109

A Young Girl’s War Between the Stars

109

33 BBY/967 GSC. Naboo Conflict +68 days. Naboo.

“Mandalore!”

“Good morning, everyone. At ease,” I returned the salute as I walked into the room and took a seat at the head of the table for the morning briefing. Allaya took the seat immediately to my right. Several of our people brought over plates loaded with breakfast and began placing them around the table as others poured caff for everyone and tea for myself and Allaya. Taking up the cup of tea as soon as it was full, I ordered, “Cdr. Typhon, report.”

The clone nodded. “Indirect incendiary mortar fire conducted overnight and the resulting forest fire forced the Gungan army to move north, as we predicted. They walked right into the trenches between our forces and the advancing droid army. The droid army engaged immediately and as soon as the enemy activated their shield generators, our men ceased fire. They have since tried to retreat from the droids and advance towards our forces, however…”

I smiled. “They discovered the mines?”

“They discovered the mines,” the man confirmed with a grin. “They have since hunkered down in the trenches and are engaging the droid army, which has sent troops forward to advance through their shield. They’ve run out of ammo and resorted to stripping the weapons off of destroyed droids, but their people are untrained on them and this has resulted in a number of blue on blue casualties.”

“Good,” I smirked. “Wait for tonight, the commence night operations against the gungan forces. I want samples of those shield generators and the personal plasma shields shipped home for study. If they’re better than what we already have, we can incorporate the tech into our own.”

“Yes, ma’am. Shouldn’t be too hard. The gungans are focusing hard on the droids since we’ve been leaving them alone. I’ll have a few teams go over the trenches and slip in their rear lines. A few of the generators have already gone down on the periphery when the beasts carrying them were killed by droids. I believe they were intact and we can extract them using jetpacks and anchors.”

I nodded. “I want that gungan army wiped out before the queen returns. We can’t allow them to survive the droids today only to become tomorrow’s problem. I refuse to get bogged down in an insurgent war against natives throwing spears and stones. Eliminating their largest fighting force here and now will hopefully demoralize them and remove the largest number of potential agitators and fighters.”

Cdr. Typhon hummed, considering for a moment as he stroked his jaw. “If you don’t mind losing multiple shield generators…?”

“It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make to see that army wiped off the face of Naboo to the man.”

“We could send in strike teams with anti-tank missiles. Have them slip through the shield, then synchronize fire. Eliminate the shield generators, then pull back and walk our artillery across the battlefield. After that, we’ll be the anvil to the droid army’s hammer and let them be crushed between us as the droids advance.”

“Do it,” I agreed.

“Yes, Mandalore. I’ll forward it to General Mereel,” the commander nodded. “Nothing else to report on my end.”

Looking to the queen’s replacement head of security, I asked, “Anything within the city?”

“A bit of unrest over the gungans declaring war. Between that and the advancing droid army, people are tense. We’ve had a flood of volunteers requesting to join the army fighting them. Per standing orders, we’ve asked them to stand down for now and informed them that if we have need of them, we will call upon them. One of our storage facilities holding weapons from the last war was broken into and looted. We believe the weapons have been distributed throughout the city and rumor is that a militia has formed.”

Frowning, I asked, “Have they caused any other problems? Are they fomenting rebellion?”

“No, ma’am. We’ve seen groups of them patrolling the streets at night, along the waterways. They fled when approached by the police, but it looks like they’re covering areas that the police and military aren’t. The only messaging we’ve heard from them is anti-gungan and anti-TradeFed.”

“The only good gungan is a dead gungan,” Cdr. Tython said, and the head of security nodded. “Saw it on a poster on the street. There are three going around so far. I collected one of each to bring today.”

The man opened the pouch at his side and drew out three folded sheets of paper before passing them over to me. I raised an eyebrow as I looked at them.

The first was a stencil painted image of a gungan head with X’s through its eyes and its tongue hanging out of its open mouth. The message was in all caps. On the top, ‘THE ONLY GOOD GUNGAN.’ Then the head. Then, ‘IS A DEAD GUNGAN.’

The second was a similar stencil image of a set of three battle droid heads impaled on spikes on top of a hill. It was the same message, just with the word ‘clanker’ replacing ‘gungan.’

The third was of a group of obvious neimoidians in shadow, holding out their hands above a marching droid army, drawn in detail. Strings connected the neimoidians to the droids, implying they were puppeteering the droids. There were no words, but there didn’t need to be in this case.

I considered them for a moment before making a decision. “Leave them be for now, but keep an eye out. If they start getting rowdy, let me know. But until then, it should be fine. A populace angry at the ones attacking it is good for us. Moving on…”

The rest of the morning briefing went by quickly, seeing as nothing had really changed since yesterday aside from resources spent. Seeing as Jaster had the army well in hand for the time being and we should hopefully see the end of the gungan army within the next day or two, there wasn’t much for me to do down here at the moment. I didn’t want to micromanage, otherwise what was the point of having competent underlings. But I also couldn’t risk taking my eyes off the situation for too long lest something unexpected develop and my people not have the training to deal with it.

The old maxim of ‘hurry up and wait’ continues to hold true.

“Allaya and I are going to go train. Alert me if the situation changes,” I instructed, before we left the room, heading for the hangar to take the Rusted Silver out and get in a bit of sparring practice in private.

As we left Theed, I briefly felt something… indistinct in the Force. A presence, but it was hazy. I couldn’t tell much about it before we were gone and I couldn’t sense it any longer.

Perhaps someone in the city has awakened to the Force? I’ll go nose around and see if I can find them later, after the war here is done, then bring them back to the Temple on Serenno for training. Assuming they want it. More Confederate Jedi can’t hurt.

33 BBY/967 GSC. Naboo Conflict +70 days. Naboo.

I watched from my position in a tree as Allaya dropped into another cell of gungan terrorists moving through the forest. After we had annihilated the main force of their army and eliminated who I suspected was the overall leader of the terror cells, all that we’d found so far were small groups ranging in number from four to a dozen, traveling through the forests. These were primarily made up of much younger gungans, usually led by one or two older, battle scarred gungans—likely survivors from the last war.

After capturing and interrogating a few groups, we had determined that the younger ones tended to fall into one of two categories: either they were very angry about Otoh Gunga and were spoiling for a fight, or they had been press ganged by their peers and elders to join. I almost felt bad about having to kill the latter, but they had chosen to pick up a weapon and fight us instead of fighting to oppose the more violent of their people.

It was a simple choice, really: us or them. They had made their choice and we had made ours.

And it was that choice that led to Allaya falling on top of a gungan and crushing his spine, before launching herself into the rest and drawing her saber. The red blade hummed as she swept it through them and in a few short strokes, the ‘battle’ was over. It was more of a slaughter than a battle, though. The enemy hadn’t detected us. We had surprise and the initiative on our side. They were young and uncoordinated, not battle hardened soldiers.

Young or not, experienced or not, they’re a pack of enemy combatants. Even mindless animals sometimes need to be put down when they become a problem.

I dropped down to the ground as Allaya shut off her lightsaber. “Good work, Padawan.”

“Thank you, Master,” Allaya smiled, carefully picking her way out of the corpses as I grabbed them up with the Force and dumped them in a pile. She pulled an incendiary charge from her belt, armed it, and flicked it into the pile.

We turned and left as the charge went off and the bodies began to burn, filling the air with the stench of burning gungan. There was nothing quite like it. They were amphibian and their skin tended to be coated with mud, and beneath that a layer of oil. They were hard to burn for anything short of a thermite charge, and when they did burn they absolutely reeked of filth.

As we made our way back to my ship, my holocom rang. Pulling it out, I saw it was Capt. Keen and answered. The woman’s hologram projected over it and she glanced briefly at my own display before looking away to something off-center. “Mandalore, the queen’s ship has returned. We’ve hailed them and they’ll be landing aboard the Redoubt momentarily.”

“Excellent! Thank you, Capt. Keen. We’ll join you shortly,” I nodded, before disconnecting the call and placing another. Jaster picked up on the second ring. “General Mereel, good news! The queen has returned.”

“That is good news,” he nodded.

“We’ll be heading up in a moment and the commencing Operation Doorkicker soon after. Your men just need to continue holding the line until then.”

“Roger that. We’ll send word back if the situation changes.”

I disconnected the call as we entered a clearing and boarded my ship. Then, it was a quick flight up and a fun little dance through enemy fire before we were back aboard the Redoubt. I parked beside the pretty silver ship and we quickly disembarked.

The surrounding men saluted and I returned it as I reached out with my Force senses. I didn’t have to search far to find them, and I winced at what I felt.

There were the familiar presences of Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, of course—along with Asajj. I didn’t sense the abomination that was Jar Jar’s presence within the Force and I could only hope he had stumbled out an airlock at some point. However, what I did find was almost worse.

The feeling of Padme within the Force had only grown stronger over the years, that ripple surrounding her reaching further and further even as the feeling immediately around her grew fainter, but now there was another presence. I could tell it was only just being trained, but despite that, it nearly rivaled Allaya and Asajj in terms of raw power, and I could tell it would only grow stronger.

The worst part was how the two of them interacted. They just sort of fit together within the Force, to the point that it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began.

I had heard of similar things before, of course. Revan had taught of the various methods of bonding within the Force.

The bond between Master and Apprentice, for instance, was considered sacred to the Jedi. There were lesser bonds between friends. Particularly strong bonds could occur between siblings, especially twins. Several Force cults attempted to form Force bonds to allow them to wield the Force to greater effect together—the Witches of Dathomir being one such group that practiced it. Then there were naturally occurring Force dyads—a strong natural bond between two people in the Force. A bit like two puzzle pieces coming together—sometimes complementary Forces, sometimes opposing Forces.

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‘Like attracts like’ and ‘opposites attract’ were both equally true as far as the Force was concerned.

The problem was, while those bonds could be amazing, precious things… they could also be toxic, corruptive, abusive, and worse. It was entirely dependent upon the individuals involved.

In this case, I couldn’t tell much beyond the fact that their presences within the Living Force were reacting to each other. Strongly.

This is going to be a future headache, isn’t it?

Shaking my head, I removed my helmet and stuck it to my mag plate as we went, heading for the deck set aside for my personal use and some guests. I passed by the meditation chamber where Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon were, on to the recroom. Asajj met us at the door, hugging me about the waist before she and Allaya exchanged a hug as well. Moving into the room, I found Padme sitting with a young boy with sandy colored hair, watching a feed from the external sensors.

The boy looked up first as we entered, followed by Padme. He blinked, his eyes going wide momentarily as his mouth fell open.

Ignoring the child gaping, I told Padme, “We’re ready to begin when you are.”

“Do I have time to change?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Which do you feel would give the better optics? Seeing their queen all made up and queenly? Or seeing her fresh off the ship from her trip to the Senate, having wanted to share the bad news immediately and so she didn’t take the time to get made up?”

“…How do you know it’s bad news? It could be good news,” Padme protested.

“Is it good news?”

She opened then closed her mouth, before sighing. “It’s bad news.” Pausing, she smiled and stood. “Oh! By the way. Tanya, this is Anakin. Ani, Tanya.”

“So you’re her Jedi Master?” he asked, pointing to Asajj.

“Asajj and Allaya there, yes,” I confirmed with a nod. Looking to Padme, I asked, “Why did you bring a child back with you?”

“He was a slave we purchased on Tatooine.”

Taking a moment to process that, I nodded slowly. “I see. You stopped by Tatooine to purchase a child slave. Yes. That makes perfect sense.”

Shaking my head, I turned and left the room, heading for the bridge—pausing only to speak briefly with my Padawans. “Asajj, good job. You’ve done well. And you’re relieved. I believe the queen will be safe here. Why don’t the two of you show young Anakin around a bit?”

“Tanya, Tanya wait!” Padme called.

“Yes, Master,” Allaya nodded.

“Thank you, Master,” Asajj smiled.

With that, I turned and left as Padme hurried out after me. “Tanya, there’s more to it than that! Don’t go jumping to any weird conclusions!”

“Well, you are a politician and this is your first child slave...”

Drawing even with me, Padme glared at me from the side, studying my face for a moment. After a few steps, she sighed. “You’re teasing me.”

“A little,” I admitted. “Now, what’s the actual story there?”

“Our hyperdrive was damaged by that attack as we left Naboo. We had to get a replacement on Tatooine. Anakin belonged to the owner of the only shop with the correct hyperdrive. Unfortunately, he didn’t want to take Republic credits and we didn’t have enough to buy the drive. So, Asajj… procured the drive. And then Master Qui-Gon convinced Watto to sell us Anakin to take on as his Padawan. Though technically, Asajj purchased him. Anakin is apparently very skilled as a mechanic and he installed the new hyperdrive, with some help.”

“I see,” I murmured, nodding.

We stepped onto the bridge as the doors cycled open and someone called, “Mandalore on deck!”

Returning the salute, I motioned Padme over to the captain’s chair. “You have a few minutes to work out a rousing speech for your people while we get in contact with our other ships and prepare for the attack. Let us know when you’re ready.”

“I will,” she nodded, and I left her to it.

Turning to Capt. Keen, I asked, “How are we looking?”

“The fleet is ready. The enemy know the queen is here, but they haven’t moved since you flew through their formation.”

“Good. We wouldn’t want them moving out of position.”

Padme cleared her throat. “I’m ready.”

Capt. Keen looked to me and I nodded. Turning away, she said, “Comms, prepare for broadcast. All channels, high intensity. Establish a laser link to the ground and have them prepare to retransmit across the planet. We’ll record first, then transmit. We want to get the timing right.”

“Aye, captain,” the comms operator acknowledged. We only had to wait a few moments before the comms officer called, “Tightbeam established. They’re ready to retransmit.”

“Good. Count down from five and begin recording,” Capt. Keen instructed. “Signal the fleet to prepare for synchronized fire and tell the Kandosii to prepare for jump.”

Padme took a breath and straightened herself, putting on her queenly persona for a moment before blowing out that breath and visibly setting it to the side. When she spoke, it was not with the trained in regal, queenly bearing, but with a much more personable and approachable mien. She went through a short opening greeting before getting straight to the point.

“As some of you may know, I have been away, negotiating with the Republic Senate for the fate of our people. It is with a heavy heart that I return bearing bad news. It is as We feared. We have been abandoned by the Republic—left to the mercy of the Trade Federation. They mean to allow Naboo to fall, in order to justify a wider war against the Trade Federation—all while our people starve and suffer under the mechanical heel of our oppressors.” She took a breath and visibly steeled herself. “I will not stand for it. That is why I will reaffirm Our decision to secede from the Republic and join the Confederacy.”

Padme glanced my way and motioned for me to join her. I stepped into the pickup range, coming to stand beside her. Reaching out, she took my hand in her own. “Hand in hand with our new friends, We will defeat the Trade Federation and remove them from Our home.”

The young queen turned her gaze up at me and nodded once. “All ships, fire.”

“Cut recording,” Capt. Keen instructed. “Fire control, calculate broadcast time versus projectile flight time from the Kandosii, then sync them up and give the order.”

“Aye, ma’am!” the officer manning our FCS nodded. A moment later, he ordered, “Comms, sending synchronized fleet fire order. Send it and begin broadcast at 15:33:30.”

“Roger that,” comms responded, tapping away at his console and keeping a watch on the clock. “Sending… now.”

“Sound battle stations and put the countdown timer up,” Capt. Keen ordered.

“All hands, all hands! —”

I grabbed Padme by the elbow and led her from the bridge. Moving to the supply storage closet on our level, I opened it up and began removing vacsuits. Thankfully, after my Padawans became a frequent fixture onboard, they had stocked child sized suits. I collected one and passed Padme a suit for herself, before grabbing one for Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon.

“Go get changed,” I instructed, sending her to my office to do so, as I pulled my own helmet on and sealed it. “Head to the recroom when you’re done. I’ll have the bridge pipe the sensor feed there.”

Hurrying down the corridor, I found Qui-Gon and Obi where I’d left them, though they had stopped their meditation and stood to come see what the commotion was. I tossed them a pair of vacsuits. “Put those on,” I said and kept moving before they could respond.

I found Asajj, Allaya, and Anakin in the training room, my Padawans already having pulled on their helmets. I tossed a folded suit to Anakin and directed him to the locker room. “Go put that on. If it doesn’t seal, ask for help.” Looking over all three, I instructed, “Head to the recroom and stay there until this is over. If the ship moves, pull down the jump seats and strap in.”

““Yes, Master!”” my girls answered.

“Uh, okay?” Anakin agreed before moving into the locker room.

I left them to it and hurried back to the bridge. As soon as I entered, the bridge sealed up behind me and I took my seat as Capt. Keen took her place at my right shoulder, magnetizing her boots and settling in for the fight to come. Glancing at the countdown clock and seeing we had some time, I considered the enemy forces arrayed against us.

Since Padme left for Coruscant, enemy reinforcements had arrived. Their smaller ships numbered in the dozens, but we weren’t particularly worried about those. My concern was the Lucrehulks serving as droid control centers—and the enemy had sent in reinforcements there as well, for a total of six of them. All of them had stacked up close together to allow their shields to cover each other. The Lucrehulks facing the front—that is, the ones closest to our own ships—could run their shields while the others kept theirs off, letting them maneuver and rotate out to give their shield emitters a break if we started hitting them again. The rest of the enemy fleet was acting as a secondary screening force for the Lucrehulks, and occasionally sallying out to try and use their greater numbers to whittle ours down.

Those Lucrehulks had to go down to end the war here and now, so they were our priority targets. Everything else was just cleanup, once they were gone.

Of course, our ships had done some maneuvering of our own in that time. We had made a tactical withdrawal as soon as enemy reinforcements arrived, ceding ground and allowing them to get closer to the planet—and its gravity well. Then slowly, over the course of the last several days, my ships had begun shifting their course and position down on the Z-axis in relation to the enemy fleet. Meanwhile, above Widow, the Kandosii had been elevating its position above the enemy fleet on the Z-axis—meaning that any shots they took would be over the heads of our own fleet.

Terrain, positioning, range, maneuverability, shielding, and firepower were the big six factors that determined the outcome of a traditional fleet engagement.

There were several ways to use the local terrain to your advantage. One example was by hiding in an asteroid field and using it to ambush your enemy. Alternatively, if you could force the enemy into a gravity well while your own forces remained further from it, that gravity well would slow the enemy, giving you more time to shoot them before they could reposition. If you could force them down further, into atmosphere, and make their shields fight against atmo and your weapons, even better.

Positioning of your forces in relation to the enemy could be the difference between a full wipe of the enemy forces, or losing half of your own to a few poorly placed shots. In this case, we were aiming to take advantage of the enemy’s shield geometry. Typically when fighting another ship, you would make sure that the shields were strongest facing the enemy by directing power to forward shields. But if you could engage from two different angles, that would force them to spread power over multiple emitters—lowering the total available power for the emitters that needed it and causing them to overheat faster.

Our ships had the range advantage from the start, but the advantage the Kandosii had with her much larger guns and more windup time before the enemy would detect her charging to fire meant that she could hit harder from further away. They thought they knew our range, but we were about to hit them from the next planet over, from over the horizon of said planet. They wouldn’t see it coming.

Lucrehulks were not known for their maneuverability. They were big, heavy, slow moving targets. So instead of trying fancy maneuvers, they turtled up. They used their smaller corvettes as a screening force to take the strain off of their shields every time we engaged. But with our ships having moved down the Z-axis over the last several days, that meant the screening corvettes had also had to adjust their own positioning… leaving a gaping hole in the Lucrehulks’ coverage.

Their shields were a known factor. With us forcing them over to ray shields, we could pretty much set a clock by how long it would take to bring them down. …Or dial in exactly the amount of firepower we needed to overwhelm them with the railguns.

Taking it all in, I asked, “Any change from the enemy fleet?”

“Nothing yet. The broadcast hasn’t actually started. We’re waiting for the shots to catch up.”

Nodding, I watched the screen and waited as the clock ticked slowly down, mentally doing the math involved for the physical railgun slugs to travel from Widow to Naboo. Given the time requirement and the distance, they would be moving at just under 1C—something only possible given just how big the Kandosii’s guns and the time they had been allowed to charge the shots for, which wouldn’t really be possible at a range close enough for the enemy’s systems to detect it happening and for their captain to figure out that perhaps he should begin evasive maneuvers.

It helped that over the course of this little war, my fleet had trickled off the railgun shots until they eventually stopped entirely and switched over to plasma and ion weapons—feigning as though they had run out of railgun ammunition. Of course, the moment they detected my ships charging for railgun shots, they would immediately switch their shielding type over to mitigate the attack. That’s what we were counting on, and the part the Kandosii would play in Operation Doorkicker.

Attack and defense were a constant battle of rock-paper-scissors. Plasma shields worked against plasma based attacks, but not against ionic or physical attacks. Ion shields protected against ionic attacks, but not plasma or physical. Particle shields protected against physical attacks, but not ionic or plasma. Ray shields protected against all of the above, but they were expensive, drained an ungodly amount of power, and put strain on the shield generation systems by building up far more heat than normal shields which couldn’t be easily dissipated inside the shield.

The Kandosii was armed to the teeth. It was frankly impressive just how many guns they had managed to fit on her. She would be the one putting her boot to the Trade Federation’s door, right up close and personal, forcing them to switch to ray shields just to hold her off.

“Kandosii jumping into the battlespace in three, two, one…”

Speak of the devil, I mused, a smile pulling across my lips as the big ship jumped in from Widow, dropping out of hyperspace outside of the line of fire between the shots on their way and our own forces and flanking the enemy Lucrehulks from the top. She engaged immediately, multiple streams of red plasma and blue ion cannon fire hammering the Trade Federation ships and volleys of plasma torpedoes launching at the Lucrehulks as she turned as quickly as her ponderous bulk would allow, putting her nose on target. At the same time, her fighters deployed, taking up a close air patrol around her but not engaging yet.

The rearmost two Lucrehulks were quickly hammered into submission before they could get their shields up, as most of the torpedoes were directed at them. One of them broke apart and began drifting as the other simply went down, power off as it drifted. One of the two in the center managed to get its shield up, while the last got them up for a moment, before their shields failed and they were quickly focused down by the Kandosii.

The three intact ships turned their guns on the Kandosii and it was looking like it would devolve into a slugging match as they desperately tried to hammer down her shields while she began focusing them down one at a time with ion fire to cripple their shields. At least, that’s how it looked right up until the countdown clock hit zero.

In between one moment and the next, the front two Lucrehulks simply ceased to exist. There was a brief, bright flash from their shields that was followed so quickly by an explosion from the Lucrehulks that they may as well have been one. The ships shrapnelized, turning into shaped charges of burning durasteel that utterly shredded the Lucrehulks behind them, turning the crippled ships into space debris.

With only one Lucrehulk left intact, our other ships—which had been charging their railguns and holding fire to wait for effect, fired the second volley. The enemy ship, which had somehow held up until now, suffered catastrophic failure as its shields went down within the first few shots. The last two railgun shots punched through its central sphere unit, destroying the bridge and surrounding area. Left vulnerable to the full might of the Kansosii’s plasma cannon fire, it didn’t last much longer.

“Laser tightbeam from our ground forces. It’s General Mereel,” the comm’s officer spoke up. “He reports that the enemy droid army has gone silent.”

“Good. Tell them to begin cleanup immediately,” I nodded, a grin pulling my lips upwards. “And in the meantime, let’s knock the rest of those flying scrap piles out of my sky! No survivors~!”

The Battle Plan: