Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Seed or Star Wars. They belong to their respective copyright owners. This story is not created with commercial aim. I make no money from it.

Phase 7: An Alliance born in fire

=RK=

Part 4

CIC

Republic cruiser "Reconciliation"

dark space

Watching the gutted wreck of her ship drift nearby through a camera feed physically pained Joanna. The admiral still couldn't believe that she and a lot of the crew survived the glancing blow. That Separatist battleship should have managed a better interception and the Freedom simply wasn't manoeuvrable enough to avoid it. With no time to go to the escape pods and the likelihood of survival even then slight to none, all Joanna could do was stare at the approaching death and pray.

At that time Veil cut off his infernal Battle Meditation making her and every other officer in the fleet stagger from the backslash. The next thing she knew the deck met her face when the ships collided. Somehow the inertial compensators across most of the Freedom held even if they couldn't entirely make up for the shock otherwise everyone on board would have turned into sauce. Instead, only about half the Star Dreadnought was a write-off with a corresponding percentage of the crew outright dead. There were thousands of wounded deeper in the ship with at least a third of them consigned to slow death from radiation poisoning too severe for even modern medicine. A lot of the rest were scared and crippled.

It was another miracle that the Freedom held as well as she did during their run in hyperspace. However, she did leave a large chunk behind. The Freedom's structural integrity was compromised, her systems were shot to hell too. At best she had only one last, probably short jump in her and then the greatest ship Joanna ever would command would be no more.

"How is the evacuation progressing?" Veil rasped from a nearby chair.

Joanna glared at the Sith. He looked like hell. She still didn't know what he did to save them back at Sullust but the consequences were very much evident. He was pale and frail looking. Even after the medics went over him and gave him Bacta shots, he still bled from the corners of his eyes and used a bandage to brush away those bloody tears. In his other hand he had a steaming plastic cup of some kind of acidic poison that even when keeping as far away from him as possible stank to hell.

Veil paid it no attention and took a long sip from the deadly cocktail. Instead of the damn thing burning a hole through his throat he simply sighed and even got a tiny bit of colour in his cheeks.

"Admiral? Will you answer?" The infuriating man continued as if he didn't look like a two week corpse revived by Jedi Sorcery.

"Thirty percent. We still have people trapped in the wrecked areas."

"Expedite rescue and evacuation efforts as much as possible. We're going back to Sullust soon." Veil said as if that was the most natural course of action instead of sheer insanity.

Joanna looked around and was glad to see that she wasn't the only one finding the general's suggestion... questionable. At that point she wished more than ever that she could disobey his orders.

"Sir, are you sure?" She tried.

"We no longer have the assets to take control of the Sullust system. However, it still contains resources we need to plunder and we need to neutralize as much of its strategic importance for the Separatists." The Sith explained in a monotone as if he found the conversation boring!

"There's still a powerful Separatist fleet back there. The same fleet that forced us to flee in the first place." Joanna pointed out the obvious.

"Were at a rough numerical parity now and despite the damage we suffered we will have an advantage in fire-power for as long as the Freedom lasts." Veil dismissed her concerns out of hand with that nonsensical response.

"The same Freedom we're evacuating right now? She may be unable to transition back to Sullust in one piece! Who will crew her?" Joanna snapped at the smug bastard.

"I'll need only the gunnery crews for the surviving emplacements and a skeleton crew in engineering. I'll handle the rest from the CIC." He stated matter of factly.

Well, if he wanted to get himself killed, who was she to go out of her way to stop him?

Admiral Holt grimaced. The need to follow his orders and safeguard his interests kicked in. That's what, she seethed at the very idea.

"What is your plan, general? Perhaps we can offer some input?" Joanna asked. She carefully didn't mention that the still incredulous crew of the Reconciliation looked like they would rather charge into the nine Corellian hells than go back to Sullust. Oh, right. They weren't mind-screwed, the lucky bastards.

"The plan? We go after a target the CIS can't afford not to defend and we take out their remaining fleet. This time we know what to expect. Who would have thought that the bastards would be crazy enough to fully network their droids and let them run wild without enough supervision?" Veil shook his head in wonder. "I saw it back in my day, you know. What happens when you have droids run whole fleets. Both the Republic and the Empire had their own incidents, because no one was crazy enough to do what the Separatists apparently did." He snorted. "Do you want to bet how long would it be before we all have to deal with a droid rebellion on top of everything, because this is how you get one."

Joanna blanched. She had studied such occasions in the academy. It was mandatory. The coordination exhibited by the enemy... she should have seen it immediately. Only Veil's battle meditation matched it. Perhaps it was because she was becoming accustomed to that technique that she didn't. Smart wardroids, which were fully networked. Oh. Kriff.

"That's actually a reason not to go back right now." Joanna pointed out. The Republic had to be informed of such a possible threat. Even if the Separatist's droids didn't rebel, if their capabilities back at Sullust were a benchmark, that might be actually a worse outcome.

"Joanna, now I know what we're facing. I did mention I've fought against an uppity droid that rebelled before, didn't I? First step is to neutralize their uncanny coordination. The best way is jamming. If they decide to play cute by dividing into individual battle groups again, doing so would be reasonable simple. While I'm quite wiped out right now, I still have a few minutes of Battle Meditation in me and that will give us a crucial advantage if we handle things right."

"If they don't play according to your plan?" Joanna asked.

"Then we'll have to pay a higher price for victory. What we can't afford to do is leave that enemy fleet intact behind us. Captain, Estimated completion time on repairs across the fleet?" With that question, Veil's tone made clear that he dismissed her concerns and made her fume with impotent fury.

"What do you plan to do with the Freedom?" Joanna asked.

"I'll hive her a proper funeral pile and tear out a huge chunk of Sullust's industry in one fell strike." Veil actually chuckled darkly.

Kriff him and his crazy Sith ways!

=RK=

Historical Notes

=RK=

"I think that after the coup, we were simply forgotten."

Colonel Re'yla Bevis, a former Jedi Padawan, told me so when I interviewed her two years ago. She was among the small group ordered by the Jedi Council to abandon their posts within the GAR and report to the closest Agri-corps administered world for the rest of the war.

While about half of them did comply with that directive and were more or ignored until general Veil's return to Coruscant, others were loath to abandon their posts. While the most visible and famous among them was general Ahsoka Tano, she was by no means the only one former Jedi Padawan who chose to side with the Republic...

There is one prevailing theme among the Padawans who left the Order before the Coup and Order 66. They formally enlisted in the GAR, which was busy snapping up every volunteers it could get. Many officers saw a precious opportunity in the former Jedi who decided to re-join the armed forces outside the purview and benefits offered to Jedi officers.

Those people, who were primary but not exclusively Padawans – there are records of five Jedi Knights who for various reasons quit the order and enlisted in the months leading to the Coup, had already demonstrated their capabilities in personal combat. Many of them were decent to good small unit leaders, fighter aces and sometimes had experience commanding larger formations. What they all lacked was proper training as officers... or any training for such a position in the first place. That oversight often compromised their tactical and strategic capabilities while in command, not to mention they ended up woefully unprepared for the administrative duties coming with command. Often the Jedi either ignored that part of their duties fostering it to their subordinates or caused various, sometimes grave accidents...

For a very good reason many historical volumes cite general Telar Valentra's logistic's genius as one of the primary reasons why the GAR "won" the war. Without the incredible feats of his organization, which oversaw all logistics needs of the Republic Navy and Army during the Clone Wars, the GAR would have collapsed under the sheer scale of its needs and mismanagement by people forced into command positions they were either not ready or suitable for.

The first measures to combat that tendency was undertaken by generals Veil and Valentra a few months after the war began. As fast as practical, the performance of the Jedi Officers was put under review. That led to many of them being demoted and in a few cases even dismissed as commanders. Others were offered proper training if they wanted to retain their current position. Unfortunately, the war turning to the worse and strife within the Jedi Order led to a lot of those measures to be implemented too late or not at all...

It was only after Second Geonosis that the GAR as a whole took institutional notice of the proper ways to utilise Force Adepts within the armed forces. Some of them could serve as excellent officers in charge of large formations, that was a truth proven by people like generals Veil, Kenobi and Adi-Mundi. Others could prove invaluable force-multipliers when leading small strike teams or even platoons. We saw both approaches during Second Geonosis and that's why that campaign is most often used as an example of this new kind of combined arms warfare. There, general Veil commanded in space and scored an astounding victory against powerful Separatists Armada. Jedi Master Shaak Ti led the first of its kind Orbital Shock Drop to take and neutralise Geonosis' planetary shield generator complex. During the ground campaign multiple Jedi commanded strike teams or small formations to very good effect and one of them was Ahsoka Tano during her last mission as a Jedi Padawan.

Geonosis proved the value of Force Adepts when they were properly meshed and working within the military's structure. Various elements within the GAR took notice and when the opportunity presented itself, they were fast to snap every single Jedi who wanted to leave the Order behind.

Some claim that general Ahsoka Tano was a special case. That her personal relationship with generals Kenobi and Veil were the reasons for the ease with which she was integrated within the army and helped her meteoric rise though the ranks. While there's a grain of truth in such accusations, it should be kept in mind that the GAR as a whole did its best to grease the wheels so to speak for every former Jedi in her shoes.

The only two instances of confirmed help general Tano received in her early days with the GAR was her placing in the Anaxes Military Academy, which was built from the ground up as one of the most prestigious training centres in the Republic. To this day the place is staffed with distinguished veteran officers and is one of the galaxy's premier military schools.

The second case is not so clear cut. Upon graduating with honours – not an easy feat for a former Jedi in the months following the Jedi Coup on Coruscant, Ahsoka Tano received a promotion to colonel and a regimental command. Perhaps general Kenobi did pull some strings to arrange it. Initially he did station her units on Coruscant and later used it to guard his HQ during his campaign to retake the Five Brothers and the whole Corellian system. Yet, in those days, colonel Tano did prove she had earned her stripes through multiple brutal campaigns that ultimately led to her first star...

However, her detractors often overlook the fact that for almost a full year Ahsoka Tano served as an XO for her Jedi Master, the disgraced former general Anakin Skywalker, with generals Shaak Ti, Obi-Wan Kenobi and even Delkatar Veil himself. On multiple instances she commanded squad, platoon and company sized formations with two confirmed occasions of taking charge of battalion sized units under general Skywalker. While a regimental command was a step up from her primary experiences, colonel Tano was a battle tested veteran. Even more important is the nature of the volunteer armies raised and trained after the initial shock of the Clone Wars began to pass. Those formations were almost exclusively green – from the raw new recruits who had to be forged into proper soldiers to the officers in charge.

Simply put, the Republic lacked enough officers to properly staff the already existing Clone Armies, which was one of the primary reasons why Chancellor Palpatine offered command to the Jedi in the first place. The further expansion of the armed forces with volunteers practically broke the system. There were whole armies with only a sprinkling of veteran NCO cadre drawn from the Clone Armies. The majority of officers were recalled retired people with experience in police or security forces. Most of them needed extensive training to handle their new duties and often the lack of enough officers was one of the reasons why newly raised formations had to wait before deployment unless the situation at the front was too dire. When looked in that light, colonel Tano was one of the most qualified officers within the two Army Groups trained on Anaxes...

from "History of the Forgotten ones:

The former Jedi Padawans in the Clone Wars"

first published by Anaxes War College