39:7:3 GrS
Sanctuary of Ignato, Lettow, The Core Worlds
"The test will now begin." Ignato intoned. The ghost was sitting on the steps of his miniature pyramid, hands clasped on the pommel of a spectral saber he had started wearing some days ago. Whether it was mere memory he had brought along into his unlife or it was an actual weapon remained a mystery to me.
I didn't reply to his words. Instead I raised my right hand and focused.
Out of the darkness of the corners of the room flew a boulder. I spun to the right, mustered the Force, and stopped it dead on. Then I pushed my upraised hand forward and sent the boulder careening into a pillar.
A wave of head sized stones came at me from the left. A wave of force broke the charge.
Two great stone rectangles dropped from the ceiling. I grunted as I caught the great stone at the same time, my hands now raised above my head. I grunted from the effort as I wrenched my hands to the side, making the stone blocks crash down to either side of me.
Cloth targets popped out of slits in the chamber's walls. I leapt into action, pushes being commanded by my will and hand motions, sending the previously deflected stones back into the air with sweeping arm waves. Thunk, thunk, thunk went the stones as they tore through the ancient synth-cloth with precision that I couldn't imagine wielding a year go.
Finally, with Force imbued ability, I jumped up to an alcove just below the ceiling of the chamber and levitated a stack of thin stone discs, sending them spiraling along the tiled roof to cut vines that hung as target. Then I jumped out of alcove, flipping a few times on the way down before landing before Ignato.
The ghostly lord was silent for a span of time. Then he looked up at me.
"You have shown commendable improvement in your mastery of the Force." He told me. "The rot that was put into your initial instruction has been removed, for the most part."
"You honor me, Mentor." I replied, bowing at the waist to the ghost. "I could not have accomplished this without your instruction."
I remained bowing, as appropriate for a youth addressing an elder in the tradition of Alsakan. Ignato hadn't elected to educate me in the social traditions of Xendor's time and had been disdainful of the customs of the Inquisitorius, so he had instructed me to address him in the manner of my people. I felt it was a curious hang up, especially for a ghost, but it was what it was.
"I am aware." Ignato paused and seemed to mull over his thoughts before continuing. "However it was not the way of Lettow, or even the Jedi in my time, to rely solely on teachings passed down from your instructor."
I nodded. "Such is also the way of the Inquisitorius."
"Good, good." Ignato floated upright, "So now the time has come for you to depart these halls, such as they are. Now is the time for you to apply what has been taught to you here. Further master yourself, refine your skills, become worthy of what I can teach you. Do not return until you have gained these victories, such are the words of Ignator of Lettwo, Tirones Andorak."
I absorbed the words in silence. In the silence that followed Ignato's words, I felt an unseen pressure on my left shoulder. The guidance of the Force to aid me, called by my unspoken command.
"Understood, Mentor." I straightened out of my bow. "I will return, one day, though I cannot say when my campaign will allow such a lull as this again to return to your side."
"Opportunities are not found, they are created Tirones. Gain knowledge, gain power, gain laurels of victory, whatever you choose to pursue, I will judge their worth when you lay them at my feet." Ignato rebuked. " You will return to this planet that I have foreseen. Now depart and earn my favor."
That was a final dismal, as plain as a clear sky. Bowing once again, I turned and walked upwards, out of the chamber.
It had been a training that could best be classified as quick, dirty and remedial though that didn't take away from its effectiveness at all.
I had known that we were being sabotaged during the training the initiates underwent at the Citadel. I hadn't understood the degree of it until Ignato had started correcting my errors.
Stances had to be adjusted and mental hangups needed to be removed. It was almost astounding to be informed just how much of my Force abilities had been sabotaged in even the simple mnemonics used in pushes and pulls. They had twisted the very ways I approached the use of the Force so that I was actively hampering myself. It made me furious.
At the very least, Ignato had been somewhat complimentative of my ability to overcome the limitations to my teachings. I was poorly comforted by that. How dare they prevent me from becoming so much more.
I decided that they had been jealous of me, those half trained padawans and Temple rejects. So bitter from their own failures that they could not bear to witness anyone rise above their pathetic level. Well I had shown them in the end and I wouldn't stop now.
I would venture once more out into the black beyond, turning over every stone that my fellow lap dogs had left unturned, hunting down every cold case that had ever been assigned to the Inquisitorius. I would constantly reforge myself in victory after victory until I had transformed into someone greater than what I was now. Nothing would stop my rise.
Not the rebels, not the fools who claimed to rule the Empire, not even my own fellows.
I would return to Ignato in triumph and drink deep of the well of mysteries he had dangled before my eyes. Mysteries and magicks that would befuddle even the more learned loremasters of the old Sith Empire. It would all be mine.
39:7:2 GrS
Ottabesk System
I was starting to lose my patience.
The plan had started off rather successfully. The fleet had reloaded the Army contingent from the surface of Lettow, leaving behind a barebones garrison to keep the newly created bases maintained. Then we had decamped from the system, traveling through hyperspace to Thoadeye. After a brief dick measuring contest with the local system defense forces over who had the right of way -we did, obviously- the fleet had thrown itself down the semi-charted hyperspace lane that Masal's researchers had mined from copies of copies of datanav cores that were last up to date two centuries ago.
Obviously, it had been very slow and cautious going. Preliminary reports said we'd need to refuel the hypermatter tanks again before making another journey like that. So we weren't going to be going back the way we came.
It left a sour taste in my mouth that it was my ship, the Adamant that was the main cause of this. Something about the matter didn't set right with my gut.
But still, we had made it. It being a point well outside the oort cloud of Ottabesk system, where we had laid in wait, observing the activity of Teradoc's besieging forces.
He had a good system in place: Star destroyers and heavy cruisers bombarded the planetary shield while picket forces patrolled the space around the planet, probably looking for us. And he rotated them out regularly.
Because Kosh Teradoc, as was befitting of a man who would one day style himself as the High Admiral, was a particularly ambitious son of a Trandoshan. He wasn't just fighting loyalist forces in the Deep Core like here on Ottabesk, he was also fighting everyone else who was duking it out in the manner of Harrsk.
Rogue Moffs, brevet captains and ambitious power climbers had flooded into the Deep Core following Harrsk's decampment from the front. Teradoc was probably the largest fish in the pond aside from Harrsk, and that meant he was fighting everyone in his empire building efforts.
He was damn good at it too, but he only had so many ships he could rotate to every front he was fighting in. He had to move ships to where they were most needed, and fill in the holes they left with other formations he was moving around. That included his own personnel ship, the Imperial-II Star Destroyer Lancet.
Intercepted intelligence had been used to track the rough movement of Teradoc and his ship across the eastern Deep Core, and since we had already put Ottabesk on his radar as a priority objective, he needed to keep a sizable contingent to maintain its siege. So there would either be a large grouping of cruisers or one star destroyer as the cornerstone of the siege line.
And it finally came to be, that after fifty-one hours of waiting in the black void, peering at static dominated video feeds that were being taken and transmitted by drones we had seeded the system upon our arrival. We watched with anticipation as the gray dagger slid back into reality, taking up position on Ottabesk's equator. In response, a smaller grouping of cruisers blinked away into hyperspace. If luck was on our side, then they'd be heading someplace that was far away enough from Ottabesk that they wouldn't be able to return to assist Teradoc in time.
If luck was feeling more like a bastard today, we'd just have to sink them all.
"On your command, my lord." Masal uttered next to me. I quickly glanced over at him. There were stress lines on his brow and deeper crow's feet next to his eyes now. The relentless campaign we had been on for a number of months was starting to tell physically. Soon it would spread to mentally as well, lowering the fleet's fighting effectiveness.
All the more reason to hit Teradoc with everything I commanded.
"Priority target is the bridge, captain. Drop us right on top of them." I said.
"Your will be done, Inquisitor." Masal saluted and barked out commands to his aides and to the pit crews. There was the familiar phantom lurching in my stomach as the white and blue swirls of hyperspace appeared, swallowing the fleet into its maw.
In a matter of heartbeats, we jumped out, and I grinned at the sight of the superstructure of the Lancet below the Adamant. We'd done it. We were right on top of them and they didn't have a clue.
"Fire!" Bellowed the gunnery officers in the bridge pit above, and a torrent of emerald turbolasers began to pummel the batteries of the Lancet. Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw the Pacer and Relentless add their own batteries to the effort.
Then from the comms alcove on my left. "Attention crew of the Imperial-II Star Destroyer Lancet, this is your one and only chance to surrender. We promise you that your trials will be swift and humane. Again, this is your only chance to surrender."
"Picket ships on the planetary poles are turning our way." Navigation reported to Masal. He nodded and ordered our own frigates and our one Vindicator class to slip around the current engagement and block the traitor's relief effort.
A shrill alarm broke the mostly silent concentration that had enveloped the bridge. It was coming from navigation.
"Approaching hyperspace shadows!" The station's officer called out. "Two of them! They'll be on top of us any second, both of them off our starboard bow!"
Masal didn't curse, but I felt his emotions take a very mean turn. Before either Masal or myself had a chance to respond, an aide bounded down the catwalk at a run. You didn't run on the bridge unless something was very wrong in the Imperial Navy.
"Sir. Report from Analytics down below." The aide handed a datapad to Masal. "This isn't the Lancet, sir. They're reporting that we're engaging the Yoke of Palpatine, another one of the Imperial-IIs that Teradoc has."
My eyes widened. If this wasn't the Lancet and Teradoc wasn't onboard, that would have to mean that we'd engaged one of the transfers that had gotten here ahead of the main formation.
Which meant! I spun back around to look out the bridge windows to see an awful sight.
Another Imperial-II class transitioned out of hyperspace, surrounded by a dozen cruisers and another star destroyer bringing up the rear of the formation. They weren't right on top of us but they definitely saw us immediately as I could barely make out TIE squadrons emerging from hangars as the traitor's quickly sketched themselves into a battle line to face us.
Then, as if the Force itself wanted to prove how much luck wasn't on our side currently, three more ships left hyperspace. I didn't need the scanner station in the bridge pit below to tell me what those ships were, two decades of learning the tools the Emperor's enemies used against his empire allowed me to know them by profile alone.
One Correllian CR90 corvette and two Pelta frigates, undoubtedly surrounded by a bevy of escorting X-Wings.
The Rebels had arrived in the Deep Core.
"Sithspit." I cursed.
A/N: While it is too early for this to be the New Republic offensive of 4 ABY, it isn't too early for there to be a New Republic stronghold on Recopia, a Core World that was among the first in the region to join the New Republic. And wouldn't you know, but it is awfully close to the Deep Core as well!
And of course Teradoc couldn't be punked out of the action like that either. We're starting up a pretty lengthy battle segment here guys, so I need all the players to be on the board before things pick up next chapter, which will be creatively named: The Battle for Ottabesk.
Or maybe Ottabesk Encounters? Mission to Ottabesk? Ottabesk Occurrences?