work also only went so far to explain his assets. His side-hustles could’ve included a whole range of extortion, ransom, smuggling, black market dealings, protection rackets and salvaging from battlespaces in the war.

I sighed wearily and walked over to the com station. Worrying about Hondo’s burgeoning ‘business’ was for future-me.

“Ahsoka to Crucible. Come in.”

It took a few moments, but the connection went through and Professor Huyang’s holo appeared in the main bridge holotank.

“Crucible here. Padawan Tano, it’s good to see you in one piece. I have six very relieved adepts in front of me.”

“I’m sure they are. I want you to lift off and land the Crucible within my newly captured Lucrehulk battleship, it should just about fit.”

“I’m sorry, Padawan. My audio receptors must be malfunctioning. Did you just imply that you’ve captured an entire Lucrehulk?”

“I did, and don’t worry about the droids you see. They’re all loyal to the Republic.”

Huyang was silent for a few very long moments and I could practically see his circuits buzzing. “I’ll be heading for the cockpit immediately, Padawan. When the Crucible arrives, you and I will be having a chat.”

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I saw Hondo off the ship in his Flarestar attack shuttle a few hours later.

The battle on Ansion’s surface was all but over at this point and most of Hondo’s small fleet of frigates were landed, with only one remaining in orbit as a token ‘escort’ for the Bloodmaul. I had already talked over the coms to the Chief Unity of the Ansionian government - their version of a federal president.

A rather blunt, straightforward ansionian male by the name of Yta Surdole, who looked like he had just come from the battlefield himself. Assuring the poor guy of my intentions with the ship had taken a huge load off his shoulders. He understandably didn’t have much time to talk, given everything he had to deal with, but I sensed he was as good a person as the ansionians could really have in the role.    

Ansion’s government was a loose alliance of the planet’s cities and towns. The low population density gave the place a real frontier feel and the people down there, which included a minority of humans and armalat, liked their independence and to keep their government small. It was a sentiment that I liked in theory, but it could only work on a planet like this.

The Crucible was on final approach and Huyang got to show off his own piloting skill with the craft that was his primary home. There was just a few meters of clearance for the dorsal and ventral sides of the ship to fit inside one of Bloodmaul’s hangars.

The lack of a full complement of Vultures on board really made things easier as well, giving the ship ample space to land.

“Ahsoka!”

I was almost dogpiled by Katooni and Ganodi, whilst the others hurried out eagerly to see the interior of their first warship.

“Whoah, easy there,” I laughed, managing to stay on my feet and awkwardly hug the two relieved girls.

All of them were almost exploding with joy in the relief that they were not staring down the spectre of being stranded out in the Mid-Rim, the worry about dealing with the pirates that had attacked, and the Separatists possibly capturing them as well. I was alive and everything looked like they were going home back to the Temple.

“Now did you all behave?” I asked sternly, looking down on the two.

“Of course we did,” Petro said as he gazed intently at a nearby Hyena droid.

“I’m happy to confirm that I had no disciplinary problems with them, Padawan,” said Huyang as he rather gracefully walked down the ramp.

“Good, that means you can all come with me on a small tour of this ship. You’ll have the unique distinction of being on board a Separatist warship without having to fight for your freedom or life.”

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“You should know we will get a coaxium ingot hand delivered by Chief Unity Surdole tomorrow.”

I removed my helmet with some relief as I dropped wearily into the Crucible’s captain chair. Keeping a bunch of hyperactive and very curious adepts on target during the tour of the Bloodmaul had been mentally exhausting. Now at last, their bellies were full and each was tucked into their quarters where I sensed them fast falling asleep.

“No doubt accompanied by the usual political grandstanding and where he will want to award you with the keys to the planet,” Huyang scoffed.

“He actually didn’t strike me as the grandstanding type, though he’ll be compelled as a matter of honor at least to give me some form of award,” I sighed wearily. It pretty much came with the territory of being a Jedi. Most tried to leave before they could get sucked into any local politics, but sometimes it couldn’t be avoided. 

“Padawan, let’s get to the heart of the matter. I just saw almost an entire Separatist battleship of droids obey your commands as their leader. I know more about droids than what most modern engineers will ever learn in their lifetime. This is not just a minor reprogramming,” Huyang had one set of arms folded over his chest, whilst the second set was on his hips and the ancient architect paced in front of me.

“No, it’s an exponential, adaptive, assimilation program that seeks to spread itself to as many droid minds that it can reach. You don’t have to worry, it's calibrated and targeted by M8 before it's deployed. It will not go beyond the hull of the Bloodmaul and it only targets CIS droid models.”

“While that is some comfort for my own circuits, the program you are describing is incredibly dangerous. How sure are you that it will not evolve beyond your control? Unless-”

“Please Professor, I know full well the dangers. It has its own form of hard coded restraints and it takes the majority of its core from M8 herself.”

“Can I assume the reason this weapon has not been deployed on a greater scale would be the threat of escalation from the Separatists?"

“Correct, and the only reason I deployed it was because General Durge was here and threatening to use the Bloodmaul and his other ships to wipe out the planet below with orbital strikes.”

Huyang actually froze and it amazed me that he could actually emote to such a degree. “Pardon me, Padawan Tano, Durge-”

I held up a hand, “Yes, you heard correctly.”

“Mistress, do you wish me to transmit the relevant recordings to the Professor?” M8 spoke up from my helmet. “It’ll definitely make this go faster.”

“If the professor agrees?” I asked, giving Huyang a raised questioning brow.

The architect droid turned his optics to my helmet, “I was wondering… you are literally wearing a droid intelligence… Oh, just go ahead, opening channel 131 Xesh.”

“Transmitting,” M8 declared with a cheery tone.

It took moments and Huyang’s entire chassis seemed to come alive, his eyes brightening, then dulling as he processed the implications of the events of the past day.

“Oh, oh dear. They were actually going to do it! Which means-”

“Yes, I might have stopped it here, but it could just mean that on other battlefields across the galaxy, the Separatists have just tossed Post-Ruusan War Conduct out the proverbial airlock.”

“Have you contacted the Jedi Council?”

“No, there are also indications that the Separatists have managed to restart espionage activities on Coruscant. I don’t want to entrust anything to long range Holonet transmissions at the moment.”

“I can understand that you don’t really want to advertise that you have a weapon like this, but given the scale of this, it’s inevitable at this point.”

“If it’s the price of saving more than twenty million,” I shrugged, releasing my nervousness into the Force. “I guess I can look forward to having my bounty increased significantly in the near future.”

“What about contacting Master Yoda? Surely, this will be important enough-”

“No, what Yoda is busy with at the moment makes this issue a trifle in comparison. I will send an encoded message directly to his shuttle and from there it is up to him. We will remain in orbit until you’ve obtained the supplies to fix the Crucible’s hyperdrive. We’ll then jump to the system’s Oort Cloud to remain hidden for the duration of the repairs. How long?”

“Once I have the coaxium in hand, twenty hours at minimum.”

“Good, now it’s just a matter of waiting and keeping six young adepts out of trouble in the meantime.”

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“Hyperspace exit in three… two… one…”

The 42nd Fleet surged into real space. Twelve Venator-IIs led by the Resolute, which was at this point a de facto Venator-II via its upgrades, smoothly organized themselves. The fleet made a few course adjustments and slotted into a wall formation

A moment later,  twenty Gun Acclamators blinked into existence behind them from hyper.

Anakin stood in Command One - the immersive holo of the space around the world of Keitum rendered in all its vast splendour.

It was a view that was marred by the condition of the planet.

It was surreal just looking at it - a world of three super-continents and two massive oceans surrounding it - which now had a massive burning scar that stretched nearly 3000 kilometers.

He reached out his left hand to a holopanel, fingers tense and twitching as he wrestled with the tempest of furious anger that broiled in his heart at the atrocity he was looking at.

A population density overlay taken from the database draped itself over the planet and told the horrific story. 

All three of the largest cities on the planet fell into that expanse of fire. Estimated fatality figures were calculated and he heard the glove over his prosthetic creak in protest as he squeezed that hand into a fist.

“Ninety million,” said Skoll hollowly, his face paling at the projected number thrown up.

Anakin couldn’t speak, he was too busy fighting to maintain his emotional equilibrium. He had an entire fleet of souls who he was also responsible for and he couldn’t command them with this volatile emotional foundation.

With a singular focus, he let the anger go, he let it pass through him, he turned his mind’s eye to see the path it had taken…

Now only he remained.

His eyes turned to the Separatist shadow fleet.

They hung over Keitum like a murderer standing over their victim, bloody vibroknife in hand.

Four Lucrehulk battleships in the core of their formation, 14 Munificents arrayed around that and eight Recusant light destroyers forming the outer layer.

The 42nd had come out of hyper as close to the edge of Keitum’s mass shadow as possible, but whoever was in command of the enemy had taken full advantage of the current astrogeography of the moons around the planet. They were still over 350k kilometers away and there would be no bombers that could scream in from hyper to ambush.

They would have to run the missile and fighter gauntlet to reach the enemy.

He turned to meet Skoll’s eyes and for once found understanding and a carefully restrained fury in there that was like looking into a mirror.

Baylan Skoll nodded, his lips pursed, “What are your orders, General?”

Anakin placed his hand on the holo, opening full command channels to the entire fleet. He could sense the horror from every crewmember in the fleet, but clone conditioning swiftly took over and they pushed through it.

“This is General Skywalker, all ready squadrons are to launch immediately. Second wave to launch as soon as possible afterward. Third wave to pause for ten minutes before launch.”

His hands grabbed hold of the fleetwide holocontrols.

“Full burn into the enemy.”

He selected ten of his Acclamators and put them on a z positive trajectory from above, whilst the second group went z negative and would converge on the enemy fleet from below. It split the fleet slightly, but would present the enemy with three targets to fire at and dilute their throw weight of torpedoes.

“Prepare for max range torpedo launch.”

The 42nd surged forward at 1500G of combined acceleration.

90 seconds until max torpedo range for the fleet, five minutes twenty seconds until gun range.

A swarm of 432 fighters; mostly Headhunters but now also the new more streamlined ARC180s surged out their motherships and burned at 3000G towards the enemy.

The CIS fleet responded with their own fighter launch.

320 Vultures, a paltry 20 Hyena bombers and not a single Tri-fighter.

“Either they’re trying to lull us into a false sense of superiority or they really are riding the limit of their combat supplies,” Anakin mused.

“Couldn’t they use cloaked frigates and light freighters to resupply the fleet?” Skoll suggested.

“A fleet this size, they’d have to use almost every cloak capable vessel in the Separatist navy to make a noticeable dent in the munitions requirements. That’s not even taking into account the fuel that all the droid fighters would be gulping down. No, I think this fleet has been keeping itself barely operational by raiding supplies from the planets they hit. Considering the aftermaths we’ve seen of their attacks.”

The maximum effective range spheres of both fighter swarms crawled closer and closer. Their closing velocities climbing ever higher.

“Skywalker to all squadrons, time to unveil our little surprise. Lock your targets and fire at will.”

Nine hundred missiles dropped from the wings of the combined Republic fighter force, their engines igniting for two seconds at 5000G before shutting themselves down to coast forward solely on the inertia imparted to them. 

Ahsoka had simply called these ‘Ghostriders’. Another example of the fruitful collaboration between his padawan and Lira Blissex.

Concussion missiles were generally detected by their exhaust plumes and the EM emissions of their seeker heads that were trying to keep a lock on their target. Ghostrider missiles did away with the former by using multi-ignition engines and relied on their launching platform for up to date target lock information streamed to the seeker by point to point laser guidance. A capital ship sensor array could use active scan to detect the mass of incoming missiles, but the sheer computing power and data transmission bandwidth to shove a targeting solution to each droid fighter and keep it going with up to date data was utterly impractical. 

Completing the puzzle was the ghostrider missile’s scan absorbent materials that effectively reduced their profile cross-section to something that was barely larger than a human fist. Vulture and Hyena droid active sensors were not sophisticated enough to detect something that small.

The only way Anakin was even seeing the missile's exact position was through the data links to the fighters and Resolute’s own active sensors. Even then it was rendered as an inferred position by the computer.

“Surprise shabla,” he mumbled with a hint of satisfied viciousness at the enemy commander.

The ghostriders speared right through the traditional counter-missile ranges and seconds later, only when they reached their terminal attack phase, did their engines ignite again.

There was no time for jamming, spoofing target locks and even last minute flare and chaff launches from the enemy fighters had only marginal effect.

In a single stroke 218 Vulture droids died with not a single casualty on the Republic side.

Only now did ranges close and the enemy response from less than a hundred surviving fighters was quite pathetic.

190 CIS missiles fired in return, only for the Republic fighters to respond with a rapid concussion missile salvo with a two second delay.

The battlespace lit up brilliantly under the missile swarms, as if suddenly hundreds of new shining stars were born, streaking through the heavens.

Tiny stars that suddenly flashed and died into nothing.

The first Republic fighter wave breached into the enemy fleet’s outer perimeter only losing two squadrons in the process.

Torpedoes burst out of the Headhunters internal launchers, followed quickly by the heavy torpedoes carried within the bellies of the ARC-180s.

Space around the CIS shadow fleet lit up with bright colored orange energy and motion as flak and plasma cannon fire tried to intercept the incoming ordnance.

“No new enemy fighter launches,” Skoll commented, looking at a detailed scan of a Recuscant, his hand swiped through more scans. “I’m also not seeing any Vultures or Hyena attached to exterior hulls either.”

Anakin frowned with worry, zooming out with the entire command projection until Keitum and its three moons were visible in a top down view.

“No, none of the moons are in a position to usefully hide anything. If I was in the opposition’s shoes, I’d want to get as many Hyena bombers angled into our aft quarters, but that’s not possible. Our scouts would’ve found them preparing that anyway.”

“Unless this trap was set before our scouts even reached the system,” Skoll stepped forward, grabbing hold of the holo to zoom in on Keitum’s northern pole. “Here, if you look at the Separatist fleet position relative to our own, by the time our fleet hits torpedo range our aft will be facing the planet’s northern pole. You land bombers there, the solar radiation flux of the planet’s magnetosphere will be more than enough to hide them from a scout’s passive detection.”

Anakin considered it before nodding decisively, tapping the comlink, “Skywalker to second fighter wave. Change of plan, follow the course I’m uploading.”

His hands interfaced with the holo and practically weaved it into being, a few interface taps later and it was sent to the fighter computers.

“Risky,” Skoll commented.

“As my old master would say, when you find a trap, spring it.”

A Recuscant and Munificent exploded with a vicious liberation of energy and debris as the fighters claimed their first capital kills of the battle.

The second wave of Republic fighters launched.

A mix of two hundred Headhunters and Y-Wings that screamed into the void from every Venator IIs bays.

The ranges closed further and the first fighter wave reached the enemy’s inner perimeter and began running the gauntlets.

ARC fighters began unleashing their medium cannons at close range into enemy shields, steadily whittling them down with concentrated fire - two squadrons each focusing on a single Munificent or Recuscant, also throwing point blank torpedoes to further the damage.

Anakin winced as Republic fighters began dying at a steady rate of attrition, even as two more Recuscant’s were reduced to expanding debris and gas clouds.

The 42nd was approaching extreme torpedo range and…

“New sensor contacts, three hundred Hyena bombers and one hundred escorting Vultures,” announced Skoll, manipulating the holo to zoom in to the droid fighters screaming out of Keitum’s atmosphere at full burn.

“Good catch, Skoll,” Anakin smirked. “Skywalker to second wave, resume your launch, cover our rear flank.”

The remaining two hundred fighters, Headhunters and ARCs, launched from the fleet and immediately turned into breaking burns to fight the velocity imparted onto them.

The 42nd left them behind immediately, but most importantly the enemy bombers were now streaking right into the jaws of the second wave.

The first division of the second wave, launched earlier, began turning and looped their course with maximum strength burns to again fight their own velocity.

The fleet quickly flew straight through their formation as well.

The 42nd now had their rear guard and in less than a minute the enemy bombers were under missile fire.

“Fleet reports, targeting solutions acquired, general.”

Anakin changed command frequencies, “Captains, by all means, open fire.”

In comparison to their early war cousins, the Venator IIs now featured double the amount of capital torpedo tubes.

96 torps launched immediately, followed by a two second delay as the huge internal cell drums physically cycled, to deliver another 96 until 480 heavy torpedoes ramped up to full acceleration and streaked through the void to the enemy fleet.

Immediately every fifth torpedo split apart into five individual smaller missiles and became a dedicated ECM penetration aid, spoofing sensors and generating sensor ghosts.

The Acclamators launched their torpedoes as well, adding only 80 from their much more limited launchers.

The CIS fleet responded with a counter-torpedo missile launch immediately, but curiously didn’t respond with their own torpedoes against the 42nd.

“They couldn’t have used it all up. Those torpedoes are only really useful against other large ships,” Skoll commented, folding his arms and frowning in thought.

“Unless they were sent into Republic space without heavy torpedoes in the first place. The Separatists had to know that we would eventually shut the door behind this shadow fleet. Their job was to sow chaos and uncertainty behind our lines and they’ve done that well enough. The orbital strike was their last act,” Anakin said bitterly and he gave a grim look to his fellow Jedi. “This entire battle is an execution, Skoll. This fleet has been given to us on a platter by the enemy.”

Hundreds of torpedoes made it through the Separatist outer defensive fire envelope, the ECM platforms doing their job well of causing spoofs and outright misses.

Four Munifcents and three Recuscants died almost simultaneously as the Republic torpedoes which had breached into the inner defensive perimeters did their job.

Behind the 42nd, the Hyena bombers had already been reduced to half-strength and were now completely outclassed by the more maneuverable Headhunters as dogfighting began.

He looked at the cycle countdown for the next torpedo launch - three minutes.

They’d reach gun range before then.

He brought up the fleet controls and laid in a course that would keep the 42nd in torpedo range only, skirting the enemy from their relative left to right.

“Skywalker to the fleet, hard to starboard.”

“You’re keeping it a missile and fighter duel.”

“Getting to gun range at this point is just pointlessly endangering our ships. I’ll be damned if I’m going to add more of our men to the butcher’s bill for this. Skywalker to Fleet, primary targets for next torpedo salvo are the Lucrehulks.”

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I did my best to wear a mask of enjoyment on my face.

An appropriate one to wear when surrounded by a boisterous crowd filled with privateers, militiamen, techs, mechanics and support personnel enjoying the carnival act being performed for them. On the seats directly in front of me, I kept a sharp eye on the six adepts who were thoroughly entranced by the exotic Preigo’s Travelling World of Wonder.

It was an act that was based out of a refurbished and retrofitted YV-865 Aurore-class freighter, which was hovering above the courtyard arena of Hondo’s fortress compound. Far from just being their mode of transport among the stars, it was also their stage, which rather impressively unfolded from the rear of the ship.

Dynamic colored spotlights flashed and strobed as the various acts performed for the crowd, the ship itself was decorated with every color imaginable to human and other species’ eyes.

The ringmaster was a dug by the name of Preigo, who was dressed in elaborate violet outfit, walking on his hind arms and using his front arms with a thin baton to conduct the acts happening around him.

The music was a cheerful constant jingle that was extremely pleasant on my montrals, that left me feeling quite nostalgic.

Most of the acrobatic circus troop consisted of aleena - short sentient reptiles who came in beige, blue and yellow. They were known for their nimble agility and performed dazzling maneuvers that even an Ataru form Jedi would be impressed by, especially since there wasn’t a hint of the Force in use here. The twi’lek performers were also amazing, as they had specialized repulsor belts that let them get superb hang time in the air as they twirled, spun and somersaulted off a large tamed reptilian beast that I knew came from Felucia - taking the role of a circus elephant in my eyes. 

“Welcome, welcome!” said Preigo, his voice blasted by a PA system mounted from his ship. “I, Preigo, have searched far and wide to bring you these talented acts from across the galaxy! What you see now is just a mosaic of the delights that will come your way as each artist and performer will do their own solo performance!”

Delighted cheers and clapping erupted.

“Our first act will be Fos Griss and his amazing group of aleena acrobats, utilizing only repulsor platforms and their own sheer skill!”

Most of the acts quickly and professionally retreated back into the ship, leaving a troupe of eleven aleena behind, whilst platforms began hovering off the stage and began shifting up and down rapidly like something straight out of a Jedi training arena or even a Mario game.

The jumping, twirling and acrobatics was something that even managed to capture my interest to perhaps incorporate into my own neophyte level Ataru.

“Amazing isn’t it, Commander Tano?”  

Chief Unity Yta Surdole sitting next to me looked much more composed, cleaner and still just reminded me of a farmer who had walked off his ranch to attend this celebratory victory carnival. He didn’t have a long line of staff waiting on him hand and foot, no one to boss around. He openly wore a blaster pistol in a quickdraw belt, rugged pants and tunic. The only hint that I was speaking with the head of state of an entire planet, was the old model protocol droid standing nearby and a single burly human bodyguard that looked like he could benchpress me with one arm, armor and all.  

“That it is, Chief Surdole.”

His single nostril flared slightly and he waved me off, “Please, call me Yta. I’m not in the mood for formalities at all! This is supposed to be a time where we let our manes down.” His buggy red eyes were quite expressive for not having any eyelids.

“Very well, Yta it is then.”

“I’m so glad I listened to that old pirate to invite Preigo to Ansion. This is just what my people need right now to, for a short time at least; delight and to be reminded that life is not just a constant struggle against nature and the enemies of our way.”

“Ohnaka has ridden herd on pirates in his employ for decades and is still alive,” I chuckled lightly. “So he must know a thing or two about keeping people… content. I suppose keeping his gang drunk most of the time helps too.”

The protocol droid stiffened abruptly, twitching before it waddled to the bodyguard and handed over a datapad it pulled out of a slot in its chest.

He in turn read it and I could see, even in the variable lighting, his face paling in shock. His emotions ranging from denial, disbelief before defaulting to a burning righteous fury.

“Dircud, what did I say about handing me work tonight?” Yta asked when the bodyguard approached.

“That I should not, but you have to read this, Chief!” said the 2.2 meter tall human. His deep rumbling voice just about managing to reach us over the loud music that had been building in volume, as the acrobat performance neared the end of its climax.

“Very well! Just give it!” Yta grabbed the pad. “Now some space please.”

He began reading and it didn’t take him more than a few seconds to go through the same emotional stages his bodyguard had gone through. In the end, he was just left in shock, staring mutely at the content, his eyes were almost completely black as his pupil had dilated.

“I had hoped to bring you the news after the performance, Yta,” I said bitterly, watching as the stage changed into readiness for the next act and music died down. 

“This- this- you knew?” he asked, slightly breathless.

“My master is in charge of the fleet that was hunting the now completely destroyed Separatist shadow fleet. He informed me a few hours ago.”

“And he couldn’t stop them?!”

“The 42nd arrived a few hours after the atrocity had already occurred. I don’t need to remind you, Yta, of the nature of space combat and that fleets can deny battle quite easily as long as they keep their wits about them and have a modern astrogation ability.” 

He sat back in his chair, his nostril flaring hard and dropped the pad on his lap. “Ninety million? It- doesn’t seem possible. That anyone could… just do that! From orbit with no recourse of defense possible. It’s… monstrous, cowardly!”

“Ladies and gentlebeings! Our next act, all the way from Devaron, Zer Tumos and his band will delight with their own cover of Eseerin Vasahina by The Agasar!”

The heavy drums and violin like instruments being wielded on stage by a bunch of devaronians made for a rather disturbing sight. Tumos’ voice came impressively close to matching the Agasar’s lead singer, but I could tell immediately it just… wasn’t the same. The crowd did begin to enjoy it though, after the passable quality and talent of the band began to shine.

The distraction of it was welcome but not useful.

Yta’s mouth twisted with an ugly sneer, “Wait, they were going to bombard us as well, weren’t they? It’s why you captured the battleship?”

“Your instincts serve you well, Yta,” I confirmed with a nod.

“Bah, it’s just experience in dealing with the cursed Separatists, this whole thing is their revenge against the Malarian Alliance for not seceding from the Republic! When it was their plot with that traitor Mousul that caused the whole problem in the first place!”

“I’m familiar with it Yta, my master, who was a padawan at the time, was part of the Jedi mission that foiled that plot.”

This was during the years leading up to the Clone Wars, when the Separatists were subtly trying to lay the foundation for the secession of many key worlds, using the proxies of the Trade Federation and Commerce Guild to foment crises and revolts.  

In Ansion’s case, it was the Commerce Guild President Shu Mai who had wanted Ansion to secede, causing a domino effect which would also cause the worlds of the Malarian Alliance to also leave.  

Yta’s eyes glared at the lively band, before he leaned forward in his seat and bowed his head briefly to me. “That means, Commander, you’re the only reason the majority of the people on this planet aren't currently ash in the wind. You didn’t even say anything… which I suppose is typical of Jedi. You deserve far more than just the paltry medal ceremony we gave you on the Bloodmaul.”

“It’s my duty as a Jedi, Yta,” I shook my head. “I have no need of further accolades or material gain from Ansion. The Separatist attack did relatively light damage to Ansion’s capital, but you still have rebuilding and repair work ahead of you. Keitum is going to need all the help it can get from the worlds of the Alliance.”

“And it will get it,” he snarled with determination, thumping his fist on the armrest of his seat. “If I have to drag the other Alliance leaders there kicking and screaming, I will!”

I was impressed by his gritty attitude and the Ansion spirit was clearly something of a force in itself. It made sense in retrospect why the planet was targeted now.

“The Republic Navy’s 42nd fleet will remain in orbit for relief work as long as it can, but they’re not really equipped for it. The Jedi Council will likely order a dedicated recovery and rebuild mission to Keitum, but it will take at least three weeks to organize the logistics for any meaningful relief effort.”

He held up a hand, “I understand, commander. Ansion and the Malarian Alliance will do everything we can to make up the gap. We’re not about to leave a treaty partner to bleed out on our watch. Then we must discuss just what we’re going to do about the Separatists. My people will not be content to just sit back and let the Republic do all the work anymore, commander. I want to shove my blaster up Dooku’s backside and pull the trigger!”

It took considerable effort to not burst into laughter at the mental image that provoked.

“Then there’s much we have to discuss, Yta.”

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A/N: Yeah, the fallout of this is not gonna be fun in many respects.

Hope you enjoyed and have a great weekend. Stay awesome folks.

2078: Highriders - Chapter 13

“So how are you feeling V?”

I looked rather incredulously at Dr. Njeri as she stood over me with a tablet in hand. 

My body was lying on a bed with more scanning equipment inside it than most labs could boast, jacked into a diagnostic computer that was giving every nanometer of the Gemini a thorough analysis against my baseline.

“Doc, given the scans you’re throwing at me, you probably know already.”

“I suppose I do, but there could always be something that these scans miss, nothing is perfect and for all that we’ve mapped machine biological interfaces, the inherent unique fractal nature of the latter means that we can never be certain. So yes, I’m asking the question,” she gave me a twinkling, knowing smile 

“Fine, I’m feeling… great. No headaches, no twitching, no pain, no touch or sensation lag, everything’s responsive. The Gemini feels… normal now.”

“Hmmm, good news,” she said thoughtfully. “However, I’m picking up some slight microscarring in the braincase interface, not that surprising given the Sandevistan usage I’m picking up in your system logs. It’s not an issue now, but it could become one. I’ll load a program to your nanites to fix it up.”

“Thanks, anything else?”

“Yes, we’ve done some simulations and it seems that the power cell we used may experience some fluctuations if you put it under extreme load, to the point that you may get temporary loss of non-critical systems.”

“We did all the math on this, doc. I should be able to overclock and have no fluctuations,” I grumbled with annoyance.

“True, but it seems we’re dealing with the difference between the theoretical and the practical here.” Njeri swiped on her tablet and turned it around to show me a live scan on the power cell in question. “We chose the best that Raven Microcyber had to offer for the model of Gemini that you chose. It should last ten years given the kinetic energy recapture and integrated photovoltaics in your skin, but it seems Raven cut their manufacturing margins on this one a little too fine. It tested well because we only put it through standard combat simulations and single system overclocks.”

“How long for a replacement?” I sighed with annoyance.

“Assuming we put the order through today, at least a week. Then a further few days for testing the new cell and adding your mods to it.”

I gave her a finger gun gesture as I transferred the eddies. “Do it.”

“Very well. Sending the order,” her eyes glowed. “What would you say if we tried to build our own powercell from scratch?”

We had already jailbreaked the Gemini very thoroughly to allow for my own mods to go in, but there was ever the chance that when swapping such a central part as my main power cell, that something would kick back in.

“I’ll begin research on it in the background,” I nodded.

“Excellent, I’ll do it as well, then we compare at some point. It’s a necessary step in any case towards building a 100% in-house Gemini in the future. Don’t want the corps to literally have leverage on us at such a fundamental level.” She turned around the tablet and made a few swipes on it. “All right, scans are done. Chassis and frame, nominal. Neural integration at 98%, acceptable. Brain nutrition and oxygenation, nominal with no projected critical deficiency. Cyberdeck, nominal. Memory storage and redundant engram backups, nominal. Sensory and cognitive systems, nominal. Neural co-processors, nominal. Sandevistan reflex booster… hmmm, might need its cooling replaced. I’m not liking these readings.”

“Seriously, doc? It’s not that bad.”

“Three degree variance on spec, not bad? No, V. You’ll leave that judgement to me, thank you very much. You overclock that Sandy in this state, you’re looking at thermal damage to your brain.”     

“Fine,” I mumbled.

“On your front, come on.”

I turned around, tucking in my breasts to a comfortable position, whilst triggering the panels all along my spine to open. The synthskin parted flawlessly and gave access to my entire spine.

Njeri walked over to her long racks of medical and cyberware supplies, before coming back with an injection gun loaded with the specific cooling fluid and an extractor to remove the old fluid.

“So, looked yourself in the mirror recently?” she asked casually, jabbing the extractor into my spine at the specific port.

I huffed with annoyance into the soft memory foam my face was lying on, as the inevitable psychological questions began.

“Yes, I did,” I answered flatly, just to get it over with.

“Your reflection feel like you?”

“Yes. No instance of dysmorphia so far.”

“Excellent,” she pulled away the extractor and stared at the small window showing the old fluid. “Hayi kodwa! More corpo crap. That’s it. We’re switching suppliers. This coolant should have lasted at least another two months, given the usage.” She chucked it away onto her tray with disgust before grabbing the injector and carefully prodding it in my spine. “Recall for me a specific memory from your past with as much detail as possible. You don’t have to actually tell me. Any fuzziness or gaps in it?”

My graduation from Arasaka private school. The look of pride from mom, dad’s warm hug, even as I spot the glint of personal ambition in his eyes. My acceptance into the even more exclusive Night University had also come through. The prospects of his own corpo career getting a boost from successfully raising me, which would go onto his profile.

My firing would’ve made a social dent in both their careers, though both had been transferred to the Amsterdam Arasaka branch in my last year of Night U. Dad would be pissed that all the eddies that had gone into me were seemingly ‘wasted’ for them now. My assault on Arasaka Tower, on the other hand, had more than likely made them both persona non grata. They wouldn’t be fired over it, but I could well imagine a few sideways ‘promotions’ had seen both their careers put into a figurative dead end. No more climbing the ladder for dear old mom and dad.

Whatever. Hadn’t heard a peep from them both since their transfer to Europe ages ago. Didn’t even get an angry email after my firing, fuckers.

“No gaps,” I smirked.

“Any memories from Johnny that shouldn’t be there anymore or flashes of events you don’t remember living through?”

“No, the only things I remember are what we actually shared on purpose, such as when Maman Brigitte bridged us in cyberspace and the initial Relic startup.”  

“Focus problems? Struggling to plan ops or do your hacks?”

“No.”

“How’s your temper been? Any rage or impulsive moments that you can’t explain?”

“Temper’s normal. No random mood swings over nothing.” Which was the first hard symptom for cyberpsychosis.

“Do you feel connected to people around you, - friends, contacts - or do they seem distant, like you’re detached from them?”

I thought about Panam, Misty, Vic, Johnny, Rogue… will definitely need to call her at some point, see how the Afterlife financials are looking. “Definitely connected, doc.” 

“Any feelings of existential dread since the transfer? Are you questioning if you’re still human?”

“Njeri, I doubt the human label can really apply to me anymore. Yes, I still feel… attached to what we’d call the ‘human condition’, feelings, empathy and so on, but there’s so much more now. I have a sense for data and cyberspace that wasn’t there before this transition.”

She frowned, a glint of interest in her eyes as she lifted the injector. “Really? Oh, you can close yourself up. Do you mean as in a literal ‘extra’ perception that you’ve gained?”

A thought and my back plating pulled in and sealed up. I gave the order for the innate self-repair nanites in the synthskin to make things seamless again.

“Yes. As you could take clay into your hands and shape it, I can do that to data. As you would read through your eyes, gaining knowledge or facts, I look at cyberspace and parse data to a degree that a normal netrunner would probably burst a blood vessel-”

She raised a hand to pause me, “I get it, V. Well, it seems we are truly breaking ground here. It just hit me that the label of ‘Post-Human’ could definitely apply to you now.”

I referenced that instantly, digesting both fictional and philosophical literature on the subject. “You’re right.”

“You can sit up, synthskin is sealed.”

A streak of laziness hit as I was quite comfortable on the memory foam at the moment, but I had work to attend to.

“So all the other systems are good?”

“All nominal, I’m going to suggest that you find yourself a local joytoy. Post-Human or not, sexuality is still part of you and it will keep you from thinking yourself above us lowly augmented humans.”

“I’m not going to-”

She held up a hand, “You said it yourself, V.”

“All right, I’ll see, are we done?”

“Yes, go ahead and get dressed.”

I hopped off the scanning bed and began donning my first attempt to somewhat blend in with the Tycho City masses; a clingy graphene based one-piece jumpsuit in black with diagonal blue neon piping and the Samurai logo snarling on the back. It had many hidden pockets in convenient places that currently held the various pieces of my current iron, ready to be assembled for use. The moment I finished zipping up, various holo patches came alive on it; the most significant of which was three stylized stars with a comet trail framing it on my left chest - the symbol of Gakulu’s workgroup within the Starjacks.

Just like in Night City, it was the equivalent of wearing any gang symbology, only in my case it didn’t denote that I was part of them. An obvious Earther wearing a workgroup tat showed that I was either employed by them or a brand new lunar immigrant. It definitely would smooth over a lot of ruffled feathers and would see me able to generally move around in Tycho without getting approached by a random Starjack or Driftkin looking to cause trouble.

My Samurai jacket came next, magboots and finally the emergency vac collar, which itself was styled to match.

“I can almost imagine you as a highrider,” Njeri smiled, pocketing her tablet.

“When in Rome, see ya next week, doc,” I shrugged and walked into the corridors of the black clinic.

It was a much livelier place now that they weren’t exclusively busy with me. I passed rooms with corpo execs doing off-the-books installations, local gang members getting the latest cyberware and desperate civilians who had traded of themselves in some manner to afford the treatment.

I used the time walking to the exit elevator and the ride itself to check in with my spy daemons that were stalking Dr. Matsui.

Johnny was also currently doing the utterly hard work of a stakeout near the apartment, just to be physically nearby in the event of something going down.

The reports and data from the daemons came streaming in, which I reviewed as I left the warehouse and eventually merged into public portions of the city’s upper level.

Nothing.

No one sniffing around for data on Matsui, overtly at least.

The fallout of Militech’s failure was still percolating through the black ops division that had made the attempt and I could imagine that heads were gonna roll soon.

I would expect Arasaka to be next in line for a poaching attempt, but the double whammy I had given them in Lunar orbit and on the ground, meant that their Luna division was also reeling. Eventually someone in their Intel divisions would soon engage their skull sponge, when the fact that I was on Luna percolated down to them. On the one hand, they have a missing Kōmori-Class Trans-Lunar Shuttle, an equally missing black ops sabotage team, then they had the fact that I was coincidentally present on Luna within that timeline.

It was entirely circumstantial, but they’d make the conclusion anyway.

I had to split more of my attention to cyberspace when I spotted the approach of the dramatic translucent avatar of Lucy.

“V? Oh thank goodness,” she breathed out a visible sight of relief and looked up at me in confusion. “Why the huge avatar?”

I had been about to ask her why she was the size of a classical pixie fairy, then looked at my own avatar data. Stupid subconscious took that Post-Human stuff and let it go to my head.

A few moments later I was shrunk down to match her size. “Sorry about that. What’s up?”

“I managed to spot one of your daemons stalking Kaori.” She placed her fists on her hips and glared at me. “Any particular reason you’re spying on her?”

“Huh, Gakulu didn’t tell you. Hollow and I flatlined a Militech poaching team that had its sights set on her. We were hired to watch out for her.”

“Fuck! Of course, yes, let’s keep the netrunner in the dark,” she groused, walking back and forth on an invisible platform, which did really interesting things to the chest of her avatar. “I worked so fucking hard to keep her off the radar and now its all down the toilet.”

“Hey, she’s still alive and where she wants to be. You don’t want to know about what happens when a poach goes bad.”

“I know enough,” she waved me off, looking thoughtful. “Might as well do it now. Come with me.”

I folded my arms, “Where are we going?”

“To speak to Kaori, she needs to know,” she declared flatly.

In meatspace, I spotted an ‘outdoor’ restaurant set on the edge of a botanical park in the current surface dome I was walking through. I found myself a seat at an open table and let my eyes purposefully glow, outwardly showing that I was busy.  

Lucy hopped off her platform and instantly shot off into the distance, disappearing into a nearby dataway.

I followed, keeping pace easily as we moved into a server briefly before taking a side route that went up.

We jumped public servers and dataways a few more times before we stopped at a server that was password protected and secured with a massive firewall bristling with nasty hacks, Black ICE and daemons, waiting to be released on anyone foolish enough to try their luck.

“Here take this,” she flung a clump of data at me that I stopped cold and isolated, subjecting it to deep level scans. “It’s just an ID authorization.”

I didn’t take her word for it and let my scans run their full course, before letting the data in.

The server opened and inside was just another dataway, which we both plunged into.

We went through another four similar protected gateway servers before finally reaching the destination that Lucy had in mind.

Inside was virtu environment of a high Luna orbit. Floating above it was a space station that was definitely not there in meatspace and looked like a scientist’s fantastic fever dream of what someone wished was possible.

It had to be over two hundred kilometers in height, a decahedral base set with sprawling towers that speared out from it with buildings of every shape imaginable. None of them looked micrometeor resistant or obeyed the inherent structural limitations of commonly used construction materials in space. The imagination of the designer had truly taken flight. Neon green and blue light flowed like veins through the entire structure, pulsing almost like a heartbeat. Thousands of small lights buzzed around the gigantic station in orderly patterns, as if each denizen had their own AV and was going to work or doing whatever they did in their daily lives.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Lucy grinned as we floated through the void towards the station, our avatars now loosely governed by the server’s movement rules and programming.

“It’s certainly pretty,” I admitted. The design of this station was pure form over function, almost a repudiation of the neo-militaristic aesthetic. An entirely new expression of Neokitsch perhaps, but it had some entirely novel elements that I was struggling to put a name to.

“Kaori designed the entire place herself, a perfect virtu space for her to focus on her work, undisturbed.”

Lucy burst into spontaneous motion, streaking towards the station.

I could just instantiate myself anywhere, ignoring the server rules, but that would make me a poor guest.

Instead I manifested inertialess kinetic energy from my hands and feet, speeding myself up to hundreds of kilometers per second to both catch up and then keep pace with Lucy.

The gigantic station soon swallowed up my avatar’s perspective and within seconds we slowed down again to zoom through the forest of buildings on the station’s surface, dodging AVs that seemingly didn’t even have any thrusters to get where they were going.

I had to admit, it was a thrilling experience - flying through an exotic space station’s towers and traffic in only my avatar’s skin and a bikini. The server was detailed enough to give the sensations of speed and inertia, rendering the feeling of a mild heat from the distant sun - as if I was laying on a beach somewhere on Earth.

Lucy came to an abrupt stop at an organically shaped two kilometer tall building of pure crystalline glass that looked no different from any other in the immediate vicinity, before slowly hovering down to a landing platform that slowly extended outwards in response to her presence.

We both touched down on it and she gestured for me to follow.

She stopped in front of a flat expanse of crystal glass and placed her hand on it.

I felt the exchange of data and authorizations, before an entire door shaped rectangle of yellow light emerged from the glass. It was a datapath that led to a further hidden partition of the server.

Paranoid thy name is Kaori Matsui.   

We stepped through the hidden door and beyond I felt the server rules change again, now we were seemingly on the lunar surface, within a dome that fully encompassed the entire Tycho crater.

A 53 mile diameter transparent dome, layered in hexagonal pieces. Below it, lit by the distant sun, was… a slice of perfection. It was as if someone had taken a knife to some unspoiled part of Earth from the 19th Century and replicated it over 2200 square miles. A mild wind rustled over my avatar’s skin, the smell of plant life hit my nose, I heard the distant chirping of birds and even spotted a small flock flying from my right. The entire crater was coated in a rolling green landscape of natural grass, with a river snaking through from one end to the other.

Even the gravity was set to the comfortable 9.8 meters per second that humanity had evolved with.

It was a fantastic paradise imagined on the lunar surface, which anyone would get lost in but I saw beyond that surface layer into the data that was at its foundation. It was very well done and I could see the style of the program that was generating it.

“Very elegant,” I commented as we began walking, feeling the soft wet grass beneath my feet deforming before perfectly returning to its original shape and wetness behind me. “She even made use of BD elements to get the various feelings and general experience right.”

“That’s Kaori, ever the perfectionist,” Lucy laughed fondly. “I helped her source those elements and with a bit of the integration work of this simulspace.”

We walked through this verdant paradise, passing a mixture of pine, oak and a dozen other species that I couldn’t help but notice felt out of place for some reason. It wasn't until I did a quick historical data search that I realized the trees were an amalgamation of species that would’ve never naturally occurred in the way I was seeing them now.

It was as we were crossing the bridge over the merrily twinkling river that I spotted the focus of my current gig.

Dr. Kaori Matsui was floating a few feet above a small hill, her hands manipulating a large holo pane in front of her which was brimming with math and equations. Rather anachronistically she also had an ancient whiteboard floating next to the holopane, also fully scribbled with esoteric equations that went right over my head. In her right hand, she idly twirled an ink marker through her fingers as she stared into the agglomeration of math before her.

Her chosen avatar for the environment generally matched her appearance in the personnel dossier, with the only change being her muscle tone - given an obvious boost that most people did when making an idealized version of themselves for cyberspace.

As we approached closer, she held up a single finger, her blue optics remaining focused on the whiteboard in front of her, “One moment.”

She spoke her English with a notable Kyoto Japanese accent and her profile picture didn’t really do her justice. Pointed chin, full lips, prominent cheekbones and a cute nose that somehow gave me the irrational urge to just squeeze it between my fingers. Her skin had the usual perfection that most well-off corpos went to a cosmetic specialist for, but she had chosen to retain or create a single small mole under her left eye, which was also neatly framed by the visible line of cyberware around her eyes.

She abruptly scoffed and used her hand to wipe off a few elements from an equation on the whiteboard, before quickly filling them back in. She bit her lip as her eyes quickly surveyed the entire mathematical sequence. “Che, good enough, I suppose. Good morning, Lucy, I trust you have a good reason for inviting an edgerunner into my private server.”

“I do, Kaori,” Lucy nodded. “This is V, she-”

“I know of her keireki shōmei (bona fides),” Matsui interrupted. She giggled at seeing Lucy’s surprised expression. “My dear Lucy, I may be singularly focused on my work, but you’d have to be a techno-luddite to not know of the dreaded and amazing V… of course depending on who you ask.” She chucked the ink marker into the air, where it promptly vanished before turning to me and giving a formal Japanese bow of greeting that I reflexively returned to the appropriate level. “Pleasure to meet you, V. I see Arasaka still trains their staff appropriately at least.”

“Dr. Matsui.”

“As I was saying,” Lucy huffed with exasperation. “I brought her here because she stopped a poaching attempt on you.”

Matsui lost all traces of humor on her face and stared at Lucy with a singular intensity. “Who?”

“Militech.”

“Chikushō! Militech ga ore o neratteru da to?! (Damn it! Militech’s after me?!)”

“Yes.”

She folded her arms, her lab bodysuit shifting from a gray-white to a full black, before she turned her angry optics to me. “How were they going to do it?”

“You mind if I make use of your server?” I asked politely.

“Go ahead.”

With a gesture I brought forth my own analysis and detailed schematics of the pod, shaped the data to sync it with the local render protocols, before chucking it out to appear right next to me.

Matsui zipped closer immediately to intently examine it, before I could even begin to explain, pulling apart the rendering to examine the internal components. It didn’t even take her ten seconds to deduce, “They were going to stuff me in one of the Mass Drivers, weren’t they?”

“Correct,” I said with a nod, feeling rather impressed. “I’ve been hired to protect you from further attempts and there is credible intel that Mitsubishi has sprung a leak regarding your work.”

“Kuso, I told those gaki that my security was just waiting to be compromised,” she angrily slapped the hull of the virtual pod, before pulling out the guts of what I recognized as the grav compensator. She proceeded to pull that apart as well until all its components were hovering in front of her. “Hmmm, pretty good attempt at solving the problem, but just like every other approach, it won’t scale.” She gave a shooing gesture and the pod was rather contemptuously deleted. “So did that weasel Yui hire you or was it the highriders?”

It took a moment of crossreference search to realize she was referring to the local Mitsubishi branch chief on Luna. “The latter.”

She scoffed, “Figures, I am very close to showing Mitsubishi to the nearest proverbial airlock and giving them a shove.”

“Kaori, you still need them,” Lucy said carefully.

Matsui huffed and glared upward, looking beyond the rendered dome and the void beyond, with the blue, white and brown marble of Earth in the distance. “I know. Now what measures are you taking for my safety, V?”

“Between myself and Lucy, you’re ironclad in cyberspace. Any netrunner tries their luck near you and I’ll fry their skullsponge. In meatspace, my partner, Hollow, already has your apartment under surveillance and ready to respond to your front door in less than a minute. However, the best security is being proactive. I'm coding out probes and crawlers to deploy to Earth’s cyberspace for any of the other major players who would have an interest in poaching you. I’ll be deploying them within the hour. My gut feeling is we should be expecting something from Kang Tao.”

“Hmmm, what of Arasaka?”

“Their Luna division has already had a few run-ins with me,” I smirked.

“Given your history, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised,” Matsui chuckled.

“However, one thing I never do is underestimate my former employer, so you can rest assured I’ll not be turning a blind eye to them.”

Lucy twitched suddenly and slashed her hand through the air in front of her. A flashing red holo flatscreen rendered in front of her face and raw data scrolled down. “Shit.”

I had to pretend not to see and understand instantly what message was being sent to Lucy through one of her own crawlers.

“I know that look,” Matsui drawled. “What’s wrong now?”

“Isotope shipment from the Serenitatis facility just went dark,” Lucy scowled, her hands practically blurring on a keyboard that materialized before her. “Activating secondary and tertiary trackers. Secondary is down as well. Tertiary responding, hah! Couldn’t get them all, fuckers. Looks like a local driftkin tribe is the culprit.”

“Please, tell me it’s not Eclipse?” I asked plaintively, already seeing the writing on the wall.

“No, it’s the Dustwalkers,” Lucy rolled her eyes with annoyance. “The closest Night City analogy I can give to them is like a hybrid between Scavs and the Valentinos, but replace Catholicism with Mawu worship.”

Mawu was the Great Mother or goddess of the moon of the Dahomey tribe in Africa and when they were carried into LEO to become contract labor, the religion came with. It initially seemed to die out in the face of both Islam and Christianity being the majority religions among what became the highriders, but Mawu clung on stubbornly and evolved further among the hardships experienced by its adherents. It saw a marked resurgence when lunar colonization began and it was now to the point where roughly 30% of Luna residents practiced Mawu worship in some form or other.  

“All right, so not exactly folks that even other highriders really like.”

“Precisely, because they’re fundamentalists who see everyone who is not Dustwalker as merely an exploitable resource and they’re rabid anti-corpos. Eclipse you can still deal with, but Dustwalker will shoot first and then begin harvesting you down to your blood, chrome and meat.”

“Cannibals?”

“Essentially,” she nodded with visible disgust.

Eww, on the bright side I can finally cut loose on these assholes, I thought. “So you want me to get the shipment back for you?”

Lucy and Matsui looked at each other for a moment. “You’re offering?”

“Sure, at a nice discount even. You need a constant supply of gravium-7 isotope for your research, don’t you, Dr. Matsui?”

“We have a reserve on hand in Tycho, so the loss of this shipment isn’t catastrophic.” She tapped the side of her nose in thought in a reflexive gesture that was painfully cute. “Yet it does represent millions in losses that I’m sure Mitsubishi will not be happy about. When they’re not happy it tends to spill over into my work and they might trim the operating and research budgets. In this case, even a fee that an edgerunner of your caliber might charge is a minor consideration. Very well, I’ll hire you personally to retrieve the shipment.”

Ah, the ka-ching of eddies flowing and biz.

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“You sure about this V?”

I gave Johnny an incredulous look and resumed packing. “Yes, between you and Lucy, you’ll be able to handle anything that comes your way with regards to protection for Dr. Matsui. In meatspace, Lucy is a beast with those monowires of hers and similarly in the netrunning department.”

“I’ve been looking into these Dustwalkers, V. I mean… I know what you’re capable of, but these guys…” he trailed off, wincing. “They make Raffen look civilized in comparison.”

“Which is why I’m doing Luna a huge favor in culling the herd a bit.”

He dropped himself on a nearby chair in our shared apartment, looking somewhat disgruntled at being left behind for this gig. “What’s this gravium shit anyway?”

“Seriously?” I gave him an incredulous look. “I know science isn’t exactly your forte, but didn’t you even absorb some skill chips or knowledge primers whilst you were with Alt?”

“Was too busy helping with Alt’s shit in cyberspace, can’t tell you much until I get the green light from her.” He waved me off and grabbed a half-drunk can of beer from a nearby stand, chugging it down.

“Fine, Gravium-7 is a synthetic transuranic element, sitting at number 121. They discovered minor amounts of it in the surface lunar regolith, formed by cosmic ray bombardment in the 2050s. It wasn’t until the sixties that they managed the process of creating it synthetically, but it’s still most economical to do it away from Earth’s magnetosphere. It has a half-life of a few months, but requires stabilization to remain useful. Long story short, as I see your eyes clouding over, you give it sufficient power and it resonates, releasing exotic particles such as quark-gluon plasma, which is used in the grav compensators that came out seven years ago.”

“Oh, well, consider me caught up then,” Johnny smiled in that infuriating way of his. “So the very valuable miracle stuff gets hijacked by a driftkin tribe, just to resell or do they have another agenda?”

“Perhaps both, you don’t survive on Luna’s surface by being a gonk with tech. With a healthy supply of gravium you could use it for many applications, both peaceful and military.” I zipped up and donned my backpack. “Now, don’t get too lazy with this stakeout, Johnny.”

“Relax V, Lucy’s here to keep me on the straight and narrow. Now off you go and don’t get killed.”

I gave him a casual wave and left the apartment.

My destination was the OA spaceport, where a cargo shuttle bound for Mare Serenitatis was waiting for me to hitch a ride on.

It was only as I was strapping myself into a rickety jump seat in the shuttle, surrounded by cargo boxes that I was hit with the realization that strapping myself into a rocket was now… normal? Just another Tuesday?

“Engine ignition,” announced the highrider manning the controls a dozen feet ‘above’ me.

I was pushed back into my seat with 3Gs of acceleration, the shuttle rumbled and roared as it leaped away from Luna’s gravity.

The burn was over in less than twenty seconds, after which the spheroid shuttle settled into the sub-orbital coast phase.

Serenitatis was in the north-east sector of the lunar maps and was just too far from Tycho to make a rover practical, especially when time was a factor in getting this shipment back. Eventually the Dustwalkers would find the last remaining tracker, at which point things would get much harder.

I mostly retreated into cyberspace for the fifty minute flight, reviewing the movements of that tracker.

Lucy had it set to ping-only mode with a microburst of signal every twenty minutes, which was why it had remained undiscovered so far.

The Dustwalkers had intercepted the shipment as it was headed south from the Serenitatis refinery towards the aptly named Tranquility Base, where the equatorial spaceport there allowed for much more fuel efficient conventional transfers to destinations all over Earth-Luna space. They had thus far been making their way steadily east towards Mare Fecunditatis.

With a virtual Luna in front of me, I began collating everything Gakulu and Mitsubishi had on the area. Recon observation satellite passes were of limited help, because the Dustwalkers knew the timing of those sats just like everyone else. However, it was known that the tribe had a network of mobile habitats and rovers, parking them in dormant lava tubes and craters to remain unobserved.

The tribe itself was formed in the early 2060s on Luna’s southern highlands from a splinter group of lunar miners abandoned by the ESA after a failed helium-3 extraction project and at this point was estimated to have roughly 130 members. That was a general guess from the Highrider Confed at least, since the Dustwalkers were content to remain firmly outside the bounds of civilization. That generally meant only a quarter of that number would be actual fighters, whilst the rest would be techs and other non-combatants. 

I traced their possible routes heading east based on the tracker data, then simulated various possible intercept points heading from the Serenitatis Refinery with a rover. The speed of the hijacked shipment, which was on a rover train, was naturally slower, plus the need to hide from orbiting satellites was another factor in my favor.

After the math and algorithms were done, I was left with four possible routes to take and nothing to really distinguish them from each other besides intercept time deviations of mere seconds.

“Eeny miny moe,” I grumbled, tapping each route. “Southernmost route will have to do.”

I retreated from cyberspace and snuggled back into my chair, setting my body into a thirty minute nap.

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Lunar night was halfway through its cycle, which didn’t allow me to properly see the Serenitatis facility except through my optics’ IR NVG mode. It was a collection of nine partially sunk domes, covered with lunacrete for micrometeor protection, with a dozen hectares of space in a single level below the surface.

I was met at the landing pad by the local highrider chief.

“V? Pleasure to meet, name’s Zane Korvak, welcome to Serenitatis.” He was lanky in the way all highriders were, with a rugged vac suit and I could make out a bearded face within the helmet.

“Thank you, is that my ride?” I pointed at the waiting nearby rover.

“Sure is, not the latest Nomad, but she’ll get you where you’re going.”

“RALF, get yourself loaded up,” I instructed the robot dog at my side.

He barked over my frequency in acknowledgment and sent regolith dust spraying as he ran with speed towards the rover.

“You seriously programmed it like that?” Korvak chuckled incredulously.

“It’s fun,” I shrugged, beginning to hop towards the vehicle. “Thanks for the rover, I’ll try not to get it shot up.”

“That’d be appreciated.”

I settled into the rover, pushing outwards in cyberspace to interface with its systems. It was a larger five seater and had definitely seen many more miles than the previous one I had used. Korvak’s people had at least done all the checklists and consumables refilling, so with that out of the way I powered everything up and slowly stepped on the accelerator.

The rover lurched forward before settling into its blistering speed of 22 kph.

I referenced the hijacked rover train’s current position and speed - 12 kph.

Well, this was a far cry from some of the many car chases I’d done in Night City. I was half-tempted to ring up ol’ Muamar ‘El Capitán’ and stream a feed to him, just to see his reaction. I settled for just recording it and seeing how I felt later about sending it to him in an email.

A few adjustments on the radio receiver and I had Moonshot Rebel Radio streaming into my ears.

“Two hours, twenty three minutes to go, wheeee.”

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I was within minutes of the rover train now, passing on the other side of a sloping hill of regolith when the first signs of Dustwalkers reached me in the form of a hovering drone that was playing Tail End Charlie.

Its automated combat subroutines immediately went hot and sent lead my way.

My reflexes let me turn the rover just enough for the shot drill through the forward glass to my left, where the railgun round finally exited the rear cabin, burying itself in the regolith behind me.

My Domination hack blasted through the drone’s firewalls like they weren’t even there. The Dustwalker runner who had programmed this drone was rather lazy, still using the original Militech soft as a basis and only doing marginal tweaks to remove inefficiencies.

With my new drone under control, I had it turn around and streak towards the rover train at its max speed.

Six flatbed cargo rovers made up the train, 9 dustwalker drones hovering overhead, with thirteen dustwalkers in their patchwork, jury rigged combat vac suits either seated on the cargo, hanging off side of the rovers or seated inside the cabins to drive the train. Two of their own armed rovers escorted the front and rear of the convoy.

With my own drone as a vector, I overclocked my cyberdeck and threw out Weapon Malfunctions that fell on them like rain.

Chaos erupted as railguns sparked then detonated.

Four dustwalkers died immediately as their suits breached and in some cases belched a brief flame as the high oxygen mixture inside ignited.

Other railguns merely sparked from my hack, their non-standard design and mods saving their owners life, but became utterly useless to them.

I opened fire with my drone’s railgun, targeting the closest enemy drones.

Three were ripped to shreds before the combat routines governing the others made the correct determination of an enemy hack and retaliated.

By throwing it through a complex set of evasives I managed to make it last to kill two more enemy drones before it was bracketed and destroyed by the others.

But not before jumping my Domination hack into the dustwalker rover.

Its cameras and sensors became my eyes and my code rushed into its limited cyberspace like a flash flood. 

I braked abruptly, sending the two panicking dustwalkers on the side of the rover flying off it at four meters per second.

On Earth, it wouldn’t have been so bad.

On Luna, with regolith acting like razor sharp sandpaper at that speed, it was catastrophic.

Their feet hit first, sending an explosive plume of regolith forward, but grinding away at their vac suits until it tore them straight off their feet. The escaping high pressure oxygen from their legs acted like two mini-thrusters and sent them soaring upward.

I put them both out of their misery with two center mass shots from the mounted railgun, which sent their bodies on an entirely different trajectory, leaving an explosive trail of misted flash frozen blood.

Next I dealt with the driver of my commandeered rover.

Its interior had been pressurized and he had no helmet on, forgetting to don it even as he tried to futilely wrestle back control of the rover.

I relaxed the hydraulics of the door to his right, weakening the seals - physics did the rest.

The escaping air pressure was just enough to pick him up and send him tumbling out the side as I gunned the throttle to 25 kph.

His emergency vac collar inflated over his head as he landed in the regolith, sending a small plume outward from his rather painful landing. It did nothing to stop his head from turning into a flash frozen mangled ruin of crystalline red, under the force of the railgun round I sent his way.

I turned the rover left to avoid the rear of the train as I caught up with it.

The last elements of my surprise ran out and the surviving dustwalkers focused on their own rover and began sending pistol shots from secondary railguns they had dug out from their packs. I also became aware of their own netrunner as she started throwing hacks my way in the small island of cyberspace we had going here.

Neither of us bothered with avatars, simply sending our respective hacks and daemons to crash into each other.

Derezz attacks blunted against junk data shields. I wiped out her replication viruses before they could try and overwhelm the rover’s limited computer systems. She also threw her own versions of System Collapse my way, which I let Butcher eat up with a contemptuous ease.

In meatspace, my railgun rounds blasted two dustwalkers off their rides, their bodies crashing onto the regolith and ripping the vac suits open.

My rover’s wheels thumped multiple times as the bodies went under the tyres, barely rocking the cabin thanks to the extremely good suspension.

The three remaining drones opened fire, stitching lines of holes straight through the empty cabin.

“Stupid,” I muttered from the safety of my actual rover a few miles away.

I engaged my Sandy and swiveled the turret, firing rapidly three times with rapid shifts of the mount.

The drones turned to composite metallic debris raining onto the regolith around us.

“Butcher, think we have enough bandwidth here?”

His only response was to brute force a connection to an orbiting ESA satellite.

“Thank you.”

I prefaced the attack with four queued Malfunctions just to keep my opponent on the defensive before unleashing the Blackwall Gateway.

And not the cookie cutter Gateway I had started with, which had a minor element that could spread to more targets as Butcher went to work. 

Butcher appeared like an apocalypse in cyberspace and from my perspective in meatspace I could see the digital blood red malicious tentacles of my AI companion erupting from the remaining dustwalkers. Their bodies contorting and twitching as he went to work through their neural sockets.

I heard my netrunner opponent’s brief scream before it was distorted by the digitizing process and disappeared with finality. I hurriedly took control of the lead dustwalker rover and twisted its fly-by-wire controls, before it could become an obstacle to the train.

Another jump and I was now in command of the lead rover and all the slaved vehicles.

Break slowly, I weaved the data command into every rover’s computer.

The entire train began slowing down over the next thirteen seconds.

I pulled the majority of my focus back to my own body and after a few minutes of driving to avoid a few boulders and craters, caught up with the stalled train and parked twenty meters away from it.

“RALF, do a sweep to the right.”

The robot dog emerged from the rover and sped off with a burst of rapid speed, leaving regolith flying in his wake.

I sat back, using my commandeered rovers to scan not just the train, but also turning my attention outwards to the horizon. At this point we were on the borders of Mare Fecunditatis and it was entirely possible that the dustwalker’s mobile base was nearby. If so, they had overwatch and possibly even snipers that already had distant eyes on this approaching convoy.

Given the terrain around me, the only place they could probably set themselves up would be to the north east. I would put a spotter on the expanse of a tall hill, near… that crater edge. A sufficiently powerful sniper could cross that distance with no problems and remain nice and lethal.

I moved into the rear left seat of my own rover and with a single data command, I had all the rovers switch off their active IR elements, turning their NVG to passive mode.

Anyone also using passive NVG scans and sensors to look at us would be robbed of resolution, turning a crisp digital picture into a blurred pixilated mess.

The fist sized hole that appeared in the front crystal glass of my rover, which instantly made another hole in the rear, missing completely, had me smirking with amusement. The passing of the round in the complete silence of a vacuum was rather disconcerting, but something I was getting used to.

I reversed the rover quickly behind the train, moving behind its cover, even as I ran a trajectory calculation and whether the guns of the dustwalker rovers had the performance I wanted.

The result was… just barely.

I assumed control of both turrets and sent a fusillade of retaliatory railgun shots arcing up into the void and even walked the fire along the likely predicated path of the sniper’s retreat.

“Butcher, does that ESA satellite have any look-down imaging?”

“Officially, it’s a communications satellite, but it does have an undisclosed radar reconnaissance system on board.”

“Hack it and see if my fire is having any effect.”

The radar data that he got to me within a mere four seconds told the story.

A human sized reflection jumping up out of the lunar regolith, probably using a similar camouflage as the Eclipse.

I watched the sharp radar returns of my railgun rounds, landing short then long, to the side and finally an intersection-

The human sized radar return disappeared.

I stopped firing.

My digital hands grabbed hold of the radar system and its data. Butcher had already done most of the work, but I wrote a program further to enhance the resolution being returned, inputting an interferometric algorithm.

It found the small rover of the now deceased sniper - a two seater that was open to space, not that much different than what the original Apollo rovers were.

“What are the chances that the sniper had a spotter?”

“Greater than 87%,” came the flat answer.

That supported my gut instinct and after a few calculations, the railgun turrets shifted, angled their barrels even higher and sent two dozen rounds silently into the void, minutely adjusting with every shot.

It was likely overkill, but I wasn’t just shooting at the rover. The firing pattern would cause a time on target effect, causing all the rounds to land at once in a square centering around the rover.

I watched dispassionately a few seconds later as the rover was turned to confetti debris as the rounds impacted and disturbed a large amount of regolith. The energy transfer was so great, even my passive NVGs picked up the sharp cloud of energetic regolith that had been thrown up. The lunar gravity would eventually pull most of it back, but there would be some micro particles that had been given enough energy for escape velocity.

“Did I just effectively do the first lunar artillery strike?” I asked somewhat incredulously as the thought struck.

“By an edgerunner, certainly. However, the caliber of the railguns would need to be larger, but that is a matter of semantics.” Butcher declared with a hint of dryness in his tone. “The chances of another corporate black operation having performed something similar is difficult to estimate with any degree of confidence.”

“I’ll take it,” I said with satisfaction, but quickly lost my smile. “Now comes the boring part. Getting all this shit to Tranquility at 15 kph.”

“Perhaps use the time to call Rogue. The ESA satellite is at our full disposal for the moment.”

“They’ll figure eventually that someone spoofed it. No, let it go, Butcher. I’ll just have to deal.”

“Very well.”

“RALF, get back in here. We have to go.” The robot dog actually gave me a very realistic whining tone in response along with the data request that he wanted to remain outside along the convoy. I hated that it so effectively wormed its way into my… heart? Did I even qualify for saying that anymore?

“Fine, but make sure you don't run your own power down too much. No telling what trouble we may run into on the way.”

Happy barking was the only response as I marshalled the entire convoy into a single programmable entity and put my hands on the digital controls to begin the long journey.

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A/N: Bound to be some teething problems with a custom modded Gemini.

Enjoy the weekend and stay awesome chooms.

The Force Wills - Chapter 140

“Padawan Tano, while I normally would never question the commanding Jedi of the Crucible on a training mission, in this case-”

I turned away from the forward viewer showing the ventral hull of the Reaver, as it had clamped itself onto the dorsal of the Crucible, beyond that was the much slower spiralling of hyper, representing the added mass that the pirate ship had to propel through the dimension. It was naturally putting much greater strain on the Reaver’s hyperdrive and it was going to need a thorough overhaul afterward. The cost of which would be going to the Jedi Order - one of the details I had negotiated with Hondo.

“This is no longer a training mission, Professor.”

“Precisely, you have us strapped to that pirate ship hurtling straight into a war zone!”

“Yes, an element of the Separatist shadow fleet is there,” I explained and gestured to bring up a holo of Ansion, around which three Munificents and a single Lucrehulk was hovering. “However, it seems Ohnaka has been rather industrious of late. He has been aggressively recruiting and crewing pirate ships to his banner, working on the fringes and in the voids left by both sides in the war. Where he’s actually getting his funding is a rather intriguing mystery, as there’s not enough plunder in these sectors to really justify it. However, in concert with the Ansionians they’ve been putting up enough resistance to contest the orbital space of the planet. How long they can last is another question, but without the Republic’s help it’s just a matter of time.”

“Which is how far away?” Huyang asked archly.

“The 42nd Fleet is currently hunting the main shadow fleet around Keitum, more than half a day away, best speed. Yes, Professor, that is an eternity in military terms but my priority is to see these adepts to safety on Coruscant. Which I can’t do with a busted hyperdrive. The only way to fix the hyperdrive is on Ansion. A Separatist force is in my way, therefore they must be removed. The only way to do that, is to enter into an alliance with a pirate who has found himself on the wrong end of a plot by Dooku.”

The holo zoomed out to show the complete Ansion system, which had six orbiting bodies. “That is the gas giant Trauchta with its six moons and very handy radiation belts. You’ve managed to repair the Crucible’s shields, so it can handle hiding within them. In the meantime, I will be going with Ohnaka to help him fight the Separatists. You can use your own discretion on where you want to hide, but I suggest the moon of Verneth."

The view zoomed in to show a rocky, volcanic moon with active geothermal activity. Its surface is scarred by lava flows, ash plains, and jagged obsidian ridges. 

“You could conceal the Crucible in a crater, shielded from detection by ash clouds and the electromagnetic noise.”

Huyang looked at it and nodded, “That is certainly a plan that shields the adepts from danger. However, you will be going into the jaws of the rancor, padawan.”

“Yes, but there’s no other choice at the moment. This shadow fleet has to be destroyed to the last. Even if the 42nd is successful and we allow this element to escape, then we’ll still have these ships terrorizing the Republic rear.”

“Do you have a plan for doing that with a pirate fleet of second hand retro-fitted ships and scrap?”

“I plan to have a plan at this point. Ohnaka has been very cagey about his ship strength. The Ansionians also have a planetary defense force, but only fighters and half a dozen old frigates.”

“I hope for your sake that he’s been a very busy pirate, Padawan Tano.”

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“But we can help, padawan,” said Katooni with an expression that should’ve been illegal given how puppy-cute it was. 

I stood my ground however and shook my head as I surveyed the six adepts who had ambushed me near the Crucible’s airlock.

“No, you are not ready for the potential combat that I’m going into. You’ve done none of the anti-droid training courses or familiarization. I’m going into battle alongside pirates and the Ansionians, both of whom I wouldn’t trust as far as I could throw a planet. I can’t fight having to worry about protecting you as well.”

“We’ll totally not be in the way, we can handle ourselves,” Petro asserted.

“If you are going to fight alongside the pirates, you’re going to need someone to watch your back,” Gungi growled, thumping his big chest.

“I appreciate the thought and the risk you are all willing to take, but this isn’t a negotiation or argument that you can win. Professor Huyang will be in charge while I’m away and you will listen to him in all matters. He is a consummate survivor of this galaxy and I want you to take the time you are waiting on the moon to learn further from him. Understood?”

I hammered my words with the Force, pushing it into the young minds before me with the lightest touch of Battle Meditation.

This was not going to be the lighthearted original timeline - there was no travelling circus, no relaxed and drunk pirate gang who could be taken advantage of - this was a full blown warzone that extended from orbit all the way to the surface.

“Yes, padawan,” said Ganodi, her face almost pouting.

“Come along, young ones,” Huyang called sternly.

The six turned around with slumped postures and walked off behind the architect droid, but Katooni abruptly rushed back with a brief burst of Force Speed and suddenly I was caught in an awkward hug.

“Please be safe, Ahsoka,” she mumbled into my armored abdomen.

“I will endeavour to do so,” I patted her scaled cranium.

“Force be with you.” She abruptly let go and hurried in the wake of her classmates, radiating embarrassment.

I went through the airlock and let it close behind me to board the Gilded Reaver, making my way quickly to the frigate’s bridge. 

The Reaver had emerged from hyper 150k clicks from the gas giant and now let go of the Crucible, letting the ancient ship power its engines and make an immediate burn for the relative safety of the jovian system.

I felt the pirate ship maneuver for its own acceleration towards Ansion, which would take a further ninety minutes given the current astro-geography of the system.

“All right, Ohnaka, what’s the situation?” I demanded as I walked onto the bridge.

The five weequay pirates who were manning the stations visibly twitched with fear and anger, hands instinctively going for holstered blasters, but quickly thought better of it.

“Well, Tano, my dear, not as bad as I feared, but it’s far from good,” he pointed at the far end viewscreen. The bridge was circular as the ship and the layout almost felt like a grungy, Corusca tech version of Kirk’s classic Constitution class. 

The screen showed a tactical projection of Ansion, which judging by the telemetry was transmitting from the Ansion defense militia. That in itself was interesting, because it meant that Hondo was fully working with ansionians. Perhaps even funded? Now why would, what was essentially a proper mid-rim Republic world, employ a pirate gang?

Those were questions that could be asked and answered later though as the tactical plot resolved further.

The three Munificents and single Lucrehulk looked like they were being harassed by bees - if those bees were frigates and fighters. Curiously, it didn’t look like there were that many Vulture or Hyena fighter droids contesting the ansionian and pirate fighters, it was barely enough for all four heavy CIS ships to maintain a screening formation. It took me a few seconds to spot what was missing from the picture.

“No missiles or torpedoes from either side.”

“Ansionians used up everything on their end in the opening minutes of the conflict, so did my ships. The Separatists also fired, but nothing like the massive missile barrages that the news talks about on the front lines,” Hondo explained.

“Seems like the shadow fleet is either being frugal or they’re actually running low on ordnance.”

“You won’t hear me complaining about that!” he said jovially. 

That smile was wiped from his face as a pirate frigate managed to get bracketed by all three Munificents and blew up.

“Idiots!”

“Whose in command over there?”

“That would be Vryss, my second.”

“Well, tell them to stop poking at every enemy ship with their cannon fire, and start to focus on a single target. They’ll run out of ships before you can even make a dent.” I rushed up to the viewscreen and pointed. “Focus all your fire on this Munificent.”

Hondo frowned in consideration before shrugging and slapping the control on his elaborately decorated captain’s chair, “Hondo to Vryss.”

“Vryss here, rather busy, boss,” came a female voice over the com system.

“I can see that, my blue shadow.”

“Oh, you’re in-system, what are you doing that far out?!”

“Circumstances, my dear, circumstances and a story for when you’re not about to get blasted out of space. Now I need you to order all ships to shoot at the Munificent I’m marking to you.”

“What? Why?”

“Don’t make me repeat myself, dear,” he said with a slightly menacing edge.

“Fine.”

The response time was abysmal but eventually the tactical plot began to show ion and heavy cannon fire shifting away from the haphazard spray and pray - to begin hammering only the Munificent on the starboard side of the CIS formation.

I watched as five Corona class frigates put themselves into a swooping run on the enemy’s port side, dipping into firing range and pouring out everything they had.

Pirate and ansionian fighters attacked the screening Hyenas, both sides suffering terrible losses in the process.

Finally, the port shields collapsed and every allied ship pounced with a bloodthirsty fervour, every large laser and plasma bolt resulting in an explosion of hull armor, debris and components.

An ansionian fighter lost control after being damaged by the Munificent point defense and the fighter was unable to perform any evasive and ended up ploughing straight into the port aft engine cluster. 

It was the spark that lit the fire and as more ion and blaster cannon fire came pouring in, the Munificent’s suffered a cascading reaction of secondary explosions before it was blasted entirely in half in a massive conflagration.

“Well, how did you know that would work?”

“Lucky guess,” I waved him off, not wanting to get into it, concentrating on the tactical plot. “Target the central Munificent next.”

It took an eternally long nine minutes before that Munificent died, losing four allied frigates and an entire squadron of fighters.

“Full retreat, Ohnaka, all ships, now!”

“And lose the orbitals?”

“You’re losing too many ships chewing through the Munificents, what you have left won’t make a dent in that Lucrehulk. Retreat now to fight another day!”

Hondo growled, slamming the armrest of his chair, unable to deny my logic. “Vryss, full retreat, scatter.”

“On our way!”

I watched on the plot as every symbol representing the remaining frigates and fighters turned and burned in every direction away from the primary battlespace.

The Hyenas gave chase, but quickly returned once the ranges reached more than 10k clicks from their parent craft.

Most of the fighters headed for the planet itself, whilst what looked to be Hondo’s frigate fleet broke orbit and retreated into hyper as soon as they left the mass shadow.

“Boss, we’ve got a comlink coming from that Lucrehulk,” said the pirate helmsman.

I quickly retreated to a blindspot in the bridge scanner to the side of the viewscreen and held up a single finger to my mouth, glaring at Hondo.

He quickly got the message, “Make sure the holoscan only captures me, got it?!”

“Yes, boss!”

The image that appeared on screen was the ominous, fearsome visage of Durge himself.

My eyes widened as I perceived through the comlink that the frontman general of the CIS Army was aboard the Lucrehulk.

Hondo did well to keep his poker face but I could feel his internal panic with a hint of dread. An entirely understandable reaction when faced with the 2000 year old gen’dai bounty hunter turned warlord general of the CIS. He plastered his best genial face and sat back in his chair.

“General Durge, welcome to Ansion.”

“Ohnaka, I have little patience for word games. Count Dooku wants to show you the same level of hospitality you showed him. You will come and surrender yourself to me.”

Durge’s arching narrow helmet and formidable armor that encased his very alien physiology was the same as I remembered, however, there were a number of repaired heavy blaster impacts on it. Clearly his time behind enemy lines had also taken its toll. That he also was the actual commander of the shadow fleet shouldn’t have been a surprise, given that its modus operandi was causing chaos and slaughter.

“As much as I would enjoy meeting Dooku again, I will have to politely decline that invitation.”

“There is no choice in the matter, Ohnaka. Right now my forces are on Ansion and I know where your compound is. If you do not surrender, you will lose everything.” 

I frowned in confusion. What was Durge playing at? Hondo was a pirate who, at the end of the day, only cared about himself. Threatening his assets and wealth couldn’t really work. Any pirate worth their salt knew they had to be alive and free to enjoy their ill-gotten gains. If Hondo had to, he could wash his hands of everything he had in Ansion and live to start another day. He also had other holdings in the Florrum system, unless he had relocated, since Dooku would clearly remember where he had been held captive.

Yet something Durge had said or implied clearly troubled the pirate.

“When you say everything-”

“Your entire gang, massacred to the last, every ansionian dead. I will turn the guns of this battleship on the planet.”

Insanity!

Was Durge seriously going to be the one to break the prohibition on orbital bombardment that had been carefully held to by both sides?

I plunged my perceptions forward along the probability lines and recoiled as I saw the kaleidoscope had suddenly shifted to bring the awful answer. I knew that the prohibition couldn’t last, but like everyone else had fallen into the trap of hope that the day wouldn’t come. That the war could be kept from crossing that Rubicon.

Yes, Durge was entirely willing and able to do it.

His inherent insanity from his long life and the natural gen’dai tendency to psychosis had finally reached the tipping point.  

“I will make sure it is known that it is your cowardice that inspired me! The galaxy will know that you could’ve turned yourself in, but you didn’t. You will be shunned, reviled, forever condemned.”

Naturally it was unfair, but both Hondo and Durge knew full well that life wasn’t ‘fair.’ There was no equation in the universe for that and the sentient condition would also ensure it.

Hondo’s poker face had completely collapsed, his mouth open with wide-eyed horror. Even his nominally bloodthirsty pirate bridge crew were shocked and appalled.

“You- you-” Hondo coughed, struggling to regain his wits. “You would kill over 25 million people… just to get me?!”

“Yes,” answered the insane gen’dai simply.

His deep voice echoed distantly in my montrals as I belatedly realized I was also experiencing shock. 

“Your ship will keep its current course and rendezvous with mine. Any deviation and I will give the order to commence bombardment.”

I numbly realized there was only one explanation for all this.

Palpatine was ready and he wanted the escalation. He wanted the excuse to introduce the Base Delta Zero doctrine for the Republic Navy - the order for a fleet to bombard and glass an entire planet, exterminating the entire population in the process. Could a single Lucrehulk and Munificent do it? Not completely, but the difference was entirely academic at this point.

His reason was going to be Ansion. He would point at what the CIS had done and justify the escalation on the blood of the millions that would be lost here.

I wanted to reach out and scream to Anakin.

Warn him, tell him to spread the warning across the entire Fulcrum network…

I barely stopped myself in time.

If there was one moment that Palpatine would be carefully watching, if he even had the slightest suspicion that someone else was also sitting across the chessboard from him, then this moment would be it.

The battle within my mind exploded without preamble or warning.

Preserve Fulcrum or possible partial exposure to the enemy. Save the few now, only to possibly lose billions more in the future.

I felt my breathing speed up.

My fists clenched, teeth gnashed.

My emotions surged, the Force twisting and bending around my body.

I heard and felt the steel paneling against my back vibrate and bend.

Control Ahsoka. Focus. Don’t fuck it up now! I berated myself.

“I- I’ll be there,” Hondo said in a dazed disbelief.

The viewscreen went blank, replaced with the old tactical view of Ansion.

“Ohnaka,” I said hoarsely, only to see the old pirate was still in shock. “Ohnaka!”

No response.

I walked up to his chair and shook him by the shoulder. “Hondo!”

He blinked, staring up at me in surprise, “Pa- Pada- Tano?”

“Listen very carefully, Hondo. Whether you give yourself up or not. He’ll still do it.”

Some wits returned to his mind, “What? But-”

“Think Hondo. You don’t casually threaten to murder a world just to capture one person. Dooku is not that desperate for vengeance against you. No, this is all just pretext, a convenient narrative that will lead into the first orbital bombardment of the war.”

He struggled to internalize or make sense of it, his emotions getting the better of him. “What- what do we do?”

It was amazing how quickly I became ‘we’, when you were staring certain doom in the face and the prospect of millions dead. 

“The only thing we can. We keep this ship on course and then with your help, I’m going to infiltrate that Lucrehulk and kill Durge.”

“That’s- that’s crazy. You can’t kill him. People have tried for literal centuries and failed!”

I glared at Hondo. “The difference between me and them is that they didn’t have to defend millions from death. Now, I’m going to need a few things.”

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The small cargo hold of the Flarestar class attack shuttle, which normally held the planetary survival equipment, was a rather tight fit for me even with everything dumped out of it.

The Reaver had a complement of six smaller saucer shaped shuttles that it could launch and Hondo had chosen one given the name ‘Ember’. It had a class 2 hyperdrive, two blaster cannons, two torpedo launchers, and could squeeze in eight people.

“Mistress, the Reaver is heading for the edge of the mass shadow, they will jump to hyper in twenty three seconds,” reported M8, showing the Ember’s own sensor feed into my helmet HUD.

“Good, they’re playing their part at least.” The part of a desperate pirate crew saving their own hides from the coming massacre. “Is my life sign masking still holding up?”

“All readings are stable, mistress. The Lucrehulk hasn’t repeated its initial scan.”

I tapped the comlink, “How you holding up, Hondo?”

“Do you even need to ask, Jedi? This is crazy!”

“Yes, it is. But crazy is the only way we can stop this. They’re going to take you to a cell. Just sit tight and I will get you out of there. Durge is not going to care one whit about you, not with the prospective slaughter he is about to engage in.”

“Why wait? He could just open fire anyway the moment I land.”

That was an entirely good point, something was putting the brakes on Durge giving that order immediately. There was a larger picture at work here and I only had part of it. It would’ve been nice to ask Hondo to pull an Anakin Skywalker and fly the Ember straight through the core hangar that spanned the length of the Lucrehulk to deliver its small complement of torpedoes straight into its guts. However, prescience revealed this was a later refit version of the battleship that had firmly done away with that weakness. There was no way any fighter could deliver torpedoes to the firmly enclosed main reactors anymore.

“Yes, but whatever story the Separatists are trying to spin, they have to give time for it to play out. That’s what gives us room to act. We might not be able to stop the guns from firing entirely, but this is just one ship, not a fleet. It’ll take further time for its fire to rake over every population center. Ansion is also a planet of wide rolling plains, grassy fields and wide valleys - the population is spread thinly all over.”

“Kriffing void! What in the seven moons of Corellia is this madness! Blasted bantha fodder! By the twin suns of Tatooine, if I survive this I’ll make the poodoo-eating Separatists pay!” he roared, smashing his fist against the cockpit seating.

It was a roaring rage I could entirely empathize with.

A few minutes later the Ember was approaching the massive form of Durge’s Lucrehulk, which utterly swallowed up the view of Ansion below.

“All right, Hondo. Remember, be yourself in this situation. Rage. Despair. Give up all hope. You can’t act in any way as someone with an ace up your sleeve. Durge is crazy, not stupid, and should you give any hint-”

“Yes, yes, Jedi. I get it.”

“Approaching release point, mistress,” M8 warned.

I did the final check of my harness, weapons, utility belt and backpack, before folding my arms across my chest, pushing away the minor embers of fear at what I was about to do.

“3… 2… 1…”

The hatch in front of me slammed open and the escaping air gave a rushing initial impetus, throwing me out into space.

Minor thrusts from my jet boots and maneuvering thrusters all over my beskar’gam straightened my orientation as I streaked head first through the void towards the looming hull of the Lucrehulk that swiftly became a horizon of metal from my perspective, with the infinite blackness of space above it and a slice of Ansion that was also rapidly disappearing.

The Ember was left behind as it began its final deceleration towards the large port landing bay of the Lucrehulk.

“Mistress, brace yourself. Flip in 3… 2… 1…”

The universe spun around me as my orientation shifted into a feet first posture and M8 took full control to manage our deceleration.

We couldn’t go full blast on any jet boots or thrusters, the risk of detection being too great.

“Mistress, I need at least 20 meters per second gone to manage a safe touchdown.”

The Force answered the call and I bled off inertia and momentum into it.

“How’s that?”

“Good enough, mistress.”

I looked down as the outer hull of the Lucrehulk came closer and closer, becoming a jagged landscape of white-gray armor littered with boxy bumps and piping.

Finally, there was a brief hiss that rumbled through the beskar’gam as M8 gave a final pulse to shed the last of our momentum, before I bent my knees slightly as my feet met the hull.

“Touchdown. Mistress, maintenance airlock is at bearing 277 degrees.”

I looked in that direction, “Got it.”

M8’s navigation was really appreciated when I only had to walk thirty meters to reach it.

The interface spike from my vambrace extended and I stabbed it into the logic port.

M8 did her usual excellent job of slicing, isolating the airlock and associated sensors on the network, reporting nothing wrong before triggering the outer door.

When we were crouching beyond the inner door, in the darkness of a system maintenance tunnel, I brought my WESTAR and Darksaber to hand.

“Ready M8?”

“Always, mistress.”

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He secured the last systems of the Ember, and looked out of the cockpit bubble at the droid reception party that was waiting for him.

How did it come to this?

Hondo Ohnaka looked back and could only conclude that someone had probably put something in a drink that night after Dooku had left Florrum in the company of Skywalker and Kenobi.

He knew it wouldn’t be wise to remain on the planet, no matter what the current front lines of the war was, with the widespread use of cloaking by both sides for scouting and special operations there would be no warning of a surgical attack. Florrum itself was too remote and there was every chance that the Separatists could sneak through a capital ship among the dense maze of hyper routes in that part of the galaxy.

So he had pulled up stakes and moved to the north-west.

Then Vryss had joined… that beautiful cunning twi’lek.

Sharp-witted, fiercely pragmatic and so good with that DL-44 blaster, she blazed a path through the gang, leaving broken bones and bodies in her wake.

It had been her initial idea to go mercenary. She had taken one look at the situation around Ansion, the fact that it was part of the Malarian Alliance - a treaty that bound four local worlds in the sector into a mutual defense and commerce pact - and declared that going pirate here would just be a quick way to die. She showed him the military assets the worlds had, their response times and it all seemed so logical.

She had been the one to make the initial pitch, using her charms to put the best foot forward and whilst the Alliance had been very reluctant to sign on a bunch of pirates.The desperation and the war itself left them with little other choice in the matter, not with all the hardware and experience they brought with them. No more was it Hondo’s Gang, now they were privateers!

They’d get paid steadily, there’d be little risk and it also meant a bit of mutual protection if ever a CIS commando squad came calling.

Yet, the allure of the big gamble and payout called to his soul.

The bounty on kyber crystals, the intel on the Jedi training mission - the opportunity just couldn’t be resisted!

He flicked a switch, causing the pilot seat to descend out of the dorsal cockpit bubble into the central compartment of the assault shuttle.

A few moments to get some measure of composure, before he walked down the passenger compartment, triggering the seals to break and the embarkation ramp to extend.

Meeting him outside were two dozen B1 droids in their perfect formation, forming a narrow passage and waiting at the end were four commando droids and a single tactical droid.

That Durge hadn’t even seen fit to meet him was a blatant insult - you’re not worth my time.

“Hondo Ohnaka, you are an enemy of the Confederation of Independent Systems,” droned the tac droid. “You are under arrest, submit to incarceration or be destroyed.”

“Fine,” he grumbled, stepping off the ship, trying his best to ignore the gnawing hollow feeling in his stomach.

In short order, electrocuffs were placed around his wrists by one commando, whilst another waved a scanner wand up and down his form.

“No weapons detected,” reported the commando.

“Take him away,” ordered the tac droid.

You better live up to your end of the deal, Tano, he thought grimly.

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“Recite your mission.”

“I am to take control of the power distribution system in engineering,” said the B1 with the yellow striped chassis, standing at attention.

“And?” I asked insistently.

“Assimilate others to the Republic cause?”

I sighed in annoyance, “M8, what’s going on?”

“Mistress, it seems that the B1 hardware that this unit was manufactured with has a deficiency at a base level in the BIOS. Let me correct it.”

The B1 unit slumped as it was powered down, then a few seconds later M8 sent the restart sequence. It immediately stood to attention, saluting.

“Commander. What are my orders?”

I growled in annoyance before taking a deep cleansing breath, “Access file Tau 31, everything is there.”

“Roger, roger. Orders understood, commander.”

“Go, quickly.”

“Roger, roger.”

The B1 turned and ran away with a clatter of metallic feet on the deck.

This was the thirteenth B1 we had subverted so far and each one had some form of significant trouble in either the hardware or software level. If this was representative of the majority of the droids of that model on board then it was a wonder that the ship was even functional to the degree that it was.

“M8, your opinion?”

“These droids are not spending enough time in their recharge cradles, mistress.”  

Given that the cradles were also responsible for code debugging and memory wipes, then it was not surprising. 

I brought up the Lucrehulk schematics in my HUD, watching the dot that represented the latest converted droid rushing towards the central engineering area. It paused for roughly eight seconds and a new dot appeared next to it, before that one also began running.

There was no time to be subtle here and M8 had changed the assimilation programming accordingly.

Already there were over 180 B1s and 32 B2-ACMs converted to Republic loyalty, with that number increasing every second exponentially, as each converted droid headed to strategic areas of the ship; bridge, engineering, armories and life support. The latter was not so critical in a droid controlled ship, but gravity control was part of it, and that was a system I wanted at my fingertips.

I gave one last look up and down the deserted corridor I was crouched down in and shorted out the local sensors before bursting into a sprint. My speed carried me through a heavy bulkhead that represented the docking joint between the Lucrehulk’s central sphere and the C-shaped primary hull.

I skidded to a halt before the first intersection, pushing my senses further out whilst shorting yet more sensors.

Durge was close now.

It was painfully obvious in the Force. He radiated a miasma of sociopathic madness that felt like I was dipping my tongue into a corrosive. It was vile and I felt like I needed a thorough scrub and bath after just being on the same ship as he was.

My infiltration continued, by the time I sensed Hondo ensconced in a detention cell and the number of assimilated droids ticked over the 1000 mark, I was within a mere twenty meters of Durge.

It was no surprise that the gen’dai was on the bridge, where else would he be to give the order to bombard the planet and get the best possible view of the carnage to come.

I crouched next to the main bulkhead entrance, finding that it was firmly closed, but crucially only the inner of the two bulkheads were sealed. I also only had two assimilated droids in there, one of which was at the helm station and the other at main weapons control.

It would at best only delay Durge by a few seconds, even if the converted droid refused the order.

“M8, give me a feed.”

The point of view of the B1 droid at the helm was piped into my HUD, with that link my awareness of the entire bridge crystalized to full.

Durge stood in the center of the bridge, a three meter tall armored behemoth, not even bothering to sit down in a chair that seemed to have been specially designed for his bulk. He bristled with impatience, eagerness and a steadily rising anger, his massive arms that were as big as my waist folded across his chest.

“Any incoming transmissions?” he growled to the B1 at communications.

“No, sir.”

That just made him angrier, but rather impressively he didn’t take it out on anything around him. There was something to be said for the level of control he developed over his two thousand years of life.

I stabbed my armor’s logic probe into the bulkhead door’s maintenance port. “M8, get to work.”

“At once, mistress.”

In my HUD, the counter of assimilated droids was ticking up in surges and reached the 1500 mark. It wouldn’t be long now until something went wrong, a missed droid seeing the assimilation, raising the alarm or some other bad luck. Every assimilation was a roll of the dice and while the programming instructed the newly converted Republic droids to remain undercover for as long as possible, there was only so much that could be accounted for.

“We have a transmission from Dooku, sir!”

“Well, put it up already!” grumbled Durge.

The full body holo of Dooku projected on the bridge. I had already made myself as small as possible in the Force, as I felt the enemy’s own awareness through the Force bloom outward in a wave.

“Durge, you are to open fire immediately! And be aware-”

“M8 kill it,” I said harshly.

My armor’s droid intelligence unveiled herself like a vengeful digital goddess into the ship’s network. The first thing she targeted was the holocommunications of the bridge, cutting off Dooku’s transmission.

Every Republic droid on the ship threw caution out the window; jumping and mobbing every CIS droid nearby to convert them. Republic B2s opened fire on their unconverted counterparts, destroying hundreds all over the ship within seconds.

Chaos erupted.

The lighting of the ship dimmed and shifted to red, the high pitched alarm echoing through the corridor.

“What is going on?!” Durge demanded of the tactical droid.

“Invasive pro- pro- pro-”

Durge pulled from his back a heavy repeating blaster cannon that he handled like it was a toy and unleashed a barrage of red plasma that utterly wrecked the droid, leaving it a smoking ruin.

“Open fire on the planet!” demanded Durge.

“We are still not in an optimal position, sir,” reported the B1 at the weapons station.

“I don’t care! Open fire!”

The B1 didn’t obey and instead jumped out of the seat, rushing at Durge, its overloading power cell causing electric arcs to jump from its chassis. “For the Republic!”

Its detonation against Durge was rather pathetic, but crucially it had given its life to badly damage the repeating cannon in the gen’dai’s hands. It was now sparking dangerously and badly scorched.

He whirled around, and began gunning down every droid on the bridge with rapid precision, before ripping out the large tibanna cell from the weapon and throwing it into the adjoining ready room.

I felt the explosion rumble through the deck plating.

Durge dropped the now useless weapon to the floor and began turning on the spot. “You can probably hear me. Know that you will die painfully and slowly, little slicer.”

“Open the door, M8.”

I pulled out the logic probe and stood, bringing my weapons to hand and lighting the Darksaber.

The bulkhead doors pulled aside, revealing me to Durge.

He saw me and I felt his anger reach new heights, then he began cruelly laughing.

“Oh, ho ho, it’s you… the Mandalorian Jedi, the two things I hate most in the universe, conveniently united into one person.”

His large hands came to rest near his sides, where his two holstered blaster pistols were.

With frightening speed his left arm came up, pointing directly at me and the machine gun gauntlet fired off a dozen flechette rounds simultaneously.

Which was stopped cold by the flat pane of TK I had already willed into existence, catching each flechette round two meters from my body.

“Oh oh, ha ha ha! Wonderful! It’s been centuries since a Jedi was good enough to completely stop that attack,” he declared with a mad glee. From behind his back he produced his spiked flail, whilst from his left vambrace the red energy shield sprouted into existence. “I shall enjoy taking the Darksaber from your corpse, only to grind it to dust under my heel.”

He burst forward into a sprint, lighting his jetpack to add speed.

I dodged right in a blur of Force Speed, the flail swinging harmlessly through the air where my head had been.

The Darksaber fended off his deadly red shield’s attempt to bisect me, whilst my WESTAR discharged five high power lethal shots within two seconds directly into Durge’s left side.

The first merely scorched his armor, but the second created a flaw, the third, cored it, letting the fourth and fifth shots penetrate and dig into the gen’dai directly.

I whirled and came to a stop eight meters down the corridor, whilst Durge slammed feet first into the corridor wall. It dented under the force and he landed on his feet, before turning to face me and looked down into the fist sized hole and wound I had created.

“That hurt little Mandalorian.”

Even as I watched, the scorched flesh there rippled and shifted, replaced with seemingly brand new flesh.

It was a clever psychological trick to demoralize his opponents, but the truth was the gen’dai didn’t actually heal that fast - he was just shifting his mass around, the wounded flesh now in another place within that huge armor.

We stared each other down for a very long three seconds.

My WESTAR blurred with motion and I sent three blasts directly at his helmet.

He burst into a forward sprint, bringing up his red energy shield to absorb my shots easily.

At the last moment, I blurred backward dodging his flail, letting the Darksaber slash into his trailing arm in the small gap in his guard, before the red shield could close his defense.

A second later I was nine meters away, firing again, my bolts dug into his huge left leg, directly on the knee joint.

I scored another wound in the process.

“Haaaaa! You think you can outlast me, Jedi?! String me along?!” he roared.

My answer was a burst of Force Speed, reaching the corridor intersection and another rapid fire burst of bolts from my WESTAR.

He blocked them contemptuously and engaged his jetpack.

I ducked left, engaging my own jet boots and used my TK to leave him a warm surprise gift.

I was already twenty meters away down the next corridor, when Durge turned the corner with a snarl.

“Boom,” I flicked my finger, using technometry.

The thermal detonator from my backpack that I had kept levitated there exploded in a thunderous flash of light and heat, right in Durge’s face.

The concussion thundered through the tight quarters of the corridor, rippling and warping the paneling.Thankfully I had got the yield settings just right - not enough to compromise the ship’s structure or strain my Tutaminis too much, but enough to thoroughly give Durge a bad day.

“M8, order a replacement droid crew to the bridge, time?”

“Done, ETA 3 minutes, mistress.”

“ARRRGGHHHHLLL!”

He emerged from the smoke, the majority of his armor torn open and ruined, revealing the rippling ribbons of gray flesh that made up the actual form of a gen’dai. Atop this rippling mass was his head, which was surprisingly humanoid in general structure, with two furious yellow eyes, brows, with a snarling lipless maw with teeth the size of fingers. There were also the blinking and metallic points of cybernetics stippled in that flesh. The armor had absorbed most of the detonator blast, but not everything and a large swath of his flesh was clearly burned, which quickly rippled as he shifted mass.

Now I was confronted with a half-naked Durge who only had the legs of his armor left.

“Not winning any beauty contests, are you?” I said dryly.

“DIEEEEE!”

He charged me down again, his flesh shooting outwards, forming tentacles, grabbing onto the ruined corridor walls to propel him even faster.

With the Force and my armor’s mobility, I kept myself airborne and shot backward, keeping my WESTAR trained up and firing into his mass.

Flying within the tight confines of the Lucrehulk corridors was a distinct challenge, yet I had to be careful not to go too fast.

Durge’s mass just ate up my blasts, shifting the wounded flesh around and presenting healed flesh as quickly as I injured it.

He managed to send six tentacles of flesh forward, topped with nasty metallic spikes that had vibro functions to try and impale me.

I dodged at the last moment, not even bothering to lop off the tentacles with the Darksaber.

“Haaarrgghg! Come here, little Mando!”

It was like being chased by some awful hybrid of cthulhu with the healing abilities of frakking Wolverine!

I had to slow down considerably to take the next intersection and flew right over the heads of six waiting B2-ACMs, who already had their arms deployed.

“M8, good thinking, but remember the plan.”

“Of course, mistress.”

Durge turned the corner right into six streams of plasma from rapid fire wrist blasters.

“AAAARGGGH!” he screamed in pain, getting huge chunks of flesh burned and outright vaporized but still surged forward in the blink of an eye, his vibro tentacles spearing forward to burst right through the B2’s armor, exactly in their weak spots.

Far from leaving them behind, those tentacles grabbed the heavy droids like toys and flung four of them at me.

I dodged low, right, then sped off.

“HA HA HA! Yes, fly away! Run! Little Mando!”

My eyes widened as I saw Durge was now using the two dead B2s as makeshift clubs, slamming against each other and even used them as shields to absorb the next burst of blaster shots I sent against him.

“Frak,” I muttered. “M8, no more droid ambushes please.”

“Yes, mistress.”

I kept kiting Durge for another nerve wracking minute. Leading him in a rough circle around the sphere section of the Lucrehulk. I considered using more grenades but the range was too close and I didn’t want any part of Durge blown off and lying around for some future idiot to grab and clone.

“Mistress, droid crew is at the bridge and awaiting orders.”

Finally, I thought desperately as I avoided more tentacle spikes sent my way. “Break orbit, target the Munificent, maximum firepower, full alpha strike.” I ordered after making sure to isolate my helmet, letting no sound escape from it. 

“Order given.”

My WESTAR fired the last of its power pack.

A replacement hovered out of my utility belt and slotted home even as I pushed off the side of the corridor to spin and dodge around more spiked tentacles shooting my way.

“Munificent is destroyed, mistress. Orders?”

“Max burn towards the sun!”

“Burn towards the sun, confirmed.”

I resumed shooting, flying and dodging.

“Oh, what fun, little Mando! But it is hopeless. Sooner or later, you will make a mistake, then I will have you! Rip you apart! You can fire your little gun at me all you want!”

I threw my legs and arms forward at an approaching T-junction, slowing down to take a right turn.

Durge caught up to me in mere moments.

Rapid fire shots picked out every tentacle he sent my way, allowing me to blast off again.

My destination was a mere twenty meters away now.

“M8, Lucrehulk velocity?”

“Target velocity in seven seconds.”

Frak!

I threw my legs and hands forwards again as I almost kissed the bulkhead at a nasty velocity.

I landed on my feet and faced the onrushing tentacled mass of cybernetic gen’dai flesh.

The Force, waiting for that exact moment, exploded out of me in an onrushing tide, not into the Electric Judgement, the Crush or anything fancy, but into one of the most basic applications there was.

From below, levitation lifted the onrushing gen’dai into the air, even as M8 triggered the bulkhead door behind me.

A Force Speed, to push me out of the way at the last moment.

The backlash of the sheer mass and momentum I was trying to manipulate slammed into my mind.

Durge, without any control, unable to arrest his momentum or shoot out tentacles against my TK Control, crashed right into the waiting embrace of the escape pod.

The bulkhead closed as M8 triggered the emergency ejection system.

I was left out of breath, lying on the floor, trying to regain my equilibrium in the Force… feeling a sense of utter disbelief despite everything.

“M8, did it work?”

“Yes mistress, the Lucrehulk just engaged a decel burn. The pod is on course and does not have enough power or fuel to change the trajectory in any meaningful way. Durge will die by the time the pod reaches 5 million kilometers from the sun’s surface in 1.54 hours from now.”

“Keep the ship within at least a light second of him for as long as possible and a full sensor and weapons lock. Destroy any other ship trying to rescue him.”

“Mistress, should I give you the odds of such an eventuality?”

“No, just do it.”

“Yes, mistress. My droid forces have the upper hand and should take full control of the ship within the next twenty minutes. What should I do with Ohnaka?”

I stood with a groan and leaned on my knees.

“Let him out and escort him to the bridge when it's safe to do so.”

“Understood, mistress. Congratulations are in order on a brilliant plan.”

“It was a team effort.”

We had saved Ansion, Durge was about to die, but it still felt hollow.

I knew that somewhere else, Palpatine had already enacted a contingency and obtained his excuse for Base Delta Zero.

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A/N: Goodbye, Durge :-)

Hope you had a fun read and enjoy your weekends. Stay awesome folks.