His ship had been taken away.
Sure, it was beneath the concerns of the newly minted Grand Moff, but he had grown attached to his ship. It had stayed with him since graduation from the academy and he had known a lot of the crew by name.
He refocused himself on his work. His contact with Vader had informed him of what his task was, but in the days that followed he had learnt the true scale of what he was being charged with.
His first take away from it was that the Emperor had a lot of trust in him to undertake this.
His second was that it was likely that by the end of this project he would be able to give the late Tarkin a run for his money in the grey hair department.
The files that accompanied this long term project were by the dozen too, with many under projects he would have to oversee and delegate.
The overarching goal of this project, was to secretly colonise and map out wild space, acting in near total secrecy to the rest of the galaxy.
The officers and enlisted men had been specially selected from the ranks of the empire. The main capture group had been orphans and those with no remaining family to leave behind, a clever strategy to reduce any homesickness or desire to see those the soldiers on this project would be leaving behind.
He was to oversee all aspects of the project, and Lord Vader was not exaggerating when he told him that he would have near limitless resources to call upon.
His new expeditionary fleet, as he was calling it, was gigantic. Headed up by his new flagship, an Imperial 2 Class Star Destroyer, The Voidwalker.
Under his command, was a new galactic fleet of 28 other imperial 2 classes, 8 refurbished Venators, 2 Lucrehulk cargo haulers and a vast sea of other smaller utility and support vessels.
In short, he was running out of room in the system for his fleet. The system, now secretly known as Gateway, had been scrubbed clean of imperial charts and was known now only to the Emperor, Lord Vader, and those within the system itself.
The plan was for the fleet to travel the galaxy by means of stabilising the wormhole in order to allow for travel. A team of scientists had been flown into the abandoned station, which had apparently previously been used for such experiments.
Whilst the scientists had been hard at work, it gave Jackson the breathing room to organise supply chains and other logistical nightmares such a challenge of running a galactic expansion brought.
His first move he had planned, would be to find a habitable planet. Ideally, in a busy system with many other planets that could be mined for resources.
Following that, further mapping and exploration would have to be conducted, and it was likely that new species would be discovered, but Jackson would address that mess when it came up, for now he could afford to shelve it.
The most critical part of this effort would be the lucrehulks, the massive trade federation haulers had been packed with a years worth of food stuffs, alongside planet side prefabs and everything needed to establish a colony.
The star destroyers under his command had a reduced amount of attached army personnel per carrier, in order to save the food requirements.
The next problem was both mapping and traversing wild space. The main problem was the dim connection to the hyperlane network, or even apparent lack of such a network.
In order to try and create a traversable network, specialised Gozanti cruisers had been designed, with the main portion of their bodywork being devoted to their hyperdrive. This allowed a more powerful entry into the hyper lanes, weakening the fabric of the system which allowed regular fitted hyperdrives to duck into and use the network too.
A flash of light from the space station caught the attention of Jackson, and much of his new bridge crew. An arc of white lightning jetted out of the station and struck the vortex at the centre of the system.
The whirling darkness rippled, and all the ships in the system juddered at the wave of energy leaving the black hole.
"Lab station is making contact sir, they say that they're ready for transport." Comm ops called.
"Instruct the nearest Gozanti to enter." He replied, voice terse.
A murmur was heard behind him as the order was relayed, and the front gozanti cruiser broke formation to press forward.
It aligned with the centre of the wormhole, and triggered its hyperdrive, powering forward into the vortex and vanishing from sight.
Silence reigned over the bridge as all the personnel watched. It was broken two moments later by Comm ops again. "The station believes they were successful."
"Believes?" He questioned.
"Yessir, they are theorising that the exit of the wormhole was so distant on the galactic map that they cannot make contact with us." The officer replied.
Jackson sighed. "Okay, start sending the fleet through."
Over the next eight hours, more and more ships fired their hyperdrive and powered into the wormhole.
His own ship was scheduled to enter about halfway in the process, and he paced nervously as they aligned for their jump, with no guarantee of survival.
If it didn't work, he just hoped that the speed at which they entered the vortex would rip them apart and kill them instantly.
He braved himself for death as the Voidwalker powered towards the centre of the black hole.
The familiar blue of a hyperspace tunnel was overridden by the darkness of the vortex, and the ship spent a minute in a tunnel of nightmarish darkness, before they were ejected into real space again.
They were in deep space, at no specific system. Looking around, it appeared that all the vessels that had been sent through had made it.
Jackson held his sigh of relief.
His ship moved clear of the entry zone and they turned to face the point at which they had arrived.
It was an inexplicable phenomenon, watching a ship enter the area. A ripple formed in the fabric of space itself as the first Lucrehulk tore into the system, a burst of light behind it before the tear in real space closed.
"Contact the ship that just entered the system, have them put long range scanners to use, look for habitable planets." Jackson ordered. "And move them away from the entry zone."
It took a moment, but the massive engines flared on the giant hauler as it moved clear.
After another 3 hours, the entire expeditionary fleet had arrived, minus the designated vanguard left behind at Gateway.
"Scanners have a hit sir." Fleet ops called, and Jackson stalked over. "A relatively near trinary star system, 7 planets in orbit. Two guaranteed habitable, one orbits the other as a moon."
Jackson nodded. Finding such a place was imperative and it was very fortunate they had found one so quickly.
"Have the pathfinder gozanti's ready to jump to the coordinates. Prepare the rest of the fleet to standby too." Jackson ordered.
The extended command bridge burst into action as his orders were relayed, the pathfinder ships moving through the fleet to lead the jump.
The process of breaching into hyperspace to create hyperspace lanes was a technology the empire had invested a massive amount of funds into.
It was theorised that the known galaxies' hyperlane network had been established by an enormous precursor civilisation. That was the general consensus. From that point, there were many splintered schools of thought as to who those precursors were.
Many believed it was the Rakata empire, an old, force wielding civilisation that dated back over 35,000 years. The Rakata had accomplished many feats, the most interesting to Jackson being that of the Starforge.
Jackson was brought back to reality as the pathfinders breached into hyperspace with a massive blue glow, before their images warped and they left real space.
Jackson returned to his office to look over more files whilst they waited for the all clear from the pathfinder group.
The quantity of installations the Emperor wanted amounted to him having his little kingdom. When being briefed, it had been made clear that this project was significantly long term, and more information and orders would follow the establishment of his control.
He didn't truly understand the purpose of his task, but he wasn't about to question orders from the Emperor.
A report arrived from navigation, produced in joint with the powerful scanning array of the accompanying Lucrehulks, which had attempted to denote their position in the galaxy.
Using many methods that he skipped over, the author of the report had determined that they were deep in the galactic west, with the closest known system as Rakaata Prime, which wasn't close at all.
Chances were, they would meet another civilisation before meeting their own.
His desk comm beeped. "Jackson here."
"The pathfinders have confirmed their jump, the fleet is on standby." Navigation ops informed him.
"Drop a beacon with the new coordinates, and make the jump."
The hyperspace tunnel as they jumped cast the fleet in blue as they approached the new system, the fleet having all jumped as one unit for maximum safety.
They greeted the rest of their fleet at the new system, the ships waiting above the habitable planet.
"Begin preparations for a colony on the planet, start the process on it's moon too." Jackson ordered.
It wasn't long before haulers started departing from the twin Lucrehulks. Their landing zone had been identified on a coast in the northern hemisphere, surrounded by mountains.
The amount of material they had onboard the gigantic haulers was near limitless, with the Emperor willing to commit much more. Their end goal was to become self sufficient however, and to act independently of the wider structure of the empire.
Following the establishment of the colony, the Emperor had informed him of a mass relocation scheme of galactic refugees that would be initiated, populating his new worlds.
Alongside his nation building tasks, a vast array of secretive scientific projects had to be undertaken, with cloning appearing to be of a special interest among those tasks.
But that would have to wait, for now, the first steps of project Resurgence were beginning.
AN: Very short chapter. I've been sat on this for a very long time, unsure of how to write the rest of the book. Lore wise, this will feed into the founding of the first order.
Looking forward Chapter wise, I'm honestly thinking of just time skipping to post battle of Endor, with the imperial remnant sort of move with the shadow council and All.
Please let me know what you think in reviews.
Cheers,
Dududueheh