Asori Rogriss' shuttle descended through the clouds above Poln Major to the sight of cheering crowds in the streets of Whitestone City. The people of the city were loyal to Grand Moff Ferrouz and had stood behind him even when he had broken from the New Order. She could imagine them watching the battle on every viewscreen they could beg, borrow, or steal, wondering if New Order would defeat Pellaeon's forces and what it would do to those who had stayed loyal to him after they had.
But the battle had been won, not lost, and in spectacular fashion. Admiral Pellaeon's fleet had utterly devastated Regent-Halmere's formation. Just the process of salvaging the destroyed ships and recovering their survivors—not to mention the survivors of Exigent—would likely take days. Each survivor they recovered would be given the chance to defect and join them, strengthening their fleet still further.
Before the Battle of Poln Major, Asori had been uncertain how all this would end. The New Order had so many more systems that defeating it was a distant fantasy. Now, though, with the sudden collapse of the Imperial Fleet and the loss of so many Star Destroyers, that fantasy seemed alarmingly real.
Don't get ahead of yourself, she thought, trying to dampen her enthusiasm. The New Order is still well-armed and vicious. You have wounded it, but what will it do in response?
Her shuttle settled to the ground outside the governor's palace. She waited for the landing ramp to fully depress, then she descended it. She was wearing her full dress uniform, and with the uniform came a sense of authority and dignity.
Everything was different, now.
"Captain Rogriss." That voice belonged to Admiral Pellaeon; she turned to face the older man and accepted a mutual salute and handshake. "Well done, Captain."
"And you, Admiral," she returned.
Pellaeon was typically reserved. "It was Baron Fel who saw the crucial element. Their TIEs would have been much deadlier had he not realized they were droids so quickly."
"Which raises the question," she said—and this was the one vital question, the concern that lingered, the knot of doubt that niggled in her gut "—where did they get six hundred droid starfighters?"
"I agree," Pellaeon said darkly. "If I'm not mistaken, that is what Baron Fel wishes to speak with us about." He gestured towards the arching, white stone columns of the governor's palace. "Come, Captain. Let us see what our leaders have for us today."
They walked together through the white stone structure. It was a solemn place, with only a handful of political aides and bureaucrats poking their heads out to get a look. The cheering crowds of the city were far from here, and even the sounds of their jubilant celebration were now silent. Their standard-issue boots clicked on the stairs as they ascended towards the governor's office. Inside they found Grand Moff Ferrouz and Baron Soontir Fel in close conversation.
Fel wasted no time with pleasantries. "Admiral, Captain. The Grand Moff and I were discussing the New Order's manufacturing capability, and we have come to the conclusion that they do not have the ability to construct and field so many droid starfighters."
"Experience would seem to suggest otherwise," Pellaeon said dryly.
Fel smiled without humor. "Indeed." He shook his head. "We have no idea where they came from. Our best guess is that the secret facility that the young Emperor Ismaren has been secreted away to is some kind of manufactory, but despite the best efforts of our intelligence apparatus we still don't know where that is."
"Worse," Grand Moff Ferrouz added, "is the fact that we don't know how long it took them to construct so many TIE droids. Was this the product of six months of manufacturing? A year? Two weeks? We have no way of knowing."
"Worse still," Fel continued, "is that we should expect the TIE droids to be smarter each time we face them. The ones we fought here used a simple behavioral matrix that dates back to the early Clone Wars. There are a number of basic improvements that could be made to their code to improve their tactics. As long as the New Order has a competent cyberneticist, we should expect they will be significantly smarter the next time we have to fight them. Not as good as sentient pilots of course… but smarter than before."
Asori imagined a few thousand TIE droids swarming over her squadron with near infinite reinforcements. "If they had huge manufacturing capacity, they would have used more than six hundred," she pointed out. "That gave them an edge in numbers but not enough of an edge to make up for their deficiencies."
"I agree," Fel said with a nod. "They brought six hundred because six hundred was what they had available. Then. But how many will they have available tomorrow?"
Pellaeon took a deep breath. "I see your point. What do you intend to do about it?"
"Two things," said Ferrouz. "First, we must redouble our efforts to acquire an intelligence asset within Emperor-Regent Halmere's inner circle. Anyone who might have come into close contact with him may also have traveled to the New Order's mysterious droid manufactory. We need to find that factory and destroy it before it fundamentally alters the dynamics of this war."
Pellaeon nodded. "Yes, sir."
"Second," and to Asori's surprise, Ferrouz turned towards her, "Captain Rogriss, I have a mission for you."
"Sir?"
"Given the unexpected and unknown strength of our enemy, the Baron and I have agreed to change our previous course. You're being sent to negotiate with the New Republic," Ferrouz said grimly. "We believe the time has come to make a formal overture towards ending the Galactic Civil War."
She blinked, astonished. "Me? Sir?"
"You," agreed Fel, taking up for Ferrouz—clearly, the two of them had rehearsed this in advance. "Your name carries some credibility with the man we want you to reach, but to get to him without drawing suspicion you'll have to find Mirax Terrik. She's a smuggler, primarily of gray market antiquities. Importantly—" he stared at her pointedly, then looked to the other people in the room "—and I do not want this widely shared: she has a direct line to the commander of their Fifth Fleet, who also happens to be my brother-in-law."
Asori heard Pellaeon's restrained grunt of surprise. Ferrouz, as usual, gave away nothing. She was still stunned almost to incoherence that she would be responsible for this mission; the additional surprise that Baron Soontir Fel and General Wedge Antilles were related by marriage added little to add to her current state of shock and uncertainty.
"If you can get to Wedge Antilles and tell him what we just fought," Fel continued, "I'm sure he'll recognize the scope of the threat we both face. The problem is we want any overture from us to the New Republic to be kept secret so that the New Order has no chance to interfere." He manipulated the datapad he was holding, and in response a holo of the galaxy illuminated above Ferrouz's desk, one that illuminated all the remaining New Order territories in a blood-red.
"With all due respect, sir," she said, putting all that information aside for later, "That doesn't answer my question. Why me?"
"I would rather it be your father," Fel replied. "He and General Antilles have worked together before on more than one occasion and his name ought to carry some credibility. But it can't be him for two reasons. First, he isn't here. He's still assembling our reserve fleet at Nirauan, preparing it to reinforce Poln Major in the event of a second New Order attack. Second, he is too well known and his appearance on Coruscant would surely put the New Order on alert."
"If I may inquire, Baron," Pellaeon asked in a somewhat subdued tone, "how can we be sure Antilles won't simply kill her? We've all seen the holos of my exchange with him at Carida. The man is utterly single-minded! If now-Senator Midanyl hadn't stepped in he may have chosen to attack my fleet rather than let us go, even if that meant he risked losing the battle."
"I can't speak to Wedge's state of mind," Fel said. "I've only known him briefly in person, but if we can get Mirax to see the message and verify it, she's sure to at least try and present it to him on its own merits. He should see the arithmetic in having us on his side to finish the New Order at least." He hesitated, then added somewhat reluctantly, "Wedge also owes Captain Rogriss' father a debt."
Asori frowned, wondering what that could mean. Still, though… "I'm not a diplomat, sir," she said warily. "That wasn't my training…" She had never been trained for peacetime and never known peacetime. There were times she wondered what she would even do if peace came. Asking her to be the agent of peace…
"I will provide you with a full briefing," put in Grand Moff Ferrouz, "including everything you are authorized to offer the New Republic to encourage them to agree to an alliance and to achieve the long-term peace we are looking for. All you have to do is deliver the datapad to the New Republic and let it speak for us." He smiled reassuringly. "Believe me, Captain, we did not select your name at random. The Baron and I agree that our representative should be from the Imperial Starfleet, someone with clean hands, and someone with a low profile. Someone that the New Republic military will have some sympathy for. That is who we need to be the new face of our Empire. In every respect, you are the right choice."
Eight hours later, after she had handed off command of her squadron to her second-in-command, Asori Rogriss found herself on a disguised Intelligence courier with Commander Dreyf and a stack of briefing datapads thick enough to serve as armor plating on a Star Destroyer.
Fliry Vorru's office was in an unassuming villa on the outskirts of Coronet City, the capital of Corellia. It stank of excess and louche old money, just as was expected of the head of Black Sun. It was, after all, a millennia-old organization, one that had been the heart of the Coruscanti criminal underworld for almost as long as Coruscant had been the galactic capital.
Until I had to close the Coruscant office due to… rampant speculation by its Vigo.
Vorru did his best to work hard but still enjoyed touches of the high life he'd missed on Kessel. His auto-massaging office chair had fine, precise servos ideal for working out kinks in his back and featured capable defense programming able to direct a truly dazzling armament. For that luxury, the chair cost as much as a large Coruscanti apartment, and as much as some Coronet apartment buildings.
Xizor, the last head of Black Sun of any note, had owned the same model. Vorru had appearances to maintain, after all.
Unlike Coruscant, most of Coronet ran closer to the ground with only a few megastructures and space-lifts at its heart. Vorru's office was ground-level, in a residential neighborhood far away from the busy harbor and spaceport, and through the slightly-colored windows was an array of beautiful Corellian plants. During the spring, Vorru had kept these windows open, which allowed both a breeze and the marvelous scent of spiceflowers, maintained by expert Corellian gardeners who had cost him a significant amount of credits to poach from the local elite.
The rest of his inner sanctum was equally opulent, but had been styled to Vorru's personal tastes, rather than those of his predecessors. His large desk was made from fine Talusan wood, as were the matching chairs (which were sized to suit Vorru's comparatively diminutive frame). On the walls were lightly-lit abstract artworks, all of a pre-Empire Corellian vintage—and not only human artists, either. Vorru, unlike many former Imperial Moffs, had no particular antipathy towards Corellia's non-human sentients. He was pretty sure that the Drallan art wasn't intended to be abstract, but to human eyes it was undoubtedly so. Despite his uncertainty about what exactly it depicted, it was attractive to the eye, and his underlings seemed to like it. Or at least they said as much to his face.
Just outside the door were two of the best mercenaries that credits could buy.
His terminal beeped, alerting him to a new urgent message. Turning towards it with a frown, he activated the monitor and brought the message up for his perusal. The message was from one of his many assets in the Imperial hierarchy—it was alarmingly easy to buy off ISB officers these days, the organization was not what it had once been—and the subject line told him almost everything he needed to know.
DISASTER AT POLN MAJOR. FLEET DESTROYED. MOFF DISRA EXECUTED FOR INCOMPETENCE.
He reviewed the rest of the communique with morbid curiosity. Emperor-Regent Halmere's assault on Grand Moff Ferrouz's forces had gone horribly wrong. Of the twelve Imperial-class Star Destroyers only four had survived, and of those four only two remained combat capable. The Grand Moff's traitors—or loyalists, Vorru thought wryly, depending on one's perspective—had possessed unexpected assets. Admiral Valentin had been found guilty of treason and Moff Disra of incompetence; both were dead. Vorru wondered, with grim amusement, what had set Valentin's treason apart from Disra's incompetence.
He was under no illusions. Vilm Disra had been a useful asset, but Vorru was all-too-well aware that his old administrative aide from his days as Corellia's Moff had ceased being fully reliable some time before. Disra's messages had been prompt, but had not been as… useful as they had been prior to Disra becoming the Moff of the Braxant Sector and being assigned to the Emperor-Regent's staff. His loss was frustrating, because it meant Vorru no longer had eyes and ears in the Council of Moffs itself, but it was not a disaster.
The rest of the message…
Vorru leaned back in his expensive massage chair, allowing the silent kneading to ease him into deep thought. He thought through the implications of what had happened, turned it over and examined it from every angle, and came to one inescapable conclusion:
The Empire was finished.
This moment had been coming for some time. He saw it even here on Corellia, as in the last six months anti-Imperial partisans had waged an extensive insurgency and protest campaign against Imperial rule. Selonia and Drall were very nearly in open revolt, and while there were still a great many Imperial sympathizers among the human populations of Corellia, Talus, and Tralus, they had become more subdued as defeat after defeat rocked the New Order. With the calamity at Poln Major and the humiliation of the Emperor-Regent himself…
The Empire is indeed finished.
Vorru found he didn't have any strong feelings about this reality one way or the other. The Empire had been dying ever since Endor, after all. The question was what should he do about it?
An odd sense of unease swept over him. Vorru was used to the unexpected happening—being able to both cause and take advantage of the unexpected was how he had become Corellia's Moff, a lifetime ago—but it nonetheless always brought with it a certain anxiety. To quell that anxiety, Vorru would have to exert his will on the new unknown, to twist it into something he did know, and something he could control.
That knowledge usually reassured him. But this time, Vorru's uneasiness lingered. Something was off…
He felt a waft of actual breeze and smelled a touch of spiceflower. It took his brain a second to catch up with the olfactory prompting, but then he snatched at his desk drawer, because that meant someone had opened one of his windows.
With a screech, his massage chair suddenly spasmed. Making a weak sound of protest, the chair whined and creaked, and Vorru leapt out of it as someone, a man, cleared his throat behind him. Spinning around, Fliry palmed the closest blaster to hand, a light holdout he kept in the top drawer of his desk, and pointed it at the interloping presence.
The man who had breached his sanctum was of an age and a height equal to his own and had a spare face stretched like tanned leather over sharp bones. The intruder held both hands up in a sign of measured harmlessness, which just made Vorru even more uncomfortable. "Hello, Moff Vorru," the intruder said. The man's voice was soft and unmistakably Corellian, Enster with a touch of gutter Coronet. "Or do you prefer Underlord these days?" One of the man's lifted hands gestured at the blaster in Vorru's hand. "You won't need that," he added with a soft smile, and to Vorru's astonishment he recognized the man's clothes. The intruder's jumpsuit had the logo of the local gardening service that Vorru had hired. "I've come on business and my business doesn't involve harming you."
Vorru took a moment to glance at his chair and saw a restraining bolt affixed to the back of it.
"On the other hand," the man added, "my business doesn't involve me being harmed either, so I had to neutralize your toy."
"Typically, I prefer for my business partners to make appointments," Vorru said calmly, checking his blaster to make sure the holdout was charged. It was. "But I suppose you've gone through all the difficulty of coming to see me. The least I can do is hear what you have to say."
The gardener smiled. "I thought you'd appreciate the subtlety. Though I also know that after this meeting you'll be reassessing your security arrangements—as you should. Your mercenaries are good at what they do, but I'd add a handful more aerial droids and double the frequency of their patrols."
"I'll keep that in mind." Vorru frowned. Now that he was looking at the man—and was reasonably certain that his life was not in immediate jeopardy—the gardener actually looked vaguely familiar. "Have we met?"
"I used to work for you, actually," the gardener said. The other man was likely one of many people who had once served the former Moff's office. For that matter, from a certain point of view, all of Corellia had once worked for Fliry Vorru. "A lifetime ago. I thought you'd appreciate the respect of necessary things being done in the shadows. After all, you're the one playing games and making the Diktat stutter and stumble."
"The Diktat hardly needs my help for that."
"True. The Empire isn't what it used to be." The gardener smiled thinly. "Have you heard about Emperor-Regent Halmere's debacle at Poln Major yet?"
That made Vorru almost stiffen in surprise. He'd only just found out about that, and he had intelligence assets in the heart of ISB! How in all the Corellian hells could this man have heard about it before he had? "Of course. The news reached me some time ago," he lied smoothly.
"Once the news gets out," the gardener said, "the Corellian people will not be able to resist responding. Protests will fill the streets of Coronet. The Selonians and Drallans will attack their Imperial garrisons." His expression tightened and Vorru saw a hint of stress there. "The leadership of the insurgency won't be able to stop it even if they wish to. The pro-Imperial militias will try to suppress them, but Thrackan Sal-Solo's people won't be able to clear them without massive bloodshed, if at all."
That was a not unreasonable set of suppositions. "Why come to me?"
"Because I'm under the impression that whatever else you are, you are also a Corellian patriot." The gardener gestured at the opulent space around them. "And because the Imperial response to those protests will be vicious. Like Deyer and a hundred other worlds, the Star Destroyers in orbit will be ordered by their ISB loyalty officers to bombard our worlds. They will destroy in an afternoon what has taken Corellia a thousand lifetimes to build."
"And you think I can stop it?"
"I know you can. I know, Moff Vorru, that you've spent the last six months manipulating the personnel rosters of those Star Destroyers. I know that they're staffed with more Corellians than the Imperial Starfleet under Tarkin would ever have accepted—Corellians who might be reluctant to rearrange so much as a blade of grass on their own homeworlds. I also know that you are very, very wealthy… and that the non-Corellian Captains and crew of those Star Destroyers might be amenable to switching sides, if provided with the proper incentive."
Vorru laughed in astonishment. "You're asking me to bribe the Captains of six Imperial-class Star Destroyers? That would cost a fortune."
The gardener didn't hesitate. "And their escorts, if possible. We don't have time to debate it, either… news of Poln Major will arrive on Corellia within days, perhaps hours. ISB's censors won't be able to stifle the news forever, and once it hits the enthusiasm and protests will get out of hand. If we're going to free Corellia without disaster, we need to act quickly and decisively."
"And if I don't have the funds?"
"You do have the funds."
The gardener's voice was calm and entirely certain and once again Vorru was struck with a sense of familiarity. "You are a leader of the Corellian resistance," he said with sudden understanding. Then, on an instinct: "Were you with CorSec?" he asked slowly. "I heard some of their records were completely destroyed during the Dark Times."
"I'm just a gardener," the man countered, his voice betraying no hint of emotion. "I nourish beautiful and productive plans, and I pull up weeds. To pull up the Empire cleanly, I'm going to need your help when the protests start."
Vorru waved his blaster for slight emphasis. "Even if I decide to help Corellia, what makes you think I'll let you leave?"
"Every rose has its thorns. You're not the only person who has been manipulating personnel assignments. If my heart stops beating while on these premises, or if I give a duress signal, one of the orbiting Home Guard warships will flatten this entire property."
That was so ridiculous that Vorru had to laugh again. "You're not serious."
"You know as well as I do that any time someone says that, they reveal themselves to be poking or prodding to reveal amateurish threats spun from filaments of imaginary fear. Rest assured, I am not an amateur. I am quite serious."
The man was either an expert sabacc player or he was telling the truth. Vorru wasn't sure which. Though they were both old Corellians in a dangerous game; he could be both. "That would be conspicuous."
"Accidents happen, especially during gunnery exercises." The gardener gestured towards the still open window. When Vorru didn't shoot him, he nodded. "It was good to see you, Fliry. I'm sure I can trust you'll do the right thing." And with that, the gardener slipped back through the window, slid it closed silently behind him, and disappeared.
Hyperspace was, Ephin Sarreti thought, the only time he ever got any real rest.
He had been enrolled in COMPNOR by his parents when he was barely a teenager. Like many children of the Coruscanti elite, he'd been steeped in Imperial politics for as long as he could remember: a constant analysis of whatever Palpatine had done this week and the reasons it was (like everything Palpatine did) pure genius and for the greater good of all. For a young man interested in politics, that was the tenor of every discussion. The only debate to be had, if there was one, was why Palpatine's decisions were genius, not if.
Keeping track of the political news was something he had done even before he fell into the clutches of COMPNOR and it was a habit he had never broken even after Palpatine's death. As he'd risen through the ranks and been given access to intelligence reports, his addictive habit of consuming the news had become an addictive habit of consuming those instead. There were days, if he wasn't doing other things, he could spend twenty hours absorbed with the damned things, reading page after page of up-to-the-minute briefs over the Imperial HoloNet. He had long ago concluded that the obsessive behavior was neither healthy nor necessary, but he continued anyway.
Except in hyperspace.
In hyperspace, the HoloNet receiver was blissfully silent. Oh, he could still review the pages and pages of files that had already been downloaded, but the obsessive pull of the most current reports was lost.
So he slept in. For several days in a row. He felt more rested now than he had in ages. Maybe ever. Certainly since he'd joined ISB, maybe since he'd joined COMPNOR.
His transport, an intelligence courier disguised as a medical ship from an easily sliced charity organization chartered out of the Corporate Sector, was small and well-furnished, and his crew was competent even if not excellent. For the first leg of the trip there was nothing for any of them to do: the location of Silencer Station was so secret that even ISB loyalty officers were required to have the hyperspace jump programmed and operated by navigational droids that would self-destruct if tampered with. But once they had arrived at Entralla, Sarreti's crew had taken over and taken up the task of navigating through New Republic-held territory to return him to Corellia with aplomb. He was scheduled to rendezvous with Admiral Daala and return to being the monkey-lizard on her shoulder. She was not going to be happy about the Emperor-Regent's further delay in the delivery of the TIE droids she wanted, but he suspected she was not going to be surprised either. Sending him in person to confer with the Emperor-Regent had been a last-ditch effort, after all.
He took his time, enjoying a last lazy morning. The caf was rich and strong, the scones had an excellent crumb, which met with his hearty approval. He casually perused a few intelligence reports, but realized almost immediately that he had already read them, so tossed them aside and snuck out an auto-wipe flimsi of a New Republic satirist and luxuriated in doing nothing beyond crunching and chuckling for just a little bit longer.
That luxury eventually passed. His wristcomm indicated that they were nearing the scheduled arrival at Corellia and rather than wait for the crew to call him to the bridge, Loyalty Officer Sarreti triggered the flimsi's wipe function, incinerated it, and arrived early. Waving their concerns away, he took up his usual seat and started to once again look for something interesting to read. He didn't find anything before the ship's captain told him they were about to come out of hyperspace.
This was the part he didn't like. Being in hyperspace was a wonderful luxury. Going in and coming out of hyperspace, on the other hand, were moments of nauseating horribleness and he would never understand how people like Daala could do it without flinching. The retching, nauseating moment of the transition arrived, stilling the swirl of hyperspace and leaving Sarreti wishing he'd indulged in one fewer scone. Perhaps two.
By the time he had recovered his dignity, they were headed in-system. "Is Admiral Daala here yet?" he asked.
The itch had already started. The itch to go and activate the HoloNet terminal and download the latest intelligence reports. And this time it wasn't just his addiction to information and gossip driving it, either: Admiral Valentin's attack on Poln Major should be over by now, and Sarreti was dying to know how the battle had gone.
"Not yet, sir." The ship's commanding officer, an ISB lieutenant, frowned as he examined the plot of the Corellia system. "Something strange though sir… it appears the Corellian System has been mobilized."
That made Sarreti sit up. "Are we under attack?"
The long pause before the officer answered caused Sarreti to lunge forward, staring at what the officer was seeing. On the combat plot were five of the six Imperial-class Star Destroyers that had been assigned to the defense of Corellia and the entire Corellian Home Guard defense fleet—which, by treaty, could never out-mass the Empire's standing guard forces… but sure looked imposing right now. There were also hundreds of freighters and snubfighters which were labeled "civilian vessels."
"Sir." The officer finally spoke, pointing at a hard-to-see-blur on the screen. It became more obvious the longer Sarreti looked at it: the Star Destroyers and civilians were clustered around it, as if it had once been a target. "Sir I think that used to be the missing Star Destroyer."
"Pilot, all stop!" Sarreti gasped as he worked through the implications. "Bring us back out of Corellia's gravity well and start plotting a jump!"
"To where, sir?"
"Anywhere!" Sarreti threw himself back into his chair. Plugging into the HoloNet, he found the local hub had been disabled—but of course it would be, if Corellia really had gone into revolt. So he tapped into the local net instead…
The monitor by his station blinked to life. A jubilant, smiling human face was surrounded by a bustle of activity. Behind her, Sarreti recognized the exterior of the government complex in Coronet City. The journalist was shouting over the noise of all the people around her to be heard, all of them cheering. Many wore green armbands and waved blaster rifles. "Diktat Gallamby has been arrested by a reinstated CorSec! I just saw him being led away by a full CorSec intervention squad! We're free!"
"Sir," the officer said, drawing his attention back out of the local news. "We're prepared for a hyperspace jump, sir, that will take us deeper into the Core towards Admiral Daala's last reported location." He grimaced. "We've also received this, sir." He handed Sarreti a datapad, which Sarreti promptly plugged into his terminal.
It was a recording. On the screen was a Star Destroyer bridge, but the ship's captain had removed his uniform and was wearing a civilian outfit, albeit one that had slight military tailoring and an orderly green armband on his left arm. "This is Captain Rann of the Corellian System Defense Forces. This system is no longer under Imperial control. All forces that remain loyal to the Empire are to leave the system at once or be destroyed."
"His Loyalty Officer will have him shot!" gasped the man next to Sarreti.
Sarreti rolled his eyes. "His Loyalty Officer has been shot already," he countered, trying to restore his tone to its normal, level calm and only partially successful. "Or spaced. Prepare to go to hyperspace, we have to tell Admiral Daala—"
"Status change!"
"It seems it's too late to tell her," the officer said, watching as the plot was updated. "Admiral Daala has just arrived."
Admiral Daala and Captain Markarian stood in the center of the bridge walk, reviewing their datapads. Stormhawk cruised towards Corellia at high speed; the sudden loss of communication with Corellia could have indicated a New Republic attack, and Daala had ordered her ship to return there with all possible speed.
"How long has Corellia been out of communication?" Markarian asked his aide.
"We lost the HoloNet link right before we made the jump, sir, so it's been about three hours."
"Battles have been won and lost in three hours," Daala pointed out. The Star Destroyer formation was huddled deep in Corellia's gravity well, protected from quick attack. That much was normal; the hordes of freighters, frigates, and snubfighters were not. Corellia had plenty of freighter traffic coming in and out at any given time, but they never got within gunnery range of a Star Destroyer if they had any other choice. That and the fact that one of their Star Destroyers was missing… "get me Captain Rann," she ordered.
"Do you think something is wrong, sir?" Markarian asked her.
"I know it is," she replied. "The only question is what. The fact that the New Republic isn't here, though, suggests that the system didn't come under attack from outside forces."
"I have Captain Rann!"
"Captain Rann, this is Admiral Daala," she responded instantly. "Status report. Now!"
"Admiral Daala." The viewer resolved into Rann's image. Captain Rann was a competent enough officer—better than most, in Daala's estimation, even if not the best in the Starfleet—and Daala had left him in command of the squadron defending Corellia. Normally a six Star Destroyer squadron would have rated an Admiral, but there were precious few Admirals left and Daala was not one to promote just to fill vacancies. At the moment, though, Rann wasn't even wearing his Captain's uniform, and Daala's heart hardened as she realized at once what had happened. "I'm afraid I must inform you that Corellia is no longer Imperial territory, Admiral. This system is now independent, by declaration of the Corellian Ruling Council."
"There is no Corellian Ruling Council," she said stiffly, almost hissing the words at him. "You are committing treason, Captain."
"I had a choice between treason against my homeworld and treason against the Empire," Rann said, folding his hands together in front of him. He bowed his head to her slightly, a respectful gesture. "I chose treason against the Empire. If you want to join us, Admiral, the Corellian System Defense Forces could use another Star Destroyer. I respect you as an officer, and I suspect you'd even be put in command once your loyalty could be assured." He smiled at her. "If you're concerned that you're not a Corellian, you shouldn't be. Corellia has always been very welcoming to all those who choose to make it home, after all."
Betrayal. "The Empire will not let this stand, Rann."
"The Empire doesn't have much choice. Have you heard about Poln Major, Admiral?"
Daala frowned. Poln Major? Stormhawk had been deep in the Core, harassing the New Republic's supply lines, for weeks. Inside New Republic territory, and unable to use the New Republic's relays for fear of giving away their location, their HoloNet communication had been spotty. The communications they did have were relayed through Corellia, which meant Corellia got all the news before Daala did. But Daala could take the information at hand and add it up to the obvious conclusion. Rann's confidence, the casual assumption that the Empire would not be a threat to him…
"Emperor-Regent Halmere attacked Poln Major personally. He took twelve Star Destroyers—a hefty chunk of everything the Empire has left." Rann scoffed contemptuously. "Pellaeon slapped him around like an errant schoolboy. I am afraid, Admiral Daala, that the Empire has nothing left that could threaten Corellia. Whatever you want to intimidate me with won't work. The war is over, the Empire is dead. I now serve Corellia and Corellia's interests… and you are not welcome here. If you attempt to come within range of any of Corellia's worlds you will be fired upon."
The screen went black.
Daala stood, glowering at the glossy black that had replaced Rann's face, then took a breath. She still had four Star Destroyers, including Stormhawk—assuming all of them are still loyal, she thought sourly—but she did not have them here. Each of them had been given a cloaking device and scattered through the heart of New Republic territory, lying in wait to ambush targets of opportunity. She could rally them, bring together what was left of the Imperial forces in the Corellian Sector, maybe even try to rally some of the Core Warlords… but without Corellia, she had no base. No staging area. No repairs. No resupply. No reinforcements. The warlords in the Deep Core were unreliable and more likely to seize her ships than help her.
Within a month, her Star Destroyers would be suffering maintenance issues. Within three she'd have serious system faults. In six they wouldn't be combat worthy. Even if she had all four here, Corellia had more than enough defenses to repel any assault she attempted to mount… and she still had to worry about the New Republic attacking her rear.
Corellia had been taken from the Empire and there was nothing she could do about it.
"Admiral?" Markarian asked nervously. "What do we do?"
She controlled her anger and did not unleash it. "Bring Loyalty Officer Sarreti's shuttle aboard. While we do, query the HoloNet node for all information about this battle at Poln Major. After that, take us into the Deep Core so we can make a secure call to headquarters. I need to talk—" she sneered, unable to hide her anger or her frustration and at that moment not caring "—to the Emperor-Regent."
Loyalty Officer Sarreti found Admiral Daala standing in the middle of her office. She wasn't pacing, or ranting, or screaming. She was just staring at the datapad in her hand. She didn't look up when he entered, though she had to know he was there.
When he came within ten feet of her, she started to speak. "He had twelve Star Destroyers," she said. "Six hundred—six hundred—TIE Droids. Three hundred and eighty thousand officers and crew." Slowly, excruciatingly slowly, she lifted her head to look at him. Her green eyes were molten with rage. "Do you know how much of Admiral Valentin's force returned?"
He swallowed hard. "I don't."
"Four. Four Star Destroyers. One of which is so badly damaged it may never see combat again. Another is going to require months—months—of refit. And zero TIE droids!" She clenched her fist, worked it a few times, her nose wrinkling as she glowered contemptuously. "None!"
The datapad was in her hand one second, and in the next, the rectangular metal slammed into the wall with impressive force, splintering against the bulkhead, bending and scattering bits of metal and plastoid as it rebounded back.
"I told Halmere to give me the TIE droids. I told Halmere not to put Valentin in command of a garbage scow, much less a battle fleet! I told Halmere to wait and let our capabilities grow!" For a brief moment, Sarreti was genuinely fearful that Daala might strangle him in Halmere's place, but she did not seize him by the throat after all. "I should have had you hold his hand and tell him not to be a kriffing idiot, damn him!"
I really ought to report this outburst, he thought tiredly.
If he did, though, ISB would add another black mark to Daala's record, and that would be one too many. The New Order's enforcers would come and take her away, put her in some re-education camp somewhere where she would be quietly forgotten. She didn't deserve that and, more to the point, her squadron needed her now more than ever. Half of her fleet had been usurped by Rann and the Corellians. She was now deep behind New Republic lines and just reuniting with her remaining ships was going to be difficult or worse. The last thing the Starfleet needed was for her squadron to be assigned to another Valentin.
So, instead of adding her name to the next ISB purge list, he merely told her what he had come to tell her. "I have received orders from the Emperor-Regent."
She looked at him, the way his ISB instructors used to look at particularly loathsome aliens. He knew that she had wanted to talk to Halmere herself, but the orders had arrived without the opportunity for a two-way real time connection. A simple communique only. With the loss of communications routed through Corellia, nothing more was possible. "What are our orders?" she asked slowly.
He straightened. This news needed to be delivered with proper import, even if it could not be delivered with the proper ceremony. "You have been promoted to Grand Admiral," he said. "Emperor-Regent Halmere has placed you in command of all remaining Imperial forces. He's ordered you to attend to him with all necessary haste so that you can assume your command and pursue the glorious final victory of the Empire."
Daala just stared at him. He wasn't sure what he had expected her to do. Celebrate, perhaps?
"With all necessary haste?" she asked.
He blinked. "That is what the order said," he replied, glancing at it to be sure.
She nodded. "We will assemble our remaining fleet, as well as any other ships we can beg, borrow, or steal from the remaining Imperial systems in the Core. They will all fall, now, there's no stopping that, so we might as well take whatever resources we can and bring them with us. Then we'll return home via the most direct possible route." She brought up a map of the Core and traced the hyper-lanes that linked to Imperial territory in the galactic north. "Through Coruscant."