Chapter 94

Empress Teta Orbit, Empress Teta System

Koros Sector

“And you are absolutely certain the distress signal originated from Coruscant!?” Commodore Vinoc demanded in furious pace as he marched through the passageways of the Koros Spaceworks.

“Affirmative,” the BD-3000 attendant droid replied, hijacked by Lady Lex’s programming, her stiff servomotors struggling to keep pace with his haste, “My sister and I have already calculated the shortest flight plan possible. At best speed, we can reach Coruscant in eighteen hours.”

Vinoc clenched his jaw. Eighteen hours? A pipe dream! The full might of Honor Salima’s Home Fleet stood vigil over Coruscant, with all of the most advanced Star Destroyers the Republic Navy had at its disposal. In comparison, Vinoc’s 284th Battle Division barely numbered seventy-four old and tired warships, with no more than twenty-two capital ships among their number. With some clever hyperspace plotting, they could surely bypass all of the picket lines between them and Coruscant, but they could never hope to touch the Jewel of the Core Worlds.

His pace slowed as he turned left, gaze drawn toward the vast viewports lining the passageway. Beyond them, the warships of the ‘4th Battle Division lay moored in the void, a flotilla of battered war machines silhouetted against the glittering shimmer of Empress Teta. The capital ships hung like wearily, the scorch marks of turbolaser fire and the patchwork plating of hasty repairs telling stories of their own..

His eyes settled on Crying Sun, his flagship, a Providence-class dreadnought that seemed to weep golden tears in the reflected light of the ecumenopolis below. It was a beast of a warship, its once-pristine hull now a mosaic of battle damage and retrofit modifications.

Flanking it, Recusant-class light destroyers stood in formation, their long, skeletal frames bristling with turbolasers. Lean and predatory, they had been the autonomous vanguard of his Deep Core Campaign, slipping past Republic sentry lines and striking deep into enemy strongholds. Beside them, the Munificent-class frigates rested like sleeping sentinels, their hyperwave jammers still warm from the last engagement. And that was not to speak of the dozens of cruisers and corvettes that filled their lines of battle.

They were not the shining, pristine warships of the Coruscant Home Fleet, nor the Perlemian Coalition’s painted warships gleaming in parade formations over Raxus Secundus. No, these ships were something else. Veterans of the void, of a hidden war they would never be thanked for fighting.

Because they had fought, bled, and conquered in the shadows of the Deep Core–beneath the cold, unblinking gaze of the Galactic Center. Droid-brained warships slithered through the labyrinth of hyperspace, threading routes no sane navigator would dare attempt, maintaining vital supply corridors to their Givin allies in the galactic south. Battlecruisers bore the flag of invasion forces, spearheading assaults against the Republic’s Deep Core redoubts.

Now, he was being asked to turn these veterans against Coruscant itself. Against the very heart of the Republic. By a damn pleasure droid.

Vinoc exhaled sharply.

No, not any mere pleasure droid. Whilst it was indeed a chrome blue-purple bettie bot pacing beside him, her true form was a kilometre-long star destroyer lurking in the deep black. Recusant-class star destroyer, Lexington, the ‘elder sister’ of the two most notorious raiders in the Deep Core. Together with her twin, these fully autonomous warships had waged a campaign of terror and precision that no organic crew could have sustained.

In the galaxy’s long and storied annals of warfare, countless doctrines and battle plans bore the names of legendary strategists and brilliant commanders. But the brutal, unorthodox style of warfare that had carved a path through the Deep Core? That belonged to two artificially thinking machines.

They had ruthlessly exploited theoretical hyperlanes, transited forbidden spacelanes where any flesh-and-blood crew would have met their doom, and stalked the battlefields of the ‘zone’ like monsters beneath one’s bed. Lexington, Saratoga and their fleet had fought a kind of war that no organic mind could withstand–a war waged in the crushing, endless dark, where even the stars themselves seemed to burn out under the unblinking stare of the supermassive black hole.

To think these two machines were once just another batch of warships fresh from the foundries of Ringo Vinda. As with all droid automatons put under Rain Bonteri’s command, they somehow found a certain kind of self-awareness of their own unlike any found in other droids. Vinoc knew not what data Bonteri trained his battle droids, but he could not deny the results.

“Commodore?” Lady Lex’s voice–hollow, electronic–brought him back.

“I presume you have a strategy to break the Home Fleet’s blockade?” Vinoc paused just outside the tender that would ferry him to his flagship.

“Affirmative. Saratoga and I will depart forthwith, and rendezvous with a second force enroute from Commenor just beyond the Coruscant Star System,” the droid star destroyer informed him, “With this, we will have two separate forces, including the Fourth Division; one Rimward and one Coreward respectively.”

“You intend on distracting the Home Fleet whilst the Fourth Division slips from behind?”

Lady Lex’s glazed eyes bored into him, “That depends on the timing of our arrival, and whomever Admiral Honor detects first.”

Vinoc studied the BD-3000’s lifeless stare, though he knew it was not truly her he was speaking to. Lexington was out there, somewhere beyond the viewport, a dark shape lurking against the light of Empress Teta. It was a strange thing, conversing with a warship in the shape of an attendant droid, but he had long since stopped questioning it.

He exhaled, shifting his weight slightly as he mulled over the plan. The strategy was sound, though it relied on more improvisation than he would have liked. Would Lexington’s division arrive first, or would his? Which would Admiral Honor detect first, and which would she decide was of a higher priority? There were far too many factors at play, and leaving the safety of Empress Teta’s domain meant enforcing radio silence. It would all come down to luck.

And yet, what other choice did they have?

Vinoc nodded, slowly at first, then with conviction.

“We’ll proceed with the plan,” he said, “Make sure Saratoga is aware of every detail.”

Lady Lex inclined her head, “She already is.”

Then the light in her photoreceptors flickered, dimmed, and faded. The BD-3000’s posture stiffened, and with that, Lexington was gone–her mind retreating back into the depths of her warship hull, the attendant droid falling into hibernation until she was needed again.

Vinoc turned, stepping onto the tender, the hiss of the hatch sealing shut behind him. Within moments, the deck beneath his feet shuddered, and the small craft detached from the station.

Through the forward viewport, he watched as the mooring arms of the Koros Spaceworks fell away, revealing the vast sprawl of the 284th Battle Division arrayed beyond. Veterans of a war that had never officially existed, hulls gleaming faintly under the reflected light of Empress Teta, the golden haze of the ecumenopolis casting a warm sheen across their massive frames.

Vinoc activated the comm panel at his side, his voice steady as he addressed the fleet.

“All hands, this is the Commodore,” he began, “Shore leave is canceled, effective immediately. All crews are to report to their vessels and be ready to depart in… three hours. You will be briefed en route.”

He toggled the frequency.

“Jorm, prep your auxiliaries and help me get a line to the Empress. I want to call in a favour.”

“–Another sortie already? What’s our target this time?”

“Coruscant.”

“…Well,” a worm of sudden apprehension slithered into Captain Jorm’s voice, “I’ll certainly let Her Highness know.”

The tender glided toward Crying Sun, engines humming low. Outside, the 284th Battle Division was already beginning to stir. Running lights flickered to life along warship hulls as skeleton crews warmed the engines. Moored vessels disengaged from their berths. Autocannons tracked invisible targets, shattering the ice buildup on their barbettes. Hollow tubes were filled with the dull warheads of proton torpedoes. The stillness that had settled over the fleet in the lull of shore leave was evaporating, replaced by the hum of impending battle.

Vinoc folded his arms, watching it unfold.

If the Republic hadn’t known of their existence… they certainly would now.

⁂

Coruscant, Coruscant System

Corusca Sector

The order is given once, then again, and again.

With each attempt, Republic Intelligence dispatches the order through another hole in the sabotaged communications network, another wavefront bursting out into the galaxy and towards the galactic rim. It spreads to GAR commanders on Togoria and Mimban, Dantooine and Wroona, New Cov and Serenno, and every battlefront, every military installation, every hospital and rehab center and spaceport cantina in the galaxy.

And it is sent again, again, and again. Like a repeating mantra, an earworm digging itself into the minds of every clone, marshal, general and admiral in the Grand Army of the Republic, burning away any uncertainty of command.

Everywhere.

Everywhere, except for Coruscant.

Because on Coruscant, Order 66 was already being executed.

It was a slow suffocation, a deep, smothering shadow falling over the Force. Every breath she took carried the weight of dying Jedi–each one a brief flare of light, a sudden crack of pain, then silence. The hunters spread across the planet like a tightening noose, troopers and droids and agents surging through the great duracrete jungle like an unrelenting virus. Shocktroopers gunning down Jedi in the alleyways of Uscru District, gunships glassing hidden enclaves on Level 1313, snipers watching for any fleeing wayward robes on the high landing arms of the Senate Annex.

Dawn was creeping across Galactic City. Fingers of morning brought a rose-colored glow to the wind-smeared upper reach of a vast twisting cone of smoke.

Jedi Master Shaak Ti was not prone to profanity–not aloud, at least. Even now, as she plummeted four thousand meters from a penthouse suite, her lips never formed so much as a syllable. Her expression remained composed, serene, as though she were merely meditating against a stiff breeze rather than plummeting toward the duracrete veins of the ecumenopolis below. Yet when she caught sight of the source of that smoke her mind betrayed her discipline with a curse she had only ever heard in the depths of a Corellian shipyard.

The Temple Precinct is on fire.

Shaak Ti sharpened her hunter’s gaze, and searched for a way out of her unplanned chuteless skydiving, sweeping the gleaming permaglass towers racing past her reflection, mind working faster than her freefall. There, just ahead–barely visible in the streaming lanes of air traffic–moved a police speeder, its silver-black chassis cutting through the dawn-lit smog.

It was too far. She was moving too fast.

She exhaled.

The Force surged to her call, wrapping around her like an unseen cocoon. The terminal velocity that had threatened to smash her into the durasteel jungle below folded around her instead, the crushing force bleeding into something softer, more malleable.

Slowing.

A snap of her wrists, a shift in her posture, and the wind resistance caught in her robes, sending her angling toward the police speeder. The distance closed rapidly. Too rapidly. Even softened, the impact would be–

Painful.

Shaak Ti struck the speeder hard enough to crack the transparisteel cockpit, only the protection of the Force saving her from a panoply of shattered bones, the power of her landing buckling the repulsors and sending the vehicle into a spiraling dive. Its sirens whooped in distress, thrusters sputtering.

Inside the cockpit, the police droid barely had time to register the incoming anomaly before Shaak Ti drove a boot through the transparisteel canopy, tearing it free in a shriek of metal and shattering glass.

It struggled to unlatch its blaster pistol; “Jedi–!”

Shaak Ti grabbed its frame and hurled it skyward.

It pinwheeled into the abyss, shrieking as it did so.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

The Jedi Master slipped into the pilot’s seat in a single motion, hands ghosting over the controls. The speeder was still in freefall, tumbling nose-first toward a crowded pedestrian thoroughfare. She snapped the control yoke to full reverse, thrusters whining in protest. The speeder screamed–then jerked upward, engines howling as it leveled out a few hundred metres above the duracrete.

Shaak Ti exhaled through her teeth, steadying the craft.

She stabbed a code that canceled the speeder’s programmed patrol route, then grabbed the yoke and kicked the craft into a twisting ascent that shot her through half a dozen crisscrossing streams of air traffic.

Shaak Ti momentarily glanced above her, towards the Chancellor’s–the Sith Lord’s–suite, where flashes of emerald against blood red could be seen clashing through the shattered glass. A part of her urged her to return to Master Yoda’s aid, but the Jedi Master within knew what was most important; the future of the Jedi Order. Master Yoda would agree, Shaak Ti was sure. Besides, he could handle his own.

Master Yoda had not lived nine hundred years to fall by the hand of some Naboo flyboy.

Destination in mind, Jedi Master Shaak Ti angled the speeder toward the smoke rising from the Temple Precinct, and triggered the speeder’s comm. It crackled to life, the frequency a tangled mess of overlapping transmissions, static bursts, and clipped voices rattling off urgent updates;

“–Repeat, all units, Temple District remains on full lockdown. Perimeter secure. Senate Emergency Response has declared a state of martial law across Galactic City. Repeat–martial law is in effect. Authorization to engage all Jedi on sight confirmed–”

Canine teeth gnashed as Shaak Ti finally let go of her composure, clenching her jaw in rictus determination.

⁂

Jedi Knight Barriss Offee and Jedi Master Cin Drallig sprinted through the empty vaulted hallway, clattering echoes of their footsteps making the two of them sound like an entire platoon. The main doors of the Temple were slowly swinging shut, two monumental duracrete edifices rumbling together until they locked into a flush surface.

The two Jedi saw the lone gatekeeper there, Master Jurokk hunched over a monitor.

“How bad is it?” Master Cin Drallig immediately demanded. He was the head of the Jedi Temple Guard, and if anybody in the Temple had any right to know, it was him.

Master Jurokk did not need to say it. It was written in the way his shoulders sagged, in the deep lines of his face that the shadows could not quite hide. It was written in the night beyond the Temple, in the thunder of approaching boots, in the distant whine of engines and the rhythmic clanking of durasteel feet upon the permacrete of the Processional Way.

The Gate Master stepped aside; “See for yourself.”

The night beyond the Temple was full of clones. Battalions of them. Brigades. Thousands. Heavy weapons and tanks and walkers lining up as far as the eye can see, in a solid, momentous march towards the Temple gate. Rank upon rank, shoulder to shoulder, no hesitation in their march. No uncertainty. No pause to wonder if they should be doing this.