Chapter 3 - Discovery [[[[#]]]]]]]]=(=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Telos IV, often referred to the Coruscant of the outer rim, was another planet with a city covering almost the entire surface. Unlike Coruscant, Telos still retained large forests and plains, and even the frozen polar caps. Being an ancient planet, and a relatively rich one by galactic standards, the cities of Telos enjoyed some of the best planetary shielding the Republic had to offer, including many overlapping Nyalsan X platforms. Despite the superlaser-equipped Bogan Obsidian-class Destroyer and a fleet of Imperial Star Destroyers constantly barraging the planetary defences, Telos's shields remained resolute in defending the vast cities.
The shields, despite their strength, were not without variance. Several holes existed between the overlaps in the shield grids and skilled pilots with knowledge of the overlaps could slip through the gaps. With pilots so skilled, the Black Vornskrs had fed supplies to the starving rebellion to prepare them for the eventual planetary assault of Darth Krayt's forces. While most shipments included weapons, medical supplies, and defensive materials, one particular shipment included three Jedi Masters, a former Jensaarai Defender and two droids.
Dressed in civilian clothes and, for everyone except Eriana, disguises, the Jedi departed their shuttle with R2-D2 and HK-47 in tow following the Telosian Black Vornskr pilot. They took his direction to connect to the local Telosian resistance cell and how to identify themselves before parting company.
They piled into an Argath line tram at the spaceport stop and travelled along it for ten minutes in silence until they reached GlazGra station, a little used station on the outskirts of town. On the cue of the doors opening, Jacen and Eriana took HK-47 and led the way out of the station, heading north while Luke and Mara followed R2-D2 east out of the station.
With the attack looming overhead, the residential area they found themselves in was practically deserted. On their way to the designated warehouse on the outskirts of the area, Eriana and Jacen passed several groups of what they figured were street gangs based on their angry looks of defiance. Most of them sized up the outsiders with a passing level of interest as if trying to determine whether any value could be had from attacking, but some well placed mind tricks reaffirming the worthlessness of the outsiders kept the Jedi safe from attack. About a kilometre from their destination, they happened upon a small gang led by a human and a Devaronian, and Eriana grabbed Jacen's arm.
"What is it?" Jacen asked.
"Do you recognize them?" Eriana asked, a mischievous glint in her eye. "Those guys, right there."
"Do you know them?"
"What happened the last time we were on Telos?"
Jacen glanced at the human again, this time taking a good look at the glittering false teeth in the mouth of the human leading the group. If what Eriana was trying to tell him was right, those false teeth were replacing some that had been removed by her elbow.
"No," Jacen said. "You've got to be kidding. Those are the same guys that jumped you?"
"Looks like they're building their business interests," Eriana said. "More goons to scare."
"We can't," Jacen grabbed her hand. "We have to minimize how many people know we're here."
"Alright," Eriana said reluctantly and resumed their walk. "But avoiding breaking up street gangs will be addressed in your quarterly performance report."
About fifteen minutes later they arrived at the warehouse and walked up to the entrance, per the plan. Jacen knocked on the door three times and stepped back, his mind caressing the lightsaber hidden in his jacket should he need to use it.
"Friendship is never lost," an expectant voice stated from behind the door.
"It is only thrown away," Jacen completed the quote from one of his favourite novels.
The door opened to reveal a dark room. Within the darkness Jacen could sense about forty beings hiding, and he could feel the aim of at least a dozen blasters crawling across his skin.
"Warning: I sense many sentients in the darkness," HK-47 said. "Prepare for combat."
"We are the leaders of the Black Vornskrs," Jacen said, ignoring his droid. "Put your weapons away and turn on the lights."
The tension in the air increased and there was stirring from the hidden people.
"You are in no position to negotiate, so-called leaders of the Black Vornskrs," a gruff woman's voice responded. "Prove your identity."
Jacen and Eriana raised their right hands and activated their identical Corusca rings, amplifying the light of the projected logo to illuminate the room. Most of the sentients covered their eyes to avoid the brightness, and a few seconds later someone turned the lights on. Jacen identified many humans, eight Gands, an Ithorian, fourteen Rodians, and a Wookiee. A human woman approached them with a sense of authority, leaving little question of who was in charge.
"My apologies for the theatrics," she said, holding out a hand. Jacen noted the gold ring on her hand, but neither of them accepted it. "Tonya Kor'va."
"Identify yourself properly," Eriana ordered. Tonya complied, and the Black Vornskr logo flashed briefly on her ring.
"Good," Jacen said, finally shaking her hand. As Eriana shook Tonya's hand, Jacen sent a telepathic pulse to his uncle to let them know it was safe. "We have two more operatives that will join us presently."
At that moment the door opened to reveal the two Jedi Masters and R2-D2, and all six of them followed Tonya to a quiet corner of the facility where they found Kyp and Octa sitting side-by-side on an old wooden crate. Four of Tonya's silver-ringed operatives followed them and took seats on some more of the dusty old wooden crates set up in a semi-circular pattern around a larger crate that was acting as a makeshift table. Tonya activated an old lantern hanging a metre and a half above the table with a remote control from her pocket and gestured for the new arrivals to take a seat on the unoccupied crates. HK-47 and Artoo rested off to the side, sensors alert to maintain the privacy of the meeting while each taking their own recording as ordered before they had left the ship. Tonya herself remained standing, leaning on the table with both palms flat on the table. The lantern light cast shadows on her face that made her appear grim and angry, but Jacen sensed only determination and a bit of annoyance radiating from her.
"Very little of your mission has been explained to us by your friends here," Tonya said, gesturing to Kyp and Octa. "If I'm going to be putting my people into danger, I need details."
"Our plan is to have a section of the shielding dropped," Eriana said. "Preferably somewhere that won't risk too much collateral damage but is close enough to something juicy so they land troops. We'll coordinate the efforts of the defence force covertly to bring a heavy assault onto the ground troops, but we need them to escape."
Looks of confusion were shared between Tonya and her four captains.
"I thought we would want to wipe out the enemy," Tonya said.
"No," Luke replied. "Your goal will be to protect Telos. Our goal is to get onto their command ship."
"After we take out Krayt, we'll blow it up and jump ship," Eriana continued. "You and your people will forget we were ever here."
"Why would the leaders of the Black Vornskrs be leading a mission onto a Bogan command ship?" Tonya asked. "You've got to be crazier than the Jedi."
"Our information suggests the Jedi are all gone," Jacen said. "And the less you know the better off we'll all be. Plausible deniability, I believe they call it. Now, you have your orders – plan the ambush and forget about us."
"Then we should find the best place for an ambush," Tonya said. She pulled the remote from her pocket and pressed another button, activating a second mode on the lantern that spread a holographic map of Telos over the table. "Anything in mind?"
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While Jaina had locked herself in her room as soon as they arrived at the hotel, and Lowbacca worked on some Force exercises with Ben in their room, Leia and Erinn brought Danni up on the events at Jag's office over a pot of tea in the relatively ornate sitting area of the suite. Taking up almost half the floor of the hotel, the suite they were put in offered plenty of room and beautiful old-fashioned furniture that seemed both out of place and appropriate in the traditional Chiss society.
"You shouldn't have said that," Leia said to Erinn. "Jaina's always had a soft spot for Jag."
"I tend to talk before thinking," Erinn admitted, blushing and looking down into her tea cup in the disarming way only an embarrassed seventeen year old girl could. "I guess I'm not really cut out as a Jedi."
"Nonsense," Danni said with a warm smile. "You're still twice the Jedi I'll ever be. And you have to admit, that was pretty damn funny."
Danni's comment earned her a scolding look from Leia that did not have any effect on her target. Danni merely took another sip of her tea and winked at Erinn.
"You knew it was Jag," Leia accused Danni. "You never told us."
"Nobody asked," Danni admitted without a hint of remorse, setting the tea cup back on its saucer on the table in front of her. "Nobody seems to pay much attention to me, anyway."
"What do you mean?"
Danni looked up at Leia's concerned face with a flicker of annoyance. "You really don't know, do you?"
The blank stare she got answered her question.
"When the war ended, where was I left? On Zonoma Sekot. The place the Jedi Order left the misfits who weren't good enough to be Jedi Knights to explore what they didn't need to know. They pushed me out of the Order on the guise of a wonderful research opportunity promising the chance to get in on groundbreaking new studies. And after almost ten years there...what? Nothing.
"No Jedi Masters to teach us the ways of the Force. Nobody has used anything that we learned about Vong biotech for anything except for Lowbacca's plasma weapon and Lando's failed suit experiment. None of the medicine or bio implants or cloning technologies or anything! We learned ways to create perfect replicas of human body parts that would replace mechanical prosthetics and nobody cared. We could have made the Jedi a fortune with the technology we developed so they could fund a thousand wars against the Bogans, and they didn't even look at the reports of what we were doing there. We could have been inciting a rebellion for all they knew. I left Zonoma Sekot for at least one week a month to come to Csilla and nobody noticed! One time I was gone for six whole months and didn't get a single message from the Jedi Order about missed progress reports. Pellaeon was the only person that seemed to remember that I was his friend and would drop me messages to see how I was doing."
Danni sipped her tea and took a moment to collect her thoughts as the two other women sat there in stunned silence at her rant.
"I'm sorry," Danni said miserably. "I shouldn't be taking this out on you."
"Why didn't you request a transfer?" Leia asked. "Or someone to train you?"
"Because," Danni's green eyes trailed to the door. "It gave me the latitude for me to keep coming here."
"But..." Leia's thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door and a look of comprehension came across her face as Danni shot up and crossed the ornate room to activate the door release. Jag appeared at the door, smiling briefly at Danni before walking further in to greet Leia.
"Ambassador Solo, I was sorry to hear about the loss of your husband," Jag said stiffly, yet still managed to convey his empathy. "Han was a great man, a true inspiration to us all."
"Thank you," Leia said, trying to maintain her composure with the still-fresh loss weighing on her heart. "Jag, we need your help."
Jaina chose that moment to reappear. The look on her face told Jag that she was not yet ready to forgive him for his earlier rudeness, but was willing to get some answers from him.
"I surmised as much," Jag said. "I'm surprised the Jedi sent such a large contingent. First, I want to apologize for my earlier behaviour. I had a visitor in my office who wished to remain anonymous. What can I do for you?"
"Where's Wedge?" Jaina snapped, a bit harsher than she had intended.
"Wedge escaped with a sizeable fleet to avoid Krayt's new ships," Danni explained in a much softer tone. "We've been trying to find him to coordinate our efforts against Krayt. We figured he went into the unknown regions."
"How big a fleet do you think he took?"
"About eight thousand capital ships," Leia said. "Plus support craft."
"Then it's highly unlikely he's out here," Jag said, taking a seat in the middle of the couch that Danni had been laying on a minute earlier and she sat down beside him. A pensive furrow crossed his brow as he thought about the reports that had crossed his desk. "We would've noticed a fleet that big travelling through Chiss space, but we do only have about seventy percent of the region under our control or observation. The other thirty is unmonitored by us."
"So he could still be out here," Jaina concluded.
"It is possible, but doubt it," Jag said, looking up at her. "Chiss space wanders quite erratically based on systems that are of interest, and that is constantly fluctuating. Unless Wedge had accurate star maps of Chiss space, or he took out the Ssi-Ruuk without our knowledge – which he hasn't, based on the report I read an hour ago – I don't think even he could move a fleet through the unknown regions without us noticing."
"Krayt is suspected to have a shipyard in the Unknown Regions," Danni said. "He got a small fleet of massive ships out from under your noses."
"Eight ships would be a lot easier to sneak past our patrols compared to eight thousand," Jag said rather gently.
Jag stood up suddenly and took two steps toward the door before turning around. "I'm sorry I can't be more help, but I'd like to invite you for dinner tonight."
"You've saved us a lot of work," Leia said gratefully as she stood up. "We'd be honoured to join you."
With a quick nod, Jag disappeared and left the four women alone.
"Anyone get the sense he's hiding something?" Jaina asked with ample sarcasm before disappearing back to her room.
Danni picked up her tea cup again, trying to ignore a penetrating glare from Leia.
"He is kinda cute once you get to know him," Erinn finally said, still looking at the door. She looked back at Danni and shrugged. "I'd do him."
"Let's not go there," Danni said, hiding her smile behind her tea cup as she took a sip.
[[[[#]]]]]]]]=(=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
With frightening efficiency, mere seconds after power was transferred away from the shield emitters across the Rothac plains, drop ships spewed out of Darth Krayt's massive black ship hovering above in orbit. Several dozen of the miniature versions of the giant double-parallelogram ships streamed through the atmosphere at full throttle and landed in the valley forming a giant ring, noses pointed outward, to create a defensive parameter. The ships combined their shield power to establish a defensive barrier and cement their foothold. On cue, members of the Telos resistance launched their attack on the defensive ring using hidden squadrons of X-wings and B-wings to harass the invading troop transports and cover a ground assault of a hundred previously hidden heavy tanks.
The fleet of drop ships lifted off the ground in unison and travelled in formation, slowly moving across the ground toward the approaching Telosian tanks while shrugging off the offending laser fire from the starfighters with their powerful shields. Once in range, the tanks opened fire, unleashing their heavy artillery and battering the ships in an impressive display of explosions that forced the drop ships to land and refocus their engine power into their shields and weapons.
"They're in position," Jacen said, staring at the small datapad in his hand. "Frankly, I don't know how we haven't been blown up or detected yet."
"The Telosians seem to know their stuff," Mara said approvingly. "Ready?"
"As we'll ever be," Jacen said. He shut off the datapad, put it on a crate beside him and looked around the reinforced duracrete bunker at the other occupants. Like himself, Mara, Luke, Kyp, Octa and Eriana were wearing the modified armoured Jedi combat uniforms designed to protect without restricting their movement and look like the ground trooper uniforms of the Bogan soldiers. The explosions shook the ground around them, but their faces wore identical looks of resolve as they put their helmets on and picked up their blaster rifles. A quick nod from everyone and Jacen looked to Mara. "Detonate."
"Fire in the hole," Mara said quietly and pressed the button on the console beside her.
If the explosions from the heavy artillery shook the bunker, Mara's explosives made the occupants feel like beads in a toddler's rattler. Loud explosions echoed above, mostly blocked by the protective helmets, and when the first round stopped Luke and Kyp pushed the heavy durasteel top off the bunker with the Force and the Jedi jumped to the ground, blasters at the ready.
The remains of over a dozen drop ships surrounded the bunker, cries of agony emanating from the twisted black hulls that were ravaged by the explosives that had been planted around the hidden bunker. Together the Jedi raced toward one of the ships that were less damaged and extracted some of the solders that were screaming in agony. While most of them had been nearly obliterated by the explosions, they found two that were only missing legs and one missing an arm. Jacen, Luke and Kyp picked up the injured soldiers, leaving Mara to squeeze a button built into the butt end of her blaster rifle. Another explosion sent up a ball of fire, demolishing all evidence of their bunker, and they ran toward the nearest intact drop ship. Eriana and Octa waved their arms for attention and the group raced toward the lowering ramp. They piled into the cramped drop ship as the ramp closed up and felt the ship twist in the air and accelerate toward the sky. Luke, Jacen and Kyp surrendered their injured soldiers to the ship medic and they all found any spot they could to hold onto as the ship bounced its way out of the Telosian atmosphere. Jacen looked at his fellow Jedi and knew, behind their dark masks, they were all thinking the same thing: As long as the X-wings and B-wings called off pursuit, the first part of the mission went off without a hitch.
