A/N: Another year. 2020 is nearly gone, thank goodness. Belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all. Thanks to AJW for betaing.
Chapter 9
Reading after-action reports was one of those aspects of life in the Republic military that served to frustrate and bore you to tears at the same time. Especially when it came from my own unique perspective, but it had to be done, to both learn from mistakes and keep up to date with enemy movements and tactics. For all that it was written in Galactic Basic, the vernacular generally used was both technical and sentence structure decidedly odd and would utterly baffle a laymen reading it. The exception was reading those written by the Jedi involved in the war, but even those had their own style and were also specially encrypted.
I had saved reading Master Fisto's report on his mission to track down the stolen Republic ship that Nute Gunray had escaped on for last and it had pretty much gone as I predicted. Fisto and a supporting company of clones had tracked down the ship to a remote planet a few hundred lightyears away from Druckenwell. It was recovered and they had barely begun investigating for further clues when a Seperatist ambush was sprung on them. Master Fisto, in what was a pleasant surprise to me, sprang his own counter-ambush and dropped his entire Task Group on the Separatists. Notably absent from this report was any mention of Knight Nadar - a young Mon Cala Jedi Knight who in the original history accompanied Fisto, and would have been killed by Grievous.
The battle ended with the enemy losing six Munificent frigates and two cruisers in trade for only one destroyed Republic Venator and another mission-killed.
A beeping alert from my datapad interrupted my reading and I looked up to regard the command bridge of the Resolute. There was an atmosphere of palpable tension among the clone officers and I spun in my newly installed command chair on the upper deck to survey them. It wasn't easy on a crew to be at combat alert status for a long time, but it was unfortunately necessary in this case. Obi-Wan's plan left us little choice in the matter.
The ship was in hyperspace, essentially going for a proverbial drive around the block constantly and would stay that way until called in. The astronavigation requirements of the mission also had practically every astromech on board plugged into the navicomputer operating in parallel to augment the number crunching that had to be done..
I thumbed another button on my chair, letting me speak directly into the ear of every officer on the bridge, "This is Commander Tano, the signal from General Kenobi has been received. Navigation, punch in those coordinates into the navicomputer. Get me an emergence five kilometers from that point."
"Roger Commander, calculating… twenty seconds to complete."
"Guns, I want that ship going nowhere. Target engines only with thirty percent concentration of fire. Focus the rest on just bringing down the shields overall."
"Yes Commander."
Another button on the chair brought up a holo of the target system, Vanqor. It was located deep in the north-eastern edge of the galaxy and deep into what was generally CIS space. That we could penetrate this deep was thanks to Republic astrogators getting a lucky break in their newfound access to Hutt hyperspace lanes and new updated astronomic data from the far eastern quadrants of the galaxy, in addition to cross-referencing truly ancient maps that the Jedi Archives still held. It let the Resolute essentially use a rediscovered hyperspace route to outflank the CIS defense lines near Boz Pity. The only reason we weren't pouring fleets through this new hyperspace route was that the Republic didn't have the ships and numbers to do so at the moment. Yet this mission was important enough that it was deemed worth it to use and leak its existence to the Seppies.
"I must say, this feels truly odd," declared Admiral Yularen.
"We're behind enemy lines, Admiral."
Yularen nodded at my point. Using hyperspace itself as a hiding place but remaining near a system to emerge at a specific tactical point was a trick I was adopting from another universe to a degree. To make it work required the hyperdrive to be throttled down to a minimum speed that was just barely above the threshold needed for remaining in hyperspace itself, which allowed the ship to 'orbit' around the system so to speak.
"Emergence point calculated, Commander. We're ready in all respects," declared the Nav officer.
"Understood, Nav. Stand by."
I immersed myself in the currents of the Force, my eyes staring into the slowly swirling tunnel of hyperspace but seeing beyond the material plane.
"Now!"
The hyperspace tunnel abruptly shuddered and resolved into the blackness of normal space. The target Munificent class CIS frigate seemed to race toward us at a ludicrous velocity. Yularen's grip on the back of the command chair visibly tightened but the man kept himself admirably stoic and unflinching. Then at last, the emergence velocity spent itself and the Resolute stopped short of ramming the frigate by eighteen kilometers.
A lightshow of blue erupted into space, streaking towards the enemy ship and slamming into its shields.
My mind's eye was gazing into the Force, following along the bond towards Anakin. My farsight showed me him and Obi-Wan confronting the very reason for this month's long mission. Count Dooku was seated in a meditative pose in his chambers, his dark beige suit combined with his regal, charismatic bearing, showed he was not at all phased by facing two Jedi with lit lightsabers.
"Your ship is outmatched, Count," declared Anakin. "It's engines are already damaged."
"Jedi fools," sneered Dooku. A hidden mechanism seemed to click and suddenly Dooku vanished into the floor, down an escape tunnel, that doubled as a slide. I marveled at the idea that Dooku ordered Federation engineers to build such a thing into a starship just so he could utilize an escape like that.
Obi-Wan scoffed, "I should've seen that coming." Anakin rushed towards the tunnel. "What are you doing?"
"Following him."
"Not that way, we need to cut him off."
"You cut him off, I'll follow him and meet you at the hangar."
With that Anakin vanished down the tunnel, letting the artificial gravity carry him down.
"Why do I even try?" Obi-Wan sighed and sprinted off.
I broke contact and turned to Yularen. "The initial capture attempt failed. Dooku is on the run."
"Blast," he cursed. "Sensors, status of the enemy?"
"Their shields are down to eighty percent and hyperdrive offline, our surprise salvo did the job, Admiral."
"Nav, vector us to port, keep our bow pointed to the enemy, normalize our fire spread, I want those shields down as soon as possible, keep us out of their forward arc," I ordered.
"Yes, Commander."
The Munificent started to get its own act together and its return fire started to slam into our shields. The droid commander oddly wasn't bringing the two nasty spinal heavy turbolasers to bear. Just bringing its broadside to face us and unloading everything it could in that arc.
"Fighter launch from the enemy," reported the Sensor officer. "Three heavy fighters escorting a Punworcca-class interstellar sloop."
"Dooku managed to get off it seems," Yularen sighed.
"Second launch, an armed CIS shuttle. It seems to be pursuing the sloop."
"Obi-Wan and Anakin are on board and in pursuit."
Yularen nodded, "Then our gloves come off. Intensify our forward batteries. I want a time on target barrage on the engines and aft section. I want that frigate out of my battlespace."
Acknowledgements rang across the bridge.
The com chime rang at this point and Obi-Wan's voice emerged on the command frequency, "Ahsoka, do follow with as many reinforcements as you can bring."
"We'll get there as soon as we can, General."
"Thank you, Kenobi out."
"Sensors, keep track of where those ships are going."
"Yes, Commander."
The slugfest kept going as both ships traded fire. The enemy shield strength ticking down far too slowly for my own liking. I brought up a holo on the initial scans from the frigate as we exited hyperspace. "Figures," I muttered in annoyance.
"Yes, in hindsight it should've been obvious that Count Dooku would not travel on a bog standard Munificent," Yularen declared after studying the same holo for a moment.
"It's also pulling double duty as a mobile prison transport, so packing shield generators that would ordinarily be on a ship twice its size makes sense. The cost of that is clear though. They're not even bothering powering up their spinal heavy turbolasers."
I hurriedly flicked the com switch, "Guns, when the shields are down, fire to disable only."
"Aye aye, Commander."
I switched channels, "Rex, I want a boarding assault to secure and sort the prisoners on board. If there are any Republic citizens and political prisoners I wanted them rescued, we'll leave the rest for the Seppies to keep. Designate a second squad that will accompany me to follow the General's pursuit."
"At once, Commander."
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With the CIS frigate disabled and boarding operations underway, I took to space with three LAAT gunships, following the course the fleeing Count Dooku had taken. There was really only one place he could go and that was the planet Vanqor itself. It was a blue-gray orb that hung in the vastness of the cosmic ocean and in the grim red light of the gunship interior I keyed a display to give me the details that the Republic database had on it.
It was not a planet you'd want to live on, despite being temperate there was little arable land and water. What rainfall and water there was would need extreme amounts of filtering to get rid of all the toxic heavy elements that snuck in there from all the silica present in the atmosphere. You could get away with a few hours of breathing the air of this planet, but more than a day and problems would set in. Then there was the native species of this planet, which was the cherry on top of making it utterly unattractive for colonization, unless you were a grade-A bad ass or very desperate - gundarks; standing at over two meters tall, four arms, two legs, all with razor sharp claws, very tough skin and a permanently hostile disposition to anything that was not a gundark.
It was why I had most of the clones armed with DC-15Xs on this mission. Gundarks were hardy enough to soak quite a few standard blaster shots, so when there was a possibility for big game hunting, always bring the local equivalent of an elephant rifle.
"Commander Tano, I've got the position of the shuttle General Kenobi used on the scanner," reported the clone pilot.
"Good, head in that direction, maximum speed. I'll update you on where I want to land, time is not on our side."
We were barely in the atmosphere of Vanqor when the pilot reported that he'd picked up another ship, "It's leaving the general area of our destination. Warbook identifies it as a Corona-class armed frigate, no IFF transponder, probably a pirate or blackops."
"Send one of the gunships to get scans but to keep their distance. They can't fight that."
I brought up the sensor feeds on the display I was using and watched as a LAAT gunship peeled off and tried to vector in. Given the relative positions, the gunship couldn't close the distance in time for a forward intercept. The unknown ship also realized it was being hunted and sped up considerably, going through evasives. It turned into a chase that the gunship lost as the unknown ship crossed Vanqor's hyper limit first.
"Worth a shot," I grumbled, but we now also had the ship's profile and hyperspace trajectory.
Barely ten minutes later the gunships were flaring to slow down just above Count Dooku's disabled ship. I keyed open the side doors and hurriedly evaluated the landscape. The Force was doing the human equivalent of sitting on the edge of its seat and gnawing its fingernails off in tension.
"Follow," I ordered and jumped.
The twenty meter drop was hardly high enough to naturally glide anywhere but straight down, but with the assistance of Force self-telekinesis I was able to land barely fifty meters from the cave I sensed Anakin and Obi-wan in. Naturally, they were in trouble. They were suffocating from toxic gas that had leaked into the cave from below in the collateral damage from fighting against the gundarks. Jedi had techniques to fight and survive without breathing in unexpectedly toxic environments - as gas attacks were one of the common mundane methods that you could use against a Force user - but that would just buy you time.
The entrance to the cave was blocked by rubble and stone from a cave-in - an appreciably heavy amount.
"Do or do not, there is no try," I chuckled and let the Force flow.
Every pebble, boulder, grain of sand, how it all fit together; the picture built itself up in my mind.
"Commander?"
"Rex, a firing line on the entrance and on our flanks. We might have gundarks paying us a visit soon."
The clones went into kneeling positions and charged their rifles which began humming ominously.
I gave a mild lifting gesture towards the cave entrance.
It was like a relatively slow explosion of rock that I directed towards the side.
After I was happy that no one was getting hurt I let the mass fall and hurried with the clones into the cave.
A thoroughly dirty Anakin and Obi-wan were coughing and greedily gulping the fresh air that was now once again streaming into the cave.
"That was a little close for comfort, Masters," I stated with relief.
"Close?" Obi-wan queried and shook his head, "We were simply searching for Count Dooku."
"Yeah," Anakin agreed after a few more coughs, "we had the situation well under control my little Padawan."
I gave them a mild smile in return, "Control? So which part did you have under control? You mean the blocked entrance, the poison gas and the gundark behind you."
"Gundark?"
"Oh, you mean the one that's too far away to worry about," Obi-wan worriedly said and turned around as heavy footfalls echoed throughout the cave entrance. Forget two meters tall average, this was a gundark giant, easily reaching three and a half meters tall without even having to stretch and the bulk to match it. I gave a two fingered shooting gesture and the clones unleashed their heavy sniper rifles into the gundark. The sound of the heavy plasma discharges was painfully magnified, but the Force allowed me to blunt the echo around my head so I didn't end up getting the Togruta version of a burst eardrum. The gundark was taken care of with a single volley from the clones and so thankfully I didn't have to keep that up for long.
"Come on, there's still Dooku to deal with," Anakin declared, leading us out of the cave and back to the gunships.
"After all that trouble we went through and he still got away," I grumbled. "Letting you get convincingly captured, a whole new hyperspace route, all the counterintelligence work and we still missed him."
"When you put it like that, it does rather sound bad."
"You two are lucky though that I have a hyperspace trajectory and sensor profile for the ship the Count escaped in."
"That is excellent news," Obi-wan stated and I could tell from the slight relaxing of his shoulders that he was very relieved.
"Snips, have I ever told you that you're my favorite Padawan?" Anakin grinned teasingly at me.
"I'm your first and only Padawan, Master, but yes, I know what you're trying to say, you're welcome."
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"Snips, what's with the chair?"
I turned said chair around from looking into the swirling tunnel of hyperspace, "After the first week of shadowing you after your capture and using the Force to fortify my legs to keep standing on shift - I realized that I had a very bored clone engineering division on hand. So I gave them this little project to brainstorm and run with. It's got its own holo projector, a communication system that lets me speak directly into the ear of each department head, crash webbing and..." a press of a button on the left control pad and a panel opened on the right armest, "a beverage cup holder."
Anakin stared at the command chair with an appraising eye and I could practically see his mechanical tinker instincts whirling in his brain, then gave me a questioning look. I sighed and stood up in answer and presented the chair for him to sit in and try. I had aesthetically modeled it after the infamous chair Emperor Palpatine had on the second Death Star but with ergonomic improvements from what I recalled of my gaming chair had had in another life.
"Oh, that's… that's comfortable," Anakin seemed to want to melt into the command chair.
"I know, right? Those meditation cushions in the Jedi temple wish they could get this level of comfort."
He played around with the controls a bit, activating the holo, which was currently defaulted to a navigational view of the Resolute relative to the rest of the galaxy. We were a few hours away from the Murkhana system, which was our latest candidate to track down where the ship with Count Dooku had gone. The ship in question was like something straight out of pulp science fiction, it had been a struggle to stop myself gushing stupidly in excitement while going over the scans the gunship had taken.
The saucer shaped Corona class armed frigate made by Haor Chall Engineering. It was a favorite outer rim patrol boat of local planetary space forces; it had concussion missiles, lasers that packed a decent punch, ion cannons, point-defense lasers, tractor beams and even acted as a mothership for six Flarestar-class attack shuttles (even smaller flying saucers). Everything that you needed in a customs boat. Unfortunately, those same features made it attractive to pirates.
It had also jogged my memory enough about the person we were looking for but unfortunately I just couldn't recall the name of the planet Hondo Ohnaka based himself and his pirate company on. Even Force assisted near-eidetic recall wasn't helping… it was probably such a fleeting detail that my brain had never pulled it into long-term memory.
"So figured out any solution to your lightsaber problem, Master?"
Anakin had, as far as he could tell, lost his lightsaber in a cave-in during the unpleasantness on Vanqor. We had tried to search for it in the cave area before we left but found nothing.
"I could build a new one but…" he trailed off.
He didn't need to elaborate further. It would mean he'd need to create a synthetic kyber crystal, which due to the process and the impurities that process imbued, meant it always came out red, which was exactly what Sith did with their lightsabers. Speaking for myself I felt that if I ever needed desperately to build a lightsaber to defend myself with, I'd synth a hundred kyber crystals if necessary and fight with a red blade, but I didn't have that problem. It did bring to mind an ability…
"General Skywalker, Communications here."
The voice out of the chair armrest startled us both.
"Yes, Lieutenant?"
"Incoming transmission from the Jedi Council."
"Thank you."
The holo of the galaxy map changed to show Masters Yoda and Mace Windu.
"Greetings, Knight Skywalker, Padawan Tano, news we have on your hunt."
Anakin bowed his head to the holo, "Master Yoda, what's going on?"
"Contacted the Chancellor has been, by a pirate leader in your sector of space."
"His name is Hondo Ohnaka," Windu elaborated, "heads a Weequay pirate outfit basing itself on the planet Florrum. They've got Dooku in custody and intend to ransom him to us."
"And just how much are they asking for the good Count?"
"A million credits delivered in spice."
I internally winced at that amount of money. Luke Skywalker would balk at spending twenty thousand Imperial credits during the height of the Empire for a simple trip across the galaxy and could almost have bought a ship for that price. In this day and age, the relative value of the Republic credit had not yet suffered any such devaluation from the Clone War spending, but it was only a matter of time.
"Logistics of the exchange, not a problem yet," Yoda shook his head. "Chancellor remains unconvinced that the pirate has Dooku. Holo, fake it could be."
"We need you and Kenobi to head to Florrum and confirm Dooku's capture to the Chancellor's satisfaction. The only stipulation is that you arrive unarmed."
"Unarmed?" Anakin shook his head.
"Masters, these are Outer Rim pirates, walking in there with no weapons is a ridiculous notion. Not to mention giving this Hondo two Jedi Generals on a platter with which he can also just turn around and bargain with the CIS for," I pointed out.
"It's a chance we have to take, Padawan Tano," Windu shook his head, "We can't let Dooku slip through our fingers again. Report back as soon as you arrive."
The holo winked out.
"This should be fun," Obi-wan declared wryly as he walked along the upper bridge to the command chair.
"I sometimes question if the Council can really see straight whenever it directly concerns Dooku," I shook my head in disbelief. "He was Master Yoda's padawan once upon a time, left the Jedi Order, now is an assumed Sith Lord leading a war against the Republic and now they're willing to throw a Jedi Master and Knight to a bantha just for a chance to capture him."
"It's a chance many would take in a heartbeat if it meant ending the war, Ahsoka," Obi-wan pointed out.
"But would it really end the war, Master? We said the same thing with Grievous and now the CIS pulls up this "Illusive General" as a replacement."
"I see your point," Obi-wan nodded. "However, we will not be going in unarmed young Padawan, the Force is with us." He leaned on the command chair and grinned at Anakin.
"I bet Dooku thought that too, Masters. So please do be extra careful."
"Of course we will, Snips," Anakin stood from the chair with visible reluctance, allowing Obi-wan to sit in it as well.
"Oh my, Ahsoka, do send the blueprints for this to my ship."
"Yes, Master."
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The Resolute was powering forward at max cruise through hyperspace to Florrum but wouldn't actually be entering the system. Anakin and Obi-wan would be taking the Twilight to the planet itself for the mission. It had always bugged me so long ago, why the Jedi hadn't simply taken the Resolute to attack the pirates and regained custody of Dooku that way. Now it was rather obvious, successful pirates who generally remained that way weren't stupid.
They had to know that either the Republic or CIS could bring ships and armies to stomp them out of existence in a straight fight. The leverage of Count Dooku's life and the fact that they could hide him anywhere on an entire planet, which would take ages to scan and search, meant the pirates held the firm upper hand here. It was also clear that this was not the first time they'd done VIP ransoms.
Anakin let out an explosive breath in frustration and I sensed his struggle to remain calm, "Sithspit! Almost..." We were in as quiet a spot as could be found on the Resolute, the cargo bay of the Twilight.
"This is a very tricky ability, Master," I sat cross-legged across from him in meditation pose, also immersed in the Force to see what potential problems there could be. "The key is both in connection and mindset. I think the latter part is the problem you have, Master. I think that at the end of the day, your subconscious can't help but see your lightsaber as just another machine or tool that you use. It's way, way more than that. It's a nexus for the Force. It's almost alive from a certain point of view. The kyber crystal at its heart, through which the Force flows, through which you channel the Force is out there. It's not destroyed or you wouldn't have felt the beginnings of a connection, accept that. Follow that bond and you will see."
Anakin took a deep breath and nodded, once more falling into meditation. This was an ability that I was sure was going to see me pulled back to Coruscant for an urgent 'consultation' with Master Yoda or even the entire Council of First Knowledge. I'd had to first demonstrate it to a disbelieving Anakin and Obi-wan by handing over one of my lightsabers and having them hide it anywhere on the Resolute they could think of and without fail I retrieved it every time without missing a beat. Distance was also meaningless. You could bury my lightsabers anywhere in the galaxy and as long as there was a hyperspace route to that place, I'd find them as well.
I felt the Force flare in front of me and I opened my mind's eye to Anakin's efforts to find his lightsaber.
This was going to take a while.
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The Resolute emerged from hyperspace in interstellar space just beyond the Oort cloud of the Florrum star system, about a third of a lightyear from the primary. We would be well beyond the range of any scanner the pirates could mount on their ships and the system was devoid of any active scans in the hyperspace domain that most populated and defended systems had to detect hyperspace signatures. The Twilight launched from the central hangar bay and shot itself into hyperspace to cover the remaining distance.
It would've been nice to accompany Anakin and Obi-wan, just to see the mighty Count Dooku in energy containment but I had to remain with the Resolute for the moment and be ready to charge in with the cavalry should things go badly. The time spent waiting and shadowing Anakin in his capture this past month had allowed me to make headway on a lot of projects that had been put on the backburner due to my assignment as Anakin's padawan, the war and my command studies. These were mostly Force techniques that I was determined to bring back from the past and from the future, so to speak.
I was almost due to come off from my bridge shift when I felt a tug along my padawan bond with Anakin, he wanted me to see something. My mind's eye plunged along the link...
The cockpit of the Twilight, bathed in the setting sun of the Florrum primary, the main holo was on showing Palpatine, Mace Windu, Jar-Jar Binks and a dark-skinned three eyed, Gran senator whose name escaped me.
"No question they have Dooku," said Obi-wan. "Send the ransom."
"He's being securely held?" Palpatine questioned with a raised eyebrow.
Anakin chuckled, "Yeah and very cranky about it."
"Good, Senator Kharrus and Representative Binks will be dispatched immediately," Palpatine said with a look of deep satisfaction on his face before the holo winked out.
"It's going to take about five days for that payment to reach us, Snips."
"Five days is a long time to be amongst those pirates, Master," I channeled my thoughts across. "Be careful of anything they may give you to eat or drink."
"Avoiding their hospitality will be seen as an insult and they can break the deal off completely," Obi-wan pointed out.
"How feasible would it be to launch a mission to capture the Count?"
"Very problematic," Anakin shook his head. "He's already been moved after we were allowed to briefly see him and Dooku is doing his best to hide his presence in the Force as well, since it's only a matter of time before CIS Intelligence learns through their Coruscant network that we're negotiating for his release here."
"We'll stay as much time as is feasible on the Twilight and keep our interaction with the pirates to the minimum," Obi-wan explained.
"Oh and Snips, I managed to find my lightsaber by the way," Anakin shook his head. "The pirates here have it, they confiscated it from Dooku. It seems he was behind the first cave-in that nearly killed us back on Vanqor."
"Can you farsense your lightsaber yet?"
"Yes, it's surprising how easy it is after you successfully break through that first time."
"Excellent, well, I'll keep the Resolute on standby, good night Masters."
I pulled away and broke contact.
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It was barely a day later while I was practicing blaster deflection against remote droids in Resolute's firing range when Anakin pushed a brief memory through our bond and abruptly closed off the connection.
"Oh sithspit, computer, halt program."
The little spherical droids all stopped and flew themselves into their receptacles along the walls to recharge. A flex of will and a towel and wrist communicator was summoned into my hands. "Admiral Yularen, we have a problem."
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Senator Kharrus of Kinyen was a Gran who was known for his long patience and even-temperedness even in the most dire of circumstances. He had negotiated some of the most risky treaties and diplomatic exchanges of the last century, in some of those cases at literal blaster point, but the last four days with Representative Binks in the confines of the Nu-class attack shuttle had been a hell that stretched his patience to levels even he was surprised at. Just how the Gungan had not killed himself yet through some accident or catastrophic event with his bumbling and horrible hand-eye coordination must either be actual proof of luck or near constant intervention by the Force.
"Approaching Lianna waypoint, prepare for hyperspace reversion."
As was standard procedure for emerging from hyperspace, he got into one of the seats lining the shuttle walls clearly meant for clone troopers encased in their armor. It was horrible and not at all agreeable on his old back. Binks was also getting into his seat but struggled to lift the crash bar.
The constant whine of the hyperdrive motivator shifted in pitch distinctively and a slight feeling of deceleration hit them before it was properly cancelled out.
"What the… woah."
"IFF that ship."
"It's squawking friendly, codes are up to date. Relax."
"Captain, what's happening?" Kharrus asked with alarm.
"Republic cruiser was waiting for us at the waypoint, Senator. It's the Resolute. Incoming communication for you."
He pushed up the crash bar of his seat and walked into the pickup range of the small briefing table holo at the front of the cabin, feeling intrigued. He knew the Resolute was the flagship of Jedi General Skywalker who had started the entire mission to capture Count Dooku. The fact that the ship was here now just short of the final jump to Florrum waiting to intercept them was not a good omen.
The holo resolved to show a middle aged human in naval uniform with Admiral pips on his chest and a rather strangely fully armored young Togruta Jedi.
"Greetings Senator Kharrus," the Jedi bowed her head, "I am Commander Ahsoka Tano, Jedi Padawan to General Skywalker. This is Admiral Yularen, Naval commander of our squadron."
"Greetings young one," Kharrus narrowed his three eyes, feeling both dread and anger. The young Jedi was just as old as one of his great-granddaughters and this young she was serving on a military vessel, fighting for her life daily even. He cursed the war anew and the failure of democracy it represented. Despite his feelings though he couldn't help but give a grandfatherly smile to the young Togruta, "To what do we owe this surprise visit?"
"The situation on Florrum has changed, Senator. Both Generals Skywalker and Kenobi have been captured and thrown in a cell along with Count Dooku."
Kharrus leaned on his cane and scratched his chin thoughtfully, "So either the pirates are intending to ransom them back to us as well or even to the Separatists once our own trade is concluded."
"That could be their thinking," Tano agreed. "However, we've monitored no further communication from the pirates on upping the price of the ransom itself."
"It could just be that they took the Generals as a guarantee against further Republic interference or reprisal after the transaction is concluded. I've studied what little records there are of these Weequay pirates and they're planet hoppers. Florrum is just their current base of operations. After this significant haul of profit they no doubt intend to uproot and move on."
"It's likely Senator, but we can't count on that being the case. They could just as well keep the Generals to ransom them to us for an even larger amount down the road and we can't afford to have these two Generals out of the fight for so long. To keep that from happening, I'm coming along on your mission."
Kharrus instinctively balked at the idea. "Commander Tano, a Jedi presence with me is a clear escalation that would upset the pirates into even further actions that we would regret."
Tano shook her head, "They've already broken the original deal, Senator. You can't keep playing fair when what little trust there was is squandered. The pirates can just as well take you hostage next. You have a crack squad of clones with you but they'd be outnumbered and outgunned."
Kharrus sighed, his mind playing all the angles, weighing the decision, then reluctantly had to nod, "Very well, Commander. You may come."
"Thank you, Senator." The holo winked out.
"Oh no, Ani isa in trouble again," Binks shook his head worriedly.
"Captain, land on the Resolute, quick as you can."
"Yes, Senator."
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A day later they were emerging from hyperspace again at the hyper limit of Florrum. The sulfurous, mainly desert world was striped with minor swaths of green and white. It was mostly an unpleasant place and backwards part of the Outer Rim that nicely explained why the Weequay pirates chose it as a staging area.
"Senator Kharrus, Representative Binks, Commander Tano please take your seats. We are coming in for a landing."
Kharrus turned to the young Jedi who he had gained a quick and pleasant rapport with. She was infinitely more pleasant company than Binks and holding a proper conversation was a delight. She eagerly asked about recent news from the Core that wasn't filtered through a hundred times before it got all the way to the Outer Rim, made especially worse since they had had to maintain communication silence on their recent mission.
"So yes Ahsoka, the last time I went on one of these ransom missions, I spent three weeks in a dungeon."
"Hopefully we can avoid that this time, Senator."
"With you along, I'm sure that will be the case."
They came across Binks, again struggling with the crash bar of his seat. Honestly, you'd think he'd remember the trick to push it down first before trying to pull it up. The young Jedi shook her head in exasperation and made a small gesture with her hand. The crash bar abruptly lifted itself up, missing Binks face by inches. He gave a cry of surprise and began to lose his balance backwards. The Gungan was caught by the young Jedi using the Force and briefly suspended in mid-air before being gently put down.
"Representative Binks, please be careful. I don't want you to get hurt on my watch. Master Skywalker would be very upset with me."
"Oi oi, mesa thank you."
Kharrus got himself settled and locked in while young Ahsoka did the same in the next seat. The assault shuttle began to rock and shudder from the turbulence of the high atmosphere. Binks finally managed to lock his crash bar and get settled in his seat. Even still the Gungan's feet were bouncing impatiently. What he wouldn't give to have that old energy of youth again.
The shuttle continued onward, the turbulence decreasing as they hit more stable air and lower altitude, then young Ahsoka stiffened.
"Captain, check your scopes aft!"
"What? Oh… I see it, Commander. Flarestar-class attack shuttle, on attack vector."
Their shuttle began going through evasive maneuvers and Kharrus felt his stomachs rebel in protest at the hard maneuvers that were managing to translate through the inertial dampers, even as his old friend, fear, came creeping up on him, threatening to rob his limbs of movement and rationality from his mind.
"Threat warning, missile lock on! Firing countermeasures."
The shuttle pulled hard left abruptly, flinging Kharrus against the crash bar hard.
"This bloody Flarestar is all over the place. We can't get a return lock."
"Captain! When I say dive, you dive! Is that understood?"
"Yes Commander."
Kharrus stared at the Jedi and saw her eyes closed and a deep frown of concentration on her face.
Ten long seconds passed.
"Dive now!"
The shuttle nosed down so steeply that Kharrus found himself briefly weightless before the dampers kicked in.
"Keep us in this cloud bank and land as soon as possible, full EMCON!"
"Understood, Commander. Looking for a landing site."
Ahsoka opened her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. The shuttle rocked a bit and settled on a smooth course once more.
"The enemy is breaking off and leaving?"
"Let them go, Captain."
Kharrus found his voice, "What was that? What did you do?"
"I managed to put an illusion into the attacking pilot's mind. He thinks he's shot us down. As it's something he was desperately trying to do anyway and he was thankfully weak of mind, it was relatively easy to pull off."
He felt both amazement and quite a bit of apprehension. He knew quite a bit about Jedi, more than the average politician in the Senate anyway and the idea that they could have such power over another sentient mind was unsettling. He'd seen a Jedi he'd worked with in the past manage minor tricks of suggestion and usually when the Jedi could at least see the person he was tricking, but this was a whole different level. His traitorous mind imagined his great-granddaughter with this power and he shuddered in horror.
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I walked down the embarkation ramp and onto Florrum's surface at last. The pilot had managed to find a nice flat area to land thankfully, avoiding the swells of the sulfurous geysers by a nice margin. The smell they permeated the area with, however, was simply awful. There were some native fauna browsing the short grass around the area, things that looked like an overweight rhino without the horns.
"It seems these pirates are not such a unified front after all."
Senator Kharrus walked out of the shuttle and tapped the earth as if testing it before standing next to me.
"What do yousa mean?"
I inwardly twitched and had to chant in my mind, Don't use Force Choke, don't fall to the Dark Side. "He means Representative, that we were attacked by the same pirates who want the ransom, even though this would risk destroying the spice they want so badly."
"There's someone in this Captain Hondo's crew that is more than likely trying to undermine him," Kharrus theorized.
"This was an attempt to intercept the spice before it could reach Hondo," I nodded and turned to the Clone Captain, "What's the distance to the landing coordinates of the pirate base?"
"About thirty clicks due north of our current position, Commander."
"If we use the shuttle we'll just get intercepted again in the air and we've got no ground transportation," Kharrus shook his head. "This mission is becoming untenable unless we call for aid from the Resolute."
"We have a more immediate problem, the traitorous pirates will no doubt be coming to see if they can retrieve any spice from our 'crashed' shuttle."
The Clone Captain gestured around us, "That isn't good, Commander, we don't have a defensible position here. It's nearly flat terrain all around."
"We'll do a combined arms approach then," I pointed at the shuttle. "We use the shuttle's forward guns in a ground attack role. Keep it hovering low, while myself and the rest of the squad attack on foot under cover of the guns. Senator Kharrus, Representative Binks, I suggest you remain in the shuttle for this so at least you'll be behind shields." The sulfur geyser erupted nearby, sending a hissing plume of gas and water into the air. That gave me another idea. "Captain, we need to further sell my illusion."
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The distinctive whine of a speeder, the air whipping in your face, the ground surging past, the sense of power between your legs was something that always captivated Turk Falso. He was many things; a pirate, criminal, murderer and he didn't have a single regret. He could look back and see how any other choice along his path would've ended with him eating a blaster bolt or being blown to space dust. You didn't survive in the Outer Rim otherwise, but the one pure vice he had, the only thing he really loved, was speeder bikes. He loved working on them, customizing them to within an inch of them blowing out and turning themselves to scrap.
Now he was speeding along with his gang towards the biggest payday of his life. He tried to imagine how many speeders he could buy or tinker with that kind of money and delightfully failed. It was also his chance to finally get out of the shadow of the great Hondo at last. Yes, the old pirate had taught him everything he knew, but it seemed that Hondo had gotten soft to his eyes. Lately, he had taken to just robbing folks and leaving zero body count behind, always with the excuse of some or other lesson his mother had taught him.
Turk checked the small nav device mounted on the controls of his speeder, they were just ten kilometers away. He could smell the spice already.
He looked to his gang, all of them on their own custom speeders, three to his left, three to the right. There would be survivors of the crash and Turk hoped they put up a decent fight. It would be nice to get the ol' juices flowing before this payday.
The smoke plume from the crash was now clear in the sky, being pulled to the side by the wind. He gestured in a signal to his gang and everyone pulled blaster pistols and powered up the mounted underslung heavy blasters on their speeders. They spread out their formation to create more spacing for maneuvers.
He squinted and at last could make out the shape of the Republic shuttle.
Then it suddenly lurched into the sky!
"That's not a crashed shuttle…"
He couldn't finish berating Jono, their gang's pilot, before the shuttle twisted to bring its nose to bear. His instincts screamed at him and he obeyed, twisting the speeder side to side in evasive. Not a moment too soon as a stream of heavy laser bolts shot at them, raking across their formation from right to left.
Karam got vaped. The oldest member of their little gang was there one moment, the next he was gone and just fragments of speeder shooting everywhere and a brief fireball as the fuel lit off.
The blue fire bit into the earth around their speeders before catching Cal and blowing him to pieces too.
Their only choice now was to speed forward and get under the guns of that shuttle where it wouldn't be able to track.
He gunned his throttle to max, the gang's survivors following suit a moment later, keeping their zig-zagging maneuvers up as best they could.
The Republic shuttle turned itself again, now clearly intending to walk its fire from their left side.
The blasts cored multiple holes in the fast moving earth but none hit them this time.
The shuttle now reared up to ten meters in the air and started to do an awkward reversing maneuver, clearly hoping to keep their distance so they could pick apart the gang at their leisure.
It had left someone behind though. A lone trooper of some kind with odd armor.
Turk signaled to the gang and they charged at the trooper.
Blaster fire suddenly seemed to spring from nowhere to their left and right.
Jonto and Hu got hit, tumbling off their bikes.
Turk now only saw red and snarled, raising his pistol and started firing at the only target his ire could find. Gal and Tor followed suit, triggering their speeder's blasters at the lone trooper. Then the world went crazy.
Two lightsabers sprung forth from the trooper's hands and batted away every threatening bolt. Sending them careening into the sky.
"JEDI!" He screamed in anger as he realized his true foe.
The Jedi promptly deflected more bolts, but this time sent them straight back to Gal and Tor, who's speeders went out of control before crashing into the ground.
He triggered his own speeder blaster and aimed to crash himself straight into the Jedi.
The Jedi didn't seem to want to move.
Then inexplicably his speeder's nose just aimed itself down and started to tear into the earth.
He was abruptly flung into the air and the world blurred around him, spinning around him in a dizzying whirl. He screamed in fear and anger. He had been hitting 160 kilometers an hour and he had no illusions what would happen when he hit the ground.
Then he was slowing down?
His body's tumble in mid air continued and the wind rushing past his hears slowed…
He must have blacked out briefly at this point because the next thing he knew was…
He was floating just a meter off the ground from the Jedi and… she was a bloody kid…
How embarrassing.
Turk welcomed the black oblivion.
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I gently lowered the pirate to the earth after putting a merciful Force Sleep on him. Catching him and keeping him from simply going splat was a tricky bit of TK, yet the physics were simple.
"Any reason we're keeping this one alive, Commander?" The clone troopers were emerging from their flanking prone positions I had organized them in.
"He's the leader and I have a feeling Hondo will want to speak to him about this little stunt he had going. We can now also safely use the shuttle to just fly in as planned. It'll take a bit of doing to explain, but I'm sure Senator Kharrus can flex those diplomatic muscles of his on this trip after all."
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The shuttle approached the pirate base that was clearly a repurposed and commandeered structure of some kind. It honestly looked like a colony seed building of some kind - the very first structure you would raise when founding a colony after initial landing. The building also had a distinct feel of recent manufacture - meaning it quite likely that Hondo and his crew had rather rudely interrupted the builders and forced them to abandon the planet. Given the mess that was Outer Rim colonization it was clear that it was a private small venture of some kind with no official backing.
The Twilight was landed off to the north side and it didn't look worse for wear - the pirates probably hadn't had time to strip or salvage the ship, then again, if any of them had half a brain, Anakin's improvements would dissuade that. The ship would be a very valuable addition to these pirates.
We organized near the aft debarkation ramp, with Senator Kharrus and Binks leading the way, with a flank of clone troopers on either side. I took the rear, keeping control of the very sulky Turk Falso.
"Mister Falso, do remember that it is useless to run or try anything," I pointedly lifted him slightly with the Force to reinforce the point. He only grunted in acknowledgement.
The shuttle shuddered as it touched down and the ramp extended.
As we walked down we were greeted by a large gathering of pirates doing their best to be intimidating in various ways and at their head was Hondo Ohnoka, looking like the eye in the storm of the chaos that surrounded him.
"Ah, welcome, welcome my friends to Florrum," Hondo greeted gregariously with open arms.
"Greetings, I am Senator Kharrus, representing the interests of the Galactic Senate of the Republic. Representative Binks, my assistant and my escorts of the Senate Guard. May I also introduce Commander Tano, our assigned Jedi escort… Oh I believe you know the apprehended gentlebeing next to her."
I pushed Turk forward but kept a firm hold on his cuffs.
"What is the meaning of this?" Hondo's eyes narrowed behind the strapped glasses he wore.
"He attempted to shoot down our shuttle before we arrived here, intending to claim the spice for himself and a small gang of his own loyalists. I regret in the battle that most of them perished. I have here," Kharrus presented a small data tablet, "our shuttle's recordings and data of the event to review at your leisure."
Hondo grabbed the tablet and his hand began tapping on the buttons and he barely needed to see a few seconds of footage before he put it away and sighed heavily, "Honestly Turk, I knew I should've gotten rid of you. Now thanks to your little bit of treachery, I'm on the back foot in this transaction. May I ask that you release him to me? He will be punished… severely."
"He assaulted a Republic Senator and officers of the Republic Navy. We will do so only if you give something in return… such as Generals Kenobi and Skywalker, whom we know you've also detained including Skywalker's lightsaber."
Hondo thoughtfully scratched his chin and eventually nodded, grabbing another Weequay pirate and sending him off to do the deed. "Honestly, I'm rather glad of it. You know what a headache it's been holding them. Three escape attempts even with all three of them bound together. I thought Sith and Jedi hated each other."
"While I cannot speak for the Jedi Order," Kharrus declared. "A common foe will generally unite even the most disparate grouping of sentients."
Soon enough, Obi-wan and Anakin were led out of the building. They were bound with cords around their waist and hands that also pulsed with a bright purple energy. The pirate herding them used some sort of decoupler device to deactivate and open the cuffs, then reached into a pocket and returned Anakin's lightsaber.
Anakin grabbed the weapon possessively and affixed it to his belt.
Senator Kharrus gestured behind him and a few more clones emerged from the shuttle carrying the crates of spice, "Now we can get to business at hand that brought all this together. Inside these containers you'll hundred percent pure grain spice, current market value of just over million credits."
Hondo smiled and gestured, "Let's talk in more comfortable surroundings."
"That would be agreeable."
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