Chapter 61
The door of my quarters aboard the Resolute closed.
Finally assured of privacy, I practically fell back against it and struggled in the fight to remain awake for just a little longer.
The ship had finally arrived in high orbit roughly half a day after Astrakane had been liberated, but it felt like an eternity. The aftermath of that town's liberation was just one problem after another, dealing with everyone clamoring for just 'a moment' of Anakin or my own time to help with their own issues had been exhausting.
At first, there was no problem, but then at hyperspeed, word had spread and then I felt like I was inundated with people asking for solutions or help from the all-knowing Jedi. It wasn't long before I started to lose patience with it. Even Astrakane's mayor had long since shut himself in his house and barred anyone from entering.
'Solve your own fucking problems!' I had wanted to scream into the face of a store owner whose shop had been badly damaged by the fighting. Instead, I simply listened and in the most polite manner possible indicated that rebuilding and repair was not in the badly overstretched GAR's mandate, nor was it even equipped to do that. That there was not an Engineering division or some reconstruction group who did that job was by design.
Then there was the other big problem; the Mimbanese Liberation Army.
For all that I had helped train and get it off the ground, managing and advising Iasento and Mayor Brolet, who were the de facto senior 'Generals' of the MLA, was also a gigantic pain in my ass. We had to start actually turning away all the volunteers we were getting, because it threatened to utterly denude both towns of able-bodied people. Most of which were actually needed to help with reconstruction or keep the towns from crippling themselves economically - a situation which was already on a knife's edge.
One of the first things I had ordered the 501st to bring down, besides themselves and their war gear, was food from the ship's long term stores. The last thing we needed to deal with right now was rioting townsfolk and starvation, when the food supplies began to run down due to the disrupted off-world supply chains. The CIS droids had targeted local food production as one of the first things they did after they had surprised everyone with their invasion.
The local farmers, those who were still alive at least, also only had bad news. By the nature of Mimban's climate, the flora and fauna, these farms weren't large and at best, provided for only forty percent of the food requirements. The rest was off-world imports, which the mining companies mostly organized for the population. A number of food-bearing freighters were stuck in orbit and convincing the captains to not only stay, but also land and actually deliver was another headache on my list of 'things to do'.
I lifted myself off the door, triggered my armor to open up and stepped out of it with a wince as my own aroma hit me.
"M8, treat yourself to a nice long clean at the droid works," I said blearily, continuing to strip on my way to the shower.
"At once, mistress," the armor replied, closing herself up and turning to exit my quarters.
"Wait," I ordered and chucked the helmet. M8 walking around Resolute like a bizarre headless horseman expy was weirdness that I didn't want to expose the crew to. The armor caught the helmet and easily attached it with a simple twist. "Keep your internal lighting on as well, no imitating that I'm in there."
"Aww, mistress, it's so fun watching everyone jump to attention."
"That's fine when I have to pretend to be somewhere else, not now. Off you go."
"Yes, mistress."
I could practically hear the pout in that tone.
I waited until M8 had closed the door before stripping off completely and jumping into the shower, slamming the button which would start it with a bit more force than truly necessary.
The first two minutes of just holding my head under that warm water was truly a balm and my bed beckoned me with its embrace. Again, I had to fight it off and actually get down to the chore of cleaning properly.
Of course, I had barely done a minute of this when my comlink decided to chirp for attention.
I wanted a punching bag at that moment. Resisting the stupid urge to punch my shower wall, I reached out with the Force and the small device came soaring across my quarters to land right in my palm. I adjusted it to audio-only mode and tapped the link to open.
The head of steam I wanted to unleash on the unlucky caller died in my throat when I perceived who was calling. Of all the times and places to make a first impression…
"Padawan Tano," said Jedi Master-General Laan Tik in greeting.
The kajain'sa'Nikto was standing on the bridge of his flagship Venator, the Horizon, the clone naval crew in full swing as mobilization operations were underway, launching the 224th Division onto the planet to begin combat.
It was hard not to wince somewhat at his physical appearance, though all Nikto and their three subspecies had horned faces of some type. The general was of the 'Red Nikto' subspecies and had the extra special fate to possess the purple skin - which was a rare mutation. Especially because the Red Nikto subspecies came into being because they had adapted to survive in the desert regions of their homeworld.
His purple skin would've stood out like a sore thumb on the Wannschok, or 'Endless Wastes' of Kintan. No natural camouflage without using clothes to completely cover himself would be possible.
To make the visage of a kajain'sa'Nikto even worse; they seemingly had no nose - a result of it being covered by a flap of movable skin to allow breathing even in the worst of sandstorms. Then there were two natural breathing tubes on either side of the neck, which could also be covered similarly - another perfect adaptation to recover the air moisture from a kajain'sa'Nikto's exhalations.
As the master was currently standing on a perfectly air conditioned starship bridge, there was no need for him to cover those tubes and it left me looking at a species that had every physical feature that pushed old instinctual buttons of revulsion, disgust and fear.
I slapped the button to switch the shower off. "Master Tik."
"You can continue your ablutions, padawan. The comlink can hear you perfectly fine."
I sensed his intent and inwardly groaned. I had studied the master's record and everything freely available about him, including some stuff not so freely available - that I got through Anakin's Knight level clearance. I had hoped it was just hyperbole or that I was just reading too much between the lines.
By all rights, I should switch on my shower and go along with his seemingly open invitation, but I knew it for what it was - this was a test.
Master Laan Tik was a straight laced, hyper-orthodox Jedi.
The kind of Jedi who was seemingly humble but you gave them just a few of the right pokes and it revealed the arrogance frothing beneath the surface. The Jedi who believed that their interpretation of the Force was the only valid one and everything else heresy.
I fortified myself with no outward physical tells, drawing energy from the Force. "No, that's all right, master. What can I do for you?"
From one point of view, I had passed his test, from another I had just shown him my belly and who was top dog. There was little else I could do. He was now theater commander, the senior Jedi in charge of the entire system.
"I would like your personal report and opinion of the situation down on Mimban. Please come to the Horizon as soon as possible. I'd rather hear this face to face from someone who was on the ground this last week, instead of just trying to glean this from military reports."
I was rather astonished at the subtext I was able to read. Either my perceptions had taken a jump recently or perhaps my training from Kina Ha was beginning to pay further dividend. A layman would've just taken the master's words at face value, even some Jedi as well. The master had said nothing in any obvious tone to betray his true feelings, but I was able to read a lot more, perhaps because I was also using the comlink as a focus for Farsight? How you spoke when you thought no one of consequence was looking at you was also perhaps at play. Then again, shouldn't Master Tik know as well of my abilities to work the Force through a comlink? He wasn't on the Jedi Council, but he should've had access to my own personal file.
There was so much to unpack…
"Very well, master. I will come over in a shuttle."
"Thank you."
The link was cut.
I stared at the small device in my hand for a long moment, before throwing it out to land on my work desk, then slapped the button to continue my shower.
"Sorry for pulling you away from the Fang simulator, Soggy."
Clone Pilot 32234, callsign 'Soggy', shook his head as he preflighted the shuttle, "No problem, commander. It was either that or boring CAPs watching Shadow Squadron bomb clankers. Ferrying you is a nice relaxing change of pace."
I sat down in the back of the shuttle with a datapad carrying everything I had researched on Master Tik, to review and prepare myself. I couldn't do that if I was worrying about flying myself to a high orbital rendezvous with another Venator. "Well, thank you anyway."
It was a pity that my own Wraith Squadron wasn't truly suited to the general theater conditions of Mimban, since the pilots trained and were geared for anti-fighter and capship work. Something the Z-95s were poorly equipped for at the moment. It also didn't help if we went through the effort of switching to anti-ground loadouts, yet suddenly had to fight a space battle. Therefore, I just had to accept that Wraith would be absent from the killboards unless the CIS managed to smuggle Vulture or Hyena droids to the party.
The shuttle began humming as its engines and repulsors came to life and I turned my attention to Master Tik's war record thus far with the 224th.
On the surface, it was quite exemplary, with only a handful of defeats that came as a result of circumstances beyond his control. The Battle of Malastare, for example. A late reinforcement, forcing a retreat, the initiative never regained and the CIS just kept going, steamrolling over any defenses the GAR could put in its way. The situation in space was even more dire and the 224th had to be evacuated completely, ceding all planetary control.
His victories were generally straightforward affairs and he really seemed to know how to use armored forces well. He seemed to know how to put the 224th right at the correct spot where the enemy was the weakest and flatten them under the armored feet and guns of AT-TEs. The one thing curiously absent from the reports was the 'butcher's bill' - casualties, fatalities, the number of armored vehicles lost. I had to go digging into records from Kamino and do a cross-reference search to get an idea of how much 'salvage' they had picked up in the wake of the victories.
I couldn't get a truly accurate result, but it was high enough to leave a sour taste in my mouth. It was war, casualties and deaths happened, but what I was seeing here was someone who spent the lives under his command with a near callous disregard. Then again, it was easy to make this judgment now, I hadn't been there. Would I have spent the lives of the 501st to fulfill the objective and achieve victory? Of course, I have done that many times, but not with this kind of butcher's bill coming due.
My fingers swiped on the pad, shutting it down.
The shuttle was already outside the Resolute, executing a series of accelerations and decelerations to match the relatively eccentric high orbit of the Horizon.
That he had requested me and not Anakin to deliver this report also spoke to something deeper. What that was, I could only speculate at the moment. It wasn't as if Anakin was unavailable. He was still technically on assignment to the MLA and now in command of the 501st on the ground as they consolidated the 'beachhead' of the area around Miststar and Astrakane. I could've still been down there, but Anakin wanted me up on the Resolute to organize the air and bombing campaign. He also wanted me to take the opportunity to rest and get the neural shunt taken out. My montrals were perfectly fine now and it'd be nice to use them again.
Now my sleep had been disrupted, I was grumpy, I still had the shunt and now I was on my way to speak to the newly arrived Jedi theater commander, who I had a proper bad feeling about.
The Horizon slowly grew in the forward viewport of the shuttle cockpit, until it totally filled the forward view.
"Uh, commander," Soggy said and I felt his clear confusion. "I'm getting instructions from the Horizon's landing controller. They're telling me to land in Bay 1."
I frowned in honest confusion for a moment - Bay 1 on a Venator was literally the most forward landing bay in the spine of the ship, practically in the nose.
"What's the traffic like?"
He keyed up a holo showing the scan readout for ships around the Horizon and it somewhat answered the question. The dorsal doors that ran for almost 570 meters along the forward length of the ship were mostly closed as per regulation. Only the doors that were needed were open to space. Bay 13, the most rearward, was open, Bay 12 and now Bay 1 was open as well. Ships were mostly just leaving the first two, but Bay 1 had no activity.
Another test from Master Tik?
Landing me in the furthest point possible from the bridge, making me walk more than a kilometer of corridors, navigate a bunch of turbolifts before finally getting to him.
What was the point?
Testing my patience and endurance?
I wasn't his padawan.
Sure, Anakin didn't have exclusivity in training me, but reaching out to another master was always the prerogative of the padawan, usually in conjunction with your 'official' master. It was generally the acknowledgement that everyone had unique talents and predisposition for certain aspects of the Force, so you could seek out training if needed.
"Go to Bay 1, Soggy, as instructed. We can't exactly disobey landing regs, now can we?"
"Yes, commander."
I quickly powered up my datapad again and began a remote search in the Jedi archives, asking a quick question.
Did Master Laan Tik ever have a padawan?
The shuttle touched down by the time I had my answer.
No. In three decades as a Jedi Master he hadn't even put his name down on the list for consideration.
The shuttle's ramp opened and I exited onto the mostly empty Bay 1. There were a couple of fighters landed here, mostly a few Y-Wings and a Z-95, but they were all in a clearly non-flyable state and being worked on by crews.
Bay 1 was usually the place on a Venator that the captains and commanders sent their 'problems' - whether they be personnel related or technical. That one fighter that just kept breaking down, off to Bay 1 it went. The rare misfit clone that while physically perfect, just didn't gel behaviorally or in temperament despite all the conditioning - to Bay 1 he went.
That didn't happen on the Resolute, but Bay 1 was still seen as a poodoo assignment, simply because it was so far from the crew quarters. It then just naturally became a place associated with either bad luck or that I had somehow found something to dislike in whoever I assigned there. No matter how much I said otherwise.
So naturally, I developed a dislike for the bloody place, even though it didn't deserve it. I was almost tempted to use a bit of Force buffed running to make this stupid journey to the bridge shorter.
I grit my teeth at the mindgame I suddenly found myself in, thanks to Master Tik.
No… I would not get angry. I understood it, looked at its path and let it pass through me.
My feet carried me through the main bulkhead doors of the bay and into the first corridor.
Very well, Master Tik. I will play your frakking game and then beat you over the head with it.
When I walked onto the bridge of the Horizon - forty minutes later I had come to the conclusion that I had run into the first Jedi I could point to and truly state with absolute firm conviction, 'He's an asshole!'
In any well run ship, a journey from fore to aft, should take at most less than ten minutes. In an era of grav turbolifts with inertial dampers on ships, there was no reason for a journey inside a ship to take this long. It was even a primary design consideration when beginning to plan any large spacefaring craft that was meant to be a warship.
Yet very conveniently the turbolifts in the port quarter of the ship were 'down for maintenance'.
Then the turbolifts that I did get in started to send me in wrong directions. The reaction of the naval clones that just happened to be with me in the lift, were genuinely startled and many immediately got on the comlink to report the problems to engineering.
Was this Master Tik as well?
I could find the answer with Prescience, but honestly, it wasn't worth it. If it was a test, it was a test. A bloody petty one and one which I did not know the motivation behind. If he wanted to test my patience he'd have to try much harder than this.
My combat booted feet came to a stop a respectful distance behind the master. He wore the typical Jedi light brown tunic, pants, robes and boots, not even a hint of armor or a practical consideration that he regularly fought in a galactic war. Even my current Hapan outfit at least had armored greaves and vambraces.
His green eyes were pensive as he stared out the front viewports of the bridge, but otherwise he was visibly serene and even in the Force, it was like I was looking at a mirrored lake.
He didn't make a single sign of acknowledging me, even in the Force. He might as well have been in a meditation trance.
It seemed the test was continuing.
I fell into an at rest stance, folding my hands behind my back and waited.
He asked for me, he wanted my knowledge, he would be the one to speak first.
Internally, I acknowledged that the potential was there that we could be standing here for hours, he was a Jedi Master, after all.
My attention partially journeyed down the bond with Anakin to check on him. Still hard busy organizing the 501st alongside Rex and getting the LAAT gunships sorted out. The rainforest was going to make them crucial even more so than usual for mobility. Contact had also been made with another tribe of Mimbanese whose general territory the main thrust of the advance would go over. Iasento and the Zhamor were on good terms with them, so it wasn't a hard sell to get them on board the MLA.
"Snips, I thought you were going to get some rest," Anakin thought sternly at me.
"I was, until Master Tik called me over to the Horizon to debrief him on the situation on the planet."
"What? Oh, but… why do I sense something off about that?"
"Good perceptions, master," I praised, then proceeded to give him a brief burst of my recent memories.
"Sithspit! I don't know much about him, but this is… crazy. He should know that you don't give uninvited training or testing to a padawan that already has a master!"
"Well, something has clearly given him cause to do otherwise. It's rather ironic, because everything I see and read about him tells me he's a traditional Jedi."
"I know what your answer will be, but I have to ask…"
"No master, you don't need to interrupt your work just to come save me from the Jedi who has his panties in a bunch and a rod shoved up his ass. Unless he starts swinging his lightsaber around, I can handle him."
"If he does, you tell me and fight with everything you have, understood? After all, Dooku turned traitor."
I knew he was only half-joking. That we hadn't seen a Jedi fall to the Dark Side yet due to the pressures of the war was a bloody miracle - but it was only a matter of time. It was quite vague due to how far in the future it was, but Prescience had already shown me a number of dark presences that would emerge from within the ranks of the Jedi, who would either rebel going outright mad or join Dooku. That this was in addition to ones from my past life memories was quite worrying.
"I will, master. Hopefully I can soon get to the bottom of this at some point."
"Good, the instant you're done with him, you get back to Resolute and sleep. Don't make me come up there and tuck you in."
"I will, master."
In the end, it took a further two hours, nineteen minutes and fifty five seconds for Master Laan Tik to finally speak. He simply seemed to come out of his half-meditation and nodded at me.
"Padawan."
"Master Tik."
"I must admit you surprise me, given all I've heard."
I was not about to engage him and fall into the next trap he set. He wanted to goad me into asking the question 'From where?' or to dismiss his sources as 'inaccurate'. Both roads would lead to places that were of his design.
"Does master wish to hear about the tactical situation on Mimban?" I asked politely, firmly keeping my cool and not playing the game at all.
He didn't react outwardly, but I definitely sensed I had made an inroad into his own composure with that one. The calm lake of his mind and presence in the Force, rippled as if I had thrown in a stone.
"Go ahead," he eventually said, his naturally rasping voice, utterly toneless.
So I delivered a rehearsed summary of the events of the past week, the only thing I left out was the discovery of the substandard droid armor, that may or may not have been sabotaged. After I had said all I wanted, he was again silent for a few moments before finally turning to face me properly.
"Recruiting the locals to help you, I can fully understand, padawan. What I can't condone is you and your master creating a militia out of them."
"Should they not defend themselves or fight for their own planet?" I asked dryly.
"Of course, but it should come out of their own decision and initiative. It's not the Jedi Order's job to militarize a society. Now you've made our job here much more complicated than it needed to be. We now have to liaise, coordinate and even hold in check a barely trained militia."
From that point of view, he had a point.
I had a different strategy and point of view in mind, one rooted in the future, enabling and arming worlds to be able to deal with their own defense against anything that threatened it, whether it be the CIS, a future Empire, even a future New Republic and especially against the Yuuzhan Vong. My reasoning in the now was eminently more practical though and more digestible than some hypothetical future threat.
"It gives them a seat at the table, master, something they wouldn't have had otherwise," I said pointedly. "As far as I'm concerned, sometimes it's we and the GAR who need to have a check on our behavior."
Tik raised his right brow, his eyes practically glaring into mine, "Oh really, padawan? Please explain."
If he thought he could intimidate me by playing the 'angry master' card on a lowly padawan, he had sorely misjudged me. It was a rather easy thing to do though. Anyone who read my own file would think I was an overachieving padawan, who had the Chosen One as a master. Combine that with the rumor grapevine and many orthodox masters would think I needed to be humbled and my ego punctured a bit.
"I have been fighting in this war for just under a year now and I have been a student of the history of war in this galaxy since I was a youngling. I have seen how this war rained devastation on worlds and while the CIS is naturally the instigating factor, the GAR is an equal partner in it. And what is left in our wake? Ruined cities, destroyed homes and infrastructure, everything that makes civilization possible. On Mimban, we're going to have a long protracted campaign to root out the war droids - how much of this rainforest are we going to destroy in our fighting? An environment that the Mimbanese have adapted to and is their home."
I could well imagine what the 224th's Juggernaut tanks were going to do. A 49 meter long armored vehicle that traveled on ten giant armored wheels. With its mass, torque and rugged suspension, it could easily bulldoze its way through any but the largest and thickest of trees. AT-TE's could move with somewhat less damage, but an entire company of them stomping through the forest would still be devastating.
Only the TX-130 Saber repulsor tanks would be able to hover themselves over the canopy of the forest and move with good speed. The problem was they were lightly armored and couldn't function on their own without support from their heavier brethren.
Master Tik's reaction to my half-rant, half-explanation was to flatten his mouth and intensify the glare in his eyes. I also actually managed to pick up a tiny hint of frustration bubbling under the calm lake of his mind.
Good, I had calculated my words to say nothing that could really be refuted, not without making him seem like either a hypocrite or a warmonger of the highest order. Did he truly care about the people of Mimban? Whose homes he was about to drive all his tanks over?
I couldn't say, but I knew he didn't care about the clones under his command. He might be hard to read, but the clones on the Horizon were an open book in comparison. He was one of those that considered them to be no more than biological droids with a purpose and would give no thought to what would happen to them after the war was over. The clone's emotions and feelings all over the ship told the story. No warship could be a place of happiness, but Horizon might as well be a ship of the dead.
Not a single clone trooper of the 224th that I had passed on my long journey to the bridge had a smidge of hope or optimism in them. Morale on this ship was floundering badly.
"Well, that is certainly an interesting perspective, padawan," he said and I caught the slightest gnash of his teeth behind his lips. "What's done is done then, I sincerely hope that we won't regret this… MLAs involvement." He might as well have been curling his lip in open disgust as he said that. "Very well, thank you padawan for your report. I'll certainly meditate on it and consider how best to proceed forward. You're dismissed."
I bowed properly in reply, turned on my heel and walked off that bridge at an unhurried pace, even though I wanted to Force Sprint back to my shuttle at this point.
My thoughts pinged and knocked along the bond with Anakin as I walked into the turbolift.
"Snips?"
"I don't foresee good things for the outcome of the battle of Mimban, master."
Anakin's mood turned grim, "Is he that bad?"
"I invite you to take a tour of the Horizon, sense the crew as I walk past them," I thought in answer.
Anakin's perceptions relayed through me and I felt him reach out… It didn't take long.
"Sithspit," he swore.
"I gave him a piece of my mind somewhat, master. I hope we can… moderate his tendency to spend the lives of his troops so freely."
"As if we don't have enough problems already, now we have to worry about our theater commander going off into the dunes."
It was a rare occasion where Anakin showed his true origins in the language he used.
"Better brush up on the GAR and Jedi laws, master. We might need to pull rank at some point."
"In what free time, Snips?" he asked sarcastically.
"Fine, I'll look it up when I'm in sickbay."
He thought back in an awful cutesy tone, "Good padawan."
Just for that, I sent a bunch of my own memories featuring the most annoying musical earworms from Coruscanti and Corellian music, then shut the bond.
My eyes blinked and my mouth felt like I had taken a stroll on Tatooine in the middle of a sandstorm.
The sound of a high pitched tune reverberated to my upper left and I could almost weep with relief as I actually heard again through my montrals, in addition to the echosense coming through loud and clear - letting me determine exactly where the medical droid was in relation to me.
The 2-1B med droid walked into view and looked down on me. "How are you feeling, commander?"
"I could really use a drink, but otherwise, everything sounds wonderful," I said. For all that Force Hearing could be considered actually superior, the fact that my montrals were no longer useless organs on the top of my head counted for a lot to my peace of mind.
The droid used its rather wicked looking right hand clamps to bring over a glass of water, which I grabbed and drank from rather greedily, "Thanks."
"You're welcome, commander," the droid droned in its usual emotionless tone.
When the glass was empty I delved into the Force and felt out my own condition. There didn't seem to be any lingering problems or issues.
"Any problems with removing the shunt?"
"None, commander. You are now in good health for your species and age. The only thing of comment is the low level of terenthium and a vitamin subtype common in togruta."
"I haven't been eating well this last week and now that I think about it I might have missed taking a few supplements." It was good I was back on board Resolute then. It was the one problem many togruta eventually developed when they left Shili for a long time. Terenthium was an essential dietary element, much like a human needed iron in their diet, which was usually obtained from eating the fauna on Shili. It was the one thing that had really nixed quite a lot of colony plans of the togruta government and why the world of Kiros was the only other colony - as the environment, flora and fauna also had the required elements for togrutans to live there without going through the expense of importing it.
My next order of business was getting some decent food and I left sickbay in a hurry.
A starship's mess was never truly down, so I had no problems getting a hearty meal.
"Commander," greeted a familiar voice.
"Admiral Yularen," I smiled at the military man as he came over to my table with a tray of food. "Late breakfast?"
"Yes, my wife was most upset with me during the last shore leave." He sat down with a fond smile on his face. "She took offense at me losing a few kilos, accusing me of skipping meals."
"Which you're guilty of," I said with certainty, pointing my spoon at him with a knowing smile.
"As charged," Yularen began smearing his toast, then placed some fried and cured nerf meat on it that smelled rather heavenly.
"How is the family doing? No problems there?" I asked lightly, but it was a question that had a bit of loaded subtext to it, which the admiral immediately recognized.
"No more than the usual boring issues which I won't trouble your montrals with, commander."
Translation: No, they haven't been threatened by our enemies in the military industrial complex of the Republic or the CIS through proxies.
"Good, how's the son?"
"Driving his mother up the walls with teenage angst and rebellion," he chuckled ruefully and bit into his toast.
The revelation that Yularen had not just a fourteen year old son, but also two daughters of eighteen and twenty was a pleasant surprise. It was also nice that the professional, stoic admiral had opened up to me to that extent, as he normally kept his military work away from his family. That had changed simply by necessity as the war kept him away from Coruscant for far longer than he was used to. It also went beyond our mentor-student relationship, but we had both been in the 'trenches' of this war through many battles and it was somewhat inevitable that our relationship would deepen.
"As a teenager, I can confidently say it'll pass," I said with a chuckle.
He huffed before taking a sip of caf, "Didn't have these issues with Badi and Mel."
"Now I'm imagining a fourteen year old Wullf Yularen."
"Don't even go there, commander," he warned with a mock glare. "I did, however, come over with a bit of a personal request."
"Oh?" I asked curiously.
"It has recently come to my children's attention that I work with both you and General Skywalker," he said evenly, but I could sense he was a bit uncomfortable and pushed into a corner emotionally.
"Really?" I could just imagine the situation around a family dinner table and suddenly the youngest, Favan Yularen, speaking up and asking his dad about working alongside war hero Anakin Skywalker and the poor admiral being pelted with question after question.
"Yes, they've… prevailed upon me to request if you could provide your signatures on some memorabilia," Yularen coughed in discomfort and sipped some more caf.
I smothered a laugh and simply nodded, "That's not a problem at all."
"Thank you," he said with a rare open display of relief. "Favan ordered a lightsaber replica, whilst Badi and Mel provided a holo-poster."
My amusement and good spirits screeched to a halt. "Holo-poster?"
The admiral looked at me and nodded, "Figured you wouldn't know, this came out just recently." He reached into a pocket of his uniform and produced a small datapad with an integrated holo emitter, then placed it on the table before activating it.
A scaled down version of the holo-poster in question appeared and it took me a moment to comprehend what I was looking at.
Large in the foreground, a slightly stylized but accurate depiction of Anakin in his armor with Jedi robes billowing dramatically behind him as he pointed forward with a lit lightsaber, shining bright. In front of him, slightly smaller, in a mirrored pose, was me.
As was typical of artistic embellishment, my proportions were more grown up and adult than I truly was. It was obvious they didn't want to advertise that a sixteen year old was actively fighting in this war.
Flying in the background carrying dramatic streaks of color behind them were Z-95s and neatly integrated into all this was the Republic roundel logo.
It was a literal propaganda poster.
"There is a lobbyist group in the Senate that has risen to recent prominence, they're called COMPOR, the Commission for the Protection of the Republic," Yularen explained. "This is their work, a significant number of them are artists; Venthan Chassu, Byno Doubton and Hamma Elad are the most notable among them."
I was rather startled at the last one. I enjoyed Elad's work and had always kept an eye out for new releases among the art collectives on the Holonet during my Jedi academy days. Her cityscapes of Coruscant and Hosnian were always amazing in that she captured scenes that seemed quite 'cyberpunk' to me.
This art didn't seem like her style, but I knew that artists were people too and they changed over time. It was only natural that the artists of the galaxy would react to the events of the war.
The existence of COMPOR, their artists and questions of style aside, I also saw the hidden hand behind all of it. Glaringly missing from this poster on either Anakin or my own armor, was the Jedi symbol. Sure, our lightsabers were there and it could be argued that was enough symbolism to mean 'Jedi', but that was just semantics.
This poster had Palpatine all over it and it had to have crossed his desk for approval, review and even adjustments.
Weirdly enough, I didn't in principle object to COMPOR or the idea behind it. The CIS were the ones constantly hacking the Holonet to broadcast their own propaganda throughout the Outer Rim and Expansion Regions. The Republic was usually on the ball to shut down these 'shadowfeeds' as they were called, but the CIS just kept hacking and it was a never ending battle as slicers on both sides fought the war on a whole new front - the cyberspace of the Holonet. That meant that the CIS message would still get through eventually.
COMPOR was clearly the Republic's response to fight the war of words and minds.
It was yet another front that Palpatine had opened and his hand picked media machines fired the first major salvos.
That both Anakin and I were featured together and not just him alone as the war hero was already a major point. Sidious might as well have given me a direct message on my CSO profile with it.
He wanted to butter both our images to the public, put us front and center in the war as bastions for the defense of the Republic.
It also began to answer a question I'd had for a long time. Just how human-centric was Palpatine?
In his heart of hearts, he was Sith, and only cared about himself and power. Species or alien against human didn't matter really, only in how it could be leveraged to gain more power. He would use prejudice as a tool and discard it when it didn't serve his interest.
Putting me as an idealized togruta and war hero alongside the very handsome, human Anakin, into the minds of the Republic, was quite a unifying, egalitarian gesture. It would definitely rub the likes of Tarkin and his ilk the wrong way.
I looked at Yularen, burying all my dark thoughts and smiled, "You have an e-pen?"
"No hurry, commander," he tapped the pad the poster vanished, before he slid it over to me. He also now reached down to a small bag he had with him and put a replica lightsaber on the table.
It was fashioned in a style that almost seemed like it was Qui-gon Jinn's blade, but had embellishment and touches added just to make it seem 'cool'.
"Where'd you get this, admiral?"
"Favan," he explained with a fond smile. "My son spent quite a bit of his allowance on this one."
I picked the hilt up and immediately felt nothing more than basic circuitry, plasteel and a tiny battery to give the weapon some imitation of life. Then I spotted the maker's label.
"He got this all the way from Naboo?"
"Indeed, he bought it from a Coruscant retailer that advertised on the Holonet, so this is the fruit of increased trade between Naboo and the rest of the Republic."
I pocketed the replica and datapad, "I'll get this signed, I'm sure the general will have little objection."
"Thank you, commander."
Poor Wullf, like all dads with beloved daughters, he didn't have it in him to say no to them on relatively trivial things like this.
I spent the next few hours with the admiral reviewing his already developed plan for the air and bombing campaign for starfighters over Mimban. There was little to really do besides a few tweaks here and there, which we both debated over and eventually agreed on.
Shadow Squadron had already gone on a scouting sortie and bombed a few droid concentrations they had spotted in the open near another mining town.
The eventuality we had to be ready for was heavier CIS units appearing. If an army of droids could be smuggled in, then the equipment that usually went with it would also not be a stretch. Somewhere in a warehouse or mine, out of sight and scanning ability, B1s could be assembling tank droids or fighter droids under the direction of the TXs.
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the CIS tanks and vehicles were ready and the only reason we hadn't seen them yet was simply the TXs wanting to consolidate them into large formations, so they weren't defeated in detail.
In the meantime, with our beachhead on Mimban secured, Master Tik had ordered the first large-scale offensive to be undertaken.
I was standing in my full armor in Briefing Room Three on the Resolute, with the pilots of Shadow, Wraith, Nanak and Green Squadrons.
Master Tik's holo appeared, relayed from the ground and I could sense he was actually standing next to a Saber tank.
"Soldiers of the 224th and 501st," he began. "In less than an hour, you will begin the campaign to retake this world. I will not mince words, it will be long and hard. The terrain will be our enemy as much as the CIS droid forces." A topographic overhead map appeared next to him, highlighting the beachhead in blue, whilst individual company unit flags and symbols appeared. "Due to the terrain and the fact that our forces would be bogged down with clearing a path through the forest, we will be heavily dependent on our carrier LAATs. The enemy will know this too and this will be their primary target in any engagement. There may come a time in the future when we won't have enough functional carriers to prosecute an attack. It is therefore up to the starfighter forces from the Venators to escort and keep the carriers alive. Strafing and bombing Rocket droids before they can become a threat.
"Our first targets will be a close cluster of enemy formations here, 160 kilometers due south-west of our beachhead. Recon has shown the presence of four droid battalions here, numbering roughly 1900 individual units. They are using four towns as their staging areas and as power sources to keep themselves functional. Unfortunately, the clearings around the town perimeters as they are now, is not sufficient surface area for our carriers to land at once. That is why our landing is going to be preceded by a calibrated air burst proton torpedo strike to clear out more of the surrounding forest."
I watched the simulated holo of such an attack. The torpedo was the ground attack variant and had been modified to effectively be a 'daisy cutter' bomb. The idea hadn't been mine at all and belonged to Master Tik. In retrospect it was a logical solution to the problem of a conventional force trying to be mobile in a rainforest. So this was a case of 'necessity being the mother of invention'. My only issue was that such a torpedo modification had only been simulated and not practically tested first.
The simulation showed an effective blast radius of 1.8 kilometers, which would result in just over eight square kilometers of rainforest being cleared out. The plan was currently to use four daisy cutter torpedoes to create a contiguous landing zone for the LAAT carriers. The problem was they couldn't be used too close to the towns for fear of killing the residents with residual overpressure effects, shattered glass and transparisteel.
So there would still be some limited bulldozing that would take place as a result. It was definitely better than cutting out entire highways worth of rainforest during an advance.
Master Tik continued the briefing with more detailed individual company assignments but soon closed things up.
"Good fortune and may the Force be with us all."
I was flying in my Fang fighter for this sortie and Wraith Squadron rendezvoused with Shadow in the atmosphere at four kilometers altitude over the Mimban beachhead.
So far my only complaint about my new fighter was the lack of an astromech riding along. The Fang was too compact and just didn't have the space to spare to engineer a docking cradle for R3. Many of the electronic warfare functions were therefore entirely automated and I would be relying on a data link directly to the other astromechs of Wraith squadron to manage my own ECM systems at the speeds required of them.
I keyed my radio, "Wraith One to Wraith and Shadow, turn to heading 225, speed 850, 2 km altitude."
We would be over the target area in eleven minutes.
Wraith would be the ones responsible for launching the daisy cutters and my own Fang fighter's launcher had one. Every Z-95 had been equipped with a belly pod that held a single daisy cutter, whilst their wings carried the standard concussion missile pods.
I tuned the com to only broadcast to Wraith, "Wraith One to Wraith Squadron, I said it once, I'll say it again. Just because Intel said there's no Vultures or Hyenas in the skies, doesn't mean we can slack off. B2-HAs will shoot at us and Rocket droids will be hounding us up here. They're quick, agile and hard to nail with cannons, so don't be frugal with missiles here. A concussion missile might take out multiple droids at once. If you spot CIS tanks, engage them with priority but only if you can be sure of your cannon shots, no strafing in the town."
The radio crackled with acknowledgements from my wingmen.
At five minutes out from target, my scanners began picking up low level tracking and targeting emissions from below.
The squadron's astromechs quickly analyzed it, reporting that they belonged to Rocket droid navigation and targeting systems.
"Wraith One to all squads, keep your altitude, let them come to us."
In air combat, 'high ground' mattered. It meant you had the potential energy to turn into speed in a dive, which gave you the advantage. The rocket droids would have to fight first against the planet's gravity to reach us and we didn't need to even see our targets.
At three minutes out, passive scans definitely showed a large mass of Rocket droids heading our way.
"All squads, go active!"
Scanning emissions from our side lit up the EM spectrum as targeting computers and astromechs began searching for missile locks.
B2-HAs on the ground returned the favor, whilst the Rocket droid formation was revealed to be numbering at about 93 strong.
My cannons were in rapid-fire mode already but the first shots would be down to the missiles from the Z-95s.
"Shadow squadron, priority on the B2-HAs, fire at will, fire at will."
Targeting emissions spiked and my cockpit started blaring with alarms.
Fifty-five homing rockets from the B2 hidden among the trees rose into the sky, whilst from the clouds the Rocket droids emerged at full thrust, aiming to clearly latch onto the fighters.
Concussion missiles leaped off the wings of the Z-95s en masse.
The range was so close, barely seconds later the fuses tripped and the sky lit up with fire as proton particles smashed and passed through air, creating hammer blows that turned a multitude of rocket droids into small metal chunks and debris that rained onto the distant canopy of the rainforest below.
39 of the flying droids made it through to intermingle with the Republic squadrons and things got very hectic.
I had to flip and roll my fighter to avoid a droid from grabbing onto my right wing, before I pulled HK's trick and used my ventral shielding to slap and crash into two droids. I rolled around to normalize my flight with the horizon, but pulled on the trigger to send a stream of bolts around in an arc that killed three droids, who were about to latch onto Wraith Two.
Despite desperate evasions and cannon shots, I could hear the screams already as pilots desperately tried to shake off the droids from their fighters. It wasn't long after that that my squadron's display started to show fighter losses from rocket droids treating themselves like missiles and self-destructing in groups, causing the loss of seven pilots across all the squadrons.
Then the B2-HA's rockets arrived and the astromechs were hard at work on the electronic battlefield as well, sending the less sophisticated seeker heads off to hit ghost targets and scrambling the avionics. The only problem was the sheer numbers of homing rockets we were dealing with.
"Missile defense Theta!" I ordered.
Every fighter dialed down the power of their guns and started firing as quickly as their capacitors could cycle in a forward arc, yawing their fighters left to right.
It was a desperate gamble of numbers, filling as much space as possible with defensive fire and hoping the rockets that got through the astromech's defense got caught up in the barrage.
"Shadow, counter fire now!"
The astromechs on the Y-Wings had not been idle, calculating the origin points of every rocket launch. A few seconds later, aiming points were given to the pilots and proton bombs began falling on calculated ballistic trajectories.
In the meantime, I was desperately playing whack-a-rocket with my cannons.
One more rocket barrage was launched before the rainforest below was rocked with huge explosions that sent wood shrapnel, shredded leaves and geysers of rock and earth into the air.
The shockwaves flashed outward and scattered low clouds into nothingness.
The astromechs doubled their efforts as the rockets screamed into the sky and searched for their prey.
My perceptions in the Force cast forward as I left behind merely being a pilot, relying only on instruments and my eyes.
I saw the entire battlespace, the rockets, every pilot, every fighter.
Crucially, I also now saw the interplay and emissions that were occurring in the EM spectrum as well. Each rocket's forward scanner cone, the wide scan emissions from every fighter. How the astromechs were sending out desperate emissions straight into the seeker heads of the rockets.
My technometry surged, shooting forth from my own fighter and Wraith Two's astromech.
The pieces came together.
The concentration and focus required was tremendous, but I put off all thought of what a headache I would have after this.
My left hand came up and I squeezed my hand into a fist, needing just that last bit of focus that came from the action to send forth my will and the technique into the Force.
In that moment, all the remaining rockets in the air stopped maneuvering, their control vanes unable to be guided by the small primitive computer inside, because it had been completely fried by my acceleration of the electrons to create multiple catastrophic short circuits throughout every logic gate, circuit and memory module.
In some cases, it was enough to set off the warhead, detonating it prematurely, in others, the rocket just coasted forward on its momentum and bounced harmlessly off shields - the warhead unable to detonate due to the small onboard computer dying.
I sat back in my pilot's chair, barely managing to activate the autopilot before the mother of all headaches slammed into me.
I am one with the Force, the Force is with me.
This pain is temporary, ephemeral, of the flesh. It can be soothed.
"Wraith Two through Five, fire your torpedoes," I hissed through gritted teeth.
"Roger, commander."
We were a mere 14 kilometers away from our target points and the four torpedoes burst with bright white and orange light into the sky.
They streaked forward at 993 meters per second.
In the meantime, I had almost fallen into a healing trance, just to bleed off the pain. Turns out the brain doesn't like it when you force nearly eighty plus perspectives on it at once and precision multitask on an order of magnitude greater than what you're used to.
Ahead just two kilometers from the edge of the towns, four bright flashes lit up the sky briefly.
Shockwaves visibly burst outward as the high humidity of the air caused massive bright white clouds to be briefly created.
It was as if a giant had just stood there and threw down a mighty sledgehammer. Trees, plants and animals that had the misfortune to be underneath were reduced to kindling or utterly destroyed. The very air ignited as the proton particles surged outward and a cauldron of fire lit up the sky briefly before turning into a mushroom cloud of black that climbed ever higher.
I tiredly keyed my radio into the command frequency, "Wraith One, detonations successful, landing zones cleared. Bring in the carriers."
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