I ain't Lucas nor Takahashi.
I decided this work had to be updated since it hadn't won the large story poll for eight months. That's honestly not acceptable, and I will be trying to figure out a way to keep that from happening in the future. But wow, did this chapter fight me at first. For the first four days every time I tried to write out a scene, I would have trouble with it. After that, it seemed to click into place again, but that is definitely a sign that I can't let this story go eight months between updates.
Warning, this is a LARGE chapter. This is because if I split it off at the most natural point, the first chapter would be quite boring. And it has, again, been eight months since this story won the large story poll.
This has been edited by myself with Grammarly and Hiryo. Undoubtedly that means there will be mistakes, but I hope not enough to harm your enjoyment of the chapter.
Chapter 22: Good Guys Can Attack Too!?
Almost instantly after the battle ended, the work of the Consulars began. Luminara and Master Fay worked together, with Master Fay taking the lead on-planet and Luminara working on reaching out to nearby planets in order to work on bringing in humanitarian aid. Some of that was hard in coming, but there were planets nearby that could loan out some of their orbital resources, such as were mobile at any rate.
This would not only aid the locals but, yes, take advantage of the metal core of Jabiim. Yet Luminara was very firm that there would be no long-term deals struck. The work being done would be a quid pro quo trade. There would be no price gouging or profiteering. That was hard to stomach for many, but thanks to her Jedi status Luminara got her way eventually with each planet she contacted. Not easily, however.
Her job was made worse due to the fact that one of the things both Fay and Luminara agreed on was the necessity of bringing in a true weather control system, the sort that many Core Worlds had. With that, perhaps the locals would be able to pull themselves out of the mud. Yet they were atrociously expensive and finding someone willing to forward the satellites, minerals, ships and other materials needed to build one was going to be an ongoing job.
At the same time, Master Fay was having trouble with the locals, as she tried to talk them through creating a new government. What members of the governmental ruling body hadn't fled during the plague had mostly been killed in the uprising. Those few that remained alive and off-world were held in severe contempt from the people and would never be trusted by the locals to "pour mud out of a boot," as one of the local newspapers put it. Considering the nature of Jabiim, that was a particularly amusing image.
And Fay agreed with them. Anyone who had fled the planet during the outbreak of the plague could not be allowed to retain their office. It showed moral turpitude to her that was simply unfathomable.
Worryingly, all this meant the remaining terrorists were the most organized body of locals left. But one of the main things that Fay wanted was to make certain that the local government was representative in nature, rather than a niche group as it would be if she relied on the terrorists who had surrendered. So, she was left to use her Force powers to figure out what was needed and how to go about getting it, as well as find enough people to fill out all the posts that needed filling.
Thankfully despite the fact that her rescue had resulted in the decimation of the Free Jabiim Movement (FJM) Master Fay was still popular. She was still the woman who had single-handedly beaten the brain rot plague aside. And only the most rabid anti-Jedi member of even the FJM thought she had anything to do with the violence that broke out at the debate between her and Alto Stratus. Indeed, many of them had been angry and worried when she had been imprisoned even if they didn't argue with it. So, she was making some decent headway.
Ranma, Shaak, and their crew didn't have much to do with those talks, for the most part, something everyone involved was happy for. Aayla was the exception. She helped out Master Fay occasionally, being her spokeswoman here and there thanks to empathy, but for the most part, Kit guarded Master Fay's back.
By mutual consent, the rest of the crew remained aboard the Wild Blade in orbit. Part of the reason for this was because that would save them a good 15 minutes of scramble time, in case they had to go into action to defend the planet from another attempt from the Separatists to take the planet. The main reason though was the planet was freaking depressing.
"I wish I could say otherwise. It is a very rare planet that does not have some hidden beauty. But in the case of Jabiim, what can you say other than that the planet is a veritable mudball wrapped around a steel ball bearing?" Aayla quipped at one point, earning a laugh from the others. The Jedi, even Barriss and Ahsoka, occasionally attempted to find something about the planet that hid some small facet that could make the planet more attractive. They didn't find anything. Perhaps in the future, that would change. But right now, an entire planet buried under mud and rain was just lacking in any intrinsic beauty.
Ranma didn't even try to look. He was perfectly content to stay a 'he' as much as possible, thank you. This meant no trips down into the endless torrents of rain, more rain, and oh yes, rain. Which didn't even mention the mud. Which was even worse than the rain for nearly everyone who had to deal with it.
Leaning back in his chair in the cockpit two days after Fay's rescue, Ranma rolled his eyes as he stared at a Separatist spokesman. The Confederacy had finally learned about what had happened here on Jabiim and they were responding extremely poorly. "Does anyone really believe this Bantha shit? Honestly, it feels as if my brain cells are dying the longer I watch."
"Does anyone believe anything a politician says?" Ahsoka asked, rolling her eyes from where she was meditating on the floor to one side of the cockpit. Shaak and K'Kruhk were sparring in the back with Janice having called the winner and Cro wanting to fight after that.
But Shaak had decided that Ahsoka needed more meditation work. "She seems to be enjoying Dun Möch far too much in my opinion while not being very good at dealing with it when it is turned on her," Shaak had said before sending her up to the cockpit with Ranma. "Perhaps a few days learning patience and control will help."
Ranma had merely laughed at that, but he had also backed away when Shaak looked at him. Ahsoka was her padawan, and he knew that for Jedi Dun Möch was a mostly Sith combat technique. So he had worked with her on a few Yoga katas, which he always thought were good for mediation, and then started to watch the news feed from the Hypercom.
"So cynical and at so young an age," Ranma replied, reaching over to poke at her montral. She batted his hand away before it came close without even opening her eyes, and he smiled. "Your sixth sense is getting better."
"You mean my Force Sense," she said still without opening her eyes. When Ranma unmuted the radio, however, she opened her eyes and looked at the image appearing in the screen, a fierce frown on her young face.
On the screen were a group of four hundred or so senators, all shouting for attention in the Senate during an extremely rare recorded session. Which only meant that everyone was attempting to grab as much screen time as possible. "And we of the peace-loving Separatist movement deride and denounce the actions of the Jedi Order for their unilateral assault on the true, elected government of Jabiim. It is no less than an act of war!"
"Senator Ga'Taku shouts that as if the terrorists," another Senator interrupted, emphasizing the last word, "hadn't kidnapped and unlawfully incarcerated Master Fay of the Jedi!"
"She would have been released eventually. And what was the Jedi doing there anyway, right as the planet was trying to come to a memorandum on their inclusion in the Republic? That smacks far too much of collusion and political suppression for any right-thinking mind to ignore! Be warned, we of the Separatists will not allow this, this hostile takeover of Jabiim to stand. The Free Jabiim Government asked for inclusion in the Separatists movement and was accepted into our party. And we take care of our own!"
"Oh dear, that, that goes a bit beyond the normal posturing," Ahsoka muttered. "Um… are you recording?"
"Tune?" Ranma asked, looking over at the astromech droid, who beeped a negative.
"Helpful interjection: the young meatbag is right. I believe that the Separatists are going to use the violent rescue of Master Fay as a cause for war. If they do, then Jabiim will become a flashpoint. Giddy addition: Most excellent!"
Ranma scowled. "Damn it. I suppose we do need to start thinking about how our actions can be taken by the galaxy at large and especially in light of this bigger question. HK, you think we played into someone's plans here?" As far as Ranma was concerned, the war was already here, but he didn't want to see the galaxy going up in flames either.
"Analytical Response: It is doubtful, master. While the mysterious Sith might have been able to move forces into a position to take advantage of this, it is doubtful they thought there would be a successful assault, let alone a complete reversal as you have created here. Master Fay might well have fallen into a trap, but she was not, in turn, a lure for us in particular. No one knew of our movement, and we are not being tracked at this time. Rueful addition: Trust me, I am making most certain this ship is not emitting any unusual signals or energy readings after the Wedding Disaster."
"Good thinking," Ranma and Ahsoka said as one, before looking at one another and sharing a laugh.
"That doesn't sound like meditation to me," Shaak's voice reached them from the main sitting room, causing Ranma to laugh harder and Ahsoka to bite her lip to keep from joining him.
A moment later though their levity went away as Ranma leaned back, putting his feet up on the console. "Still, HK, how many of those sensor buoys do we have?"
The Techno Union had apparently brought in enough sensor buoys to coat the system in them in order to help them defend the planet. They had been stored on the planet, in order to link them into the planetary data net, which had never before had to handle such an immense demand and had subsequently broken down while Fay was a prisoner. That had forced the Techno Union forces to use their Vulture fighters as they had when the Wild Blade attacked.
The Wild Bladecould handle the telemetry of about seven of those buoys at a time. With Tune's help, Ranma, Janice, and Shaak Ti emplaced the buoys in groups of five, spread out in the hyperspace belt of the system, the area around the sun's gravity limit where ships most commonly could hyperjump in. This took about two days, but on the third day, it paid off.
"Warning we have incoming hyperjumps on a least-time course from Alliga!" Tune's voice blared out. "Five of them, all medium weight ships judging by the size of the hyperspace flares."
Barely twenty seconds after he shouted the warning, Ranma and Shaak were on the bridge, tossing on their clothing as they did. They'd been enjoying some 'us' time in their room just then since Aayla was on Jabiim at the moment. "HK, what've we got?" Ranma asked while Shaak was repeating Tune's warning, informing everyone that there might be enemies inbound and to get ready to launch fighters.
Instantly upon waking up, HK had hooked himself into the sensor equipment, which was connected to those buoys. Behind him, Janice rushed onto the cockpit with K'Kruhk to see what was going on as HK began to intone, "Analysis: Tune was correct. We have five capital ships incoming, all medium weight ships. Energy and weight readings indicate two of them are of the Munificent class, which we have already faced here, and three others. Intrigued aside: Since the other hyperspace footprints are of the same size, it looks as if the Lucrehulk we fought over Jabiim before is not part of this flotilla. Interesting. Sneering aside: I would assume the meatbags aboard have learned the true extent of their valor."
HK then paused, as the Wild Blade sped out-system to intercept the incoming vessels. "Professional announcement: The three unknown ships are staying behind the two cruisers. They are also launching fighters. A moment please."
The others waited, and then HK intoned, "Professional elaboration: I have a match for those ships Master. They are a revamped version of the smaller trade Federation ship that we faced over Zonama Sekot, Captor class freighters. Slightly larger than that one, each of those would be able to place at least a full brigade's worth of infantry droids on the surface and have a half wing of Vulture fighters. The Munificent class would only add a further 12 starfighters each to their numbers."
"…That… is a lot of starfighters," Sergeant Cro said from the doorway, where he and Janice were watching the screen, frowning in professional concern, not fear. "I don't think we can stand against that number of starfighters in open combat, not without surprise on our side."
"HK, do you think you could use your taunting attack on them like before?" Ranma asked.
"Annoyed tone: I do not think so master. Enough time has passed since that last battle for our opponents to create a defense against such and that last Lucrehulk survived too. The more enemies that survive, the more the enemy can learn of our tactics, as you well know."
"So, the starfighters are going to be the real problem," Shaak murmured. The three ships launching most of those starfighters wouldn't have enough offensive punch to matter to the Wild Blade. And the two Munificent cruisers, while excellent warships, were honestly not good enough to match the Wild Blade. Their main offensive punch was the giant twin turbolaser cannons that thrust forward from their skeletal-looking main body, working with a smaller pair of ion cannons, the totality of those weapons taking up a goodly portion of their mass. Those made them dangerous against other capital ships, like the Wild Blade.
But the Wild Blade was, while just as large as the Munificent class, was far more maneuverable. The ship had heavier defenses in terms of shields and armor, as they had proven in the battle over Jabiim. The Wild Blade also had just as much power to a point as the Munificent. They could knockout shielding and then disrupt the shielding entirely for a capital ship with almost frightening speed.
"Regardless of whether or not we can use the taunting trick, we can probably use electronic warfare on the Vultures to break up their ability to work together. Droid Cant is very susceptible to disruption of all sorts," Tune interjected.
"And no matter how grim this fight looks, it's not one we can run away from. And we need to stop those capital ships at least, we can't let them land troops." So saying, Ranma grinned wolfishly. "Get to your fighters folks, we're going in."
Since the Wild Blade had been in orbit, and the newcomers had come in at the outer edge of the hyperspace bubble, they had about 45 minutes at combat speed before the battle was joined. This was more than long enough for Aayla to rejoin the ship and for the Wild Blade to launch its own starfighters. The Mandalorian Flashfists and the Sekotan starfighters along with the Sprite being piloted by Aayla fell in behind the battlecruiser.
As the two forces sped towards one another it was quite obvious from the get-go that their opponents had indeed learned from the earlier battle. The two Munificent class ships spread out from one another as they came in obviously intent on keeping their distance and lobbing in long-range blasts from there twins turbolaser, moving to envelop the cone of space the Wild Blade was currently passing through. At the same time, the starfighters roared straight in, trying to envelop the Wild Blade from three angles. There were at least two wings of seventy-two starfighters each from the three small carriers, with another squadron of twelve being added into the Force from the Munificent ships.
Looking at the attacking force, Ranma smirked, then gestured downwards. "Down and around that smaller asteroid planet I think," he said into the intercom. "Follow us in, as close as possible but hold back your torpedoes for now."
Ranma then looked over to Shaak and gestured with his head against the flap on the back of his chair. That flap held the synaptic hood and judging from the number of enemies coming at them, Ranma felt the added reaction time would be worth it.
After a moment's thought, Shaak nodded, and the two of them pulled their hoods over their heads. Ranma had to concentrate a brief second to pull back his ki, allowing the synaptic fibers to slip into his skin and connect him directly to the ship. His body jolted a brief second as he felt the ship's gestalt, the animal-like intelligence form by the dozens of seed-partners wash over him, accepting his control like a horse would the bridle, then felt Shaak there, the gestalt linking them together as well somehow. Surface feelings and thoughts flashed across that synaptic link and two became one.
"Ready the Dovin Basal, Ahsoka," Shaak said, her voice a dull monotone to Ranma's ears in comparison to the thoughts he was sensing through this temporary link. "We are going to need it soon enough. Power to shields and engines, waiting to divert power back to the weapon systems on command."
"Then here we go," Ranma said, his own voice almost dull to Ahsoka's ears, causing her to look between them in confusion.
She hopped to her feet and stuck her head over their chairs, only then seeing the hoods they were now wearing. "Gah. Right, ship is alive and able to bond with them. Eesh. Hearing that was one thing, seeing it another."
Shaak allowed a chuckle out at that, the sound almost sepulchral in the confines of her hood, and Ahsoka held back a very un-Jedi like shiver. "I suppose we do look frightening, but it is necessary padawan."
Just as the initial wave of Vulture fighters were about to hit them, the Wild Blade veered off, heading downwards at such a harsh angle, it looked as if the ship had stopped on a dime. This allowed the two Munificent class to range on them, but Ranma dodged them through their fire with ease, holding their own fire until they were within range.
Besides being more powerful than normal, those twin turbolasers had greater range than the normal variety. But the Munificents had not realized how fast the Wild Blade was, nor had they realized the Jedi and their allies could use a gravity well to speed them up.
Moments later, they used the gravity of the small planet as a slingshot, slamming up and through a side of Vulture swarm which had spread out across the space in order to cover them from any angle. Spreading out like that had weakened the Vultures at the point of impact and behind the Wild Blade, Aayla and the other starfighter pilots roared out, peeling off and away. Their job wasn't to take on either of the two Munificents. That was the job of the Wild Blade. Their job was to kill starfighters and defend the larger ship as best they could from the pinpricks of the Vultures.
"Verbal snarl: Knowing that I am fighting other droids does makes this far less fun for me Master. Could we perhaps find some meat actual meatbags to fight next time? And someplace on the ground so I can see their bodies explode so enjoyably?"
"I don't know, fighting droids is much less messy for me," Ranma said with a laugh that the hood made sound almost sinister to Ahsoka's ears. "Still, that sort of why we're here, we need Master Fay's help to find our target among the data from Ossus. So hopefully in the near future I suppose?"
Even as the two of them bantered, the Wild Blade was taking fire from the Vultures. Even as maneuverable as their ship was, there were just too many starfighters around them, for Ranma to dodge everything that came at them. He dodged about ninety percent of the fire, which for a ship the size of the Wild Blade was beyond impossible, but even so, they were getting hit.
But those starfighters were dying in turn. The Vultures, while incredibly maneuverable and able to hit hard, still lacked in terms of defense. Yet they were low-cost, low maintenance, and there were a lot of them.
"I feel we should get used to this," Shaak said, sighing faintly in her hood as another blast from a Vulture fighter got through to their shielding before the Vulture in question died under the fire of one of the Mandalorian-made Flashfists, three hits from the Mandalorian starfighter's laser cannons taking it out, while Wild Blade's own shielding did not so much is shiver from the hit.
"Probably," Ranma said with a shrug as he slewed the ship to one side, dodging a turbolaser blast from one of the Munificents. "Does it really matter?"
"Tactically not so much, but strategically it does," Shaak replied authoritatively. "Vultures are not just a tactical weapon Ranma, they are a strategic one. How many planets would roll over for the attack like this, which is quite small if you think about it. We are facing barely a division's worth of capital ships. Put together with the ships we destroyed we have faced a single flotilla if that."
Ranma frowned at that but had to concede the point. She was right. For a polity the size of the Separatists, this was a tiny force. Furthermore they weren't facing even a single Lucrehulk, the true battleships of the enemy, or supercarrier whichever term you wanted to use.
Ranma grimaced then as more hits got through the shielding. This early in the fight the fact we're getting hit at all is not a good sign. But then they were out into open space racing towards one of the Munificent class ships, far faster than the enemy ship could pull away and still keep firing at them.
A blazing bolt of energy flashed out from the twin turbolasers at the front of the ship, but Ranma rolled the Wild Blade to the side, showing the adroit speed and reaction time of a starfighter in something size of a cruiser.
But we hit like a battlecruiser bitches, he thought to himself with a grin as a zoomed forward along the side of the Munificent. At the same time, he felt the gestalt's 'mind' if such a word was applicable suddenly concentrate, like a predator about to pounce. The ship hadn't seemed to care about the Vultures dying under its fire, they were beneath its notice, but the Maleficent was large enough to be prey. Heh, time to show them our real fangs.
The enemy cruiser's anti-fighter weapons began to fire, quad cannons, lasers, light turbolasers, and even flak guns, but Ranma didn't even bother to dodge them. Instead, he trusted in their shielding, skewing the front of the ship around to bring their own weapons to bear on the side of the enemy vessel. Four blasts from the plasma cannons lashed out, slamming into the Munificent class's shields, and then several bolts from their ion cannon lanced through under Shaak's command. So accurate was her fire that the ion cannon bolts hit precisely the same point of the shield as the plasma cannons, causing them to flicker.
Then they were past, Ranma sending the ship down underneath the enemy capital ship before gunning the engines, zooming past it towards the three smaller carriers in the distance. They had kept the range open, spreading out but that wasn't going to save them. The only thing that could have was jumping to hyperspace, but they were too deep into the system's gravity well for that.
Behind him, one of the Nova Guard in a Flashfist got in a lucky blow on that ship, two paired concussion missiles slipping under their shielding before it could reconstitute itself. Those missiles blew large chunks of the skeletal ship to pieces, once more showing the weakness of the design. An instant later the power of that entire quadrant of the ship died out, shields and weapons both.
The sorely wounded vessel desperately tried to bring its main guns to bear again on the racing Wild Blade, skewing around in a sharp turn. But the Wild Blade was too mobile and now going too fast for the wounded ship's captain to lock on. And the other Munificent hadn't turned fast enough to bring its own guns to bear again on the wildly maneuvering living ship.
"Our starfighters have taken some hits, Shaak murmured from her own place in the gestalt. She was controlling the main guns and watching the overall battle, letting Ranma handle the flying.
"Time until the shields recharge on the Flashfists?" Ranma asked.
"Fifteen to twenty seconds and the Sekotan starfighters also need time to rebuild the Living Force in their hulls. A change of tactics is necessary, I feel." Ranma nodded, and the Wild Blade slowed, letting the starfighters fly past them and Shaak intoned, "Ahsoka ready on the Dovin Basal. We're going to be under fire for a bit. Aayla, Janice, Cro. Everyone, link your flight data to us."
With the job of protecting their starfighters, the range of movement the Wild Blade could pull off shrank noticeably. Not enough for the Munificents to take advantage of, but enough for the Vultures, who were much closer, to lock them up and fire their concussion missiles.
The Vulture fighters which had been on their tail instantly shifted targets to the Wild Blade en-masse, hammering it from behind in several and from the sides with their guns. More than a dozen launched concussion missiles, but Ahsoka was ready. Each time she sensed a concussion missile coming close she used the Dovin Basal, the organic weapon shooting out tiny little black holes, which would absorb the missiles or redirect them with its gravity.
More than two squadrons of Vultures died, as Ranma twisted this way and that to bring their quad cannons to bear. But even so, the shields of the Wild Blade began to dim noticeably, shifting from the green into the yellow as three concussion missiles impacted their shields along with numerous laser blasts. Thanks to the overlapping nature of their shields that was all though and the lower layer of the shields started to regain energy even as the battle continued.
Still keeping an eye on the overall battle Shaak hissed a warning as the second Munificent class twisted around enough to bring them into range again of its twin-barreled turbolasers. But Ranma was already moving, juking the ship upwards hard, so hard it pressed all of them back into their seats and the ship nearly stood on its tail. The blast from the massively heavy turbolasers passed directly underneath them, and then Ranma was arcing the ship back down into the line of the beam, using it for a split second before rolling backward out of the way again as HK and Shaak between them shredded another nine Vultures before blasting six more into dust.
From her own cockpit, Aayla had kept one eye on the ongoing battle behind her with a faint smile of approval on her face. That warship really is an incredible piece of work.
However, she had her own part in this battle to concentrate on despite her Force powers. "Here we go folks," she said, having taken the lead among the starfighters from one of the Mandalorians. Kad Solus was an incredible starfighter pilot, but had never actually led a squadron before this, and Janice was most decidedly a ground pounder. She could fly well enough, but she ran into problems in space, always having trouble keeping an eye on where her troops were while also flying her starfighter.
With Aayla in the lead dodging incoming fire from the carrier, the twelve starfighters from the Wild Blade streaked in on the first carrier, hammering its shields, but waiting to launch their proton torpedoes, the true ship killers of the starfighters. Dancing around it, they waited until the Vulture fighters became aware of the threat to their motherships, and were ordered back to defend it, then Aayla ordered them to disengage, twisting around and away.
Again, their own fighters began taking hits. Sergeant Cro's starfighter, a Flashfist, had lost his shielding completely, the generator blown to bits. Despite that Cro was able to get away, and the Wild Blade too had begun to put distance between themselves and the second Munificent class and the majority of the Vulture fighters streaking out of the swarm at the space equivalent of a dead sprint, all power to engines and shields, leading the swarm out in a curve away from the starfighters and their real target.
The starfighters meanwhile closed on the second carrier, which had been quite a way's distance from the first. Aayla reflected this showed the lack of true military experience among their enemies. They had thought that distance from the fight and from one another would defend them better than relying on overlapping fields of fire.
Here, Aayla and the other starfighter pilot started to take serious hits, since many of the Vulture fighters ignored the Wild Blade, and cut the angle on them, as they closed with the second carrier. But Aayla still ordered the Flashfists to launch their concussion missiles, launching her own proton torpedoes in pairs the instant she had target lock on the enemy capital ship. The flashing lights of the second carrier's shield pulsed into the visible spectra, then popped out of existence. Two more concussion missiles slammed in, then a third, then a fourth.
The shields of the enemy carrier went down entirely, its shield generator exploding in an actinic flare of fire that was quickly snuffed out by. Then the Wild Blade turned back, racing straight towards the wounded vessel. Even as the Vultures around it continued to hammer the shields of the living vessel, its ion cannon and plasma cannons flashed down into the carrier from above.
An instant later, Sergeant Cro peeled off, and launched his remaining concussion missiles down into the heavily wounded ship. It exploded an instant later, the missiles having hit its engine somewhere.
"Yes!" Ranma shouted. "One down four to go."
"I need a pickup," Cro said, his voice crackly in the pickup. "My ship is done for and I don't know how long it's even going to stay together!" One small wing of the Flashfist was gone, his weapons cone had been torn away, and he was now running on emergency power.
"Roger that Cro, keep going on a straight line then eject, we will pull ahead of you and let you into the hatch," Shaak ordered.
Cro and the Wild Blade weren't able to dock. That was the one problem with the Wild Blade, taking on ships was extremely slow, and could not be done in combat.
This forced Cro to abandon his mauled fighter. Instead, he used his Nova Guard style pair spacesuit's thrusters to push himself out into space, using a transponder to tell the Wild Blade where he was, waiting for the ship to pick him up.
Slowing like that allowed the Vultures to close, and another dogfight erupted as the other starfighters went to work defending their fellows. Aayla and the others bought them a bit of time and soon, Cro was onboard, and the Wild Blade twisted around, roaring back towards the undamaged Munificent class. By the time they did though, the remaining starfighters were damaged and their shields were down, possibly permanently.
And of course, the Wild Blade itself also took several hits, including four concussion missiles in quick succession just as Cro entered the hatch. "Professional report: Our shields are entering the red now master. We will not be able to recharge them without rerouting all power to them for a time," HK intoned.
"I know," Ranma said grimly. "We don't have surprise on our side this time, and despite I think being as green as grass, whoever is on the other side is learning fast."
"Indeed," Shaak murmured looking at the tactical display as they passed through one side of the wing of Vulture fighters out towards the unwounded Munificent once more. It was already pulling back, doing so slowly, moving backward in order to keep its main guns to bear once more in the battle. a single hit from that weapon would probably short out their remaining shields, but if they could avoid it that didn't really matter.
Ranma twisted their ship around again in a vast arc over the enemy ship watching as the Munificent class tried desperately to follow the maneuver. "He's good," Ranma murmured. "It's a pity, really."
As he thought that, the Munificent class twisted along its length rolling and continuing to roll even as the Wild Blade started the fire on it. Why you clever bastard!"
"Language!" Shaak's growled out, reaching over to slap his shoulder. "I fully understand that in some ways you will corrupt my padawan, but language will not be one of them."
Ranma blinked, then nodded, apologizing in a low tone even as Shaak went on. "But you're right, that was very quick!"
The Munificent class was twisting so that as the Wild Blade tried to fire on it, no one quadrant of shielding took the hits it had to in order to knock that area's shields down. It was an incredibly good move, and it also allowed more of the defensive guns of the Munificent class to also range one after another.
Even so, the Munificent wasn't able to stop the Wild Blade from getting in behind it entirely. From there a fusillade of their primary weapons under Shaak's directions knocked out the shielding around its engines.
She only had an instant to get in two paired proton torpedoes and the engines were still active as the Wild Blade pulled away, while the first Munificent class they'd tangled with tried to come in behind them, its own weapons lashing out.
Ranma had almost been too focused on their current opponents to see it coming, but Shaak had kept her eyes open, and warned him through their connection to the ship just in time for the Wild Blade to skitter to the side to avoid the turbolaser blasts.
However, the starfighters were done. Even with the Vultures now almost entirely focused on the Wild Blade They had taken a horrendous pounding near misses. Their weapons were gone for the most part, but part of the reason why the Flashfist design had been chosen was that the pilot's cockpit was separated from everything else and the ship could retain life support and engines for a time after taking a dangerous amount of damage. The Sekotan starfighters had also taken too much damage, overcoming their ki-reinforced durability.
Noticing this Shaak ordered, "Pull out Aayla, Janice. You all are too battered to do any more good here. Retreat to Jabiim's orbit and make what repairs you can." That would be minimal at best since the planet had next to no orbital industry. Or any industry at all given the conditions on the planet.
"We will in just a second," the other Jedi replied grimly, twisting around and zooming forward.
The original Munificent that had been wounded by the Wild Blade previously had come too close in order to line up the perfect shot on the Wild Blade. Now it found itself under fire from the starfighters. Normally this wouldn't have been a problem, the Munificent class was an excellent all-around platform. Even if it did somewhat specialize in ship killing it had more than enough defensive weaponry to see off a single squadron of mangled starfighters.
But the Wild Blade's earlier depredations had left an entire side of the ship without power, its weapons on that side dead, it's shielding nonexistent. The shielding from the rest of the ship was unable to cover that area as strongly, and a second later failed, as the remaining starfighters launched their remaining concussion missiles and proton torpedoes at once.
It wasn't at a single target, that would've broken the back of the Munificent class easily. Instead, it was a rolling fire that did even more damage across its surface than the Wild Blade's initial attack.
Suddenly, the engines of the ship faltered, the lights all along it going out, as it started to go into an uncontrolled spin, end over end. "That's it, their gravities gone!" Ranma muttered, shaking his head. "I hope they were prepared for it."
Even at the speed a capital ship moved, if the internal inertia dampeners went out, that was going to kill a lot of people.
With that done, the starfighters peeled away, Aayla leading them to use the gravity of a nearby gas giant to slingshot themselves deeper into the system in a reverse of the move they had used earlier to get below the attackers. They got away clean, but their ships were more slag than fighting vessels at this point.
That Munificent class was out of action, and that left the carriers and the other Munificent class. One of the carriers was completely unmolested, the other had damaged shielding but nothing more, and the third had been almost shattered, its primary engines down. The last Maleficent though, while it had been battered, was still very much in the fight.
The Wild Blade twitched then as the shields failed, utterly. They were down for now. "Reel in the shield nacelles!" Like the ship's weapons bar the quad lasers, the shield nacelles, or generators, could be pulled back into the corral-steel hull.
Shaak complied, while Ranma began to move the ship even more wildly. Under her orders the shield generators slowly shifted position as she watched a diagram of the ship showing them being pulled underneath the armor of the ship itself.
What followed after that was an even harsher battle, as more starfighters were launched from the carriers. The two still able to move had formed up again, and then retreated entirely away from the fight, even jumping away at one point in a small hyperjump to place themselves on the opposite side of the system from the ongoing battle when the Wild Blade moved in their direction.
The Wild Blade took hit after hit from the Vultures but continued to dodge the more deadly twin turbolasers of the Munificent class, which just as grimly kept the range open as much is it possibly could. And when it could not, the enemy captain used that same rolling maneuver in order to spread out the damage the Wild Blade could do.
One on one, that still wouldn't have saved the ship, the Munificent class was good. This captain was better. But the Wild Blade was on a whole different level especially with Ranma doing the driving and Shaak and HK the shooting.
But the Vultures continued to prove the difference, swarming over the ship from every direction, hit upon hit getting through even as they died, in their dozens. More and more came in, more hits began to go home, and for the first time since its creation, the ship began to feel pain. Ranma and Shaak felt it, felt it through the Force for Shaak and through the gestalt of their connection for both of them. The ship's animal mind roused itself further, keening in pain as the reinforced armor began to fail.
"Easy," Shaak murmured, pushing out her mind into the gestalt, soothing it as she would a wild beast. "This is war. This is what you were built for. No warrior can go into battle without thinking he will not feel pain. And you are a true warrior, you will bear the pain and you will survive to strike back." That seemed to work, and the feeling of the ship shifted to something like grim purpose and wrath rather than pain and growing worry.
Eventually perhaps the starfighters would've worn the Wild Blade down but their speed still allowed them to close occasionally with the Munificent. And soon after the ship began to feel pain Ranma whooped euphoria flooding their synaptic link, as the shielding on one segment of the Munificent class failed.
Shaak instantly popped in a few proton torpedoes, unable to range with her ion cannons. They slammed into the ship causing explosions underneath the shielding, and as Ranma sloughed the Wild Blade around again, the Wild Blade began to finally get into an area of the Munificent class that could hurt it.
But then he had to dodge away as two Vultures tried to actually ram their ship. That let the Munificent class tear away, instantly rolling and zooming away as fast as he could. But still, the Wild Blade was on his heels, ignoring the ongoing attacks from the Vulture fighters now, taking the hits they could dish out in order to try and finish the larger ship. Their continued attacks caught the Munificent class right on the aft shielding, collapsing it, and soon, its shielding failed.
However, at the same time warning began to flare once more through the connection Ranma and Shaak had with the ship. The Dovin Basal was out of the energy needed to form the small black holes it shot out, and both quad lasers had just been blasted away.
Even so, Ranma knew they had just won this fight. Even as he watched, the Munificent class was pulling away, diverting all of his energy to its engines and its few remaining shields, as it raced for the hyperspace limit.
"We have lost all shielding, we have lost both Quad guns, aft gun is off-line, Dovin Basal is down," Ahsoka intoned, shaking her head. "We can move, and we have at least one plasma cannon left, and if I'm reading this right, one of the others is repairing itself?"
"I love this ship," Ranma said, patting the control panel in front of him companionably. "It still has enough internal energy to be able to do that. What about the shields, can we push out the shield nacelles again?"
Shaak worked her controls, and then nodded. "They're back to sixty-five percent, and I think we need them," she said even as the ship continued to take punishment from the Vultures. They had paired away much of its armor, and most of its weaponry at this point, but its engines were still well-defended, not having taken any direct hits.
"Damn," Ranma muttered, having taken over the tactical layout from Shaak for a second as she ordered the ship to push out the shield nacelles again. "He really is running."
"Of course, he…" Shaak blinked, then looked at her own readout. "He's running for the hyperspace limit. He's willing to let the Vultures finish this fight if they can entirely. Well…drat."
"He should've done that from the start," Ranma said shaking his head. "It would have been the death of a million pinpricks, but it would've worked. Damn it, I hate letting smart enemies get away."
"If we chase him, the Vultures will pick us to death," she warned. "Our shields are barely above half strength, our armor is cut to ribbons, and we don't have any weapons except for the one working magma launcher. We need to get this ship some resources so it can repair itself, not try to…" she broke off as the readout from sensor buoys blinked at her.
"Well now," she said smiling beatifically, "ask, and the Force shall provide."
As the Maleficent had begun to fall back five ships had emerged from hyperspace. But these were not the same type as the Techno Union ships that had just been attacking them. No, these were katana class cruisers. Two of them instantly went full bore on their engines, moving to intercept the Munificent class before could get to the hyperspace limit. Ranma did the math, and realized they would be able to, breathing a sigh of relief even as he gunned the engines forward. The other three had come out and then within an instant micro-jumped directly on top of the two remaining carriers. They instantly took them under fire, pounding their shields down within a bare minute as Ranma watched, forcing their surrender.
By that point, Ranma was on the intercom shouting into it, "Munificent class, you are outgunned, cut off from any escape. Surrender, order your fighters to power down. You will be treated honorably, and in accordance with the laws of the Republic. You fought one hell of a fight, don't go down with your ship."
"And what will happen to my ship?" came the instant response. "To my men? I am unfamiliar with what rights we are allowed to have in times of war.?"
"I am Jedi Master Shaak Ti," Shaak cut in." We were here to rescue our own and remain to make certain that there is a democratic government instead of a tyrannical one-party system on Jabiim. We will treat your crew as we have with the same respect we have given our own-planet prisoners, so long as they do not attempt open revolt. As Ranma said, you fought well. There is no dishonor in surrender at this point."
For a moment the other man fell silent, then he replied simply my name is "I am Captain Pors Tonith of the Banking Clan. I will have your word as a Jedi, that my men will be given all rights and treated according to Republic law, and I request the right to scuttle my ship."
"You may scuttle your ship captain and the other Maleficent. But you cannot scuttle the damaged carriers," Shaak said before Ranma could speak up. "Nor can you order the self-destruct of the vultures." There were still over a wing of the vultures around them and more would probably be found on the first carrier they had taken out of the fight.
The man on the other side of the communication hesitated, and Shaak went on. "Your ships attacked our lawful defense of this planet captain. It occurs to me that a punishment fitting the crime would be to add your ships to the system's defense fleet," Shaak replied with a smile.
The man frowned, leaning back thoughtfully, then looked to the side. The two katana class cruisers had continued their way to cut him off, and by this point, Ranma had no doubt that the man was seeing the readouts of those ships. Their defenses, their weapons, and everything else.
He grimaced, then nodded firmly. "Very well. I will surrender my men and myself to you, and as for our ships," he paused, scowling before shaking his head. "I, I have to agree. I refuse to let my men die today for no good reason. But in return, I demand that we will be held on this planet, and that none of my men nor I will be subject to any kind of interrogation or questioning. You have beaten me, but my loyalty is still to the Confederacy."
"The Confederacy?" Ranma asked blinking
"The Confederacy of Independent planets, I believe that is what the separatists are calling themselves is it not?" Shaak asked. "I apologize, but both of us have been rather busy on the tactical scale of late, with little attention to spare for the political picture as it were."
The man snorted, while Ranma read off a little brief message that Shaak had just typed in so that it appeared above the man in his display describing his species. Ranma had seen Muun before, but never been close to one or talked to one. But given how human-like they were, it was easy enough to see the man's haggard, drawn-out expression. Don't know why he looks like that, this fight only lasted about an hour or two. Or maybe he looks like that because he knows he made mistakes here that let us beat him.
"Somewhat understandable out here in the hinterlands. Then you might not know, but Confederacy has, within the last week, split off from the Republic. No monies are flowing between the two governments and all trade between Confederacy worlds and Republic worlds is now under guard from both sides. A state of war has yet to be declared between the Confederacy and the Republic, but all Jedi present on Confederacy systems have been detained and deported or, if they resisted, killed, due to your actions here, despite internal protests."
"You mean our rescuing a Jedi Master confined against her will?" Ranma asked mockingly. "Or are we talking about something else entirely here?"
The Muun male on the screen grunted. "I am a soldier Jedi, I don't care what people are saying one way or to the other. My duty is to my planet, and my planet is part of the Confederacy. It is that simple. My personal thoughts about Jedi and their vaunted neutrality immaterial."
"Frankly captain, that is far more understandable to me than this whole Republic thing to me," Ranma said with a laugh that was rather dry but no less amicable for that.
The man blinked at that, but Shaak didn't let them question it for long, pressing him to order the Vultures surrender as they had continued to try and close with the Maleficent in order to protect it from the newcomers. Moments later, the Munificent class was broadcasting it surrender, while the Wild Blade peeled off, heading back towards Jabiim.
Even as they did, Shaak was getting in touch with the incoming katana class cruisers. They were being crewed by several thousand Wookies, Sullustans, humans and other sentients from planets allied with the Jedi Order. The admiral in charge was also a Jedi Master, by the name of Jotun Cral. Master Jotun Cral was, elderly, and rather looking like a dry sort of creature, looking almost like he was going to dry up and blow away. He bowed deeply to Master Fay and Master Shaak, who both of them were staring into the pickup now, while Ranma dealt with the deck damages to the ship.
"Master Shaak, Master Fay. Greetings from the Jedi Order, and Master Yoda in particular. He asked me to intervene on your behalf Master Fay, although he seems to know that you wouldn't actually need much in the way of rescue," Cral said as he opened up communications.
"The old frog knows too much as it is," Ranma muttered, causing Shaak to reach over lightly to smack them upside the head.
"Ignore him, he's just annoyed at how much damage our ship took before you arrived. Your arrival however was rather neat," Shaak observed.
"And only doable thanks to the sensor buoys you all had strung out, and the fact that your opponents had not destroyed them. That was a rather costly mistake on their part," the old man replied, scratching at a thin, extremely pointed chin. "We called ahead of course, and Knight Secura was able to relay us real-time data from the probes to let us set up that ambush. Otherwise even with the Force doing so over the span of space would have been difficult."
"Yeah, that kind of thing isn't something we'll be able to do often," Ranma said shaking his head. "Still, it worked this time at least so I'm not about to look a gift horse in the mouth."
"Nor I," Shaak murmured. "But might I ask, you have cruisers with you and a single squadron of starfighters. Is that all that is being sent?"
The man shook his head. "No, we are to be reinforced by a Mon Calamari heavy cruiser division, and what they are calling a Bottom Feeder class manufactory. It is essentially a ship that can be shifted into a shipyard. The Mon Calamari have been able to bring their colony worlds up to subsistence level economically."
"That's all well and good, but those are capital ships. What about starfighters?" Shaak asked. "This battle has shown us that the Vultures for all that they don't have enough armor or defenses are the real threat of any long-term engagement against the Confederacy."
"I have no idea," the man said bluntly. "I was told that more advanced starfighters than the Sprites will be forthcoming and that we would be reinforcing this planet as heavily as possible but what that means is up to the Force."
Ranma frowned at that, looking over at Shaak as he pulled himself away from his own work, pulling off his synaptic helmet, setting aside the list of materials that the ship had told him it needed to heal itself. That had been beyond weird, to feel the gestalt of the ship pushing those thoughts into his head while he tried to keep it calm, petting its mind so to speak like a dog owner would his guard dog. "That sounds interesting. Don't you think?"
"I rather do," Shaak said with a faint smile. "That does sound extremely promising."
OOOOOOO
Master Pong Krell's smile was so wide it nearly looked fit to split his face as he stared at the two-hundred and sixty-six starfighters in their bays. He rubbed all four of his hands together staring at the fighters as they slowly lifted up out of the hidden hangar bay set into the crust of the planet's northern pole. The Sekotan seed fighters were all composed of the gestalt of three to five seeds, their odd shapeshifting ability molded and worked together with other local resources to create the starfighter, and beyond a certain level. Normally this process would be optimized to work with a specific individual, but that ability had been set by the wayside in order to design starfighters that could be mass-produced.
A few of the Jedi on the planet, and a few that had been brought in and then left, had received their own specially designed starfighters. Those starfighters and the sole capital ship currently doing its workup exercise in orbit were Pong's work. All of them had shields now, using the overlapping Mon Calamari design. They also had Force-reinforced hulls thanks to Ranma's teachings.
The weapons and the design of the starfighters, however, were Pong's work. Each ship contained two quad cannons at the front and a concussion missile slung underneath, with expanded magazines, also from Ranma's teachings. Indeed, the result of Ranma sharing his unique take on the Force could be found anywhere on Zonama Sekot. It was almost enough to make Pong become jealous of his accomplishments despite being a Jedi.
Yet the capital ship, the Chu'unthor II? His fingers were all over his design, having pushed hard for simplicity, to cut down on the number of crew necessary and to force the Mon Calamari and Sekotan designers to realize that not every ship could be a singular work of art. At times this had basically meant standing over them with a metaphorical club, but it had worked out in the end and Krell felt an un-Jedi-like surge of pride at the fact.
It would be slower going to make capital ships on Zonama Sekot given the sheer amount of resources necessary in comparison to starfighters. Since he had arrived here a little over two and a half weeks ago, the planet had only been able to produce one such ship, although it had been able to renovate the ships taken during what the locals called 'The Charge of the Wild Brigade'. Yet that one ship was a match for any star dreadnought Krell knew still in service anywhere in the Core Worlds. Further, the Jedi Order already had the Katana fleet to mine for medium-sized capital ships. Sekot would provide flagships to that fleet, command ships which the Jedi themselves would crew.
What the Jedi Order needed immediately however was a source of starfighters, better starfighters than they had been given by the Republic. The Sekotan starfighters would be more than a match for ten Vulture fighters, four of even the Sprites currently in use. Their sheer durability, agility, and responsiveness made any existing starfighter design pale in comparison.
And in the time he had, since he had arrived here, Zonama Sekot had created over a thousand starfighters. It would continue to create more even as it started to divert resources to its capital ships, Zonama Sekot's biological processes changing slowly to become more organized, streamlined, and faster.
Yes, Krell thought. Yes, the Council was right to send me here. I might not be on the front line fighting against the Sith as I would have hoped. But in years to come, it will be my additions, my work that will have given us the victory.
The nearby Masters looked at him askance, feeling his growing pride through the Force, then looked at one another, communicating with raised eyebrows and minute changes in their facial expressions. The consensus reached eventually was to let the Besaliskian take pride in his warcraft. They had more pride in the fact that they had been successful in creating a second Temple here on Zonama Sekot. A temple that would never fall.
The Sith might not have realized it, but the Jedi Order was well prepared for the coming conflict. They had a growing fleet. They had their fallback points and their hidden temple. They had their allies. The Sith were not the only ones able to spring surprises.
Yet, war is always immutable, changing, evolving. And the sheer scale of the coming war would put all plans to the test.
OOOOOOO
Later that day, Ranma landed the Wild Blade in an out of the way valley on Jabiim, looking out to see the mud, mud, and more mud of the planet, which covered both the valley and the mountains all around. It was hard to say where the valley began and the mountains ended, there just was too much mud everywhere, and above them the constant rainfall continued unendingly.
This particular bit of mud though was near an abandoned mine, one of the first that had been dug deep enough to find the various minerals and metals that had made this planet such a tempting target for the Confederacy, which Alto Stratus had been able to parlay into so many goods for his terrorist force.
He deliberately crashed the front of the ship into the head of the mine shaft, hopping out of his chair as the others aboard grumbled about his piloting, their words carrying up into the cockpit. "Quiet, it's not like the bumping was all that bad. That'll make it easier." He then paused. "Um, the blade's mouth is near the front right? I can't remember if I asked or not."
"I did," Shaak asked stated primly from where she had been sitting in front of the table, communicating with the other Jedi on the planet and making plans to meet in person late that night. "And yes, it's near the front. This should be quite fascinating."
It did turn out to be quite fascinating. Also, somewhat disturbing when the feeding process began.
Before that, however, Ranma went down into the shaft of the tunnel that had been boarded down into the rock of the planet, grateful that when they had abandoned this installation, the terrorists hadn't thought about just removing the roof, letting the rain and the mud to its work to cave it in. instead, while the sides of the shaft were slick with runoff and mud, Ranma could still climb down it. It wasn't easy, and Ranma changed into his female form at one point, but he continued the climb.
She eventually began to find actual rock rather than reinforced ferrocrete holding back mud, although she estimated that she had gone at least half a mile down before doing so. The natural rock then shifted almost instantly into metal, the light of her lightsaber showing the shift easily. "Damn, when they say this planet has a core of battle they are not kidding," she muttered, staring at the walls, which had been burned out by arc-cutters or something similar, then looking downward as far as her eyes could see with the light of the lightsaber. Everywhere he looked it was metal.
With a faint smile, she began to cut away at them at the walls all around him, stopping the pieces into his weapons space. She would be able to cut carry several tons of raw ore like that, and hopefully, that would be enough for the Wild Blade to repair itself.
Eventually, she had basically widened the tunnel area by at least several body lengths, and then made her way back up, the winch operated by Shaak and K'Kruhk levering her up easily. "Well, that was interesting for the first five minutes," she drawled as she was pulled back out into the area around the mine complex, entrance and she grimaced. Staring out across the rainy vista. Not, that this planet seems to have any other kind of vista. "I've got the stuff, tell the beastie to get ready to feed."
With that, she dumped the chunks of ore out of her ki space. This made an appreciable pile in front of him, almost obscuring him from the cameras on the ship even as much of it sunk into the mud and spread out from him instead of building up in place.
Aayla shook her head. She had yet to leave again to meet up with the other Jedi once more, and now she chuckled quietly. "I am never going to get used to that. Force-expanded space, creating tornadoes, bolts of pure Force energy? Oh, and that's not to mention durability and speed enhancements and healing. How good is that last one by the way?"
"Very good," Shaak said with a smile but not going into details as she pulled on the synaptic hood. She had tried to reach out with the Force to the gestalt, but it was still too unresponsive for that to work to give it specific orders, she had to link into the ship via the hood to get this message across. Yet that took surprisingly little time, and a moment later, she felt the gestalt respond, and the ship shifted somehow.
"Oh, I have to see this," Ahsoka said excitedly, exiting the cockpit, with Aayla right behind her. Shaak joined them, and the other inhabitants of the Wild Blade gathered the front of the ship.
As they stood there the large underslung jaw, that had been the only thing from the original Wild Light, which had carried over to the new ship, opened. Bits and pieces of steel-coral shifted and the true living matter beneath was exposed. Tentacle-like feelers popped out of it, like so many feelers on a deep-sea fish. They began reaching forward almost blindly towards the chunks of metal. When it found one it quickly found the others, stuffing them one after another down a maw that looked like something from a worm or leech, within which smaller feelers could be seen.
Those feelers plucked out tiny bits and pieces of other minerals, while the majority were being gnashed on. The ship actually made a noise, a crunching sort of noise that almost sounded like, "Nom, Nom, Nom."
Ahsoka shook her head, staring. "Master, I know that it takes all sorts to make a universe, but that looks just freaky."
"It might look freaky," Ranma retorted, "but if it works to repair the ship and can do so to where it's almost brand-new, I'll deal with it being mildly creepy."
It worked just as well as Ranma could have hoped for. With the high metal content 'meal,' the living ship was able to repair itself as if it was any living creature healing from a wound. It was slower than he could have wished, but still far faster than even the best shipyard could have done.
Over the next few weeks, Cral's promise of more aid was borne out. First was a Mon Calamari heavy cruiser division. This was three rather than the normal two heavy ships in other navies. Ranma felt they were equivalent to battleships, and they were accompanied by their version of patrol craft, ships that were larger than starfighters and with a bit heavier weapons but not as much maneuverability that Ranma likened to a "piranha with four wings."
With them was an even larger ship. It was massive, as large as a Lucrehulk, yet longer, its ends both shaped like that of a hammerhead shark, its middle section thin save for a single arching command tower. When that ship came into orbit, it instantly began to come apart at the seams. Smaller bits and pieces moved away from one another as thousands of Mon Calamari spread out in spacesuits, working to transform it into a construction yard. It would be small and resource hungry, but with this vessel, the locals, at last, had something like an orbital infrastructure.
Starfighters too started to come in. First were a few Jedi starfighters or retrofitted small freighters carrying various padawans, Masters and Knights who were in the nearby sectors and who the Jedi Council had diverted to this planet for now. But some of them came in large groups, as was the case with the first installment of Zonama Sekot style starfighters. Then, about three weeks after they arrived, a group of two-hundred and fifty starfighters, led by Jedi Master Tsui Choi, the blue-scaled Aleena who Ranma had previously met during the Yinchorri Uprising arrived.
During this time the planet had been probed twice by various Confederacy forces and attacked once again, a bare day before the Mon Calamari arrived. But by that time, the Wild Blade had repaired itself thanks to the amount of materials that Ranma supplied it with and the guns had been replaced as well. That had been somewhat arduous, but thanks to Ranma's strength, they didn't even need a shipyard for the work and it utterly lacked the novelty of watching the ship gorge on resources in order to see to its own repairs.
With the Wild Blade leading the way, the defenders had done so much damage to the small Confederacy fleet that it had retreated into hyperspace after losing the majority of it starfighters and two more medium-sized capital ships despite being led by three Lucrehulks, which had battered the seven Katana class cruisers – two more had arrived to bolster the original five - badly before retreating. The capital ships all took hits, but with the Jedi forces on hand, they were able to punch through the starfighter screen and start to hammer blows into the aft shielding of the Lucrehulk ships. It was evident after that either the Neimoidian captains were under orders to preserve their ships, or simply cowards. Ranma wasn't certain which, but they were all grateful for it, whatever it was.
The probe after that was composed of a single tramp freighter with a fake IFF. But it quickly retreated, since by that point the Mon Calamari had arrived, along with various humanitarian vessels.
During this time Ranma had spent most of his time with Kit and the others rooting out Pro‑Stratus cells of the Revolutionary Front, who were not willing to talk peace even with the Order itself rather than the Republic as a whole.
The rest of the planet though was quite happy with what was happening. Thanks to Master Fay's adroit political maneuvering and Aayla's empathic powers, there was a real local representative government for the first time in generations. Almost the instant that government was in place and had begun to create more organized deals with the various planets that had sent Jabiim aid, a new vote had been called. This vote wasn't for any position in the government but whether or not to formally ask the Jedi Order to take the planet on as a subsidiary, or to rejoin the Republic as a whole.
The vote took several days but was overwhelmingly against the Republic and in favor of the Jedi. The Jedi, thanks again to Fay, was seen as the planet's saviors, while the Republic was seen as, at best, uncaring overlords. Moreover, there was the way Luminara and the other Jedi involved in the process had made certain the planet was not locked into unequal trade agreements for the aid they received. So Jabiim would become like the agrarian colony worlds that the Jedi ran via the Agri-corps, planets beholden to the Jedi Order, running themselves but looking to the Jedi for creating deals with others and for defense.
Of course, they would have no voice in the running of the greater Republic nor have any of the privileges they would have gained. But considering how many of them had come to realize they would never gain those privileges anyway even with their newfound wealth in resources, that was not even a consideration.
The same day that Master Choi arrived Luminara announced she and Barriss were also going to stay on Jabiim. Master Unduli felt that her time aboard the Wild Blade had to come to an end now. She and her padawan would be leading the humanitarian efforts. More importantly for Ranma and the others the two of them, Fay, and Choi joined the rest of them on the Wild Blade that evening to help use the Force to decide where the Wild Blade and its crew should go from here.
"I am rather ambivalent about the idea myself," Choi confessed, the short (he only came up to Ranma's waist if he stood on his people's equivalent of tippy-toes) said as he looked around the main room of the Wild Blade. It was in it's sitting room configuration right now, and most of the Nova Guard and Mandos were kipping out in their dorm rooms. "While using the Force should be the method Jedi use to decide where to go, with the Veil blocking our sight, it is a dangerous to attempt, especially given how much interest you and yours have garnered from the Sith before this."
"True, but we feel that the Sith are only able to use the Veil to block our sight occasionally. We have used a similar method to this before, Ranma and I," Shaak reposted. "It was a technique much like this that led us to know Master Fay and Kit were on Zonama Sekot. We haven't used it since for fear of alerting the Sith that we can do so, but I feel at this time, we need to take a risk. We need to find the Sith."
Ranma nodded in agreement with his wife, sitting down next to her. He wouldn't be able to contribute much in this ceremony, not having the same connection to the others as he did with Shaak, but he could at least provide moral support. "We can't win a war by playing defense all the time. Not like this. Not when the enemy both has momentum and initiative and can attack any target it chooses. It might work in martial arts, not in war."
"I understand that. I am just leery of whether or not the Force will agree with your priorities," Choi replied. "Still, color me interested at the very least." He bowed deeply to Master Fay then as the ancient Jedi came in from the showers, where she had just had an extremely hot bath. Jabiim's constant cold rain was something even Fay had not enjoyed dealing with. "Master Fay, I understand that while Master Ti will be providing the air under our wings, you will be the one controlling our flight?"
"Indeed Master Choi. Even in these tumultuous times, I have been able to discover the path the Force wishes me to follow. With Shaak's help and the starting point of the list of planets that disappeared from the Republic registry, I believe that we can find a target for Ranma and his crew," Fay replied. She held out a hand, and Shaak handed over the data crystal they had taken from Ossus and then began to input controls into the central hologram device.
Raising an eyebrow that was more just a slightly lighter color of scale than anything else at the informality in Fay's tone, Choi nodded and sat down on the half-circle sofa across from the married couple. He was still having trouble accepting the reality of their connection, but it was easily among the most obvious thing he had ever seen in the Force, they practically glowed with it and the Living Force to his senses. Times are changing, if such as that was allowed to grow at all, let alone become formally recognized. Still, it has at least not spread overmuch. We Jedi must be wary about rising so high into the light when it is the shadows which we must watch.
Soon the other Jedi joined them, most of the ladies coming out of the bathroom one after another, hot baths all around having been almost demanded from everyone who had been out and about on Jabiim. They formed a circle around the hologram, the two padawans sitting on the floor between the two half-circle sofas to complete it. As they did, Fay finished inputting her commands and an image of the known galaxy appeared, one that covered a bit more on the outskirts that the Republic's map did. "I have spent decades in Wild Space," she said softly. "This is a map I have occasionally worked on based on my own travels added to a map of the Republic. It won't help us, but I wanted you all to be aware that the vastness of the area we may need to search is far larger than the Republic alone."
Her tone was soft, soothing, almost lulling her listeners, calming even the two young padawans, making the impossible – searching for a single name among the billions of planets shown – seem difficult, but possible at the same time. She then smiled, and Ranma bit back a growing smirk as he saw the effect that smile had even on Tsui and Depa making them smile in turn and sit up a bit straighter. "But if a task wasn't difficult, there would be no need for Jedi to achieve it. So let us begin."
With that, she inputted a control, and the information from the data crystal from Ossus was inputted into the map, the names glowing red as other names faded and disappeared. "We will first discern if the name of a planet we are searching for is indeed among the information shown here. Once that is done, we can move on to either sifting through those names or looking elsewhere. Regardless of how we do it, we, all of us gathered here, will find a target where Ranma and Shaak can hurt the Sith. We might not find the head of this snake, but we will find someplace through which we can hurt him."
With that, Fay closed her eyes, and the other Jedi did the same. "Shaak, if you would?"
Nodding from her position in the circle Shaak began to reach inside herself for the Force, feeling Ranma's hands on her shoulders from behind, giving what support he could. A second later the Jedi all gasped as her Force Light blazed out, covering all of them. The more senior Jedi almost flinched as the feelings of Force Light washed over them, while the youngsters simply smiled or sighed as the Veil recoiled from around them. For the first time in a very long time, the Jedi felt the Force around them without the cloying, disturbing hint of the Dark Side that was always there these days.
Fay smiled but refrained from adding her own Force Light into the mix. That was Shaak's part in this task, her own was to use the clarity Shaak's act gave them to delve into the Force for their answers. "Let us begin…"
Even with Shaak's Force Light giving them a safe starting point, so to speak, reaching out into the Force beyond to find a specific answer still took the Jedi the better part of fourteen hours of constant meditation. And that was not only with Shaak's Force Light but also with the answer being among the names of systems the Republic had forgotten from Ossus. The Veil was still there, dragging their thoughts down, hiding the future and the present as best it could. It did not give the Jedi the impression the veil was being guided by a sentient enemy thankfully, but it was, as Choi put it after "As if we were attempting to ambush a single specific carrion bird on a moonless, starless night without alerting it that we were hunting for it in the first place. And every time we try, the darkness would automatically come alive, aiding the bird in its hiding."
It was debilitating, draining and intense. Both padawans fell out of the gestalt halfway through, followed by Kit, K'Kruhk and Aayla. But eventually, with Fay guiding them, they were able to at last find the answer.
"Wayland: single planet system," Shaak read off the information. "Privately owned and colonized by a corporation 4,500 years ago, last mentioned as the sight of a battle during the Mandalorian Wars. That's all we have on it, nothing about the geography, nothing about who colonized it, nothing. Still if the Force thinks this is the target we have been looking for after all this I think we should put our trust in it."
"Indeed. With the Chaotic Locus nearby and your own Force Light, there is no way that could be a false sending or influenced by the Veil in any way. I could wish I was able to discern more of what you will run into, but that was beyond my power," Fay replied sadly. "Perhaps because my own future does not include going there."
"You mean you're not going with us?" Ranma asked, saddened. Kit had become his best male friend in this universe, and it was very nice to have another guy around that he was that close to. And Master Fay was something really special frankly, although he really didn't know how to describe their friendship beyond that simple, all-encompassing phrase.
"I am being called elsewhere. I could sense that even as I concentrated on aiding your own mission," Master Fay said simply, a fond smile on her face as she reached out to touch Ranma's cheek tenderly, which he leaned into lightly, closing his eyes. Though not normally the type to do so, her friendship with Ranma lent itself to such. "But you must remember Ranma, that we are all of us but servants of the Force. Just because you do not feel that call does not mean you can ignore its power. And your way, your path, as important as it is, is and will likely always be one of violence. That is not my way."
"How will you leave?" Shaak asked reasonably, while her husband nodded his head in acquiescence. "Your yacht was confiscated and then destroyed by the terrorists before we could regain control of it after freeing you."
"I know," Master Fay said with a shrug of her shoulders. There was no sign in her of any remorse or sadness at the destruction of her ship, despite the fact that it had served as her mobile home for more years than they had all lived combined. The ship was, after all, it just a thing, and Master Fay was a Jedi. Such attachments were not something she was going to dwell on. "I will use one of the refitted freighters instead. The one Master Echidnu and his padawan came in for instance. Since they are both representatives of lizard-type species they are at home on Jabiim and will no doubt be assigned here to help the locals further."
"So, what are you searching for this time?" Ranma asked. "You helped us just now find the name and location of the planet we were searching for, so did you see something of the same?"
Master Fay hesitated, looking at Ranma and the others closely. "I did not see anything as solid as that. I am being sent by the Force to find a specific man. He is important somehow. Beyond that, I have a direction. But… I feel after I find the man, we will meet again soon after. Introducing the two of you is almost as important as finding this man alone would be."
Ranma shook his head. "Yeah that's not mysterious at all.…" he drawled. "Still, I wish you were coming with us. We could have used your insight."
"I will not be with you either," Aayla stated abruptly. She had been silent since falling out of the Gestalt, maintaining that silence after the Jedi's mediations had come to a close, until this point. "I will be going with master Fay."
Fay just nodded, while the others looked at her in surprise, including Kit, who was looking a little concerned as well.
"The Force is singing to me," Aayla continued looking both ecstatic and sad. "It's, it's the clearest, obvious sign of the Force trying to guide my steps that I have seen in years. I can wish it was otherwise, but I think my place is with master Fay."
Shaak frowned. "I am sorry to see you go, Aayla. I think that you could have learned a lot from Ranma's training."
"Maybe but it would not have been worth my sanity. If I had to put up with even another night of feeling what you two do to one another in your quarters I would have screamed," Aayla replied tartly, but she was smiling at her older friend as she did, reaching out to squeeze Shaak's hand.
"I don't think I want to know what she means by that. But as the Force told Aayla her path led away from you, it told me that my steps should walk with yours now," Kit said with a sigh.
This sigh was quite heartfelt for many reasons. First, he had come to care for master Fay, she had become something more than a mentor figure over the years, almost like an older, wiser sister. Her teachings had helped him gain insight into the Force that he would have struggled with for decades otherwise. It was not pleasant to be parted from her after more than three years even if the Force willed it.
On the other end of the scale, at one point in their past, he and Aayla had dallied with a very un‑Jedi like attraction. With Shaak and Ranma as an example, a part of Kit had idly thought about perhaps renewing that. The two of them had spent several hours together just talking over the past few days, and for his part, he had felt the attraction was still there.
Yet like Aayla he too had heard the call of the Force. His time with master Fay was done. It was time for another to take up her defense, and his and Aayla's connection would have to be forgotten. The road beyond that, however, the Force was somewhat silent. He sensed that the Force wanted him to go with Ranma and Company, but for how long he didn't know.
He voiced that thought, and Ranma smiled in relief. He would still have preferred to keep Fay close, to protect her himself, but she was right. Ranma was the tornado and even in the eye of the storm, chaos reigned. And Fay would never be one who enjoyed that kind of ride.
As intriguing as this is," Tsui said, smiling somewhat whimsically at Master Fay. He had enjoyed the experience of reaching out into the force alongside the aged Master and the insights he had gleaned through the Force himself were things he would be thinking about for weeks. Still, he had his duty to the Order. "I believe it is past time now for me to pass on some messages, and some orders for you all from the Order as a whole." Since Jabiim was way the heck out there from the core, even coded messages could be intercepted with ease. And since Tsui was being sent out here from Zonama Sekot anyway, he had been tasked to share the High Council's orders.
With Shaak's nod of assent, Tsui inputted a series of controls into the hologram device, which once more showed a map of the Republic as the Republic saw it. "First I will fill you in on the strategic picture. To put it very bluntly, the situation is spiraling further out of control with every passing day. The Confederacy has practically split off at this point, a patently illegal act, but we are not in open warfare just yet thanks to the Senate dithering as usual about it. While we have attempted to pin down Master Bulq, we have failed so far. He is constantly on the move, his whereabouts unknown save for a few of the Confederacy's chief leaders, all of whom have also gone into hiding as if they fear assassination."
"Considering the last few months have seen various senators come under attack on Coruscant, that is quite smart of them," he interrupted himself dryly. "The majority of those thus assassinated were among the Centrist Faction, but a few were among the Peace Party and two were among the Separatists. Two Senators who advocated a peaceful separation. The Peace Party is led by Padme and Sen. Bail Organa, who replaced Senator Antilles of Alderaan. But I am afraid that the Peace Party is not large enough to offset the growing call for war on both sides."
As Tsui spoke, the hologram changed. Ranma and the others watched as colors were added in various places, and he began to frown. There was something weird there, something he should see but he wasn't. Shaak felt his confusion in his body language and looked at him, but Ranma shook his head, still staring narrow-eyed at the image.
"It is the opinion of the Consulars watching the Senate that the debate on what to do about the Confederacy's growing push for an enforced separation from the Republic is going to come to a head in two weeks. That talk was surprisingly slowed in part by the actions here on both sides. Your freeing of Master Fay has made intergalactic news, as has all the problems Jabiim faced, which were not solved by the Republic as it should have been. The Centrists have been facing internal division on the issue of representation and funds allocation, while the Confederacy had its collective nose rubbed in the fact that they were backing murderous terrorists. It hasn't made their rhetoric any less vitriolic, but just because they were pushing to secede from the Republic does not mean all their Senators were as corrupt as the Senator for the Commerce Guild."
Tsui smiled. "And on top of that, is fear. Several bits of your battle here on the surface were recorded, and the recording somehow got out into the Hypercom Network. You, in particular, young Ranma, have become something of a celebrity in the more sensationalist newscasts."
"Joy, Ranma muttered. "Am I supposed to be happy about that or something?"
"No, but you should be wary," Tsui said, bluntly. "It got a lot out too quickly as if someone was waiting for news from the surface of Jabiim and primed the news agencies for it. I know several Jedi are looking into that aspect, but since I left Zonama Sekot they had yet to find anything."
'If this was a trap for us it failed magnificently," Shaak interjected. "Yet if that message did get off so fast, then what was the goal?"
"Outrage against the Jedi Order at first," said shaking his head at least in part. "Your 'unilateral, unlawful' actions have lost us quite a lot of clout in the Senate, despite the fact that we were bluntly told by the Chancellor that his own hands were tied. The Confederacy now sees us as enemies for certain and have added the Jedi to nearly all their rhetoric against the Senate and how the Republic is run. There's also some shock at how well your assault occurred, and rumors that the Jedi have allied with the Mandalorians is not happy news for many."
"But we have allied with them," Ranma replied, still frowning.
"We've succeeded in keeping that a secret up to this point," Tsui chuckled. "Still, the time is coming when it will have to come to light."
Tsui then sighed, moving on more seriously. "What has also come to light is that the Republic commissioned the construction of a new fleet at least a year and a half ago when troubles first began. The final payment on that fleet is to occur when the Military Creation Act is passed. Outside of the Chancellor's office and various centrist senators who are not talking, no one seems to know where that fleet is stationed or being built. But it is there. The Republic will have the tools necessary for war."
"And the manpower?" Janice asked, scowling. "You don't just pull the manpower for that kind of thing out of your hat."
"That is indeed a question. One that many Jedi are asking, but the Senate seems to think that the Order itself has somehow seen to that.
All of them looked at one another in confusion and Ranma asked the question that was on all their minds. "How the heck could anyone think that? There's only around fourteen thousand, maybe twenty-thousand of you Jedi if you include the Agri-corps. That's barely enough for one army, let alone the kind of armies you'd need in a galactic conflict." Something about that sentence too bothered Ranma, but he couldn't figure out what.
"Indeed. We're trying to figure out that aspect, but the Senate doesn't seem to be worried about it. And again, no one is talking." He waited, but since they had nothing to go on, none of those present commented on that question again.
Tsui turned his attention to other matters. "For the Order itself, we have basically reached the limits of what we can do with the Katana Fleet on her own. We managed to move seventy-five katana class cruisers, which are more than we thought we would be able to, without getting the Republic as a whole involved. But now with our allies tapped out on manpower, we are going to have to reach out to the Republic at this point for crews for them all. But we have experts in robotics going over the remainder in order to cut down on the size of the crews even more than previously, and from what I have been told, that project is bearing some fruit.
"We will be sending around twenty of them out here with minimal crews. I think that we can find locals willing to be trained up to crew them on Jabiim after Master Fay's work here, and certainly the idea of being able to look after their own defenses will help. That, in turn, will free up our own forces to be used elsewhere. We intend to use this planet as a staging ground from which the starfighters that we are getting from Zonama Sekot can be spread throughout the Order. I am going to be staying here as Wing Commander and general military advisor."
The talk on that point went on for some time, as Tsui detailed various strategic moves from both sides, what groups had joined which side, what systems had tried to remain aloof and had joined the Peace Party and so forth. The fact that Corellia had decided to recess itself from the Republic using the ancient Republic law Contemplanys Hermi to do so came as something of a shock to many of the Jedi.
For his part, Ranma wondered why the Green Jedi had gone along with it after Yoda and the others had been working to reconcile with them. But this far removed there was nothing they could do about that.
When that thought occurred to him, Ranma realized what had been bothering him the moment Tsui began to display the map of the Republic to them all. The problem was too damn big. The war coming was just too damn big, the problems that were spawning it were too damn big for him to understand, let alone influence. Even if we take out the Sith that might be behind all this, will that really be enough to stop this? It was with a near heart-stopping sadness that he realized it wouldn't. The Sith's plan was like a train on rails at this point. You could knock it off course maybe, but it would just keep on going, even if you removed the conductor.
Ranma leaned back, scowling to himself as that all occurred to him, letting the others dominate the discussion, Kit, Luminara and the others asking specific questions about various worlds, Jedi or Senate moves that would have gone over Ranma's head even if he had been listening. He was brought back to the here and now by Shaak squeezing his hand and Ranma looked over to her, seeing a wan smile on her face. It was obvious his wife had felt some of the emotions going through him, and at her look of concern, he smiled, suddenly realizing that it didn't honestly matter. Let the war come, it wasn't his job as a martial artist to solve all the ills of the universe. It was only his job to defend those he could. And while the war might continue, it won't be nearly as bad if I remove the Sith Lord who orchestrated it. That way, to continue the train metaphor, at least the train will be out of control and can be reclaimed, pulled safely into a station without the train fighting back.
"None of that changes what we're going to be doing does it?" he questioned abruptly looking over at the others. "One way or the other, while this war might have a lot of other reasons behind it starting, we know that the Sith are still out there, either to take advantage of it or to move in after that we've been weakened. We need to take them out, and I'm not talking about just finding Master bulk and caving in his head for shits and giggles."
"Jaundiced observation: Master, you say the most amazing thing sometimes. But you are also correct. Nothing you have said indicates any more knowledge of the Sith or their personal resources have been found. We on the other hand at least have something of a lead on that kind of thing thanks to your Force powers."
"That is true enough," Master Fay replied, shaking her head. Leave it to Ranma to cut through the growing doubt and concern like an auger. "And I think we all need to get on with that."
Tsui spoke up once more. "There is actually one aspect of the search for the Sith that I can tell you about which has been going somewhat well. The attack on the Hypercom Relay Station backfired. The nearby weapons development planet Balmorra has also decided to aid the Jedi Order and has loaned its entire slicer division to the effort of finding the Sith. It's slow going since they have to basically start from scratch and cover their own tracks, but, that investigation is still moving. And they have also opened their labs to any Jedi or ally that wants to fight against the Sith. Whatever else, I think you need to make a stop in there first."
Ranma and Shaak exchanged a glance before Shaak spoke for them both. "Agreed. We will need those slicers when we go to Wayland. Even if we are able to find the Sith Lord at home, we need to be able to roll up the Sith Shadow Empire afterward."
"And before that, we can get you a new body HK." Ranma said.
"Oooh, I have sooo many ideas on that score!" Dralshy'a said excitedly, and the meeting broke up on that note.
It was decided that, like Fay and her new companion, the Wild Blade would be leaving that evening. While the Jedi spent some more time speaking quietly to one another Ranma, Cro and Janice spent some time trying to figure out any more information on the planet that they had chosen, without trying to search the Hypercom network, fearing that to do so would warn their enemy. Their lack of information on how much the Sith had infiltrated galactic communication was still a major concern.
But they couldn't find much. A single entry in a nearly four-thousand-year-old entry of a company that had bought out the planet, after finding it with one of their own survey teams during the Mandalorian Wars, that was it. That was the only thing they could find on an entire planet, and Ranma was kind of appalled by that. "How often does that happen, I mean a corporation fighting the planet, tells the Republic about a minimal amount of information and then nothing else?"
"Not as often these days, when colonization isn't as important," Janice said. "Although it might still happen out in the Corporate Sector."
"So, we have no way of knowing if this is the only target. There could be more out there just like it," Ranma groaned.
"I do not think so," Master Fay cut in, shaking his head her head and turning from her discussion with Master Choi on a few of the local political leaders to keep an eye on. The others looked at her quizzically, and she shrugged feeling the worry of the other Jedi at Ranma's concerns. "You must understand, that while such an idea is certainly possible, you have to take into mind the psychology of the individuals."
Ranma, who was in his own way a master of psychological warfare, got it almost immediately. "The Sith don't trust do they?" He asked while the other Jedi were still mulling Fay's words over. "They don't trust one another, they don't trust even their own apprentices all that far I'd bet."
"Exactly. The Sith have long practiced the art of fratricide, indeed in many of our wars with them, they did as much damage to one another through infighting as they did through open warfare against us," Fay replied.
"So they wouldn't want to have too many baskets for their eggs," Luminara murmured. "One would always be more important than any other and judging by the fact that this planet is the one that the Force is leading us towards as much is it can, we can assume it is the most important target."
"Good!" Ranma exclaimed. "This is only the second time we're going to be landing an offensive punch, rather than replying with our own jabs to attacks they've launched. And the first was completely unplanned. I want this punch to be a knockout blow, or if not that, at least concussion inducing," he said, cracking his knuckles with all the sound of an artillery barrage.
That night, the Wild Blade left the Jabiim system. Long farewells and teary goodbyes were not a Jedi thing and none of them, Ranma most of all have any love for the rainy muddy planet. Shaak and Aayla had talked for several minutes while the others were getting ready to leave, and Ranma was running the Wild Blade through a series of tests to make certain all of the repairs had been accomplished, but that was about all. The one jab he heard from Aayla, "At least this way I won't lose any sleep because of the two of you!" made Ranma thankful he couldn't hear any more, especially once he saw Aayla start to blush and Janice and Luminara drift over to listen in.
As they flew out towards the hyperspace limit, Ranma frowned, wondering about something. "Why do I think we forgot to tell Master Choi something?"
Shaak and the other Jedi looked at one another, then Shaak gasped, starting to chuckle. "Hehehe, we forgot to mention master Ood Bnar to Master Choi. Hehe, I believe that would constitute a Ranma-level oops, wouldn't it?"
"Oy!" Ranma barked, but that did nothing to stop the laughter of the other people in the Wild Blade's cockpit as the ship jumped.
OOOOOOO
Meanwhile elsewhere, Tyranus and Sidious were both scrambling to keep the Great Plan going. Sidious was instigating several attacks on the Jedi, from the Senate, shouts of how they had reconstructed the Army of Light, which had been illegal by law for so long, and pushing the more extreme Centrists into acting, while also preparing the passing of the Military Creation Act as well as paving the way for the Clone Army. This meant letting the Jedi assume that Sifo-Dyas had created it in order to combat the Sith, with no connection to where the funding had come from. After all, a dagger in the back loses its stopping power if the betrayal is predicted beforehand.
On the other side, Tyranus was continually rousing the Confederacy, letting his mouthpieces push the idea that the Jedi had proven themselves to be just another tool of the Senate and its various power structures. That the Confederacy could not allow this to continue and that war was imminent, while all the while Bulq tried to seem as if he was simply a political reformer rather than the leader of the insurrectionists. After having laid the groundwork for so long, it was a very easy sell, on both sides.
They also discussed between one another what was going on, and what to do once real war broke out, communicating in real time with one another thanks to the number of backdoor pathways the Sith had created in the Hypercom network over their thousand years of hiding. "We will need to let the Confederacy hit some important targets, make it clear that Confederacy is the villain in this piece and that the Republic is in a fight for its life. That will force neutral planets to take sides and will also give me the clout I need to browbeat the Jedi Order into taking part as a whole even with the groundwork they've been doing to rely on their own forces and allies."
That is true. I have to wonder where the dreadnoughts came from. I had at first discounted the few reports of such ships that reached me," he confessed. "I knew that the Wookies had found a few of them and had rebuilt them in their own ramshackle fashion. But seven of them have so far appeared in the Jabiim system during the second battle there and only two of them came from the Wookies."
"Indeed. I've been going through our type three spy reports, and I have discovered at least forty more sightings of similar ships, including a few answering to the Nova Guard and other races or societies who have tied themselves to the Jedi. That points to something else. The Katana fleet," Sidious intoned.
"200 cruisers of the ineptly named Dreadnought-class. That would be a dangerous force if gathered in one place," Tyranus mused. "But the Jedi order does not have enough resources to field that force, while the Republic would once the clones are introduced. Thus on a strategic level, their existence and their careful distribution matter rather more."
"Exactly. The Jedi have been planning all too well and been keeping their planning all too secret, curse them. Even the Veil did not warn me of these dreadnoughts. May the Dark Side curse the Chaotic Locus," Sidious said, his tone mild even if the words were not, showing the truly scary amount of control Sidious had over his emotions, even when speaking about the Chaotic Locus, who he had come to hate even more than the Jedi themselves, at least in Sora Bulq's opinion.
"And yet, what else have they done besides finding the so-called Dark Fleet?" Tyranus asked, fighting hard to keep a shiver out of his voice. My master is truly a scary one.
"Allied with the Mandalorians. We can probably turn that to our advantage in the court of public opinion, but it will be hard if the Mandalorians are truly willing to fight with the Jedi against the Confederacy. They have also been sending large groups of Jedi and younglings away from the Agri Worlds. Two of them are now entirely empty. And the influx of new younglings to the temple has ceased utterly. I have been unable to discover where those Force Sensitive children are being sent, which has put paid to many of my ideas for the future. Still…" Sidious frowned, thinking things through. "The one issue which might be most dangerous is Balmorra and it's surprising decision to work directly with the Jedi after the fiasco with the Hypercom Relay Station. It served, utterly cutting the link between Harth's mistake and us, and has allowed me to grab even more power in the senate, but Balmorra is still dangerous for its weapons-craft."
"Yet, even that is small scale in terms of the total Republic," he sneered. "One thing the Jedi have never understood is how the scale of the Republic is itself their worst enemy. Even counting in all their friends and allies they cannot be aware of everything going on."
Tyranus bowed his head in response to that, then asked, "Does that mean we will need to go with plan Omicron?" Omicron detailed a direct assault on Balmorra as part of its opening attacks.
Sidious leaned back thinking. "No, go with Plan Theta," he said at last. "We will need to show that the Confederacy has the momentum despite Jedi's earlier victories in order to really rally the Core Worlds, which means concentrating your initial assaults on those same Core World Sectors. I need the Core Worlds tied firmly to our cause, both publicly and privately. The media onslaught against the Jedi will continue in a disjointed, seemingly unconnected fashion. I will control that aspect. As for the Confederacy and its targets…" he shrugged nonchalantly. "I suppose we will have to sacrifice a few sectors to make the point that the Confederacy is not in this just to break away from the Republic. No, you will be trying to conquer the Republic as a whole. This will lose you some of your more timid members but will galvanize the rest even more strongly."
This time Tyranus could not hold back a shiver even though it was almost unseen in the pickup. Knowing they were talking about the deaths of untold trillions of sentient beings and that Sidious was so dismissive of it was more than even Sora Bulq, steeped in the Dark Side and remade as a Sith, could view without responding.
Sidious caught it and smiled. "I know. It goes against the grain to sacrificed so many possible future pawns so soon in the game. But it is necessary, and the Veil is in place so it will not be a pointless sacrifice. Let them fear, let them hate, the Dark Side power from their deaths will take us all the stronger."
Understanding the reasoning while still disturbed by the scale of the horror they were talking about, Tyranus nodded, before asking, "Master, might I make a suggestion?"
In reply Sidious looked at him quizzically, gesturing with a finger. He had learned to listen to Tyranus' suggestions before this. The way the man had taken to Sidious's own brand of Sith methodology – that of control over all - made Sidious smile, especially when he knew his own control was somewhat frayed by the Chaotic Locus and its effect on the Veil.
"I suggest that I use my position one last time. Create an incident to cause the shutdown of the Senate for a few days so you can hold off on the Military Creation Act. Allow me to reach out to the Jedi and see if I can trap some of them. Most especially a few of those who would become outspoken against the war, letting you push the entire Order out into the battlefield."
He outlined his plan and Sidious nodded. "Very well. But, in that case, we will not be going with Plan Theta. The most likely planet for a meeting of that nature is too close to the initial targets of that plan. That would put any survivors of your little trap to close to assault that we want the Confederacy to be launching at the same time."
He thought for a moment, then smiled thinly a truly evil look on his hooded face. "We will instead go with plan Primus."
At that Tyranus' eyes widened, then he smiled grimly. "Two blows for the price of one Master? Yes, that is rather delicious. I will pass on the orders. Indeed, it will make an excellent debut for General Grievous."
Sidious smiled. "I knew you would understand. Do we have any idea where the Chaotic Locus and his entirely too capable ship will be heading now that it has left Jabiim?" he asked abruptly.
Tyranus frowned a little at that, seeing Sidious's continued concerns on the Chaotic Locus as a sign that Sidious's self-control was slipping. And yet I cannot deny the fact that the creature has an impact out of all proportion and in every other way he has kept his control far beyond what anyone else could have. Yet perhaps it is that very need for control that makes the Chaotic Locus the wound that never heals. "We do not master. They might be heading to a planet to repair their ship. However, it was badly battered in the defense of Jabiim. And whatever else, the Locus and his people remain too few in number to truly matter."
"Perhaps. Still, be on the lookout for them. I would not put it past the chaotic Locus to appear when you least expect it," Sidious mused. "And your position is much more exposed than mine. I will detail some type two agents into Balmorra. That is the most likely place for them to appear to repair their ship. Perhaps even upgrade it. And since Kenobi is there, it makes sense that they would want to meet him and get firsthand information on Ventress."
After a few minutes more discussing what jobs to assign the Dark Jedi, which Bulq had convinced to follow him, Sidious cut the line with his padawan. Leaning back in his throne Sidious took strength from the darkness all around him, drawing it into his very being, smiling as it filled him. Soon, soon the Jedi will begin dying, each death feeding the Veil as the Light weakens. Soon the war will begin, and my ascension with it.
But even as he thought that Sidious felt a niggle of worry. The Dark Side was trying to tell him something. Something about the Chaotic Locus and those with him. The Dark Side was warning him about them to an even larger degree than normal.
Abruptly he stood up, moving through his throne room to a communication screen. Looking at the information detailed there, he nodded. It is time to get Plagueis' vergence involved once more. I will move him into Balmorra via my Palpatine persona, and then link up with him later to discover what I can on the Locus's movements rather than recalling him to Coruscant. Time enough to reignite his obsession with Amidala later. For now, the Locus is key.
OOOOOOO
The Balmorra Star System was a surprisingly large one. It had a massive orange sun, the largest Ranma had seen so far, with three asteroid belts that were dense that they must once have been planetoids of some the not too distant past. Astrologically speaking anyway. It had three planets, although only one in the water-bearing zone, near to where another asteroid belt of even larger and denser size lay. The other two were deeper in, and if not for the massive mining complexes covering almost their entire surface in energy sources, Ranma would have thought them too close to the sun to be inhabitable.
The rest of the system matched that level of industry. It was easily one of the busiest systems Ranma had seen so far, not quite up to the scale of California or Coruscant. Thousands of in-system craft flitted about space between the planets, there were dozens of space stations, two massive orbital shipyards over the one water-bearing planet, and that planet teamed with life.
It was also well defended. Almost the moment the Wild Blade came out of hyperspace they were challenged, a nearby ready squadron of gunboats sweeping towards them from where they had been on patrol in the outer edge of the system. They were ugly little things, basically the size of two starfighters put together, with six wings of varying size, carrying weapons sticking out of a small body barely large enough for a crew of four.
HK labeled them Eliminator-class gunboats, expensive local builds that anywhere else would've been command ship of a goodly size flotilla of gunboats. In their home system, they were the only gunboat any of them could see.
"Incoming vessel, this is the Balmorra defense force, you are an unscheduled arrival. State your intentions and port of call, or you will be fired upon," said a grim male voice, unaccompanied by any image on the communicator.
"This is Master Shaak Ti of the Jedi Order aboard the Wild Blade. We are here to meet our friends and perhaps to have some repairs done."
For a moment the gunboats came on, and Shaak could feel the gestalt of the Wild Blade rousing itself, predatory amusement going through it at the idea that these little creatures would challenge it. Despite the number of weapons the ships had, the Eliminators were no match for the Wild Blade except perhaps in overwhelming numbers
Finally, there was a reply. "Roger that Wild Blade, we will escort you into landing bay fifteen on the Aspiring Dawn shipyard. The Jedi will all be waiting for you upon arrival. Welcome to Balmorra."
As the Wild Blade settled down on its landing bay, Obi-Wan and a few others stepped forward to meet them.
Obi-Wan looked much the same as he had been the last time Ranma had seen him. His beard was a little longer certainly, much fuller, but beyond that, the man looked much the same as back on Mandalore. Siri Tachi being there was also no surprise, though her leg having been replaced by a robotic limb was a shock to those who knew her.
But the last two Jedi being there was something of a surprise to even Ranma. "Is that Giiett and Anakin?"
"I believe it is. My word hasn't Anakin grown up since the last time we saw him," Shaak murmured with a laugh.
That was true enough, Ranma reflected although he and Shaak hadn't seen the youngster in several years now if Ranma was doing the math right. Still, there's no denying that he had grown up, adding several feet to his height, and a surprising amount of self-control evident in his face, even if his body language still showed a bit of arrogance. "Still, I wonder why they are here?"
"Perhaps on something entirely unrelated?" K'Kruhk guessed, before getting looks from the others and shaking his boar-like head. "Yes, I didn't think much of that idea either."
"Actually," Giiett said with a laugh a quiet one, but still alive my padawan and I are here for an entirely unrelated reason. "Our ships needed refitting and Chancellor Palpatine asked us to come here and make inquiries about young Obi-Wan and Siri's health."
"That's right. We've been smacking down slavers and pirates over Ryloth for more than a year now. Even with me seeing to their maintenance, master's YT freighter and my Sprite took a pounding, and we couldn't get some of the parts out there. But more importantly, what's this I hear about you all having an entirely new type of starfighter aboard your ship?" Anakin asked eagerly. He seemed almost dismissive of the Wild Blade. That was until you saw his eyes, gleaming eagerly as he leaned around them, looking up into the hatch as Cro led the Nova Guard down the gangplank.
"We will talk more about that later," Shaak said, smiling at the younger human, and gesturing with one hand to calm him down while to one side, her own padawan scoffed at his attitude.
Then Anakin's eyes flicked down to Ahsoka, seeing her scoffing expression, and he rolled his eyes. "Oh no, if it isn't the terrible rug rat. How are you doing Snips?"
Ahsoka growled, one hand fingering her lightsaber. "Don't call me that! I'm not a youngling anymore, I'm a padawan just like you and there's no seniority or anything like that among padawans."
"Maybe not," he said reaching over to pat her head like a child, "but you're still a snippy little thing, so the nickname still works."
The young Togrutan reached for her lightsaber but before she could draw it, Shaak patter her shoulder, and Ahsoka reined in her response, sending a sneer Anakin's way. "I will not rise to your provocations any longer Skyboy. I am a better person than that."
"It's Skywalker, not 'Skyboy'!" Anakin growled, losing his own cool despite being at least five years older than Ahsoka. Ranma honestly didn't know how old the younger man was but guessed nineteen or so.
While Ranma and Kit were laughing at their interaction, Shaak rolled her eyes, and reach down lightly tugging at Ahsoka's shirt, pulling her back. "Enough Ahsoka. Padawans should be more in control than this. Do not rise to Anakin's insults or else I will rethink my decision to let Ranma teach you Dun Möch. We have more important things to speak of at the moment. Obi-Wan?"
Obi-Wan smiled and instantly began to lead them all out of the hangar bay and into a small, adjoining conference room. The room was guarded by four very obvious guards armed with heavy blaster rifles and body armor. They opened the door, then smartly moved away, one of them telling Obi-Wan that the Farraday cage within had been activated along with the sound dampeners.
Inside they met three of the locals. All three wore normal station worker's garb but were marked off as unusual by the insignias they wore. "May I introduce the Chief Fabricator of Balmorra, Cuthbert Caine, captain Hinch Beltane, and Financier Ehshotak. They represent the Balmorran government, and Captain Beltane, in particular, has been chosen as our liaison with them."
He looked at Master Giiett, then over at Shaak. "Master Ti, Master Giiett, are you ready to have your padawan be part of this discussion?"
Since Giiett had been a member of the High Council for more than a decade, he had known about the clandestine war against the Sith long before he took Anakin as his Padawan. Giiett turned to look at Anakin, while Shaak merely smiled and Ahsoka sat up straight with a smirk, knowing what this was about and also knowing that she already knew more than Obi-Wan, let alone Anakin. Anakin saw this and suppressed a scowl only because his master was still looking at him.
But a moment later, Giiett nodded. "I believe that Anakin is mature enough to handle being read into this secret. However Anakin, I must stress that this is indeed a secret. Everything we discuss here we cannot have you speak about to anyone else. None of your friends within the order, or without."
Anakin stiffened at that, knowing that was a shot across the bow of his friendship with the Chancellor, which had continued over the years. The Chancellor had taken to calling him for insight into how the Jedi worked, how specific types of missions were viewed and organized, and other minor things, mostly as an excuse to talk to someone who wasn't a politician or public persona. He had admitted as such to Giiett, but Anakin was willing to be used in such a manner. Yet if Master Giiett learned he had shared something with the Chancellor after being told not to, he would be punished most severely. And he also had to call my maturity into question, darn it, Anakin thought, before nodding. "I swear by the Force that I won't speak about anything I learn here."
"Good. I'd have hated to break your legs like dry twigs if you ruined this for us," Ranma replied, and Anakin gulped, realizing thanks to the Force that Ranma was in no way joking.
With that out of the way, and with a final rueful look at Ranma, Obi-Wan began, "Very well. As many of you already know, but Anakin does not, Knight Tachi and I were part of a force that was trying to run down a message in the Hypercom Network. This message could have led us to the Sith, who we believe is out there. The fact we were attacked by a Sith obviously proves that fact beyond a doubt."
From there Obi-Wan gave a summary of that mission to the newcomers from his perspective. This included a recording from the security cameras in Hypercom Relay Station showing the attack in bits and pieces followed by a final video of Eeth Koth dueling with the red lightsaber using Sith.
Ranma and the others from the Wild Blade studied her intensely as she appeared. Ranma and Shaak exchanged a few glances, but everyone stayed silent for now, keeping their own counsel.
K'Kruhk and Shaak interrupted Obi-Wan's story a few times at the start of the action, while Anakin was shocked that all this was going on without his having heard more than rumors before. He knew the Order had been worried about Dark Side users for a while but his mission with Master Giiett on Ryloth had taken him out of circulation for the most part. Now he learned the truth and how badly the Sith had hurt the Jedi and vice-versa in the last few years.
"So… does that mean you are at loose ends at the moment?" Shaak asked, seemingly innocent. The wide grins on Kit and Ranma's faces though spoiled the image somewhat.
Obi-Wan looked at them warily, almost fearful of some kind of prank, but eventually replied slowly, "I am, as are many of my slicing team. They are on Balmorra's retainer, on loan to the Order while we go through what information news we could strip from the wreckage of the Hypercom Relay Station. Fully sequestered too, so they cannot be influenced by anyone but myself and captain Beltane.
"We have a target," Shaak said without preamble. "An important one. We have no idea what to expect there, but we want to attack it as soon as possible, lest word or the Dark Side carry to the Sith that we have discovered it."
"Then we should be attacking it with everything we've got! We should call in the Chancellor on this and have him get us a battlefleet or something. Heck, why the secrecy at all!? Hell, why are we even talking about going in slowly like this!" Anakin burst out, looking as if he wanted to stand up and being to pace. "If the Sith are really out there why don't we call the Chancellor and have him loan us some naval divisions, then go in guns blazing?! We go in hard enough and fast enough, it won't matter what they have!"
"Because we don't want to warn the Sith we're coming," Shaak said.
An instant after she spoke Ranma broke in. "Because Palpy's a politician, and politicians can't get shit done without other people. And those other people might contain a spy among them or someone just willing to sell information on the side, or hell, an actual Sith!" Anakin glared at him, but it rolled off Ranma easily and he went on. "We don't know enough about the Sith. That's been the problem all along. Every time the Jedi Order has been able to find a thread to follow, that thread is cut before they can ca …" he paused thinking of how to finish the metaphor.
"Can lead us back to the rest of the spider's web," Shaak supplied to which Ranma smiled in thanks. "Most of the resources the Sith have used against us come in the form of expendable troops, criminal underworld types who are more than willing to earn some cash to do odd jobs. We know they are somehow connected to the Separatist Crisis, we think Bulq is one of them, but we have no proof. We know they were behind the invasion of Naboo but cannot find any connection between them and the Trade Federation. We have been attacked continually, but there has been no evidence to lead us to the Sith Lord or his base of operations. We need that link, we need that thread connected directly to the spider's web that we can pull. "
"Or set on fire," Ranma said and Shaak rolled her eyes.
Then she continued as if he hadn't interrupted. "To follow back to the rest of the web. If we can't do that, we will never know whether or not we've gotten them all, we will never know if we really found the Dark Lord rather than his apprentice. We have killed his assassins before, we have killed his criminal pawns in their thousands, and even other Dark Side users. But we have not been able to strike the body of the Sith, the enemy leadership. We must find the spider, and if we do not do that when it is at home in its lair, we must be able to follow the web back to him."
Anakin frowned, trying to figure out a way around their logic. This whole sneaking in thing, especially if they felt that they had found the heart of the enemies, annoyed him a lot. But, he couldn't argue with it. Darn it.
"It's all right Skyboy," Ahsoka said, smiling and reaching out to pat his shoulder before he could flinch away. "It didn't occur to me either first off. And if I couldn't understand it right away, how could someone as slow as you understand it?"
"Children," Shaak said before Anakin could shoot back. "Do I need to send you to your corners for timeouts?"
That brought up both of them, Ahsoka looking sheepish, and Anakin continued to scowl.
Ranma reached over and clapped a hand on his shoulder, smiling. "Don't worry about it kiddo. Trust me, I don't like any of this sneaking around either. But it is necessary." He turned to look at the three locals. "In fact, I'm wondering how well you lot will be able to keep a secret."
"Then don't tell us the secret," said the Chief Fabricator bluntly. "We don't need to know, we don't want to know. All we need to know is how best to help you crush the Sith before another war begins. If we cannot help you hunt down Bulq, who is surely a catspaw or Sith, then what tactical, material help can we be?"
"Why?" Ranma asked just as frankly. "A lot of people would be questioning that kind of thing. Like Shaak said, most of the Republic's leaders would see it as rabble-rousing at best, a personal attack on Bulq or jumping at shadows. Hell, that's the actual case isn't it, even with that video making the rounds."
"True, but we are Balmorrans." When Ranma continued to look at him blankly, the man sighed. "I see that our planet's history hasn't been part of your education, Force Warrior."
"Wait, what? What did you call me?" Ranma asked, confused.
"I called you the Force Warrior. That's the name that people are giving you in the news. A lot of people seem to think that you've just sort of sprung from the Force full-grown, with all of your techniques and abilities given to you and that you will follow the Jedi as long as the Force wills it."
Ranma's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Sprung from the Force full-grown? Is that some kind of religious thing? Please don't tell me there are people out there who want to, you know, fall down and worship me or anything. Because let me tell you, I'm already a little freaked out, and that would push me around the bend. And let's get one thing straight above everything else. I bled and sweat for my skills and abilities. They are mine, not one of them was 'given' to me, I freaking earned them! This whole Force Fetish that this entire universe has really chaffed my ass sometimes you know! The very idea of someone just being given my skills is…"
At that point, Kit's hand slid around Ranma's mouth, and he pulled the shorter human man up out of his chair, getting him into a modified sleep hold before Ranma could realize he was in danger. "Don't mind him," Kit said brightly, "he just has issues occasionally. But you were saying about your planet's history."
While Anakin and Ahsoka were grinning at Ranma's misfortune, the conversation continued while Ranma rolled his eyes and just let himself be muzzled. He did want to know more about the planet's history after all.
"This planet has suffered under the Sith horribly. We were one of the Sith's first conquests in the opening years of the New Sith Wars and was only freed in the last four before the New Sith Wars ended. We were renowned throughout the Republic for our weapons systems, and they wanted that technology."
The man gestured, and an image appeared of what Balmorra looked like back then. Several mountain ranges had been apparently flattened since, an ocean had dried up, and two cities had been glassed from orbit. One of the moons was also still a radioactive wasteland.
"We weren't able to throw the Sith out on our own, not then, but by the time we were liberated we had tied up the equivalent of four army groups. I will be damned and my citizens with me if we just sit back and let them come back!"
He breathed in, then went on more calmly, gesturing to Obi-Wan. "We were recently visited by Master Windu and told about you finding the Dark Fleet. We'll be able to turn those old cruisers around quickly. We already have the plans for them, and our weapons designers are going over them with a fine-tooth comb to see how we can make them better, how we can streamline that process, and upgrade their systems all at the same time. We'll start off small, with one or two, and then will be able to start building up to as many at working on as many as ten or twelve at a time turning them out every week. Crewing them is still going to be an issue unless we are able to reduce the crew size by quite a bit more, but we will see. Even there we will help, so long as we can add a few of them to our own defense fleet."
That defense fleet was extremely good for any world, even a Core world ecumenopolis, let alone a world that stood on the border between the Core World and the Colonies region. Balmorra also had extremely heavy guns embedded into heavily reinforced planetary defense fortresses and orbital installations. They weren't very big, but there were a lot of them and backed by the very big turbolaser and ion cannon batteries on the planet, Balmorra would be an extremely tough nut to crack. "Although even combined the Katana Fleet might not be much in comparison to what's coming."
"All that makes sense, but does this open-handedness stretch to us right now?" Ranma asked gesturing to Shaak and himself. He then pulled out HK's head, tossing it up and down in his hand. "Because let me tell you, one of the reasons why we were interested in coming here in the first place wasn't just to pick up Obi-Wan and his slicers but to build this one a body."
The man laughed even as he wondered where Ranma had pulled that head from. "I'll get you in touch with some of our weapons teams. You can go down to their testing grounds, and have fun buying whatever you want on our dime."
"This could be a first," Ranma said with a laugh. "The first time I've gone shopping and actually enjoyed the experience start to finish."
"Oh?" Shaak asked quietly as they all stood up. "So, you don't like shopping with me?"
"I didn't say that," Ranma retorted with a laugh. "I said I'd enjoy it from start to finish. There are quite a few things when I'm shopping with you that I enjoy, but not all of it."
"Good save," Janice muttered from behind them. But even she was grinning."
It turned out that this planet was indeed as devoted to weapons development as anyone had thought. They built practically everything and designed a lot of their own gear. Ground ordinance of all sorts, turbolaser cannons, disruptor-style weapons, grenades, armor, starfighters, nearly everything weapons-related was on offer. Even better most of it was on display in the area the Balmorrans directed them to, an area as wide as a college's baseball field.
The Nova Guard and the Mandalorians were like kids in a candy's store as they raced from one display area to another in the massive concourse that the locals used as a selling area.
Kad was goggling at the starfighters with Anakin. The two of them had struck up a quick friendship within about ten minutes of arriving on the surface. K'Kruhk, Cro and Thomas were talking about the various types of metals that would be best for armor. All the Nova Guard and the Mandalorians had taken numerous hits to their armor, and while the Mandalorians would have to be involved in the creation process – that was a tenant of the Resol'nare – the Nova Guard were more practical and could get a jump on replacing their specialized armor.
Janice was interested mostly in re-creating crush gauntlets for her team, along with new radios. Their radios had failed within a few hours of landing on Jabiim, the heavy rainfall destroying them swiftly despite being encased in their helmets. She also wanted to get the signals especially encrypted and protected, knowing that they would eventually run into more sophisticated enemies, which would try to infiltrate that kind of thing, and perhaps upgrading their helmet HUD displays. That kind of thing was expensive, and most Mandos didn't go for it, but since they weren't paying this time she thought to splurge, especially going into an entirely unknown fight as they would be soon.
Beyond that, most of their drop type weaponry and gear had been damaged and had to be repaired or replaced. Several of the Nova Guard wanted new respirators for their masks and wanted to replace some of the weapons they had lost during the Wedding Fiasco part two.
Shaak and Ahsoka were not there. Shaak had taken her padawan out to the nearby mountains to hike around for the day. After several weeksspent on Jabiim and its endless mud, Shaak wanted to reconnect with nature. And she felt that Ahsoka would benefit from some time surrounded by nature as well, especially given how she had clashed so harshly with Anakin even after only meeting him for a few moments.
Ranma would have been with them. In fact, he would have eagerly agreed to go hiking for a bit, but Ranma was busy with Dralshy'a and HK's head. They had instead dropped from orbit to what he had been told was the best robotics production facility on the planet. This was an entirely separate complex on the other side of Balmorra's main continent from the other institute. It was also not an open bazaar, but a closed faculty, with rules that had truly put Dralshy'a's nose out of order. Namely, they didn't allow any weapons, visible or otherwise, on their premises. And you had to submit to a scan to that effect, which had forced Dralshy'a to leave her beskar – her armor - behind, including her helmet.
This was one of only two times Ranma had seen any of the Mandos out of full armor. Normally on the ship, they kept their armor on simply taking off their helmets. And to his utter lack of surprise, Dralshy'a didn't have any clothing beyond the under-shirt and pants that went with her armor, so that had forced Ranma to go out and buy her something to wear for the day.
Dralshy'a turned out to have a body that naturally would tend to be overweight, but her Mandalorian training and then Ranma's own training regimen had wiped nearly all that away except for wide hips, a big – if toned - rear, and slightly drooping, but rather large, chest. Most of that Ranma had known already, Mando armor being somewhat formfitting, but the chest had astonished him into exclaiming, "What the, how'd you hide those in your armor?"
"With great difficulty," the white-haired, white-skinned girl replied with a scowl. "And a sports bra that has actual metal weave worked into it." She held up the dress to her, her scowl shifting targets. "Okay, you got my measurements right. But how the heck does anyone go out with something so flimsy on!? It looks like something I'd wear in the bedroom!"
The dress was a long flowing dress that covered everything from head to toe, only becoming formfitting in the shoulders and arms which ended in long fishnet gloves. Well, there and her chest, but that was because of her chest rather than the dress, and if she was used to a sports bra that could contain those things, Ranma reflected, she wouldn't mind wearing one underneath the dress. "It's just a regular dress Dralshy'a. Now come on, let's get a move on."
"Querulous Tone: Indeed. Your warped sense of propriety is trumped by my needing to get a body Dralshy'a. Let us get a move on!" HK intoned from where Ranma was holding him idly in one hand.
Moments later Dralshy'a was dressed, but still looking uncomfortable, staring down at her legs and chest then crossing her arms, looking as if she was a second from bolting. Whatever courage all Mandos showed in combat, it obviously did not extend to going out without their armor on in public, although Dralshy'a was probably an extreme example. Ranma hoped.
"Are you sure I can't just bring in one of my palm blasters, or my holdout vibro-knife?" she whined. "I feel naked going out unarmed!"
"No, you can't," Ranma said repressively, wondering if this was how parents felt when telling their children, 'no you can't bring that toy with you on the plane', or similar. "If they detect a weapon on you, they won't do business with us and we were told this place was the best place to get HK's body built quickly and well. Now come on, let's get this over with."
"Dry interjection: Indeed. And if you think you feel naked without a weapon, put yourself in this robot's cerebrum for a moment."
That seems to calm Dralshy'a down, and Ranma led the way down the ramp and to the waiting shuttle.
The laboratory they were going to specialized in one-off combat droids, very specifically combat droids, and nothing mass-produced. Balmorra Refined Robotics was never going to be as famous as some of the larger companies on the planet let alone elsewhere. But according to the locals they did make very, very good stuff, the shift from contact to design and then on to construction were fast, and they only built by order.
"So long that is, that your design makes sense to us, and is physically possible," The man who had met them at the door droned looking at them as he finished the company's normal sales pitch. He was… well, Ranma would've called him a wannabe vampire if he was dressed in black, but instead he was dressed in white. He looked as if he needed a lot of sun, his hair was lanky and black falling back to his shoulders, and his face had the look of someone who needed a lot of sleep sometime very shortly before he went complete round the bend and started to murder people.
"Of course my design will be physically possible," Dralshy'a huffed. All her earlier issues about being out without her Beskar had faded the moment she met the man, and this last almost snide comment seemed to have finished the job. Now she went on hotly, tapping away at her datapad and sending her design to the nearby computer screen that filled one wall. "The question will be how fast can you build it. I have already taken into account weight distribution, energy runs, tensile strength, neuro-synaptic fiber gradient, joint dispersion and…"
From there the girl went into a long spiel, during which Ranma barely understood one word in four, although he was able to follow the visual aspect of what she was talking about. HK too seemed to understand everything and judging by his electronic mutters of, "Exalted tone: Oh yes, meatbags beware," seemed to enjoy it too. At some point, the man who needed a good night's sleep had been replaced by two men in overalls and heavily muscled arms along with three scientist types. One of them was an Arkanian like Dralshy'a, but she showed no recognition of that fact as she continued to argue a few points about HK's new body.
Feeling rather superfluous to requirements at the moment, Ranma was only called upon occasionally to agree with Dralshy'a on HK's computing capacity and reaction speed a time or two. When he said, "But not nearly as fast as mine," the locals looked at him somewhat askance but astonishingly didn't question him about it. Instead, they quickly agreed to the work on the main body and went on to discuss weapons.
Here, Ranma had more input to give, and did so, the discussion shifting to what they had available, what would have to be built along with the droid, and what he wanted: HK able to switch from long range to close range without pause. "Every fight we've been in has had a close-range component. His last body was okay for that, with its giant claw, but it wasn't very quick. I'd also like to have one heavy-duty weapon, and one rapid-fire weapon at the very least. That idea was a good one with HK's last body. But not a turbolaser cannon or a grenade launcher. We've got those on our teams already. Maybe something that can home in on a target?"
"Hmm, I think we can handle that." One of the scientist types inputted a few commands and a boxy-looking weapon system popped up on the screen, its front composing more than a thousand small square openings. "What about something like this?"
Ranma held up HK's head and the two of them read off the weapon's description, with HK finishing quickly. Ranma finished a second later and nodded his head judiciously as HK began to let loose disturbing electronic cackles. "Yeah, I think that'll work very well indeed."
After that, the discussion shifted more into the nitty-gritty, and Ranma's ability to give any input faded. He left Dralshy'a and HK to it, heading out to explore the planet for a time before returning to be fitted with some armor in the local style and a helmet. Given how much information the helmet could convey and make available to the wearer he didn't protest, though Ranma figured that he wouldn't wear it in every fight. He refused the armor entirely though. "No way, do you have any idea what a chest plate like that would feel like if I was splashed with cold water?"
Janice, who had convinced him on the helmet, frowned at that, then nodded. "Okay, I concede the point. You might not attract water like you once said you did Ranma, but it definitely still tends to find you when it can. But do you have a preference for the helmet design?" she asked with artful innocence.
"Meh, make it like the ones you Mandos wear I guess, it seems a bit better for open field engagements than the Nova Guard's. But you better make sure you prepare helmets for Shaak and the others too. I'd wager they're more of a project than mine."
At those words Janice smirked, heading off with a hidden smirk. Yep, she'd make a Mando of Ranma yet. If she had to drag Shaak Ti along for the ride, so be it.
After that, Ranma met once more with the locals along with Shaak at Captain Beltane's request. The two of them were the nominal leaders of this expedition after all. The Chief Fabricator began the discussion by saying, "Judging from the reports our people have sent on to us, we seem to be doing very well in meeting your tactical needs. But this next mission of yours is also a strategic target. So is there anything we can do to help you achieve your strategic objectives as well? Does your ship need anything?"
Ranma and Shaak exchanged a glance, then Shaak spoke up for them both. "Our main objective here is to hurt the Sith as badly as we can. But it isn't going to be a knockout punch and we all know it." She chuckled as Ranma pouted at her, laying a hand on Ranma's thigh. "It might floor them, put them on their knees, they'll still be able to strike back but unless we are incredibly lucky as to either surprise the Sith Lord at home or take the place intact and able to set a trap he cannot feel through the Force, the Sith Lord and most of his web of resources will still be out there. What we need most of all is information."
The locals all nodded while Ranma stopped pouting. He might have preferred this to be a decapitation strike, but he knew that they were not going to get that lucky. The Veil was still there, and with it in place surprising the Sith Lord in person was probably going to be impossible even if Mister Baddy – as Ranma thought of him – couldn't track them in turn.
"To get that, I think we need a few things. First, is there any way you can build some kind of Hypercom jamming device?"
"There is such a thing as a Hypercom jamming device already, do you want it installed on your ship?" He turned away from them, looking at a few readouts from the space station's internal sensors and cameras, then glanced over at the other local man who wasn't dressed in a uniform, who shook his head. We wouldn't be able to put it on your ship, there's not going to be enough internal space available."
Ranma laughed evilly. "You want to bet on that?"
About an hour later, the man was staring around the interior of the Wild Blade, which was quite a bit larger than it should be. "H, how…" he whispered, his face slack with awe. "How are you, I mean is this a Force trick or something?"
"Pretty much?" Ranma said with a nod.
"What is this material anyway," the unintroduced scientist asked, poking at the wall. "It feels almost alive like skin, or thin scales."
"That will be our secret and remain that way," Shaak replied firmly. "You have not given us any reason to distrust you, but there is such a thing as a need to know on matters such as that."
"We're used to that Master Ti," said Beltane with a laugh, while his friend pouted. "Still, we can install the jammer I think, overlap a lot of the superstructure and control networks on your own existing Hypercom uplink system, then emplace the actual jamming system on the prow of the ship."
Ranma nodded. "On top of that we'll need full loadouts of proton torpedoes, we ran through all of ours." Proton torpedoes were the one thing that the Wild Blade hadn't been able to create. They couldn't find a source for the explosives in the warheads.
"We also would like anything else you could give us that could help us take computers and computer networks intact," Shaak cut in.
"We have ion pulse grenades for that kind of thing, they're not exactly normal loadouts but we have them. And about fifteen of our slicers are combat rated, so we can loan a team of five to you for this mission. But can… I mean… is this something you could do on our ships?" the man asked gesturing around them at the enhanced space around them.
"Not unless you have Jedi on board, and even then, they would need a lot of what I call Living Force." The man looked confused, and Ranma sighed. "What did the locals call it?"
"Bioelectric energy," Shaak supplied. "You have to figure out a way to create such energy in massive quantities."
"A biological reactor? What can a biological reactor do that a regular he couldn't?"
"The energy is more malleable shall we say." Shaak said before shaking her head firmly. "I'm sorry, but this isn't something we're going to want to share beyond what we have already told you, and it isn't something you are intellectually flexible enough to grasp."
The scientist almost glared at her in the front, but his fellows simply chuckled saying "Give over Tosh. Come on, let's see what else we can do for them."
"How about something that can keep heat from leaking out past the outer hull? Without any knowledge of what we're going to face we might be best served by imitating an asteroid or something, and the Wild Blade radiates too much heat for that kind of thing even with everything powered down." Since the Wild Blade was alive it didn't go into shutdown as mechanical ships would, there was always a heat source, and any heat source or anomaly could give the game away.
The locals frowned and once more pulled out their data slates, consulting them. Eventually, they answered in the affirmative, and the conversation continued from there.
That night and the next morning, while Dralshy'a and HK's head were still busy preparing his body, Ranma and Shaak spent time together, alone from the first time since the night of their honeymoon. Ever since then, there had always been other people around, be it Ahsoka, K'Kruhk and the other Jedi, the Mandalorians, or the Nova Guard. There was always someone else on the Wild Blade with them, and Shaak reflected that it was rather liberating to no longer be around other people. She and Ranma had been mostly on their own so long that it had was very nice to get back to that state of affairs.
Ahsoka was not there. She had asked to help Janice and the Mandos find a metallurgy lab where they could be involved in the process of upgrading their armor, which the Resol'nare demanded they be. Ahsoka was fascinated by the idea and wanted to watch them work, and she had joined them in getting a series of hotel rooms down on the planet for their stay.
Shaak smiled as Ranma set down a rash sure of style bacon, for himself and something he called blood sausage for her. It was another human-style kind of meat but one that was rare enough for her Togrutan preferences. Her smile widened as Ranma, instead of sitting down on his own side of the table scooted in next to her on the circular sofa. He nuzzled into her neck, shivering at the smell of her skin, the cinnamon, and pepper of it, and then leaned down to bite lightly at the top of her lek where it met her montral, causing her to shiver and bite back a moan.
"None of that," she muttered, slapping his thigh. "The food will go cold."
"That's what microwaves are for," he whispered, putting his arms around her, one arm behind her back, the other resting first on her thigh. That hand then moved up her body, to gently cup her breast underneath her loose negligee, which was the only thing she was currently wearing. "It'll keep."
Shaak laughed throatily, and turned, capturing Ranma's lips with hers, her tongue entering his mouth. The two of them made out for several minutes, then Shaak began to move, shifting herself around to face Ranma, one leg rising between them before spreading out to along back of the sofa, before both her legs wrapped Ranma, capturing him against her as she fell backward onto the sofa taking Ranma with her. She slowly began to grind up against him, and Ranma reached down and removed his boxers.
Where that would have gone was obvious to anyone. But before they could take the next step down that path, the ship's intercom buzzed, indicating that someone wanted admittance to the Wild Blade.
Ranma growled, and Shaak closed her eyes, slowly concentrating on happy, warm thoughts rather than her suddenly murderous once. "I wonder if anyone has ever fallen into the Dark Side based simply on coitus interruptus and the fury that comes with it?"
Ranma looked down at her as Shaak's eyes opened wide realizing she had said that aloud, and Ranma began to laugh, leaning his forehead against hers. The humor in the noise dissipated the last of Shaak's annoyance and she began to laugh too, kissing him on the cheek as Ranma levered himself up off her and around the table, grabbing up his boxers where he flung them with surprisingly force earlier, pulling them on.
He then hit the button on the datapad one side of the hatch, growling out, "What!?"
Outside, Obi-Wan, Siri, Micah, and Anakin were standing. 'We'd like to talk to you and Master Ti if that is alright?"
Ranma barely bit back a groan, "Would you go away if I said no it wasn't?" When Micah laughed and the others rolled their eyes, he sighed. "This better be good you four."
"Why," Anakin asked before any of the others could stop him. "What were you doing in there?"
"None of your damn business kid," Ranma said before smirking suddenly. "Or are you really saying as a nineteen-year-old you haven't been told about the birds and the bees?" Of course, Ranma had never sat down and had that conversation either, but that was because his old man was a bastard and Ranma doubted that was one label that anyone could stick on Master Giiett.
Anakin blushed, and Siri bit back a giggled behind him, while Obi-Wan looked pained and Micah simply smirked. "One should never ask a question like that Anakin, especially in circumstances like this."
Moments later, the four Jedi joined the two lovers in the main sitting room, with Shaak having thrown on the robe that Ranma had given her. This still showed quite a bit of cleavage, and one of the bitemarks Ranma had just left on her lekku was visible too. Even the narrow-eyed look she was wearing could not take away from how sheerly sexy Shaak looked at that moment. "Holy kriff…" Anakin muttered before a slap upside the head from Obi-Wan made him remember that he was ogling a Jedi Master, not a joy girl at a dance bar.
"Heh, that's rather like the pot calling the kettle black from what I remember Obi-Wan," Ranma said with a grin.
Obi-Wan had the grace to flush. "Yes well that was years ago, I have matured since then, and I did apologize at the time."
"You did, yeah," Ranma said with a laugh, leaning back and putting an arm around Shaak's shoulders, pulling her unresisting into his side. "So, what's this about?"
"First of all, I understand that congratulations are in order. The two of you officially got married?" Giiett asked with a faint smile. "Let me tell you that that caused quite a bit of confusion and discussion among the high Council. Luckily, I was once removed from that, but Master Koon deigned to keep me informed." He rolled his eyes, waving his hand airily, "Why he thought he had to, I have no idea."
The other Jedi chuckled. Plo Koon and Master Giiett were actually close friends, but they never ceased to needle one another: Plo Koon about Master Giiett's misplaced sense of humor, and Micah about Plo Koon's lack of said, as well as his more inflexible personality.
"Thank you," Shaak said with a polite smile. "For the congratulations anyway. I knew when we began our relationship that it would cause issues, but I decided, after much reflection, that as long as the Force itself did not object I was free to do as I wished."
"Wait, what?" Anakin gawked. "So they were, that is you were allowed to marry?"
"Is that so strange to hear? The Green Jedi are allowed to marry, simply because without us looking the other way as they did, the Green Jedi would have long broken off and formed their own sect. I retook my vows in the old way, renewing my dedication to the Force but also allowing for another connection. Ranma fully understands that my loyalties are thus strained, although admittedly we haven't had to test that just yet," Shaak replied.
"It'd be awfully hard to do so anyway, considering we share a ship," Ranma said with a laugh. He was perfectly content to let Shaak guide their course, considering that in this parlous time, that always ended in a fight somewhere.
"So you're saying if someone took the Old Oath, they could…" Anakin began.
"Master Ti is a unique case," Giiett interrupted Anakin, chuckling even as he reached up to lay a hand on his young padawan's shoulder. "While you would probably be able to eventually win that right, it is something that would take quite a long time." He shot a sly glance towards Ranma and Shaak, and when he went on was delighted to see a blush suffuse both their faces at his words. "Theirs, while passionate, is a love built on longstanding friendship, understanding, shared opinions, discussions, and time. How long since you first met you got married?" he asked looking over at a flushing Shaak.
"Before the actual marriage or before we decided to become involved?" she replied gamely.
"Both."
"It has been over five years since we first met. From that moment before we started our relationship?" She frowned thinking. "Around eleven to thirteen months, something like that? And it was not an easy decision for me. I agonized over at quite some time until finally deciding that while the Force was silent on this matter, it had shown me two possible futures. Both of them showed me successful, respected, and suchlike, but one showed me happy as well. I decided, all things being equal, that I could prioritize the decision that would make me happy."
"I can understand that Jedi cannot rush into such relationships. I have felt the pull of jealousy," Shaak confessed. "The pull of anger, sudden fear for my lover, occasionally on that one anyway, jealousy and fear someone would try to come between us far more often. I understand the High Council's concerns about relationships being doorways to those emotions, and thus to the Dark Side. I did not originally aim to start a relationship with Ranma. Both occurred gradually, built over time, which allowed me time to get used to dealing with those emotions and their power. Note I said dealing with, not feeling those emotions all. We are not robots, as much is some Jedi Consulars and Guardians would prefer to think of us as such."
"She's also felt the rage of coitus interruptus, just this morning in fact," Ranma said, to which Shaak very maturely stuck her tongue out at him, and the other Jedi looked both embarrassed and amused. "So what is this about?"
"First of all, when you leave on this assault of yours, no I'm not asking where you're going, or how you discovered will information your acting on, I wish to go with you. I will lead the team of some slicers, but I feel that another lightsaber will help," Obi-Wan spoke up first.
Siri indicated herself with a wave of her hand. "I too would like to go. I am due back at the High Council once I get used to my new prosthetic, but it isn't for anything important really."
"Anakin and I will be going with you as well. That will give you two extra lightsabers," Micah added.
Ranma shook his head firmly. "No. We don't need more lightsabers, what we need, are combat troops, people with a proven ability in combat we can trust. And I know that a lot of you Jedi aren't real combat troops. How good are you with your lightsabers, how good at working together, maybe even following orders given by non-Jedi?"
At that Siri sighed and backed away quite quickly. It was obvious then that she had only offered as a proforma. Given how stiff she moved on her electronic leg her combat days seemed to be over, for the short term at least.
"Giiett I know can handle himself, so long as he hasn't lost a step in his old age," Ranma went on, grinning over at the other Jedi. "Anakin, I suppose we could just strap into a starfighter cockpit and make him worth something."
"Hey!" Anakin muttered, giving Ranma the finger. He knew in this company that wouldn't be taken poorly, whereas in a lot of Jedi's might have taken aback by the show of emotions. "I will have you know that my lightsaber skills are among the best in the Order."
"For your age group and among Knights, yes," Giiett said cut in repressively even as he was chuckling. "But he is correct. Anakin is an extremely competent lightsaber fighter."
Ranma nodded. "And how is he at following orders?" he asked deliberately looking away from Anakin to Master Giiett.
"That is an ongoing project," Giiett said now laughing openly, while Anakin was, surprisingly, tugging at his padawan braid looking self-conscious.
"I'm getting better at it, I just well, if I don't have any specific orders to the contrary, I normally trust in the Force. And that normally works pretty darn well for me," he muttered.
"It has, but I believe that we have already had a discussion on the limitations of the Force and what Jedi alone can accomplish, haven't we, Anakin?" Giiett asked.
At that point, Anakin had the grace to flush and look away nodding. "Yes, Master we have," he said contritely. Then he looked back at Ranma fiercely. "But that doesn't mean I don't want to be part of this assault."
"Is that anger speaking, or a desire to help?" Shaak asked.
The young man frowned thinking hard about his own motivations, then said, "Could it be both?"
"It can indeed," Shaak replied with a laugh.
"In that case, let's see how good you are kiddo," Ranma said hopping up.
The others all stood up, while Anakin looked at him incredulously and the table started to sink into the ground along with the sofa at a flick of a switch by Shaak. "What, now?"
"Sure, you interrupted my breakfast among other things. I want to hit something for that, and you just opened your mouth," Ranma replied blithely.
Anakin frowned, holding up a finger as if to speak then sighed. "Right, I kind of did ask for this didn't I? Oh well, it won't be the first time I've eaten floor."
Several minutes later, Ranma made certain to make that a self-fulfilling prophecy, although he was surprised at the youngster's abilities. He had heard from Shaak and other Jedi that Anakin's connection to the Force was incredibly profound, but to hear that, and then to see it in person was a different thing. Anakin's speed, power, ability to read Ranma, all of that was far better than Ranma had thought he would be able to do.
But that didn't mean he up to Ranma's level. Ranma could see the youngster trying to make his body react, using the Force to imbue his body with speed and strength to an incredibly high degree, but he was all still only about as good Shaak was when the two of them had arrived on Mandalore for the first time. Very darn good, but not up to Ranma's skills even then, let alone now.
The hatch opened as Anakin was gasping on the ground, Ranma's foot onto the back of his head as he quite literally ate floor. Ranma turned, keeping his position with ease as HK walked in and his new body, with Dralshy'a behind him.
HK took one look at the tableau and muttered, "Pained observation: Master, I'm hurt. you are schooling a new young meatbag and you did not wait for mt to arrive to do commentary?"
Ranma laughed, stepping away from the youngster, and pulling him to his feet as he looked over at HK's new body.
It was more humanoid than the last one, its legs entirely humanlike. Its arms were heavy and large, and he stood at least as tall as Master K'Kruhk. HK's forearms were even wider than normal, and he had four heavy, thick fingers. The Inside of those fingers had tiny little lines visible on each bit of finger.
"Well kid, you didn't do so badly. If you want to come with us, I suppose we can watch out for you when we get there, wherever there is." Ranma said almost offhand as he moved his foot from Anakin's head. "Now if you could move to one side, I'd like to see what HK's new body can do.
Anakin grumbled, but it was a good-natured grumble and he allowed Ranma to pull him to his feet, a smile on his face.
OOOOOOO
Later that night, aboard the Subtle Jester, Anakin scowled, staring down at his hands as he lay in his bed in the Corellian freighter that his master used as his personal ship. The ship looked like a heap of junk held together by duct tape but looks could be deceiving, and like most Corellian ships, this one had been easily modified over the years. This included a fake hatch and an ejection system to shoot Anakin's starfighter out all the faster, a few weapons systems.
Of course, it wasn't the ship that was on his thoughts at present. No, it was what he had been told earlier that day: the Sith being out there, the concerns about their shadow empire of influence, and more importantly the need to keep everything secret from everyone else. His master hadn't even contacted the High Council, which they had requested, to tell them the Wild Blade had arrived.
Yet at the same time, he and his master had been sent here not by the rest of the order, but on the personal request of Chancellor Palpatine. They had been asked to make certain that Balmorra was not leaning towards rejoining the Techno Union, and in whether or not the planet would stay the course if hostilities broke out between the Republic and their old allies in the Union. They had also been tasked to make certain no one was selling Balmorran weapons to the newly named Confederacy under the table, trying to play both sides.
And now, thanks to Master Ti and Ranma's injunction, they couldn't report on those things, a blanket order his own master agreed with. Anakin couldn't contact the Chancellor to get his opinion on the Sith, or to ask for help. And that felt… wrong. It felt almost like a betrayal, but not quite, to retain com-silence about this. It was almost as if the Force was trying to tell him he should contact the Chancellor regardless, but while Anakin had gotten used to listening to the Force over the years over common sense, local social taboos, laws, and even the rules of the Order, he had never – alright, almost never – chosen to listen to the Force over the words of his Master.
Okay so perhaps I've gone against his words occasionally, and his advice a lot, but never a direct order. Kriff, how often has Master Giiett given me a direct, no-compromise order anyway? Anakin couldn't think of more than a two, maybe three instances since his Master had taken him as his padawan, and that was saying something. And yet… the Force is telling me I should…
"I can sense your thoughts Anakin even while asleep," Micah's voice interrupted Anakin's musings. "What are you spinning your mental wheels about?"
"I… the Force… Master are you sure we shouldn't be calling in more help for this? The Chancellor, he could have a fleet ready to back us up, we could really hammer this, wherever it is, and…"
"And possibly tip off the Sith," Micah replied, although there was no recrimination or censure in his voice as he sat down on the bed by Anakin's feet. "Master Ti and Ranma were very clear on that. But you still want to, don't you? Can you understand their point?"
"Yes, of course. As much as I respect the Chancellor, Ranma's right, to get everything moving he'd have to tell a lot of people, and one of them could be a Sith spy. Heck, if I were the Sith I'd be spying on the Senate and Chancellor all the time," Anakin answered quickly. "It's also common sense in this instance: the more people who know a secret the more can give it away."
"So, we have established that your mind and heart agree with this injunction on staying silent. This tells me your confusion is coming from the Force telling you something different, correct?" Micah asked, still calm, but frowning now. When Anakin nodded, he went on slowly. "Do you recall how Ranma and Master Ti mentioned how they had been led into a trap?"
Anakin nodded and Micah sighed. "What I am about to tell you is something that even K'Kruhk and Kit do not know. In fact, there are only five people outside of the High Council who know what I am about to tell you. You must keep this a secret. I am deadly serious padawan, what I am about to tell you strikes at the very heart of the Order. It was, in a way the final reason behind the five-team redeployment strategy that the High Council began to push a few years ago."
Staring at his Master, Anakin thought furiously. The redeployment strategy paired Masters and Knights who didn't have padawans together for the most part, with one of them at least having been put through the special toughness training offered on Kashyyyk. It was an organizational idea the High Council had started using on dangerous or long-term missions several years ago. That organization wasn't always used, but they had been part of such a team on Ryloth for many months and he had seen how well it could work then. But what secret could have pushed the High Council to switch to that rather than the one-Jedi (or one Jedi, one padawan) fits all concept? He nodded slowly, firmly. "I won't tell anyone master. I promise."
"They were led into that trap by a vision passed on to them that had struck Plo Koon about Sha Koon, his niece. They ran into a well-planned ambush that would have slaughtered any other Jedi or even whole teams of Jedi and only survived it because Ranma had some tricks he had never used before, ever as far as I know. But the point is, the vision was sent to Plo Koon through the Force by the Sith," Micah intoned swiftly, simply, like pulling off a band-aid.
Anakin reeled back, slamming his head back against the bulkhead behind him. Wincing he held his head but didn't look away from his master, his eyes wide. "I, the Veil!? You, you think this is, my desire to share what's happening is…"
"I doubt it. That tactic, directly influencing a Jedi, is not one the Sith have done often. But the Veil? The Veil of the Dark Side might be clouding your judgment, a purposeful thing on the Sith's part. Or perhaps this target Ranma and the others has found is so important the Veil is warning the Sith something is wrong, and they are on the lookout for any information on what that could be."
"KRIFF!" Anakin cursed. "I, that is… that makes way too much sense master!" His eyes lit up as an idea occurred to him. "But if that's the case, then we can really, really hurt them, can't we? Of we keep the secret I mean?" He nodded purposefully. "I won't tell anyone master, I promise."
"Good." Micah replied patting Anakin's leg, a wry smile growing on his face. "I would hate to have seen Ranma go through with his threat, after all.
Anakin sputtered but did not comment on that, as Micah stood up, heading back to his own small room. Behind him, Anakin watched his master go for a moment, before leaning back, no longer even thinking about contacting anyone about what was going on, or any other reason.
Thus, the mission would go forward with no backup, but also no chance of being betrayed.
OOOOOOO
With no idea of what they were getting into, Ranma and the others had decided to reuse the same trick that they had used to get in close to Naboo: come in like they were a runaway asteroid, hit the surface and then make their way wherever they had to from there. They jumped into the deep dark right outside of their target system, which, like the planet, was called Wayland.
From there they moved in imitating a rock, with as many things shut down as possible. Even with an outer ablative covering of heat-absorbing rock, they had to keep the heat to a minimum. Luckily Wayland was a very small system, with a small white star and a single planet, with a wide, heavy asteroid belt that must have at one point been a gas giant. They were able to use that belt to get closer to the planet, so the trip did not take nearly as long as it would have otherwise, but then they had to go in cold and slow.
During this trip everyone aboard the Wild Blade was thankful for the fact that it was large enough inside to give them all a bit of space, but the addition of the three new Jedi and the five slicers added to their troop cut deeply into that space. K'Kruhk and Obi-Wan both spent the entire trip, meditating as often as possible. Micah and Anakin spent the time verbally sparring, with Gary making Anakin, and at times Ahsoka think through various real-world problems, how they would solve them with access to the force and without, as well as forcing them to analyze which was better. While Anakin's connection to the Force was profound, and Micah had done a very good job of abusing his ego up to this point, he wanted to make certain Anakin realized there was more to the universe than just the Force.
Ranma and Shaak spent most of their time in the cockpit, turning over their room to Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Giiett, with Ahsoka sharing the other separate room with master K'Kruhk and two of the slicers, the other three slicers bunking in with the Nova Guard and the Mandalorians, taking the bunks of those who had already fallen. The married couple rarely left it save during Shaak's ongoing instructions of Ahsoka, which concentrated mainly on cloaking her Force presence, something the girl had issues with going into this training. By the time they reached Wayland, though she was very good at it.
It took more than a few weeks, to slowly move in like this, but it was well worth it once their passive sensors were able to scan the planet as they started to come closer. There was nothing untoward in orbit, no sign anyone had ever been here before at all and coupled with the lack of power readings that made many of the Jedi worry that perhaps all this had been a wild goose chase that the Veil had got the better of even Fay this time.
Or rather, all but Shaak and Ranma were fearing that. They were worried about another thing entirely, a fear that Ranma voiced. "Crap, I hope this isn't another ghost hunt like with Exxy."
The others who had gathered in the cockpit to view the first readings of the planet hadn't heard him, and instead, Anakin spoke for them all, scoffing as he stared at the scanner's passive readouts. "This is what worked we were so worried about? I don't see any live defenses or even energy sources."
"Were on passive," Shaak replied mildly, showing no annoyance at his tone or his leaning over her shoulder like that even as Ranma began to glare. "But you're right, the Sith apparently decided to play for anonymity rather than build an overt presence here."
"Matches their normal operating procedure," Ranma said, scowling as he leaned back in his chair, putting his feet up on the table in front of them, and interlocking his fingers behind his head as he stared at the image. "How much farther do you think before will be able to get a decent reading on the geography?"
"With passive sensors?" Anakin asked before anyone else could speak up. "We won't be getting that at all, not until we hit the atmosphere anyway. And at the rate our orbit is declining, that's going to be another few days at this rate."
Passive sensors relied mostly on reflected light data and heat sensors, so they would get an image and detect power sources. But they would have to be close enough for the light to have penetrated the atmosphere of the planet and then back out to their ship to see more than the outline of continents and such.
"Kid, you are welcome to hop out and walk the rest of the way," Ranma stated mildly, but Anakin knew the man was serious, given how his fingers were twitching.
"No thanks!" Anakin said quickly backing away from the two pilot seats, which had been Ranma's main goal with that threat anyway. "I'll just go back to meditating."
"Smart boy," Ahsoka muttered.
Anakin gave her a glare, but the younger Togrutan glared right back, and Ranma rolled his eyes while Shaak clapped her hands together turning to give them both looks of her own. "Children, I feel as if I am a broken recording right now. Do I need to send you to opposite corners and tell you to reflect on the decorum expected of Jedi padawans?"
The nineteen-year-old Anakin scowled, but fourteen-year-old Ahsoka simply grinned impishly, sticking out her tongue at her master, who laughed quietly, shooing them off. "I hear the sounds of sparring going on, why don't you to go get some energy out?"
Ahsoka instantly hopped up, bowed to her master and was out the door, squeezing between K'Kruhk and Obi-Wan eagerly. Anakin looked a little reluctant, but when the other three Jedi all turned to leave, he sighed and turned to go as well.
"Lucky," Ranma muttered, staring at the kids as they left. "Any chance I could do that?"
"Unfortunately not," Shaak said commiseratingly. Ranma sighed but since he knew the reason why he waited patiently. Then, as the others left, he grinned and turned to Shaak finding her already sliding into his lap.
"But if you have energy, then perhaps we should do something to work it off again," she whispered salaciously, leaning in, as Ranma began to play with the tip of one lek with his fingers.
"Tune lock the door to the cockpit, and then power off," Ranma growled, teeth grazing the sensitive skin of Shaak's lek as Shaak opened her robe, showing she was naked underneath, as Ranma twitched his boxers off.
"Good grief, is it normal for humans to be so amorous?" Tune's voice came out as an aside before he obeyed Ranma's command.
Two days later, they finally got into orbit where they started getting some readouts from the planet. It was an exceptionally forested world, looking something like Ranma thought Earth might have been back in the dark ages or before humans started to really clear a lot of land for farming. There were no deserts, the polar ice caps were small. Even more strangely to Ranma's eyes, it was a landlocked world. The bodies of water were all small and scattered across the globe haphazardly, locked around large continents.
Several areas were rocky, and there was a series of mountains that loomed as large as any at Ranma had ever seen, with one lone mountain sticking out at the edge of the range. It was not as tall as many of the others but it's very solitary-ness drew the eye. There was no sign of high-tech habitation even now. However, that ended abruptly as Tune began to blare out a warning. "We were just pinged by a passive sensor master."
"What can that tell anyone about us?" Ranma asked quickly.
With the rock armor the Balmorrans installed, nothing," Tune said promptly. "Even our passive sensors and the one remaining heat signature won't be found so easily. What I cannot predict is…"
As he broke off, passive sensors showed several large objects breaking off from one of the larger mountains, streaking upwards towards them. "Their response I presume." Shaak finished dryly. "It would seem as if the Sith have decided to be proactive about removing any threats near the planets."
With a sigh of regret, Ranma lifted himself off her pulling out as he did, causing Shaak to bite back a whimper at the suddenly empty feeling. The two of them had just finished a bout of lovemaking in her chair, with Ranma on top this time driving into her, then had decided to just cuddle for a bit before Tune had announced they had entered orbit and had not stopped cuddling until just now. Now the two of them stood up, with Ranma shifting back to his chair as Shaak began to hunt her underwear and robe. She had just found the underwear and pulled it on when the heretofore locked door opened, someone on the other side having overridden the command.
She looked at Obi-Wan, K'Kruhk and Micah along with Janice and Cro gathered in the hallway beyond, holding her robe in front of her, one eyebrow rising. "Yes, was there something?" she asked mildly. But there was nothing mild about her eyes suddenly darkening, and the fact her lightsaber had just floated to her hand.
Ranma had made no move to get up to change, having grabbed up his clothing and changed where he had been sitting, Martial Arts Quick Changing was not just speed after all, but now he turned and smirked over the back of his chair at the flushed, embarrassed faces in the doorway. Hmm… I think it's time for a bit of a scare…
With a deep breath, he pulled his ki up into his face and then used a technique he hadn't used in a long while. In fact, I can even remember if I've used this technique at all since coming to this weird universe.
Suddenly, Ranma's head was six times its normal size, as he roared out, "What the hell do you think you're doing! That door was locked for a reason! Stop ogling my wife, strap yourselves in, and get ready for action, we don't need backseat drivers up here!"
Even Micah backed away rapidly at the strange apparition that Ranma had suddenly become and Shaak stared as they all quickly vacated the cockpit, closing the door behind them.
"What have they launched at us," Ranma asked Tune, who had beeped and bobbled in place for a bit, either laughing, or shocked at Ranma's outburst.
"They have just launched three planetary level concussion missiles, master. That is enough to shatter any asteroid the size of this ship regardless of its composition."
"Shit," Ranma cursed while Shaak finished dressing, her giggles causing him to smile even as danger came at them with explodey death. "Tune, do you think we can eject the ablative armor to impact those missiles right before they hit us?" Ranma didn't know if the Wild Blade could survive hits like that without their shields on, and he wasn't about to try if he didn't have to. And even if we did, we'd face a prepared enemy at best, lose our chance at attacking them at all at worst.
Tune fell silent calculating, then answered in the affirmative. "Yes master, but if we do that, the enemy will know that this is a ship, the ship itself will still be here after all."
"No, it won't," Ranma said, leaning back and pulling on the helmet of that chair again, wincing only slightly as he pulled back his ki from his skin to allow the ship access. "You handle that aspect Shaak, I'll handle the rest."
For a moment, Ranma connected to the ship's gestalt, feeling the touch of its mind, not so much like a quizzical child, but like that of an animal ready to learn a new trick. Ranma grinned under the helmet, thinking, all right, you've learned a lot for me so far, now you're going to learn one more trick. Let's see what we can do with the Silent Thief Technique.
Thirty seconds later, the tiny explosives that would release the rock armor detonated, almost undetectable even with active scanners. Those pieces flew outward, impacting the incoming missiles just as they entered the final hundred yards, causing them to explode prematurely.
The ship rocked from the shockwaves, but thankfully shockwaves didn't propagate very well in space, so they dissipated just as quickly. By the time they did, the ship was long gone to passive sensors. Anyone watching those sensors would have assumed the asteroid had been destroyed, the Wild Blade and Ranma having timed their trick perfectly.
If the enemy had been using active sensors, the Silent Thief Technique wouldn't have worked. Not on something this large, and not with only really small bits of debris to redirect attention toward. However, on passive, the ship was able to hit the atmosphere unmolested. Moments later the ship was knifing down towards the distant surface of the planet.
Thanking the Force that the Wild Blade was somewhat aerodynamic and had actual wings, Shaak guided the ship on a slow descent, spiraling down toward the ground. They quickly went over the horizon from where the missiles had come, almost gliding down to splash into a small lake the water of which steamed and hissed. Ranma got a sense of intense pleasure from the gestalt of the ship, as the heat that had built up during entry and the technique faded, and Ranma let go of it, pulling the synaptic hood off his head.
"All right people," Ranma said shouting the words down the hall rather than using the ship's intercom. Even now, using any kind of energy source was probably not a good idea. "The train has pulled into the stop. Welcome to Wayland, home of the Sith, and hopefully all our data-slicing needs. Mandos out first, Nova Guard after. Jedi you all can follow up the rear. HK, with the Jedi. We're in the water right now so you'll have to wait to be of much use."
"Prideful rebuttal: Actually master, my new form is quite waterproof. Conciliatory tone: Although that doesn't mean I would enjoy the experience."
Ranma laughed quietly at that, and he and Shaak joined the others. Anakin and Micah and Obi-Wan still looked embarrassed from earlier, but Ahsoka was staring Ranma with wide, sparkling eyes. "How did you do that giant head thing? Can I learn it!?"
"Put it down as one of my weird Living Force techniques for now kiddo. Maybe someday, just don't expect to be able to get to that level quickly." Ranma then turned his attention to the others. "Let's get a move on people."
At the hatch, which led out into the water of the lake, Ranma frowned. "Shaak, how likely is it that a Sith could feel the Force's reaction to my curse?"
"…Very likely I'm afraid. Can you jump that?" Shaak said, frowning. The Jedi were all hidden under cloaks, their Force presence erased, and had been since the moment they jumped into this system. Beyond that, they were hoping that the Sith just wasn't going to be on the lookout for sentient minds. If they were, they would already be waiting for them. But if not, feeling the Force's giggle at Ranma's curse, or anyone using the Force, so close could get them looking.
Ranma nodded grimly and then lifted Tune in the air. "HK!"
The attack droid and two of the Mandos, the better swimmers Janice and Kad, had reached the shore already, while the others were still making for shore. They turned, and Ranma pulled his arm back, tossing Tune towards them. "Catch!"
"Oh, you asshole!" Janice howled, ducking away just in time to avoid the tossed astromech, who was wailing in distress. HK, however, did catch the droid, his arms going around the droid and then twirling to kill its momentum before setting it down. "Amused drawl: Master, I am always in awe of, and somewhat appalled by your problem-solving skills."
With the droid dealt with, Ranma was able to jump to shore with relative ease. The Jedi too made the leap easily, the Force in their bodies helping them along, something that no one would be able to detect under their Force Cloaks.
Once on solid ground the Jedi and their allies spread out, not using their sensors but their eyes, enhanced through the gear in their helmet, as they looked around themselves. The Jedi also all wore at least helmets allowing them to communicate with one another and chest plates under their robes.
Wiping his hair out of his eyes, Ranma set the droids down, pulling out his wrist computer. "Alright Tune, what do we know?"
Tune bleeped and tootled at him, words appearing on his wrist's datapad. Most of those words were unprintable curses sent Ranma's way for his earlier treatment but Tune eventually got down to business. "Master, those missiles came from one of the mountains. However, our sensors were able to detect that the launchers themselves were external type, well- hidden but simply situated on the mountain. We were able to detect a bit of a radio signal at the same time."
"And that means what?" Ahsoka asked, although from the frown on her face, she might have figured it out already.
"I believe that those are remote activating launchers. However, if we can get within sight of them, we might see a reload system activated. If there is an automated one, as in an on-site reload system, that will tell us whether or not there is more to that mountain than just those launchers. If as I suppose, they are remote activated systems, the reload for them will also be remote type. Droid workers perhaps on a hovercar."
"He's right," Shaak said with a smile, patting the top of the droid's head affectionately. "Well thought."
The astromech droid wobbled and weebled in place, and Anakin chuckled. "Reminds me of Artoo."
"Artoo?"
One of the repair and astromech droids Queen Amidala had on her yacht back when we first met. He had a bit of an attitude, really lively fella way more than most. I wonder if she still has him?" Anakin mused. "I might want to look her up when I'm back on Coruscant, see if I can buy him off her."
Micah looked at his apprentice, a faint frown on his face, but Anakin didn't meet his eyes, and Micah sighed. It looks as if that infatuation with his so-called savior still exists. Thank the Force though that he has clung to that image of Padme rather than Shaak Ti who had just as much to do with his being rescued from slavery. I would rather not think what Ranma would do if that had been the case.
"Annoyed drawl: While talking about the tin cans is a fascinating topic for you meat bags, I'm sure we are here on a mission," HK interjected. His weapons systems were all online now, and he was scanning the forest in every direction. Something about it was setting his systems on end, but he could not detect any threats.
"Rules of engagement boss?" Janice asked, her tone teasing even as she hefted her weapons, including her brand spanking -new, freaking awesome disruptor blaster. With extended magazine too. Oh yes, I will clean you and oil you and call you Reesha…
Nor was she alone in that. The entire Mandos and Nova Guard looked almost giddy at the idea of using their new weapons.
Ranma sensed something in her tone and chuckled quietly, but simply said, "Spread out. I'll take to the trees with Shaak, and the other and will spread out above you. Nova Guard in the center guarding the slicers. Sorry Cro, but you and yours are going to have to be hefting those weapons of yours. We'll spread out in a line, while you all follow us in the column formation, but you set the pace."
The Mandos and the Nova Guard all nodded, as they moved deeper into the forest while the slicers looked hesitant. But they knew they had come too far to back out, and with Obi-Wan chivvying them along they followed the others.
Ranma ranged out ahead of the others, with Shaak moving in tandem on the other side of the column, and the Jedi between them, spread out in a line, Micah in the center, Ahsoka and Anakin to one side Obi-Wan to the other.
They moved quickly and efficiently, even the Nova Guard not noticeably slowed down by their equipment. They were only just starting to see signs of the strength and speed enhancements from Ranma's brutal training, but even if they hadn't been, the Nova Guard was an intensely well-trained and drilled group. And this team despite their losses was still the cream of the crop. Even with the slicers slowing them down considerably, they traveled at quite a clip.
Two days' hard travel through the woods brought them to the mountains and late that evening Tune communicated to Ranma via a com-wire stuck into his datapad from Tune's side. They had to do this considering that they were under radio silence just in case, although the trees here seemed to be blocking out their scanners and most likely would have done the same to anyone else looking for them in turn. The Sith had proven to be paranoid enough that they might be on guard after the destruction of an asteroid and any hint might either bring the Sith out in force or equally likely, have them simply leave.
Then too, Ranma had been carrying the astromech on his back throughout the trek. His small wheels were next to useless in this terrain. Something that very obviously annoyed Tune given the tone of his message to Ranma. "Master, you should tell your hangers-on and the mistress that we are coming up on a point where we should be able to make out the missile launchers. I recommend we slow down and find someplace to observe them unless of course, our plans have changed and I wasn't informed."
"Hangers-on, huh? You've been spending far too much time with HK, my fine young droid." So saying Ranma moved to the side of his current position, heading into the column, where he spotted master Obi-Wan, and held up a fist, indicating he should stop.
Obi-Wan nodded in turn, going to ground rather adroitly Ranma thought.
The other Jedi quickly converged on him, and the column came up behind them just as quickly, each man or woman holding up a fist to the others, indicating they needed to slow down. Without orders they spread out in a circle, and Ranma smirked, pleased at how well they were all moving. Anakin and Micah were having more difficulties than the rest, but even they were doing darn well.
He nodded to Micah, twitching his head towards Anakin, and giving the man a surreptitious thumbs-up, to which the shorter Jedi Master simply chuckled, shaking his head as if the say that it was mostly Anakin's work, not his. Which indeed was the case. Micah would only take credit for changing Anakin's attitude, not his physical skills.
"All right, Tune says that we're coming up on a point where we should be able to see the missile launchers with our magnifiers. Let's dig in, and tomorrow we'll see what we can see. Janice, divvy up the watch rotation, but I want at least one Jedi awake and on watch at any time."
The others nodded, and the group of infiltrators spread out. Ahsoka and Shaak made a little bower up in the trees, with Ranma and K'Kruhk following their example. The Mandos spread out, creating small hideaways for themselves, so well that Anakin could barely see them after a few moments. In contrast, the Nova Guard created a few foxholes in a slightly rocky, open area back of where they had stopped covering the top of them with camouflage blankets. Micah, Obi-Wan, and Giiett were not nearly as good at hiding themselves away, and HK didn't even bother trying, simply squatting down between two massive tree roots.
The day passed uneventfully, with all of them spending the time to do maintenance on weapons or simply talking, with the Jedi meditating. There was something niggling at the edge of their senses, but none of them, not even Anakin with his greater connection to the Force or Shaak with her own enhanced senses, could localize the feeling. It was bizarre like something just buzzing at the very edge of hearing would be to someone using their physical senses.
While they were meditating on that, Ranma had moved forward alone, closing with the missile launchers. They were incredibly well camouflaged, but as Tune had reported from orbit, they were also exterior launchers. They were stuck on the outer face of the mountain, not held in silos hollowed out of the mountain itself. And two of them were empty still, which meant that something or someone would need to be coming by at some point to reload them. Which would then lead them to the Sith's true holding on this world. Knowing they were on the right track everyone settled in to wait.
Or most of them did. After dinner, Ranma and Shaak found their eyes drifting to one another, and later, as they went on a walk through the woods, Ranma asked, "So, does this feel as if it's going too smoothly to you too?"
"Yes, I think at this point I am just waiting for the other shoe to drop," Shaak replied tenderly twining her fingers with Ranma's. "If living with you has taught me nothing else it is that the peaceful times never last."
This premonition was borne out that night. They spotted a large, flat hover truck zooming over the forest canopy up towards the missile launchers. The droids used flashlights and other tools while rearming the missile launchers, then the hover truck flew back in the same direction it had come.
With a direction to go, the group moved off that night, but the hover truck's speed was such even Ranma couldn't keep it in sight at night. Yet that was okay. They knew a direction at least. With that information, Ranma and Kit took a brief trip back to the Wild Blade dropping off Tune before returning to the others.
Rejoining the others, Ranma and company kept moving for two more days in that direction, pushing hard but keeping their eyes open. Still, no sign of the Sith appeared, nor any other sign of habitation and the trek continued until their third night on the planet.
That night, the first moment that anyone realized they were in danger was Shaak opening her eyes, leaping to her feet her lightsaber already in her hand. Elsewhere in the camp Anakin too was rousted from sleep by the Force warning him, with the other Jedi noticeably slower to respond or hear the warning. "Beware, we are under attack!" Shaak Ti shouted.
That warning saved three of the Mandalorians and one of the Nova Guard. The Nova Guard, Kik'tova had reacted to the shout by hunkering down in the fire pair's foxhole and twitched in shock as something hit his helmet's chin where before it would've taken him the throat, where the armor was weaker.
The three Mandalorians on guard had all responded just as fast, ducking behind the trees around them automatically. A second later they heard the sound of something hitting the ground and trees where they had been standing. Janice was the only one experienced enough to realize what was causing the sound, and she growled out, "Are you serious!? Blow darts! Are we fighting freaking barbs now?"
"Blow darts from people who are able to sneak up on us," Sgt. Cro muttered, hunkered down in another of his people's foxholes, "What are they?"
"Damn good at sneaking around, is what they are," Ranma interjected, staring out of the darkness. His eyesight was pretty darn good, even at night, but he couldn't see anything moving, and that was kind of terrifying.
"Better question, why are they attacking us?" Ahsoka asked, staring out into the dark, her lightsaber activating in her hand.
Instantly there was silence in the woods, the attacks stopping as Ahsoka activated her lightsaber. She was still blinking in surprise when a voice called out from around them, its owner still unseen even by HK and Ranma. "You speak for the Lord? But the Lord had red blade."
Thanks to their Force powers, the Jedi were able to understand what was being spoken even without seeing who was doing the speaking, whereas the others were looking at everyone in confusion.
"They just called the Sith 'Lord'," Shaak said frowning heavily. "That is not a good sign."
"We were warned of the warriors who would wield magic blades of different colors than the holy red. They are enemy to the great Lord!" shouted another voice sounding older than the first. "Kill them!"
At that, they were attacked from every direction at once, dozens, then hundreds of blow darts flying through the air towards them. Ranma caught one idly, staring at it in surprise. The thing was as hard as metal but looked like a kind of nut, and he scowled. "Are we back on Zonama Sekot again and no one told me?"
The others all docked and dodged into cover. The Nova Guard and Mandos held fire unable to spot any targets even with their helmets set to night vision, while the Jedi, even Anakin, was reluctant to attack primitives such as this. Yet that wouldn't last long if they kept attacking, and HK was already moving around, his four-fingered hands clenching and unclenching. "Dour observation: Being on the defense like this is no way to run a battle."
Ranma knew it, and also had far more leeway of nonlethal means to deal with this kind of thing. "I'll be right back, you lot just hunker down and protect yourself as much as you can. With that he leaped out into the darkness towards the darts targeting him, leaping more than forty feet in a single bound from one tree to another then down into the bushes.
The instant he landed on the ground there was a flash to one side and someone cut out of the darkness at him, but he blocked the blade with his hand, catching it easily in his palm. He then pulled the attacker into the light from the Jedi's lightsabers through the trees as the creature stared at him wide-eyed as his second dagger shattered against' Ranma's forearm, leaving not even a welt behind.
The being was tall, taller than Ranma by a good foot or so, with crystalline-like skin, a face that reminded Ranma something of an anteater with three triangular ears. One of which was on the top of its bald head. Its eyes were small and deeply set, almost entirely protected by a heavy ridge of bone. The being had four arms, each arm corresponding to its own torso segment. It was only wearing a loincloth of some kind of leather and had a weapon in each hand.
Another four-armed sentient attacked Ranma from behind, but Ranma just turned and grab that one by the elbow bypassing his blade entirely. He then pulled them together and shouted out "I think it's time for a meeting of the minds!" before slamming their heads together.
He then dropped them, before leaping over their stunned bodies into the darkness beyond.
Having been able to follow all this if barely from his own position, Anakin blinked, shaking his head and turning off his lightsaber while looking over at Ahsoka. "So tell me, have you gotten used to the Ranma method of conflict resolution?"
"No," Ahsoka said, hunkering down beside him using the same giant root as cover, turning off her own lightsaber less she accidentally skewer him. Or on purpose skewer him. "It's not the kind of thing a person ever does get used to unless they are touched in the head."
"On the other hand, those two are still alive, and I suppose that If we were forced to fight with blaster and lightsaber, we would have been forced to slay some of these natives. These are not slavers. These are primitives. They do not know any better, than attacking those different," Micah cut in.
Shaak set her lightsaber down, cracked her neck in either direction and smiled grimly. "I think I'm going to join my husband for a bit. We'll be back, just stay hidden for now, we might not be able to draw them all in to attack the two of us after all. Regardless I think we need a prisoner to answer some questions here."
"Right," said Cro, pulling back his sleeping bag. Like the other Nova Guard, he had slept in his foxhole, instead of out in the open. "Wake me up when it's over."
Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Micah all blinked, nonplussed, but the Nova Guard followed their leader's example. A Second later, their confusion went up a notch as most of the Mandos were ordered to stand down. Nearby K'Kruhk called out from his cower, from which he had yet to reveal himself. "You get used to it after a time."
"Annoyed mutter: My master is once more having all the fun. I don't like it. Philosophical note: Yet since you all apparently would be annoyed if I flensed these barbarian meatbags for their temerity of attacking us, I suppose there would be little fun to be had," HK interjected, powering down his weapons and going back on near-standby.
"That and I bet you can't even see the locals to attack them," Ahsoka said with a grin.
"Electronic Grumble," HK replied, no words beyond that necessary.
Ranma and Shaak eventually returned, with Ranma dragging one of the locals behind them by his ankles. This one looks a little older than the others," he said holding him up. And his skin did indeed look a little more mottled, a little grayer than the rest he and Shaak had dealt with.
"The rest of our attackers are out there tied up after we rather liberally knocked some sense into them," Shaak said, shaking her head ruefully. It had been a most un-Jedi like action, but it had been fun too. "Hopefully this one will be able to answer some questions."
The two of them tied him to a tree in the center of the sprawled out camp, and then, with the Jedi, Janice, HK, and Cro looking on, Ranma splashed some water in the native's face. "Now you're going to answer some questions for my friends here."
The man looked at him in confusion, his back ramrod straight as he tried to back into the tree. "Oh great Kas'Hakal, please forgive! Take your carnage elsewhere, leave my people in peace!"
"I'm the what now," Ranma asked as Shaak relayed that.
"The, the great Kas'Hakal, the great bringing of violence and disorder. Where you go, chaos and death follow. Please, holy worthy avatar, forgive me!" the barbarian warbled. His voice, through his short beak, was like a songbird almost, but deeper, and at the moment sounding quite desperate.
"Huh. Actually, I like that name. Can I keep it?" Ranma asked, looking around with a small smirk on his face.
"I think it's a law of nicknames that you can't keep one if you like it," Anakin said with a sigh.
"What, you don't like being known as the Jedi Without Fear? They called you that once in a news report I saw," Ranma drawled.
Anakin looked at Master Giiett, then away. "Let's just say it's not exactly descriptive and leave it at that," Anakin said sounding a little pained.
Ranma smiled at that and ruffled the younger man's hair. "Then you've learned the great secret kiddo, there's no such thing as no pain or no fear, it's overcoming them and how you do it that is the real test. It is in never letting the fear win, to never let it influence you or your actions."
"That's astonishingly deep, did you get it out of one of those Balmorran fortune cookies?" Ahsoka quipped.
"Wait, what?" Ranma asked
Shaak rolled her eyes but Cro cut in, asking, "Can we please concentrate here?"
He had just seen some of the armor that had been hit by the darts of the enemy, during the aborted nighttime action and he was feeling very mortal at the moment. Nearly every dart had hit a joint in the armor of the wearer be that wearer Mando, Nova Guard, or Jedi. Though they hadn't penetrated, that marksmanship, coupled with that kind of this stealth, was not something he wanted to play around with despite Ranma and Shaak Ti's proven abilities.
"Tell me, why did you attack us," Shaak asked, using the Force to channel her words into the local's mind.
The local scowled. "You have much of the same powers as the great lords, but you are not of them. The great lords only wield you red blades, you are me of many colors, that means you are the weak ones that they fight against. The ones who have disturbed the order of things. You will find nothing here."
"You have been lied to," Shaak said firmly. "The red blades mean that you have spoken to those we call the Sith. They are no lords. No one can own the Force, and there is no great balance that they are trying to put right. They are our enemies, however. Yet what have they done for you? Why do you call them lords?"
The man growled angrily you will not twist my mind! For generations, the Lords have defended us from enemies beyond the stars. They slew all the pale-skinned ones here, drove them to the south away from the People where they died without aid from beyond the stars."
"Have you ever seen these enemies Micah asked smoothly, also using the Force to get his point across. The implications of what the local sentient had just let slide was ugly, but it must have happened centuries ago, so there was little to be gained by worrying about it now.
"You are here now are you not?" the man replied scornfully.
"Can you guys make him understand me?" Ranma cut in. It looks as if all his earlier fear of me has faded. Time to do something about that.
When the Jedi all indicated they could. Ranma moved over to one a nearby Boulder, gesturing at it. "How many of your people would this take to lift?"
Blinking at the apparent non sequitur, even if he wouldn't understand the term, the native scowled angrily. "What does that matter?"
"Just answer the question," Ranma groaned wearily.
The man grunted irritably, then shrugged his shoulders. "It would take four of us, so long as there was nothing too deep into the ground. If so more."
Ranma nodded, put his arms around the boulder, and heaved it up like someone else would have lifted up a package that, while large, was about as light as air. He then pulled it completely out of the ground showing that the boulder did indeed stick down into the ground, before balancing it over his head in one hand, looking back at the local. "Lesson one," he said smiling at the creature.
The barbarian seemed to grunt, shaking his head. We have seen the great Sith do similar things with the Force. They would not even need to touch…"
He broke off as Ranma squeezed his hands together, shattering the boulder. "Lesson two," Ranma said with a laugh.
Even so, the four-armed alien was still looking at them with us and frown on his face. And Ranma sighed, "All right, lesson three. He held up a fist, this is what I hit your people with most of the time. That, or banging their heads together. Now imagine what would've happened if I'd hit them full power."
The local man became even grayer than he had been, looking away hurriedly. "Tr, truly you are an avatar of Kas'Hakal!"
"That's what I thought," Ranma said with a nod of grim satisfaction as Ahsoka remembered the little lecture that Ranma had given her and Barriss after the wedding disaster. "But I didn't. I simply knocked you all out."
HK laughed electronically, "Amused speculation: No doubt in the most humiliating and amusing way possible. A pity that we were not able to see it. It is not often that I am able to see such a magnificent floorshow as my Master going all out."
"Now," Ranma went on, ignoring the droid beyond giving him the finger, crouching down in front of the local again. "I don't want to hurt anyone here. The only reason we're here is for the Sith. We won't do anything to your people, we won't even stay on the planet after we're done. In fact, we won't even tell anyone this planet exists if you like your isolation so much. So you can either work with us or get out of the way and do nothing. I don't care which."
"Ranma your diplomacy skills leave much to be desired, and yet, the end result is acceptable," Micah said with a laugh shaking his head as the local babbled something, about letting them pass through their territory.
There were other clans and even an entirely different species out there according to the four-armed native called the Psadans. But that other species were not nearly as dangerous in ambush as this group. And if they came at Shaak, Janice and the others in the open, they were not going to get very far. The being also babbled about the sacred mountain to the south, where "The lords of the red blades dwelled. The lone mountain, Tantiss."
"All right let's get a move on," Ranma said, after undying the local so he could return to his people. "We're burning daylight."
Shaak nodded, while the Mandos and Nova Guard grumbled lightly about not having gotten much sleep. But they pushed themselves to their feet and followed after Ranma and the Jedi south towards where the low flying skimmer which had brought the reloading droids.
The group trekked through the heavy forest throughout the day fast as they could go while still not making all that much noise. Just because the other locals might not be very good at ambush was no reason to tempt fate. Still, they covered far more territory than even the best soldiers would've been able to, and the Nova Guard, by their body language, which Ranma had finally gotten a handle on, were grinning at one another in their helmets when they stopped that night. "We're finally seeing some progress from your training."
Ranma smirked, giving the man a thumb's up while inside he thought, Oh you poor misguided fools. Do you think your training has been had up to this point? Don't make me laugh. The instant I see any of you showing signs of ki is when the real hell will begin.
Later that night, everyone else had bunked down, while Shaak, Kit, and Ranma went ahead of the others. The Nautolan had the most training from Ranma besides Shaak, and thus the most endurance. And thanks to his greater connection to the Force, Anakin could almost match him. The three of them spread out, moving out of the forest up the mountains as they continued to move in the direction the droid work crew had come from. It wasn't long before they started to go downhill once more, back into the forest proper yet still traveling south over a series of hills. But in the distance, the hills gave way once more to the lone large mountain they had seen from orbit that was only vaguely part of this range.
The two Jedi looked at one another, and Kit nodded firmly. "Yes." Shaak nodded too, and Ranma looked at them for an explanation, which Kit gave as Shaak continued to stare ahead of them. "Even through our Force Cloaks we can sense certain things. And this close, that mountain reeks of the Dark Side."
"Joy," Ranma muttered. "Well, let's get back to the others. I think we want to circle around, come at the mountain from another angle, and then… then we'll have to start going even more slowly and unseen." Now it was the two Jedi's turn to look at him, and he shrugged. "Think about it. The size of that mountain and you saying it reeks of the Dark Side, the Force trying to help us find this place. Whatever's in there, is going to be protected. Heavily. Very, heavily."
Kit winced, but then a grin formed across his wide, flat face, his strong teeth gleaming in the moon overhead. "Well then, I suppose we need to take a page from your book, won't we? Strike hard, strike fast, and leave chaos in our wake."
Four days later, Ranma and the others had found a series of near flat rock faces leading up the mountain. If any aspect of the mountain was going to be unprotected, it would be this area, although they didn't take that for granted. Ranma took two of the slicers with them who had kept up pretty well up to this point, although the others had pretty much coddled them on the march. With the two Balmorrans and Shaak following, Ranma moved ahead of the others, looking for passive alarms. They didn't find many, but those they found the slicers were able to spoof through the use of mirrors and small devices which would cut out any signal for as long as their batteries lasted.
Helping the others up, especially the Nova Guard, over that segment took a while. But eventually, the entire attack force was above the snowline, moving on. Again, Shaak and Ranma took the lead with two of the slicers who had experience in mountaineering, surveying the area. In this way, they found what they were looking for: an air vent. It had security on it, but the slicers, with Ranma's help in getting close, were able to spoof them.
After that, Ranma and his slicer 'backpack' returned to the others. "Alright people, this is it. Prepare yourselves, we go in at the crack of dawn."
That was only about half a night away, but everyone nodded. Even the slicers, who were not elite soldiers although they had military training, knew they needed to get what rest they could. They all bunked down using warming packs and other things to keep warm, while Shaak and Ranma huddled under a single blanket with Ahsoka between them. The youngest of the Jedi, she was having the most trouble regulating her temperature in the cold up here. But with Shaak's help, she was doing all right still.
As dawn broke over the mountains, Ranma roused the others, making certain they had a light meal, nothing heavy before a battle, then, when Cro, Janice and Marcus, the leader of the slicers signaled they were ready, he looked over at Micah and Shaak. They looked at the other Jedi, who all nodded, and Ranma nodded back, cracking his neck and knuckles. "Alright folks, let's go!"
With that Ranma raced up to the air vent they'd found, with the Jedi following on his heels and the others after them. By the time they reached him, Ranma had already torn off the cover of the air vent and was standing inside, feeling the warm air flowing out of it. Ahsoka joined him quickly, while the other Jedi turned and made certain the others were following before entering in turn.
As the others followed Ranma into the vent however every Jedi there staggered as the Force shifted. It was a vast, earthquake-like shift, a massive change in the weave of the Force, something momentous shifting, changing, futures which had, despite Ranma's presence up to this point been secure, utterly unraveling now. And at the same time, those who could heard the Light Side of the Force sing in triumph, showing more reaction than it ever did beyond the feeling that most likened to laughing at Ranma's curse.
The impact of the change staggered every Jedi there.
Kit groaned leaning against the wall of the air shaft and holding his head. Micah blinked then stood in place rocking on his feet while Anakin fell poleaxed to the ground, one of the nearby slicers grabbing him from doing a full faceplant. Obi-Wan shuddered, stumbling into several of the Mandos, who likewise supported him. K'Kruhk fell to the side opposite Kit, grabbing the metal of the air shaft's side so hard his claws left grooves.
Ahsoka stumbled to her knees, and Shaak nearly joined her. But Ranma grabbed her by the elbow, holding her as he looked at them all quizzically. "What's wrong, is it some defense against Force users or something?"
"I, I don't know. There was a shift in the Force. Something momentous just changed entirely, just from us entering this place we have changed, changed the future in as profound a manner as you did when you first arrived in this universe," Shaak whispered, a wide, fay grin slowly crossing her face as she recovered. "Oh my, yes. If we win here, we will have severely hurt the Dark Side. It won't be crippling but it will be the next best thing. I can feel the Veil recoiling Ranma! That, that is going to mean so much to our fellows, I cannot even begin to describe it."
Looking around at the other Jedi, all save Anakin and Ahsoka were shaking off the impact of this monumental shift in the Force, and all of them, even Obi-Wan was smiling. Those smiles were very toothy things as they gathered themselves for a great effort, but the fact they all could feel the Veil recoiling away from them was more than enough to make the Jedi very, very determined to carry through with this attack and make that permanent.
"Quick question," Ranma said, frowning as he stared at ahead of them where he had just spotted some movement. "I know you were cloaking us all, and the slicers took out the alarm on the air shaft's opening before I pulled it off. But did that shift in the Force knock your Cloaks out of whack? Or worse, could the Sith have felt it?"
All the Jedi looked at one another, and Kit summarized their thoughts easily. "Well, kriff!"
Without another word, Ranma raced over to the Nova Guard carrying the extra powerful communications gear. "Power up everybody and get in deeper into the shaft!" As the Nova Guard and everyone else activated their weapons and suit batteries for the first time since they landed, Ranma pulled the connecting cable and plugged it into his own helmet, shouting out as he did, "Tune do it!"
From well out of sight the Wild Blade blasted up into the atmosphere, twisting around to fire directly towards the mountain. The ECM and ion pulse beams slagged out, shutting everything on the mountain's surface down even as high up as the assault team. Several of the slicers looked on with wide eyes as the ion bolts continued hammering into the mountain from top to bottom while the ship's new Hypercom Jammer went to work as well.
"Go, go go!" Ranma shouted, racing down the hatch. "Time for shock and awe people, go, go! If it moves, kill it!"
Inside the mountain, they found themselves smashing out the other side of the air shaft, out into a long maintenance hallway where several other hatches leading up to other air shafts or into other rooms. It was also already coming alive with droids, which were popping out of small alcoves here and there. At the same time, automatic guns came down from the ceiling.
Ranma instantly activated his lightsaber and began to bat them backward, even as he forged forwards ignoring any of the bolts that would hit him in order to defend the alcove behind him letting the others enter.
It was the Nova Guard under Cro who entered first, one of them popping their head in. A second later they all thrust their guns around the corner, using the telemetry data from that first Nova Guard to target the guns and the droids. A second later they followed their guns out into the hallway, still firing with one target each, then splitting up to other targets one after another after another. The heavy disruptor rifles slagged droid after droid as they moved forward, and Cro shouted, "Clear, move up!"
"The Mandos in an open battlefield or forest, the Nova Guard for a set-piece or base assault Ranma," Cro went on grimly as he reached the martial artist. Pulling a large shield off of his back, which enlarged to cover his entire forearm and body from the neck down. It was thick heavy, durasteel and would be able to stop anything up to a turbolaser. Even a SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon) like an E-Web repeating blaster would not be able to get through it quickly.
Soon Ranma and Cro reached the far end of that hallway, coming to a T-junction. "Obi-Wan!" Ranma ordered, having somehow taken command without anyone objecting. "Taka K'Kruhk and go left with one of the Nova Guard. It should be heading back out to the outer face of the mountain. Make certain, then rejoin us, if not, radio us or blow the fuck out of the tunnel to guard our rear. The rest with me. But first, coms check."
Everyone checked they could still talk to one another inside the mountain, and then the two named Jedi broke off, racing away down the indicated tunnel while Ranma led the others in the opposite direction. Both groups soon met heavy resistance in the form of prepared security checks which had, obviously com online in order to stop the invaders. But it wasn't anything they couldn't blast their way through.
It was very clear that the mountain was a warren, and the outer edge, where they were right now, didn't have anything remotely interesting, or important.
By the time they hit another T-junction, the two separated Jedi had rejoined them. "We found an access port for a turbolaser battery. We destroyed it, and a few others, but it ended in a dead-end."
Ranma nodded, but he had already her ordered Cro and Micah and Anakin to one side with another Mando down the outer edge here. "Join us, and let's keep moving people. Speed over everything is our friend, we can't let them bog us down and overwhelm us with sheer numbers of droids."
"We're sloping downwards and moving in a spiral," Anakin said, frowning. "I think we've only just gotten back to the snow line now, and everything we've seen has looked like maintenance or defensive installations. We should start seeing something more interesting soon."
A few moments later, Anakin's words were proven prophetic. After blasting through another defensive position, they came out the tunnel into onto a second-story bridge overlooking what looked like some kind of mausoleum. Every Jedi there shuttered, backing away rapidly. "Some of that stuff reeks of the Dark Side," Kit said, shaking his head to clear it.
"Really?" Ranma said even as he reactivated his lightsaber to block some incoming fire. "I thought it was the guy in the cloak over there."
At his words, the others looked across the bridge to the tunnel opposite. There they saw a shadowed figure at the far end of the room, holding the leashes to several large Terentateks. Both of them were larger, and stronger looking than any Ranma had seen before, by at least a meter, if not more. Their arms and legs were completely covered by black armor, standing out starkly against their light pink skin, their horns were huge and massive fit to gore a Rancor bull and their fangs were long and pointed hooked almost, to rend as well as tear.
The man in the dark cloak opened his hands and released his grip on the steel leashes, shouting out a command in some language that Ranma didn't know. Judging by the winces, the Jedi were able to understand it though and did not like what he said one bit. The Nova Guard and Mandos, however, just opened fire on the things, only to see their blaster bolts bounce off the Terentateks' skin like rain.
"This is my dance I think," Ranma shouted, racing forward to engage the two.
The catwalk was wide, which allowed for both Terentatek to charge forward as one, but Ranma leaped forward, lashing out with his lightsaber at one, targeting the thing's eyes and causing it to back away rapidly. At the same time, he had taken to the air, lashing out with a kick at the other, which caught it in the face. But to his surprise the kick barely made the thing stumble. His lightsaber too seemed to do nothing, not even anger the beasts when it hit them. Whatever training they had gone through had turned their scales into a substance that was practically immune to the heat-based assault of the lightsaber.
It reached forward with a howl of rage then Ranma was dancing around the two of them, leaping this way and that. They were fast too, far faster than those he'd fought before. "But not fast enough you ugly motherfuckers!"
Grimacing Shaak nodded from behind the action. Terentatek were incredibly tough to kill with lightsabers or blasters, and these looked like the original breeding pair of the nest they had dealt with on the way to Shili and on Vjun. As such, most of the other Jedi wouldn't be able to deal with them. And I can better serve our assault by forging ahead and dealing with any more such we face than getting bogged down here.
With that in mind even as the two titans attempted to squash her husband Shaak started to shout orders. "Mandalorians and most of the Jedi will go ahead! Nova Guard, cover them head down below with Obi-Wan. Ranma, join them afterward. Slicers even split. We have to start spreading out now that we've got the chance!"
"Roger!" Janice and Cro both shouted in reply.
The Nova Guard laid down at blistering fire past Ranma who was staying on the ground literately to let them do this and to let the Jedi and Mandos past him. Their disruptor bolts only occasionally hit one of the two beasts, doing no damage at all. But the fire going past them cause the robed man to ducked back into the tunnel behind. When he did, every Jedi bar Obi-Wan raced after him, leaping up over the continuing battle between the beasts in a series of Force-assisted somersaults.
"Shouldn't we help Ranma?" Anakin shouted, even as he followed his master in a massive leap over the violence.
"Does it look as if he's having any difficulties?" Shaak asked tartly from where she had landed on the other side of the bridge from their entrance. "Remember what we are here for, we're not here to simply smash everything, we are here for information."
She deposited the hacker she had grabbed and leaped with over the monsters down onto the floor, looking at Ahsoka sternly and then Anakin. "Your job is to guard him, understood?"
Behind the Jedi, the Mandos followed on their jet pack but since the entrance to the gangplank ended another T junction, Shaak was forced to split them up once more and did so by sending the Mandalorians one way and then leading the Jedi in the other, deciding to go that way as she sensed more Dark Side energies in that direction than in the other. "Move, move, move people," Shaak ordered, "find us some consoles some computers, anything! We need a map of this place as soon as possible."
Their weapons having proven ineffective against the Terentateks, the Nova Guard quickly rappelled down onto the floor of the mausoleum, where Shaak had seen another two entrances. There they found themselves taking fire from both entrances in the form of two new types of attack droids that none of them had seen before. Both were tall, broad-shouldered and powerfully built. One was fast on its, feet, nimble looking, and wielded polearms as they closed. The other had one human hand and two underslung blaster cannons on its other arm was just as large and looked heavily armored.
This proved to be a mistake, however. While the Mandos had embraced the knife and the sword, the Nova Guard preferred the staff and the spear and were experts in fights like this. "Obi-Wan, guard the left flank, Kik'tova, Al'Sarg, and Shinsa, guard the right entrance!"
So saying, Cro instantly shifted his shield to his back and pulled out the concussion grenade launcher from his back and Obi-Wan nodded, knowing the other man had far more experience in this kind of fight than he did. He engaged the first polearm wielder, cutting it down with a swift shift from defense to offense that took it by surprise, then tangled up the next two in the doorway, holding them there so they couldn't spread out. Hmm, basic programming on these droids. This base was set up with all the resources to see off an attack, but not the training.
At the other entrance, the Nova Guard moved to take out the polearm using droids with their own polearms, while their fellows would fire around them at the other droids, pushing them back. Each time a droid went down the team at that doorway would instantly move into cover on either side of the door, allowing Cro to engage with the grenade launcher, first the side his own troopers guarded, then the one Obi-Wan was stationed at.
Unable to use their mobility or speed against the Nova Guard in the tight confines of the doorway, the pole-wielding droids did no better against the Nova Guard than the first one had against Obi-Wan. And thanks to their training with Ranma, the Nova Guard was as fast as most Jedi and able to keep up with the droids.
However, just as the ebb of attack droids finished, one of his men went down. A door to one side of the hallway leading away from the museum had opened, and another man, his features cloaked in shadow came out. Sith Lightning flashed from his hand, and he shrieked out, "Interlopers, you will all die! Die for the effrontery of coming here to this hallowed place of shadow and dark!"
The Nova Guards struck was named Al'Sarg and he was one of the best closing fighters among the Nova Guard. He had liked practical jokes almost as much as the Mandalorians Thomas and Jethro and had been one of the few who thought maybe that bonding to a living starfighter might've been a good idea.
He died screaming in his armor as the Sith Lightning electrocuted him.
The Sith then laughed as Cro fired a grenade his way, catching them in midair. But one of the others opened fire on the grenades, exploding them in midair, blowing him backward. Another Nova Guard rolled a grenade across the floor, as the man was about to push himself to his feet.
The man, whose hood had been blown off in the first explosion, was pale, red-eyed, and mad-looking, with a long flowing beard. He had a brief second to look down at his feet where the rolling detonator was, before it exploded, turning him into so many broken bits. Several disruptor bolts followed, incinerating what remained of his head.
"Just in case," Cro muttered, staring down at his dead trooper, mandibles clenching under his mask. "There's no such thing as overkill after all."
Obi-Wan finished the last of the droids in front of him and moved over to the Nova Guard. "I'm sorry sergeant, I could not detect that man, if I had, I would have been the one facing that direction. I apologize."
"Keep your apology Jedi," Cro barked a laugh, "it wasn't your fault, it was the luck of the draw, and your apology won't bring him back."
On the bridge above them, Ranma had just speared one of the Terentateks through the neck with his lightsaber. Having been covered by the thing's collar, the skin there wasn't quite as tough as the rest of the thing, and his lightsaber seared in one side then out the other.
The other grabbed him but Ranma broke the grip then dropped his lightsaber before leaping up over it's descending maw, grabbing the thing by its horns, flipping himself up over its head. There he braced himself on its back pulling the Terentatek's head back and pushing at his shoulders with his feet while the beast thrashed and howled, trying to dislodge him. This went on for more than a minute until he felt something start to give. Then with a roar, Ranma wrenched the things head to one side, snapping its neck with a sound like a giant oak shattering.
As the body crashed to the ground Ranma leaped down, joining the Nova Guard, huffing in annoyance. He'd had to reinforce his natural strength with his ki quite a bit in that fight. They had stopped on the other side of the entrance to that area, trying to make heads or tails of which way to go. "That way's to the outer side of the mountain," Ranma said in the direction that Obi-Wan had been guarding.
"Inward then," Cro said grimly.
Ranma nodded, and the assault continued, spreading out as best they could.
OOOOOOO
Deep inside the mountain, four senior members of the Prophets of the Dark Side sat in the command center of the mountain of Wayland, trying desperately to activate more and more of their defenses. But most of those defenses were external, and by finding that air duct and getting inside so quickly undetected, Ranma and his attackers had completely bypassed them.
"The Chaotic Locus, here!?" one of them said, actual fear in his voice rather than the normal hate and rage that powered the Dark Side as they used it in their experiments. "How!? Why didn't we sense him? How did they find Wayland!?"
"Quiet!" said another, having already grabbed control of his fear using it to empower himself further. That was the way of the Sith: adapt, improvise, above all, control everything they could, to make them stronger. "We were not in our right minds yet when we sent Skasal up there with the Terentatek Primes thanks to that Force Shift. But how they found Wayland matters not at all. He is here, and we must deal with it. And the fact their assault team is so small tells me that they do not have any idea what they have run into here."
"How can you say that? The two original Terentateks have already been dealt with, curse it! And we thought that the alarm was just caused by some random predator they could slaughter to their heart's content. The Chaotic Locus is stronger and far faster than we had thought. I have no faith in our droid brigades to stop it, even if they could perhaps deal with his companions."
"Those companions are not without skill," growled a third voice, its owner shaking his head angrily as it watched one of their younger acolytes die to simple soldiers while a Jedi was nearby but tied up with droids. "I vote that we immediately start the self-destruct sequence. Our deaths will stop them from rolling up everything else that the Sith have gathered over the eons. And we might be able to take the Locus with us! We will have struck a blow for the Sith that no one else has been able to."
"We cannot! We must fight to the end. There are too many precious relics, archives, our work to reconstruct the Chaotic Locus's abilities, that would all be lost. We must escape with that information set a fourth voice, speaking up for the first time since this attack had begun. "What is more important, the items of his Dark Majesty, or the knowledge of them?"
"Agreed," said the other three instantly at the mention of their dread lord. They quickly moved back to the controls, inputting several commands. This brough online the droid commander, a single droid that was programmed with the schematics of the mountain and with orders to take command of the droid defenses within. They sent him all the current information, and then a few basic instructions on what to do, before turning their attention to their own followers. Those within the labs, which were close to the attacker's current location, were ordered to do what they could. Others were ordered to the generator room and still more were ordered to work with the droids, joining them from various places within the mountain.
"That will slow them down at least. But we must prepare for the worst. If we cannot hold, we must escape, and leave the cursed Jedi nothing! Download the information on to the prepared archives, and then let us escape!" the fourth voice ordered. He had taken command somehow, in a way that the others would have argued violently with under other circumstances. Right now, though, a single voice of command was just what they needed.
"It is not a fast process," the third voice warned. "We will have to stay here for half an hour if we want it all."
"We must have it all. Only that will appease our dread master, Lord Sidious!"
The other three replied by rote. "All hail the Chosen of the Dark Side!"
Sidious had broken with the rule of Two after Maul had fallen to Ranma on Naboo. He had done so in several very different ways. First, he took more than one apprentice at a time in the form of first Komari Vosa, then Sora Bulq and to a lesser extent Set Harth. He then encouraged Tyranus to take on several Dark Jedi himself and one true apprentice in the form of Asajj Ventress. In this, he created not only an atmosphere of continuous one-upmanship, which bettered all their individual skills, but he created a force that could be called upon to fight the Jedi one on one. While at the same time, he allowed Set Harth to dabble in Sith Alchemy, bringing together the Prophets of the Dark Side to aid and eventually take over his experiments, while also working their way through much of his treasure trove of Sith artifacts and those the Sith themselves had gathered since the time of Darth Bane.
These men and few women were a sort of Sith offshoot that had been around since being started by Darth Millennial after Darth Cognus had exiled him. During that time they had mostly constrained themselves to experiments in the Dark Side, finding Darkside artifacts, and squirreling them away. Plagueis had reached out to them initially but hadn't followed up on it to the extent that Sidious had. Now all forty of the Prophets of the Dark Side were within the mountain, broken into cabals of ten, the leaders of which were in the control room.
They were not Dark Jedi nor were they truly Sith for they lacked many of the basic combat skills both Jedi and Sith were trained in, only a few of them even using lightsabers. But they made up for that in their mastery of the Dark Side, and many of the more advanced combat abilities, such as the Sith Lightning that had killed one of the attackers already, Force Choke, and other such abilities.
And at the moment, Shaak and the others were running into the labs. A place where a large number of the Brotherhood could always be found along with their most esoteric and dangerous toys.
OOOOOOO
Tunnel combat was one of the worst environments Ranma had ever fought in. It took away most of his normal mobility, and forced him to fight as Ryoga would: full speed ahead in a straight line, with very little space to dodge. Worse, the strike team they were attacking with was a small one, much smaller than the size of this place warranted. Which meant if they stopped their forward momentum at all, they could be overwhelmed by the defenders. As Ranma, Cro, and Obi-Wan led the Nova Guard on, the defenders themselves didn't seem to realize this just yet, but they still ran into dozens of hardpoints. Each hardpoint was guarded by at least four of the new long-range combat type droids, and ten or more automatic weapons systems. While the Sith might have gone in for hiding this place from orbit, inside they certainly had not skimped on the defenses.
Luckily, those defenses didn't seem to be very well led just yet. Besides the Dark Side users, the Nova Guard had dealt with already, they didn't run into any more living opponents, for quite some time.
Unfortunately, that could not be said of Shaak and her team. Worse, the shock of their attack was not going to last forever…
OOOOOOO
Several minutes after leaving the scene of where Ranma was fighting the two giant Terentateks, Shaak and her team found themselves entering what was quite obviously a laboratory of massive size, large enough to hold a sports field. They found themselves on the ground floor of the massive interconnected room, with dozens of small gantries and conveyor belts lining the sides of the lab, along with hundreds, perhaps thousands of cages. Numerous operating tables dotted the room. Chemical compounds were stored in large glass containers here and there, rising from the floor, cables and numerous other equipment was scattered around, an organization made haphazard through constant use.
The place also positively screamed of the Dark Side to Shaak Ti. There was more Dark Side residue here than she had felt even in the temple where they found Exar Kun's dead body, more than she had felt even on Vjun, where they had first fought Set Harth. Pain, so much pain, hopeless rage and hate, and fear, a miasma of it to her senses, and an undercurrent of anger that nearly made Shaak reel away it was so strong.
But she bore through it as all save Ahsoka did, the younger Togrutan having little experience with such a powerful feeling of Dark Side energies. "Ahsoka, fall back, let the others through!"
Because the laboratory was not empty.
Scattered throughout the lab were at least fifteen Dark Side users, Shaak was unable to see the far side of the room, so the number was not exact. They seemed to be middle-aged men and women of all different species, though they were predominantly human and male. Shaak had a brief moment to wonder why that was, before the Sith shouted commands to one another, and began to launch Sith Lightning their way.
But their attacks came as individuals. Their Sith Lightning was spread out instead of targeted to blanket every inch of the doorway, which would have overwhelmed even Shaak who was at the lead of her team, all of them having been forced to race along in single file in the hallway leading to this lab. The attacks also came in slowly, starting from the nearest and then moving out from there, with many not even taking part. Instead many turned away, racing to open the cages. While perhaps smart in the long term, it would have been better if they had acted as a trained unit.
The Jedi in comparison defended as one, Shaak taking a deliberate step forward to clear the doorway for the others who instantly spread out in a controlled pattern. Micah and Anakin, relative unknowns to Shaak and the others, slipped easily into the gestalt mindset that marked out the Jedi from every other Force sect. They fought as one, every lightsaber intercepting a single blast of Sith Lightning, redirecting it into the floor in front of them. Very specifically the floor.
Seeing this, Ahsoka regained her senses, shifting forward to stand beside her Master, allowing the circle of defending lightsabers to grow in turn. She blocked a flash of Sith Lightning that would have taken Shaak in the side and felt almost two feet taller at the faint smile of approval this won from the older Togrutan. But even so she had a question. "Master, why are we redirecting the lightning into the floor? Surely we should be trying to move forward."
Even in mid-combat, Shaak decided to make this a learning experience. "Stretch out your senses Ahsoka, and tell me what you think?"
Ahsoka frowned, and for a moment the tumult of battle kept her from doing so. Then she heard sprinting feet behind them and then smiled as she sensed the Mandalorians she had come to know over the past few months racing up behind them. As she did, Janice's voice crackled over their helmet coms. "Marcus, get your slicers on the ground, we're coming through!"
A second later, the Mandos were there, leaping or wall-running around the group of slicers as they huddled on the tunnel floor. As each of them moved out of the tunnel into the half-circle of the Jedi's position they activated their jump jets with whoops of delight. Janice and her people had run into four sharp nasty fights but each of them had occurred in the tunnels, and they had been unable to do much more than use their weapons like they were Nova Guard, rather than mobility and skill. Now they blasted their jets up into the air of the laboratory, even as a few of the Dark Side by the cages began to input commands desperately into the control panels beside them.
From above, the Mandalorians laid down a withering hail of fire, rockets, thermal grenades and disruptor bolts spreading across the lab, shattering a lot of the equipment and killing several of the Dark Siders in those first few seconds. They also drew a lot of fire from the Dark Side users, which in turn allowed the Jedi to race forward.
"Anakin, Ahsoka, remember to guard Marcus and the other slicers. Slicers, get to that panel over there!" Shaak reached out, grasping the nearest Dark Side user and tossing him up into the Sith Lightning from his fellows aiming at Janice and a few of her Mandalorians. His body electrocuted absorbing the bolts, and the Mandalorians to split up further while she gestured with her lightsaber before twirling into an attack with a speed that took even Ahsoka aback at the first Terentatek out of its cage. "Go!"
Ahsoka obeyed instantly, turning to a side corner to the right of where they had entered, where there were a series of control panels and computers and no Dark Side user, although there were four cages, two to each wall of the corner. Seeing them about to open, Ahsoka dealt with the problem by using all four of her assigned grenades in a second, lobbing one into each cage, exploding the contents into gobbets of flesh. That done, she took a stance on an angle motioning the slicers around her as she blocked an errant blaster bolt from a series of security guns that had just popped out of the ceiling.
One of the Mandos went down, hammered from above before he could turn and engage the guns. But the rest of the Mandalorians turned their attention to them en-masse, wiping the guns out in a matter of seconds. The downed Mando's jetpack had taken most of the damage, and Thomas rolled as he landed, tossing his backpack forward into the face of a Terentatek as it came out of a cage. "Come on you kriffers!" he roared, disruptor rifle blasting out as a long vibro-knife almost appeared in his other hand.
In front of him and throughout the lab the cages opened, and out stepped horror. Eight of the cages contained Terentateks as large as the breeding pair they had killed in the asteroid. Six other Terentateks had been very obviously modified, gaining an extra pair of limbs, bionic implants, two had what Ranma would have likened to a scorpion's sting rising from their backs as they stalked forward.
The Dark Side users might not have been warriors as Shaak understood the term, but they adapted quickly, pulling back, letting the Terentateks do the attacking, as they moved into teams of two. They then started lobbing long-range Force Grabs and Sith Lightning at the Jedi in the Mandalorians.
K'Kruhk was tripped up, then found himself pulled into a Terentateks grip, the Terentatek the attempting to bite his head. The Whiphid defended himself by grabbing its jaws and wrench them further open, using the Force to enhance his strength and tearing the jaw off. The beast staggered back and K'Kruhk kicked out, sending it back enough to open it up for one of the Mandos to finish off.
Kit staggered, breaking a Force Choke but found himself surrounded by Terentateks and cut off from the others. But rather than retreat he laughed, his lightsaber moving in a wild, almost chaotic manner as he began to leap and dance around.
Another of the Mandos fell, but Dralshy'a was unharmed, her jetpack having only been clipped by Sith Lightning. In response her own personal weapon, a twin-barreled rifle that she had built while on Balmorra targeted a group of four Sith. They were able to block the blaster bolts from one of the barrels, but the other shot out solid slugs, an idea she had after seeing Jedi fight so often. The gauss bullets tore the four Dark Siders apart, and she whooped even as she fell back and away from the Terentateks, deciding to fort up in the corner with Ahsoka. "Hell yes, let's hear it for science you kriffers!"
"You do know you're a little bit mad?" Ahsoka asked as she attacked a Terentatek that had decided to attack the smallest of the Force users there.
"Meh, every good scientist has to be a little mad," Dralshy'a replied. "Besides, you run with Ranma and his kriffing woman too, so you can't talk."
"Hmm… can't deny that I suppose," Ahsoka muttered, ducking under an attack and letting Dralshy'a fire into the Terentatek, blinding it before she cut upwards with her lightsaber. Her attack cut it open from crotch to neck.
Having been left behind by the racing Mandalorians, HK entered the lab now, only to find that no one else was near enough to support him as he found himself beset by dozen Terentateks and two Dark Siders as they attempted to get behind Shaak, Anakin, and Micah. But HK, confident in his new body and weapons, did not even attempt to retreat. "Exultant battle cry: You will know the superiority of the robot form beasts! Taunting aside: Do not worry oh mighty Dark Siders, though you are not true Sith, I will give you meatbags the honor of dying under my blades. Certainly, that is all you weak meatbags are good for!"
The Dark Side user thus addressed roared out in rage and anger, empowering his powers further as he launched an attack at the giant droid. "Die you freakish droid!"
But HK dodged to one side, and over one shoulder the box launcher's front opened. HK's head twisted from side to side, locking on each target in turn and inputting an electronic command to the rocket launcher. But this wasn't just any simple rocket launcher. No, each tiny rocket, only about the size of two of his large fingers, was a radio-controlled gyroscopic rocket with a tiny payload. "Exultant Roar: FIRE!"
At that shout, hundreds of small rockets blasted out from the shoulder mount with a sound like "BRRRAAAGGG!" as their individual engines lit off.
The Terentateks and the Dark Side user was practically eviscerated by the rockets. As they blasted through one of the beasts at point-blank range, turning the beasts into so much chaff. Several of them then went on to do the same to the Dark Side user. Who had not, as a few others around the lab had put himself through the toughness training.
For a moment the entire battlefield fell silent as HK turned his head, staring at his shoulder-mounted weapon. "Awed response: I think I'm in love." Then he raised his arms, and the holes in his palms opened as he shouted out. "Gleeful scream: Eat condensed and heated gas foolish meatbags!"
As the battle raged on, while Kit and Shaak seemed to be garnering the lion's share of the attention from the beasts, Anakin and Giiett had moved around the sides of the fight, hoping to cut off any retreat or attempts to reinforce the enemy from the other entrance to the lab. As they did, Giiett had first moved to defend K'Kruhk's back. In so doing he didn't realize Anakin had left him behind before they were separated, the young man's eagerness and confidence sabotaging him. "Anakin get back here!" he shouted, leaving K'Kruhk behind to catch up to his padawan, cutting down a Terentatek that had gotten between them in an effort to attack Anakin from the back.
Anakin didn't listen, still too confident in his own abilities despite Micah having proven several times that the Force wasn't everything and that there was a limit to what any one man could do. Worse for Anakin, he had automatically adapted to the environment of the Force within the lab and hadn't consciously realized that the Dark Side miasma was preventing them all from using their Force Precognition to the level they normally could. Only Shaak was not feeling that weakness, the Living Force within her keeping the miasma at bay.
He quickly found himself the first of the Jedi to match blade to blade with one of the Dark Side users. Yet, though two of the four Dark Siders facing him could use lightsabers they were not skilled in their use. He cut down both of them without even trying cut very hard, but then barely was able to overwhelm a Force Choke at his throat and another blast of Sith Lightning. He shattered it with his own Force powers, yet his momentum had stopped as he dealt with it.
He almost missed a fourth Dark Side User slashing at his arm and would have lost the limb if not for his Force senses warning him in time. And having to dodge it meant breaking his block of the Sith lightning. The last bit of lightning hit, and he screamed, spasming as he felt to his knees, only holding onto his lightsaber through grit.
The Sith facing him could well have killed Anakin then if not for Janice killing the one who had been attacking him with Force Lightning with a headshot from on high. Even so, two of the Terentateks were on him in an instant. They roared and struck down at him, and Anakin would have died if not for Master Giiett barreling him out of the way, his own twin swords taking the heads off both Terentateks even as one of their limbs caught him in the side.
Like many of the Order, Micah had not gone through the durability training to the extent of those who traveled with Ranma. And these beasts had been enhanced to fight Ranma and Shaak. They were stronger and even more durable than Terentateks normally were. The blow punched through his side, the Terentatek's claws shredding armor, ribs, and flesh with ease.
"No!" Anakin roared, turning and raising his hands using a force push of such power on one of the Dark Side Terentateks that it exploded as if hit by one of HK's grenades when it impacted the far wall. The bits and pieces of the Terentatek impacted a Dark Side user underneath where it hit, blinding him for a second as Anakin raced forward, cutting him down instantly.
As Kit, K'Kruhk and HK formed a triangle, surrounded by the Terentateks, Shaak raced to deal with the last Dark Side Users. As she came, she unleashed a technique she had been holding out on for fear of letting the Dark Side users elsewhere in the fortress have time to figure out how to combat it: Force Light. From her body, a blazing white and blue light flashed out.
The effect was evident even more now than it had been the last time she used it on Vjun. The Dark Side miasma slowly began to evaporate, but the real impact was felt by the Terentateks and the Dark Side users. The Terentateks were weakened staggering and easy prey while the Dark Side users screamed in agony, reeling away from her even as Shaak grimaced, dealing with the energy requirements of the technique.
The last six Dark Siders had been desperately trying to race towards the opposing entrance from where the attackers it entered, but Shaak had leaped up to the roof, from which she had released her Force Light. Then as they were staggering, she ran across it in a technique she had learned from Ranma. Then she fell back down onto the ground, cutting them down mercilessly while Janice and the other Mandalorians began to cut down the Terentateks around the other Jedi.
Now she strode forward, into the heart of the Terentateks and they fell back, almost driven to run from the Force Light. Caught between her and the others though with aerial fire hammering down on them from the Mandos, the Terentateks didn't last much longer. Moments later the battle in the laboratory was all over. But already, Shaak's enhanced hearing via her montrals, enhanced further by her helmet, could hear the sound of clanking boots racing from behind them and deeper within the fortress.
As K'Kruhk and Kit knelt down beside Anakin by Micah's side, Shaak turned to Janice as she landed next to the Togrutan. "Janice, how many explosives do we still have?"
"What type?"
"Any."
"We each have for more five more concussion grenades, and none of us have used our ion pulse grenades, the droids will be hardened against that level of ionic disruption. We also have two bunker busters, I have one, Kas has another," Janice reported smartly.
Anakin paused in where he was attempting to staunch the wound on his Master's side to look up in shock at the amount of weaponry that the Mandalorians were carrying, and the nearest Mandalorian smirked at him, even as he began to pull off different segments of his damaged armor, the bits no longer connected to the armor underneath it. "Strength training Anakin, it's one of the things that Ranma's been pushing on us. Thank the Resol'nare for it!"
"I've got it I've got it!" shouted one of the slicers gathered around the corner Ahsoka and Dralshy'a had been protecting. He quickly pulled his datapad away from where he had been loading something from the computer to it, racing over to Shaak, holding up his datapad. "Let me connect to your datapad."
"I'll upload the map of this place to you. It was part of the surface data on that computer and they weren't able to block me out before I was able to download it."
"We're not going to have much luck here beyond that," one of the other slicers reported as Shaak held out her arm, where her datapad was connected to her armor looking over at the others for an explanation which the man gave her. "It's got extremely good defensive subroutines here, and I think every time we are forced to delete one or can overcome it, a chunk of the computer's information disappears with it. And well you said…"
"I said that we were here for information yes. If you are certain that is what's happening, then don't bother trying just yet. Will get to a true command center and then you all can go wild."
The slicers looked a little peeved at that, but they also looked a lot terrified. All five slicers were supposed to be combat slicers, as good as regular troopers that you know guns and blasters, but none of them had faced anything like what they'd been fighting through here.
And this is with taking this place by surprise, Shaak thought grimly. If we had been forced to fight our way in, she froze, staring up over at the slicers. "Can you make certain that no one else can create some kind of information dump from the computers?"
The three slicers quickly turned to the computers, frowning. "We can make certain that no one dumps any information that is hardwired into these computers, or any computers in what is called laboratory two-dash-four-slash-five."
Shaak frowned working that out. Two and three, that probably means that this is the second, third and fourth level of the base, she thought, looking up at the two-story ceiling. "And five, lab five but out of how many?"
Since Shaak had asked that question aloud the man who had found the map replied. "There are fifteen different ones, some of them are interconnected, some of them aren't, some of them are also labeled 'failed, shut down', although whether or not that means you know the experiments within failed, or if they are closed, I don't know."
Shuddering at the idea of there being five labs like this one, Shaak nodded grimly, before moving over to the other Jedi around Micah Giiett. Before she could reach him though, she already knew that there would be no saving him, she could sense it through the Force. Micah's lungs had both been destroyed in the blow, and his intestines perforated along with damage to his ribs and spine. That was beyond K'Kruhk's ability to heal, and none of the others were even as good as he was at healing others.
"Don't even bother, my large friend," Micah said, almost calmly despite a trickle of blood running down the side of his lips as he gently pushed K'Kruhk's hand away. He was smiling even now, using the Force to dull the pain as he looked up at the others. "I'm done for. But I can still do something for our cause here if one of you Mandalorians would be so good as to rig up a bunker buster I think you called it for me to detonate?"
Janice nodded, saluting the older Jedi and then turned to the others, barking out orders. The Mandalorians saluted Micah one after another, then turned away to their own duties.
"Master, I, I'm… so, so sorry, if I hadn't…" Anakin began, distraught.
But Micah cut him off quickly. "It is not your fault Anakin, but those who created these monsters. Hehehe, indeed, this has been a long time coming. Without Ranma, heh, I would have died against the Yinchorri. All of us must become one with the Force eventually Anakin. My time to do so has just caught up with me."
He looked at the others, touching K'Kruhk's hand again. "Do not give in to your anger my large friend, that should never be your way. You are too gentle a soul for that, remember Master Twoseas' training. Nor is that your way, Kit." The Nautolan just nodded, while K'Kruhk answered in the affirmative that he would never give in to the Dark Side. "Good. Good. So long as you can laugh in the face of hate and anger, the Dark Side loses much of its power over you and those around you. That is your gift Kit Fisto."
As Kit bowed his head in acknowledgment, Micah then turned to Shaak and his smile widened. Being so near to joining it had given him some further insight into the Force, and he was eager to share as much as he could. "It has been a pleasure to know you Master Ti, and to see you grow over time. I think so long as you and Ranma continue to do so, to grow to face every challenge, the whole universe will benefit. May the Force be with you."
"And may it welcome you into its embrace Master Giiett," Shaak replied bowing from the waist. Then, sensing Micah wanted to be alone with his padawan, the three more senior Jedi turned away.
Janice came over and began to make up the explosive behind Micah, putting the detonator in his hand so that if his grip lessened, it would go off, and then she too moved on. She felt they had to hurry, but at the moment it looked as if the defenders were having troubles elsewhere.
"No tears Anakin, no sadness for this. Mourn my passing yes, but do not let it consume you, learn from it and move on. That is the Jedi way." Micah sighed as he watched Anakin nod, visibly using all his self-control to keep his feelings in check. "Anakin, you are a man of strong emotions, strong thoughts, opinions, and beliefs. But that makes you too headstrong, too certain in your own abilities when coupled with your powerful connection to the Force. Yet while the Force can guide our steps, but that does not mean certainty is always our friend. Always keep your mind open, and not just to the Force, but to the idea you might be wrong and to the advice and teachings of others."
He hacked then, coughing up blood, but continued after a moment, staring directly into Anakin's eyes. "And do not let your darker emotions, thoughts control you. I know you still have issues with anger. The Dark Side, anger or hate, does not make you stronger. it only more one dimensional, easier to manipulate." He waited until Anakin nodded, and went on, hoping his words would sink in. If Anakin, of all Jedi, gave in to the Dark Side and then joined the Sith, the damage he could do was horrifying to contemplate. "Continue our work on Ryloth. Always use your mind as much as the Force, and beware making decisions based on fear, anger or hate. May the Force be with you my young Padawan."
As the Jedi helped Micah to sit up, one of the other slicers, a Devaronian, gave a whoop, "I found the control center, and I just inputted a call it a reverse defensive measure to stop anyone from activating any more programming directions!"
As Shaak's interrogative look, the man shrugged his shoulders. "Basically, I thrust through a command to that control center that said that the rest of the mountain had been compromised by a computer virus, and to shut itself off and disconnect entirely from the system. Which includes another secondary data bus. If we can get control of either the control center or that second data bus, we'll have all of the information stored in the entire mountain!"
A grim predatory snarl crossing her lips invisible inside her helmet, Shaak clicked on the intercom. "Ranma, did you get all that?"
OOOOOOO
"I did," Ranma said, staring around the wreckage of a turbolaser battery. It wouldn't have been out of place on a major capital ship, or as the centerpiece of a planetary defense base, and it had been the fourth that they had destroyed already.
Those defensive batteries thought were the only actual target they'd found since leaving that first trophy room. Ranma wondered why the tunnels were set out like that with a trophy room so far out on the periphery until he saw the map and realized that there were several other trophy rooms. Each successive Sith must have devised their own, he thought to himself.
But that wasn't important. What was important, was two things. One was that while he and his team had been breaking through defensive stations Ranma could also hear droids coming at them from behind. A lot of them. They had destroyed several side tunnels to guard their back, but not all, and they were now out of bunker-buster type explosives. And those noises were getting closer.
But to offset that was the second bit of information: that judging by this map, Ranma, Obi-Wan and the Nova Guard with him, were directly above what looked like the fortress's main entrance and hanger bay. Mind you, that's through about two hundred feet of solid stone, Ranma thought to himself. "Still," he said aloud, activating one half of his lightsaber. Have lightsaber will travel. Obi-Wan, Cro, guard the door. I'll get us out of here."
Obi-Wan sighed, moving toward the door just as the droids apparently came into sight. They instantly started to fire, but he blocked them with his lightsaber as Cro and one of the other Nova Guard took up position to either side, their heavy durasteel shields closing the wide hallway down so that Obi-Wan didn't have to worry about bolts going past him. "Whatever you are planning you'd best do it quickly!"
Ranma quickly cut into the ground, at an angle so that he basically cut a cone out of the ground. He then tapped the interior of the cone, saying aloud, "Bakusai Tenketsu!"
Cro stared, first at the now gapping divot exploded out of the rock, then up at Ranma. "You've been holding out on us," he said almost accusingly.
"It only works on rocks don't worry," Ranma said waving his hand. "I couldn't even use it on the actual ground, only rock."
"Even so," Cro said slowly, staring at Ranma in such a way that he knew the man's eyes were narrowed behind his mask.
"Complain later," Ranma said hopping down into the hole. "Let's get out of this cul-de-sac now."
A second later, Ranma cut into open-air, and grinned as he created a circle his lightsaber through the rock, falling down with it into the open air of the hangar bay. He leaped clear, landing in among a squad of combat droids, which had just spilled out of the interior entrance to the hangar bay.
Ranma cut and sliced to either side, his legs smashing out like pistons, shattering the droids as he shouted, "Get down here quick!"
"Who does he think we are, Mandalorians?" muttered one of the Nova Guard, tying a rope down to the edge of the craggy hole.
Cro shook his head, having placed several of their grenades together in a simple tripwire across the entrance to the destroyed turbolaser battery. "Obi-wan, pull back but watch your feet. Kik'tova, Shinsa, do the same."
With that, Cro then followed his man down the hole, repelling himself down into the hangar bay.
The two of them hung there, pulling out their weapons and beginning to lay down fire for Ranma. The next second Obi-Wan dropped past them, using the Force to slow his fall, rolling as he hit to attack the droids in the next second. The last two dropped to the ground, carrying the crew-served weapons, and they set them up in the doorway the instant the two lightsaber wielders cleared it. Within a few seconds, they had created a hard defensive position.
Just in the nick of time too because just as they finished four Dark Side users and two companies of combat droids rounded the corner just as they finished up. The Dark Side users took one look and shouted out commands to the droids, but the Nova Guard were already firing, using the heavy weapons they had been lugging all this while and only used occasionally in the smaller battles up to this point. Cro's concussion grenade launcher and his squads two heavy quad lasers opened fire from behind their blast shields.
Watching this from behind the Nova Guard, Ranma smirked. Now it's the droids turn to find out why tunnel fighting sucked so much. There was no cover, nowhere to retreat, and no respite. The droids fell quickly, and the four Dark Side users retreated just as quickly, leaving one of their fellows dead on the ground. And these Dark Side users are not nearly as tough as the Sith are. Researchers I'd guess, but not strong enough in the Force or too old to be trained to fight maybe? Weird to run into so many Force users who don't use lightsabers though.
"Can you hold here?" Ranma asked Cro.
Cro gave him a look, which told Ranma he was rolling his eyes behind his mask. "Does the sea on Ailon Prime eat through plastic?"
"I don't know, does it?" Ranma replied, bemused.
Laughing Cro shook his head. "Sorry, cultural idiom. Go on. We've got this."
"Obi-Wan, can you do something about that hole we came through just in case?"
Obi-Wan frowned, looking back over his shoulder at the hole. If they hadn't done a good enough job at destroying the tunnel leading into that last turbolaser battery, the droids might be able to get through. "Hmm…" He looked around, then nodded as he spotted a heavy troop transport to one side. I suppose it came with the droids? "Yes, I can. I'll power that transport up, then set the anti-air gun on automatic to destroy anything moving, while activating the shield. If the droids try to come down, they'll be destroyed."
"Great. After that, split off somewhere, and see if you can cause some chaos. I'm going to go after those three old guys. I'm betting they were the leaders of these Dark Assholes." With that, Ranma leaped over the Nova Guard's defensive line and raced after the retreating Dark Side users.
Around a corner in the tunnel, he ran into heavy droids again at a junction in the tunnel where four tunnels met. Some of the droids were the type wielding long vibro-staffs, while the rest were the type that wielded heavy-duty blasters. There were also two younger-seeming Dark Side users, who were armed with lightsabers.
Ranma smashed through the droids as if they were toys in no mood to rein in his power, shattering each droid with a single punch or kick. The two Dark Side users though held him up, both of them having apparently been put through the durability training to the extent they were immune almost to his lightsaber, despite lightsabers being more about cutting heat than actual impact. That was unusual since only Shaak could take hits from a lightsaber without being crippled, but Ranma didn't care at present.
"I don't have freaking time for you!" Ranma roared, smashing one of them to the ground then stomping on his head so hard he overcame the man's durability, shattering his skull. The next second, his lightsaber flashed out catching the last Dark Sider's lightsaber blade before Ranma flipped up and over the man.
But it was too late. At the end of the main tunnel the older Dark Siders had retreated down, a blast door slammed shut ahead of him just as he was finishing with them.
Ranma roared in anger, activating his lightsaber's second blade and turning to launch a furious assault at the male Twi'lek who was the last of the Dark Siders in the corridor. The man fell back, but eventually his durability failed and Ranma's lightsaber cut through his side, cutting him almost in two.
"Shaak, I think we just blocked an attempt by the local leadership to escape. Whatever else happens I don't think we surprised Mr. Master Sith in his lair here, these weaklings don't seem the type. But I bet we can damn sure hurt him!"
"I'm a Little busy right now Ranma," Shaak said, her voice strained.
Ranma frowned at that, then looked up as he heard the sound of closing doors. He looked around and found that blast doors had shut all around him. A second later, gas began to pour into the area, green and yellow obvious as it flowed out of several air ducts. "Well, fuck!"
Shaking his head, Ranma started to punch his way through the doorway, having no such luck. He pulled up the map on his helmet's HUD, and then looked upwards, chuckling evilly. He then leaped up and another shout of "Bakusai Tenketsu!" resounded around the area.
The explosion of rock blasted up into what looked like a security room, shredding five droids and several walls worth of consoles. Ranma then pulled himself up and before moving down a tunnel and then blasting his way back down on the other side of the massive hatch. "Ready or not, here I come!"
OOOOOOO
As the call with Ranma ended, Shaak Ti was on her knees, her lightsaber on the floor in front of her, both hands raised as around her the other Jedi stood in a similar fashion. Several minutes after they had attempted to move on from the first laboratory, they had pushed through another droid area, only to run smack dab into a squadron of the second type of locals. These were short, squat, horned beings, that looked nothing so squished rhinos on two legs. And while the Terentateks they had faced so far been put through the durability training, making them hellishly tough to put down, these Psadan had apparently been put through training that took that to the extreme, like the two Dark Side warriors Ranma had fought.
They were able to take direct lightsaber strikes to their faces and bodies and not even flinch, and Jedi were not exactly used to lightsabers bouncing like that. They had all taken return blows or cuts from their enemies, who thankfully were only armed with massive, leave-bladed spears. And the Psadan were not weakened by Shaak's continued use of Force Light, which made her end her use of the technique.
"To be able to take the toughness training to the point where even lightsaber strikes, which were more heat-based than actual cutting force is incredible," Shaak remarked to herself even as she finally slew on of the Psadan.
Kit heard her and, ducking under one attack from a creature with a large spear, sliced the weapon in two. When the thing charged him, he cut to the sides and legs, dozens of strikes in and single instant, spreading out the heat of his attack and then slicing through at a point in the scales of the creature thus weakened. "You sound almost admiring?"
"Somewhat. I think one of the worst mistakes a leader can make is underestimating the opponent because you feel contempt for his or her doctrine suppose. We cannot afford to underestimate the Sith."
Something about that thought made her pause, the Force roaring into her as if it was trying to tell her something. But it couldn't quite get through and this distraction cost her. She took a strike to the side of her helmet, that dented the portion of it over one of her horns. It also broke the acoustic enhancer on that side, causing her to grumble even as she twisted around, her lightsaber flashing out, a loud crackling noise now filling her montrals.
While everything else about the Psadans might have been reinforced, there was only so much reinforcement someone could do to their eyes. Her lightsaber speared through the Psadan's eye into its skull after a few seconds hesitation.
She then turned off her lightsaber and flipped up over the creature to avoid blaster bolts from several attack droids, summoning her lightsaber back into her hand even as she turned around and cut downwards onto another Dark Side user. He hastily raised his own lightsaber, but she used the momentum of his block to flip herself up and over him in turn, faster than he could move to turn in block again.
He went down, and she pulled off her helmet, saying into it, "Ranma, my helmet has been damaged, I'm pulling it for now. Contact one of the others if you have anything you need to say to me."
"Roger that," Ranma said to the sounds of explosions in the background. He had run into another company of droids in a wide gallery-like area with a lot of heavy machinery and what looked like some experimental ships or something similar and was now stuck in a running fight with them, slowing his pursuit of the three old men again.
"We have trouble incoming!" Anakin shouted, and Shaak looked up at the honest fear in his tone. But when she saw what was coming their way, she couldn't argue that it was terrifying.
From ahead of them where they had seen a lab, came bugs, the same kind of Sith Alchemically created bugs that had been hidden in the cake during the Wedding Disaster. There were thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands strong, although many of them looked weaker, smaller, less developed almost than the ones Shaak had seen previously. There were also far more varieties, some of them were scrabbling along like giant scarabs, scorpions or centipedes of incredible size. It was a veritable cornucopia of bug-based monster, and Shaak barely held back a very un-Jedi like shudder at the sight.
They swarmed the entire corridor, filling the air with their buzzing and scuttling noises. "Hold them!" Shaak ordered, reaching out towards the bugs and to the other Jedi with her senses.
A second later the Force gestalt of the Jedi halted the bugs in place, and HK strode forward. "Wrathful cackle: Taste hot incendiary you tiny scuttling monstrosities!" He knelt down and a panel on his kneecap opened. A larger missile than his radio-controlled ones burst out, flashing into a massive explosion of heat and fire as it struck the wall of bugs.
The Jedi shivered but held their gestalt. Then HK and the other Mandos fired shot after shot of explosives into the mass until it began to dissipate.
As the other Jedi used their senses to make certain they had killed all the alchemical creations Shaak pulled her battered, practically ruined helmet back on, looking at the map on its data hub. Through the rest of the information the HUD could show that was now all there all at once, making it almost impossible to read any one screen.
While she couldn't have done so during combat in this brief lull, Shaak was able to concentrate through the hash of the rest of the information that she no longer needed access to, although she noticed absently that one more Nova Guard had gone down, and several of the Mandalorians were injured into the red judging by their own information. That was bad, but they were still moving.
She looked to where Ranma was forging ahead now alone after the Dark Side users who had attempted to escape, frowning in thought, then look at her own position and that of her team. "All right, we are coming up to an elevator shaft. It probably won't be working, that's a basic defense to shut that kind of system down, but we can all make our way up or down easily enough. I will go downwards, deeper into the laboratory segments. If there are any more Dark Side surprises or users they will be within that area."
That made sense considering that the laboratories connected directly to what had to be living quarters, large long rows of admittedly small cells almost like monk cells, as evinced on the map. She tried to send information to the others to Mark out their own targets, but again the battering her helmet had taken made that function unusable. So she was forced to rely on simple verbal orders without the accompanying picture. "Janice, you will break off as well, heading straight up to the topmost floor of this fortress. There you can find…"
Janice had already pulled up the information on her own HUD and nodded brusquely. "The environmental controls. Although given the helmets were all where most of us are wearing, I don't know if any attack based on those controls would have worked anyway. Still, I can do that. Thomas, that means you're in charge."
One of the other Mandalorians nodded his head, looking over at Master Shaak." Where do you want us?"
"Take the Generator room. It is spread over the entire bottom floor of this installation. I would ask you to forge ahead towards the control room on this level for a time then take another elevator down since that will allow you to bypass the labs entirely." The labs could only be accessed by the elevator shaft in front of them, but there were two others that went all the way down to the generator room.
"And the rest of us," Anakin asked, before shuddering, his face closing down and his eyes hardening as he felt something through the Force. Two seconds later, the other Jedi felt it, Master Giiett's passing the Force behind them.
Shaak sighed and whispered. "May the Force welcome you within its Light, Master Giiett," words the other Jedi repeated around with Anakin holding back tears, his hand on his lightsaber causing a creaking noise.
"Ahsoka, you will go with K'Kruhk," she ordered. Ahsoka blinked at that about to protest that she was Shaak's padawan, but a look from her Master shut her down. Shaak in no way wanted a 14-year-old girl to see what was behind those doors. While they didn't know much about the alchemy of the Sith, what she had felt in the first lab told her it was built around pain and rear, working in an environment where those emotions had been brought out of its victims.
"You two will have the job of taking physical control of this control center. Our slicers will go with you, defend them as we have to this point, they are worth their weight in solid precious metals." She turned her attention to the three surviving slicers. Two of them had died to the Psadans. "As for you three, once in the control center, do what you can to shut it down. I do not want us to play with trying to get any information out of it until we have thoroughly scoured this base clean of any Sith presence."
Behind them, they began to hear the clank clank clank of oncoming droids from behind as well as to the front. Shaak quickly broke the engagement up, looking around them. Kit, your choice. Can you and Anakin make a stand here to hold off or destroy the attackers coming in from behind us, or do you want to follow us to the elevator shaft?"
K'Kruhk looked around, then over at Anakin. "Elevator shaft," he said instantly. "The young man needs some time to get over his grief."
Anakin whirled on him, his lightsaber still in hand, but K'Kruhk met his look calmly. "The passage of a Master should be something that is mourned Anakin, but you cannot dwell on it, you cannot allow it to affect your control or your connection to the Force."
Anakin stared at him, then around at the other Jedi, all save Ahsoka still wearing helmets, which did not allow him to make eye contact. "Very well Master Fisto, you are correct," he said slowly, reining in his emotions with a lot of difficulties. I will endeavor to ignore my grief for now."
"Do not ignore it," Shaak said with a shake of her head. "Set it to the wayside. Do not allow it to impact your presence in the now. You can work through your grief later, now is the time to do justice for his murderers."
Anakin nodded resolutely at that and raced on with the others towards the elevator shaft on the other side of the lab where the bugs had come from.
OOOOOOO
Of the disparate teams or single individuals that broke up at the elevator shaft, Janice had by far the easiest time of it. She found one Sith Dark Side user and two combat droids on the top floor. Their initial assault had cut across the center of the underground fortress, and most of the security rooms where the droids had been held on standby were near the main entrance. No one had thought someone could sneak past the exterior defenses on the mountain to attack from the air vents.
She gunned down one combat droid almost instantly, before being forced to dodge away from Sith Lightning from the Dark Side user. She then tossed one of her last grenades down the floor towards him.
The Dark Side user grabbed it and was about to toss it back when she pulled a trick from the Nova Guard's book, hitting the detonator before it could fly far. She charged forward through the roiling explosion using her jets to power down the corridor like a runaway rocket, getting in between the two of them. Her vibro-knife found the neck of the droid, and a kick smashed into the face of the Dark Side user even as he tried to dodge her blaster's visibly shifting muzzle.
He was knocked to the ground, and before he could get up, her vibro-knife was again flashing out, slicing his throat open. And this one was not a Dark Side user who had gone through their toughening training. That one blow almost decapitated him, and Janice was alone in the hallway.
Inside her helmet, Janice blinked. "Well, that was anti-climactic."
With that, she raced on quickly finding the environmental control area, eight giant gardens situated around a centralized control area. From there shafts led up down into the rest of the underground warren, continually recycling the air. She set a few traps there, then turned back the way she came, eager to rejoin her troops.
OOOOOOO
The area around the elevator was a larger open area, where three different hallways met up at the one elevator. Anakin and Master Kit moved away from one another, close enough to provide support, but far enough away for their lightsabers to have full play, waiting. HK had placed traps along each corridor before returning entering the elevator shaft and heading downward after the others.
They didn't have to wait long. A column of the attack droids that they had been dealing with since practically entering this installation came on them from behind, as well as from both sides. This was obviously a planned attempt to pin them down, and it involved more droids in one battle then they had faced before. Several dozen of the frontrunners, who were the polearm users, were shredded by HK's traps, but the others kept on over their shattered remains, firing as they came.
Against any other attacker, it might've worked very well. Even against Jedi, that kind of overwhelming firepower from every direction was enough to put them down, especially when faced with just two of them. Kit took several battering hits from heavy blasters and Anakin grimaced as more than a few hits slashed past him near enough to sear skin.
But these droids had obviously not had been programmed for anti-Jedi combat, because several of them in the front rows made the mistake of firing grenades towards the Jedi. Kit and Anakin exchanged a brief grin, before reaching out and grabbing them with the Force, tossing them all down one corridor, where they exploded among the robots gathered there, shredding them in utterly. This left them facing fire from two directions instead of three, which was much easier to deal with, even if the remaining androids didn't follow their fellows into that brand of stupidity and the Jedi went to work.
OOOOOOO
Falling down the elevator shaft towards the labs, Shaak only fell for a few stories until she noticed something coming up towards her. "Really? How droll," she muttered, shaking her head even as she flipped herself end over end, her lightsaber activating as she sliced in a circle in front of her. The tip of her lightsaber cut into the top of the elevator, and a quick Force Push into the center of the circle pushed the cut metal circle down into the elevator's roof, where she flipped herself to land on her feet, cutting in every direction.
Two Dark Side users were within, but unlike the one that had faced Janice, they both had gone through their toughness training. One of them was able to grab her sword lightsaber wielding arm and pin it against the wall. She headbutted that one hard, hard enough for herself to see stars, let alone the man in question, and he fell back groaning and holding his head, right up until she kneed him hard in the stomach, then twisted around, blocking the other man from launching a point-blank Sith Lightning assault. The first one attempted a Force Choke, but she broke it with ease.
In the next few seconds of close, furious combat she hammered them both under using punches and kicks, smiling at acting like her husband, something that seemed to infuriate the two Dark Side users. She was about to finish the last one off when the force caused her to turn, and she saw the first one, who Shaak had thought she had already knocked out, to pull a pin from the thermal detonator.
"By the force!" Desperately Shaak Force Leaped back up through the hole she had fallen through, thrusting downward with the Force. She kept the grenade the man had been about to hurl from following her, and it detonated right in the middle of the elevator above the two Dark Side users. A second later, Shaak landed back on top of the elevator, box and then leaned over the hole to look inside, quickly retracting herself as the sole survivor launched Sith Lightning up at towards her.
Reaching out with the Force into the box, Shaak found her lightsaber, and activated it, then flung it into the back of the man, which cut into one of the man's open wounds, bypassing his durability training. The man gasped as he was stabbed through the back, dying almost instantly.
A second later Shaak dropped back down into the blood and offal splattered elevator, noting wearily that the controls for the elevator box had also been ruined.
Shaak summoned her lightsaber into her hand and then sighed shaking her head as she gently pushed the dead bodies to either side before cutting into the bottom of the elevator as well before dropping downwards. Moments later she estimated she was coming close to the remaining labs. Shaak then reached out, grabbing the side of the elevator shaft with one hand, just as the doorway to the next lab section appeared in front of her. She held on, using the Force to stop her momentum. With that done, Shaak hung there in the darkness of the shaft for a second and then cut into that doorway with her lightsaber.
On the other side, several droids behind security shields open fire instantly, not even allowing her time to get set, or to put a lightsaber in between herself and the incoming fire and Shaak grunted in pain as their bolts hit. Her own durability was extremely high, much higher even than Kit or Master K'Kruhk, and she took it. Hurling her lightsaber forward, Shaak directed it with the Force to slice up and then down, behind the blast doors, slicing into the droids from behind.
She then moved forward, quickly pushing the blast shields to either side of her as two more Dark Side users opened up with Sith Lightning towards her.
That much Sith Lightning after the punishment she'd just taken would have put even Shaak down and with a mighty kick Shaak sent the blast door on the left into the assassin on that side, then whirled, leaping up and over the Sith Lightning from the other, her lightsaber intercepting it and redirecting it until she was behind the man, who had turned in an effort to keep the lightning on target. A Force Choke reached out for her, but she batted it aside, and then thrust forward with her lightsaber, impaling the man, before leaping over his falling body to finish the other one-off before he could recover from being slammed into a wall from the large blast door.
"This is Master Shaak, I have control of the labs."
"This is Janice, I have control of the hydroponics area. Minimal resistance. Heading to rejoin my squad."
"Heavy resistance here but dealt with," Shaak replied. She touched her skin through the seared away segments of her cloak slightly, grimacing at the pain. "Ranma?"
Ranma was not able to reply, but Sergeant Cro did, looking his helmet into the nearby controls on the inner door of the hangar bay. "This is Sergeant Cro. We have control of the hangar. My men have the ships here to explode just in case we are forced back. Obi-Wan has split off and is moving to take out the generator room."
"This is K'Kruhk. That's good to hear about Obi-Wan. I regret to say that due to combat injuries and…losses… the Mandalorians will not be able to split off to assault the generator. We are going to push on to the command center within moments though."
OOOOOOO
Ahsoka and K'Kruhk had forged their way through two more heavily reinforced areas, along with the Mandalorians and slicers with them. The last one had been especially brutal, and Ahsoka stared down at the body of one of the Mandalorians, Thomas who lay next to the body of three of the slicers, including their leader. "I liked him," she whispered. "He was fun and was always giving me tips about how to shoot better or prank Ranma more."
She reached down and was about to remove the helmet when Kad Solus grabbed her hand. "Don't. We don't remove the beskar of the dead until his clan is present to ake charge of the body, if possible. If not, he'll be buried with it. Such is the way of the Resol'nare."
Kad was also limping badly, and Dralshy'a was leaning up against a nearby wall, her armor dented and singed in numerous places and her leg at a very wrong looking angle. She was alive though thanks to HK, who stood nearby, his weapons aimed down a corridor to one side from which Ahsoka, thanks to her montrals, could hear the sounds of incoming clanking noises.
"Do you think you can handle it HK?" K'Kruhk asked looking at the droid.
Dralshy'a pulled out several things from her backpack, laying them out and beginning to hook them up one into the other, soon she had what looked like a sawed-off version of a crew-served repeating blaster rifle, only with three barrels instead of one. It was evident to Ahsoka the girl was playing around with the idea of multi-barrel, multi-type weapons. "Go on," she said with a manic tone in her voice through the helmet. "We've got this."
"Joyous growl: Dralshy'a and I have this. Go on.
Looking over at the others, Dralshy'a froze at the body of her comrade, Thomas, shaking her head sadly. "Do it," she ordered, turning her neck to look at Ahsoka grimly, her head jerking back to the dead bodies. "Do it for them. Do it for us, shut this place down kriffing hard!"
"We will," Ahsoka said firmly, and she and Master K'Kruhk turned away, racing down the corridor with the two surviving slicers with them.
As they did, the sound of blaster bolts opening fire behind them started up once more. Hearing it, Ahsoka wished for once that her hearing wasn't so acute. On the other hand, HK's back there too. At that thought, any worry about the surviving Mandos living through this fight faded and as small explosions began to go off behind her, she almost started to feel bad for the enemy droids. Almost.
Moments later, the two Jedi and the last slicers left alive arrived at the doorway, leading into the control center.
The slicer instantly moved to the control pad to one side, hissing angrily. "I can't get it open, not quickly. It's retina locked."
"To one side please," K'Kruhk said, reaching forward with his large hands, gripping the door and tearing it open with difficulty. He grunted as fire erupted from inside, but took it on his chest and head, even as it seared through the armor he was wearing, grimacing as one of his tusks was seared off.
With a yell, Ahsoka leaped over him, cutting downwards at the large quad laser cannon that had been set up into the ceiling there, and then to both sides destroying all three quad lasers in as many seconds before landing on her feet, and then slicing into the second doorway beyond, racing in to find… Nothing. No one was there, and she breathed a sigh of relief as she saw the still functioning computers.
The display on one of them, however, caused that sigh of relief to become a gasp. "Get in here they're dumping the computer core!" she shouted.
"Oh no, they aren't!" The slicer muttered, moving past the wounded Master K'Kruhk, and sitting down at a console pulling out his large black box and hooking it up. "No you don't, no you kriffing don't! Not after all this!"
OOOOOOO
The three remaining leaders of the Prophets of the Dark Side had felt their fellows dying one after another even as they tried to race away from Ranma. They tossed entire companies worth of droids in between them, only for Ranma to shred them as swiftly and efficiently as possible to continue his charge after them. Indeed, doing so they had weakened the overall defense of the mountain, allowing Ahsoka and her team to get to the control room, and weakening the attempts to pin the invaders down elsewhere.
Traps like the gas held him up for longer, but they weren't enough. Even explosive gas that went off after reaching a certain balance between it and the air didn't stop him, and in fact, he was right on their heels as they finally reached the level they needed, the small, private offshoot of their Dread Lord.
"You are not getting away from me!" Ranma howled, as he sprinted down the corridor.
He burst through a doorway after them, finding himself into a small, almost entirely unlit throne room. A few trophies and trinkets were displayed prominently here, including a bust of a Muun and a lightsaber, but there were fewer than in the initial treasure room. Everything in the room gave the appearance of a darkly majestic throne of a conqueror, but it was empty, as the three people he'd been chasing had disappeared, having shattered the throne room's chair as well as the small dais it had been on.
From the light of the hallway, Ranma saw a bit of the wall finish closing behind the Dark Siders. Some kind of hidden door? Could they be going for a secret escape ship? But if the Dark Side users thought that the stone and steel ferrocrete reinforced wall would stop Ranma, they had another thing , he reached out with all 10 of his fingers, and roared out "Bakusai Tenketsu!"
One of the Dark Side users was too close to the door as it exploded behind him and was perforated as if he had just been hit by several large shotguns going off point-blank. Ranma leaped over his collapsing body, as the other two turned, spreading out. One of them tried Sith Lightning, another tried Force Choke.
Ranma blocked the first with his lightsaber, grunted under the second, and grinned at the man doing it his lips barred. "Is that all you've got! My old man choked me more than that when I was twelve to show me submission holds!"
He kicked up a bit of rock into the one man's face and he fell backward with a cry of agony. But instead of letting the pain conquer him the Dark Side user grasped the pain, using it to fuel his Dark Side energies to launch another lightning attack, hoping to have better luck. But Ranma had already moved, hurling his lightsaber through the field of lightning from the first Sith Lightning user, bisecting him.
At that point, he realized that these idiots hadn't put themselves through the toughness training, and he wondered if that had been some kind of personal choice among them. Stupid if so if I was the leader of this bunk, I would have tried all I could to get stronger or better skilled. Still, say what you will about these Dark Side users' basic combat abilities, but they were freaking loyal.
Ranma moved the man away, tapping on the wall behind him then picking up his lightsaber he began to cut into it. On the other side, he found a small narrow chimney almost, a little wider than the elevator Shaak had fought in, heading upwards. Sitting in front of him on the floor of that area was a tiny ship, barely big enough for a cockpit and a hyperspace engine. "… how the hell were three people going to fit…fuck, they were probably going to kill one another or something to see who would be able to escape. Gah."
Ranma looked at it, then around, before deciding to err on the side of caution and stuck his lightsaber through the hyperspace engines. Since they were unpowered, that didn't do anything, but that would change rapidly if someone activated the ship.
With that, he turned back, stepping lightly over the bodies of the three Dark Side leaders, and into the throne room beyond. As he did, he was struck once more by how intensely dark the room was, even with the door to the hall open. There was only a single light, and it glowed a dull red by a series of busts along one wall, the first of which Ranma had noticed before.
"Dark Side right, the 'darkness is my friend' and all that crud. I wonder if all Sith start out as emos?" Ranma muttered, shaking his head as he looked around. Thankfully, the helmet he was wearing had night vision which he turned on. The red light screwed with it a little, but he was still able to make out a lot of the throne room. There was no sign of any computers or anything like that in here, but Ranma could see there might have been under the throne, which had been trashed. "DAMN IT."
With a sigh, Ranma clicked on his communicator. "This is Ranma I'm clear. The enemy leaders are dead, is there any fighting still going on?"
"Yes!" Kit said, an almost gay laugh in his voice. "If you could find where Anakin and I are, we would rather like the help. It feels as if we're facing what amounts to an entire battalion's worth of droid troops!"
"Well that's not good," Ranma muttered.
He arrived at the sight of the battle going on around Anakin and Kit at the same time Shaak finished climbing her way back up the elevator shaft. The two of them had a brief moment to look at one another across the shoulders of at least two companies of combat droids and Ranma waved his hand, before launching himself forward into the back of them, attacking even as they tried to turn to engage them.
The battle of Wayland soon ended after that. Ranma had, almost accidentally taken out the command droid, and the remaining had simply kept on feeding themselves into the battles until there was none left, their programming not sophisticated enough to think strategically I.E. about ways to deny the mountain to the enemy rather than simply killing them.
The death toll after the battle was pretty gruesome. Under an assault from the droids to take over the vehicles within the hanger Shina had died, leaving only Cro and Kik'tova alive. Cro had lost his leg, from the thigh down, and Kik'tova his arm before Ranma could get back to them. Both of the wounded would have to be sent home, which Ranma and Shaak were rather sad about.
The Jedi had taken a heavy pounding even if 'only' Master Giiett had passed into the Force. When he passed, he had taken out at least two heavy companies of droids with him, buying the others much needed time.
Obi-Wan had walked into a trap in the generator room and had nearly died, saved only by Janice's arrival and then Ranma and the others joining the fight throughout the massive room. Even with that, he was currently spending time in a bacta tank they had found, although all the Jedi were trying very hard not to think about why the medical room was so close to the Sith research labs.
Kit and Shaak and K'Kruhk had been hit multiple times. They were all bruised from head to toe, their armor in literal shambles on their bodies. Yet they were mobile at least and would recover fully in a few days.
In contrast, Anakin had lost his hand, cut off by a vibroblade wielded by one of the staff using droids that he hadn't been able to block with his lightsaber in time. But the younger man had fought on, impressing Ranma greatly, killing the droid in question and several more.
Indeed, the younger man had proved himself to Ranma in a lot of ways today, both him and Ahsoka. The younger padawan had come through the fight with only a few minor scratches, although several of them were bleeding kind of badly before Shaak had walked her through how to close them with the Force.
Among the Mandos, Thomas and Natasha were dead, the latter having died in the battle in the generator room to an exploding generator coil. Dralshy'a and Kad Solus were both heavily wounded and were now inhabiting two bacta tanks right next to Obi-Wan, leaving Janice the only Mando mobile.
While Kad was morose about their losses, Dralshy'a was almost cheerful, concentrating only on her own wound at the moment. Inside the tube in front of Ranma she could be heard muttering into the air mask about bionic parts she wanted to add to replace her missing arm. One of the staff-wielding droids had cut her arm off just below the elbow.
There is something strange about that girl, Ranma reflected, but at least HK likes her. Or should that be a reason to worry? She might have a, what's it called, a Robo-Fetish?
HK himself had come through the assault banged and bruised but also ecstatic. The two of them had held the corridor which led to the control center against nearly as many enemies as the others had faced by the elevator, albeit only from one direction instead of three. They had destroyed them all, including two last Dark Side users who had apparently been elsewhere in the faculty, male and a female Zabrak who had attempted to get past them to the control room. They had not succeeded, and HK had been able to practice his close-quarter weapons by literally taking them apart at the seams.
Despite their losses, the surviving Mandalorians and Nova Guard were ecstatic about the assault. This was the kind of fight legends were made of in both of their societies, especially the Mandalorians, who had never really specialized in tunnel fighting like this. They had taken out the equivalent of not a single company of combat droids, not even a battalion. They had fought an entire brigade, nearly eight thousand combat droids of a type that was far more durable than most out in the galaxy, along with another type that could specialize in hand-to-hand combat.
"Trust me, when we get back to Mandalore, none of us are ever going to have to buy a drink again for as long as we live!" Janice said as they helped Dralshy'a into the bacta tank. None of the Jedi specialized in healing and had only been able to deaden the pain of the wounded, which was a lot in and of itself, but not enough.
Shaking his head Ranma moved on, stopping by Anakin as he was talking to Kad in the next tank over. He ruffled the younger man's hair, causing Anakin to bat his hand away and moved on through the fortress.
He found Shaak and Ahsoka together in the control room along with the sole surviving slicer. The man had taken control of the defenses of the installation, although not until all the combat droids in the place had been wiped out. However, he had control of the remnants of those defenses now, including the remaining exterior ones. With those and the generators still intact, this place was going to remain in their control for a long while.
"So," he said plopping into the chair next to where Shaak was kneeling on the floor, her legs crossed under her in a meditative pose as she watched the slicer working. "What have we got so far?"
"We've got a lot of junk," the slicer, whose name was Anton Demolay, admitted. "Oh, I was able to stop them from completely destroying the data files, but these people are kriffing paranoid. We've got the computer core, but everything inside's hashed out and at least… oh, about four quadrants worth, had erased themselves when the kriffers turned on the security controls. I might be able to recover most of that given time, but we'll see. The separate date core is toast, but the rest I can eventually rebuild. It'll take my computers a lot of time to parse the data together into a form that we can understand though. But I already pulled a full itinerary of the experiments being done in the labs here and accessed the fortress's intact Hypercom Uplink." the man smiled with a certain amount of grim humor. "One that is hardwired to target a single relay. Once we get to that relay, I can then follow the signal from there, like Master Kenobi wanted to before the Sith jumped him."
Ranma breathed a sigh of relief at that. If all of this had been for nothing, he would have screamed. "Awesome. We've started the process at least of torching Mister Sith Spider's fucking spiderweb for him. Light up enough of it, and maybe we'll spy the big bad spider himself."
Shaak nodded from where she was meditating, frowning faintly. "I really, truly hope it will be that simple. Yet I fear we will not be so lucky."
To that, Ranma could only nod in agreement, and the two of them fell silent holding hands behind Ahsoka as the slicer went back to work. Wayland was theirs, but the war continued.
End Chapter
Well now, I bet all of you can see now why I refused to cut this chapter in two LOL. I had a lot of concerns going into that last fight. I wanted to show the reality of attacking an enemy installation, especially an enemy which could negate most of a Jedi's tricks. Fighting through an underground fortress like this would be even worse than trying to board a ship. Far worse, given its size. Even Ranma's abilities were only enough to somewhat even the odds, and their attacking force barely won out, and wouldn't have against either a prepared enemy, or even simply a well-trained one.
Now, the question is, what has been happening in the rest of the galaxy as the invasion of Wayland went on? And what will the repercussions of it's discovery be? For the answers to these, and more, tune in next time gentle readers, same bat time, same bat channel.
And as always, if you want a greater voice in what stories are updated per week, think about signing up over on Patty On. You'll also get access to a lot of nifty stuff and extra stories over there too.
