Disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars or Worm. They belong to their respective copyright owners. This story is not created with a commercial purpose. It is not for sale or rent.
Chapter 18
=MK=
Part 1
=MK=
Warrior's Rest hotel
Sundari
Mandalore
Secretary Winters was right. He didn't like what he learned about Veil's past exploits as the Clone Wars continued to ravage a whole galaxy.
The "Cleansing" of Atrisia was a herald of things to come. It was the first world Veil murdered since he became a player on the galactic stage, and arguably, the only one he had a justification for.
That Crimson plague… Winters shuddered at what little the documentary could show while maintaining a reasonable rating. That horror was something out of the Slaughterhouse Nine's wet dreams. A sentient plague able to use the Force, possessing a singular goal – to spread and consume.
It came as no surprise that Crimson was an ancient Sith doomsday weapon, meant for use in case of a total military defeat. Because, and some people over here apparently agreed with the sentiment, as bad as the Sith were, it was no surprise that when faced with genocide by the good guys, they would go to extreme measures to ensure everyone would lose.
On one hand, the Sith were arguably much worse than the Nazis of World War two's infamy. Yet, the response by the Republic and the Jedi was something the victorious Allies thankfully didn't seriously contemplate. However, over here, even the beacon of Democracy and freedom that used to be the Old Republic, and the Jedi of all people, saw little wrong with genocide, if the target were Sith and their supporters.
Winters honestly hoped that all he could find on that point was mostly propaganda, painting the Sith and their allies as victims, and their enemies as monsters. However, those cited events had happened more than four thousand years ago. That was longer than most civilizations on Earth had existed. This also meant it was more than enough time for people and cultures to change, for either the better or the worse. If possible, utterly destroying a vicious enemy would have been seen by many back then as a great idea.
When the initial shock passed, the real surprise about Crimson wasn't that such a monstrosity could exist in this galaxy, without being created by a deranged bio-tinker. Its Sith origin was almost expected.
The fact that the Republic accidentally unleashed it upon itself, after the Confederacy already used biological weapons on both Naboo and Coruscant was the cherry on top of that shit-cake… though Winters would never put it that way aloud. Then again, the whole initiative was Palpatine's brainchild, and he was supposed to be the arch-villain.
Veil burned a Core world to contain the spread of a weapon that might have consumed the whole galaxy. Reading between the lines, and seeing recordings from the Senate debate that followed, Winters was glad he wouldn't have to deal with that slippery bastard. By all accounts, Palpatine was at fault for the death of thirty-two billion people. The death of a whole world was on his shoulders! Despite that, more than enough Senators hailed him as a hero and savior, for preventing a greater catastrophe. The same was true about Veil, who did the deed.
The more Winters saw of how people ran this galaxy, and of the people who did it, the more he questioned how much good this mission would do the United States and Earth. People here tended to operate on another standard. There was little lip service about morals, freedom, and self-determination. Those concepts were casualties of the war.
Might was most important over here. Raw power and the willingness to exercise, were keys, and Earth had precious little of it, concentrated in the hands of a handful of Parahumans.
The Secretary of State feared that even the worst-case predictions of what they would find in this new universe would fall far short of the terrible new reality that was now their world.
"Continue. Major exploits of General Veil after the Cleansing of Artisia." Winters eventually spoke in a voice he hardly recognized.
He could still see the high-definition images of raining fire and whole continents burning.
"General Veil took his fleet and went in pursuit of Crimson's origin. He located the facility that contained the disease and annihilated it. Doing so, led him to be out of place during the Confederate Grand offensive. He managed to return from the Unknown Regions, while said offensive was at its height. His fleet fought a series of engagements with Confederate forces in the western parts of the galaxy. The General's victories there eventually allowed him to break through to Republic-controlled space around Eriadu. His fleet resupplied there, before leaving in a desperate attempt to reinforce Kamino." The Narrator explained. "It is widely believed nowadays that General Veil's first visit to Eriadu was key in laying the foundations of the future Mid-Rim Alliance."
"I expected worse…" Jasper unwittingly muttered.
"I'm sure things will get worse before they improve." Winters blandly answered his aide.
It was almost heartening to learn that Veil, Mandalore, or whatever he wanted to be called today, could suffer defeat. In a disastrous fashion too.
"Arguably, the Confederate Grand Offensive did destroy the Republic. It was just that, as with anything involved in the old Senate, its death was slow and agonizing. Between the industrial damage inflicted on Kuat and the fall of Corellia, the Offensive achieved many of its key strategic goals. Primary, the Republic could no longer rely on its sheer industrial might to win the war. The disastrous fall of Kamino compounded those issues, ensuring the Republic would no longer have access to relatively cheap, and more importantly, disposable soldiers." The Narrator grimly explained. "By the time General Veil and his fleet reached Kamino and reinforced the battered Republic fleets desperately holding the system, the Grand Offensive was at its closing phase. He arrived just in time for the Jedi Rebellion to shatter the GAR's contingency plans.
"While we have fragmented and conflicting reports about what happened on Kamino, there are a few things we're sure about. Our conclusions are backed up by all survivors of the battle, and records from multiple surviving ships that made it largely intact to Republic space. First, General Veil went to the surface to establish a working relationship with the Jedi Generals in charge of the defense. Second, this happened just when the Jedi Coup launched across the galaxy, crippling GAR High Command in multiple theaters of operation. We know that multiple Jedi Masters attempted to assassinate General Veil and that he didn't emerge whole from that encounter. It is confirmed, that at the very least, he lost a hand during the assassination attempt and suffered various injuries. Nevertheless, the General managed to evacuate to his flagship in orbit. There, he utilized his unique form of Battle Meditation in one last desperate attempt to hold the line and save Kamino."
"Well, he's not invincible, that's something, right?" Jasper asked. His voice rang loud in the mostly silent room.
Winters didn't deem that statement as worthy of comment and simply shook his head, and returned his full attention to the large screen. He ignored the various pictures and short clips from the battle, focusing on the narrator's words.
"Unfortunately for General Veil, and Kamino in particular, the ORR, had foreseen his appearance in that theater of operations. When their assault on Kamino ground to a halt due to General Veil's Battle Meditation, they deployed a modified Mind Bomb, targeting him, personally. The effects, felt by all surviving Republic personnel, and dully testified on, were profound. If it wasn't for General Veil's efforts, the Mind Bomb would shatter the minds of the Republic personnel bound by the Battle Mediation. Despite everything the General managed to do, the disruption and side effects of deploying the weapon were devastating. First, it locked the Republic personnel in executing the last orders they had received… and for some of them, said orders were limited orbital strikes to neutralize ORR beachheads and deny key strategic facilities to the Confederacy in case Kamino fell. The initial orbital strikes were on target, as ordered by General Veil, and recorded by the relevant monitoring systems across the fleet. However, due to the Mind-Bomb's influence, the bombardment didn't stop but continued until it laid waste to most of the planets. The sheer death toll fed into the Force-based archeotech weapon and its effect rebounded upon the survivors on the surface. While General Veil managed to protect the fleet at a steep price to himself, anyone who failed to promptly evacuate from Kamino became a victim to the Mind-Bomb.
In the resulting chaos, the Republic defenses collapsed, and the Confederacy forced General Veil to order a fighting retreat. He managed to extract a portion of the combined Republic fleets protecting Kamino and fled. General Veil went dark for the next few months to recover and assess the political situation within the Republic…"
"That's two worlds he is either directly, or partially responsible for destroying. Do I dare ask how many other worlds did he destroy before the war was over?" Jasper asked. He was obviously feeling ill.
"Counting the gas giant in the Sullust System, General Veil ignited into a star, causing a fractional Nova event…" The Narrator began, there was the Ravaging of Bothawui…"
"Enough!" Winters raised a hand in a stop gesture. His voice sounded old and tired to his ears. "We all need to take a rest and digest what we've learned so far."
Winters wasn't sure how he would handle seeing more worlds die. That was true even if he couldn't fully comprehend the human price of those events, and thanks to God for that dubious mercy.
=MK=
Part 2
=MK=
Warrior's Rest hotel
Sundari
Mandalore
In a futile attempt to calm himself down, Winters drank from a small bottle full of a green, sweet juice that left a citrus aftertaste in his mouth. His fingers twitched, as the need to light up a cigar became near overwhelming. He stopped smoking nearly a decade ago. Yet there were days when his work all but pushed him into puffing like a coil power-plant chimney without safety equipment.
It was a good thing, that repeated shocks to the system tended to dull a man's perception of reality. In the last few hours, the Secretary saw too many murdered worlds. He watched whole fleets die, without their loss decisively resolving the war. And then, there were the images of the fighting on the ground.
Watching chosen moments from the Liberation of Corellia was supposed to be a step up, after figuring exactly into whose backyard Earth Bet was now stuck. Obi-Wan Kenobi was supposed to be one of the good guys if an understandably flawed character. That impression was hard to reconcile with what the real man, existing in this universe, had ordered on Corellia.
Every time Winters closed his eyes. He saw crystal clear images of worlds dying. Either that or hundreds of thousands of soldiers and thousands of armored vehicles, throwing themselves in the teeth of Coronet City's defenses.
It was a madness no one sane on Earth Bet would contemplate. Yet, over here, it was the price of waging a galaxy-wide war.
Watching the battles at Sullust, proved once again, that Veil did make mistakes. He could be outmaneuvered, he could lose. And then, unless you managed to kill him for good, he would be back with a vengeance.
That thought prompted one of the images now etched in Winter's mind forever to surface. It was a combination of a focused camera view, if distant, and a more abstracted sensor view. A heavily damaged kilometers-long Corellian ship plunged into the heart of a gas giant like a poisoned dagger. What followed was like opening the gates of Hell itself, with the resulting explosion wiping out all industry and habitats in the planetary system. It also crippled the Confederate fleet that had driven off Veil earlier, allowing for a devastating counter-strike at its core by the Sith.
And even before that, during the unrestrained bombardment in the Sullust system? That act alone burned more industry than Earth Bet could dream of possessing. They also killed more than enough skilled labor to depopulate many smaller countries!
Winter knew deep in his heart that he wasn't ready to deal with this kind of reality. He was even less prepared to handle the people who could casually condemn Earth Bet to utter annihilation if the mood struck them! In comparison, all the mercenaries did back home was outright mundane, if not practically helpful.
Then there was the Endbringer in the room – Bothawui. The man responsible for that atrocity was on this very planet, in this city even. Veil was too close to Earth Bet for comfort. It was an unsettling feeling that a single person could outright consume all the life on a planet, and you were utterly at their mercy.
The Secretary of State went back to the windows and looked at the ongoing construction. What he saw happen on Corellia, the same, or close enough had happened here too. Even years after the war, in a capital city of a capital world that would get priority for reconstruction, the scars of the war were both deep and visible.
Suddenly, Winters saw the claim that available aid funds and supplies that could find their way to Earth Bet were limited, in a different light. He turned back to the large screen. Many of the security people were busy studying the war more in-depth. They were using the documentary series.
"Can you show us the number of worlds currently in need of aid and reconstruction as a direct result of the war? A rough number and overview on the galaxy map would be enough." Winters addressed the Protocol droid.
"Of course, sir!" The thinking machine turned its head towards the screen and spoke.
Basic kept sounding both damningly familiar due to a painfully familiar accent, yet alien.
Winters grimaced at what was on the screen when the playing video froze. It was the familiar Senate building from the movies, which was practically identical to the Republic Senate building from before the war. Now he could see it burning. Even worse, one side of it was cracked like an egg, while people in identical armors fought for their lives.
"What the hell are you watching?" Jasper was the first to ask.
Winter's aide had a smoking cup in hand and judging by the smell, it was some combination of local chocolate and coffee.
"We went looking for the Battle of Coruscant." The senior Protection Service agent answered. "There were many of those. That is supposed to be a mini-civil war, prompted by the way Palpatine's successor took power. Some Clone Units didn't accept it as a lawful transition of power and tried to arrest Chancellor Kenobi."
"That would be Empress Kenobi now. I guess?" Winters asked. If that was the case, it was obvious who had won that particular battle.
"That is correct, Secretary Winters." The Protocol Droid began explaining. "General Kenobi personally led the Defense of the Senate during the Coruscant Incursion. Another notable event is this was the first combat operation former General Skywalker participated in after Second Geonosis."
"Former General? What happened to him?" Winters asked.
Before the Droid could answer, the map of the galaxy grew to cover the whole screen. Then, one after another, dozens, then hundreds and thousands of worlds turned into red dots all over the galaxy.
"Currently, there are twenty-one thousand Imperial Worlds which formally requested aid from the Federal Government, to rebuild and take care of refugees. There is at least an order of magnitude more worlds that could technically handle the damage they suffered and the refugees in place. However, they still accept donations in either monetary or in supply form." The Droid paused and even more, worlds lit up in angry red, this time, many of them were pointedly beyond the claimed borders of the Empire. "There are many currently neutral worlds, seeking aid, which is currently restricted by both the Imperial Government and the Confederate Remnant for internal recovery. Some of those worlds seceded and declared neutrality during the war, or were abandoned by the Confederate military as both too heavily damaged and unsustainable between Republic/Imperial military actions and the Black Rebellion."
Now large regions in various parts of the galaxy blinked deep red. Notably, one took most of the western edge of what used to be the Republic.
The Droid saw where Winters was looking at and elaborated.
"That is the Droid exclusion zone. During the Black Rebellion, the first Droid Fleets to go, rogue, had to fall back into more defensible positions and secure themselves a base of operation. Due to the position of Republic and Separatist forces that remained loyal, the rogue Droids had to fall back towards Fondor. They managed to take control of multiple sectors in that part of the galaxy, and fortified them, turning that territory into the industrial heart of the Black Rebellion. At the same time, Separatist Loyalists had to race back home to put down localized droid uprisings. Meanwhile, the Republic military had to bull back to the Core to avoid being flanked and block possible Droid advance in that direction."
The map changed, showing a different galaxy – one at the height of the war, with only a single large section in the center marked as ravaged by combat. This image put things into perspective. Most core Separatist territories were far away from Fondor, which was on the far western edge of the Republic core. If that had become the primary base of operations for the local Skynet expires, it explained how the war had continued for so long, and why there was a Confederate Remnant to speak of. The Republic would have been unable to launch major offensive operations without neutralizing the rebelling droids first. That would have bought time for the Separatists to deal with any potentially disloyal droid units. It was also clear that their whole Droid military didn't rebel at the same time, or at all – the talk of loyalists units was loaded in that regard.
Winters rubbed his forehead and drank from his juice wondering how he would best describe the survivors of a war he could even now scarcely imagine. They would be more paranoid than the Soviets were right after WWII ended, and they held all the power here. That wasn't a good combination. Even worse, the enemy hadn't been vanquished for good, and everyone was preparing for round two.
The less said about Mandalore and his habit of destroying worlds, the better. Winters twitched at that thought, painfully recalling images of Bothawui. The dead world looked both intact, and so wrong in the aftermath, that it was hard to put it into words. You just knew something terrible had happened there even before someone explained the gritty details.