The Force Wills - Chapter 183 (Patreon)

For a glorious few moments, we had the initiative.

The amount of firepower we were throwing out was enough to utterly demolish an entire company of B2-ACMs.

The megadroid moved through it like we were only armed with water pistols.

Its shields shimmered close to its chassis, conforming to its contours by a mere hand width, shrugging off every bolt.

It gave two agile strides and swiped its right arm to carve its massive vibroblades through a section of an assembly line. I felt the two troopers caught behind that cover die instantly as large pieces of machinery and cauterized body parts went flying.

Simultaneously, its shoulder-mounted plasma mortar swiveled and fired a single glowing yellow round into an arcing trajectory straight towards where Rex and majority of the company had found their initial cover.

“No you frakking don’t!” I shouted and grabbed the mortar round mid-air in a solid telekinetic hold and reversed its direction.

I managed to keep the speed just low enough to pass it through the shield.

The mortar round detonated against the lower chest area of the megadroid with a thumping flash that echoed through the entire assembly hall. It was knocked back a step, but managed to retain its balance in a very organic way.

I had to take my figurative hat off to the Baktoid programmers and engineers. Agile walking platforms were very tricky even at humanoid scale, going larger, the Republic AT-TE six legged adaptive walker tanks were barely within the realm of what had been possible and economical at the start of the war. Now we were contending with a 9 meter, 30 ton armored walker platform that could move with close to the agility of a frakking BX droid.

The damage was unfortunately quite superficial, the phrik plated armor was scorched and blackened, but not penetrated. The mortar round had probably been anti-infantry-

I had to jink and roll-dodge left in a blur, avoiding the megadroid vibroclaws from slicing me to ribbons by inches.

It rounded on me as its primary target. I had to blackflip as well to avoid being locked in an energy web.

All seven Blades in the company took to the air, lighting their jetpacks and arced in towards the megadroid in overlapping trajectories.

As they passed overhead, each threw either a droid popper or a thermal charge.

Most simply bounced off, not coming under the speed limit of allowing passage through the shields. Safeties kept them from detonating without proper contact and they spilled to the floor.

One droid popper made it through and a flash of blue-white light erupted near the megadroid’s head.

Electric arcs played and danced over its outer shell and armor. Its red eyes flickered malevolently and otherwise the weapon seemed to have no effect.

I wished I had the focus or the time to puzzle just how it had been hardened against the standard droid popper, but it didn’t surprise me that the CIS had eventually built a droid that could shrug that weapon off. 

I jumped with a brief burst of my own boot jets, leaving my focus free to grab four thermal detonators with the Force and send them shooting towards the enemy.

The megadroid seemed to wait a brief moment, then slashed with its right arm.

It caught a Blade mid-flight, sending his upper body in one direction with the jetpack still thrusting, whilst the lower body arced and fell to the floor with remaining momentum.

Its own energy web projectors managed to catch two of my detonators, and it twisted around on the spot, letting the remaining two attach to its back armor.

It was as good as I was going to get, even as I buried my astonishment that this droid was such a cunning combatant. A flick of my finger let both charges detonate.

The concussion within the massive hall was horrific. Anyone who wasn’t wearing sonic protection or a helmet would’ve been downed instantly with burst ears.

Two small mushroom clouds of fire climbed into the air and the megadroid was pushed straight forward and crashed face first into the floor

“Stay alert!” I snapped at everyone.

The smoke had barely cleared, letting me see the torn and warped back armor, the outer layers fell off ablatively as the megadroid planted its palms to the floor, pushed up and fired three rounds from its shoulder mortar.

A Force Push intercepted the mortar rounds, sending them careening off course to detonate on the far end of the hall.

It fired more, buying itself the time to push higher off the ground, bringing its right leg under itself again.

Some of the troopers even managed to shoot those mortars straight out of the air, detonating them mere meters from the megadroid’s face. Its shield lit up under the assault, rippling like energetic water.

“Manda’lor, the lower back is vulnerable!” shouted a female Blade over the tac net.

I was a bit busy keeping its mortars from killing everyone in a single shot. It kept firing them beyond what the size of that launcher cell suggested and that meant it had internal ammo storage feed actively pushing new rounds in. “GO!”

The Blades swooped through the air as the enemy got to its feet, angling straight towards its back.

Rex, Fives and six others had managed to sneak to within range and threw droid poppers and detonators.

The Blades split their formation in two, streaking left and right past the droid, delivering more detonators.

The megadroid used its energy web like a bloody tennis racket, creating a large flat 2D plane of solid shield from its right hand that it swiped to slap the grenades straight back to the clones.

I gritted my teeth with focus, even as that bloody mortar kept firing!

My telekinetic control grabbed everything I could.

Four mortar rounds, nine detonators, eight poppers.

AND PULLED…..

I managed to grab every grenade heading towards the clones…

It all zoomed in straight back towards the megadroid… through the shield…

The combined flash and detonation sent a shockwave outward that knocked me out of control in the air.

The entire assembly hall spun wildly and only M8 taking over saved my ass, manipulating my arms and legs, thrusting to stabilize and bring me back down safely.

She landed me behind the overturned wreckage of a conveyor belt and a sparking fabricator.

The entire area where the megadroid should’ve been was now a mass of burning flame and smoke.

I could sense that most of the company was still alive, but the concussive force had almost everyone on their back and most of the Blades who had still been in the air, were now firmly on the ground with one degree of injury or another.

“Mistress! I detect-” M8 cried in alarm.

“I know!”

The Force embraced me and I shot forward with two great strides, jumping into the air with a burst from my jet boots. My lightsabers shot into my hands and ignited as I descended.

The left arm of the megadroid clawed out of the fire, grabbing a fallen trooper that was still trying to get up.

I felt his life extinguished instantly, as it closed its left hand. The right hand emerged and stabbed its huge vibroblades into the floor.

The megadroid pulled itself forward, exposing that it now lacked everything below the waist; its legs and waist reduced to pure dangling wreckage that it was now trailing behind itself.

Its red eyes glared at me as I descended right onto the dome of its head.

Both my blades came down into a reverse stab straight through those eyes.

This close and with the blades piercing straight through, I realized that while I’d destroyed the primary ocular sensors, linkages and some processing capacity, that we were far from properly killing the thing.

Its left hand went flat and it ripped its vibroblades out of the floor, flexing its wrist to bring it to bear straight towards me.

There was absolutely no way I was fighting the raw mechanical strength with which those blades would lance towards me.

This ended now!

I reached towards the river of the Force…

And channeled an Emerald Judgement straight through my lightsaber blades.

The destructive Force lightning hit the first conductive elements within the megadroids head and instantly spread throughout the internals.

I felt conduits sear, overload, computing components shattering. The internal fusion reactor scrammed into an emergency shutdown. The lightning channeled around the internal ammunition, protected by non-conductive cellular casings.

When I felt the last of its processors melted to slag, I stopped the Judgment and focused Mecha-Deru through it. It would’ve been nice to just use this from the start, but there would’ve been no way I could do something so complex and keep my guard up. 

The megadroid froze, robbed of all residual motive power, secondary processors shutting down and it collapsed forward.

I rode it briefly, pulled out my sabers and hopped forward as it crashed face down for a final time.

It was a struggle to stay on my feet as I warred to regain equilibrium in the Force.

Thankfully, M8 caught me, buying me the extra few seconds to retain some dignity.

“Clear!” I shouted.

The survivors emerged wearily but quickly got moving when Rex began organizing a regroup and making sure the ID tags were removed from the dead.

With the help of the surviving Blades, we removed the beskar armor from the dead mandalorians and spread the pieces among everyone to carry.

“Manda’lor?” asked one of the female Blades, Varris Jobaist, a Concordian clan. She gestured to the bodies gathered together, left now only in their under armor. I nodded in answer to her unspoken question; we had the time for a quick rite.

Much like the Jedi, the Mandalorians didn’t really have reverence for the bodies of the dead. It was a tool that had served its purpose. Their spirit had already rejoined with the manda or collective oversoul, the remains were secondary. The armor was the primary memorial and would be returned to the clan. We didn’t have time for a cremation but we did have enough for the verbal remembrance.

We gathered before the two dead mandalorians. I didn’t focus on the state of their bodies, putting it out of my mind before speaking.

“Ni su’cuyi, gar kyr’adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum; Mol Jitirr, Oputh Seng. Bic cuyi kyr’am jate.”

(I’m still alive, but you are dead. I remember you, so you are eternal, Mol Jitrr, Oputh Seng. It was a good death.)

The five surviving Blades chorused my words and I nodded to the one Blade who had a long barrelled disruptor rifle.

He took aim and shot each body, reducing them to little more than glowing yellow motes that explosively expanded before vanishing.

Rex had waited respectfully and approached, “General, dead, wounded and living are accounted for. We’re patching them up.”

“Good. We move out immediately. The enemy ST is undoubtedly sending more droids to wear us down further.”

“At once, General. Company, fall in!”

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The rendezvous point was noisy.

Not just because of the giant horizontal impellers working to suck in outside air within a room nearly 60 meters in length, but also the makeshift aid station and forward operating base that had been set up by Anakin and Ursa.

A quick mental count revealed 117 souls, in various states of battle readiness, injury or could just barely walk.

63 dead, I thought, accepting it with a speed that I couldn’t decide whether it was either good or bad.

I found Anakin at one of the master control stations for the impellers, his hands rapidly tapping on the screens and occasionally manipulating a physical control or lever.

“Snips, good to see you’ve made it,” he said, his face a study of annoyed frustration. “As you can see, I’m trying to shut down these impellers. Using the vent shafts with them still on, is rather suicidal.”

“Let me guess, the ST droid has encrypted the controls?”

He nodded, “And even if I decrypt, I’m just not fast enough before it just throws another encryption layer. We really should’ve figured out how R2 could hitch a ride in a Crustbreaker, for the future. So if M8 doesn’t mind…”

“At once, Master Skywalker. Hurry Mistress, plug me in!” my droid intelligence chirped aloud.

I flicked my left wrist and stabbed the logic spike into the local terminal port.

“Slicing! Now let’s see how that ST likes this!” she said with a vicious, near-creepy glee.

M8 showed me a small visualization of her digital battle in my HUD, but my focus was more on Anakin as he folded his arms and gazed around the room.

“You argued and pushed for us to attack in this manner, instead of a conventional assault. I thought this was too risky, I didn’t contradict you in front of the men, but now that we know…” He trailed off. “Even if we had the full 501st and 96th, this mountain could’ve massacred them both.”

“Hindsight and foresight, Skyguy, don’t make me lecture you,” I gave him a light teasing slap on the shoulder. 

I could practically feel him rolling his eyes behind his helmet. “Was that an Emerald Judgment I sensed from you?”

“Yes,” I sighed, the residual tingles from that technique was still poking in my fingers. I took the time to send a brief memory of the fight against the megadroid.

“Sithspit,” he muttered. “If that is what it takes to destroy one, can you imagine what a squad of these on a battlefield could accomplish?”

“All too well, Skyguy. Which is why I made sure to copy as much schematics from the factory lines as I could.”

He glared at me incredulously, “Snips, tell me you can’t seriously be entertaining the idea-”

“Oh yes, I am,” I confirmed seriously. “Not for this war, obviously. And I’m not putting a droid intelligence in it. If it gets built, it will have a pilot, perhaps even using the proxy system.”

Anakin’s shoulders relaxed fractionally with relief. “Oh, well, that’s much better I suppose.”

The picture of an entire company of agile mechs, striding forward to ruin the Yuuzhan Vong’s day was a pleasant thought. Especially given their utter zealous hatred for conventional technology and droids.

“Hah! Got you, you miserable pile of circuits!” shouted M8.

The impellers whined, losing their high pitch as they began powering down and spending the momentum built up in their blades.

“And just for that… take this fractal virus for fun! Ta ta!” she gave the equivalent of a digital raspberry to the ST droid before disconnecting.

“M8, that has a good chance of not just killing him, but also decimating the computer infrastructure of this entire factory,” I pointed out to her, removing the interface spike.

“Of course, we’re going to flatten the place from orbit anyway, mistress. Just a bit of fun and neatly stops him from ordering more droids to attack us.”

Which was a fair concern as we had to wait for another quarter hour for the impellers to wind down enough to safely use the ventilation tunnels. We also used that time to safely disable the fixed defenses in those tunnels.

There were three in total and with liberal usage of lightsabers and the Force, we cut and TK’d our way through the initial obstacles that separated the impeller room from the tunnels. It still meant an initial climb and that troopers had to use the underslung ascension modules on their rifles, whilst the Blades had to also help those who were too injured to safely use it.

Thankfully, M8’s intervention had kept us from being attacked during this vulnerable time. A climb under fire was not something any of us wanted to experience. We organized ourselves into three groups and began the journey.

The air vents themselves were vast arteries carved and reinforced through the mountain’s rock. They were never meant for people to use them, but the defense planners had built turrets in them anyway.

They were octagonal in cross-section, five meters across in most sections, though they occasionally narrowed or even widened to seven meters to accommodate the anti-infiltration turrets; all of which were dead silent. The gradient of the tunnel was also quite nasty, shifting from easy 20 degree inclines all the way to full 90 climbs, slowing us down further. The walls were a patchwork of bare scarred rock and heavy, dark metal plating bolted directly into stone. It made me feel like we were traversing up through a mechanical throat.

With no more steady air flow, it was already heating up, carrying a nasty metallic tang that was making it through standard breathing filters, so I advised everyone to rather switch back to internal life support.

After half an hour of awkward climbing, heat began shimmering visibly in the longer stretches of tunnel. Condensation that once formed on the cooler upper sections had already dried into pale mineral streaks and rusty trails that ran down the metal like old blood. Figures that Baktoid would cut corners and use substandard metals. Occasionally we would find maintenance ledges, grating, and protruding sensor vanes and flow regulators that served as handy improvised foot and hand holds.

The worst sections to climb through was when the tunnel lighting ended abruptly. It was so dark, that standard night vision settings were useless and everyone had to switch to thermal vision in their helmets, which in the now sweltering tunnels, turned the world into a hazy mess of color that left us barely able to see beyond a few meters. It slowed any jetpack user to a crawl.

Eventually I got sick of it, and levitated my green lightsabers overhead to give my evac group some proper light. I didn’t need it to navigate, but I could feel their spirits and morale visibly perk up.

‘The masters can screw themselves if they ever find out.’

Using the lightsaber as a glorified glow rod was one of those things that every Jedi has done in similar situations, but would never truly admit because of the stodgy, hidebound traditionalists in the Order.

Every moment of the climb, the atmosphere became more and more oppressive. Every scrape of armor, every labor of breath and dislodged pebble echoed up and down the shaft. Distant metallic groans occasionally reached us as the structure expanded in the heat.

‘Snips, making good progress?’ Anakin’s thoughts reached me.

‘Yes. I believe my group is approaching the final stretch.’

The air was growing marginally cooler and cleaner according to my armor’s sensors. The falling dust glowed like a green cloud under my lightsaber. Natural rock was becoming more common.

“Mistress, inertial calculations indicate it’s 80 meters to what should be a potential exit point.”

Naturally, it was only twenty meters later that we were confronted with another vertical climb.

I grabbed two injured troopers with the Force and used my jet boots to carry them this final stretch. Far from being satisfied with that, I flew back down and even started carrying the uninjured troopers beyond this climb.

A final stretch of 26 degree gradient slope greeted us and the tunnel ended with a huge, angled grid cap of durasteel, that allowed hardly any light through.

I gathered my now thoroughly tired evac group and had them all sit down to take a breather, drink water and get something to eat from ration packs.

‘Skyguy, I’m at the tunnel cap.’

‘Still 120 meters to go on my end, I sense group three is at fifty meters.’

‘I’m giving my group a 10 minute rest. I’m afraid we’re not out of the woods yet.’

Anakin’s frustration was palpable across the Bond. ‘Now what?’

‘M8’s virus created havoc, but not enough that it completely disabled our opposition. They knew where we would emerge. Every remaining BX that could make the climb to this height of the mountain is out there and six HMP gunships are hovering nearby waiting to strafe us.’

‘Time to call in some backup, Snips.’

I tapped the comlink on my vambrace and wasn’t surprised to find that heavy jamming was blanketing the zone. More than likely coming from the HMPs.

Without pause, I reached through the Force to my Bond with Taria.

‘Ahsoka?’

‘We’re at the exfil point, but being jammed. If you’d kindly tell the XO that we need a combat evac, quickly. We’ve got BX and HMPs blocking us.’

There was a slight pause on a reply, ‘Done. We’re plotting an emergence from hyper. Gunships will launch immediately after. ETA 18 minutes.’

‘Thank you.’

‘How long could you hold the tunnels if the droids were to push in?’

I played out that scenario through both tactics and prescience. ‘Long enough, we have 117 survivors, but not all of them are combat effective.’

‘And how are you feeling, Ahsoka?’

She was playing the Jedi Master card on me. It was something that had been happening subtly and slowly over time as the Shadow training continued. Anakin was my ‘official’ master, but it was clear that Taria, probably at the behest of Yoda and Obi-Wan, had been slowly stepping in to provide the more traditional support that Master would give a padawan. Something that Anakin was generally too young and inexperienced himself to really give.

How did I feel?

Such a simple question, yet in the wake of fighting for the lives of my men and losing them despite my best efforts-

‘I’m sick of it, Taria. I’m sick of this war and its pantomime nature. I feel like grabbing every greedy bastard profiting from it, trying to ensure it goes on longer and slapping some sense into them all! I want to shove my lightsabers up Palpatine’s ass, then behead him with the Darksaber! Then repeat with every clone he has waiting to embody him again!’

‘An entirely understandable feeling. I think even Yoda would admit to sharing the sentiment, though not so colorfully. Yet I sense there is something more, there is an acute guilt in you.’

I turned away from watching the clones and Mandalorians seated in a shared circle. What divisions had been there before, utterly erased in the wake of going through the same meat grinder. I watched as a Blade shared his ration with an injured trooper that he had been carrying. My hand grabbed onto the massive grid cap separating us from the outside. My eyes glared through the narrow slits into the sky beyond.

‘For some reason, the deaths of the Mandalorians under my command hit me harder today. We carry their armor back to the family and clan. We destroy the body. We say a few words, declare their deaths are ‘good’, that they live on in us and for the benefit of victory. Then it hit me that the next time I go back to Concordia, I will have to host a feast in their honor and for all the others who have died.’

‘And that troubles you, padawan?’

‘Honestly, yes. That I will have to look into the faces of dozens of fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters. Tell them that their loved one’s sacrifice was worth it. It’s the one thing of my adoptive culture that I’ve struggled the most with.’

‘Understandable, Jedi view it as a solemn occasion. Not exactly a time to eat, drink and celebrate.’

‘It’s a stupid guilt. I know there was nothing more I could’ve reasonably done.’

‘Conquering the heart is never easy, Ahsoka. It’s also a struggle that never truly ends. And it should never end, because that is the true moment of defeat for not just a Jedi, but for every sentient.’

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Our ‘rescue’ proceeded as swiftly and textbook as it could under the circumstances.

Nearly every gunship that the Conqueror had screamed down onto the mountain, raining concussion missiles, heavy cannon and scything composite lasers into the ground.

The HMP droids were overwhelmed in moments and the BX commandos were reduced to slag.

“GO! GO!”

The tunnel caps were already cut via lightsaber or rigged with shaped charges.

They popped off with a hefty Force Push and the evac groups streamed out of the tunnels.

Blaster fire from the few surviving BX droids was easily deflected or outright blocked when I used levitating rocks as both cover and projectiles.

The steep angle of the mountain at this altitude was the only real complication. LAAT gunships coming to pick up the survivors had to remain at a low hover and the troopers had to actually jump into open sides.

The injured had to be ferried over via jetpack.

When we were sure the last BX’s had been dealt with, Anakin and I hurried things up by careful telekinesis.

“That’s the last one!” he declared, taking one last look around with eyes and the Force.

I nodded in agreement and we both made a Force assisted leap into the waiting gunship.

“The honor is yours, Snips!” Anakin shouted, gesturing to the mountain, as the LAAT banked and powered away from it.

I tapped my comlink to check the signal strength. With the HMPs gone and the factory’s systems compromised by the virus, disabling any potential jamming system, the signal was actually at a good 70%.

Only when the gunships reached 15km did I push the button with decisive satisfaction.

In the first second, nothing seemed to happen. Then came a heavy, compressive pulse and the mountain itself seemed to flinch.

A blinding, blue-white flare erupted from the heart of the complex.

Through farsight, I perceived the initial blast as a perfect, expanding sphere of raw energy that vaporized bulkheads, production lines, and entire chambers in an instant. The mountain’s internal structure offered only the briefest of resistance before it began to fail. The second, heavier detonation followed as secondary power cells, fuel stores and munitions cooked off in a cascading concussion.

The sound that reached the surface was a rolling, thunderous roar that built to a continuous bellow.

Great jets of fire and superheated gas punched upward through the ventilation shafts, elevator wells, and the bore-holes that had been left by the Crustbreakers, erupting from the mountainside like volcanic vents. Rock and durasteel was flung skyward in glowing arcs.

The entire mountain now heaved. Entire sections collapsed inward, as support pillars and loadbearing strata were obliterated.

A massive secondary shockwave visibly radiated outward, condensing the moist air into a racing expanding cloud.

It stripped trees from the lower slopes and sent a visible ripple through the surrounding terrain.

Out of every fissure and exit, thick black smoke with visible embers began boiling out.

For long seconds, the mountain continued to die from the inside. Secondary explosions bloomed in irregular intervals, each one punching new wounds through the rock. It sent debris, the smallest of which was the size of a speeder, arcing outward on ballistic trajectories to either crash among the neighboring mountains or splash into the ocean, creating significant displacement waves.

Finally, with a grinding, tectonic groan, a large portion of the upper factory levels caved in on itself.  

Everyone in the assault force watched and those injured pleaded from the gunship deck to be turned so they could also see.

The medic’s initial objections were overruled, when by silent agreement, the closest trooper or Mando, adjusted the medical gurney and everyone got out of the way.

“Now that’s a pretty sight,” Fives declared with a big grin.

Being one of those chiefly responsible for making such a big explosion was pretty satisfying, I couldn’t help but admit to myself. It was a firecracker in comparison to what was regularly done during a space battle though.

We watched the aftermath unfold for a while.

When our distance reached 50km, I changed comlink channels. “All gunship pilots, get us into space. Tano to XO.”

“XO, here. General.”

“Are you in position?”

“Ready, target locked and awaiting your order.”

“Consider it given. Fire.”

The LAAT gunships angled upward and climbed with max speed. The side doors closed, but the viewing slats remained open.

Moments later, a bright blue hammer of energy seemingly descended from the sky and slammed into the remains of the factory.

Followed by another, and another.

Each flash seemingly swallowed by the earth, before a shockwave raced outward.

The gunships were far enough away to survive, but we still got a rocky ride, which thankfully lessened as we climbed into the thinner parts of the atmosphere as the orbital bombardment continued.

Four minutes later, we were in space and the Conqueror fired the final shot.

From space, I could see the wound I had left on Golatha.

The entire mountain range around the factory was a glowing volcanic mess, the ocean boiling and sending a stream of cloudy vapor gas streaming into the upper atmosphere.

The Conqueror was barely bigger than my thumb at this moment in its low orbit, but quickly grew as the gunship squadron picked up speed.

For a while, I was just numb. Carefully not thinking about anything. It was very tempting to just fall into a blissful meditation right there as I was standing, but we were not out of enemy territory.

“Tano to XO, do we have any enemy assets in the system responding?”

“Yes, General. Patrols of Gozanti cruisers and Hardcell combat ships are converging into a squadron formation and headed our way at max burn. They won’t reach us before we can escape into hyper.”

“Combat analysis.”

“If the Conqueror was at 100%, we could win, General.”

“But we’re not, thanks to the Rakata. All right. The instant we land, you’re clear for a best speed burn out of the mass shadow. Give us a hyperjump to a randomized spot in the system’s Kuiper Belt.”

“Understood, General. XO out.”

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It was mostly dull, reddish-brown, which smoothly transitioned into a brighter, bluish-white water and methane ice surface and it felt like I could get lost in the randomized, natural beauty of it as it glinted in the faint sunlight that was reaching it from Golatha’s star.

Conqueror had hid itself in the sensor shadow of a substantial Kuiper-belt body roughly 380 kilometers across. Its shape was irregular but it edged towards being ellipsoidal, with a noticeable bulge on one hemisphere and a deep, scarred depression on the opposite side; the remnant of an ancient, low-velocity collision.

I was seated in meditation posture before the transparisteel window of my quarter’s primary living area, with eight hours of deep, rejuvenative meditation in the Force behind me. M8 was standing in the corner of the room, plugged into the recharge station I had installed there at her request. Something she was most insistent about, as the Droid Works was just too far away in an emergency.

The chime at the front door decided whether my dithering would continue. A quick probe with the Force revealed that I wouldn’t have to don something over my underwear.

“Come in!”

The door hissed open, revealing a distracted Anakin, freshly showered damp long hair, in fresh dark brown Jedi attire, clutching a large datapad.

“Snips,” he greeted softly, giving me a critical look top to bottom, before gazing at the view beyond of the kuiper object.

“Skyguy.”

I parsed carefully what I was feeling from him; a clear worry and concern for me being the most prominent, but he was using it as a shield for something else and deeper.

“Have a good meditation?” he asked, coming to stand right in front of the window.

His actual question was obvious. “Yes, you can relax. I’m alright, Master. My ‘issue’ is for the most part, sorted.”

I caught the slight huff of relief he gave. “Good, I’m happy to hear that. Thought you might want to take a look at this as soon as you came out of meditation.”

He handed over the datapad and as soon as the screen came on, it showed the partially cloaked image of a mid-sized, saucer shaped space station. The computer analysis filled out the invisible parts with a wireframe diagram, estimating it at nearly two kilometers from its central dorsal tower all the way to the lowest ventral tower, with a six hundred meter diameter habitable saucer section.

“Ah, the mysterious partially cloaked space station.”

What its purpose was definitely hinted at, with the docking arms, container racks, and a small hangar for freighter droid transports and extreme long-range sensor dishes, anti-ship batteries, and a small complement of Vulture droids.

I tapped the datapad to view the next file and gave Anakin an exasperated look, “You took our one and only commando team and boarded it.”

“It’s something that you were going to order anyway, Snips. We had to take advantage before the Separatist reinforcements arrived,” he explained.

“The mission there was something I wanted to run overwatch on, Skyguy,” I gave him a brief glare, but let it go. “But I also understand, you wanted to ease my burdens. What’s done is done.”

He folded his arms and leaned against the wall, unsuccessfully trying to hide a bit of uncomfortable squirming under my gaze, “Yes, well, as you can see, what we have here is a logistics-command station that also doubles as an early-warning passive sensor platform.”

“And the reason they couldn’t cloak it completely?”

“Severely underestimated the power requirements. That station would need a reactor with nearly four times the output to even come close and even then the fuel requirements would be a nightmare. Best they could do was the partial cloak, which does at least make detection at long range problematic. The only reason we could detect that passively was because the Conqueror’s an Acclamator-II and KDY put in a near-scientific precision sensor package on her.”

“Anything else?” I asked pointedly.

“Downloaded everything from their databases, including some from hidden data vaults. It seems that they were using Golatha as a backup data repository for a number of projects.”

“I suppose that made Captain Olva very happy.”

Anakin chuckled, “There is a rather disturbing glee in her eyes whenever she gets a new secret or encryption put in front of her. Unlocking those databases and files are going to be a long-term issue. Not something that the computers in the ship’s RI annex could hope to really complete by themselves. But they did uncover some interesting initial files.”

I swiped the screen and carefully read through a file detailing the support and logistics for…

“Umbaran Partisans.”

“It was inevitable, given the Republic's military occupation,” Anakin shook his head, clearly troubled because he had led the clone forces that had done it. “Officially, the Umbaran government and the majority of the population is back within the Republic, but it seems a growing number of them want to send Separatists and the Republic packing out of their solar system. The Separatists are secretly encouraging, funding and supplying the Partisans through two levels of intermediaries.”

“Typical,” I scoffed. “And the instant the Partisans gain their objective, they’ll find themselves rolled over by the Separatists.”

“That’s the long term idea, but even the Separatists don't really think it can happen. It’s just another operation to tie up GAR resources and personnel, whilst the ultimate prize is more Umbaran technology.”

“Of course it is,” I sighed.

He gave me a scrutinizing look, “Something wrong, Snips?” 

“You know I’m read into a number of GAR and Republic R&D projects, both through KDY and MandalMotors. Well, those scientists have been studying Umbaran ‘salvage’ from the battle.” Which was another way of saying they looted an Umbaran airbase of everything that wasn’t tied down and in some cases brought the plasma torches. “As an example, the T-20 Umbaran fighter has been disassembled very carefully and even after a year of study, most of its components and technology is only barely understood. The question of how it works is another story entirely. Did you know that they literally grow their fighters with nanodroids?”

Anakin’s expression was suitably astonished, even as I could see his mind whirling with calculations, “Wh- How… Nanodroids working with such heavy elements? Where are they getting the required energy from and not burning themselves out in the process? Even if you got around that problem, the speed of construction growth would be impractical.”

“Ask the Umbarans, good luck getting an answer,” I said dryly.

I had a notion that the Umbarans were somehow directly tapping the hyperspace domain and pulling energy from there, but it was not a theory I was comfortable in sharing. Giving the keys or even the idea of limitless energy without hypermatter constraints and logistics was not something I wanted Palpatine anywhere near.

“Anyway, other than that, all we’ve managed to decode is a project list with codenames.”

My eyes widened as I took in a list of 28 names.

Project Nightfall

Operation Silent Mantle

Project Eclipse Protocol

Initiative Black Horizon

Project Final Circuit

Infinite Coil Initiative

Operation Long Shadow

As with all such names, they were meant to be maddeningly vague yet also specific enough that if anyone in the Republic Intel circles used those names, and the Separatists learned about it, it would immediately alert them. It would tell them that the Golatha repository had been figuratively burned and they would immediately switch codenames and encryption ciphers. Even more frustrating, was that some of these projects were also pie-in-the-sky projects that were just there as disinformation. 

Especially worrying names that popped out to me were…

Project Godsbane

Operation Dead Switch

Project Cinder Path

Initiative Last Light

Codename: Oblivion Threshold

Trying to apply prescience to them was almost pointless because of that. Project Cinder Path might as well have been an early codename for the Death Star and we couldn’t know until that file was cracked open.

“Anything jump out at you?” he asked hopefully.

“No,” I said flatly. “We’ve seen and dealt with a number of the Separatists’ super weapons during the course of the war. Researching this is not in our mandate. Let RI do their job.”

My words were flat out misdirection, as I would be shoving a copy of these files to Fulcrum. HK and his growing cadre of R series droids in the Concordian facility could also tackle the decryption problem.

“XO to Tano.”

My comlink flew into my hand from the nearby caf table. “Tano here. Go XO.”

“General, enemy reinforcements have just arrived in the system; four Munificents and a single Lucrehulk, battleship configuration. They’re on a course straight for Golatha III.”

“Thank you, XO. I think our welcome here has officially run out. Recall all scouts, set a course back for Dalicron. Make sure to use the updated star map I uploaded into the Navicomputer.”

“Yes, ma’am. XO out.”

I smoothly stood and stretched out the kinks in my arms and legs.

“Ooof, that feels good. Going for a shower, Skyguy. If you spot Cloud on your way out, do tell him to prepare my dinner with a tad less spiciness. My digestive system didn’t really appreciate his last experiment.” He smirked at me as I chucked the datapad back to him and headed straight to my adjoining bedroom and its attached refresher.

When I was standing luxuriantly under the hot spray, I tried very hard not to go down the probability path where Anakin would decide to join me in the ‘fresher.

That it was down to a bloody 50/50 split had my stomach twisting itself into knots of anxiousness and it felt like someone was holding a heater to my face.

Oh, for frak’s sake, not now.

I firmly shut the door on the Bond and sensed him leaving the captain’s quarters and sure enough, running into my ever-dependable steward.

With almost vicious frustration, I turned the cold settings to full.

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A/N: Poor Ahsoka, prescience can be quite frustrating. The diplomacy deck and her quarters have subverted bugs, but it takes a bit of preparation to use them safely. Her misdirection efforts also means she's letting RI and Palpatine put her under a larger microscope. Anakin has the same issues.

Hope you enjoyed the megadroid battle. Enjoy the weekend and stay awesome folks!