Entry Nineteen – Days after Geonosis, One Hundred Twenty-Seven
There has been a great victory. Anakin Skywalker and his Padawan Ahsoka Tano saved the life of Jabba the Hutt's huttlet Rotta and with assistance from Senator Amidala of Naboo exposed Ziro the Hutt as a Separatist conspirator. At long last the elusive alliance with the Hutt Clan has been secured.
One hundred and twenty-seven days. Such a short stretch of time to go from looking upon the Hutts as malevolent parasites draining the galaxy's life blood to cheering the announcement of an alliance with them. Truly, I actually did cheer. I jumped up from my desk when the news update played. Childish perhaps, but I cannot help but find joy at this. The Separatists will never be able to blockade all the shifting byways known to the Hutts. Supplies with get through again. The miserable shortages, and the lives they take away, will end, or at least ease.
Strange, mind-boggling truly, to think of how many lives depended upon the fate of a single huttlet. Such is the leverage the Hutts possess, the power to turn the tide of the war – and the incalculable riches they will obtain from choosing the victor – whichever way they desire. I suspect Jabba probably favored the Republic all along, he has centuries of experience in twisting Senators to obtain all he wishes, but the actions of Ziro indicate the existence of an almost equally potent faction seeking opportunity through drastic change. Frightening to think that even the Hutts suffer the same divisions we do.
I noticed something very strange as I traveled about this evening. This news seemed to have had a decidedly minimal impact here in the Bucket. The populace is hardly unaware, the various propaganda appendages wasted no time in plastering the announcement across every screen to celebrate Skywalker and Kenobi. Appropriate of them to limit Tano's exposure, a padawan does not need such distractions. Few cheers greet this. Instead there is generalized apathy, as if the war was something waged between two faraway states in the distant Outer Rim. Truthfully, I cannot say that this has not been my own reaction to certain news bulletins in the past. Indeed, perhaps my reaction to this specific incident comes only from my awareness of its consequences, and their highly personal impact.
I suspect that in certain ways this war is too large, too widespread for us to wholly grasp. Battles rage across a thousand star systems every day. Most can only be named properly if the observer has extensively studied astronomy, fewer still truly understood. In the grand strategic scheme of this war whole planets, perhaps whole sectors, are reduced to minor objectives, supply depots, and forward firebases. The underworld too may face such a relabeling in time. Military development projects have been modest so far, but with the supply routes open I suspect that will change, and swiftly.
How people will react I do not know, but the more time I spend down here the more my view has drifted towards Morne's. Development will bring with it significant disruption, that is certain, but these projects will also supply essential upgrades and replacements for neglected basic infrastructure, much of which itself has not been properly built since the last great crisis of the Republic a thousand years ago. After all my fungal nemesis would be never have become a problem in the first place is the air filtration equipment here met modern starship standards.
That it takes a terrible conflict to allow such advances serves as cruel commentary on the failures of those past thousand years. Can war heal us? Surely not, but it seems there will be positive side effects. It is very strange, especially as the impetus for these projects comes not from the Senate, but the Chancellor's Office.
For now I can only hope that Skywalker's heroism is a match for all that the HoloNet claims, and that the Hutts' routes prove decisive. Even a single day less of fighting is a victory.
Notes
Accordingly to the chronological listing of TCW episodes, the alliance with the Hutt Clan as portrayed in the TCW feature film is the first major event of the Clone Wars. Exactly when this happened is unclear, and the one hundred and twenty-seven days I have afforded to the war prior to this is entirely arbitrary. However, it does seem likely there was some delay. Notably, it is very strongly implied that Anakin has been on campaign for some time prior to meeting Ahsoka, and that he and Obi-wan had fought other battles prior to Christophsis.
The notation that the Jedi Council and the media limited Ahsoka Tano's public exposure seems reasonable given later events. Despite spending the better part of three years fighting beside the most famous Jedi in the galaxy, Ahsoka remained startlingly anonymous up to the very end of the war. Only a deliberate policy choice could account for this.
The general apathy of the Republic populace, and Coruscant's population specifically, to various Clone Wars events has been shown in other sources. I feel Nema's observation here is important – the conflict itself is so massive that the actual effects of any given battle are impossible to observe save through statistics. Nema has access to those statistics, at least with regard to the flow of medical supplies, but most people don't. There's an eerie current events parallel here, actually (this story was initially written 1st quarter 2020).