"Earth had major leverage over us due to the discovery of certain strategic resources in what was rightfully their space, and by offering half of them to us it would give both of us significant gains. However, they knew that they had a lot of leverage, leverage that we would exploit."
Princess Leia OrganaChapter 16: Negotiations
"I don't see any issue with your proposal Admiral, with perhaps the sole exception of your postwar territorial and economic demands," Leia said to Johnson in the conference room that was being used for negotiations.
"Why do you take issue with those?"
"Because it is an inordinate amount of resources for what has been comparably minimal work from Earth."
"Princess, Earth, and our allies have liberated several sectors from the Empire, which by now is several hundred worlds. We continue to do so as well and will have several more sectors under our control soon. Several thousand Imperial ships have been destroyed, we've killed or captured tens of millions, and billions now live under freedom and lack the fear that they once had to live with under the Empire. Our contribution might not be as high as yours, but it's expanding rapidly and I assure you it will expand as much as possible as time goes on. And if you don't want the crystals that's fine as well."
Leia sighed. Johnson had a point, and regardless of how reasonable it was to give this world such rights, they seemed to be standing firm on that condition. And they had the leverage to do so.
Speaking with her team of negotiators a decision was soon reached. In all honesty, they had little choice if they wanted to gain access to such deposits. Mothma had wanted to see if Leia could get a better deal for the Alliance but would be willing to accept Earth's terms if they didn't budge. It would be difficult if not impossible task to get them to move so a decision was soon reached to accept more or less what Earth had set out to originally be the terms.
It was a deal that satisfied Earth and while Leia was a bit unsure of the, giving them what would be a large amount of the spoils of war wouldn't harm them immediately. This would be something to deal with once the Empire was defeated.
"The negotiations were brief," Ailla said after they had finished.
"Indeed, though I hope to see Earth pull more weight now."
"I think they are doing as much as they can do, and they are expanding rapidly. I'd watch out for them though. I think they are going to make an impact on the galactic stage soon, though I'm not sure exactly what." She replied and sighed.
"Amylin, what did you think of this?" Leia asked one of her friends who were on the diplomatic team, Amylin Holdo.
"They got bargaining power, and as far as I'm concerned a hell of a lot of it. I just hope that we can keep that world a secret. Once our turbolasers start being equipped with kyber the Empire is going to find something out."
"The world it comes from is pretty deep behind Earth's lines. Johnson had mined all but three exits and is going to put a significant defensive force around the world and is encouraging the alliance to do so as well."
"The Empire might not do so immediately and it would take massive casualties to do so but they would do so," Ailla said. "That's assuming they can find it in the first place. Johnson wants the coordinates to be kept at a massive degree of secretness."
"I can only hope they won't find it," Leia said. "That world might lead to victory for us."
It was Sabine Wren's second trip to the headquarters of Earth's special forces. When she had been a few months ago she had been impressed. These were a culture of people she was familiar with, and if you closed your eyes and replaced a few words here and there one might think they were Mandalorian like her.
She'd be meeting here with the rest of a group of other special forces officers to work more on joint operations and training between the various forces. Major Emmett, one of the leaders of the Alliance's special forces, her, Colonel Petrova, and a couple of others that she did not know of yet. These were some from Earth's allies but who they were wasn't exactly known yet. Probably some old separatists from the free confederacy and some former imperials or something like that.
She was greeted upon arrival at the base by several of Earth's soldiers. They led her through faculties she had been through once before and to a fairly new conference room that was used for briefings. And meetings like this one as well.
Ematt looked impressed as he made his way through the building behind her. He had heard the stories of Earth's soldiers before and was fascinated by their exploits, which were becoming more and more well-known by Alliance Special Forces and the various Mandalorian clans on the side of the alliance.
They arrived at the conference room and Sabine almost drew her blasters out of shock. There were a few new faces such as a couple of soldiers in some sort of neo-CIS equipment, along with familiar faces such as Petrova herself.
But a Death Trooper was sitting in the middle of the conference room, acting like nothing he was doing was out of the ordinary. While he wasn't, it still looked odd, he was still a death trooper. Nothing could change that.
The trooper appeared to be less threatening than he might initially seem by taking off his helmet, though there were still a variety of weapons lining his body.
"What the, who are you?" She exclaimed at the trooper. This was certainly something that she wasn't prepared for, especially considering that everyone around her seemed to treat him normally with no issue.
"I am TKSD-1928, but you can call me Major Bart. I am the leader of a small detachment of a few dozen death troopers that serves as the personnel guards of Moff Illustrious. Most of us stayed loyal to her when the Empire came, and we had certain internal limitations removed to increase our self-awareness of the situation we found ourselves in. Those that did not were terminated. We now understand what the Empire has done and want to better ourselves by striking back at them. With our leader's approval, we have started to be employed in limited missions behind enemy lines in support of the war effort."
"Alright, but you will understand that I am suspicious," Sabine said.
"Of course, that is to be expected. However, the Rebel Alliance has a history of accepting defected imperials and I hope that you consider me as you did with them."
"I will," Sabine said. It would be hypocritical to do anything else, considering that large numbers of other Imperials had defected in her presence. But so far he was the first death trooper that she had met that hadn't been trying to kill her.
"The alliance would like to get more information about the state of Death troopers and how they operate," Ematt said.
"Indeed, I believe that some intelligence was sent to you but got lost in all of the various pieces of other intel we sent." He replied. "I am willing to speak to just about any of my experiences to you or any other alliance personnel so that you are better informed to face my kind in the future."
"Well with that out of the way I think we should get down to business," Petrova said. "I think that considering the elite nature of the troops under our command we should work together more to improve our abilities against the empire. Some sort of joint training for example could go a long way to helping us be prepared for missions against them. There is a lot that we could all learn from one another."
There were various nods and murmurs of agreement across the group.
"That leads to another point: joint operations and intelligence sharing. As time goes on we are going to need to cooperate if we wish to improve our skills together. While we aren't exactly intel-gathering units we do a lot of that work that involves that and we should share it to improve the effectiveness of our units." Petrova went on to describe more along the same lines of cooperation, which everyone agreed to do more of. Plans for a variety of missions were also drawn up, which was also going to lead to Earth's soldiers getting more experience on different battlefields across the rest of the galaxy.
