From how my plot looks right now this chapter deals with a lot of things, it has the potential to be quite long, but I am not going to say it will be and then it turns out short. But it has the potential to be quite long. And a lot of questions are brought up. Or at least a big one, just read.

Chapter 16: The Gathering

Two Months after Previous Chapter

It had taken her the best of five months, Daala, to gather a sizeable fleet. It now consisted of 60 capitol ships, and hundreds of thousands of TIE Fighters and bombers. Forty ships were Imperial Class Star Destroyers, the other twenty were a mix. 10 are Victory Class Star Destroyers, about half the size of the Imperial Class, 7 are Tartan Patrol Cruisers which equal Corellian Corvettes in size and the remaining three were Interdictor Class Star Destroyers, a little longer than Victory Class, Interdictor class housed four generators which created a cone of gravity with a wide range in space, stopping enemy ships from jumping to hyperspace. These Interdictor Class ships were also more heavily armored than most, and they had an upgraded arsenal of turbo lasers and ion cannons since those three were actually a fleet that broke away from Vader.

Daala, Pellaeon, and Kratas were commanders over the fleet. Daala had appointed Pellaeon and Admiral, and Kratas was not Vice Admiral.

Mara was in her usual cabin on the Gorgon studying the schematics of Interdictor Class ships, one thing the former Emperor always taught her. Know your weapons, know their weaknesses because one day they may turn on you. And Vader and Ravan were both living proof of that. She hated them so, but she was beginning to doubt the reason why. At first she hated them for leaving her with nothing, utterly nothing but the clothes she had and weapons. But now it seemed she hated them because the voice nagging at her never left her alone. She wasn't so sure she wanted to kill them herself now, well she did but now only to make the former Emperor's voice stop.

The door to her quarters shot open, she turned her data pad off and whirled around on her chair, expecting to see either Kallisto or Daala enter, or maybe Nigel who had been to a rehab center in one of the star destroyers and quit drinking, or half did, he was still going through it. His new habit was drinking non alcoholic fruity, fruity, very fruity beverages. But to Mara's surprise, or not Alecto came in.

"Hey." Alecto said.

"What is it now?" Mara asked. "Another smuggler complaint Daala wants me to help deal with?"

"No, nothing like that, actually the captains of every ship in the fleet have come aboard the Gorgon and Daala called a conference. She's got the plans to cover vaguely and some sixty first ship."

"We got another one?" Mara asked gladly, though her voice didn't show it.

"Yeah, no word from Daala on what type or where she is keeping it."

"Okay then, we'd better go."

"There's… one more thing." Alecto said nervously as Mara stood up and flipped her red mane to the side.

"What?"

"I heard someone yesterday, finishing listing off every ship in Daala's force to someone… it was Kallisto."

"What in the hell do you mean by that?!" Mara asked in shock. Kallisto couldn't be a spy, or some sort of double agent. There was no way, she was a smuggler from Cato Neimoidia. People even knew about her on Tatooine, if she was a spy Vader and his cronies sure went through a lot of trouble arranging for her a solid identity, or an alias.

"I mean I believe Kallisto might… possibly be a spy." Alecto answered quietly.

"How? What—you worked with her for a long time! How could she be working for someone else right under your nose?!"

"Well think about it!" Alecto snapped. "How does she have all the answers? How does she somehow know about the Imperials and Mourth Doole? How does she know how to trade with Imperials? Her storey was never that solid Mara, surely you know that. First she says she deals with Imperials, but not directly. Then—"

"Shouldn't you have realized she was working for the Imperials a long time before now then? All this circumstantial evidence you have? Well!"

"I've suspected it, this call she made just proves it Mara, damn it! I need you on my side. We have to make sure she's not feeding Vader intel on our operations."

Mara took a deep breath, and let it flow out slowly. Speaking in a much more calm voice she said: "I'm on your side. Agreed, we watch Kallisto."

XxX

Did it always have to happen this way? The briefing room was filled to the point of overflowing with captains from each of Daala's ships. Mara and Alecto were the last to enter the meeting room after an obese captain. Kallisto was there with her legs crossed and her red hair tied up into a messy bun. Captain Zax sat opposite her and General Derevko next to her. Mara sat down somewhere near Daala and a few gruff looking men. As the Admiral cleared her throat to speak Mara noticed something odd. And it was so very small she wondered if it was her imagination. Kallisto's arm reached up to her right shoulder to rub it, or perhaps it was feigned, when it came down there was a small blink of light emitted from the shoulder of her red suit, and nothing else happened.

Mara kept her eyes on Kallisto, and when Kallisto turned her head to look at her Mara took her eyes off. What was that light? She reflected on what Alecto has said… if Kallisto was a spy then that could very well have been some sort of recording or listening device. Mara considered reaching for her EMP pistol, if it was indeed a bug or listening device and she shot it with an electro magnetic pulse it would short out, it if was a small device maybe even explode, but she didn't.

Daala began to speak.

"Welcome commanders. As you know we have been creating plans for our attack on Coruscant for the past three months. Our plans are almost finalized and as long as we stick with them we might have a good chance of accomplishing our mission. But I'm not going to lie to you. We stand a snowballs chance on Mustafar of defeating Vader's armies. Yes we do have quite a big fleet, but Vader is in control of more ships than we are. I have no doubt that Vader will call any ships he can spare when we attack him that is why we have maybe a three hour timeline to get this done in. Here is our plan. We're going to neutralize two prime targets with one swift stroke. My scientists in the Maw Cluster have analyzed their plans of the Death Star. We have found a weakness.

"There is a small thermal exhaust port right below the main port of the Death Star's main reactor which as we know supplies the power of its laser. Now this shaft is no more than two meters wide, and it is ray shielded so we will use proton torpedoes. The shaft comes up at the end of a trench, if we can launch even one proton torpedo down it then we can cause a chain reaction which will destroy the station. We will outfit two flight wings of twenty four TIE interceptors with proton torpedoes, which means we have twenty four chances to destroy the station.

"The interceptors will be escorted by an entire attack wing of TIE fighters which is seventy two as well as sixty TIE bombers to take out the stations turbo lasers in the area."

"Isn't that a bit of a sacrifice?" A captain asked. "Sending out an entire attack wing of TIE fighters when a standard Imperial Star Destroyer carries only that many?"

"No." Daala replied. "We may lose ships yes, but we need each of those seventy two fighters to keep other TIE fighters off our interceptor's and bomber's backs. In addition we will send ten of our Imperial class Star Destroyers to fight off the Death Star's guard fleet, the rest of our ships will siege Coruscant. Vader will be forced to divide his forces here."

"An excellent plan." A captain said.

"Thank you." Daala replied quickly. "Once we get a clear path we will send Kallisto, Alecto, and Mara Jade along with an army of highly trained smugglers into the Imperial palace to take out Vader."

"Wait a moment." A captain said.

"What?" Daala asked with just a hint of frustration.

"What about Vader's flagship the Executor, we have nothing that can match its fire power."

Daala's eye brows and face noticeably twitched with somewhat of a passionate evil, or something. She smiled.

"I have an answer to that." Daala said. "May I direct your attention out of the window, above Kessel, look. What do you see?"

"Nothing Admiral." A captain said.

"There are no stars there, in that spot." Mara pointed out. When each captain took a closer look it suddenly became noticeable, there were no stars above Kessel.

"Now." Daala said quietly into a comm.

And then hundreds of thousands of little lights light the black space above Kessel and the outline of a great mammoth black super star destroyer appeared. Mara could almost hear the sounds of the traitor Imperials screaming as the huge ship vaporized them.

"Ladies and gentlemen." Daala said. "May I present to you the only other super star destroyer I know of ever finished. Night Hammer, which I have renamed Knight Hammer with a K. This is my new capitol ship. As you can see it has stealth capabilities. This ship will be a key piece in taking Coruscant."

The room filled the light sound of gloved hands clapping. Mara did nothing but stare with a glinting eye smile on her face. Let all run in fear of the Knight Hammer.

"Who the hell was stupid enough to give that up?" Kallisto asked.

"A young captain." Daala replied. "Originally the ship was supposed to belong to an Admiral but the captain decided to break away from the Empire when Vader took over. The ship is now mine. It is my flagship. With it we will take Coruscant."

It just wouldn't be Daala without the Knight Hammer. NOTE: Also in my plot I am in the perfect position, I think, to make an Unknown Son 3. It is possible this could happen, and I'll be able to have a Ravan/ Mara relationship as well, possibly. But I need to know now whether or not any of you would read it because I can either leave it open for a sequel, or I can close the Unknown Son series completely and begin work on other projects. Review your answers.