Glacier Edge
Author's Introduction: This is a Clone Wars adventure pure and simple. It is an exploration of the vast canvas presented by that conflict in terms of how a small niche of the galaxy might be affected. The story will center on original characters, with canon players making only bit appearances. Source material draws heavily from little bits of canon to expand to something more in many cases. Explanatory notes will be provided at the end of chapters for readers interested in this. Otherwise enjoy!
Chapter 1
Core Worlds, Coruscant, 421 days after Geonosis
The Senate Building was a very refined piece of architecture, grand, spacious, and ornate. It was also, to Veishi Heldron's great relief, not particularly crowded, at least for the moment. The young man had been able to find the office he needed without too much trouble, and without pressing through the still incomprehensible crowds of Coruscant he'd observed on the speeder trip from the landing pad.
One trillion sentients, or so the encyclopedia entry said anyway, it had mentioned discrepancies about census accuracy regarding the lower levels, but whatever the margin of error it was too much for the pilot to accept. He couldn't properly conceive of such an astounding number of people, even having gotten a long look at the planet's surface from orbit while he fought with Coruscant Traffic Control for several hours. At this point he was still trying to work through his mind that there might be individual building complexes on this planet with a greater population than his homeworld.
It was depressing thinking, and his spirits were already abysmal, but he couldn't help running through the numbers over and over again. How could he expect help for his own Twin Moons Commonwealth in such a massive place? What would a trillion people care for the concerns of less than one hundred and fifty million?
This overwhelming sense of inconsequentiality pressed down on him, but he had a duty to complete and his military training had been good. It had been a long journey, but Lieutenant Heldron intended to fulfill his objective on this massive city-world.
He pressed the intercom plate on the office door. "Lieutenant Veishi Heldron to see Senator Sen Vike."
Without acknowledgement the door slid open, something fitting to the military-minded young man. He walked in carefully.
The first room was not the expansive antechamber he might have expected, but merely a work area. Four desks, two on each side, with smart, modern workstations made a simple column to a modest door at the back of the hall. There were no decorations, really, only the normal basic gray of the building, with a single wrap around banner just above door height in the crosshatched silver and maroon used by the Epicanthix Impergium Navy on official symbols.
Of the four workers, and the young pilot guessed they must be the Senator's aides, they were split between men and women, and he suspected not substantially older than he was. All were near-humans, but he did not recognize the races specifically, only that they were not Euthons like himself, or Epicanthix, something he thought odd. He would have expected the Senator to have members of his own species as aides.
The lady closest to the door looked up at him as he entered and simply motioned him on, not bothering to say anything before getting back to her work. Veishi nodded acknowledgement anyway and then cautiously approached the Senator's door. It opened just as he arrived, indicating either surveillance or a certain level of intelligence to the door system. The information the Lieutenant had read on the Senator, and he had gone through everything available during the long journey to Coruscant, made him suspect the former. The door closed behind him as he stepped inside.
It was not the typical Senator's office, all flowery decoration and precious objects of art. There was in fact little decoration at all, and what was present was decidedly martial in nature, unit banners, plaques from various ships and campaigns, and the like. The Senator's desk was a simple, unadorned office desk like his aide's used, the kind that you could find in any government institution in the Core Worlds. Veishi wondered if this was humility or if the Senator's Spartan office, which led only to a small side room that he apparently slept in, according to the newszines, was his way of calling out the rest of the senate as a bunch of posh poseurs.
The Senator rose from behind his desk as the young man approached, and then did something completely unexpected. He straightened and saluted.
Veishi knew his mouth was almost hanging open, but he recovered from his keen embarrassment quickly enough to return the salute. He felt shabby though, Senator Vike wore the spotless maroon and silver uniform of an Epicanthix Impergium Rear Admiral, while he had only his much battered flight suit, very dirty now from several days in the cockpit. Starfighters were not meant to travel from the Outer Rim to the Core in the fashion he had. He felt a sudden need to mention this. "My apologies for my appearance sir, but I-"
"Not needed," Vike cut him off. The gray-haired Epicanthix had a magisterial look, but he smiled with grandfatherly warmth. "It shows dedication, besides, good for all those loungers out there to see a pilot rushing back from battle, helps to remind them that there is a war on after all."
Veishi could only nod, thankful for the Senator's tolerance. He knew he was pressing on it significantly just by coming to the man in the first place, though that had government sanction at least.
"Anyway, sit down," Vike motioned to a chair in front of his desk before doing likewise. "I gather we have things to talk about."
"Yes sir," Veishi felt comfortable with sir, it was an appropriate response to an officer. He had no idea how to address a Senator, especially considering the relationship between his world and the Impergium.
"I've gotten the holomessage about the Separatist attack on the Twin Moons," Vike spoke first. "And I must say decisions have already been made. You probably know this already, but the Impergium's sitting this one out. We'll support the Republic cause by paying our taxes and sending intelligence reports just like everyone else, but the EIN stays inside our borders. I feel bad for the Commonwealth, I do," he eyes expressed real honesty, a soldier's regret, Veishi thought, not a politician's. "I fought against your little rebellion you know, and so I know you're tough stuff. Being swamped by overwhelming Sep force isn't fair, but that's the price I suppose. An independent tributary has to provide for its own defense."
Vike delivered crushing information honestly, like the soldier he had once been. It came to Veishi's mind that Epicanthix lifespans truly were long, as the Twin Moons had won their independence almost sixty years before. The Senator was probably close to one hundred years old, but he appeared as a human of sixty might.
It took a moment for the pilot to regain his bearings again, recalling his overwhelmed homeworld, the small fleet he served in having retreated without even daring to give battle, hiding away in space hoping for support to retake their homes. "I understand that there won't be aid, that's not why I was sent," he managed.
"Really?" the Senator appeared interested. "You're clearly not here to attempt to lobby the Republic for some kind of rescue fleet, they'd send a diplomat for that, and it's a lost cause regardless, so what information are you carrying that can't be trusted to the Holonet?"
"The reason we were invaded sir," Veishi answered, and he drew on the information he had absorbed as he left, and the speech he had been rehearsing for long hours in a cramped cockpit.
"I see," Vike leaned back. "I did think it was curious that the Separatists attacked you, it seemed like a terrible risk to take for really no gain." He pinned the young pilot with a hard look, the look an admiral uses against a very junior officer in a great deal of trouble. "Just what is it that you people possess that the Separatists wanted?"
"A weapons system," Veishi blurted, losing his composure. "A technology for starfighter superiority."
"Go on."
"I don't know all the details," the pilot apologized. "Most of the information I have was relayed by a tightbeam laser transmission from fleet command right before jumping to hyperspace." He paused, taking a deep breath. "It's called the Gimbaled Rotary Laser Cannon sir; it's a design that gives the targeting and flexibility of a quad laser turret to a starfighter's laser cannon. If bonded to a fighter design, and we have one, called the Sentinel, made to use it, you basically can mount something with the anti-fighter capacity of three quad turrets onto a platform with starfighter speed and maneuverability, meaning."
Vike held up his hand, his eyes clearly focused well past the wall he was actually looking at. It was precisely what the Twin Moons pilot needed to see. He'd worried about trying to explain the technology to a politician, forgetting that the Epicanthix Impergium was a military government and the Senator a military man. It was obvious he understood.
"A weapon like that," Vike was murmuring mostly to himself. "It wouldn't be always useful, but in major battles, against large enemy starfighter forces, especially if the fighters weren't particularly durable…by the Force, it would take the Separatist fleet apart!"
"Yes sir," Veishi felt compelled to offer his agreement. The Separatists fielded huge hordes of droid fighters; he recalled seeing them come at him, a vast cloud in the blackness of space. His Dagger fighter, a variant on the old Cloakshape hull, was designed principally to engage a single enemy fighter at once, a small fighter group at most, but a space-superiority fighter like the Sentinel, well, they'd have to invent a whole new category of ace for those guys.
"I always thought you Twin Moons boys were inventive," the Senator shook his head. "So what happened to this laser cannon design? If you have the specs with you I suspect we can bribe the Republic into freeing your worlds, assuming that's the plan."
"We tried to evacuate the plans sir, and Dr. Compesda, the designer," the young soldier shook his head. "We failed sir."
Vike's eyes narrowed. "Take me through it, exactly what happened?"
"The Separatists came out of hyperspace without warning," Veishi recalled the klaxons, hurriedly yanking on his flightsuit, the flightsuit he was still wearing now days later, rushing to his Dagger fighter in absolute chaos. "The patrol groups engaged them, but they couldn't buy us more than a few moments," both men knew how small the Twin Moons navy was, and they'd faced a full fledged Separatist fleet, there'd been no chance from the start. "Admiral Tovret ordered everything into the air, even the support staff to evacuate in shuttles, transports, everything we had, or if they couldn't get transport to flee into the countryside with the ground forces. He had us blast the bases to rubble as we left." It had been the hardest thing he'd done in his short life, turning his fighter's laser cannons on the barracks where he'd been trained, reducing so much of what their little government had struggled to build over decades into slag in moments.
The Senator nodded when hearing this, apparently recognizing the callous but effective strategy of the move to deny military bases to incoming Separatist forces.
"The Admiral also ordered Dr. Compesda's lab destroyed, and he tasked a commando unit, the Ice Daggers, one of the best, to get him out in a shuttle. My squad, Emerald, was their escorts." Veishi wasn't looking at the Senator anymore, he was staring back into his past, the scream of engines as the shuttle hurtled from the frozen surface of Temishi III, the swarm of laser fire as the droid fighters chased after them, the chaos all over the com channels, battle taking everyone for the first time. "The droids, there were too many of them, just too many. We tried to hold them off but we couldn't do it. The shuttle was damaged and couldn't make the jump. The Ice Dagger captain, I can't remember his name, diverted to Temishi IV, saying they'd hide out in the ice caves, protect the doctor and the only copy of the data. Lieutenant Illiat's flight went with them," He recalled the young Cybin woman, a good friend, even if she always berated him about small arms training. "The Captain, Captain Niad, he took his flight right into the droid fighters, went to punch through, to buy a few seconds, he, he knew…"
Veishi couldn't go on; his mind was viewing over and over again those four Dagger fighters hurling themselves into the heart of two hundred or more droid attackers, lasers blaring, no caution, no hope, no return, and no chance at all.
His voice seemed to march on without him. "My flight was ordered to divert," he spoke like an automaton now. "The admiral's personal orders, three to Panatha, to ask the Impergium for aid, and one all the way to Coruscant, to pursue any opportunities, any at all."
"A hard thing to do," Senator Vike said softly. "To be ordered to live, to leave, when your comrades die; a very hard thing indeed." He gave the young pilot a caring look. "There's no shame though, you've done your duty, and I've heard your story. Let's just confirm a few things, shall we?"
"Sir."
"So, I gather from what you've told me," Vike's voice was methodical, careful, as if he were conducting an inspection. "You've got plans for this new weapon, and a fighter to put it on, and the scientist who came up with it. All the copies have been erased except one, with the scientist."
"Yes sir," Veishi wasn't sure where the Senator was going, but he would do his best to be helpful, he didn't see any other options.
"Now, the trouble is, those plans and that scientist are stuck on Temishi IV, one of the Twin Moons, and currently under Separatist occupation." The Senator's expression was grimmer.
"The Ice Daggers' will keep them safe a long while sir," Veishi was adamant, and he truly believed it. "They're the best, everyone says, and they went down in the Shattered Glacier. You said you served in the war; droids won't be able to get them out of there. They can evade for a long time, and they'll destroy the data before capture."
"True," Vike admitted. "That maze of ice isn't some place I'd try to go after a group of commandos, certainly not with droids, but eventually they'll run out of supplies and freeze, even if they can evade all the droids in the galaxy. Apologies to your moons, but the surface of those places aren't fit even for you natives."
It was true enough, humans had never been meant to inhabit binary moons orbiting a gas giant in a red giant system, and a few millennia of evolution might have made Cybins and Euthons more able to take it, but the freezing surfaces would still be lethal in short order if you ran out of suit power. "They can still hold out for months, sir," Veishi stood firm, convinced that they could. He'd done basic training out on the ice just like the rest of the navy recruits, he knew they could last.
"Fair enough," Vike replied. "So, we have a modest window if we want to get these plans, after which they'll either be in Separatist hands, which is very bad, or they'll be gone, which is bad, but not quite as much, and you've come all the way here to appeal for someone to do something about that."
"Yes sir," Veishi did not feel very confident in that last reply.
"The best way to get our hands on this weapon of yours would be to charge in, blast the Sep fleet to scrap, and find your scientist," Vike grimaced. "But the Impergium's decided not to do that even after hearing this story from the rest of your flight, and I'll tell you right now that the Republic won't either. I could try of course, but it won't amount to much of anything. The Impergium's not well liked around here, and normally we prefer that they ignore us, I don't have any friends to call in favors from. So where does that leave us?"
It was hard, very hard, for Veishi to say the next part, because it meant consigning his world to Separatist occupation until likely the end of the war, and possibly forever if the Republic should lose, which was certainly possible, but he squared his shoulders and spoke up anyway. It was his duty to, and since the rest of the Twin Moons Navy couldn't be here, he didn't dare let it down. "Sir, if we can just get to the Ice Daggers with a ship we could get the plans out. The Twin Moons Navy is prepared to sortie to cover an extraction."
"That's awfully gallant," Vike lowered his head, clearly understanding, just as the young pilot did, how many casualties might be incurred in such an effort against a superior droid force. "But still tricky, you'd need a nasty little ground crew to handle the extraction, basically more commandos to rescue your commandos, and presumably you want something better than your own guys, or you'd try it with them."
"There's a problem of communication sir, we don't have any secure method to contact the Ice Daggers that the Separatists aren't likely to compromise." It was a complicated way to say that they were utterly lost in an iceball wilderness.
"That's quite a stumbling block you know," Vike appeared thoughtful. "That explains why the Impergium won't send its own commando team, finding someone in the Shattered Glacier who doesn't want to be found, I'd put that at pretty close to impossible."
"For commandos sir, yes, but we hoped the Republic might…" Veishi couldn't quite bring himself to voice the concept.
"A Jedi?" the Senator picked up where the pilot had left off. "An interesting idea, though I've no idea if Jedi can do something like that."
"I thought they could," the disappointment was crushing, but the young soldier had one last bit of information he could offer. "There's a woman with the Ice Daggers who can use the Force though."
"What, you mean you've got a Jedi with them already? Then why are you bothering me?"
"No, sir, sorry sir," Veishi apologies. "It's not a Jedi, just someone who can sense the Force."
"Oh, I see," Vike became thoughtful, running his hand along his chin. "The Jedi don't like us Epicanthix you know," he gave Veishi a tough look.
The young man knew that, it was fairly common scuttlebutt. In all honesty, he wasn't sure if anyone really liked the Epicanthix. Being nice wasn't exactly one of their prime species traits. It was hard enough on his pride to stand here begging before the representative of a government that had conquered his own people, the Euthons and their sister people the Cybins, and lorded over them for four hundred years before finally being driven off to the point of becoming an 'Autonomous Tributary State.' "Senator, sir," he swallowed his pride further, duty demanded it. "Our fleet's willing to promise to fight for the Republic for the rest of the war if we can just get the plans out."
There was a brief moment when surprise passed over Vike's face and it was clear for the pilot to see, and hen he went formal again. "That's a strong offer young man. I admire your spirit, and I admire you coming so far." His face grew grim. "I can't make the Imperators do anything, and they've decided the Impergium won't help you directly, but as Senator I represent all the tributary states to the Republic as well. I'll do what I can."
Veishi felt suddenly positive at this, a surge of good feeling, but the Senator wasn't done.
"I can't promise anything," the gray-haired Epicanthix shook his head. "The Jedi Council doesn't seem to listen anyone but its own and maybe Palpatine, and I haven't got friends there, but I'll petition. If, and it's a big if, understand, they pledge support then I can put together a few people to fill out a mission and find a suitable ship. That part's easy on Corsucant. It's going to take some work though. So, I want you to head outside and talk to my aides, they'll find you a hotel room for the evening, a change of clothes, and so forth, and I'll have them call tonight when there's some news, all right?"
"Yes sir," Veishi wasn't elated, the Senator's response was quite sobering, but it was also honest, the Epicanthix was going to try, the Impergium wasn't shutting them out totally, which considering the scars of rebellion they could have been reasonably expected to do. He knew going to the Republic directly, petitioning the Jedi Council or whoever ran the war on his own would get nowhere, so this man had just offered the Twin Moons whatever chance they had. He dared to hope that the mission would happen; that it would succeed, and when their weapon vanished, then the Separatists would leave his cold home. He stood and saluted before marching out.
Chapter Notes: The Epicanthix are a canon near-human species (Yun, from the Jedi Knight game, is the most notable example), native to Panatha in the Pacanth Reach, which they reputedly control. They were said to be a warrior species with long life spans, the Impergium (which will continually gain more detail as the story progresses) is my invention, but they must have had some form of government. Cybins, Euthons, and the Twin Moons Commonwealth are original creations.