Star Wars: Rise of the Battlemage - Chapter 366 (Patreon)

Time spun away as the Skyforged Vanguard continued to grow, in just about every direction I could hope for. I was extremely proud of the progress my people were making on the production facilities that were being built on the moon and the infrastructure being built down on Nirn. Even as our population and Vercopa continued to grow, we remained mostly self-sufficient, with farming industries providing more and more of what we needed to keep expanding. 

At this point, we had a dozen little farming villages spread out around the continent that Vercopa and Port Green were on, dotted around fertile and already cleared areas.

We even started a production plant for materials, this one based on Nirn, though it took a full two hours by airspeeder to get there from Vercopa. It was built along the edge of one of the planet's larger deserts, where materials would be plentiful. There we were starting to produce our own duracrete supplies, as well as other stone-based building materials. We also had a proper mill set up, this one closer to home, allowing us to convert the massive trees that filled the jungle around Vercopa into refined boards, paper, and more.

People were a bit doubtful of why I wanted to produce paper, but I had a feeling it would catch on pretty quick. Being mostly digital was pretty handy when you got used to it, but there was something to the convenience of just being able to jot a quick note down on a pad. Plus, it was something we could trade with later, as there were plenty of people in the galaxy who collected books and hard copies.  

Of course, the primary reason for our increased population was the need to staff our new stations. The Bavos-1 weapons platform was officially up and running at full capacity, with enough staff to have a rotating workforce. We had barely finished staffing that station before we were working on staffing the Golan II, which had returned from its trip to Mon Cal just a week after Princess Leia and her entourage left. The space above Vercopa was now home to a large array of orbital defenses, enough to take on three or four star destroyers at once with its onboard starfighter squadrons, five or six if Boxi's Fury happens to be in orbit, and six or seven if you include the incredibly potent ground-based defenses.

And that was a low estimate, the higher, more optimistic predictions went all the way up to ten and eleven.

We were finally reaching the point where, if the Empire managed to find us and attacked us directly, that if they wanted to assure their victory with numbers, they would have to pull such a large amount of ships from their roles that Rebellion Intelligence would absolutely notice something was going on. That isn't to say that the Emperor couldn't magic up some hidden super star destroyer or super weapon, as he generally liked to do, but we would at least be able to defend ourselves long enough to evacuate the civilians. 

The bottom line was that our defenses were finally passable by my standards, which meant we could start working on making them impressive.

During that time, 1st Fleet went on another remission, this time clearing out a pirate group building up strength in the outer rim, stealing supplies and kidnapping people. We were able to apprehend most of the ships and save the most recent victims, which was a solid win.

On the return trip, I was sharing dinner with the crew in one of the Hope's many cafeterias, a smaller one that was mostly empty when Julus put down his fork and looked at me. I stayed mostly quiet, my mind elsewhere, occasionally tuning in to the conversation and adding a few words before checking back out.

"Boss, what's got you thinking so hard?" He asked with a frown. "You've been doing that a lot, and it looks like you're trying to figure out the best way to eat a bag of gravel." 

I looked over at him with a raised eyebrow, honestly surprised by how insightful he was for once. It wasn't that he was dumb or oblivious, it's just not what I would have considered him good at.

I leaned back and glanced at Ahsoka, who had obviously noticed my mood, but had decided to let me choose when to talk about it. After a moment, I looked back at Julus and paused, considering my words before nodding.

"I'm trying to figure out a way to kill the Emperor," I explained. "I-"

Unsurprisingly, my deceptively casual statement was met with quite a few exclamations. Ahsoka had anticipated it on some level, having felt my rising mischievousness, so she just rolled her eyes. 

"Oh, is that all?" she asked. "I'm sure we could finish that in time for the Rebellion's new charter." 

"Actually, I'm thinking about doing it after that, so the new look of the Rebellion has time to solidify," I responded. 

For a moment, she looked like she was about to throw something from her lunch at me, but I dropped my joking attitude and looked around at my crew. 

"Killing Palpatine, or helping kill him, was always going to be on my agenda," I revealed. "As always, the Skyforged Vanguard remains a volunteer outfit…"

"Why the sudden focus?" Tatnia finally said. "What changed?"

"Palpy… has always had backup plans. Convoluted, dark, evil backup plans that would allow him to, potentially, return from the grave," I revealed. "One of those plans rivaled the Empire itself in terms of threats, so I needed a way to kill him and keep him dead. I was chipping away at the need with an original concept when my grimoire delivered a solution to me via my shouts, the Thu'um. It took the form of a shout designed to lock down a person into their mortal coil, to make death final. It was originally designed to curtail immortality, but I'm certain I can use it to make any death Palpy feels final."

"That… is a lot to take in," Mara admitted. "I've never heard of any plans for surviving death, though I understand I was not as integral as I had thought under him." 

"He plays it pretty close to his chest… and to be honest, there are two main possibilities, one that's a massive threat and another…"

I trailed off, a rather obvious thought floating to the top of my brain. I had seen the sequel movies, which meant I had seen all sorts of images from that Sith planet, Exgo or something, whatever it was called. I knew what that spiky throne looked like, and I knew what the special Sith star destroyers looked like…

That meant I could use Clairvoyance on them.

"I've had this ability more or less since this whole adventure started, and I still forget about it," I said with a frown, then focused on that spiky, dark throne Palpy was sitting on in the movie before casting the spell, dropping it a moment later.

Then I cast it again, this time focusing on the Sith-style Star Destroyer, the massive Sith stadium, anything I could remember from that planet, including what parts of the lightning-scarred surface I could recall. After about five minutes, I had tried just about everything I could remember, but ultimately not a single one connected. 

The Eternal Sith Empire didn't exist in this universe, at least not as it did in the movies. The fleet of planet-cracking star destroyers did not exist.

I sagged in my seat, letting out a long breath of relief. I knew the basic outline of the story around Palpatine's return in the Legends universe, where he was body-jumping clones. He unleashed a bunch of new weapons, like a Super Star Destroyer with a planet-cracking super laser and sun-popping missiles, and the World Devastators, automated factories that could tear cities apart and turn them into Imperial weapons. 

Their names matched pretty well to what they could do.

I also knew that Luke went pretty deep into the dark side, trying to take the reborn Emperor down from within.

Those were terrible, potentially catastrophic issues, problems that could still pop up even if we killed Palpy cleanly, without giving him a chance to respawn. But all of that absolutely paled in comparison to the absolute level of screwed the galaxy would be if the Eternal Sith fleet managed to deploy and spread out around the galaxy.

Even without their ability to blow up a planet on their own, the fleet alone was dangerous, a massive fighting force that could irrevocably alter the galaxy's path. Even with their rather large weak point, the sheer scale of that threat was not something we could contend with, especially since the Sith Eternal were fanatic cultists and would not just surrender if we killed the Emperor for real. They would fight to the death, trying to take down as many of us as they possibly could, which was likely to be quite a few.

It was a bit like having to choose between being stabbed by a dagger or impaled on a sword. Both would suck, but realistically, the choice was pretty simple. 

Byss was a threat, definitely something we need to consider, but it could wait. 

"Well?" Tatnia asked, pulling me from my thoughts. "We've all known you long enough to recognize that look. What did you learn?"

"The more dangerous, worrying possibility is off the table," I explained, letting out a relatively happy, if solemn, nod. "I can keep on checking, just to make sure I'm not off on time scale, but… I'm pretty sure we are good. And trust me, you don't want to know." 

I said, ending with the warning, just as Julius opened his mouth to ask the obvious question. 

"So… you have a way to kill him and make him stay dead," Tatnia repeated, shaking her head when she heard herself. "I miss when getting stabbed for trying to scam some cargo jockey was my biggest concern." 

"I don't, wouldn't have gotten this far without you, Tatnia," I pointed out, the woman rolling her eyes in response, though I could tell she was happy with my statement. "Either way, this is not from nowhere. Yes, I finally have a way to kill him, but there is another problem, which I already shared with Ahsoka and Tatnia. The Empire is building another Death Star."

If the shock of me saying I wanted to kill the Emperor was bad, this was several times worse. As the barrage of questions came in, I looked around to confirm that no one was around us to hear what we were talking about. When it was clear we were alone, I let out a snap of electricity, the crack silencing the table.

"I know, trust me, I know," I assured them, holding up my hand to stop them from saying more. "At this point it's around seventy-five percent done, probably, and I'm expecting a call from the Rebellion any day that they need all the ships they can get."

"So the Rebellion learns about it?" Ashoka asked with a frown. "When? How do you know that it's still… that they will."

Her particular wording made me pause, but I quickly realized she was still trying to protect the fact that the more I changed things, the more the information I knew shifted away. She brought up a good point, though, we had changed a lot, so it was possible that the Emperor had shifted the time scale. But I highly doubted he would change his ambush plan, considering how far he went in creating it, and how he staked his entire late game plan on it. The ambush, at least in Legends, was supposed to be the final end of the Rebellion, the trap that drew them all in so he could finish them off. He would not just give that up. 

Add additional layers to it so that a certain thorn in his side with a penchant for just knowing things can't see through it, sure, but just wash it away and start over? That's not how old testicle face worked. 

"He lets the information leak," I answered. "He spreads the lie that the station isn't operational, when it already is. This draws the Rebel fleet into his grasp, where he pins them in place and starts cracking capital ships with his super laser like smashing small nuts with a sledgehammer."

"But you're going to warn them," Mara pointed out.

"Of course," I said. "There is still time before the Emperor will engage his plan, which gives us more time to prepare and work with the Rebellion. But our primary mission right now, our penultimate goal, is to destroy that station and get me close enough to the Emperor in a controlled manner, so I can kill him myself." 

"No problem, I'm sure we can handle that," Julus said, feigning confidence. "Where is he now?" 

I cast Clairvoyance again, this time focusing on the Emperor's wrinkly face, the spell connecting instantly. The arrow in my palm pointed up to my left, which meant nothing to me since we were on board a ship crossing the galaxy in hyperspace.

"That way," I said, gesturing with a pointed finger. "Probably on Coruscant. Or Byss. Hell, he might be in orbit around Endor." 

"What's Endor?" Nal asked simply.

"Endor is the planet the Death Star is likely stationed at," I explained. "It's got a planetary-based shield system projected around it. So the Empire might already be there, though… he probably isn't." 

"Could… we attack him at Coruscant?" Mara asked. "I mean, infiltrating the capital world of the galaxy seems impossible, but… with how much food and material goods go into running that planet, smuggling on a large scale does happen." 

"It's… well, it's technically an option, but I would hate to have to use it," I said. "Coruscant will be massively chaotic after Palpy's death, and escaping with the might of the Empire coming down on us on a planet like that… it would get complicated fast. I would much rather set up an ambush and take him down like that. Or… trip his trap and reverse it back on him."

"That's it, set up an ambush or turn around a trap involving a planet cracker?" 

"This is not something we are going to clap our hands and set off right now," I assured them. "But it is something we, as a crew, and we as the Skyforged Vanguard need to do. The Empire will not be defeated in any way until the Empire is dead, and destroying the Death Star is just as important, if not more so."

The crew shared a few looks, seeming to communicate without talking. Ahsoka looked at me with certainty, clearly ready and eager to support my goal. Then, one by one, the rest of the crew agreed as well, and I couldn't help but smile.