Ten years, one month, and seventeen days after the Battle of Yavin…
Or the forty-fifth year, first month, and seventeenth day after the Great Resynchronization.
(Eight months and two days since the Arrival.)
KABOOM!
The sound of the explosion echoed through the mountains, reflecting off them over and over, now swelling, now fading.
But it had no effect on the demolition target.
The metal structure — a high-voltage transmission line tower — its base literally sheared off by the directional blast, began to topple sideways with the groan of a dying sea giant.
The thick cables, through which enormous streams of energy from the nuclear power plant surged every second to power the facilities in the valley, first stretched taut like strings on an ancient musical instrument.
Physics in action — opposing forces vied for dominance over what was happening.
"It won't work," Ezra said, commenting on the result of his actions as he fastened the jetpack onto his back. "You can't fool gravity."
On the planet Koensayr, the gravitational pull was slightly higher than what was considered standard across the galaxy.
That is, equal to Coruscant's.
And it prevailed.
The wires snapped, lashing across the nearest cliffs like a merciless whip.
The kind that, even if it didn't kill you on impact, would certainly finish you off with the accumulated electrical charge.
Not to mention the fact that the whips were those very cables coming from the power station, which were live.
But Ezra wasn't particularly interested in that.
Because behind him, the engines of the jetpack were already roaring cheerfully, and the special forces soldier was descending the mountain at breathtaking speed, double-checking his weapons as he went.
Republic special forces soldier Ezra Bridger.
The battle for the planet Koensayr was approaching its end.
And the battlefield remained in the hands of the Alliance armed forces.
The planet, located in Quadrant N-12 of the Colonies Region on the Hydian Way, in its northern part, bordered a seemingly insignificant Imperial Remnant known as the Antimeridian sector, whose capital was the region's well-known planet Loronar.
Led by Moff Getelles, the Antimeridian sector supplied Strike-class medium cruisers throughout the galaxy.
Not exactly a serious opponent, but not every system even had a heavy cruiser that could teach the imperials, swollen with their own overblown ego, a lesson.
By the time the Calamari Star Cruiser, Admiral Eclipse's flagship, along with its escort, arrived at Koensayr in response to the local government's plea for help in ridding themselves of imperial tyranny, there were about two dozen Strike-class cruisers in the system and one Victory-II-class Star Destroyer.
Getelles himself was aboard the latter, having fled in disgrace the moment the gunners of the Calamari turned the first three ships of his Remnant into scrap metal.
Abandoning on the surface up to two regiments of ground forces — an occupation army whose goal was to capture the shipyards located on the planet's surface.
Shipyards that the commanders explained were desperately needed by the young Alliance's forces.
Ah, just like the good old days when Bridger served in the militia under General Rahm Kota's command.
Location of Koensayr relative to Loronar.
The Jedi Knight and celebrated Clone Wars general, Rahm Kota, had never trusted the clones of the Grand Army of the Republic, preferring to command born men rather than artificially created ones.
So he recruited his troops from militiamen who had suffered from separatist actions or were dissatisfied with them, from mercenaries, former separatist prisoners, and other willing individuals.
Such a choice of battle comrades turned Kota's small army into a rather motley force. Ezra still remembered the times when he, a young lad, a native of the planet Sochi, enlisted in Kota's militia as a volunteer.
Learning the skills of warfare under the guidance of seasoned mercenaries, Bridger himself matured on the military path, fighting alongside his fellow militiamen honorably on the battlefields while warily eyeing the clones fighting on the fronts adjacent to theirs.
Soulless and obedient, the GAR clones, no matter what anyone said, were precisely the "meat droids" that separatist hostile propaganda made them out to be.
With the same indifference with which they destroyed CIS battle droids, they also carried out Order 66. An army of true men helped Kota survive the destruction of the Jedi, which his soldiers simply refused to carry out.
Some of Kota's militia fighters, it should be noted, left the general, unwilling to oppose the new "legitimate" government, but most of the soldiers remained loyal to their commander.
The jetpack had done its job, and Ezra, after running a few steps forward, shed the jetpack, joining the full-scale advance of Admiral Eclipse's ground forces onto the territory of the testing complex.
This was, in fact, why he had blown up the tower's support — to completely cut power to the complex and thereby, until the backup generators kicked in, allow the forward units to breach the facility's first line of defense, taking advantage of the absence of the working automated security system.
Unlike the past exploits of General Kota's militia, which operated on a "hit-and-run" tactic, the current state of the militia and the forces under the general's and admiral's control could no longer be characterized as a "guerrilla war against the Galactic Empire."
Yes, in some places the units still used weapons inherited from the Republic, but for the most part they managed with weapons purchased through their own resistance group.
The source of supply, in their time, had been the galaxy's black markets.
Nearby, several rockets roared through the air, their exhaust deafening, and blew a section of the wall to shreds, on top of which an automated laser turret was beginning to come to life.
A powerful blast — a ten-meter stretch of wall, half a man's height thick, was blown to pieces.
That's imperial quality for you.
And yes, the heavy weaponry of General Kota's militia fighters had been obtained from imperial depots or convoys.
Against the wishes of their previous owners, of course.
But who asked for their opinion anyway?
Over the years of its activity, General Kota's militia had managed to become a considerable nuisance to the Galactic Empire, but the militia units, divided into small groups, were virtually uncatchable, skillfully and swiftly attacking remote imperial facilities.
Kota struck not only at the Empire's economy but also at its pride, its symb—
One such operation was the raid on the TIE fighter space assembly plant over Nar Shaddaa in Hutt Space. Kota's soldiers invaded the factory and quickly captured its key facilities, including the control center.
And then…
Ezra made it through the breach in the wall, joining the firefight.
He saw only targets before him — in white and black armor.
Stormtroopers and imperial army troopers.
No mercy.
All enemies must die.
Bridger became a murderously precise and merciless machine of death aimed at the enemy.
The emotional self-charging he performed before battle had worked this time too.
No one but the general himself survived that raid on the TIE fighter assembly plant over Nar Shaddaa.
During the battle, the factory lost orbit and, breaking apart, crashed into the atmosphere of Nal Hutta's moon.
Most of it burned up in the planet's atmosphere, along with all the militiamen involved in the operation and most of the factory's imperial personnel.
The general himself did not particularly like recalling the reasons for that defeat.
The mission to lure the Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Vader, into a deadly fight had gone wrong.
Instead of the Emperor's enforcer himself, some almighty kid arrived…
Ezra didn't even flinch when, rounding a corner, he saw a tall man with short dark hair literally tearing an AT-AT apart, ripping the "limbs" from the chassis, following the "head," of the Empire's battle walker.
Yes, this very "kid."
Galen Marek, as he was called.
Though he himself didn't particularly like being called by his full name, preferring to use only the first part.
Just Galen.
In fact, he said that even this name didn't correspond to reality, claiming he was merely a clone of the real secret apprentice of Darth Vader.
But he also hated the nickname given to him at his "birth" — "Starkiller" because it referred to that part of his past that was created without his involvement.
So, just Galen.
General Kota had spent years trying to convince his student that he wasn't a genetic copy of some deceased gifted kid.
The stubborn Jedi didn't even want to believe the medical research data that confirmed his artificial origin.
He stubbornly insisted that cloning a Jedi was impossible…
Ah, the brave general could sometimes be amusing in his stubbornness when it came to people close to him.
This clone, wielding two white-and-blue lightsabers, was one of them.
A good kid, really.
And, to be honest, his "cloned" origin made many of General Kota's militia fighters breathe a sigh of relief.
Because at the orbital assembly plant over Nar Shaddaa, many of the general's fighters who hadn't participated in that battle had lost friends, family, loved ones.
Yes, both women and men served under the general, both humans and non-humans — it wasn't gender or race that determined how good a fighter you were.
But in Galen's case, the situation was somewhat different.
If he weren't a clone, then even his part in saving the remnants of Kota's militia after the attack on Kamino wouldn't have mitigated his involvement in the destruction of the militia fighters over Nar Shaddaa.
But a clone…
What claims could you make against him regarding what his prototype had fought for on the wrong side?
It took a long time after Nar Shaddaa to restore the general's unit's combat effectiveness.
Unfortunately, by the time of the Battle of Kamino, they still hadn't managed to properly build up their strength, which resulted in catastrophic losses during that battle that ended the imperial Jedi cloning program.
And now…
After nearly a decade spent fighting against small imperial units, continuously nipping at minor Remnants, General Kota's militia was once again as combat-effective as in the past.
Only now they were called something else.
The merger with the Alliance forces meant that from now on, they, fighters just like Ezra himself, were no longer listed as militiamen but as soldiers of elite forces.
Alliance Special Forces.
Elite units formed from infantrymen who had sided with Mon Mothma after the Alliance's formation.
Fighters who had undergone additional military training courses, mastered survival programs in any conditions, and were also trained for combat in zero gravity, mine demolition, knowledge of ship architecture, and camouflage.
An analogous unit — the New Republic Special Forces — was created on the initiative of prominent heroes of the Alliance to Restore the Republic.
In those years, the Alliance needed units for reconnaissance and sabotage operations on enemy territory, supporting army infantry on particularly critical sectors of the front, capturing ships, and conducting combat operations on space stations.
Special forces soldiers carried out missions both in space and on the ground with equal effectiveness.
For a long time, the commander of the special forces remained the imperial deserter, General Crix Madine.
But now, information about former allies was not so widely known.
The Alliance was much more interested in training its own fighters, which, for lack of a better system, they divided into just two branches — infantry, bearing all the burdens of prolonged positional combat, and special forces, created for boarding actions, space station combat, and swift strikes against enemy positions on celestial bodies.
That is, precisely what Ezra and his comrades-in-arms were doing now.
And they were winning.
Galen, moving at the vanguard of the advance, was mercilessly hacking apart enemy war machines and ground units, leaving only the occasional dazed survivor for the special forces.
One such survivor came across Ezra, climbing out of a mangled imperial tank.
The imperial, in a black flight suit and heavy metal helmet, jumped off the twisted, burning tank and began rolling on the ground to put out the flames.
Some fuel had apparently splashed on him and ignited when the vehicle was hit.
"Die!" Ezra heard a voice nearby.
It was a young guy who had only recently joined his unit.
With his face twisted in rage, the Alliance soldier was frantically trying to swap out the power cell in his blaster to finish off the tanker, who was screaming in pain, engulfed in flames.
The special forces soldier covered the distance in one long stride, stopping next to the suffering enemy.
"Don't you dare!" he barked, seeing the young soldier aim his blaster at the tanker, whom Ezra — having set aside his blaster rifle — was beginning to cover with loose sand that littered the testing center's courtyard.
"Sergeant, he's the enemy!" the young soldier exclaimed in astonishment. "Finish him off and be done with it…"
"Hold on, kid," Ezra muttered, pouring sand over the parts of the tanker's gear that were burning through from the flames. "It'll be over soon."
The tanker's screams nearly tore through eardrums, but Ezra didn't stop throwing sand on him.
Two more fighters nearby joined in, and the job went faster.
The flames, deprived of oxygen by the fine sand covering the fuel-soaked fabric of the flight suit, died out, leaving only a burned man with black material fused to his body.
"Medic, over here!" Ezra shouted.
But he was already finishing the sentence as he saw a special forces soldier with medic markings cutting the remains of the uniform from the burned tanker's body with one hand while spraying bacta from an aerosol can over the exposed areas of the wounds with the other.
Meanwhile, the special forces soldier noticed that the roar of battle had subsided.
They had won — the imperials began surrendering en masse after Galen had mangled their armored vehicles and killed their commanders, having stormed the administrative building being used as headquarters.
"Tibanna to the head and don't waste any supplies on him," he heard the young soldier's voice.
Ezra straightened up, towering a head above his young comrade.
"We are not imperials," he declared. "We do not kill the wounded or prisoners."
"Well, that's a mistake," the young soldier shrugged. "Wasting bacta on him. For what? Who needs him? Certainly not Moff Getelles…"
Ezra grabbed the soldier by the chest plate and pulled him close, slamming the visor of his own helmet hard into the forehead of the young special forces soldier's identical gear.
"Now listen to me, kid," he hissed through clenched teeth. "In the New Republic, they could brainwash you all they wanted. Reality is somewhat different from propaganda slogans. Yes, imperials aren't Jedi. They do finish off the wounded, sometimes execute prisoners. But not all of them, and not always. We never do that. Because we are not beasts, like them. We are sentient beings. And we fight soldiers just like ourselves. They're people too, just with brains washed by imperial propaganda. We save his life — and maybe in a month or two, he'll be covering our backs during the next offensive. Because he'll understand — the Empire didn't give a damn about him. But we — we took care of him. That's the right way. That's honorable. We, Kota's fighters, fight exactly like that. Got it?"
He's not even twenty yet. Ezra thought, releasing the stunned soldier and studying his face, which was sprouting a sparse stubble.
Just starting to live, and already in special forces…
And with such cruelty, such hatred…
"It's all strange," the young soldier muttered. "They want to destroy us, and we pity them…"
"Act according to the situation," Bridger advised, calming down. "If you see imps finishing off the wounded — don't spare them on the battlefield. But if he's wounded or has surrendered — don't even think about killing him. There's a line you must not cross."
"Weird logic," the young soldier grumbled, watching as the unconscious tanker was packed into a medical evacuation pod. "Kill on the battlefield, but don't touch the wounded…"
"That's the way it is," Ezra snapped. "If you don't like it — write a transfer request."
The young special forces soldier was silent, turning away.
* * *
Result of the two-day operation against the not-so-best forces of the "Zann Consortium."
"Motivator" destroyed, having sustained damage from the station's detonation and subsequent crash onto the planet.
Nearly twenty thousand crew members and stormtroopers quartered on the ship were rescued.
"Krueger" at half combat capability, "Chimaera" and "Death's Head" sustained significant damage, necessitating their repair after the next port of call at a system with repair stations.
Four of our "Crusader II"-class corvettes were also destroyed; the rest are damaged but will reach the base.
"Thunder" also goes in for repairs and replenishment of its air wing.
It took more damage from the suicide attacks of the "Star Galleons," whose crews, realizing their escape route was cut off, attempted to ram the ship and detonate themselves.
It didn't work.
The breaches will be quickly patched, destroyed gun batteries replaced with new ones, crews and air wings brought up to strength.
Well, the victory isn't "clean," but there's every reason to be glad.
We captured the second station, and we've already installed a hyperdrive on it for making the jump to hyperspace, having dismantled some peripheral compartments and modules so they wouldn't tear off during transit.
The plasma cannon was disassembled entirely and loaded into the hold of one of the five "Acclamators" sent to us from the nearest regular fleet base to transport the spoils.
Given the Class 1 hyperdrives installed on these assault ships, they made the transition quickly and are already almost fully loaded.
Now, while Morrt project buzz droids are generously scattering in orbit and the final loading of equipment involved in the planetary sweep and the evacuation of valuable gear from the remains of the "Motivator" is underway, there's a chance to thoroughly consider and assess the results.
It's interesting that this is happening under the salvos of the "Chimaera," "Thunder," "Death's Head," "Point of No Return," and "Twilight," which are erasing everything left of the "Motivator" on the planet with orbital bombardment.
Turbolasers and proton torpedo salvos will reliably turn the damaged sections of the ship into a pile of scrap metal that even the most meticulous investigator wouldn't be able to identify.
Occupying the base on Smarck isn't the best idea — at least this time, given the current realities.
The Kadmiumu sector, where the planet is located, belongs to Imperial Space.
And leaving a garrison on enemy territory without providing it with full means of defense against a full-scale invasion means condemning the garrison to destruction or capture.
The local inhabitants frankly don't care what's happening here.
So even if any forces do show up to investigate the incident, we'll find out about it from the buzz droids.
They won't be able to use the base — the stormtroopers left enough explosives there to vaporize the entire mountain.
Reconnaissance groups on the planet will monitor what kind of reaction occurs here after our withdrawal.
If there is one, of course.
However, I won't delude myself with hope — Zann has clearly already figured out that the capture of Feena D'Asta didn't go according to plan.
The lack of communication with Urai Fen and Sol Mon will arouse his unhealthy interest in what happened.
I don't know for sure whether the "Chimaera" and "Eternal Wrath" were detected by early warning systems during the attack on our escort frigate (which had been captured by pirates), but before the assault on Smarck, they definitely managed to do so.
There's no way to stop the alarm signal — it's duplicated by the warning systems and goes both to the base on Smarck and to the Corporate Sector.
Our only advantage is that the alarm signal is going through backup relay communication lines because we jammed the "HoloNet" broadcast device in the Kadmiumu sector using a hybridium-based masking screen.
The regular fleet has been placed on combat alert and is expecting a possible attack.
Thousands and thousands of reconnaissance drones and ARC-170s have been dispatched to the sectors and systems under our control for streaming reconnaissance.
So far, it's quiet.
But that doesn't mean nothing is being plotted against us.
Add to that the fact that, according to reports from the Kaminoans, the originals of the sentients cloned by the pirates were aboard the self-destructing "Star Galleons" and the mood sours.
The Kaminoans don't know the identities of those they cloned.
And you can't really blame them — they don't care about people.
They don't care about anyone at all.
Not even representatives of their own race who belong to a lower hierarchy than a particular racial representative.
For them, clones and donors are a product and a source of data for the product.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Just business, nothing personal.
No documents relating to these operations remain — Makus Kaynif also sent them aboard the transport ships.
Well, that's the neutral-negative side.
On the relatively positive side — we managed to capture another "Keldabe II," having killed its entire crew aboard the ship.
Two trophy "Crusaders" of the second modification will also help replenish our losses.
It's unfortunate that the vultures aboard the starships destroyed all the critically important information.
No maps, no access codes, no identification means.
No prisoners either.
Total crew elimination.
Which gives an idea that the crews fighting aboard the Zann Consortium's starships are clearly not ordinary mercenaries.
Judging by the number of identical faces, they're clones.
Tyber Zann actively uses them to build up his armed forces, just as I do.
And consequently, it's highly unlikely that having Kamino and ysalamiri, he didn't combine these two concepts and find a benefit in such a symbiosis.
From the interrogation of Sol Mon, it's clear that he did.
And that's a problem.
A huge problem, whose scale directly depends on the number of cloning cylinders on Kamino.
Never have I wished so much that there was a minimal amount of this equipment on the Kaminoans' homeworld.
Or perhaps there was none at all.
Even the amount we managed to obtain on Smarck didn't exactly lift the spirits.
Seven thousand two hundred cloning cylinders and a team of cloners with extensive experience in army production.
For both the Old Republic and the Zann Consortium.
We'd have to work hard, of course, to ship those cylinders to our laboratory ships and restart them.
At the very least, we'd need to manufacture a substantial volume of nutrient fluid for the clones to develop in.
And purchase it — conversation with the Kaminoan technician overseeing the installations had brought unexpected revelations.
As it turned out, this gelatinous substance had to be changed after every cloning process, not once every ten cycles, as stated in Imperial documents.
Wonderful.
At least we had the Langhesi, who specialized in biological-genetic experiments and related production.
Manufacturing the necessary nutrient medium wouldn't be a problem for them.
Even if it would cause some extra, but not particularly significant, inconvenience.
The worst part was something else — the Kaminoans didn't know when or from where the Zann Consortium had obtained the Spaarti cloning cylinders.
But there could be no doubt — they were exact copies of the ones scattered across our laboratory ships.
As far as I remembered, they were manufactured at the Spaarti Creation facility on the planet Cartao.
"Manufactured," however, was saying too much.
They had begun production during the Clone Wars by order of Palpatine.
All manufactured units except for twenty thousand were destroyed during a simulated crash of a starship carrying Jedi on board.
Another improvisation by Palpatine.
A deliberate attempt to blacken the Order in the eyes of the locals.
I had to consider two possibilities.
First — not all cloning cylinders were destroyed in the ship's crash under Palpatine's plan.
Second — Spaarti Creation was operational again.
Intelligence had already received orders to verify the latter version, although I clearly remembered that the literature describing the aforementioned episode had stated unequivocally that the facility was destroyed and beyond repair, as the local workers were incapable of restoring it.
Well, time would tell.
I postponed my conversation with Orun Va, the leader of the Kaminoans, until he left the infirmary.
For now, my guards were working with his team, taking statements about what had happened and how it had occurred in the past.
But they had virtually no information about events beyond their own laboratories.
Because they weren't interested in it.
On the other hand, I had learned a great deal about this race — information I would need for my subsequent conversation with Orun Va.
According to reports, he was quite the manipulator.
Knowledge about his race would allow me to interpret his words correctly and identify the lies that would inevitably be present in any conversation with the senior geneticist.
But that was a matter for another day — Orun Va wouldn't leave the infirmary for another week, and by then we would already be at Tangrene.
That gave me five standard days to process the data obtained from his team.
All of it was connected, in one way or another, to human cloning.
And that caveat was important — it indicated that Tyber Zann had deliberately focused on producing duplicates of the human race.
This somewhat simplified matters when it came to identifying possible clones from the New Republic, the Alliance, and similar states.
The Imperial Remnants would be harder — they were predominantly human everywhere.
And checking everyone through DNA analysis was ruinously expensive and prohibitively time-consuming.
Well, we had three dozen Kaminoans, not counting Orun Va.
A complete genetic team, including several high-level geneticists.
Every single one had participated in creating clone soldiers for the Grand Army of the Republic.
All of them had been on Kamino during the Kaminoan clone uprising.
According to them, immediately after the Empire's victory, the cloning laboratories on the planet were sealed, and clone production continued only on a small scale, directly under the supervision of Imperial scientists.
Who, judging by their accounts, were learning from the Kaminoans.
Interestingly, by the time Darth Vader took one of the Kaminoan laboratory-cities to produce Galen Marek's clones, all the Imperial scientists had already left Kamino.
Where they went was unknown.
But I suspected they were all on Byss now.
Darth Vader had relied on the work of Kaminoan scientists, though that hadn't stopped him from stationing a garrison on the planet to ensure the security of his project.
After the Battle of Kamino, when General Kota's group and Galen Marek's clone had defeated the Empire, a new fleet arrived to secure the planet.
By that time, a significant portion of the planet's cloning capacity had either been destroyed in the previous battle or was simply idle and had fallen into disrepair.
Because the Imperials had forbidden service on cloning cylinders that were not being used for any experiments.
It was the Imperials, not the Zann Consortium as I had thought earlier, who had laid the minefields and cut the planet off from the rest of the galaxy.
But the criminals had managed to seize control of the planet and produce clones of their own soldiers there.
How they had overcome the minefields was unknown.
I suspected they had found a way to approach those Imperials responsible for that area.
In the bloody battle on Kamino between Zann Consortium operatives and Imperial forces, up to half the cities were destroyed, including over seventy percent of the remaining cloning cylinders.
That was... relatively optimistic.
But when I considered that none of the cloners could name the exact number of cloning cylinders on the planet, it became less cheerful.
There could have been a million, or a billion — this question required separate analysis, studying the exact size of the Grand Army of the Republic at its initial stage.
Not to mention that during the Clone Wars, the New Republic had repeatedly ordered new batches of soldiers from the planet.
So, the Zann Consortium, having seized control of the planet, had successfully repelled attacks from the Empire, which sought to regain control.
According to rumors spread by Tyber Zann's officers in Tipoca City — the capital of Kamino — the Consortium had destroyed nearly several sector fleets of the Empire.
I doubted that was actually the case.
And they certainly couldn't have done it in open battle — at that time, Zann simply didn't have enough ships, his main source being the MandalMotors shipyards.
So, most likely, the bulk of the task of destroying the Imperial fleet fell on the Kuat mines laid by the Imperials themselves.
And that made my theory much more viable — that these mines could easily be subjugated by knowing the correct IFF code.
The question was only how to obtain the necessary data if Zann Consortium fighters didn't surrender.
What happened next on Kamino, the members of Orun Va's team didn't know.
They had never seen ysalamiri before arriving here, nor heard of any experiments with these lizards.
But they acknowledged that other groups of cloners might have been doing it.
They had been taken to Smarck shortly before Endor, and since then had never left the planet, never maintained contact with anyone except Makus Kaynif.
Well, I would have questions for him too — far more than for the Kaminoan.
For now, he was in a medically induced coma, while our doctors studied his body for more "poison ampoules" and fitted a prosthetic to maintain verbal contact.
And at this point, he was the only source of information as highly placed in the criminal syndicate's hierarchy as possible.
Well...
In the end, I could say I had been almost correct in my calculations about when Tyber Zann had captured Kamino — it had happened a year before the Battle of Endor.
Consequently, if not for the appearance of ysalamiri in this equation, I could breathe easy knowing that the clones, however many there were, hadn't been produced yet.
The problem was that Tyber Zann knew about ysalamiri.
He knew they blocked the Force and that this accelerated and stabilized clone production.
And since it worked on Spaarti cloning cylinders, it clearly followed that I should check for a similar effect on Kaminoan-design cloning cylinders.
I would check.
And the more I learned about Tyber Zann, the more I thought that he and I thought alike.
Either these actions, in the context of the situation, were simply a logical solution to the problems we faced, or there was some very sinister hidden meaning behind it all.
And these patterns were unsettling me.
As much as I could possibly be unsettled.
The situation was far from pleasant.
Dig deep — stumble upon an underground city filled with closets of skeletons at every step.
An extremely unpleasant situation.
"Sir," the comlink crackled to life with Captain Tschel's voice. "All ships, including the prizes, report they are ready to break the light barrier."
"Understood, Captain," I replied. "Did the inspection of the captured starships reveal any tracking systems?"
"No, sir. The techs went through everything five times with scanners. If anything's there, it's hidden very deep. Given the capabilities of our equipment, I'd say there's nothing at all."
"Would you stake your head on that, Captain?" I inquired.
A pause on the other end of the channel.
"No, sir," Tschel replied.
At least he was honest.
"Then follow the instructions," I said. "The ships are to proceed to our south-eastern borders. Have the orders been communicated to the ship commanders?"
"All units are ready to move out on your first command, Grand Admiral," reported the commander of the Chimaera.
"Consider that order given," I commanded. "Let's move out."
"Yes, sir."
The comlink fell silent.
I pushed away from the workstation, leaned back in my chair, and pondered how effective my plan would be.
By my calculations — extremely effective, given the objectively magnificent bait I was leaving for Tyber Zann.
It was time to test whether my assumptions about similar thinking between Zann and myself had any real basis or not.
* * *
"And our soldiers died for this," Admiral Eclipse said slowly, studying the aircraft stationed before her, right in the center of a small hangar.
"A new model," Galen said, running a hand through his short hair. "A pre-production prototype, to be precise."
"A sixteen-meter starfighter," Juno shook her head. "That's... extremely impractical."
"On the contrary, Admiral Eclipse," a short, stout man approached them — the director of Koensayr Manufactories. "This is a development of our most successful BTL fighter-bomber, which has performed excellently over the last thirty years."
"Yeah," Galen smirked. "That 'wishbone' is such a reliable and modern small craft."
"Our machines participated in the attack on both Death Stars," the director of the Manufactories said, offense creeping into his voice. "And during the Clone Wars, it was our bombers that won the most resounding victories."
"Nobody's arguing with that," Juno said. "It's just... What even is this thing?!"
"A machine developed over the last several years, designated the K-wing," the director of the enterprise said, not without pride. "Everything a fighter-bomber pilot would want at their fingertips but was afraid to ask the New Republic for. I think the Alliance deserves this machine — after all, you freed us from working for the Empire."
"Lucky for you they didn't cut off your communications before our government decided to contact you," Galen said.
"Actually, we contacted them," the little man twitched his nose. "And asked for help in exchange for an alliance. Because representatives of the New Republic refused us, citing excessive preoccupation with the front-line situation and a lack of spare ships."
Galen and Juno exchanged glances.
Well, with that kind of wording, you didn't even need enemies — your allies would just scatter.
"How many do you have?" Juno asked.
"A test squadron," the director said. "The machines are expensive — a quarter of a million credits each, but they're worth it."
"Three million for a squadron?" the Jedi was taken aback. "Isn't that a bit much for bombers?"
"Take my word for it — they're worth it," the little man smiled. "You can see how much weaponry it carries, can't you?"
"Yes, enough for a whole squadron," Galen snorted.
"Dual rear laser cannon, quad laser turret for enfilade fire, missile launcher, torpedo launcher," Juno listed. "And... another launcher. Did I miss anything?"
K-wing fighter-bomber.
"That's correct," the director beamed. "I can see you're an excellent pilot who knows small craft. The last launcher is for firing anti-shield plasma torpedoes. Highly effective against the strong deflectors of Imperial Star Destroyers. Six torpedoes in a salvo — and a shield section is weakened enough that even a blaster pistol could punch through it."
"Impressive," Juno murmured, clearly taken by what she'd heard about the ship.
"And why didn't you use them against Moff Getelles's ships?" Galen asked.
"Because stormtroopers who landed beforehand destroyed our pilots' barracks," the director of Koensayr Manufactories darkened. "Combat pilots, test pilots — all dead. Otherwise, we would have given the attackers a real fight."
"I don't doubt it," Juno stepped closer to the machine, running her hand along the right wing. "From my experience, I can tell you there are no perfect starfighters, especially bombers. None exist."
"Then your experience is clearly insufficient," the little man smirked with utmost smugness.
"Watch your words," Galen advised. "Admiral Eclipse was once a pilot in Darth Vader's Black Squadron."
The Koensayr man paled.
"I think you understand that a female pilot didn't get that assignment for her pretty face," Galen grinned, watching Juno scrutinize the K-wing. "So you'd better start telling us about the machine's pros and cons. The Alliance leadership will clearly listen to the Admiral's opinion before giving their answer on purchasing new machines. Those 'wishbones' are obviously cheaper, and more familiar to Alliance pilots."
"Yes, of course," the little man nodded. "Development began after Endor, when the New Republic government realized that in the ever-intensifying maelstrom of galactic war, it needed not only to ramp up production of established fighters and bombers but also to start developing new equipment. We heard they were trying to find a replacement for the X-wings, tasking Incom with it, but after the fall of the Galactic Republic, they had so many new customers from across the galaxy, thanks to the Republic's own advertising of the X-wing and the Ashek, that it never got past the design stage. As far as I know, it's still all in mock-ups, but we don't keep a close eye on Incom. Maybe they have something in metal for a new escort fighter, but that's not quite our area."
"Are you talking about the E-wing?" Juno asked, still examining the fighter-bomber. "From what I've heard, the first prototypes already passed trials last year and were sent back for refinement."
Galen even knew where his girlfriend might have "heard" that information.
Despite General Kota's group operating independently in recent years, they bought their equipment from the same places as the New Republic.
Fortunately, the Republic had completely ignored and abolished the Imperial laws on controlling the trade of weapons and military equipment, in the interests of the manufacturers.
Now anyone could order an entire fleet from any shipyard — no one would even bat an eye.
"Is that so," the director smacked his thick lips. "Well, thank you, good to know."
"Don't mention it," Juno spotted something in the aft section of the K-wing, but the director didn't even look her way, choosing Galen as the target of his educational monologue.
Well, let him.
The main thing was that Juno would have time to evaluate the new machine and make notes before the Alliance threw money blindly at Koensayr Manufactories.
"We developed the BTL replacement knowing that the 'wishbone,' while good, wasn't without its flaws."
Galen was about to comment on the last statement but wisely kept quiet.
"Grand Admiral Thrawn's campaign only spurred our development. We came to the conclusion that we should increase the bomber's armament and adapt it for combat against other small craft, reasoning that it was better to use a single machine capable of blasting its way through enemy small craft than to take losses. To that end, we installed a deflector shield and additional weaponry, including multiple launchers and a rear twin turret."
"You created a command module," the Admiral pointed to the ship's nose section, "as an escape pod."
"Correct," the director agreed. "Initially, we thought about just two pilots and a layout like the 'wishbone' the pilot and gunner sitting one behind the other — but later we abandoned that idea and expanded the crew to four. Accordingly: pilot, two gunners, and a missile weapon operator. But you missed something. The command module has its own generator and low-power engines, allowing the escape pod to reach the command ship on its own or fly to a base after the starship is destroyed."
"It's not a starship," Juno corrected. "You didn't install a hyperdrive. At least not on this model."
"Yes, a habit... Unfortunately, you're right — so much equipment was installed on the ship that a hyperdrive wouldn't fit."
Given that all versions of the BTL produced on this planet were equipped with hyperdrives, it might have been a slip of the tongue.
Or a deliberate misdirection.
Galen concentrated on the Force, directing it toward the little man.
But as it turned out, he didn't feel even a hint of frustration at being caught out.
Just regret that he'd spoken without thinking.
Most likely, they hadn't installed a hyperdrive, understanding that the New Republic had enough strike craft capable of traveling through the stars and delivering attacks.
And configuring the machine with that equipment would be prohibitively expensive for the buyer.
Koensayr Manufactories had bet on the impressive firepower of their new invention.
"I don't think you could have made the cockpit maneuverable," Juno continued. "And if that's the case, it could easily become a target for enemy pilots."
"There's also the option of using conventional ejection," the director explained.
In other words, besides escaping in the cockpit module, one could save their life the usual way — ejecting with the seat.
"The ship's size and armament are close to the Imperial Xg-1 assault gunboat," Juno continued. "I think, given their appearance at the Battle of Sluis Van and the active use of these machines by Imperial Space, the gunboat has found a competitor."
"You're flattering us mercilessly," the director declared. "The Xg-1 can carry forty missiles, torpedoes, and bombs; our K-wing only carries twenty-eight."
But considering that various modifications of the "wishbone" could carry eight to ten missiles or torpedoes, progress was evident.
"As for configuration options for the missile-torpedo arsenal, we have a wide range of munitions," the director continued. "Light HEAT rockets, high-explosive, fragmentation, and HE-fragmentation rockets, proton anti-ship torpedoes, thermobaric bombs, and plasma torpedoes, which, as I mentioned, are designed to punch through deflector shields. Additionally, K-wings can be used to lay minefields in space."
Now that was very good indeed.
Small space mines, linked into a barrier and virtually invisible on scanners, could seriously damage even a large ship.
An excellent defensive weapon.
"I think you did the right thing by doubling the crew size," Juno concluded. "A couple of sentients couldn't handle that kind of tech and all that weaponry."
"The initial project envisioned much less formidable armament," the little man explained. "As I said, we revised the concept. Relying on the fact that, when meeting enemy fighters, the crew of the original two-man machine would have to trust only in the competent cover of escort fighters and the enemy pilots' poor aim — that wouldn't benefit our customers."
Honest and straightforward.
It seemed the enterprise's leadership had decided to hide nothing from those who had saved them from occupation and thereby earn a measure of trust.
A fairly bold and correct move.
"Furthermore," the company director continued, "the impracticality of placing the weapon operator behind the pilot was proven in practice, as their field of view was severely limited. We carefully observed all operations of Grand Admiral Thrawn's fleet and concluded that the majority of both our and their bombers were shot down precisely when attacked from the rear. Positioning the weapon operator facing backward allowed us to give them visual control of that space."
"Given the short engagement ranges of small craft combat, that's a very smart move," Juno agreed. "By placing the nose cannon under the cockpit floor, you also predetermined that, besides covering the forward and lower hemispheres, the gunner of the quad enfilade turret could successfully engage ground targets, destroying light armor or infantry."
"Yes," the director confirmed. "If you're going to build a heavy machine, why deny it the ability to engage ground targets with its onboard weaponry, given its armament and size? Our designers thought that was wrong."
"Speed approximately eighty megac?" Juno asked.
Galen was growing bored, realizing that in this conversation he understood very little and could grasp even less.
Still, flying and space combat were Juno's element.
"Don't flatter us," the director said with a guilty smile. "Seventy megac in space and a thousand kilometers per hour in atmosphere."
Juno winced almost imperceptibly.
"Honestly, I'd advise you to drop the 'fighter' prefix from the name," she said. "This type of small craft — the K-Wing, with all due respect to your designers — doesn't measure up at all."
"We've already thought about that," the director admitted. "For the production model, the designation will be either 'bomber' or 'torpedo bomber,' for obvious reasons."
Well, of course.
It carries both bombs and torpedoes.
"It also has plenty of missiles," the young woman-admiral smiled. "Better to call it a 'multirole bomber' after all."
"We'll discuss naming options with the designers," the director assured her. "It's not our policy to give flashy names to machines that don't actually live up to them."
"You're having quite a parade of revelations today," Galen said, double-checking the fat man's words through the Force.
"We're not the biggest corporation, Master Jedi," his interlocutor said sadly. "We don't have influential patrons, and multi-billion credit orders haven't been on the horizon for years — the New Republic preferred to repair old equipment rather than buy new. And the K-Wing isn't cheap at all."
"But it will give us an advantage in battle against the Empire," Juno said firmly. "The machine isn't perfect, but it's worth the money, given the amount of weaponry your engineers have crammed into it. I'll speak with Alliance leadership to allocate funds for purchasing these machines."
"I'll be grateful for your lobbying on our behalf," the fat man bowed.
From his demeanor, it was clear he'd started the conversation with obvious skepticism, but seeing a professional pilot before him, he'd been won over and used his best weapon — he spoke the truth.
Everyone present understood that the K-Wing's cost was quite high for large-scale purchases and complete rearmament of the starships in Alliance service.
But if even one squadron of these machines was aboard a star cruiser — the enemy couldn't count on an easy victory.
That alone was clearly worth fighting for to see this machine find its owners in the form of Alliance pilots.