Chapter 7: The Confederacy will Rise Again

"The Confederacy of Independent systems may have been defeated, but its ideas remained despite the crackdown of the empire. In terms of propaganda, it was part of the imperial talking point while slandering the Separatists that they had valid points and that the empire was what was needed to fix those issues such as corruption. This created not sympathy but understanding for the Confederacy in the eyes of many in the Empire."

"The separatist's war machine was another matter. While the droid shutdown may have deactivated their army with some technical skills and a few hours were able to reactivate some units and while the continuation of the Confederacy would be in vain these reactivated fleets and armies would lay the core of Separatist holdouts that would harass the empire until its fall."

The Confederacy Rose again, a book by _

Garnizon II, Zoloch Sector

Zut Gorky looked out the window of his large headquarters building in the bustling city below. It was filled with people of many species, ages, and backgrounds, many employed in some way or another to fight the empire.

He had gained control of this place after the empire had been defeated on this world, and was responsible for administering half of the planet. After the sector had been conquered he and Johnson had decided what places would be governed by either his organization or Earth. Earth took control of the areas nearby its planet, one that it had conquered at the beginning of the war and wanted under its control to preserve its territorial integrity. Systems that the Free Confederacy had initially taken as it wanted to preserve its territories had been given to them and some systems were shared between both of their rules. Such as the system he was in right now, Garnizon.

There were simply many reasons why he had chosen Garnizon to be his administrative capital, it was fairly centrally located within both the Zoloch Sector and the territory that he had initially controlled (as he gained more and more worlds along with Earth, it became fewer centralized and more off to one side)

Additionally, the planet had a lot of significance both within the sector and to him personally. It had once been the place where he had begun his military service, a mere lieutenant in the world's planetary defense force, the Garnizon guard. He would not be here if he had made different choices, and they all corresponded with his choice to enter naval service.

There were several other good reasons outside those that were personal to him; Garnizon was the most economically productive world in the sector. It had a diverse economy made up of a combination of services, manufacturing, and orbital shipbuilding. The orbital shipyards could be seen in the orbit and were busy constructing and fitting out numerous different types of ships for both his and Earth's fleet.

He thought back to what he had said to the people of this world when he had just gained control of it, proclaiming that while sometimes flawed the ideas of the Separatists had had merit and that they held even more true now than what they had had in the days of the republic. The legacy of the separatists had not been fully erased here; even many Imperials saw the reasons for the world's defection to be failures of the republic which they tried to claim no longer existed. He had gotten the population to embrace contributing to his war effort, with tens of thousands volunteering for service with most serving in one-way shape, or form to this day.

He chuckled at the recollection. He was a charismatic speaker, one who could draw many to an ideology or idea with his oratory abilities. It had served him in high school speech and debate, the small pro-separatist revolution that he had ignited intending to align Garnizon's small local military to align with the Separatists, and in organizing the Free Confederacy after the Separatists fell.

His staff officer, Lieutenant Jiasnd Oplen entered the office, prepared to give the morning briefing. The fairly young Rodian had been from a family of spacefarers who had been detained by the Empire for being suspected rebels. Oplen had evaded detection and taken the freighter to Gorky after stumbling upon a battle that involved Gorky's forces, who had recruited the resourceful kid.

"Morning sir, are you ready for the brief?" He ask his superior, who nodded.

"Our forces have made good headway in the blank sector and we've solved the coordination issues with Illustrois's forces. She's in the process of upgrading a lot of her fleet to give them a bigger advantage over other imperial forces and will be ramping up her contribution to the invasion forces in the area."

"Good, any specific battles or skirmishes?"

"Elements of the 8th fleer were attacked in a system Hakis 2821 while refueling by an imperial force of a Star destroyer and a few escorts. We lost four Lupus missile frigates and had a number of our ships damaged in return for 3 imperial escorts destroyed, one captured, and the rest damaged. The Star destroyer suffered only light damage, unfortunately."

"Who was in command of that fleet? Wasn't it that newly promoted rear admiral, Klinkov?"

"Indeed sir he had taken command of the fleet mere minutes before the empire attacked," Oplen replied. "He is already saying that he accepts responsibility for the losses."

"Bantha poodoo!" Gorky replied. "He can't be responsible for something he just took command of mere minutes before. This was the exact reason I am sacking admiral Lenexa." Admiral Kingston Lenexa was the officer who had preceded Klinkov, an ancient fossil of a man who dated back to before the clone wars. He had been good in his day no doubt but he was getting too old for this kind of work and not up to speed on how the war had involved. Since

"You mean giving him early retirement?" Oplen said. The boy had a knack for playing politics.

"Yes yes that's what I mean," Gorky replied, sighing. "I just am glad that he's out of any real position of power. His medical reports indicated that something was going on, and his actions have certainly reflected that." He said. "What else?"

"A task force of the 9th fleet raided an Imperial convoy in system hash 1010 and destroyed or captured 7 Imperial freighters, with no ship losses and minimal losses in boarding parties. (this was mostly because droids were the primary combatants of the free confederacy both in space and on land). The raid on Imperial facilities in orbit of the KIalda system was successful and the forces engaged were able to severely damage a parked Star destroyer and half a dozen other ships. This indicates that the new long-range fighters that have been in the pipeline for quite some time are quite effective."

"Good, what else?" Gorky asked.

"Nothing else in space since the last briefing but there has been some significant action on land. The offensive on Lonin III has finally resumed its pace and our forces are moving rapidly to take the rest of the planet. Major battles are reported on Anandm IV and several other worlds, all of them favorable to us." Oplen said.

"Good," Gorky replied. "How are operations in the Ajans Sector?"

"No change since that last battle. We're getting a large amount of stuff from the fleet that was captured, this is some serious loot even divided three ways."

"Good," Gorky replied. "What about more civilian matters; like the production reports and are little democratic experiments."

"Well sir our production lines are going well, we have several cases of lines exceeding their quotas, and the people in supply and ordnance want to give the managers and workers bonuses."

"What do you think about giving them bones?" Gorky asked him. He was grooming the kid for future leadership roles, and he wanted Oplet to not just report on a site but offer commentary and insight.

"Well sir, I think that it's a good idea. It would motivate the workers and factory managers to be more efficient, though a system for preventing the quality of equipment coming out degrading should be put in place."

"That is a good idea, I will see that it is put into motion," Gorky said.

"The shipyards are prepared to commission several new vessels today, some of the standardized frigates and destroyers both Earth and soon Illustrious are putting into production. Today across all of our shipyards 3 destroyers and 3 frigates are being commissioned, of the new class."

"Good," Gorky replied. "What about the civilian administration?"

After both Earth and the Free Confederacy invaded Garnizon, systems were put in place to determine how each planet would be governed and run. It was decided that civilian affairs of the planet would mostly be organized by each planet with a government created by the planet to govern the planet. There were limitations; it had to be some form of democracy and Earth or the Free Confederacy had significant control over its elements of the planet related to war production and was able to requisition various amounts of supplies from the local population. All of this was helped by the fact that most systems had welcomed either Earth or the Free Confederacy as liberators due to how the empire had treated them, and the arrangement had mostly worked well for the time being, at least on most worlds.

"No issues reported there sir." He replied. The civilian government on Garnizon had been quite cooperative with him and Earth, which had meant that they could make maxim use o the resources in the world."

"Anything else I should be aware of, and what does my daily schedule look like for today?"

"Well sir there isn't anything else major that has happened in the past 24 hours, so that's the answer to your first question. As for your second, you first have a meeting with Admiral Peruna about the modernization program for some of our larger space combatants, I think the Munificencents and Recusants."

"Haven't we modernized those ships plenty already?" He asked. The Munificent Class Frigate and the Recusant Class Light Destroyer had both been staples of the Seperarist war effort during the clone wars and when the free confederacy was formed a number came into their hands. More and more had been salvaged from forgotten battlefields or even built-in secrets during the tel decades that the free confederacy had operated in the shadows, increasing their fleet size as they gained more of these evils than they lost.

Both designs had their strengths and weaknesses but they both required upgrades in some categories as the war continued. This included the addition of a lot of armor to their skeletal frame, more and bigger guns, better shielding and armor, and a larger dedicated hanger for the storage of small craft.

"What upgrades does she even want to add to these ships?"

"Nothing that hasn't been tried in the past, and what she does want are all incremental changes."

"What's your opinion on this Lieutenant?"

"I think that the resources used in this could be better used in other areas of the war effort, like building new ships. The increase in combat power for those ships would be minimal compared to building new ones."

"You have my agreement there," Gorky replied. "What else?"

"A meeting with the production staff about the bonus we talked about earlier, and after that a check-in with both feet and ground command on their plans for the future." He said. After that, there is a meeting with the civilian government, one of the usual of course. You have a press conference after that and those are all of the meetings you have today."

"Good, I don't need more paperwork." He replied. If there was any disadvantage to his current situation it was that he didn't have the freedom he once had when he was waging a guerilla war against the empire.

But he still wouldn't trade now for then, not in a thousand years. His fleets and armies were growing larger than he had ever imagined, from a ragtag group of a few hundred ships from the clone wars to an armada in the thousands, and one that was growing at a faster pace than it had ever had before. At this point, he was the largest and most powerful separatist holdout in the galaxy, though this was probably because many of these groups had been subsumed into the Alliance or were at least subservient to them.

Gorky might have allies, and he was willing to help them most certainly. But he was also subservient to no one, and while his soldiers and droids were fighting a war for their very survival by every metric they were winning. That was most certainly good, even if the war may turn in the other direction later on.

The Confederacy of Independent Systems may have had many flaws; it's ruled by predatory corporations who had an outsized influence over government, economy, and society, corruption, incompetence, and disunity, but it had arisen due to valid and legitimate circumstances that people had found themselves in. And it might have been defeated two decades ago, but that didn't mean it still didn't have sympathies across the galaxy. Sympathies ran especially deep in the Zoloch Sector, and they had not gone away in the past two decades under Imperial rule.

And now more progress has been made in the past year than in the past 20. And even if the spark would be snuffed out, it would resist till it could no longer.

The confederacy would rise again.