The two Noghri and Captain Ayur's group had both met with a rather large gang of heavily armed imperial stormtroopers. Jacen ignited his green bladed lightsaber and entered the exchange of fire. He deflected numerous blasts from the 'troopers as he backed up to where Ayur and his men were safely firing from. It was behind two large brick walls that were connected by an arch, all of which together held up a bridge walkway. They were sitting down against the wall, turning around and firing when the opportunity presented itself. The Noghri were in the heat of the battle, pouncing on the stormtroopers and taking them out by hand.
"Don't worry about the Queen," Jacen told Ayur. "My sister is taking care of them. She'll get them to safety!"
"I wasn't worried," Ayur admitted. "There's no one us Nubians trust more than Jedi!" He turned around and fired four rounds of laser bolts, taking a stormtrooper out with each one. Jacen could see why he was captain of the royal highnesses bodyguards. "Look at the way they're positioned," he told Jacen. "They're covering for someone. They're drawing the attention while someone - probably an Imperial official - gets to their destination!"
Jacen pushed down his open hand as if to say 'calm down'. "Alright! I'll take care of it!" He moved out from the protection of the brick wall and advanced his way towards the stormtroopers. He had fought them many a times before and was quite the expert at it.
Stormtroopers. The mere appearance of their helmet struck fear into the hearts of uncountable civilians and soldiers in uncountable systems. They were the iron will and iron fist of the Empire. The backbone of its exoskeleton. Clad in white armor, they were ready to take on many great opponents. But the one reason that the Empire survived, the one reason that they lasted twenty years was that the Jedi Order was extinct and that meant that the stormtroopers never fought a real enemy. While they may have been trained to handle the greatest of oppositions - smugglers, Rebels, warlords, droids, bounty hunters, pirates, and extremists - none of them were ever prepared to take on a Jedi Knight.
Jacen knew that with every fiber of his being. He moved fluidly, an expert duelist since three years old. The blaster bolts just seemed to dance off of his glowing blade like crackling sparks from an open flame. He cut the Imperial soldiers down as he went, stabbing some, slicing others. He rounded the corner as Ayur's group drew the Imperial fire.
The stormtrooper escort and whoever they were carrying were nowhere in sight. Jaina! He thought worriedly. With Force enhanced speed, he took off into the castle and up the stairs, but no one was seated at the table.
Stormtroopers! Jaina felt Jacen's thought as soon as he had thought it. She acted directly upon it. "Excuse me, sorry to break up the meeting but we've gotta move."
Leia turned to her daughter. "What's wrong?"
"Now I don't want to alarm any of you, but there are stormtroopers in the courtyard. We need to move you to a safer location. Is there someplace you know to be safe? Someplace where Captain Ayur could meet up with you at?"
The Queen thought for a second, surprisingly calm. She snapped her fingers as she thought of a place. "Underground! There's a large storage directly underneath the palace. Ayur and I only discovered it the other day!"
"Alright," Jaina said. "Let's move!"
Grand Admiral Therane and his twelve troop escort entered the underground warehouse from the back of the palace, just barely avoiding the Jedi Knight. "I did not realize there would be Jedi here," he said. "No matter. We are in here and with Skywalker we can escape! He will crush any opposing Jedi!"
The room was empty though. It was simply a gigantic, empty, metal room. "Sir," one of the troopers began.
"You think there is nothing in here," Therane said. "But it is not in this room. The warehouse was built underneath even this underground. Trooper, hand me your blaster."
The trooper handed him his E-11 BlasTech rifle. Therane used the sniper and aimed it. He pulled the trigger and fired. Where the blaster hit, rather than bouncing off the walls, an electro-magnetic pulse, revealing a door. "You see," Therane said cockily.
The troop commander turned to his fellow troopers. "Let's move out!" he barked, his speech ruffled by the voice synthesizer.
They moved towards the door. The commander kicked it open. Therane moved inside. Past the doorway there was a walkway extending to the left and to the right, then moving upwards and connecting again on the other side - about two hundred feet away. Below them was about a seventy foot drop. In the middle of the large room, and taking up most of it, was a huge generator powering everything inside the warehouse. "Well then," Therane said. "Let's go." They made their way towards the turbolift and took it down to the other level.
Once the turbolift dinged, signaling its landing, doors on either side opened up, giving them the opportunity to go to the room with the generator or a room full of other projects. Therane chose the room with the generator first. According to what his men could tell, the generator not only powered the warehouse, but was also a space capable combat ship. A miniature Dreadnaught of old. What was better was that it was capable of producing its own clones.
Inside the other room, Therane and his men found cloning formulas and enhancements, as well as readouts for a new class of Star Destroyers known as Supreme class. They were larger than the Super Star Destroyer. Readouts of the warehouse showed that it itself had the metal producing factory to contribute to building at least one of these and four Victory class Star Destroyers.
"I think," Therane said to his men, "that we may have struck gold."
