STAR WARS
THE SKYWALKER HERESY

EPISODE II

FORCES OF REBELLION

Ten months have passed since the rise of the New Order, and Palpatine's Galactic Empire asserts it's authority over a still restive Galaxy. Darth Sidious, in his persona as Emperor Palpatine, has been hunting down those Jedi that did not take part in the Exodus, but still has not found a suitable apprentice to replace what was supposed to have been Darth Vader.

All over Imperial Space, his fleet is asserting his authority with an iron fist, and already many systems feel the weight of his tyranny. But not all is lost. Republic loyalists, CIS remnants and a myriad of other groups tentatively start the long, bitter and dangerous fight against the evil Empire.

On Coruscant the Imperial Senate does what Emperor Palpatine wishes it to, but even here there are those who dare to quietly oppose him. Rumours from the edges of the Unknown Regions have come to their ears...

Chapter 1

The Hyperspace lanes along had never been particularly safe, even during the days when the Old Republic had itself still been new. In the Unknown Regions all sorts of threats only waited for either naïve of stupid merchants to use this one on their own, and during the War, the Separatists had often raided around here, using Droid ships and fighters that didn't need much in the way of base infrastructure. Now though, with the Imperial Navy using the plethora of ex-Republic ships that were now more or less surplus providing convoy escort, the run was more than a little boring, especially for a small, "low-priority" shipment such as that of Convoy IF-247/T to one of the many Imperial outposts and listening stations along the edges of known space.

At the same time most of the crews aboard the six freighters and two escorting frigates were glad that they were here, doing a boring supply run instead of fighting against ultimately doomed but still suicidally fanatic CIS remnants or, and that would have been worse, be in on the rumoured hunts for fugitive Jedi. Most of the crews for these ships had come from worlds that hadn't seen anything of the Clone Wars, and therefore no Jedi, so were far more inclined to believe Imperial propaganda about them than someone from the core worlds or even Coruscant itself.

Lieutenant-Commander Trun hailed from Coruscant, he and his wife both stemmed from long lines of civil servants, and she still worked for one of the Senators, so he didn't assume that everything the HoloNet said was true. At the same time he didn't really care either way, and knew that it was healthier in so many ways to do as one was told. As captain of the DC-20 frigate he was, thankfully, not senior officer of the escort, since that would have required him to actually pay attention to what was going on around them and still be bored to tears. No, what really annoyed him was that he didn't even know exactly what was on board.

"Captain, we have something on the short-range scanners, coming out of that nebula cloud 299.212-44."

"Identification?"

"Not sure yet, Sir. The nebula obscures our scopes."

Trun didn't bother asking if the Flagship had reacted, because that particular officer was an clumsy fool. The very reason that this convoy was escorted was because over the last few weeks several convoys had disappeared in this area.

He cursed Sector Command for sending such a small escort, but he knew that the uprising on Ma'acus wasn't that far back and they would need any larger ships until the pacification efforts were complete.

"Battle stations."

"Yes, Sir."

Trun glanced at the sensor display and was enraged when he saw that Turbulent still hadn't launched the six V-19s she carried. When you crossed a system like this on sublight then it should be... no, it was standard procedure to launch one's fighters, but it seemed that Captain Ort knew better. Again.

However, it was then that Trun was proven right. His DP-20 frigate was to the rear of the convoy, and and coming out from within an Asteroid field, six starfighters attacked him from the rear. Of course only one of his turbolasers could train that way, and none of his concussion missile launchers.

He used one of the visual scanners to look at his opponents. Two ETA-2s, the rest were Delta-7Bs. Much to his surprise, both the ETA-2s fire one concussion missile each, and before they impacted on his aft shields, he managed to realize that they must have been extensively modified. After that he was too busy trying not to fall over as the two missiles impacted into and obliterated his aft deflector shields. Most of the fighters veered off, but one of them began to pepper his aft section, and most importantly, his engines with blue laser fire, taking care to stay out of the aft turret's firing arc.

An explosion rocked the ship and the lights flickered.

"Captain, the main engines are down." someone supplied, not realizing how pointless that report was. Then again, he couldn't know that main power would fail next. The lights went to emergency red and she shuddered to a halt, clearly out of the fight for the moment. Most of the external sensors still worked, being run off emergency power, but those batteries couldn't supply enough for weapons, shields, never mind the hyperdrive or sublight engines even if those had still been working. All they could do was watch.

And what they could watch.

The enemy ship was a capital one, in fact it seemed to be a Victory-Class Star Destroyer in Old Republic colours, and he realized that it probably was the one he'd heard stories about before setting off for this forsaken corner of the galaxy. He had to give it to Ort, at least he tried.

The larger frigate launched all twelve of her fighters, but since this was a low-priority sector, at least it was right now, those weren't flown by clones but by volunteers from one of the local worlds that had proven it's loyalties, first to the Republic and now to the Empire. That they had sent their 'best' didn't exactly fill him with confidence, he'd been a tactical officer during the Battle of Coruscant and he'd seen how real soldiers fought.

Still, the V-19 formed up and headed towards the Jedi fighters, while Turbulent interposed herself between the convoy and the Star Destroyer. The freighters ran for the edge of the massive gravity well that existed in this system. Ort was a fool for going through instead of around this known navigation hazard.

The volume of fire the Rebel Star Destroyer put out was frightening, evidently they had managed to keep her in good repair. The frigate replied as well as she could, but it was no comparison. Shot after shot of blue energy impacted on Turbulent's shields, battering them down one after another, while the Star Destroyer could easily shrug it off, having been made to slug it out with ships it's own size.

Meanwhile the fighter battle was not going well for the Empire. The pilots from the local backwaters were up against Clone Wars veterans, and it showed. Even though they were outnumbered, the Rebels flew as if they weren't, and he could see how the two ETA-2s, one Orange-white and the other Yellow-white, supported one another and quickly began racking up the kills. The last V-19 died when the orange one exploded it with a single expert shot. Whoever flew that one had to be very, very good.

The fighters then formed up again, and he saw that the Rebels had lost no one, except for two that seemed to be damaged, and one of them quite badly by the way he was leaking fuel, but they were all there, the damaged ones shortly breaking off and heading out of the immediate battle area, the remaining D-7Bs running down transports. Meanwhile the two ETA-2s lined up the aft section of Turbulent, ignored the inaccurate laserfire around them and collapsed her weakened rear shields with the impacts, before peppering the engines just like they had done with his own ship.

Unlike a D-20, C-Class ships were more heavily armoured, but even a Star Destroyer couldn't have taken this sort of punishment forever as the two fighters strafed the ship again and again for minutes before standing off. By then Turbulent had lost most of her weapons and the sublight engines seemed to be heavily damaged. The Star Destroyer kept her cannons on the frigate while the two fighters assumed a high cover position relative to the plane of movement of the convoy.

His own transmitters were damaged, but as it turned out, he could receive just fine.

"This is General Skywalker of the Republic Navy. Imperial ships, your escorts have been disabled, and my fighters have you in their sights. If you surrender now, you will not be harmed. Heave to and wait for my boarding parties to approach. You will not destroy or jettison cargo, or resist my boarding parties as they come onto your ships. If you comply, then we will soon be gone and you can go where you please. If not..."

You had to hand it to Skywalker, Trun admitted to himself, he was as good a pilot as his reputation said, and he was as ruthless as Trun himself would have been in the situation.

"Captain, the convoy has stopped."

"A sensible, if deplorable choice. But at least that gives us more time to gather intelligence. I take it you are recording everything?" he asked his Sensor officer. The man knew that this was a rhetorical question, but still replied. "Yes, Sir."

Trun nodded in acknowledgement and returned to the monitor. The freighters could figure out their chances at escaping from fighters that were individually faster than them and had the help of a Star Destroyer to call on and...

"Sir, Turbulent is moving!"

She was indeed. The frigate had somehow found a few tiny remnants of drive power somewhere and was now slowly, inexorably moving on a collision course with the Star Destroyer. Ort was not only a fool then, but a suicidal one.

Sure enough, the rebel ship opened fire, this time it also shot off a few of the heavy concussion missiles the Victory-Class carried. Without shields, Turbulent began to shed hull plating and atmosphere like both were going out of fashion even from the heavy turbolasers, but it was the concussion missiles that did the trick. Two of them hit the narrow neck of the frigate and snapped it clean in half.

Even as the dead and dying parts of the ship began to drift away from each other, the Star Destroyer launched several shuttles, both of old Republic and CIS make, who approached the freighters under the watchful protection of their starfighters. They Rebels must have liked whatever they found in those freighters, because they then began, as he later found out, to transfer the crews from all of them to the two that carried the new water purifier for the outpost that had been the convoy's destination and took over the rest of them wholesale.

He didn't know what was on them, but they really, really really liked it it seemed. They slaved the freighters systems to that of the Star Destroyer, recovered all their fighters, damaged and undamaged, as well as their shuttles before slowly making their way out of the gravity well and presumably into hyper space for a short hop at a random vector before heading to their base of operations.

Trun didn't pay them much heed after they were out of weapons range and instead commed his engineer. "Is the hyperdrive recoverable?"

"Yes, Sir. Give me an hour and we have sublight back as well. They weren't looking to stranding us here forever."

"Then get to it, Lieutenant."

It wasn't until almost two weeks later that Trun was able to leave the Sector Command Station. He and his crew had been cleared of any wrongdoing, in no little part due to their sensor recordings and Trun's inate ability to talk faster than most people, but he knew that this would still hang over his career for a very long time. Because of that he had taken the transfer to the Coruscant Space Traffic Control Centre without much deliberation. For one, it was, while less prestigious, at least not as boring as running convoys, since there was always something going on in the beating heart of the Empire, second, and more importantly, he could live with his wife and his daughter instead of only seeing them once every month or so, as it had been for most of the last year.

His wife had been ecstatic and had opted to meet him when his shuttle landed. So of course he looked out for her when he stepped of the arrival platform and into the bustle of people he looked out for his wife's tell-tale black head of hair.

"Father!"

That worked too.

He turned just in time to see a four year old whirlwind of a child run around and through the throngs of people right into his arms, his wife right behind.

"I picked her up from school. Tomorrow is off, and it's a special occasion. The teacher understood. So we thought we'd pick you up, and I'd let her escort you home before I go back to the office." she said as a way of a greeting.

He kissed her in reply, ignoring his daughter's protestations and the looks from the passers by they were getting.

"So, have you been given a new assignment yet?" his wife asked.

"Yes, STC for the next eighteen months, Varan, my love."

"Is it because..." she trailed off. Her had told her as much about the ambush as he could but they both knew that sharing this with their daughter was wrong.

"Yes, unfortunately." he replied with a sigh. "But at least it's here and not on the Hutt border, and here with the two of you."

They walked off into the crowd, in the general direction of the Senate District, only stopping to buy a bite to eat in a small shop near the Strikefast memorial. As they walked, with their daughter distracted by her food, he told her the things about the attack that he hadn't trusted to the HoloNet.

"I'm glad that I don't have to go out there again soon, because this will come to the Emperor's ears, and he will want revenge. So instead of being out there, hunting pirates and getting my head shot off, and instead go home after shift and spend my weekends with the two of you." he said with a smile.

"Unfortunately you will have to wait a bit for happy family times, my beloved husband. I have to go back to work." Varan replied, and patted her daughter on the head. She gave her husband a kiss on the cheek, and they said their goodbyes. While she waited for the next skybus to the Senate District, she watched a man in an Imperial Fleet uniform walk away with a small girl chatting to him like their was no tomorrow, and she smiled.

Twenty minutes later she walked through the employee entrance of the Senate and up to Senator Organa's office. Most of the human worlds could, and did, bring on personnel from their worlds, but some, such as Naboo and Alderaan, tended to hire locals. Together with her predecessor's leaving due to what the Senator had termed a 'better offer' in the Imperial Security Bureau, there now was a Coruscanti being Chief of Staff for the Senator representing Alderaan.

She had worked for him for several months now, and in that time she had learned that her boss was nothing if not someone who would always see anything pertaining to his work important. When she had first gone to Alderaan with him and met his wife, she#d been struck by the sense of purpose that he still seemed to have. Even though she knew better than to ever say this, she knew that many Senators only held onto their jobs because they wanted to keep at least one tiny shred of power out of Palpatine's hands, and to do that the Senate needed to be around, and to be around, the Senate needed to be useful to the Empire.

In the end though this was not her concern, and right now Varan Trun was busy trying to get into her office. She mis-typed her access code twice, but after all, who had been the one to insist that she needed a new one?

"So, I take it everything went well?"

Organa's voice came from the door that led to his own office, and she turned, nodding.

"Oh yes, Sir. My husband has taken our daughter home, and I already fear what those two will have cooked up by the time I get home."

Organa smiled whistfully. He and his wife wanted children of their own, but it seemed that fate had chosen another path for them.

"Well, let us have a look at the security reports on the Alderaani trade lanes like we discussed and then we shut things down here for today."

"Yes, Sir." she said, enthusiasm evident.

She had half-turned and then thought what her husband had told her. Technically it was none of Organa's business, but she knew from the report they were going to discuss in preparation for a speech he was going to make in front of the Alderaani assembly next month and there had been a few Alderaani freighters among those raided in the last few attacks. So went into her office, collected the report from her desk and crossed the reception area to the Senator's office directly opposite her own without even looking at the droid behind the desk.

"So, what happened?" the Senator asked once they were behind closed doors and he had, unknown to her, surreptitiously made sure that they were not being eavesdropped on. Everyone in the Delegation of 2000 knew that their offices were likely bugged, and that in spite of their measures they had to be very, very careful, which was why they had decided to bide their time after the death of Senator Amidala in what the authorities claimed to have been accidental crossfire. Still, if need be he would could truthfully claim that he had acted in good faith, assuming that nothing of what she told him was any sort of secret. He doubted it would be and he would hate to throw his Chief of Staff under the hover-bus, but self-preservation was the first order of business until he had figured out all the ways of how the Empire worked. At least he would make sure that her family was taken care of if the worst thing happened.

"Mrs. Trun, if you don't want to or can't tell me..."

She shook her head. "No, it's all right. My husband said that he was told that this isn't exactly secret. Besides," she glanced at her datareader, "it seems the attack on the convoy is pertaining to our work. They used one of ours to release the crew once they'd stripped off the cargo. The Starlight Express."

"Any idea who was behind this?"

"My husband wouldn't tell me. When I asked he said that that part was classified."

Organa ticked off a point from his mental checklist. The pattern was that if Imperial authorities refused classified the identity of 'pirates' that raided a convoy then it was a good indicator that it wasn't the endemic raiders that plagued the fringes of civilized space since the invention of hyperdrive but indicated Rebel activity. Many of the groups that were springing up did not survive long enough to make an impact, and there were still too many who were simply happy to credit the Empire for ending the war and live under it. But some were run by beings who knew what was at stake and who knew what they had to do to survive.

"Well, that is only proper. After all, loose lips cost ships. Were there many casualties?"

"Not very. On the escorts of course, but the pirates didn't shoot any of the civilians apparently."

Of course what the Empire would end up claiming for public consumption was something else entirely, though neither were stupid enough to say that out loud. It was another check.

"I see. So, that report..."

They turned to discussing the report, unspoken agreement saying that they'd pushed the envelope enough, and when she left thirty minutes later, Organa was torn. On one hand, he really wanted to believe those rumours he'd heard from various respectable and very loyal Alderaani traders, beings he knew he could trust about their feelings towards the Empire. He wanted those rumours to be true, desperately so. Intellectually, he knew that at least part of it was true. By inferrence, this gave the other parts some weight. He really wanted Padmé Amidala to be alive. Not only because she was a friend and political ally but also for her family's sake.

All he knew was that some of the staff at 500 Republica claimed that they had seen her fleeing the building in company with a young Togrutan girl on the security recordings before the CSF had seized them, and that said girl had been carrying a lightsabre. It was circumstantial, it was thin, it was the only thing he had. One other person knew of his efforts.

Mon Mothma had been present as well when, at the 'suggestion' of the Empperor, successive services had been held in Amidala's memory both in the Senate and on Naboo. When on her homeworld, both he and Mothma had tried to speak to her parents, but they had refused to speak to anyone, be it Senators or HoloNet reporters. Whatever inquieries both had dared to make had led nowhere, they hadn't even been able to confirm that she had been pregnant at the time of her disappearance. That fact, if true, opened up a whole other raft of questions, and Bail Organa was someone who hated those.

Though if he was to be honest with himself, there were only a few things he could do, and he would not use the Senate's infrastructure for any of them. That decided, he rose to his feet and left the Senate. Anyone who watched him would think that he was calling it a day a bit earlier than normal, but would not think much of it, as he had worked late for most of the last week.

But far from it. He was going to take action.

tbc

So, here we go. The first chapter of Forces of Rebellion. Now featuring a title crawl. Admittedly, I forgot posting the one from Episode I. If there's interest, I can put it into an AN some time.

I hope you like it. That being said, I have written Chapter 8 of this already. I post here as I finish them, i.e. when I finish Chapter 9, you get Chapter 2.