100

A Young Girl’s War Between the Stars

100

“Thirty seconds to drop.”

I watched as we drew closer to the Saak’ak, holding onto the grab bar in the cockpit as the pilot and copilot worked. At the twenty second mark, the hatch leading back to the drop compartment closed and I heard the sounds of depressurization. At the ten second mark, I felt a faint thump through the ship as the hatches opened.

“That’s the green light,” the copilot announced as she hit a switch to signal it was time to go, and I felt excitement as the group disembarked. “They’re away. Approaching the hull… Hard lock. They’re onboard.”

“Good,” I nodded as we passed through the force field protecting the Lucrehulk’s port hangar bay. Below, I saw racks and racks of Vulture droids just waiting to deploy. Those would be the closest to the bay exits, but I knew the next compartment over would contain the majority of the drop ships. The bulkhead doors between the two compartments would open when they were ready to deploy, allowing them to move troop transports into the hangars and giving them space to conduct any last minute loading.

It looks like they haven’t decided to launch the ground invasion yet. But it would only take a few hours to open those doors, move the transports up, and then start deploying.

Following the instructions from the Lucrehulk, we landed not terribly far inside the docking bay, away from everything else. Given the turrets mounted on the ceiling above us, that was obviously by design—so that if they opened fire on our ship, its destruction wouldn’t lead to any splash damage of their own equipment.

“Leave as soon as I’m out. No point leaving the transport here if they decide to preemptively destroy it,” I said as the ship touched down and the wings folded up.

“Aye, ma’am. Good luck,” the pilot nodded.

I left the cockpit and took the main ramp out the back. Looking around, I spotted a silver protocol droid waddling over. “Greetings. I am TC-14, at your service. This way, please.”

Following along, I extended my senses and spun up a scanning formula, tracking our progress through the ship. The droid led me towards the bridge, but stopped at a room just before the connecting corridor that led to the bridge. As the droid stepped into the room, I reached out and hit the door lock button, then turned and ran at Force speed down the corridor towards the open bridge I could see at the end of the corridor.

What sort of idiot leaves the hatch to their bridge open when an enemy ship is in the vicinity and may engage in combat, let alone when a potential enemy sends an obvious Trojan horse over to board your vessel?

An alarm sounded overhead when I hit the three quarter mark and I keyed up on my radio as the hatches in question quickly began to close. “Breach! Breach! Breach!”

Leaping forward, I dove through the gap between them and rolled, coming up into a crouch and drawing my hand cannon and lightsabers as the droids on the bridge turned and drew their own weapons. Throwing out my sabers, I sent them arrowing through the air like missiles, punching neat little holes through droids as I opened fire on one of the living bridge crew who had drawn a weapon.

“Hands above your heads! Step away from the consoles and lie face down on the ground!” I yelled, putting my helmet in PA mode so they would hear me over the sounds of blasters firing and droids being destroyed. Switching over to my comms, I instructed, “Bridge team, breach!”

A sound from above drew my eyes and I spotted a circle of metal starting to glow in the ceiling. A moment later, the new hatch popped off, revealing a glowing temporary force field that had been placed over it to contain the air. Mandos jumped down into the bridge and began securing the prisoners. As they did, I collected my lightsabers and marched over to the Viceroy in his red robes and funny hat.

“This act of aggression will not go unpunished!” the neimoidian yelled.

Chuckling, I shook my head. “It’s truly a pleasure to meet you again, Viceroy.”

The alien blinked and the anger and indignation I’d felt from him guttered like a candle in the wind. “That voice is familiar…”

Reaching up, I began removing my helmet. I felt it the moment dawning realization set in, and fear oozed off of him. “Oh no. No! Not you! Not again!”

“Me. Again.” I smiled and the neimoidian man collapsed into a nearby seat, cradling his face in his hands.

“What do you want?” he moaned, despair and defeat rolling off of him.

Attaching my helmet to the magplate on my side, I hummed, feigning indecision. “The better question is, what can I get? I think we both know the truth. You, Viceroy, are a pawn. A useful idiot. You can and will be replaced at the drop of a hat. So unfortunately, I’m not sure there’s actually anything you can offer me. And if you can’t offer me anything, then…”

I left the statement handing and another moan escaped him. “I, I know our true plans for Naboo!”

“You’ll send more Lucrehulks full of droids. Once you’ve got enough to win a decisive victory, you’ll send the droids and their armor down and roll over the countryside on the way to Theed, where you’ll then take the capital. There, you’ll either force Queen Amidala into negotiating a surrender on your turns, leaving Naboo effectively a vassal state of the Trade Federation, or she’ll die in the fighting—”

My comms lit up as Allaya keyed up. I held up a hand to the Viceroy as she made her report. “Droid control center captured! Their droids are down.”

“Good work. Asajj, sitrep?”

“Engine room secure. We were pinned down by droids, but we’re good now!”

“Excellent. Continue with the plan,” I instructed, before turning back to the Viceroy. “Now, where was I? Ah, right. Queen Amidala. It will be such a tragedy the queen died in the fighting, but you’ll make sure another one is put forward to replace her immediately. One who will surrender on your terms and agree to Naboo becoming a TradeFed vassal state. Because you want the plasma to fuel your ships and your droid armies. Does that about cover it?”

Viceroy Gunray’s mouth worked opened and closed for a moment, before he went limp where he sat, defeat once more rolling off of him. “Yes.” Quietly, he asked, “Are you going to kill me?”

I snorted quietly, sending him an amused look. Regardless of how much as I would like to kill him on a personal level, no. The irony was that I would do more damage to the enemy side by sending him back than I would by killing him, and risking them replacing him with someone competent. Not likely in the cesspit of Neimoidians the TradeFed were choosing their leaders from, but it was possible. Still, you shouldn’t tell the enemy that to their face. They might actually listen to the unsolicited advice and do something to compensate, likely by hiring more competent underlings.

“No. It’s going to look much better when we negotiate in good faith, hand you over, and your people break whatever deal we come to. That is how you can be useful to me. As a living example of the perfidy of the Trade Federation.” Glancing away from the Viceroy, I ordered, “Get the crew secured and move them to the flight deck so we can transport them.”

Glancing at the instrument panels and the complete lack of reaction from the other ships, I hummed in thought. Right now, at this moment, the enemy were completely unaware that they had just lost their commander or that we had captured one of their ships. We had the element of surprise. That would end the moment they tried to check in with the Saak’ak or we did something to alert them.

I need to use this opportunity while we still have it. There are five more Lucrehulks. Can we pull the same trick twice and capture another? Are they that lax in their security? Assuming we do, we could perhaps successfully capture a second, maybe even a third. But eventually, the ruse will fail. How much of our hand do I want to reveal here and now, in the opening moves of the war? Surprise is our biggest advantage, but an advantage we don’t use is an advantage wasted. So it must be spent judiciously…

“Take the Viceroy with you,” I ordered one of the Mandos passing by. He nodded and slapped a pair of cuffs on the Viceroy, before putting him in line with the other Neimoidian crew. As soon as they were out and the bridge emptied, I cast an illusion over myself, disguising myself as the Viceroy. Then, I looked at the comms display and selected the next closest Lucrehulk.

The other side picked up and a comms officer sent me a startled look, before transferring me to who I assumed was the captain. “Viceroy?”

“It has come to my attention that some of our captains may be neglecting their duties. I am coming over to conduct an inspection of your troop readiness immediately.”

“Uh, yes Viceroy. Of course. Right away,” the captain nodded, and the call disconnected.

Dropping the illusion, I sent a quick message to our transport and then another to the troops to let them know we were leaving. Then, I hurried over to the main flight deck, just in time to see the Kom’rk land. Switching to private comms with the men, I ordered, “Two of you, ready a shuttle and escort our prisoners to the Redoubt. The rest, load up. We’re going to hit another Lucrehulk.”

“Oorah!”

I nodded as they fell out, the marines I would be traveling with hurrying up the ramp and into the transport, along with my Padawans. Heading up to the cockpit, I looked over the controls and confirmed what I had hoped to find—Cindy had been busy upgrading our transports with the same hologram tech as our stealth ship and my Rusted Silver. “Get a scan of one of their shuttles, then set our holo emitter to mimic it. Then, we’re going to fly over to this Lucrehulk,” I tapped the screen, “nice and easy. Just coming over for a routine inspection. We’ll drop the kids off just outside the barn doors like we did for this one. You won’t be able to pull out as that would look suspicious, so be ready with the shields just in case.”

“Roger that,” the pilot agreed and the pair got to work.

We’ll take the second one, then pull back to the Redoubt. Then, we’ll take out the remaining Lucrehulks first, before focusing on the other ships.

Nodding to myself, I mentally prepared for what was to come as the ship lifted off and took us out of the hangar.

Watching the big holographic screen, Padme frowned as she watched the transport disappear inside the big donut ship again, before a pair of shuttles left it—one of them heading for another donut ship, the other approaching them. “What’s going on? Where did our ship go and why are they sending out shuttles?”

Capt. Keen hummed. “It’s probably—”

“Incoming tightbeam from the shuttle. They’re using our team’s authentication codes,” the comms officer spoke up.

“Put them through,” Capt. Keen replied from where she sat. A moment later, audio piped in from the shuttle.

“Captain, we’re coming in with a group of prisoners and a couple of HVTs.”

“I see. We’ll have troops standing by to escort them to the brig. What’s the status of our Mandalore?” the captain asked.

There was a brief pause, then, “She took the transport and the rest of the troops to go capture another Lucrehulk, ma’am.”

The captain frowned, lacing her fingers in her lap as she closed her eyes and thought for a moment. Finally, she nodded. “Very well. Dock and we’ll handle the prisoners and the shuttle. Keen out.” The captain shut off the comms with the press of a button on her chair, before ordering, “XO, see to it we’ve got accommodations prepared for our guests.”

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“Aye, ma’am!” another Mando responded, before heading for the bridge exit.

Looking to her comms officer, Capt. Keen ordered, “Send a message to the rest of the fleet. Have them prepare fighters and make ready for an alpha strike the moment the Mandalore returns. Send them our sensor data and highlight the ships that haven’t been captured for them.

“Captain?” Padme asked. “What’s happening?”

The captain sent her a calculating look for a moment, before asking, “How well do you know Tanya, really?”

“I’ve spoken with her by holomail a few times outside of the three times we’ve met, now,” Padme answered, unsure where the captain was going with that line of questioning and how it related.

“Right now, she’s capturing another of those big ships full of droids. When she’s done, she’s either going to come back to the Redoubt or try it a third time. I doubt she’ll go back to the well again though—the odds of one of the enemy captains figuring out something is wrong are too great. When she comes back, the shooting will start. Redoubt, being the only ship visible to the enemy at the moment, will be the most exposed and attract the most danger. We’ll need to hold off the enemy in time for our forces to deal with them. We’ll deploy more fighters while our backup does the same, but it’ll take a few minutes for their fighters to reach us. Minutes during which we’ll be vulnerable.”

“We’re going to be fighting? But I thought she went over there to capture their leader?” Padme questioned, fear making her body tremble and her stomach and back muscles tighten. Quieter, she muttered, “I thought I would be safe here.”

“Certainly safer than if you were on the ground,” Capt. Keen pointed out. “And yes. Did you expect us to remove an enemy fleet blockading your planet without a single shot fired?”

Padme winced. She had, in fact. In her mind, she had expected things to play out a certain way from the moment she involved Tanya.

The Confederates would show up with a few ships. They would threaten the Viceroy’s own ships, which according to her analysts, were effectively repurposed civilian model vessels with guns strapped onto them—not actual warships. The Viceroy would see he was outgunned and back down. Trade to Naboo could resume. And all she’d have to do would be to leave the Republic, which may take upwards of a year or two to make official. Plenty of time to get her people used to the idea, or to give the Confederacy time to peter out or even be eliminated if they misstepped, leaving Naboo neutral and free to rejoin the Republic if the need arose.

And if it didn’t… Having skimmed most of that agreement she’d signed, it certainly looked like Naboo would be better off in the long term if they stayed with the CIS, on the taxes alone—never mind them not taking a third of the fuel pumped and over sixty percent of the profits for themselves, which is what the Trade Federation were doing when they had their people running the plasma extraction facilities. Assuming the war ended in the next five years and the CIS were still around, and Naboo was still part of it, then in twenty years they would be experiencing an economic boom the likes of which Naboo hadn’t seen since the discovery of the plasma core. They would be set to become the jewel of the Outer Rim on profits alone.

It was a good vision. One that might still come to pass, at least in part. But Padme was quickly coming to realize that it was going to get worse before it got better. It was very likely to get bloody soon.

Her thoughts spun outwards from there, to the wider political landscape. In a very real way, this was the first official opening blow of the war. It set the tone for things to come. And what she was seeing was that the TradeFed were being allowed to do what they liked as long as it was outside of the Core, while the Republic Senate sat around and endlessly debated what to do, while the populations of planets like Naboo were going to be pressured into capitulating to the Trade Federation’s demands.

If the Republic aren’t willing to step in against the Trade Federation now, who’s to say they would do so for any planet outside of the Core? The Confederates are right. We’ve been abandoned and the Republic itself is corrupt.

She was pulled from her thoughts some time later as movement caught her eye and one of the bridge crew reported, “Two shuttles inbound, captain.”

“Incoming transmission from the lead shuttle. Identifier shows it’s our Kom’rk transport,” the comms officer reported.

“Put it through.”

A moment later, a color hologram of Tanya standing inside the transport popped up in front of them. “Pass this along to the rest of the fleet: Commence the operation. Synchronize batteries and open fire. Deploy fighters and take out the bridge sections of those other Lucrehulks first, then move on other targets. Make sure to focus fire on any ship that looks like it’s trying to run. I don’t want word getting out until we’re ready.”

“Yes, Mandalore,” the captain saluted, before the feed shut off. “You heard her. Signal battle stations, relay that to the rest of the fleet, then synchronize firing.” Standing up, Capt. Keen grabbed her helmet from where it had been sitting beside her chair and pulled it on, as the few bridge crew who weren’t wearing them began putting them on.

Overhead, speakers played a long note of sound like a whistle that raised in pitch halfway through while half the lights shifted to red. “General quarters, general quarters! All hands, man your battle stations! Set material condition Zerek throughout the ship. Section leaders report ready status to DC—”

Padme looked around a bit wide eyed as people began strapping into their seats or clamping mag boots to the floor and the blast doors shut over the hatch leading to the bridge. Capt. Keen took her by the shoulders and dragged her over, grabbed the collapsed vac suit helmet from under her robe, and dumped her in the chair the captain had just vacated. Popping the helmet out, the captain thumped it down over Padme’s head, locking into place on the vac suit under her borrowed robe, before reaching down and strapping Padme into the seat with the belts.

“Stay there,” the Mando ordered, and Padme nodded.

“Shuttles are in!”

“T minus one minute to synchronized fire action!”

“Charging main guns!”

Padme’s mouth went dry as her heart hammered in her chest. Her hands gripped the arms of the seat hard enough that her knuckles turned white as her stomach did flips.

“Thirty seconds!”

Captain Keen’s hand came to rest on the top of the seat above Padme’s head as she spoke. “Light ‘em up. Full sensor sweep. I want to know their positions down to the inch. Tightbeam the data back to the fleet for targeting adjustments.”

“Twenty seconds!”

“Enemy shields coming online, captain! They’re turning and burning hard for us.”

“Launch fighters after the first volley.”

“All hands, brace for fire mission in ten! Nine, eight, seven—”

This is it, Padme thought.

“Firing!”

Padme hadn’t been sure what to expect actually being on a vessel engaged in combat. Everything she had seen in holovids showed ships firing at each other in space hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles away from each other—with the occasional fight happening so close it felt like someone on one ship could have reached out and touched the other. A glance at the range indicator on screen showed they were much, much further from the enemy than in those holovids. Those videos showed ships occasionally shuddering as their massive weapons fired, or shaking and sparks flying as they took fire. Explosions from other ships would rock and shake the screen, practically deafening the crew on screen, which logically she knew just wasn’t possible given the actual physics involved. Fire from ships crossed distances practically instantly, unless it would be more dramatic for it to be slower.

This wasn’t that.

It felt like something slammed into the ship as the entire vessel abruptly lurched as the inertial dampeners partially failed in their job, throwing the queen into the restraints hard enough to rattle her brain in her skull. She felt like she’d been rear ended by a flying speeder. Looking around the bridge, none of the crew seemed affected at all. Even the captain standing beside her had only shifted a bit with the motion before righting herself.

But that became a distant thought when she took in the scene displayed on the big fishbowl hologram around them. Realistically, she knew that the enemy ships were far, far away—far enough that they should be little more than specs against the black of space. The cameras or sensors on the ship allowed them to see the enemy as if they were right there in front of them.

A countdown timer on the screen began and, seconds later, all but two of the big Lucrehulk ships abruptly erupted—large sections of the spheres in the center of the ‘donut’ shape of their hulls suddenly shattering into a debris field that rapidly expanded, shredding the spheres and the interior of the donuts. Lights went out in places and fires flared visibly in others before abruptly flashing out. In one case, secondary explosions followed from within the donut ring before the ship exploded, breaking apart into large chunks and forcing the smaller ships around it to scatter.

“Enemy fighters deploying!”

“Launch the rest of our fighters. Main battery, fire at will. Wait for the enemy ships to close range before launching missiles.”

The other ships reacted like a nest of angry insects that had been kicked, as smaller craft boiled out of them, filling the black around them with flashes of silver. On the screen, each of them was marked with a little red triangle around them, while their own fighters swarmed out of the ship as green triangles and from behind them somewhere, Padme caught a glimpse of more green triangles rushing their way.

“Rusted Silver just deployed.”

The captain sighed, quietly enough that only Padme heard her. “Of course she did. She wouldn’t pass up some ‘live fire target practice’ for her Padawans,” the woman muttered, voice somewhere between amusement and fond exasperation. As Padme watched, a blue triangle blew past the nearest green like they were standing still.

“Captain, what ah, what is she doing?” Padme asked, briefly wondering if she wasn’t about to see Tanya get blasted apart by the approaching enemy fighters.

“The enemy is using Vulture droids,” Capt. Keen explained, not sounding worried at all—just a bit exasperated. “We got our hands on a bunch of them a while back, after we captured our first Lucrehulk. Our techs had a chance to tear them down and look at the programming, analyze the ships themselves to build a hardware profile, and then got real world data on how they actually perform in combat. The droid brains running them aren’t particularly smart and they have some bad habits, such as locking on and pursuing what they perceive to be the greatest threat.”

Blinking, Padme asked, “So she’s going to, what? Draw their attention onto her? That’s suicide—!”

“Just watch,” Capt. Keen instructed, before tapping at the controls on the arm rest. The hologram view shifted, focusing on the Rusted Silver as it approached the enemy droid ships.

The larger ship opened fire, its guns destroying several of the lead droids as they began firing. The enemy formation scattered around the larger ship as its guns turned and tracked, firing independently of each other as more droids fell and the faster Silver dodged around and between streams of fire with supernatural precision and such a narrow margin for error that Padme found herself flinching every time plasma bolts narrowly skimmed off the shields.

Then, completely disregarding the slower and larger approaching force of Mandalorian fighters, the enemy droids broke formation and turned in on itself, giving chase as the Silver blew through their ranks and kept going, drawing them in behind her.

It’s like watching a flock of birds try to chase off a predator, Padme realized, as Tanya led them back towards the ships that had launched them. Those ships opened fire, only to wind up hitting their own fighters as the Rusted Silver evaded with a precision that Padme could only call intentional as Tanya very obviously maneuvered the fighters behind her to cluster up, then baited the enemy ships into shooting into those groups when they missed her.

“There was one other little minor oversight in the programming. A contingency some thoughtful engineer left behind, I’m guessing,” Capt. Keen mused, and Padme swore she heard a smile in the woman’s voice.

“And that is…?”

“A bit of simple logic that lets them identify friend from foe that runs parallel to IFF transponders. Someone had the forethought to program in a contingency for someone boarding or stealing a TradeFed vessel and using it against their own people. I suppose the thought was that if someone stole one of their ships thinking that the TradeFed wouldn’t attack one of their own because the IFF would report it as friendly, letting them get some free shots off then they were going to be in for a nasty surprise when their fighters identified anyone who fired on them as hostile, regardless of IFF tags. Meaning…”

On the screen, the Rusted Silver stopped firing and accelerated away from the enemy fighters, even as the whole swarm kept approaching the remainder of the fleet. Their own fighters, which hadn’t fired a single shot yet, closed in behind them.

It seemed that someone on the other side of the battlefield figured out that something was wrong as one of their ships abruptly broke formation and began trying to run—only for the entire engine section to shatter and explode the same way the Lucrehulks had. The droid fighters, which had stopped firing on the Rusted Silver, abruptly opened fire again—this time on the very ships that had launched them.

“Oh,” Padme breathed, a quiet laugh escaping her lips. “This absolutely wouldn’t happen with living pilots, would it?”

“Friendly fire incidents happen, but not like this, no,” Capt. Keen chuckled. “It was only ever going to work once though. They would’ve fixed it eventually, and any change or update to the droid control system could’ve broken it. I can see why she took advantage of it now. Unfortunately, now it’s become a big, messy furball. Our own ships won’t be able to fire into that mess without risking our people. So for now, we’ll just sit back and let the fighters duke it out with each other and the enemy ships.”

“So we just… wait?” Padme asked, and Capt. Keen nodded. “How long?”

“As long as it takes,” the older woman answered blandly. “Could be minutes, could be hours. You’ll find that a lot of combat is just sitting and waiting, while someone nearby fights for their life and you can’t go help them because that would leave you out of position and potentially vulnerable. If you want to leave the bridge, now’s the time. I can have one of my men escort you.”

“No, thank you. I, I should be here to see it through,” Padme took a breath and shook her head, before settling in for the long haul.

“Suit yourself.”

In the end, the fighting lasted only a little over two hours from start to finish.

The TradeFed ships eventually figured out the ancient tech ritual of turning it off and on again and got their fighters to stop attacking their own ships, but by then it was too late. They had done a lot of damage and our own fighters had been waiting in the wings, not committing until my gambit played out one way or another. Once the enemy fighters stopped attacking their own ships, our fighters swiftly moved in and mopped them up before moving on to attacking the enemy ships themselves.

After that, it was a complete defeat for the enemy—fighters swarming and overwhelming one ship at a time while staying clear of the others and letting our hidden fleet get some more shots off to thin their numbers. In the end, only a handful of enemy ships made it out alive—all of which surrendered back to back after the first. From there, it we moved to marine boarding action from ship to ship, rounding up the crew and taking them prisoner, then sending them down to the surface to hold there since I didn’t want that many prisoners on my ship.

When I returned to the Redoubt, I found Padme was surprisingly calm about the whole thing. With the action done and only cleanup and preparation for the next fight to do for now, I sent her with my Padawans to get a meal in the galley, then made her turn in and get some sleep since she’d had a rather stressful day.

Which left us to head down to the planet first thing in the morning, so Padme could handle matters of state. Specifically, addressing her people, the Republic Senate, the Republic as a whole, and her new allies among the CIS.

“—and it is with a heavy heart that We must withdraw from the Republic, who abandoned Naboo in Our time of need. I would like to thank Our good friends and new allies in the Confederation of Independent Systems for coming to Our aid and welcoming Us with open arms. I look forward to joining your ranks for my first Senate meeting to discuss the state of matters on Naboo and how we move forward together from here—”

The Senate can’t leave this alone, now. They have to acknowledge it. Which means acknowledging their failure with the rest of the Confederate planets by proxy. They sought to turn Naboo into casus belli to join the war. Now it will become a political quagmire as they have to explain why they dragged their heels coming to a decision and either admit malice in the fact that they intended to sacrifice Naboo as an excuse, or admit incompetence.

Either way, we win the PR battle here. The Confederation comes out looking like Big Damn Heroes. Cavalry riding to the rescue in Naboo’s darkest hour, when they were ignored by the very government who was supposed to protect them. We may never win the Core worlds or the Republic loyalists, but for the rest of the galaxy? Those who were undecided, those waiting for action on our part to see what we were about, and the fence sitters. For them, this is a clear message. Join the Confederation if you want to actually see your system protected and your tax dollars put to good use.

I tuned out the rest of what I’m sure was a very pretty and rousing speech on Padme’s part as my mind turned towards the next part of my job. I had taken Naboo from the Trade Federation. Now, I had to hold it. We had to show everyone watching that it wasn’t a fluke. That we could take and hold territory. That if they put their trust in us to defend their systems, we could and would do so.

It’s entirely possible that we’ll either lose the space war, or the enemy will repel us enough to land troops and try to speed run Theed. I should call for clone reinforcements and have our Mandos start setting up for a defensive war immediately. Hit and run tactics, ambushes, traps, and other methods that take advantage of their smaller numbers, higher mobility, and greater combat utility per individual. Hopefully, this loss will give the TradeFed pause and delay them enough for reinforcements to arrive.

But then, when has hoping for the best ever helped? No, better to prepare for the worst. I should expect them to react immediately and with what they believe to be overwhelming force. With their plot exposed, there’s no reason not to make a second attempt. Not until they sustain such losses that they can no longer justify it. And then there’s the new Sith Supreme Chancellor to consider. How will he react?

A thought occurred and a grin spread under my helmet as I realized that I now had a unique opportunity. The former Senator’s home was here on Naboo. The home with all of his Sith artifacts, just sitting there…

It would be a shame if the Trade Federation were to destroy it on accident. Yes, a missed shot from one of those big tank cannons should level the building and take out any hidden structures. And with nothing but plasma burned rubble left, there would be no way to tell if it were looted beforehand…

Deny the enemy resources, take those resources for myself, and demoralize or infuriate him in a single stroke?

I believe I will.