Into the Chaos -- Author's note.

Welcome to the 13. chapter of my story 'Into the Chaos'. A Sci-fi story that just happens to take place in the Unknown Regions of the Star Wars universe just after the Great Galactic War, almost 4000 years before the events of the movies.

To those not really into Star Wars lore, the events in this story happens about 2600 years before Darth Bane instigated the Rule of Two, limiting the Sith to a One Master, One Apprentice system. In other words, there were thousands of Sith in this time period. Some were immensely powerful (Like Darth Malgus), while other were not.

As I said, this is the 13. chapter and if you haven't read the previous ones, I recommend that you do that first.

Disclaimer: I do not own or hold any rights to any Star Wars licenses, including the star ships used in this story.

Some warnings:

This is an erotic sci-fi adventure, meaning that there will be both sex and violence, but I don't mix the two.

This story is posted on the Literotica website and the author does not give permission for it to be reposted or reprinted anywhere else without consent.

P.S. The series is self-edited, so any mistakes are mine, though I now have a proofreader, that can catch missing words ect. Thanks to Jessejames932006 for doing that.

P.P.S. While you're here anyway, please rate the chapter and leave a comment :)

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Chapter 13 - The Chaos

Dreadnought Majestic, the Chaos

"It is believed by many that the military life is one of adventure and excitement.

In truth, that life more often consists of long periods of routine, even boredom,

with only brief intervals of challenge and danger."

From the Holy Book of War

Two days later, I was sitting on the sofa in the office, watching the combat from the second prison camp. Basically, it was nothing more than a rough cut of the recordings from the available cameras. Granted, with every sergeant, fire team-leader, Manka, and dropship equipped with one or more cameras in addition to the surveillance droids the space marines always used, there were a lot of different recordings. However, the techs and their droids had done a good job of creating a coherent flow.

The first thing that had impressed me was the way the marines had handled the appearance of the three Sith. They might have been forced to retreat, but they had done so in a disciplined manner, limiting their losses and even managing to take out one of the Sith.

That was the next thing I had noticed. The Sith we had met in the camp were nowhere close to the skill level of those who had boarded Majestic. In fact, they reminded me of the renegades we had encountered in Alpha Viga: reasonably good against troopers but woefully unprepared for the surprise appearance of another Force user.

I took a sip of the chocolate coffee as I thought it over. In a strange way, it made sense. Not every Sith could be a corruption-powered supervillain. There was an organization and a hierarchy for a reason, and like all militaristic hierarchies, it was pyramid-shaped, with more people at the bottom than on any level above that.

Giving the lower-powered or less skilled acolytes a job, like guarding a special prison or searching for an artifact, freed the Sith Lords to command fleets and conquer planets.

That was both good news and bad news. Good because it meant that it would be easier to take the prison camps and free the prisoners. Bad because it meant that the Sith in Darth Arkol's fleet were magnitudes more powerful, and unless I missed my guess, we would have to face them at some point. Allowing a Sith to roam free in the Chaos was not a good idea when trying to find a place where the freed prisoners could live in peace.

I stretched and yawned. With all the details that had to be taken care of after a combat to rescue twenty thousand people, it had been some hectic days, and I was starting to feel it.

Keller and his engineers were busy repairing the damaged S-class and getting it ready for transporting eight thousand people, including the crew, back to Republic space, while other groups were stripping the destroyed S-class cruisers for fuel, ammunition, spare parts, and everything else we might need.

In the meantime, the three Astra-class ships, along with several Mantas and Drakes, were busy using their tractor beam projectors to pick up escape pods all over the planet. Normally we would just have let them be, but on a planet where the local wildlife was as lethal and aggressive as Quamire's, it was an act of mercy, as the crew inside the pods couldn't leave them without getting eaten.

So, the pods were picked up, brought to the prison where the Imperial crews were let out and questioned, while the pods themselves were transported to Vellathi, the Tork-class replenishment ship, where they were stored for later use.

Yaki and Titlow were responsible for getting the captured Imperials off the ships and down to the prison camp, where they would join the rest of the garrison, along with the Imperials we had captured on the way here and the ones from the escape pods.

Tavune, Eho, and Resa were also planet-side, downloading the garrison's database and making sure that the prison's defences were functional so the Imperials wouldn't get eaten by the planet's predators the moment we left. Not that I had much empathy for them, but it was the decent thing to do, and it gave us a place to store those people we didn't want, like some of the captured Imperial pilots from Kwin 34 and the Imperial soldiers that had guarded the crews of the Astra-class ships.

On the more amusing side, Chef Winston had contacted me almost as soon as we landed on the Majestic, insisting on going down to the planet to gather the remains of the creatures we had killed so we could eat them instead of letting them go to waste. I had given my blessing with the condition that the meat had to be distributed among all the ships in the fleet. She had agreed, and the refugees had barely been lifted off the planet before a horde of shuttles and transports descended on the field outside the second prison to butcher the creatures.

Unfortunately, the scent of blood attracted even more creatures that had to be killed to protect the mess crew, so in the end they resorted to lifting the dead creatures away using tractor beams and butchering them elsewhere.

To top it off, she had also arranged for shuttles to go down to the planet to collect plants and seeds from the prison's greenhouses, which would not only give us more variety in the food but also allow us to finish the hangar parks in the newer ships, like Shadow Ray, a lot faster.

Not that those were the only shuttles to visit the remaining prison. The shuttles carrying captured Imperials down to the prison returned with missiles from the turrets, spare parts and droids, as well as bacta and other medicine from the garrison's medical centre.

The freed prisoners had been transported into space by the Star Wanderers, while we, meaning Commander Elise Samko, were trying to determine which ones would join us and who would prefer to go to the Outer Rim along with the royal prisoners.

In Samko's last report, the number of people wanting to go home had passed ten thousand, but I knew from experience that the number would become smaller as some of the prisoners realized that their homeworlds were under Sith control. On the bright side, it meant that there were enough people to crew the ship, and Waydar had even found enough pilots to fly the S-class's twelve fighters, so it would have protection on the way. In short, if the routes were carefully chosen, the S-class shouldn't have any problems reaching the Outer Rim.

There was always the chance that the cruiser would run into Darth Arkol's people, and because of that, the techs had temporarily disabled the sensors so it wouldn't gather data on the fleet. The first hyperspace coordinates would be transmitted from another ship, and the sensors would automatically come back online the moment the ship entered hyperspace.

Glancing at the watch, I discovered that there were five hours until my watch started again, so I ordered Majestic to lower the lights and wake me in four and a half hours, then lay down to sleep.

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Nothing special happened on my watch, so I left the bridge to Iska and took the lift to the infirmary to visit the wounded.

The first thing that caught my eye when I entered the infirmary was a young boy having his arm bandaged by Lena Agusta. He was clearly in pain but did his best not to cry out, and I shook my head as I recognized him as Dalcas Karstein, one of Master Gunner Karstein's children. I also knew the Twi'lek boy standing next to the bed, but I had to think for a moment before his name popped up: Alex.

"I see that our two young crewmembers have been in trouble again," I said as I walked over to them.

The two boys looked at me, eyes wide with surprise. Alex was the first to regain his wits and sent me a smile. "Hello again, sir. And we didn't run in the hallways this time."

"Oh?" I raised an eyebrow, inviting clarification.

Dalcas swallowed, then squared his shoulders. "It's true, sir. I fell from the swing while we were playing."

"Very well," I said with a slight smile and looked at Lena Agusta. "What do you say, Lady Agusta? Will the young man live?"

Shaking with silent laughter, Lena nodded. "Yes, sir. For a while I was afraid that we would have to amputate it, but it seems a bandage and a sling will suffice."

Both Dalcas and Alex looked at her open-mouthed but then saw the smile on her face and giggled.

"It's always good when patients survive," I commented and looked at Dalcas. "Take it easy for a few days, crewmembers."

As last time when I had called them crewmembers, the two boys smiled widely. "Yes, sir."

I gave them a nod and walked on to people with more serious injuries.

The Sith in the second prison camp on Quamire had caused at least thirty casualties among the marines. Fewer than I had feared, more than I would have liked, and I was certain that if many of the marines hadn't been veterans from the Great Galactic War who had dealt with Sith before, that number would have tripled.

Not that the Sith had caused an influx of people in the infirmary, since they usually killed their opponents instead of wounding them, though at least four of the survivors had limbs cut off. That also meant that the rest of the wounded suffered from the garrison's blaster fire, resulting in blaster scoring, near-miss thermal shock, and kinetic transfer bruising where bolts had been partially dispersed. Exactly the threat profile the marine armor had been built to counter, which fortunately also meant that most hits that didn't kill people outright were survivable.

A few were hurt so badly that they were in the bacta tanks for regeneration, but the rest were awake, so I spent some time walking between the beds, talking with the wounded.

"The DDF needs a medal system, sir," said a male marine with a chuckle, causing one of the others to snort. "You don't get a medal just because you forgot to duck."

That brought a round of laughter from those within hearing range, including the marine. Then he turned serious. "Honestly, sir, right now it's hard to tell who's done this before and who hasn't. And when a Sith is on the field, that difference matters."

I nodded slowly. That made sense. "Do continue."

He shifted slightly, careful of his injuries, and kept talking like this was something he had already thought through. "We don't need anything fancy. We're not looking for speeches or ceremonies. We just need a way to recognize experience. Something visible."

A murmur of agreement moved through the room.

"When you're moving through a prison block or stacking up before a breach, you make decisions fast. Who you follow. Who you put where. Who you trust to hold a line when it starts collapsing. Some of the people here have faced Sith before and they know what it feels like when the air turns wrong and the rules stop applying. Others do not have that experience."

"So, something that says: 'I've been here before and know the drill'?" I asked.

"Exactly, sir. Something easy to see." He thought for a moment. "It could be something as simple as a colour on the shoulder pads."

"Sergeant Markus has a point, sir," a female marine chimed in. "We need something that tells the rest of us who to listen to when things start going sideways." She sighed. "When the Sith show up, nobody cares about rank. We care about who's still standing."

"Excellent point," I said slowly and looked around. "Sergeant Markus."

He looked surprised. "Yes, sir?"

"Since both you and Corporal Janka have to stay here for a few days to heal, I want the two of you to give me a suggestion for this. Involve the rest, but the two of you are in charge."

His face split into a grin. "Yes, sir."

I returned the smile. "Just keep it simple. The armors are flashy enough as it is."

"Yes, sir."

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I continued my walk and ended up in the bacta room. All ten tanks were in use, with marines immersed in the healing liquid while wearing breathing apparatus, while medical droids calmly observed them.

The sight of a well-known form made me change direction and walk over to a tank. There was no mistaking the voluptuous shape of Gunnery Sergeant Vess, also known as Anitama.

Reading the list of injuries on the screen, I frowned. It looked like the injuries were centred on her neck area.

Looking around, I spotted a familiar droid. "M3C?"

"Yes, sir?" It said, its voice slightly artificial.

"What's wrong with Gunnery Sergeant Vess here?" I smiled a bit. "In normal speak, please. I don't need to know medical details."

"Oh. Sergeant Vess suffered severe neck trauma, a strained spine, and a bruised windpipe from being attacked by a Sith." It paused for a second but then continued. "She was close to dying, but she will be fine in a few days thanks to the bacta."

"Thank you, M3C."

"You're welcome, sir." It said and drove away, while I entered the database, looking for more details about how Anitama had sustained those wounds. The answer surprised me, since it turned out that she was the marine sergeant the second Sith had been close to killing when the droids and I had forced him to let go of her by shooting at him.

The surprise was due to me not knowing it. I can usually feel people I know when they're around me, but I had been so focused on the Sith and the Dark Side that I hadn't even noticed it at the time, which to me meant that it was something I needed to train.

That was a problem for later, though. Right now, I was just happy she had not only survived but would be fine in a few days.

Sending her one last glance, I turned and looked at the rest of the tanks, shaking my head slightly as I saw that four of them were missing arms, hands, or legs. A clear sign that they had been up against lightsaber-wielding Force-users, and nothing that could be healed by a bacta tank. On the positive side, Mercy, the Delta-class medical ship, had a lot of artificial limbs, and most of them were advanced versions with synthetic flesh and skin that even carried nerve signals. Basically, the same material that Resa was covered with, just as cybernetics.

The thought made me wonder. Resa had been made by the Kzii, and if the Kzii could do that, they could clearly make cybernetics as well in case we ever ran out of stock. However, we wouldn't always be near their system, so when we visited them as we had planned, it might be a good idea to stock up on cybernetics just in case.

With that thought in mind, I walked towards the last room on my round, which was the three-bed intensive care unit.

Unlike the others, this one was guarded by a Black Dragon in full armor, but as I came near, the marine saluted and stepped aside, pressing the contact that opened the door.

Inside there were two more Black Dragons, and from their quick reaction I was certain the guard outside the door had warned them before opening the door.

I nodded to them and walked inside.

There was quiet in the room, and only one of the beds was occupied by a youngish-looking man who was missing a hand. It had to be the aide who had panicked and tried to shoot Shakka in her disguise as the Sith Lady Darth Atroxa. According to the files Tavune and Eho had recovered, he was Lieutenant Teren Kestel, educated in logistics, administration, and supply.

That explained the guards, but not why Petty Officer First Class Vosar'enc'iflar, the female Chiss who had turned out to be one of the leaders of the prisoners, was sitting on a chair next to the bed, holding the aide's remaining hand.

Alerted by the sound of the door opening, she looked over at me, taking in the uniform, and then blinked in surprise as she discovered I was a Chiss as well.

Then she stood and saluted. "Sir."

She had spoken in Cheunh, so I used that language as well when I said, "Petty Officer Vosar'enc'iflar. I'm Commodore Mitth'ale'nuruodo of the Dragon Defence Force."

That left her speechless, so I gestured at the chair. "Please take a seat, PO."

She sat down, looking dazed, and mumbled, "This can't be true."

"Let me clarify a few things," I said gently. "The Dragon Defence Force is not part of the CEDF, and to be honest, they would likely court-martial me if they knew what was happening." I shrugged lightly. "The important part is that you and the rest of the crew of the Tasu'cara are as safe and free as any other person in the fleet."

I could see tears in her eyes as she asked, "How can that be? We're traitors to everybody."

"By 'everybody', I assume that you mean both the Chiss Ascendancy and the Sith Empire," I said and continued when she nodded. "First of all, we're not part of either. Second, this fleet is mostly crewed by freed prisoners from both the Republic and the Empire with most of them having had the misfortune of being part of a crew who surrendered or used the escape pods and was picked up by the Empire." I smiled a little. "As for being traitors to the Ascendancy, I think that you cannot be held responsible for the actions of your superior officers, and even if you could, ten years in a Sith prison camp is more than enough punishment."

For a moment she looked at me in stunned silence and then started to cry, hiding her face in her hands.

I was about to say some comforting words when Teren Kestel mumbled, "Why are you crying, honey?" His eyes went to me. "What did you say to her?" His eyes widened slightly as he saw the uniform, and he added a 'Sir'.

"The truth," I said in Basic. "You're free and safe... or at least as safe as everybody else here."

"Thank you," Kestel said and patted Vosar'enc'iflar on the back. "You hear that, Renci? We're finally free."

Coming from someone who had been an Imperial officer three days ago, it sounded strange, and I was sure there was a fantastic story behind it.

Still watching the supporting hand on the Petty Officer's back, I thought back to how he had lost the other hand and suddenly realised that the aide had only tried to shoot Darth Atroxa (aka Shakka) after she had said that she was there to take all the Chiss somewhere else.

Teren Kestel had tried to protect her, I suddenly realised. It had been an ill-advised move, born from desperation and surprise, but it still showed that this Imperial officer cared more for a Chiss prisoner than I had thought possible. He might even be the father of her unborn child.

Vosar'enc'iflar brought her crying under control and looked at me through tears. "Any chance you take in defecting Imperial officers?"

The despair in her voice stopped my chuckle even before it had begun, and I kept my tone serious as I said, "As a matter of fact, we do. At least twenty of the officers in the fleet are former Imperials who saw the chance to get away from the Empire."

There was silence in the room for a moment as they both looked at me.

"We don't carry passengers," I continued. "Those who choose to stay with us will be part of the fleet on equal terms with everybody else until we find a place where people can live in peace." I looked from one to the other. "The crew composition also means that interspecies relationships are the norm here, not the exception." I felt doubt from them, so I continued. "My human Chief Engineer is with a Pantoran captain. The Chiss Space Marine commander is dating a human. To be honest, I struggle to come up with examples since it's so common." I chuckled. "Trust me, nobody will think it's weird or offensive that a Chiss and a human are in a relationship."

"That would have been almost unbelievable," said Renci slowly, "if I hadn't seen the number of interspecies relationships in the camp."

"Excuse me, sir," said Kestel, "but are you aware that there is one more camp on this planet?"

"Yes. We took it two days ago with the help of the Vurel transports... Which reminds me... Do you have any idea what two Vurels were doing in the prison?"

He nodded and there was a slight smile on his face as he said, "Yes, sir. That is my fault."

Curiosity piqued, I looked at him. "I would like to hear that... not to mention how a prison lieutenant and a prisoner fell in love."

The smile on his face widened as he glanced over at Renci before looking at me again. "I hope you have time, sir."

"They'll call me if I'm needed elsewhere," I told them with a smile. "Do continue."

Teren Kestel nodded and explained that he wasn't educated on the core worlds of the Sith Empire but on Ord Radama, an industrial world under the Sith Empire. Eight years earlier, he had been transferred to Quamire along with the new base commander. It didn't take him long to realize that the prison was a terminal facility where the prisoners were supposed to be worked to death slowly, reproducing before they perished.

That wasn't what he had signed up for, so he gradually changed things for the better, reorganizing work crews, equipment allocation, and work schedules. All disguised as efficiency improvements, and it worked. The output from the mine improved, and the fact that fewer prisoners died was treated as a side effect.

The camp commander got a recommendation for running an efficient camp, and Kestel got a female prisoner he could use as he pleased.

"He didn't," interjected Renci with a slight smile. "I cleaned, cleared his mess, and did everything else expected of me, but he didn't take me to bed... and after a while it started to worry me."

There was a sound from the guards at the door as one of them shifted her stance. Renci looked over at them. "You don't get it, soldier. I discovered that he was the one keeping people alive, and not taking a female prisoner to bed was so unusual that...."

"I understand, Petty Officer Renci," one of the Black Dragons interrupted. I glanced over at her, reading her rank and name: Lance Corporal Hask, which only told me that she wasn't Chiss. "Permission to remove my helmet, sir."

"Granted, Corporal," I said without hesitation and watched as she did exactly that, revealing that she was a beautiful Thyrsian. As with the rest of her race, she was so dark-skinned she was almost black, with black hair and black eyes.

She smiled slightly, her white teeth shining brightly in contrast to the black skin. "On Qek-40, I was the one who took one for the rest of the prisoners, willingly sleeping with our new base commander so the lower-ranking security officers wouldn't report him for 'suspicious behaviour.' Fortunately, he turned out to be a good guy, which is more than I can say about a lot of others." She shrugged. "Lieutenant Kreen had stopped more abuse of the prisoners than anyone else. Unfortunately, he was loyal to the Empire and elected to stay when we were rescued."

She didn't say that if Lieutenant Kreen had joined us their relationship would have continued, but it hung in the air.

"So yes, I do understand your reasoning," she continued. "And so does the Commodore and everybody else in the fleet." She saluted Lieutenant Kestel. "Good job, sir."

The lieutenant nodded his thanks.

"Now that that is settled..." I said dryly after a moment of stunned silence in the room. "Please continue your story."

"Yes, sir." Lieutenant Kestel said and continued. Life in the prison went on for a few years, with him quietly doing his best to both keep the prisoners alive and resist his commander's suggestions of a replacement for Renci.

Then they discovered that Renci had become pregnant, and things changed. Especially when Darth Arkol had shown up. He had simply taken control of the facility and demanded that thousands of slaves be transferred to his ships.

Unable to do anything else, Kestel had complied but had ensured that none of the Chiss were transferred.

He had also requested that the two Vurel-class ships in Darth Arkol's fleet be transferred to the prison. They weren't needed on the fleet, and by transferring them, "the prison would be able to relocate both material and prisoners from the ground to the ships more efficiently." To his surprise, the request went through, and the two Vurel-class ships were stationed at the prison.

I thought about his actions and then nodded slowly. The lieutenant had clearly been planning a prison break, and the Vurel was a solid choice for that. While not exactly perfect for the job, the Vurel-class was a decent ship to be used in an escape: large enough to hold a lot of people, fast enough to avoid most pursuers, and not significant enough to dispatch a fleet group to pursue.

"I guess we ruined your plans for a prison break," I told him quietly. "Sorry about that."

That caused Renci to snap her head around to look at Kestel. "What?"

That made me laugh. "I can't think of any other reason to have two ships here. I'm sure the lieutenant had planned on not being here when Darth Arkol returned for more prisoners."

Lieutenant Kestel nodded. "Yes, sir." He glanced at his Chiss lover. "Sorry, honey. I didn't want to give you false hope, so I didn't tell you."

She accepted that with a nod, but for me, and I guess any other Chiss, it was clear that she was proud of him... and with good reason. Lieutenant Kestel had not only managed to lower the number of fatal accidents among the prisoners but had also secured two ships capable of holding at least two thousand people once the walkers were removed. All without being detected by his superior officer or anybody else.

I was about to ask how exactly this prison break was going to happen when my earpiece activated.

"Commander Samko here." Elise's voice said. "Do you have a moment? Because we have a situation here."

"Hold one." I answered and smiled at the couple in front of me. "I'm sorry, but it seems like I've run out of time. I would love to hear the rest of the story some other time, but now I need to go, and you..." I looked at Lieutenant Kestel "... need to relax and heal."

"Quick question, sir," Kestel said. "What happens to the two Vurel-class now?"

"They have been added to the fleet," I answered with a smile. "We still have more camps to liberate, and those two will be very helpful in that... and now I really have to go."

Renci and Kestel saluted. "Thank you, sir. Both for saving us and the explanation."

"All credit for the saving of your camp should go to Doctor Shakka and the marines," I said with a chuckle as I walked towards the door. "They did the work."

The Black Dragons stepped aside as they opened the door, and I walked out, already asking Samko what was up.

"You're not going to believe this," she answered with a chuckle. "But three of the royal prisoners have just asked to join us."

Thoughts danced in my head as I walked through the infirmary. Four of the liberated royal prisoners were clan leaders from the planet of Druunfall, and they had just wanted to get home as soon as possible. That left the rulers of Kharvos and Velcaris and their heirs.

"Let me guess," I said slowly. "They're going to send the rulers of Kharvos and Velcaris home, while the heirs stay here in case the S-class is lost?"

Elise was silent for a moment and then laughed softly. "Spot on, sir."

"What have they offered in return?"

"Nothing as of yet, and that is why I want you to talk with them."

"On my way," I told her. "And while I'm walking, give me a quick update on how royalty works in the Republic. I have no idea how much it resembles the High Families in the Chiss Ascendancy, and those are the only ones that I know of."

"One second, sir. I'll let the XO do that." Samko replied, and a moment later I had Betty Nagos in my ear, explaining about the Republic's royalty while I walked.

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Twenty minutes later, I was sitting next to Elise Samko at a table in a large cell, looking at High Queen Elayne IV of Velcaris and Lord-Primarch Sael Korvin Trex, as they had just given their proposal for the heirs to stay with the DDF for now and then be allowed to return home later.

Strangely, the three heirs were not at the table but sat at a bench in the far end of the room, looking slightly nervous.

Leaning back in the seat, I looked at the two rulers. High Queen Elayne looked as calm as when I had carried her out of the prison with the timer for the reactor explosion counting down the minutes. Beneath the grey hair, her grey eyes were sharp and reminded me of Raika from Raika's Rest.

The bearded Lord-Primarch Sael Trex was cut from the same material. Despite the years in a Sith prison, he looked relaxed, but I could feel the tension under the surface. This wasn't 'just' a request but something that could mean the survival of their bloodline. Something they no longer took for granted after six years of prison.

"In principle," I started, "there's nothing wrong with your request, Lord Trex... at least not as long as they join the Dragon Defence Force on equal terms with everybody else. That means that they will be part of the crew and will work just like everybody else."

High Queen Elayne fastened her eyes on me. "That will be good for them, but as the objective is to keep them safe, I will have to insist that they serve on one of the bigger ships and not in the starfighter corps or marines."

"Since none of them have experience with starfighters or the marines, we can guarantee that, Your Highness," said Elise with a little smile. "We usually assign people based on skills and aptitude, not background."

"Good," nodded the Queen. "Now we need to debate what we're willing to give you in return for this."

I inclined my head slightly but said nothing as thoughts spun in my head. This was a totally different battleground than I was used to, and I had a feeling that as long as this was a negotiation, the Queen and Lord-Primarch would have the advantage, as they had years of experience that I didn't.

"First of all, we offer open docking and resupply rights within our solar systems," said Lord Trex, making it obvious that this was something the two rulers had debated at length. "Second, we will grant emergency haven for wounded, displaced, or regrouping units of the Dragon Defence Force."

"Third," Queen Elayne continued as she took over, "we will grant you repair rights at any shipyard within our solar systems."

"Excuse me, Your Highnesses," I said as I stood from the table. "There's an emergency I need to take care of."

Walking to the wall, I switched to Cheunh and activated the earpiece. "Tavune, I need the specs on the systems belonging to the royals."

"Yes, sir." There was a few seconds' pause. "Both systems have populations around a billion, which includes some of the moons in their respective systems. They also both have orbital shipyards and defence platforms, but as far as I can see, they're quite old. None of them can produce anything bigger than a patrol craft, though they can repair larger craft." He paused again. "I take that back. Velcaris actually has a decent repair yard... and a little more industry than Kharvos, which is agriculturally heavy."

"Right. What do their defence forces look like?"

That question made him snort. "Close to non-existent, sir. The Empire crushed them when they took the whole sector and left them with no protection as they withdrew after the Treaty of Coruscant. There's nothing in the nav data that suggests they have built new ships, but they almost must have done that to stop smuggling and the like."

"Thank you."

I walked back to the table and sat down. "Sorry about that. I believe I interrupted you in the middle of what you were offering us."

Lord Trex smiled thinly. "No, Commodore. We were finished."

"So, docking, resupply and repair rights and safe haven?"

"Yes," Queen Elayne agreed with a smile.

I could feel Elise Samko's satisfaction at that, but before she could say anything I bumped her leg with my knee under the table as I watched the two rulers in silence.

It was a testament to their skill in diplomacy that they didn't look the least bit uncomfortable at that.

"With all due respect, my Lady," I finally said, "that is about as useful as offering us an extra starfighter."

Her eyes widened a fraction, and her voice shook a little as she said, "You... You were the one that got us out of that prison!"

Lord Trex arched an eyebrow as he looked at her. "Are you sure, Elayne?"

"Yes," she said in a firm voice. "Nobody else has called me 'my Lady'." She looked at me. "You were the one who carried me out, weren't you, Commodore?"

There was no point in denying it, so I nodded. "Yes, along with half a squad of Black Dragons."

That made her smile. "I think I might have forgotten to thank you in all the chaos. So, from the bottom of my heart: thank you." She gestured towards the heirs. "Not only for me, but also for saving the heirs."

Lord Trex nodded in agreement. "Please accept my most sincere gratitude." He paused and then added, "It is customary to offer someone who has saved the life of the Lord-Primarch an honorary title, but I guess that would be worth nothing out here."

"Ah, yes," smiled Queen Elayne. "We have the same for people who have saved the royal family... which you most certainly have."

The word 'title' spun in my head for a few moments, crystallizing into something solid.

"I accept," I said quietly, causing both of the royals to look at me.

"Excuse me?" the Queen blurted.

"I accept your offer of a title," I told them slowly. "However, I'm not interested in land or riches. I am interested in other things that will cost you nothing. First of all, I need a title of Duke or whatever equivalent you have. The important part is that it will allow a personal guard of three thousand people."

I could feel Elise's utter surprise at what I was saying, but I ignored it as I continued.

"Second, I feel like the leader of the marines needs the title of Count, and so does Captain Meistrin, who commanded the space force and defeated an Imperial taskforce, giving us the time we needed to take the two prisons."

I could feel that they were taken slightly aback, and for the first time I felt like I was back in command of the situation. "Both your planets have populations around a billion but no fleet worth mentioning. We will sign a contract where you name the Dragon Defence Force as co-protector of the two realms... just as if you had hired any other mercenary group to defend you. That means unconditional rights to enter and patrol your systems in addition to what else you have offered." I smiled. "When our ships are present, they will act in defence of your realms."

They looked stunned, so I continued. "Last is the matter of refugees. Your planets will accept a reasonable number of refugees as long as they are brought to you by the Dragon Defence Force. Most of those people will be former naval personnel... which is a group of people your planets desperately need."

There was silence in the room for a moment as the two rulers looked at me, until Queen Elayne raised her eyebrows. "And what do we get in return?"

That question alone told me that my demands weren't as far out as I had thought. "Aside from us handing an S-class cruiser over to you so you can get home, we will escort your heirs home when the time comes... and when I say escort, I mean that they will be transported home by a fleet, not a single ship."

"And by 'fleet' you mean what?" asked Lord Trex.

"As many dreadnoughts, cruisers, screen, and picket ships as we can spare," I said firmly. "Enough to burn right through anything less than an Imperial or Republic fleet."

I could feel Elise's thoughts, and she clearly thought this was far out, but she didn't say anything.

The two rulers nodded slowly. "That is not unreasonable. Can we get some time alone and without surveillance to talk this over?"

"Of course, Your Highness," I said and stood, followed by Samko. "We will talk again later."

----------------

"You're insane, sir," mumbled Samko as we walked towards the bridge. "What was that all about?"

"One moment," I said and activated the comm again. "Tavune, where's Commander Yaki?"

"On a shuttle enroute to Majestic, sir." He answered immediately.

"Brilliant. I need her in my office as soon as she arrives... and I need a holo-conference with Captain Meistrin at the same time."

"Yes, sir."

I switched the comm off again and sent Elise Samko a smile. "Don't worry. There's a plan behind this."

"I can't wait to hear that," she muttered and followed me.

-------------------

"You're insane," echoed Yaki as I finished retelling the events to both her and Captain Meistrin half an hour later.

Captain Meistrin looked thoughtful as she studied me in silence for a moment, then a slow smile spread on her lips. "Not insane, Commander. Just smarter than most... actually, I'll go as far as to say he's a genius." She chuckled and added, "This time at least."

That caused both Yaki and Samko to look at the hologram open-mouthed. "What?"

Happy that somebody other than me had understood the plan, I bowed slightly. "Thank you, Captain."

"No, if they agree to this," said Captain Meistrin as she became serious again, "it's me who needs to thank you." She looked over at Yaki. "Commander, you went to the naval academy. What are the rules for putting foreign nobility on trial?"

"You can't," Yaki answered immediately. "If they break the law, they can be declared unwanted in Chiss Space and transported away..." Her voice faded as she spoke, and her red eyes grew wider as she looked at me.

"Exactly," said Meistrin dryly. "If this goes through, the Commodore just assured that none of the highest-ranking commanding officers can be jailed... no matter how angry the CEDF admirals are at us for attacking Imperial prisons, liberating non-Chiss prisoners, or taking an Imperial battlegroup."

For a moment the only sound in the room was the faint hum of the reactor.

Then Meistrin continued. "Even better, this protection extends to the three thousand people in the Personal Guards or whatever they're going to call it, and unless I'm mistaken, that will protect every Chiss in the fleet from being thrown in jail... including everyone that left Alpha Viga with us and the two thousand we just liberated." She looked at me. "Am I correct, Commodore?"

"That was the plan," I admitted.

On the hologram, a smiling Meistrin turned towards me. "You're a sneaky one, sir... as usual."

"I try my best," I said and glanced over at Yaki, who looked like she had been hit by a stun grenade. "Are you okay, Commander?"

Instead of answering, Yaki took two quick steps towards me and gave me a hug so hard I could feel my ribs protest. Then she let go, and to my surprise there were tears in her eyes as she said, "Sorry for breaking protocol, sir, but on behalf of me and the Black Dragons, thank you."

"You're welcome," I managed to say.

Captain Meistrin coughed. "May I make one suggestion, sir?"

I looked at the hologram. "Yes, of course."

"First of all, if the DDF is supposed to be 'co-protector' of those two planets, we need to send the other S-class cruiser as well, so we have one for each planet." She smiled a bit. "This will allow us to keep a presence in the two systems, and by crewing the ships with DDF people, the cruisers can stay in the systems to protect them." She looked at Elise. "Do we have the people for that, Commander Samko?"

Elise thought for a moment. "That is doable... I think we can find a couple of thousand people who want to go to an Outer Rim planet... if they can become citizens there." She looked over at me with a smile. "Which they can if that agreement goes through."

"Sending two cruisers is an excellent idea," I said slowly. The S-class might be old and slow, but with twenty turbolasers, ten quad lasers, and a complement of twenty-two Aurek starfighters each, they were still a force to be reckoned with.

"Nobody in their right mind would attack two S-class cruisers with anything less than heavy cruisers or dreadnoughts, which will increase their chances of reaching Velcaris or Kharvos significantly... And we can rotate some of the Delta-class transports from the first two squadrons to the support squadron to make up for the loss."

"Then you might as well send Captain Bobba and Barracuda along," suggested Elise. "The only reason they're still here is because they don't dare navigate the Chaos all the way to the Outer Rim without protection. With two cruisers, they will have that."

Captain Meistrin nodded. "That'll work."

I nodded as well. Captain Bobba and the rest of his free-spirited crew were civilians, and the Barracuda had no place in the fleet except for tagging along the support group, getting bored to death, so sending it off meant one less ship to protect.

If we had had the time to rearrange the Astra-class and turn them into proper picket ships, I would have sent two of them along as well, but right now they were just tough yachts that couldn't do much in a naval battle without having a screen to help them out. The three Hammerhead-class cruisers were also a possibility, but I had a feeling that we were going to need them, and sending any of the Mantas or Drakes would make the Sith wonder what their newest and best picket ships were doing in the Republic... and come to investigate.

"Good. Let them have some time to talk it over and then we'll see what happens."

"They'll take the deal, sir," stated Meistrin. "There might be some small adjustments, but it's really a win for them, since they get what they wanted for very little in return. One thing though... we need to make sure that the contract is legal in the Republic, and you need to make sure that the title is given before they leave and that there isn't some hidden commitment or duty in it." She grimaced. "I doubt that the Admiralty would look at you with kind eyes if you swore fealty to a foreign ruler."

"True that," I nodded. "But if everything else here in the Chaos goes wrong, we at least have a plan B if this works out... at least for a while."

"You're still convinced that the war will start again?" she asked, making me nod.

"The Republic simply can't afford to let the Empire control so many planets. Hate and anger are easier to access than patience and self-control, so there will be more Sith than ever before if the Jedi and the Republic don't react. Yes, many of the new Sith will kill each other, but the ones that survive will be better than the newly educated Jedi." I said with a sigh. "It'll break out again."

"I hope you're wrong, sir, but I doubt it."

I nodded and looked at Yaki and Elise Samko. "Set everything in motion so we can get those people sent off the right way."

"Yes, sir." They said and left the room.

I had expected Meistrin to disappear as well, but she stayed. "I need to ask you a question, sir."

I gestured for her to continue.

She took a deep breath. "Will this title protect you as much as anyone else?"

I shook my head. "No... And it's not the fleet rules that matter here; it's the Praetorian Guards. If they think I've given in to the Corruption, they'll get rid of me somehow, no matter how much legal protection I have."

Meistrin nodded slowly. "I thought as much." She smiled sadly. "May I advise you to never go back to the Ascendancy, sir?"

"You're not the first to give me that advice," I admitted, remembering one of the Black Dragons telling me exactly the same at the party at Nodia. "Unfortunately, I need to be present for this Duke thing to work, so unless I come up with a better plan before we go home, that is what I have to do." I smiled a little. "However, that is not a problem for now, Captain. We can talk about that at a later date."

"Yes, sir. Have a good day, sir."

"Likewise, Captain."

She saluted, and a moment later the hologram winked out of existence, leaving me alone in the office.

---------------------------------------

Next stage

Dreadnought Majestic, Quamire system

"Let training be hard and merciless, so battle may be brief."

Saying from the CEDF Marine Corps.

Taking a deep breath, I walked over to the sofa and sat down. As I had told Meistrin, I doubted any title would keep me out of trouble, but at least there was a chance it would keep me out of jail. Unless Master Brin thought I had fallen to the Dark Side, in which case I was certain he would have me killed.

The Chiss Ascendancy simply couldn't afford to have a Dark Side user on the loose, especially not one with a fleet as large as the DDF had become.

On the positive side, it should be painfully obvious to a Force user as experienced as Master Brin that I hadn't started using the Corruption, or fallen to the Dark Side, as the Jedi called it according to the holocron. If anything, with the guidance Trejar Melbate had offered, I doubted I had ever been further from it.

Much has been said about the Jedi, but when it came to teaching about the Force, their thousands of years of experience showed. In the year I had studied the holocron, I had learned more about the Force than in the previous ten years under Master Brin.

In all fairness, this was mostly because Master Brin had focused on teaching useful powers, while the Jedi were more about teaching how the Force worked, but it was still a large difference. It was like the difference between someone who taught you how to shoot versus someone who taught you how to build the blaster and then shoot.

It was a slower but more complete form of learning, and while it hadn't enabled me to learn any new power aside from healing, I had become better at the powers I had learned as a Praetorian.

The thoughts about the Jedi made my mind wander to Regon Harbru, the carbonite-frozen Jedi who still waited to be thawed. That was mostly my fault, as I hadn't wanted to thaw him before I had time to do it in a remote location where I could talk with him before he saw the fleet. That way, I had the option of handing him an Agency-class shuttle so he could get home to the Republic without having to fear that he would use the Force to make us help him in either his mission or the fight against the Sith.

That was the problem with me not knowing much about Jedi powers. I knew that some of them could influence minds, but not to what degree or how powerful that ability was. I had tried to ask the holocron about it, but apparently that ability wasn't part of Trejar Melbate's information, because the only thing I got was "they would NEVER do that."

To be fair, I was certain that under normal circumstances that was true, but being caught by Sith in an unknown part of space and subsequently frozen in carbonite wasn't exactly what I would call "normal circumstances," and as Shakka had said, "Desperate people do desperate things."

On the other hand, if he wanted to go back to the Republic, it was a lot safer for him to travel with two S-class cruisers than an Agency-class shuttle, so if there was ever a time to thaw him, it was now. Unfortunately, I didn't know anything about thawing someone from carbonite freezing, so...

I suddenly stopped my line of thinking and mumbled "Idiot" to myself, as I realized that I had forgotten the most obvious answer... or at least who to ask.

"Majestic, what is the procedure for thawing a person who has been frozen in carbonite?"

"That would depend on the length of the freezing, sir." The ship's computer answered immediately, making me chuckle. From time to time, I forgot that Majestic was a former Sith ship and might have this kind of information buried in the database.

"Let's say a couple of months."

"The recommended time is fifteen minutes of extraction followed by an hour of stabilization. At that point the subject is fully conscious but will require a few days of medical supervision to recover completely." Came the precise reply. "The assistance of a doctor or medical team is recommended."

That was a remarkably short time compared to the five to seven days I had heard quoted by other people, but then again, they had been quoting holodramas, and in them some of the people had been frozen for years or decades.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome, sir."

Next, I got hold of Chief Engineer Keller for an update on the S-class cruiser and was told that it would take at least four days before the ship was ready to take off due to a problem with a stabilizer for the hyperdrive.

Since I had planned to have the fleet ready before thawing Regon Harbru, that meant I had plenty of time to set it up to be as safe as possible.

Closing the channel, I walked over to the closet and took out the holocron. If I was going to meet a Jedi, I might as well hear a little more about the different ranks and types so I would at least know what questions to ask.

As usual, Trejar Melbate had chosen the environment according to my mood, and this time we were in a library filled with data packs.

"Greetings, Melbate."

"Hello, Commodore Mitth'ale'nuruodo," he said with a smile and walked over to sit in a chair opposite mine. "Did you find the prison camp?"

"Oh yes... we liberated about twenty thousand prisoners." I started and explained first the ruse in the first camp and the combat in the second camp, where he politely asked to see my memory of it.

As with the other times, I didn't feel any difference, but when I came to the part with the Manta, he shook his head slightly. "You did tell me that one of your strongest sides was telekinesis, Mitth'ale'nuruodo. I just hadn't realized how strong you really are."

"The lessons you provided helped a lot," I said with a little bow. "Much appreciated."

"You are welcome, but it still worries me that you simply execute the defeated Sith." He held up a hand. "Yes, I know that you can't keep them prisoners out here and that leaving a living enemy alive is inviting disaster, but I do not have to like it."

"Well, the Sith had it coming," I said slowly. "What bothers me is when I have to use it on their troopers. I was in the infirmary earlier and it wasn't fun to see people missing arms and legs, and I know the same will happen if I go up against Imperial troopers. It's not like I can use the flat of the blade to knock them out or something like that. That's the problem with lightsabers: they kill or dismember too effectively." Thinking it over, I added, "I need a way to stop troopers without leaving them dismembered or dead."

Melbate nodded slowly. "You know you could use telekinesis to push them away?"

That made me laugh. "Master Melbate, when I'm in the middle of a battle trying to save my troopers, I do not have the time to adjust my telekinesis so it won't crush people." I shrugged slightly. "Anyway, I'm here because I am seriously considering thawing the Jedi we found. For that I need to know some more about the Jedi and their organization."

"Very well." A cup of tea appeared on the table next to him. "The Jedi date ba..."

"Stop." I interrupted him. "I don't need the history of the Jedi. Just give me an overview of the organization and the different types of Jedi."

He nodded and explained that there were three types of Jedi: Guardians, who were trained for direct confrontation, lightsaber mastery, physical Force use, and battlefield leadership; Consulars, who specialized in healing, perception, coordination, and diplomacy; and Sentinels, who were trained to operate where the Force alone wasn't enough. They were trained in lightsaber use, investigation, infiltration, and counterintelligence.

"To be honest, that doesn't really sound like the Jedi I've heard the former prisoners tell me about," I commented.

"Not all combat happens on the battlefield," Melbate said quietly. "But the battlefields are all these people have seen."

I considered that for a moment and had to agree. Our freed prisoners wouldn't have seen a Sith assassin or known about an Imperial or Jedi spy network, but it was as much a battlefield as dreadnoughts clashing in deep space.

"Good point... Hmm, since you grouped healing under Consulars, I guess that all healers are Consulars."

"More or less. And they're usually very, very good," he said with a proud smile. "Take Doctor Shakka and make her five times more experienced in treating patients."

I was impressed. Shakka was universally thought to be a very good doctor, and I had a hard time imagining someone being five times better. "That is quite impressive."

"Yes indeed," Melbate said. "Doctor Shakka has improved a lot since she started, but it's hard to beat years of experience with the Force."

I nodded. As Shakka had grown more comfortable with the Force, I had introduced her to the holocron, and much to her delight, Melbate had agreed to teach her medical skills as well as Force healing. Like with lightsaber combat, she had proven to be a natural, but natural affinity still needed time and training to develop properly.

"Just as it's hard to beat years of experience with medical procedures," I told him calmly. "Shakka might be a novice with the Force, but I'm willing to bet that she'll learn the Force healing techniques faster than the Jedi learned medical techniques."

"You might be right about that," he admitted. "That young Twi'lek is extremely gifted."

"That she is." I agreed and stood from the chair. "We will talk later, Master Melbate."

He nodded as well. "Until next time, Commodore Mitth'ale'nuruodo."

Unlike the other times, the return to my office was a slow fade, which was different enough from the usual abrupt shift that I wondered if Shakka had complained to Melbate about it.

The thought of Shakka being cross with Melbate made me chuckle as I walked towards the bridge. While he sounded like a person, he was really an advanced search engine with a database, and it rarely paid off to be cross at a search engine... but in this case it might just have worked.

---------------------

With all the competent people working on the most obvious problems while the fleet held position over Quamire, the shift on the bridge was remarkably peaceful. When it was over, I went down to the training area to work some of the restlessness out of my body.

After two hours of training, sweat had soaked my training clothes and I was panting for breath as I hit the last droid with purple lightning, making it fall to the deck where it joined the rest of the destroyed target dummies and fried droids.

I stood still, trying to catch my breath.

All in all, the training had gone extremely well. The time needed to insert myself in the Force was shorter than ever, and yet there was something missing.

As I had told Melbate, it irritated me that I had no way of stopping enemy troopers without killing or dismembering them. Under normal circumstances that wasn't a big problem, but it would be nice to have a way to incapacitate an enemy without killing them.

The Jedi had their Mind Tricks, but affecting unwilling minds wasn't really my strong side, and the only technique the Sith had was, as far as I knew, Sith Lightning which both Lord Xhal and the Sith on Quamire had tried to use on me.

However, Sith Lightning was fueled by corruption and hate, which again wasn't my strong side. Not only did I not hate my opponents, but the Bicit vzeat or calm of battle would work against me if I tried to use it. You can't really be calm and hate someone with a passion at the same time, and I had no intention of ever touching the Corruption.

Still, I remembered Lord Xhal's lightning and the effect it had on my body. It had been like being hit with a powerful electric current, and if I hadn't been protected by the Force I would have been writhing on the floor.

Something moving out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. It was one of the floating droids. As I looked, it swirled in my direction, but before it could shoot, another stream of ionized purple lightning hit it and sent it back to the floor.

For a moment I just stood there. The ionizing purple lightning had looked a lot like Sith Lightning, but considering that I only knew those two kinds of lightning, it was possible that any Force-based lightning just looked like that.

Yet the difference in effect was huge.

Purple lightning was a stream of ionized particles that only affected machinery and circuits, not biological beings. Just like the ion cannons on the ship didn't affect the crew of the target except as a side effect, knocking out life support and artificial gravity.

Both according to the holocron and my personal experience, Sith Lightning was a projection of raw corruption, powered by hate and rage, that invaded the body and fried the nerves. The electricity was a side effect, adding even more pain and cramping the muscles.

The major difference, however, was that the effectiveness of purple lightning depended on the skill of the user, while Sith Lightning depended on the intensity of the Corruption as well as the amount of hate and rage the Sith could pour into it... at least to my knowledge.

I frowned. That would also mean that it had to be the Corruption that somehow created the electricity, which made sense considering that it was the Force that created the ion particles in the purple lightning.

A chill ran down my spine as I realized that they were really two sides of the same coin. Ions were created by removing an electron from a particle, and that ion was accelerated towards the target by the Force... but in theory there should be no difference from accelerating the electrons instead.

Eyeing one of the metal rods, I tried to do exactly that.

The outcome wasn't exactly as I had envisioned: golden sparks appeared on my fingertips and gave me an electric shock that sent a wave of pain through my body.

"Frak!" I cursed and blew on the slightly blackened fingertips, where a throbbing pain was spreading.

With a sigh I focused my thoughts on the healing technique I had been taught by the lessons in the holocron, and it didn't take long before the pain subsided.

I stared at my fingertips, turning my hands slowly as if that would somehow make the answer present itself. Until now, I had never questioned how the purple lightning reached its target. The Force created the ions, and they moved. That had been enough. It worked, it was reliable, and it did exactly what it was supposed to do.

It was, however, painfully clear that electrons couldn't be accelerated in the same way as ions... which led to the question of what actually accelerated the ions. If it was just the Force, there shouldn't be a difference.

Still thinking, I used the purple lightning, studying it as it zig-zagged through the air to hit a metal pole. While the ions did spread somewhat, they didn't arc wildly or become grounded randomly on their way to the target. It might not be a straight line, but it was a line nonetheless. Which meant that something was shaping how they moved through space.

With a snort, I shook my head. Since the Force was creating the ions and I was directing them, that meant that whatever I was directing them with was something I already knew and that boiled it down to telekinesis, since it was the only Force power I had that could influence the world directly... or at least it had been when I had learned purple lightning.

But electrons were lighter than ions by a factor of almost two thousand times, and I doubted that telekinesis could push anything that light. They were also faster and more sensitive to force fields... which meant that I had used the wrong method.

I raised one hand again, carefully this time, and instead of trying to send anything forward, I focused on the space between myself and the target, using telekinesis to shape the path for the electrons. Then I tried letting the electrons loose again.

Golden sparks danced across my fingertips again, sharp and immediate, snapping through the air toward the metal rod and scorching the metal exactly where I had been focusing.

I smiled as a wave of quiet satisfaction ran through me, just like when a battle plan turns out just right. Not due to luck, but because the major variables had been recognized and taken into account.

Then my smile disappeared as I collapsed the field too quickly and was rewarded with an electric jolt to the fingers so powerful that it locked the muscles in my hand for a few seconds, sent pain up my arm, and left burn marks on my fingertips.

Cursing in Cheunh, I flexed my fingers. If there ever was a warning against becoming too confident, that was it. If I wasn't careful, I would end up stunning myself or worse.

With a sigh, I focused on being calm and applied the healing technique I had learned from the holocron.

When the pain had subsided and the burns healed, I tried again, being careful to stop the Force from generating the electrons before letting the field collapse. That was a lot better, as I didn't electrocute myself this time.

I tried it at a few other metal rods and discovered that the golden lightning really did behave much like electricity, seeking any target as soon as it had left the telekinetic field.

For a while I tried carefully constructed fields of different shapes and discovered that by making a flattened cone, the golden lightning would fan out in front of my hand, hitting any target in an arc in front of me, just like Sith Lightning did.

While I didn't like the similarities, it was clearly the most efficient shape of the field as it didn't have to be aimed as precisely as the first few fields I had made, making it a lot more practical in combat.

Looking at the scorch mark on the metal, I nodded to myself. The basis was there. Now I only needed to calibrate the output so it could stun an Imperial trooper in armor before I could start using it in training.

Looking at my fingertips once more, I frowned. Despite burning my fingers, the golden lightning was clearly not as powerful as Sith Lightning, but that wasn't necessarily a flaw. If it was powerful enough to stun people in armor, it might just be the thing to surprise a Sith.

Unfortunately, according to the holocron, Sith fought each other on a regular basis, and as Sith Lightning seemed to be a staple of the Sith, it was safe to assume that any Sith I met would know how to parry or discard any lightning attack against them. Theoretically at least. The major component of Sith lightning wasn't the electrons, but the Corruption, so there was a chance that this golden lightning might work or at least give them a shock and slow them down.

Against non-Sith, however, the calculus was different. Imperial troops, mercenaries, guards, and soldiers had no such conditioning and no experience fighting through raw electrical shock delivered by the Force itself.

As that was exactly what I had been planning from the start, I was fine with that limitation. Especially if it gave me a way to stop ordinary Imperials without having to kill them.

That demanded that the golden lightning didn't fry them inside their armors, so I needed to have Waydar make a dummy with sensors on the inside, so I could experiment with the power output, and I needed to talk with Shakka. As a doctor she would know how much electricity a body could take without causing a heart attack or some other lethal condition.

After all, there was no point in frying people while trying to take them alive.

Smiling widely, I looked at the mess around me and then used telekinesis to gather it all in one pile near the service entrance, making it faster for the cleaning droids to handle.

I was bone tired, sweaty and needed a bath, but beneath the exhaustion, a sensation of happy satisfaction hummed in my body. The golden lightning power felt right to me and while it needed a lot of calibration, refinement and training, it might just be the power I had needed.

---------------------

"Are you sure that isn't Sith Lightning in another colour?" asked Master Mechanic Waydar with an uneasy shiver in his deep voice the next day as we studied the sensor output on the screens. "Because it really looks like it."

Chuckling, I nodded. "Yes. Trust me on that. I accidentally hit myself yesterday and it feels nothing like the Sith Lightning Lord Xhal threw at me in Grinda. There's a world of difference once you have been on the receiving end of it."

The dark-skinned giant of a man looked over at me with raised eyebrows as he pointed at the readout with a thumb. "Are you saying that Sith Lightning hits harder than this?"

"A lot." I confirmed. "I have a chance to shield myself against electricity, but because Sith Lightning is raw Dark Side power, it is far harder to shield against. It'll rip through just about any Force shield I can make, so the normal counter move is a risky parry, not a shield. Not only that, but as it's the Dark Side, it scales with the hatred and rage the Sith can channel."

He nodded slowly. "And this will not."

"No. It's a variation of the purple lightning you have seen me use against droids, and as such it can only become stronger with training and increased focus." I said and used the purple lightning on one of the cleaning droids, hitting it squarely and making it shut down. "Like this."

"Good. I would hate to see you fall to the Dark Side... especially when you're commanding this fleet." He said matter-of-factly and turned his attention to the screen again. "Well, if the goal is to knock out people without killing or harming them, you need to lessen the output, sir. According to the numbers Doctor Shakka gave me, this much power will fry them or at least give them permanent neural damage."

"Let me try something else first." I replied and walked over to the rows of armor.

The sequence was the same: open path, create lightning, stop lightning, collapse path. But instead of trying to lessen the power output as Waydar had suggested, I shortened the time, delivering a short, controlled burst.

Five seconds first, then three seconds and finally I managed to do it in one second.

"How was that?"

"The first two will fry people, sir." The Master Mechanic replied as he looked up from the screen. "And the third will leave serious permanent damage." He smiled wryly. "If you can deliver the same output in half a second, it'll be about right."

I nodded and looked at the targets. "Right. Here we go again."

That proved to be more difficult, and when I had to stop because fatigue was starting to affect my tests, I wasn't quite there yet. Close but not there.

Waydar handed me a glass of lemonade with a chuckle. "That has to be frustrating, sir."

I sent him a smile as I sat down on a crate. "Both yes and no. Yes, because I feel like I ought to be able to do it faster. No, because it took me months to learn purple lightning and we've only been doing this for a few hours." I shrugged. "It's like learning how to shoot. I'm pretty good with my Charric blaster, but while that is very similar to a blaster, it's still not quite the same, so I'm worse with a regular blaster. Of course, the difference is that I've used my Charric blaster for a decade, while I haven't really used a regular blaster much." I drank some of the lemonade, which was pleasantly cold and sour enough to be refreshing. "I know that golden lightning works and I know how it works, so I just need more training to get the outcome that I want."

He thought about that for a moment and then nodded slowly. "I see what you mean, sir, but it's kinda strange to hear a Force-user describing what he does in terms that sound more like physics or mechanics than mystic."

That made me laugh. "Oh, there're plenty of mysteries in the Force. To be honest, I couldn't explain half of what I'm doing to you in a way you would understand it... However, we're not talking about learning a new power here. I'm refining a power that I already know how works and that has an outcome that for once can be measured by ordinary sensors and computers." I sent him a smile. "This is the outlier, not the norm."

"Oh, you mean like killing two Sith before ripping a Manta apart and lifting the aft end out of a hangar?" Waydar said with a grin.

I sighed. "I was pressed for time... and I didn't just rip it apart. That ship was falling apart already from both the space battle and ramming the blast doors of the hangar. Has everybody seen that by now?"

Waydar shook his head. "No, but people talk and sorry to say, sir, but you simply can't pull off a stunt like that and expect people not to talk about it." He drank from his lemonade. "The only thing that keeps the stories from going wild right now is Dragon Quest. People know that this will be part of the series at some point, and they don't want to look stupid by exaggerating too much."

I pondered that for a moment, since I hadn't considered that Dragon Quest might reduce the amount of rumours instead of adding to it. "I guess I'll have to live with that."

Waydar sent me a grin. "Good, because I don't think you have much of a choice, sir."

With a nod, I stood, setting the glass aside and flexing my fingers, feeling the familiar ache of overused muscles and strained focus. "We'll pick this up again tomorrow. Please send the updated curves and sensor data to Doctor Shakka, so she can evaluate them."

Waydar nodded. "Understood, sir."

"And Master Mechanic... Thanks for the help."

That made him smile. "You're welcome, sir."

I hesitated for a moment but then said, "Waydar, if you have the time, I have a request."

His deep rumble of a chuckle filled the room. "That will depend on the request."

"I need to have my armor changed," I told him. "When you made it in the Snare system, it made a lot of sense, but now I'm just giving the newly liberated prisoners a heart attack when I show up." I smiled a bit. "Imagine how you would have felt if I had walked into your cell in that armor."

He shivered. "No thanks... I see what you mean." He tilted his head. "Do you have anything special in mind?"

"Not besides not giving people a heart attack," I said drily and considered it before saying, "Even just new colours would be fine. It's the combination of the shape and the black colour that scares people." I thought of the latest training and then added, "And make it lighter or faster. At Quamire, my speed was limited by the servos. Not by much, but enough to place an artificial limit on my speed."

The giant of a man looked disbelieving at me. "You're moving so fast the servos can't keep up?"

"Yes." I said simply, not wishing to explain the increased fluidity and speed I got when immersed in the Force. "The joints limit my speed. It's likely the reason why most Sith armors I've seen are not powered armors."

Frowning, Waydar nodded. "You might be right sir."

He lifted his datapad and brought up the diagram of the armor. "Well, since the body sleeve is a Verpine fibre ultramesh armor, reinforced with Songsteel, I could take that and simply fasten the Songsteel Duranium composite armor plates to it." He looked at me. "It won't be as protective, but it will eliminate the problem with the servos."

"What will that do to the weight distribution?"

He shrugged. "As it is now, the added strength from the servos cancel out the added weight, so it will feel almost the same despite being lighter."

"Nice. That will save me hours of retraining." Looking at the armor diagram again, I added, "And the gauntlets have to be Verpine mesh as well... at least the part covering the inside of the hand and fingertips." I smiled wryly. "Otherwise, I think I will stun myself the first time I try to use the lightning we just tried."

"You might have a point, sir," he chuckled. "I'll see if I can add some Songsteel plates to the glove instead."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome." Waydar pointed at the diagram. "Now, regarding colours, may I suggest that we simply make the black areas deep blue instead? That would lighten up the whole visual impression and the blue works with the Dragon Defence Force logo."

"Can you do it on the pad so I can see it?"

"Sure." He nodded and went to work.

A few minutes later, I had to agree. The deep blue did change the whole feel of the armor and worked well with the golden parts. "That works, Master Mechanic."

"Good." He smiled. "It will not look exactly like this, but close enough. I'll ask Commander Yaki for some design ideas."

"Just make sure she doesn't go overboard." I chuckled.

"Thank you again," I said, before I turned and walked out of the workshop. I just had time for a quick dinner before the next meeting.

--------------------

As Chief of Personnel, Elise Samko was in charge of filling the two S-class cruisers with people and had enrolled half the tech-staff to sort through the people applying for a place on them, but there were only her, me and DD5 at the meeting.

"It's insane, sir," she told me with a smile when we had sat down at the table in her office. "I thought we would be overrun, but almost none of the Old Guard have applied." She gestured at her droid. "DD5, pull up the file."

The beautiful droid nodded and a moment later, a chart appeared on the screen. "As you can see, sir. Ninety-nine percent of the people that were with us in the Snare system wish to stay. The few that want to go are people in the lower ranks, who for some reason haven't been able to climb the ranks." She smiled brightly. "Mostly because they keep messing up."

The chart shifted. "Ninety-five percent of people we liberated in Nodia, Grinda and Qek-40 system also wish to stay."

Looking at the chart I noticed an abnormality. "What is that spike?"

"The Yrlans we picked up in the Jenth-32 system." Chuckled Elise, removing a strand of red hair from her face. "Most of them have a noble title and they want to go back to a system that has those titles." She shrugged. "I don't know why they think that their titles will help them in another system, but I didn't press them to answer that."

I thought for a moment. "Extend the invitation to the other Sublars. I'm tired of having them occupy cells on our capital ships. If they want to leave, let them." I smiled a little. "Though they'll need to be transported in the cells of the S-class cruisers... Otherwise they will most likely try to stage a mutiny."

Elise chuckled. "Deal, sir... and since they're in the cells, they won't even count against the people the cruisers can transport."

"Good." I thought for a moment. "Make sure that there are some marines on those ships to protect the crew against desperate refugees."

"Already done."

"Thank you... hmm... How many liberated prisoners do we have room for?"

DD5 pulled up another slide and Elise continued. "Two thousand reasonably experienced crewmembers for the ships... a thousand on each. The rest of the crew will be from those who wish to return home. Which will be an additional fifteen hundred per ship, for a total of three thousand." The chart slide was replaced by another. "Even when that is done, we have room for five thousand on each ship, which brings the total to thirteen thousand." She smiled widely. "Oh, and Captain Bobba on the Barracuda can take seven hundred more."

"So, thirteen thousand seven hundred all in all."

"Yes, but many of those who wish to go to the Inner Rim are people with children." She hesitated but then continued. "I did consult with Shakka on this and most of the children are with their biological fathers."

I almost asked why, but then remembered the Sith breeding program, where women had been impregnated with sperm from a Sith in order to produce Force-sensitive offspring. Most of those had been removed years before we ever arrived, but there were still a lot of children that had been adopted by other families when their parents died and those were not easy to track. As far as we knew, the breeding program didn't involve eggs from female Sith, so by choosing children where the DNA test showed that they were indeed the child of the father, Samko had effectively eliminated any possible result of the breeding program from being sent off.

Thinking it over, I shrugged. "You don't have to screen those, Elise. Yes, they might be Force Sensitive, but the Republic is going to need a lot more Jedi after this war, so just send those who want to go. They deserve the same chance as everybody else."

"Are you sure, sir?"

"Yes. I don't want to train people who don't want to be here, no matter what their potential might be." I smiled slightly. "Not to mention that the Jedi have been teaching people for twenty thousand years."

Elise raised her eyebrows. "Yes, sir, except that Ajunta Pall, Exar Kun, Ulic Qel-Droma, Darth Revan, Darth Malak and Darth Traya all were Jedi before they became Sith... or at least Fallen Jedi." She smiled slightly at the look I gave her and said, "I've been talking with Kisha Arbourne, the professor in Galactic History, and all these Sith Lords started out as Jedi... some even as Jedi Masters. According to her, the Jedi Order have been the source of many of their greatest enemies."

Leaning back in the chair, I considered that for a moment. It wasn't the first time it had come up and, in my opinion, the reasons for the failing Jedi were always the same: emotions and isolation. As long as the Jedi tried to raise the Force-sensitive children in an environment that didn't show them how to react to normal, healthy relationships, some of them were going to fall at some point. You simply couldn't stop people from falling in love or lust, and teaching them that having certain emotions was wrong was not only unnatural, but it was also setting the students up for failure.

It was also pointless. People formed bonds with anyone they interacted with on a regular basis, and while I couldn't be sure, chances were that the bond between master and apprentice, Jedi and Padawan, was just as strong as the bond between lovers.

However, that was their rules, and I had to admit that it was possible that the Jedi had chosen those rules not because they were perfect or even the best, but because in their experience it was the route that led to the lowest amount of fallen Jedi. If that was the case, they had been extremely unlucky with their fallen, because as Elise and the professor had rightly pointed out, those had been very powerful in the Force.

Of course, it was one of those questions we would never find an answer for, because you cannot prove a negative that way. There was no way of knowing how many Force Sensitives didn't fall due to those rules, just as there had to be numerous other incidents where less powerful Jedi had fallen and were quietly taken care of by the Jedi Order before they could become a problem.

"I know, but over the thousands of years the Jedi Order have existed, they have trained millions of Jedi." I told her. "Let's call it five million to have a solid number. Elise, you're making training schedules for a lot of people. If you had a system that educated five million people and only five failed, that's a frakking good system." I chuckled. "Even if we say that for each one we know about, there're a hundred we don't, it's still not bad."

"That's a one to ten thousand failure rate." DD5 injected.

"That's pretty good." Elise admitted. "If only six or seven of the people we have educated screw up, I'll be extremely happy." She looked at me with a smile. "All right, sir. You make a good point... I'll extend some more invitations."

DD5 nodded and made a note, while Elise Samko watched me with a slight smile and a certain expression on her face that I knew quite well. She was getting horny.

Since I didn't mind that in the slightest, I smiled at her. "You look like you have a thought."

She shrugged. "I would have sworn that you wouldn't know half of the fallen Jedi I mentioned, but evidently I was wrong."

Laughing softly, I said, "I know about Exar Kun and Ulic Qel-Droma due to research in lightsabers, and Darth Revan and Darth Malak due to their tactics having been analysed to death in the Naval Academy. I've never heard about the ... hmm... Ajunta Pall and Darth Traya you mentioned."

"Ajunta Pall," she corrected absently and there was a somewhat embarrassed tone in her voice as she continued. "Well, I still lost a bet, sir, so I have to ask if you would be interested in having a private dinner with Professor Kisha Arbourne one of these days." She smiled slightly. "She's slightly obsessed with Revan and would like to know more about his tactics."

"That actually sounds interesting." I chuckled. "Especially if she knows more about the Jedi Civil War era."

"Oh, she does." Elise looked thoughtful. "The fascinating part is not really what she knows but her analysis of it. I mean the database has most of the facts and dates, but Kisha can put those into perspective... exactly as you do with tactics."

"As I said, it sounds interesting, but it will have to wait until we're in hyperspace again." I smiled. "There's too much else on my mind right now." My eyes went to the chart again. "Now it's time to be a ruthless fleet commander. Not everybody wants to be in a fleet and not everybody is good at it, so let's prioritize those that are either unhappy or simply bad at their job."

She lifted her eyebrows. "You want to get rid of them?"

I shook my head. "No, I want them as passengers in a ship that is going towards Republic Space, instead of being in a job they dislike or are bad at. If you screw up while making food, people will have to eat ration bars. If you screw up with a ship, people will die." I leaned back in the chair and looked thoughtfully at the chart. "As far as I remember, we had around forty thousand adults and seven thousand children when we arrived here."

She nodded. "Close enough and before you ask, we're close to sixty thousand adults and ten thousand children now." She looked over at DD5. "How many people with children have expressed a wish to go home so far?"

"Three thousand two hundred and thirty-one adult prisoners with a total of two thousand three hundred twenty-five from Quamire alone." The droid stated and added. "There are another two thousand eight hundred adults with one thousand four hundred children from various other camps."

"Round it up, DD5." I told it.

"Six thousand adults and almost four thousand children."

"Good. Let's get them out of here." I decided. "The remaining four thousand or so spots will go to those that either don't want to be here or that we don't want here."

Elise grimaced. "Are you sure that's wise? I mean, S-class cruisers hit hard, but four thousand children..."

I sighed. "I know, but the only other ships we can send without kicking off a war are Hammerheads, Fafnirs, Wyverns and Dragons, and we need those here." I thought for a moment. "We could send an Astra class, but as long as they're not rebuilt, they'll just be targets. The S-class cruisers are big, tough warships with starfighters, and the Barracuda is a civilian ship with military armor and shields. I ran a few simulations and it's the combination with the largest chance of survival for everybody. They have the range, fuel, provisions, spare parts and scare factor to make it."

She nodded. "And it's not like it's safe to stay here. Sooner or later, we will run into one of their fleets. This way they at least run away from danger and not into it."

That comment reminded me that while Elise didn't have the temperament to captain a warship, she was a competent tactician.

"Exactly. I would rather not have them here when we meet Darth Arkol's fleet again."

"I get that." She said and looked at her droid. "You heard it, DD. Make it happen."

"Yes, sir."

Elise sat still for a moment but then smiled as she stood and stretched. "Well, we're done here, so I would like to suggest that we use a couple of hours on some sex to put our minds at ease."

"Seems like an excellent suggestion." I chuckled as I stood as well, reaching for her.

Her mouth found mine in a hungry kiss. I felt the soft, heavy weight of her breasts press against my chest through the thin fabric of her uniform.

Returning the kiss, I cupped the back of her neck with one hand while the other slid down to rest at the small of her back. When we broke apart for air, her green eyes were bright, lips slightly parted.

"I have been thinking about this since the meeting started," she murmured, voice low and direct. "You sitting there so calm and in control while I tried not to squirm in my seat. It was unfair."

Smiling faintly, I brushed a strand of hair from her face. "You suggested it."

"I know." She grinned, already working the fastenings of my tunic open. "Does not make it any less unfair."

Her hands were efficient. She pushed the tunic off my shoulders, then ran her palms over my bare chest, thumbs brushing across my nipples. Reaching for her uniform in return, I unfastened the clasps and peeled the fabric down her arms until it pooled at her waist, exposing her full breasts.

As always, the sheer size of them made me pause. If I didn't know better, I would have sworn there was some kind of magic or surgery at play, because breasts that large shouldn't stand so proud and full without any sagging.

Cupping one heavy breast, I circled the nipple with my thumb until it tightened. She arched into the contact with a soft moan. I leaned in, took the nipple into my mouth and sucked gently while my fingers played with the other. Her fingers threaded through my hair, holding me there as her breathing grew ragged.

"Thalen..." The way she said my name, low and needy, sent a shiver of lust through me.

I let my hand slip between us, fingers tracing the edge of her underclothes before sliding beneath the fabric. When I brushed a finger over her clitoris she bucked against my hand with a sharp inhale.

"More," she pleaded, hips rolling against my touch.

Sliding two fingers inside her and curling them while my thumb circled her clitoris, I watched her moan, head falling back.

She came the first time with a shuddering cry, thighs tightening around my hand, her body arching. I kept my fingers moving through it, gentler now, drawing out the aftershocks until she relaxed with a long, satisfied sigh.

"Gods, that was good," she murmured, eyes still closed, a lazy smile on her lips. Then she opened them, green and gleaming with renewed hunger. "Let's move to the bed. I want your tongue first."

The last pieces of clothing hit the floor as we moved to the bed. Elise reached it first and let herself fall on her back, spreading her legs with a smile.

Smiling back at her, I let my hands slide over the soft skin of her legs as she spread them wider. I followed the path of my fingers with my mouth, kissing and tasting my way slowly up her thighs.

When I finally reached her pussy, she was already breathing faster, her hips shifting restlessly. Extending my tongue, I dragged it slowly up through her folds, savoring her taste.

She gasped sharply, hips lifting off the bed. "Yes... like that..."

I took my time, licking long, slow strokes along her slit and then circling her swollen clitoris with the flat of my tongue. I slid the full length of my tongue deep inside her, curling and thrusting in a steady rhythm while my upper lip stayed pressed firmly against her clitoris, giving her constant warm pressure.

Elise moaned loudly, her fingers tightening in my hair, her breasts heaving with every ragged breath.

I kept the rhythm steady, sometimes pulling my tongue back to flick her clitoris with quick, teasing strokes before plunging deep inside her again. Her thighs began to tremble and her moans grew higher, more desperate. "Just like that... I am close..."

I drove my tongue as deep as it would go, curling the tip firmly against her G-spot and stroking that sensitive spot with slow, deliberate pressure while my upper lip and nose continued rubbing rhythmically against her clitoris.

Elise came with a loud, shuddering cry, her inner walls pulsing around my tongue as her hips bucked hard against my face. I kept licking her through it, gentler now, drawing out every last tremor until she finally collapsed back against the bed, breathing hard.

Lifting my head and licking my lips, I looked up at her flushed face. "Better?"

"Much," she breathed. Her green eyes were dark with lust. "Now get behind me. I want you to fuck me while DD5 licks me from underneath."

Elise rolled onto her stomach and pushed herself up onto all fours, spreading her knees wider and arching her back. I moved behind her and ran my hands over the generous curve of her ass before gripping her hips.

"DD5," she commanded, voice husky, "get underneath me and start licking."

The droid moved instantly and without hesitation, sliding onto the bed and positioning itself on its back directly under Elise's spread thighs, and began licking her clitoris with precise, tireless strokes.

Elise moaned loudly at the first contact. "Yes... just like that."

Lining myself up, I pushed into her from behind in one slow, deep thrust. She was incredibly wet and tight. Elise gasped sharply and pushed back against me, her inner walls clenching around my cock as the droid continued the perfect, unrelenting licking.

Instead of staying upright, she gradually lowered her upper body until she was lying flat on her stomach, her breasts pressed against the sheets. The new angle lifted her ass higher and allowed me to sink even deeper.

From behind, I reached forward and slid my hands under her chest, cupping her full, heavy breasts. They felt warm and soft in my palms as I squeezed gently, rolling her hard nipples between my fingers while I continued thrusting into her with long, powerful strokes.

Elise moaned louder, pushing back to meet every thrust. "Harder," she gasped. "Fuck me harder, Thalen."

I tightened my grip on her breasts for a moment, then moved my hands back to her hips for better leverage and gave her what she asked for, pounding into her with deep, forceful strokes. The wet slap of skin against skin filled the room, mixed with the soft, relentless licking from the droid beneath her.

Elise's arms started to tremble. She dropped even lower, resting fully on her chest, which pushed her ass even higher and let me hit a new, deeper angle. I could feel every ripple and flutter of her walls around my cock.

"I'm close," she moaned, her voice raw. "Don't stop... either of you..."

I kept thrusting hard and deep, my hands now firmly on her hips, while DD5 continued its precise, tireless licking without any sign of slowing down.

Elise's breathing turned into short, desperate gasps. Her whole body began to shake. Then she came hard, with a loud, shuddering cry that echoed off the walls. Her inner muscles clamped down around my cock in powerful, rhythmic spasms, milking me as her hips bucked wildly. I kept moving through it, slower now, drawing out every wave while DD5 never stopped licking.

When the worst of the tremors finally eased, Elise collapsed forward onto the bed, breathing heavily, her body limp and glistening with sweat. She reached down and gave DD5 a light tap on the shoulder.

"Enough, DD5. Move aside for a moment."

The droid stopped instantly and slid out from underneath her without a word, returning to standby position at the edge of the bed.

For a moment the only sounds were her ragged breathing and the quiet hum of the ship's systems.

She let out a low, satisfied laugh and turned her head to look back at me, eyes half-lidded and gleaming.

"Fuck... that was intense," she murmured. "Give me a second to recover... then I want you on your back."

Looking at her flushed, glistening body, I considered my options. If I let her run the show right now, I would probably come way too soon and I wanted to draw this out longer.

I stepped off the bed, took hold of her ankles, and dragged her smoothly toward the edge until her ass was right at the side of the mattress.

"What're you doing?" she asked with a breathless chuckle, looking up at me.

"Change of plans," I told her, spreading her legs wide. "You said you wanted to get fucked." As I spoke, I lined up and thrust my hard cock back into her pussy in one smooth, deep stroke, making her groan loudly. "So that is exactly what I'm going to do."

I eyed the waiting droid. "DD5, give her tits a proper workover."

"Yes, sir," the droid replied instantly.

DD5 moved to the side of the bed, leaned over Elise, and began using its warm, soft hands and mouth on her breasts, kneading them, licking, and sucking her nipples with slow, tireless attention.

I kept thrusting into her with deep, steady strokes, watching her breasts move under the droid's touch. Elise moaned deeply, her eyes fluttering shut as the dual sensations hit her.

After a few minutes I could feel myself getting dangerously close. I didn't want to finish yet.

I pulled out suddenly, knelt between her spread legs, and slid two fingers back inside her, curling them firmly against her G-spot while I lowered my mouth to her clitoris. I licked her with long, slow strokes, then sucked gently on the sensitive bud, pushing her pleasure even higher.

Elise gasped sharply, her hips lifting off the bed. "Fuck..."

I kept fingering her steadily, my tongue working her clitoris. Her hands fisted in my hair, her moans growing louder and more desperate.

Only when I felt her getting close again did I pull my fingers out, rise up, and slide my cock back into her in one smooth thrust.

Elise groaned loudly as I filled her again. I started fucking her with long, powerful strokes, my hands gripping her pale thighs and spreading her legs wider so I could watch every inch of my blue cock sliding in and out of her pink, glistening pussy. The sharp visual contrast, my dark blue skin against her light, flushed complexion and the bright red patch of hair above her slit, made the sight even more intoxicating.

I took my time now, fucking her slowly and deliberately, savoring the tight, wet heat and the way her inner walls fluttered around me with every deep thrust. Elise's moans grew deeper, her hips rolling to meet me as she enjoyed the unhurried pace.

I could feel myself getting close again. Instead of holding back any longer, I looked at the droid.

"DD5, play with her clitoris."

The droid kept its mouth on Elise's breasts, licking and sucking one nipple, while it reached down with one hand and began rubbing her clitoris with steady, tireless strokes.

Elise's eyes flew open. "Oh fuck..."

Her moans turned into broken gasps as the added stimulation hit her. I kept thrusting deep and steady, watching her face and the way her breasts moved with every stroke. Her whole body started to shake.

When her inner walls began to flutter strongly around me, I let go completely. I fucked her harder, faster, driving into her with everything I had.

"Yes!" Elise groaned and came with a wild, broken scream, her body convulsing beneath me. Her pussy clamped down in powerful, rhythmic spasms, milking me hard as her hips bucked uncontrollably and her thighs trembled violently.

The feeling pushed me over the edge right with her. With a deep groan I buried myself as deep as I could and came hard, pulsing inside her in long, hot spurts as I continued to fuck her until I was spent.

Then I stood still, enjoying the sight of her body sprawling on the bed, and letting my hands roam over her soft skin, while I stayed buried inside her for a long moment, both of us breathing hard. Slowly I pulled out and collapsed onto the bed beside her.

Elise turned onto her side and snuggled against me, draping one leg over mine, her head resting on my chest. Her body was warm, soft, and still faintly trembling.

I swallowed a grin, as the still naked DD5 quietly got off the bed and started to collect our clothes from the floor and fold them neatly, before placing them on a chair.

Elise and I lay there in comfortable silence for a long time, just breathing, skin against skin, the quiet hum of the ship around us.

Eventually Elise lifted her head slightly, a lazy, satisfied smile on her face.

"That was exactly what I needed," she murmured, tracing lazy circles on my chest with her fingertip.

I smiled and stroked her back. "Glad I could help."

She chuckled softly and nestled closer, clearly in no hurry to move.

---------------------------------------

Thawing the prisoner

Duchess, Quamire system

Two days later, I was on the Duchess along with Resa, Lena Agusta, and the two tiger droids. We stopped behind Quamire's moon and prepared to thaw the frozen Jedi.

Originally, I had planned on having Shakka along but had decided against it. According to Majestic, people were disoriented for some time after being thawed, and I didn't want the first thing the Jedi saw to look like a known Sith Lord. That was inviting trouble.

"We're in position, sir," declared Resa as she stood from the pilot's chair. "The autopilot will hold the position."

"Good." I said as I double-checked that the moon did indeed block the view of the fleet. It did, so I stood as well and followed Resa to the lounge where Lena Agusta and the two droids were watching the slab of carbonite with the Jedi.

"Ready?" I asked as soon as we got inside.

"Ready, sir," replied Agusta with a smile.

"One thing," I said calmly. "Until we get back on Majestic, there are no titles. Just use the names. Otherwise, dressing in civilian clothes is rather pointless."

Lena Agusta nodded. "Yes, Thalen. Can I start the thaw now?"

"Please do that, Lena," I chuckled and sat in one of the chairs as she started operating the panel on the side.

Looking around in the familiar space, I couldn't help but smile. The green plants had been cared for by the maintenance droids, the furniture was as immaculate as the first time I had seen it, and the pool had been filled after more than a year without water. Mostly because both Shakka and the medical droid had recommended that we place Regon Harbru in warm water as soon as he came out of the carbonite to help him regain warmth.

The thought of the Jedi made me double-check that I had cloaked myself so Regon Harbru wouldn't and couldn't detect me as a Force-user even if he tried. I hadn't needed to worry, as the cloak was firmly in place, so I took a pair of dark glasses from a pocket and donned them, completing my 'disguise'. While I could see perfectly, the glasses hid my red eyes, making people who hadn't met a Chiss before assume that I was a Pantoran. At least that was what most of the freed prisoners from Nodia and Grinda had assumed until they saw the red eyes, and it was an assumption I didn't mind feeding until I knew more about Regon Harbru.

The sound of chimes spread softly in the room as internal safeties disengaged one by one in response to Lena's handling.

The first visible clue was on the panel, where a temperature indicator was climbing.

Then a thin mist bled from the seams of the slab and the carbonite surface dulled, losing its glassy sheen as microfractures spread across it in faint, spiderweb patterns.

The carbonite dissolved into the air, revealing Regon Harbru as he had been the moment he was frozen. A thin, translucent residue clung to his skin and clothing like frost, making him look more like a statue than a person.

Resa and Lena had just enough time to reach out and support him before his body sagged forward, joints stiff and uncooperative.

I smiled a little to myself when I saw Resa's hands wander over the Jedi's body, expertly searching him while making it feel like she was just trying to get a better grip. Looking up at me, she shook her head slightly to indicate that there was nothing there.

That made my original suspicion that the Sith had taken or destroyed the Jedi's lightsaber much more likely, and the effect was the same. He couldn't suddenly lash out with the weapon in a panic.

"Easy there, Regon," Resa said gently. "We've got you."

Harbru's chest jerked violently as he dragged in a long, rasping breath, and I realized that he hadn't been breathing up to that point. The first breath was followed by a second.

The medical droid moved in, sensors sweeping over the Jedi as it injected stabilizers and thermal regulators. His breathing settled into a shallow, uneven rhythm, eyes fluttering as consciousness struggled to surface.

"Core temperature rising," Lena said calmly. "Heart rate elevated but stabilizing."

"Nice," commented Resa as she started to undress Harbru. "Give me a hand. He needs to get out of those clothes and into the water."

A moment later, Harbru was lowered into the water, dressed only in his underwear. He was clearly not a frontline Jedi. His body was not exactly untrained, but there simply wasn't the defined muscle and that edge fighters normally had. Then again, it was the first time I had seen a Jedi, so there really was no way of knowing.

"Neural activity is increasing," the medical droid reported in its neutral tone. "Cognitive coherence is delayed but present."

"Well, at least he isn't brain-dead," mumbled Resa.

"Shh," Lena hushed. "He's coming around."

I stood from the chair and walked closer to the pool so I could see, and Lena was right. Harbru had opened his eyes, but they were still glazed over from the shock as they skimmed around the room, briefly taking in both Resa and Lena before slipping shut again as his brow creased in discomfort. A weak shiver ran through him, the first sign that sensation was beginning to reconnect.

"Easy," Lena murmured, one hand steady on his shoulder to keep him from slipping under. "You're not going anywhere."

Harbru's lips moved, but at first no sound came. Then he took a breath and tried again.

"Time?"

"I don't know what time you mean," said Resa slowly. "But you can relax. You're safe now."

He relaxed visibly for a few seconds as his breathing steadied, shallow but no longer panicked. The medical droid adjusted the thermal output, and the faint tremor in his hands eased as warmth spread through his body.

Suddenly his eyes snapped open wide, and he looked around with a mix of panic and desperation on his face. "Jessa?"

Lena and Resa exchanged glances and then looked at me.

"You were frozen alone," I told him calmly. "Who's Jessa?"

"My Padawan," he replied hoarsely. "She was in a shuttle, examining a moon." He swallowed something, and judging from the expression on his face, that was a painful experience. "Four months of rations... How long was I frozen?"

"Four months of rations means five to six months if rationed," I said calmly. "Which I hope she did, because you have been frozen for four and a half months."

Harbru's hand tightened on the edge of the pool, knuckles whitening.

Lena handed him a water bottle. "Here. You need this."

With a grateful nod, he took the bottle and drank half of it before looking at me again.

"We need to talk," he said, his voice steadier now.

"We do," I agreed. "You can start by telling us what a Jedi and a Padawan were doing in the Unknown Regions." I paused and added, "And please don't lie. Not only am I really good at figuring out when people are lying, but you're also hooked up to a medical droid, which will read your body's signs... Just tell the truth."

Lena nodded. "We're really not bad people."

Despite the seriousness of the situation, I had to swallow a grin. In total disregard for their clothes, both Resa and Lena had jumped into the pool from the start, and both of them looked sexy and cute as they stood there in their soaked clothes.

Regon Harbru drew another breath, deeper this time, and nodded.

"We were on an exploratory assignment," he began, voice rough but steady. "Outer fringe of the Unknown Regions. The Council wanted a low-signature survey of stellar anomalies that didn't fit known charts. Gravitational distortions, radiation shadows, that sort of thing." He closed his eyes briefly. "Nothing that justified a task force. Nothing that warranted attention."

That sounded totally plausible, but unfortunately, it was a lie. I looked at him. "Jedi Harbru. According to rumours, Jedi prefer the truth, and yet you just lied to me. Last warning. Do it again, and I will have you sedated so you cannot harm my crew."

Harbru held my gaze for a long moment, then let his head sink back against the edge of the pool. "Sorry. I had to try."

I just looked at him without saying anything.

He sighed. "Do you know anything about the evacuation of Ossus?"

"Not besides the fact that Exar Kun and Ulic Qel-Droma attacked it during the Great Sith War and that the planet was destroyed," I replied. "About four hundred years ago, I think."

Harbru nodded and sighed again. "You're right. It was once a major site for the Order... numerous Jedi academies along with gigantic libraries, but all was destroyed along with centuries, if not millennia, of data. The Order tried to save as much as they could, and during that evacuation a ship loaded with holocrons and a single Jedi custodian named Deren Talos was hunted by Exar Kun's forces."

He was silent for a few seconds, and I simply waited.

"The ship tried to escape," Harbru started and explained that the ship had taken risky hyperspace jumps to get away from its pursuers, ending up in the Unknown Regions where it crashed on a moon. The only one that survived was Deren Talos, and he managed to make it back home in a hyper-capable shuttle.

He had also made a journal about the whole thing. A journal that had survived in the Jedi archives for centuries until Harbru found it and read it.

At first it was just an interesting story from the evacuation and subsequent destruction of Ossus, but after the Sith had attacked and razed the Jedi temple on Coruscant some years ago, with the following peace treaty, Regon Harbru had gotten permission to try to backtrack the Jedi custodian's route in the hope of finding the holocrons and recovering some of the lost knowledge.

He and his Padawan, Jessa, had been scanning a solar system, and to give her some training, he had sent her off in a small shuttle to scan one of the moons when a Sith task force suddenly appeared almost on top of him. A single salvo had disabled his engines, and before he knew what was happening, the ship was caught in a tractor beam.

The Sith had overpowered him and eventually froze him in carbonite, leaving the Padawan undetected... and now she was trapped in a shuttle without a hyperspace engine and limited food supplies.

"How many holocrons did that ship have since it was so important?" I asked quietly.

"As far as we know, there should be at least twelve." He took a deep breath. "Look, if you help me find my Padawan before it's too late and help me find the holocrons, the Order will reward you greatly."

"Well, at least that version made sense," I said as I leaned back slightly, studying him. The story didn't feel complete, but my intuition told me that it was all I was going to get for now. "I need the name of the system so we can see how far away we are."

"It was Kuna-12," he said immediately and then suddenly blinked. "Wait a minute... what happened to the Sith?"

"I'll tell you later," I said absently. "Resa, can you find that planet on the maps?"

"I'll try," she replied.

I nodded and looked over at the medical droid. "Violet, please."

"Yes, sir." It replied, and a moment later Regon Harbru simply fell asleep as the sedation the droid had pumped into him took effect.

"May I ask why you did that?" Lena asked, sounding more curious than worried.

"I need time to think and act without a Jedi observing me," I told her and looked over at Resa as she started to chuckle. "Yes?"

"Master Engineer Keller always says that you're the luckiest commander he has ever met, and I'm starting to think he's right." As she spoke, a starmap appeared on the screen by the pool with a circle around a system, and I realized that I had forgotten that she was connected to the Duchess's systems. "That's the Kuna-12 system." A line appeared on the map, zigzagging through star systems. "And this is the route we have plotted to get to Pire. As you can see, Kuna-12 is just a single jump from Vecta, one of the stops on the route, and Kuna-12 won't cost us much."

"Any inhabitable planets in the system?"

Resa shook her head. "No. A single sun, three rock planets, and a gas giant, and none of them have an atmosphere. The same goes for the moons in the system. The Padawan would only have the food in the shuttle."

Studying the map, I nodded slowly. "Backtrack a route from Grinda to Kuna-12."

"Yes, sir."

A moment later a new route showed up, connecting Kuna-12 with Grinda.

"Travel time?"

"Two weeks in an S-class cruiser as Lord Xhal used."

That caused me to grimace. Adding two weeks to the time the Padawan had been in the shuttle made it five months, and while that was within the range of the provisions, most people are inherently optimistic and only start rationing their food after a few weeks. All in all, there was a chance that the Padawan was currently starving to death while being trapped in a shuttle in an empty system.

On the other hand, Harbru's story didn't say anything about what had happened to his ship. We knew that it hadn't been there when Lord Xhal's task force entered Grinda, so either it was still in the Kuna-12 system, or the Sith had destroyed it before they left.

"Resa, have someone check the database on one of the ships we took in the Grinda system," I said slowly. "If they met a ship in the Kuna-12 system, what happened to it? Did they leave it or destroy it?"

The blue LED at her temple blinked as the female droid looked emptily into the air for a few seconds. Her eyes snapped back into focus. "The Sith task force did encounter an XS freighter in Kuna-12 and, as Harbru told us, disabled it by hitting the engines. They also used it for target practice before leaving the system."

"Well, at least that confirms some of his story," I mumbled.

Lena Agusta tilted her head as she looked at me. "May I ask another stupid question?"

"Since you haven't asked one yet, it can't be 'another'," I told her mildly. "But ask away."

"Why did you want to know what happened to his ship?"

"If they hadn't destroyed it, Jessa the Padawan could have returned to it and gotten more supplies," I told her. "Most ships in the Chaos carry a lot more food than strictly needed, so if the ship was still there, we wouldn't have to hurry."

I looked over at Resa. "Time from Quamire to Kuna-12?"

"Three weeks for the whole fleet," Resa said and smiled. "Both First and Second Squadron can do it in two weeks."

I nodded slightly. The larger transports of the support squadron were simply slower than the pure combat squadrons.

"One week," said Lena Agusta suddenly and walked over to a console, where she started typing. "The Dragon-, Wyvern-, and Astra-class can take this route and make it in a week." She paused and added, "So can the Star Wanderers, but they're not relevant to this."

A new route appeared on the map, and unlike Resa's route, one of the jumps was extremely long, spanning one of the numerous small star voids that the rest of the ships had to go around.

"Is there anything special in that void?"

Both Lena and Resa shook their heads.

"According to the map," said Resa, "it's just an ordinary void. An area where the distances between star systems are larger than usual."

"I don't detect anything dangerous in there," added Lena. "As Resa says, it's a star void like so many others."

"Right," I said and looked at the map while thoughts spun in my head. On one hand, I didn't want to risk thousands of people to rescue a single person, Padawan or not, but on the other hand, I hated the thought of leaving someone to starve to death alone in a shuttle in a remote star system. In addition, morale would take a serious hit if I refused to take a safe route to rescue someone when doing so posed no real danger to the fleet.

It would make more sense to send a single ship, but with the shifting condition of the Chaos, crossing that void demanded that Lena Agusta, Marie Munmaki, or myself was present on that ship. After what had happened at Jenth-32, I was certain that Yaki would simply deem it too dangerous. She would even be right, since we had no idea if the Kuna-12 system was part of a regular route for the Sith or not.

Then there was the question about the holocrons. The one we had found in the Snare system had been a treasure trove. Not only for me, but for the engineers as well. However, there was no guarantee that the holocrons contained useful information or even that Regon Harbru would allow me access to them. Not that he had much of a claim to them, but it wasn't something I would be prepared to pick a quarrel with the Jedi Order over.

However, that was a problem for later. Now it was about saving a stranded and starving person in a remote star system.

I chuckled to myself as I realized that my subconscious had already decided while I had been thinking of other things.

"Get us back to the fleet, Resa. We have a lot of work to do."

"Yes, sir."

-------------------

Once back on the Majestic, the still-unconscious Regon Harbru was transferred to the infirmary where Lena Agusta would look after him until we were certain he was clearheaded enough to be introduced to Shakka.

Then I walked into the meeting room, where the holograms of some of the senior captains were waiting, and briefed them on the situation, leaving out only the part about the holocrons, ending with my decision to take Majestic and the three Wyverns from First Squadron, reinforce them with the three Astra-class ships, and cross the void when we reached that point.

I had also decided to keep the fleet together for the first two jumps. It might add a day of travel time, but we had spent too long in the Quamire system already, and the first two jumps were the ones where there was the highest chance of encountering Darth Arkol's fleet.

"Are you sure this is a good idea, sir?" asked Captain Meistrin when I was done. She raised a hand slightly. "I didn't mean the part about going to the rescue but splitting the fleet again."

"For once, we don't really have an option," I replied. "The timetable is forcing our hand."

Corlew Bucbro and Jay Barlee both nodded in unison.

"You're right, sir," said Captain Bucbro from his place on Falcon's bridge. "Padawan or not, every decent spacer in the galaxy would do the same."

On the Vulture, Captain Barlee leaned slightly forward. "I have to agree on that. Her situation is the stuff of nightmares for spacers."

"What about the S-class cruisers?" Captain Tlath asked. "Are they ready to depart?"

I glanced over at Iska, who saw it and nodded. "Yes. According to Chief Engineer Keller the ships are ready. The last of the passengers were transferred earlier today, and the astrogators are double-checking the route as we speak." She smiled faintly. "We're even ready to sign the contract with the rulers of Velcaris and Kharvos later today. They wanted a ceremony of sorts, but I don't think we'll have time for that."

That made me smile as well.

Almost as soon as XO Betty Nagos had been briefed on the deal, she had located some of the highly educated non-military prisoners among those we had liberated and assembled a small working group: former Republic lawyers, an expert in Senate policy analysis, and several others.

The task she had given them had been straightforward: Take the agreement between the Dragon Defence Force and the Kingdoms of Velcaris and Kharvos and make it legal under Republic law, while ensuring that the DDF wasn't under the command of the royalty of those kingdoms but functioned as an independent helping force.

In addition, the parts about titles, refugees, and rights to yards also needed to be hammered out. They had even added a section where it was specified that the two planets would pay the crews' salaries and grant them citizenships if they so wished, along with the ships' maintenance.

In return, she had promised to find a place on the S-class cruisers for those who wished to return to the Outer Rim.

It had taken them two days, but the resulting contract was almost two hundred pages long and, according to the XO, so bulletproof that if we ever needed to enter Republic space, we could probably use it as an extra layer of armor.

I had read it, and besides being one of the dullest pieces of written material I had ever read, it was also very thorough, and if there was an omission in it, I hadn't been able to find it. Neither had the old legislator droid Gov Zedas had managed to dig up from storage, so I guessed that the agreement was as good as it was going to get.

I still made a few changes to it to give both Meistrin and Yaki a personal guard of five hundred while lowering my own to two thousand. Mostly because it gave me more options in case I needed them later.

The rulers had read the agreement and agreed to it. That had surprised me until Resa pointed out that in reality Velcaris and Kharvos got a capital warship with a trained crew for free each, and since citizenships were free as well, the only thing they needed to do was to pay for the maintenance and crew salaries.

Now all that remained was to sign it... and apparently there was a tradition of sitting in the same room when doing so.

"Right. Let's get this show on the road," I decided and looked around. "Captain Bucbro, you brief the Astra-class captains. Senior Captain Meistrin, before you go, I need to have a word with you."

"Yes, sir."

I waited until the others had gone before I said, "In order to assist you and the rest of the fleet, I'm going to send Astrogator Agusta over to Glorious."

That made her eyes widen a fraction. Despite people talking, not many people aside from a few officers on Majestic actually believed that Lena Agusta and Marie Munmaki could use the Force to navigate the Chaos, and I was more than happy to keep it that way.

As second in command, Meistrin was one of the few who knew about the two Yrlans' abilities, since she needed to know in case I died, but I wasn't sure she really believed it.

"Thank you, sir."

"You're welcome... and Captain..."

"Yes?"

"Trust her routes," I said with a faint smile. "Don't let your astrogator overrule her due to seniority."

She looked at me for a long moment and then nodded. "Yes, sir."

"Good." I let the smile widen. "Oh, and you'd better get over here, Captain. The signing of the contract with the royals is in an hour, and I'm not signing until we get the titles. So, dress uniform and get ready to become a Count."

That made her laugh softly. "I bet that's the first time a Chiss has ever said that to another Chiss, sir, but I'll be there in half an hour."

"See you then."

She nodded and the hologram winked out.

As I turned, Iska smiled wryly. "Having a Force-assisted astrogator is quite different from just getting the nav data from the flagship. It takes some getting used to."

"I wouldn't know," I chuckled, "but I'll take your word for it."

"Hmmm... I would have asked why you sent Lena Agusta," Iska said as we walked into my office. "But I guess it was her turn, since Marie Munmaki was on Hawk when we were in the Qek system."

"Exactly."

She nodded and went onto the bridge, while I walked into the bedroom to take a quick bath, change into the dress uniform, and get ready for signing the contract.

---------------------------------------

A contract

Duchess, Quamire system

"Leadership is not about being in charge.

It's about taking responsibility of those in your charge."

Commodore Thalen of the DDF

The signing ceremony was scheduled to take place in the Hangar Park, and Meistrin, Yaki, and I met by one of the long tables outside Raika's Rest a good ten minutes before it was supposed to start.

"I still say you're slightly insane to have come up with a scheme like this, sir," declared Yaki in Cheunh as she looked around in the park, inspecting some of the Black Dragon honour guards. For some reason a whole squad was present.

That made Meistrin smile. "This qualifies as 'thinking outside the box', Commander."

Yaki snorted. "This is so far out of the box that it isn't even in the same solar system."

I sent her a smile. "Well, on the bright side, in about half an hour Titlow will be able to say that he's dating a Countess. I mean, it's not a Princess, but it's up there."

"Very funny, sir," Yaki mumbled and looked at me. "If there wasn't a chance that this would save the troopers, I wouldn't even be here."

"Moot point," Meistrin smiled. "Because that is exactly why we're here." Her smile grew into a grin. "Aside from making sure that almost fourteen thousand liberated prisoners get back home."

"There is that little detail," admitted Yaki with a nervous chuckle. "Well, at least the surroundings are better than a cell in the brig."

I silently agreed with that.

Originally, I had considered doing the signing in a closed conference room in the security area, but with two thousand experienced crew staffing the S-class cruisers, keeping the size of the fleet a secret was simply impossible in case they were caught.

All I could do was to plan for the trip to the Inner Rim to be as smooth as possible and hope they didn't encounter Darth Arkol or one of his task forces.

It was for that reason that Marie Munmaki, Lena Agusta, and Astrogator Jandar San had spent the last three days going over the star maps from the captured ships, using the Force to plot the best route for the S-class cruisers to take. A route that was a balance between keeping as far away from Yrla so Darth Arkol was unlikely to encounter them, but not so far from the known routes that they risked an encounter with Lord Moragth's task force.

My thought was interrupted as one of the doors opened and High Queen Elayne IV of Velcaris and her Crown Prince, Alric, came walking into the Hangar Park, escorted by a squad of Grey Wolves Space Marines.

I swallowed a grin as I saw the royals stop to look around, astonishment painted on their faces as they took in the green plants, the artificial sky, and the café. After a moment High Queen Elayne walked on with her head held high, followed by Crown Prince Alric, who discreetly dried his eyes.

My amused feeling changed into sympathy as I realized that, unlike the other prisoners, there was a real chance that the royal prisoners hadn't seen the outside since they were caught.

The door opened again, this time to allow the Golden Klion honour guard to escort Lord-Primarch Sael Korvin Trex and his two grown children into the Hangar Park. They too stopped in surprise as they saw the greenery and had to take a moment to gather themselves before they continued.

It also gave me a chance to study the heir to the throne, Aren Trex, and his sister Lysara Trex. Both were in their early twenties, and I was sure that they would be considered good-looking anywhere other than here. Still, they held themselves well, just as the Queen and Crown Prince of Velcaris had done, and proceeded with dignity.

The signing ceremony was a simple affair as Lord-Primarch Sael Korvin Trex, High Queen Elayne IV, and I all signed three copies of the document, which was then taken away to be encased in a thin layer of transparisteel, while I received the title of Duke and both Yaki and Meistrin became Countesses. As specified in the agreement, the titles were largely ceremonial and by what they called a 'Writ of Personal Service', which I had learned meant that the title couldn't be inherited and didn't come with any land grants unlike most other titles.

That suited me fine. Getting land in the Outer Rim would just complicate my life even further, and that was something I really didn't need.

"I'm happy that we could come to this agreement, Duke Thalen," Lord-Primarch Sael Korvin Trex said with a smile as we were waiting for the encased document to come back. "It gives me hope for the future."

"That is always nice to hear. You certainly deserve that."

"Thank you." Trex said with a slight nod and lowered his voice. "May I ask a favour from you regarding my children?"

"If it doesn't violate our policies," I answered carefully.

He hesitated for a moment but then said, "My children know little of how fleets and armies are managed. Could you please start them from the lowest rank possible?"

That request was the polar opposite of what I had expected. "I assume it's because you want them to learn as much as possible?"

Trex nodded. "Exactly. My father was wise enough to let me go through military training as a normal recruit and that did me a lot of good." He smiled faintly. "Before that, I must admit that I was somewhat spoiled. A year in the armed forces took care of that."

"Well, as Commander Samko explained last time, we test everybody to see where their abilities are best applied, but I shall mention to her that service shouldn't be limited to flight operations... within the limitations we discussed last time."

"Thank you."

"No need to thank me, sir," I told him. "We're just treating them like everybody else."

Smiling, he nodded and moved on to talk with Yaki with the quiet confidence of a person used to small talk at important events, while the presence of Queen Elayne came nearer.

"I see that Lord-Primarch Trex had the same idea as me," she said in a soft voice.

"As we already agreed, my Lady," I said as I turned around to look at her, "the heirs will be treated as ordinary members within the limitation of our contract." I shrugged slightly. "It's simply the way we do things."

"Yes, I notice that." She chuckled. "I am, however, afraid that I will have to ask you for a favour, just as the Lord-Primarch."

Inclining my head, I said, "I'm listening, my lady."

"Alric is a young man embarking on a journey that will most likely take at least a couple of years," she said calmly. "Young people, and especially young men, make terrible decisions when the opposite sex is involved." She smiled a knowing smile. "I cannot stop that, and I will not ask you to try either. What I am going to ask is that he receive a new implant to prevent pregnancies."

"That I cannot do, my Lady," I said with a slight sigh, causing her to widen her eyes in surprise. "Not due to lack of will, but simply because we don't have any. It's not standard equipment and the blueprint isn't in the fabricators." I paused for a moment to think and then added, "If we find any implants or blueprints for them, I assure you that your children will be among the first to receive them."

Her eyes bore into mine for a moment, but finally she nodded. "In that case... May I request that if he happens to produce any offspring they will return with him to Velcaris when the time comes?"

"We will do our best to ensure that, my Lady," I promised her.

"Thank you." She said and looked over my shoulder. "I think one of the officers is trying to get your attention."

Looking over, I discovered Resa, who was standing a couple of meters away with two small boxes in her hands. Behind her stood a nervous-looking junior lieutenant with the three transparisteel-encased contracts.

With a smile, I indicated that Resa should come over, which she did.

"Here you go, sir," she said as she handed me the two boxes.

"Thank you, Lieutenant."

Turning towards the two rulers, I said, "High Queen and Lord-Primarch, may I have your attention for a moment?"

They both looked at me.

"We're grateful that you have agreed to receive thousands of liberated prisoners. Those are people who not only need a start to a new life but some good fortune on top of that. However, a new start in life is not cheap and it's a tradition of the Dragon Defence Force that we do not send people off without at least some means to make that life better." I smiled and handed the two rulers a box each. "Every former prisoner that departs gets one of these... including you."

Curiously, they opened the boxes. Inside lay a large coin made from gold with an edge of platinum. In the middle there was a motif of a dragon with two small gems as eyes and the tail curled around the coin.

"We call them 'Dragon coins' and they are compliant with Republic banking law regarding personal corporate gifts." I smiled a little. "Each of these coins has a material value of fifteen thousand credits and to prevent theft, each one is encoded with the receiver's biometric hash, so they're only redeemable by that person." I paused for a moment, giving them time to look at the coins. "Now it's my turn to ask a favour from you. In case the banks for whatever reason won't accept these, I would ask that you help your fellow survivors out and have them redeemed by the treasury. That way people can have money on their accounts instead of relying on charity while they build a new life."

They were silent for a few seconds, but then the Lord-Primarch closed his hand around the Dragon coin and looked me in the eyes as he said, "I promise to do that."

Queen Elayne nodded at that. "So do I."

"Thank you," I said with a slight bow. "Then I cannot ask for more."

I signalled to the junior lieutenant with the contracts and as he walked over to hand them to the two rulers, I turned towards the three royal children. "Lysara, Aren and Alric. I am aware that this arrangement might not be what you have dreamed of, but if you're really against it, I need you to speak up now. This is your chance. As soon as we're done here and the S-class take off, there is no going back. You will follow the Code of Conduct for the Dragon Defence Force until we can deliver you safely back home sometime in the future." I looked from one to another. "Feel free to speak."

They exchanged glances, but then Alric firmly said, "I wish to stay here."

That was followed a moment later by Aren Trex's, "I would very much like to stay, sir."

The dark-haired Lysara looked me straight in the eyes.

"I will stay," she said calmly and with no hesitation in her voice. "Not because I was told to, and not because it is expected of me. I want to understand how the Dragon Defence Force works... what kind of people you are and why you came to rescue us."

"Very well," I said with a slight nod. "From this moment on, you are not heirs, but candidates. You will be tested, evaluated, and assigned where you are most useful. You will be addressed by rank, not by title, and you will follow orders."

All three nodded.

"Good." I inclined my head toward them. "Then welcome to the Dragon Defence Force."

Behind them, I caught a glimpse of Lord-Primarch Trex. He hadn't said a word, but the tension I'd sensed earlier had eased from his shoulders. Queen Elayne's expression was more difficult to read, but she met my eyes briefly and gave a small, approving nod.

"Lieutenant Resa," I said without turning, "please make sure the appropriate intake documentation is prepared and that Commander Samko is informed. When they have said their goodbyes, they'll need a uniform and to be shown their quarters."

"Yes, sir," she replied at once.

"Thank you."

We all watched them as they left the room and through the Force, I could feel the doubt of both rulers, wondering if they had done the right thing.

"You have my word," I said gently without looking at them, "that I will not put them in unnecessary danger. We didn't rescue them just to place them in harm's way later out of ill will."

"Thank you, Commodore," said Queen Elayne as some of the doubt faded, echoed a moment later by Lord-Primarch Trex.

I turned to look at them. "You're welcome and now you'll have to excuse me. Your shuttles will be ready shortly, I have some people I need to say goodbye to, and Captain Meistrin needs to get back to her ship." I gave them a small bow. "Have a safe journey."

"Likewise, Commodore."

"You too, Commodore."

"Until we meet again," I said with a nod and walked out, followed by Meistrin and Yaki.

------------------

Yaki walked off almost immediately, wanting to get back in her normal uniform, but Meistrin and I walked to the lift to get to the hangar.

"You're even sneakier than I thought, sir," remarked Meistrin in Cheunh as the lift moved.

"Oh... How so?"

"I saw the changes you made to the contract," Meistrin chuckled. "Now both Yaki and I have a five-hundred-person personal guard... enough to protect both the Chiss that went with us from Alpha Viga and those we liberated in Centurion 21 whether you're there or not."

I chuckled and nodded. "Yes... but so far, it's not because I don't intend to return. I do, however, want you to be able to protect those people even if I happen to be dead." I shrugged slightly. "Not that I plan on dying, but battles are a bloody mess, and it only takes a split second's lack of focus or a lucky salvo from a Harrower to kill people, and nobody is immortal."

Laughing slightly, she shook her head. "If the CEDF leaves you alone, you're going to be a very good admiral one day."

"Thank you, but so are you." I saw her raise her eyebrows and continued. "Not only have you gained two full ranks in the tactical simulator since the Snare system, but you have also been doing the work of a Mid-Admiral for almost a year now. If you got back in the CEDF you would run circles around the rest of the officers, and you have a better grasp on politics than I do."

Her smile grew wider. "You just proved my point, sir. I've learned more from your debriefings of both simulations and real battles than I did from ten years at the Academy. So, if I'm supposed to be a Mid-Admiral, that'll make you an Admiral or even a Fleet Admiral." She lifted her eyebrows. "So, why're you still using the Commodore title?"

I laughed softly at the question. "Two reasons. First of all, taking an Admiral title just feels wrong... like one of those holovids where there's a pirate Admiral. Secondly, you were the one that told Keller to give me a Commodore rank, so you shouldn't be complaining."

"Good point, sir, but if I had known how many enemy vessels we would end up capturing, I would have suggested Admiral, sir."

Before I could say anything to that, the lift arrived at the hangar and the door opened.

Still smiling, Meistrin walked out, saluted, and walked towards her waiting shuttle, while I walked over to the small group of spacers that was the crew of Barracuda.

Somewhat to my surprise, they straightened up and saluted as I came nearer, and Captain Bobba stepped forward to meet me.

He had been an overweight elderly man when I first saw him in space over Centaury 21. Now he had more grey hair but had lost a lot of weight, which made him look younger for some reason.

"Hello, Commodore," said Captain Bobba with a smile and extended a hand. "Nice of you to come and say goodbye."

We shook hands as I said, "I couldn't just let people go that made it through the Snare system without saying goodbye and wishing you a safe journey."

"Thank you." His smile widened. "And thank you for the Dragon coins and most of all, thank you for Barracuda."

"With the action you took to save people, you and your crew deserve it." I glanced over at the crew for a moment, before going back to Captain Bobba. "Have you decided where you're going to be based yet?"

He shook his head. "Not really. If Velcaris or Kharvos doesn't work out, I have thought about trying the Terminus system."

That made me nod. The Terminus system was located at the cross between the Corellian Trade Spine and the newly discovered Hydian Way, besides being close to both Wild Space and the Unknown Regions. There was a lot of trade going on there and I had no doubt that Captain Bobba and the rest would do well there.

"Sounds like a solid plan," I said. "I hope I'll see you there some day."

"You are always welcome, Commodore," Captain Bobba said, just as his pilot came up to say goodbye as well, and a moment later I was surrounded by the crew of Barracuda, who all wanted to say goodbye and did so with a surprising warmth born from genuine gratitude.

"I hope we see you again, Commodore," one of them said, followed by another. "Thank you for everything, sir."

Eventually, they drifted away slowly, one by one as they walked back to Barracuda's shuttle, leaving Captain Bobba alone with me.

He hesitated for a moment, but then said, "Commodore. If anything goes wrong out here, you know where to find us... Velcaris, Kharvos, wherever."

I nodded in acknowledgment of his offer. "Thank you, Captain. Be safe out there."

With a smile, Captain Bobba saluted and walked away to join his men in the shuttle.

I remained where I was as I watched the running lights shifting to blue as the systems came fully online and seconds later, the shuttle lifted cleanly from the deck with the familiar hum of repulsors. Then it flew towards the exit of the hangar and disappeared into space.

With a slight smile, I turned and walked back to the lift. Captain Bobba and his crew hadn't had much luck in their life, and I sincerely hoped that their luck would change now.

-------------------

An hour later, I was standing on the bridge next to Iska, as Tavune said, "All three ships report that they are ready to depart."

Looking at the screens, I nodded. "Very well, send the route to them."

"Done, sir."

"Thank you." I said and looked at a screen as it switched on, showing Captain Thorin Malvek of Condor, the lead S-class cruiser. "Hello, sir. The route is locked in and we're ready to depart."

"Very well, Captain Malvek," I said with a smile. Thorin Malvek and his two wives had decided that while they would have loved to stay here with the rest of the fleet, their fourteen children, most of them adopted, some not, would be better off growing up on a planet instead of in a fleet. "I hope to see you in some years."

"Likewise, sir," he answered and gestured to someone, before saying, "The best of luck with the other camps. I hope you get them all out."

"We plan on it," I said and then fell silent as the screen split into several smaller screens, each one showing crew members in their DDF uniforms. All were standing, giving us a perfect salute as they smiled.

The bridge grew quiet as I returned the salute, holding it for a heartbeat longer than protocol strictly required, before I said, "Safe travels."

"Acknowledged," Captain Malvek replied with a smile.

One by one, the screens went dark. On the main display, three icons peeled away from the fleet and aligned on the departure vector, their drives spooling up in perfect synchronization.

"Clear to jump," Tavune reported.

I watched the countdown reach zero.

Then the two cruisers and the smaller Wanderer-class vanished into hyperspace, leaving the stars behind them undisturbed.

"Right," I said as I turned towards the rest of the bridge. "Let's move out. We've spent enough time in this system. Tavune, give the signal to Second Squadron and let's get the slower ships out of here. We will follow as soon as they are out of here."

"Yes, sir."

It didn't take long before Second Squadron had left the system as well and as soon as the patrolling fighters had returned, we followed.

---------------------------------------

Recovery

Dreadnought Majestic, Hyperspace

"Recovery is where experience turns into capability."

From the Holy Book of War

Regon Harbru was sitting upright in his bed, leaning against a couple of pillows and slowly eating his food when Resa and I entered the room, followed by the tiger droids. He looked better now, but the hand that held the fork was still shaking ever so slightly, indicating that he was still recovering.

"Ahh," he said with a weak smile. "My rescuers have returned." He placed the plate on the table next to the bed. "My compliments to the chef, by the way. This is the best meal I've had since I left Corellia."

"I'm glad you liked it," Resa said with a smile.

Regon Harbru studied her for a moment and then asked, "Excuse me, but are you a droid?"

"Yes," Resa said simply.

He nodded slightly and looked at me. "I'm sorry, but if you ever gave me your name, I can't remember it."

"I'm Thalen and she's Resa," I explained. "How are you feeling?"

"Better," he said and took a glass of water. "I can feel that we're in hyperspace. Please tell me that we're going to the Kuna-12 system."

That he could feel we were in hyperspace made me grateful that I, as usual, had cloaked myself from detection and wore the glasses that hid my eyes.

"We are," confirmed Resa with a smile. "Estimated time of arrival is one week."

Harbru grimaced. "And going faster is impossible, I guess."

"We're pushing it as it is," I told him calmly. "As I'm sure you know, the Unknown Regions is an unforgiving place."

He accepted that with a nod. "Indeed." A smile split his face. "I'm relieved and grateful that you decided to help, and as I said, I'll make sure the Order rewards you generously."

I thought about how to respond to that for a moment and decided that telling the truth now would save us a metric ton of trouble later. "Jedi Harbru, we're not doing it for the reward, but because no decent spacer would willingly leave another to starve to death, caught alone in a shuttle in an empty system." I smiled. "And besides, we're in the Unknown Regions. There are no banking clans or Republic credit system out here, so there's no way to give us such a reward anyway."

He raised his eyebrows in surprise but took the time to think for a moment before saying, "In that case, I thank you from the bottom of my heart."

There was silence for a moment, but then he asked, "Mister Thalen, I vaguely remember you saying that you would tell me about what happened to the Sith that took me prisoner. Do you have time to do that now?"

"Oh yes, it's not that complicated," I said calmly. "We hunted the Sith task force because it carried thousands of prisoners that we wanted back. Fortunately, we know this part of the Unknown Regions better than the Sith and were able to take another route that allowed us to ambush them. Long story short, we were successful, the Sith flagship exploded, and eventually the other ships surrendered."

"You were found on one of the other ships," added Resa with a slight smile. "Pure chance, I have to admit, as we had no clue that you were there, and if you had been on the flagship, you would be just as dead as the rest of them."

His eyes widened somewhat from Resa's blunt answer, but then he nodded slowly. "Thank you again. That explains a lot." He paused for a moment before asking, "Did you find my lightsaber by any chance?"

Resa shook her head. "No. We did look, but there was nothing. We assumed that the Sith kept it on the flagship as a trophy."

He sighed. "That is more than likely." His eyes glided over to the two tiger droids, who had lain down on the floor while we were talking, looking exactly like two big cats. "Hmm, you have a lot of droids here."

"Not more than usual," I replied with a soft chuckle. "I'm trying to limit the crew's exposure to you until I have determined how desperate you are." I met his eyes. "And droids cannot be affected by the famed Jedi mind trick."

"I would never do that!" he protested immediately.

"Jedi Harbru," I said calmly. "You're a member of an Order who tried to protect the Galactic Republic, fighting on a hundred different fronts for almost thirty years against the Sith Empire and was forced to accept an unfavourable peace treaty when the Empire took the capital of the Republic and razed your main temple."

I let that sit for a moment before continuing.

"You and the rest of the Order know that this peace is nothing more than a break in hostilities, and the Order is desperate enough to send a single Jedi along with his Padawan into one of the most inhospitable regions of the galaxy..." I gestured around. "...to retrieve a cache of holocrons that might help them when the war starts again. As one of my crew so eloquently put it: desperate people do desperate things."

Harbru didn't answer immediately, but took a few deep breaths, and when he spoke his voice was calm. "You have a point, but you clearly do not know the Jedi Order that well. We have survived worse without breaking our code."

"I'm not worried about an entire Order," I replied calmly. "They're far away from here. You're not, and it's you that I worry about." I held up a hand to stop any arguments. "Regon Harbru, it's really much simpler than a long debate about the Jedi Order. I don't know you and I don't know what you are willing to do for the greater good. That will most likely change as I get to know you better, but so far, the only reason I have to trust you is my own instinct and the fact that you're a Jedi... and the part about being a Jedi means very little out here. Can you accept that?"

He thought about it for a moment and nodded. "I can see your point."

"Good. Now the reason that I bring this up is that this ship is filled with people who were extracted from Imperial prison camps. Some of them are former Republic Navy personnel, and after decades of being prisoners by the Sith, I think it's safe to assume that at least some of them feel like they were abandoned by the Republic and thus the Jedi Order."

He actually blinked in surprise at that. "How can that be? The Sith don't take prisoners."

"They do when those prisoners can be sold." I sighed and told him how the Sith had killed the officers of captured or surrendered people, Imperial and Republic both, and kept only those they assumed would fetch a good price.

He looked horrified. "You have to be kidding me!"

"No, that is a fact," said Resa gently. "When you leave this room at some point, you will be surrounded by people that started out as prisoners, and as Thalen said, not all of them will have positive thoughts about the Jedi, despite that their situation is none of your fault."

He tilted his head again as he listened to her, frowning slightly. "Why don't you sound like a droid when you talk?"

"That is not for you to worry about," she said with a slight smile.

That answer made him look even more surprised, but before he could ask anything, I said, "Now, to get back to the matter at hand, there is some information that you need. The most important being that our Chief Medical Officer is a red Twi'lek and a former slave."

He blinked a few times and tore his eyes away from Resa to look at me. "I'm not sure why that is relevant."

I smiled a little. "It's relevant because her owner had her tattooed to look like Darth Atroxa... a name I'm sure you're familiar with."

He nodded slowly. "I am indeed."

"Good. Do you think you can handle a doctor that looks like a Sith?"

"Yes," he said firmly.

"Good." I looked at Resa, who got the hint, and a moment later the door opened and Shakka walked inside.

Even dressed in her doctor's uniform as she was, the tattoos on her head and lekku were clearly visible, and the effect on Harbru was a sharp intake of air before he could control it. But control it he did.

"So, you're the doctor I keep hearing about," he said with a smile. "Greetings. I'm Regon Harbru... but I'm sure you already knew that."

The beautiful face split into a smile as she walked over to his bed. "Yes, and sorry about the tattoos... My first owner had a Sith fetish... or at least a Darth Atroxa fetish."

"That..." he said hesitantly. "Cannot be easy."

"Oh, it's not bad," she said absently as she looked at the readout on the medical bed. "Darth Atroxa is mostly known to Imperial officers, not the rank and file." Looking up from the readout, her green eyes studied the Jedi for a moment. "You'll be fine, but you're somewhat out of shape. I will recommend that you do physical exercise before you start training with the lightsaber again."

Harbru smiled. "Thanks for the advice, but according to Thalen here, my lightsaber is lost."

"If Thalen says so, it's true," Shakka said with a shrug. "But as far as I know, there's nothing stopping you from using training swords. Do that. The training will do you good. However, as I said, you need to be stronger before you start training again."

Harbru's eyebrows rose. "Did the carbonite freezing do that much damage?"

She laughed her usual pearly and seductive laughter. "No, but staying in bed all day with nothing to do but worry about your Padawan is not good for you. Physical training will do you good and make you tired enough to sleep." She turned towards me. "Could you arrange that in about a week, Thalen?"

"Yes, doctor," I said with a slight chuckle. "We have some training swords we use."

That made Harbru look at me in surprise. "You have? I wouldn't have thought that was standard on a ship."

"It's not, but I like to fence with vibrorapiers and so do several others of the crew."

He nodded slightly and swallowed a yawn, causing Shakka to look at Resa and me. "I'm sorry, but no more questions for today. Harbru needs to sleep."

"Sleep well, Harbru," said Resa and walked to the door, where she stopped to wait for me.

I waited for a few seconds and then said, "Please wait outside, Resa."

She nodded with a smile and walked out.

Turning towards Harbru, I lowered my voice. "Jedi Harbru, if you want our cooperation, I suggest that you act with tact and grace towards the members of the crew... and Resa is very much part of that crew. You will respond to her just as you would to any biological person, no matter how you feel about droids."

He looked at me with surprise painted on his face but then nodded. "Yes, sir. I'm sorry if I offended you."

"You didn't offend me," I said quietly. "You insulted a member of the crew."

Shakka patted the Jedi on the shoulder. "People have a name for a reason, Harbru. Not acknowledging them as persons is rather rude, no matter where you are."

Harbru nodded again, slower this time. "I understand."

"Good," she said, already turning away, moving as elegantly as usual as she stepped back to the medstation. "Then we'll all get along just fine."

Shakka moved to the console, her hands precise as she dimmed the lights and adjusted the room to night-cycle. "There. Time to sleep. The sedative will keep you under for eight hours." She sent him a smile. "Your mind will be clearer when you wake up again."

"Thank you," he said and shifted his gaze to me. "Mister Thalen, I'm sorry that I insulted your crew member. I did not mean to, and I apologize for that. Please tell Resa that I'm sorry."

"I will, though in your time here you will have ample time to tell her so yourself," I nodded slightly. "Sleep well, Jedi Harbru."

"Thank you," he said as Shakka rearranged the bed so he could lie down flat, while I left the room.

Once outside the room I leaned against the wall, trying to figure out if I had been too harsh with Harbru. After all, he didn't know that Resa was sentient and that had shaped his behaviour.

However, after running the situation through in my head, I decided that my reaction had been fitting. Not replying had been rude and quietly letting it slide would have been wrong. The Jedi needed to know that everybody with a name was a member of the crew and ought to be treated with a certain amount of respect.

I looked up as Shakka came out as well, carefully closing the door before looking at me with a grin. "That was awesome."

"I assume you mean the dressing-down I gave him."

The smile widened a bit more. "Oh yes. You know, I never really understood that 'command presence' Iska and you have talked about, but now that I have seen it up close... Frak, you projected so much authority that it was downright intimidating." She laughed softly. "You just unsettled a freaking Jedi without threatening him even once."

She walked closer to me and lowered her voice, which was suddenly filled with lust. "You and me... lightsaber training... no armor... after dinner."

"Yes, doctor," I mumbled with a smile.

She gave me a wink and walked away, hips swaying a little more than usual.

--------------------

The training hall we used for lightsaber training was dimmer than usual when I arrived, but it wasn't empty. The inside had been made to look like a space station bar. To make it even more believable, someone had programmed the projectors so that the bulkheads looked like they had windows, showing a gorgeous view of a sun-lit gas giant and its moons outside.

"I hear you fancy a Sith," Shakka's voice said, and a few seconds later she stepped out from behind a decoration. "Do you think you can handle a Sith Lady, pretty boy?"

I felt a smile widen on my face as I looked at her. She was wearing the Darth Atroxa armor she had used on Quamire, and like last time I saw it, it was extremely flattering for her figure. The black synth-leather with dark red etching clung to her voluptuous curves, making her generous breasts look even bigger, and her long legs were framed by tall boots that didn't hide how well formed they were.

Since it was obvious that she wanted a mock combat and some roleplay, I decided to play along. "I hear you Sith fancy passion... I'm going to show you what passion really is."

She laughed, and the hiss of a lightsaber igniting filled the room as her pale blue blade extended. As always, I found myself wondering how a blade of that colour could seem warm, but it did. Even more importantly, the gentle hum of the blade clearly told me that the lightsaber was in training mode and not combat mode.

"Don't be shy, pretty boy," Shakka said as she walked closer. "Let me see what you're packing."

Still smiling, I drew and ignited my lightsaber, the slim but fiery orange-red core extending from the handle like frozen flame, surrounded by the transparent 'real' blade that was slightly longer and wider.

I knew it was in training mode, but just to be on the safe side I tapped it against the floor to make sure it didn't burn it. It didn't.

"Not bad," Shakka commented with a grin and went on the attack with a fluidity that made me smile. She had come a long way since the first unsure training session.

I parried... and frowned, as her swings were unusually hard. A chill ran down my spine, and I reached out with the Force and grabbed her, holding her still as I switched off my lightsaber.

"What're you doing?" she protested. "You're ruining it."

"'Peace is a lie. There is only passion.' I quoted calmly. "'Through passion, I gain strength.'"

"Oh frak," she sighed as she recognized the two first lines of the Sith code and switched the lightsaber off. "Is it really that easy?"

"No, not by a long shot... but it is the start of a slippery slope," I told her. "You were not channelling the Force just before; you were channelling lustful passion, and you hit harder than ever before." I said quietly. "And as irritating as it is when I'm the object of that lust, that's a route you don't want to take."

"Shit... I screwed up big time!"

I dragged her into my arms and gave her a hug and a kiss. "No, you actually gained a very important lesson in the most fun way possible."

Shakka relaxed a little in my arms, returning the kiss. "I think I know what you mean but explain anyway."

"Well, now you know what it feels like when passion kind of takes over the Force... So if you ever do it again, you can recognize it and stop in time," I told her. "There's nothing wrong with lust in and of itself... Just don't channel it when using the Force." Thinking back on my own fights and the debates I'd had with Melbate, I added, "There are feelings that you can channel safely. Light side feelings, so to speak. Hope, love, resolve, and duty."

Shakka sighed. "I don't get it. Why is lust bad while love is good?"

"Because lust is normally an egocentric feeling," I smiled. "It's desire, a want to have another person. Light side feelings have to be selfless in order to be channelled safely." Thinking it over, I added, "Basically, if a feeling is rooted in your own benefits, it's dangerous to channel."

She thought it over. "So egocentric love is bad and unconditional love is good."

"Exactly... and by the way, egocentric love is usually paired with the fear of losing someone, with jealousy, and a whole host of bad feelings."

She nodded. "That is true... But if that's only when channelling the feelings, why does the Jedi say that 'there is no passion'?"

I laughed softly. "I have thought about that for a long time as well, but I think that it's about clarity. If your head is filled with jealousy and anger, it makes it close to impossible to channel hope or duty... not to mention that you'll be severely tempted to channel those feelings instead."

Shakka gave me a kiss. "So how do you handle it? You're one of the most passionate guys I have ever encountered, and yet you're extremely calm... and the least Dark Side person I know."

I thought back on my training. "Well, I was taught to think differently. To treat my own pleasure as a side effect instead of the main benefit." I let a hand slide over a lekku, caressing it gently. "To think of how much pleasure this gives you as a first priority instead of how good it feels for me. We're living beings and we're bound to feel desire, but if you think of sex mainly as giving another person pleasure instead of yourself, that changes a lot."

"By the stars," she said as a smile slowly spread on her face. "That explains so much about you that I can't even begin to explain it. Not to mention why the sex is so good." She chuckled. "This is so strange, but when you think about it, we have been trained in the same thing. As a pleasure slave, I was trained to put someone else's pleasure before my own. Always."

"I haven't actually thought about it that way," I admitted with a chuckle, "but you're right... and it'll save you a lot of trouble later. The same with your lack of jealousy, by the way. That is the main reason why the Jedi Order forbids attachments. Jealousy leads to anger and hatred, which as Melbate keeps preaching, leads to the Dark Side." I kissed her again and looked at her with a smile. "You're an exceptionally good person, Shakka, and even if we hadn't become involved, I would still feel honoured to know you."

She sent me a gentle smile. "Thank you, Thalen... But you're just as good a person as I am."

"See," I chuckled. "There you do it again, but I would have to say as a general principle, a person who has healing others as their primary goal is a better person than a person dedicated to killing people and ordering others into battle." She looked like she was about to say something, so I quickly kissed her again. "Shh. I'm not saying that I'm bad or that my reasons for doing those things aren't good. I'm saying that from a purely philosophical point of view, a doctor is a better person than a naval officer."

"Yeah, yeah," she mumbled and hugged me. "So, what do I do now? Sit down and meditate on it?"

Returning the hug, I shook my head. "You can do that later... I think that you should consult Trajan Melbate in the Holocron first. That will give you a better perspective." I chuckled. "Just be aware that he will most likely say that all feelings are bad."

A slow smile crept onto her face, and her hands started to wander on my back. "Since that is later, how about we avoid the feeling of disappointment and give in to non-channelled lust now?"

"Well, since we already established that there's nothing wrong with lust or love," I said and let my hand slide further up the lekku, caressing the sensitive skin, "that sounds like an excellent idea."

Shakka's smile widened as her hands continued their lazy exploration of my back. "Good," she murmured, voice low and warm against my ear. "Because I've been thinking about this since the moment you pinned me."

She pulled me closer, pressing her body against mine, and kissed me deeply, her tongue sliding into my mouth with clear hunger. Her hands moved down to my hips, tugging at the waistband of my training pants, and she broke the kiss just long enough to push them down herself. My cock sprang free, already hard, and she wrapped her fingers around it, stroking me a few times with a firm grip.

I let my hands roam over her body, sliding the last pieces of her black synth-leather armor off until she was completely naked. Her red skin was flushed darker across her chest and thighs, nipples stiff and begging for attention. I cupped her breasts, squeezing them gently, then rolled the hard nipples between my fingers.

Shakka moaned into my mouth and rocked her hips against me, rubbing her wet pussy along the length of my cock.

Then she surprised me by lifting her right leg so high that she could place it on my shoulder, and with a grin she pressed her pussy against my dick, guiding it inside her.

Taking hold of her well-formed thigh with one hand, I began sliding my dick in and out of her, using small moves that didn't affect her balance.

Shakka reached out, folded both hands behind my back, and leaned forward to kiss me in an impressive display of agility. That she managed to rock her hips back and forth at the same time only made it better, and I luxuriated in the feel of her soft lips against mine, the feel of her soft breast in my hand, and the sensation of her pussy around my cock... all at the same time.

It wasn't anything that would make us come, but it was a very nice sensual moment, and we stood like that for a while, enjoying each other. Then she let go of my neck, leaned back, and arched her body enough to place her hands on the floor.

Getting the hint, I let go of her leg, allowing her to do the flip she had clearly intended.

She ended up on her feet, but before she could regain her balance completely, I tackled her and brought her down on the training mats.

"Hey!" she protested with a grin as she looked up at me. "That wasn't part of the show-off move!"

"No," I told her with a grin as I parted her long legs and knelt. "But this is part of my plan."

Lowering my head to her wet pussy, I licked her slowly from the bottom of the slit all the way to the clitoris, enjoying the sweet taste of her juices.

"Okay," she gasped. "I will accept your plan."

Making my tongue hard, I began licking her clitoris with increasing pressure, enjoying her groans and moans. Moving my hands upwards on her thighs, I used the tips of two fingers to reach between the lips of her pussy and massaged the opening, teasing her as I continued to lick her clitoris.

With a moan, she spread her legs more, giving me more room to work, and I took advantage of that by moving one hand to the top of her pussy, teasing the clitoris with my thumb while licking the rest of her pussy.

Then I started focusing on her opening, carefully licking all the way around the hole, savouring the feel and taste of her, before I started to go deeper inside her, feeling the muscles of her pussy jerking as I licked the inner walls.

Then my tongue found her G-spot and licked it as hard and fast as I could, moving my tongue from side to side over it while my thumb continued to rub her clitoris.

That made her gasp with pleasure, and a moment later her hands found my hair as she took a firm grip and pressed my head against her pussy as she started to shake. Not much, just enough to tell me that it wouldn't take long before she came.

Without moving my head, I withdrew my tongue from her pussy and returned to her clitoris, causing her to jolt as my tongue made contact with the sensitive organ.

With a chuckle, I licked her clitoris with firm, steady strokes, then sucked it gently between my lips and let the tip of my tongue flick over it.

Shakka groaned loudly as her hips bucked up against my face, making it easy for me to bury my tongue in her pussy once more, licking her G-spot while my fingers returned to her clitoris.

"Frak!" hissed Shakka as her inner muscles began to spasm around my tongue, her body shuddering and shivering. "I'm close!"

That made me pick up the speed of both tongue and fingers, and a moment later she came with a sharp cry, her thighs clamping around my head as her pussy pulsed and flooded my tongue.

"Oh fuck... yes!" she gasped, her voice breaking as the orgasm hit her hard. I kept licking her gently through it, drawing out the pleasure until her tremors eased.

With a grin, I moved up her body to give her a kiss, and Shakka used the opportunity to reach down, take hold of my cock, and guide me to her entrance. I pushed in slowly, feeling her tight, wet heat stretch around me. She groaned as I sank all the way in, her walls gripping me tightly.

We started moving together, slow and deep at first. I thrust into her with long, steady strokes, grinding against her clitoris every time I bottomed out. Shakka's legs wrapped around my waist, pulling me closer as she met every thrust with a roll of her hips. Her moans grew louder, her nails digging lightly into my back.

I picked up the pace, fucking her harder, the sound of our bodies slapping together filling the quiet training hall as her breathing turned ragged. I could feel her getting close again, her pussy starting to flutter around my cock.

She came a second time with a loud moan, her inner walls clenching rhythmically around me, milking my cock as her body shook. "Ahh... I'm coming again!" she cried out, her voice raw as the orgasm tore through her. I kept thrusting through it, deep and powerful, but slowly. The feeling of her pulsing around me was too good to end so soon.

On the other hand, seeing her breasts shake gently with the force of the orgasm made me want to fondle them some more, so while her tremors had subsided, I pulled out and lay down on my side next to her.

Shakka sent me a smile and turned onto her side as well, pressing her magnificent ass against me. Then she spread her legs, reached behind her, took hold of my still-hard cock, and guided it between her thighs. I shifted closer, sliding into her from behind in one slow, smooth push. She sighed deeply as I filled her again, her pussy still slick and warm from the orgasms.

We stayed like that for a moment, simply enjoying the connection. I wrapped one arm around her, cupping her breast in my hand, feeling the soft weight and the hard nipple against my palm. My other hand rested on her hip, holding her steady as I began to move. Slow, deep thrusts. No rush. Just the steady slide of my cock moving in and out of her tight, wet pussy.

Shakka moaned softly, pushing back against me to meet each thrust. The position let me feel every inch of her: the way her pussy gripped me, the soft curve of her ass pressing against my hips, the warm weight of her breast filling my hand. I squeezed her breast gently, rolling the nipple between my fingers while I kept the slow, deliberate rhythm.

Her breathing grew heavier again. I could feel her clitoris swelling as I moved, and every time I pushed deep, my pelvis pressed against her ass, giving her that extra pressure. She reached down between her legs, her fingers brushing my cock where it entered her, then rubbing her clitoris in small circles.

I kept fucking her slowly, savouring the slick grip of her pussy and the way her breast moved in my hand with every thrust.

Shakka's moans became longer, deeper, her body starting to tremble. I pinched her nipple lightly, and she gasped, her pussy clenching around me.

She came again with a long, shuddering moan, her inner walls pulsing around my cock in slow, strong waves. "Yes... fuck, yes!" she cried out, her voice breaking as the orgasm hit her. I held her close, still moving inside her through her orgasm, drawing it out as long as I could. When her tremors finally eased, I kept the same slow pace, enjoying the feel of her pussy fluttering around me.

Shakka turned her head slightly, looking back at me with heavy-lidded eyes. "Don't stop," she whispered. "Keep going... just like this."

I did exactly that, continuing to fuck her with long, steady thrusts while caressing her breasts, gently squeezing and rolling the nipple as my cock slid deep into her again and again. The position let me feel everything: the slick grip of her pussy, the warmth of her body pressed against mine, the soft weight of her breast in my palm, the stiff nipple against my skin.

Time seemed to stretch. We moved together like that for a long while, slow and intimate, lost in the simple pleasure of being connected. Shakka came once more, a quieter, deeper orgasm that made her whole body shudder against me. "Oh god... again..." she moaned, her voice hoarse as the pleasure rolled through her.

After she had come down from that orgasm, still breathing heavily, Shakka reached down between our bodies again. Her fingers found my cock where it was still sliding slowly in and out of her slick pussy.

"Pull out and lie still for a moment," she whispered.

I did what she asked, and with a gentle hand she guided my wet cock backward, pressing the tip firmly against the tight ring of her anus. Then she pushed back against me, slow and deliberate, until the head of my cock slipped past the tight ring and slid inside her ass.

Shakka let out a low, throaty moan as I sank deeper, inch by inch, into the incredibly tight heat of her anus. The feeling was hotter and even more intense than her pussy, the muscles gripping me like a velvet fist. She kept pressing back until I was buried to the hilt inside her ass, her body trembling slightly at the stretch.

Her hand stayed between her legs, fingers circling her clitoris in slow, firm strokes while I began to move again. Slow, deep thrusts. Just the steady slide of my cock moving in and out of her tight, hot ass.

The feeling was extremely intense, and I moaned as I kissed her neck.

Shakka moaned as well, pushing back to meet each thrust.

The position let me feel everything: the tight grip of her anus around my cock, the soft curve of her ass pressing against my hips, the warm weight of her breast still filling my hand. I squeezed her breast gently, rolling the nipple between my fingers as I kept the slow, deliberate rhythm.

I let go of her breast with one hand and moved it to her lekku, caressing it just as gently as I fondled her breasts with the other hand.

Her breathing grew heavier again. Her fingers moved faster on her clitoris, rubbing in tight circles while her body rocked back to meet every thrust. I could feel her getting close once more, her anus clenching rhythmically around my cock, the muscles fluttering as her pleasure built.

She came with a long, shuddering moan, her inner walls pulsing around my cock in slow, strong waves. "Ahh... I'm coming... fuck!" she cried out, her voice raw as the orgasm hit her.

I held her close, still moving inside her ass through her orgasm, drawing it out as long as I could. When her tremors finally eased, I kept the same slow pace, enjoying the feel of her tight heat around me. It wouldn't take long before I came, and I wanted to draw it out as much as I could.

"I'm coming soon," I whispered in her ear, knowing she loved when we came at the same time.

"Me too," she gasped and continued to rub her clitoris while her hips picked up the speed, milking my cock in an ever-increasing rhythm.

It didn't take long before my body surrendered.

"Coming!" I growled as my dick pulsed inside her.

"Yes... yes..." she gasped, her voice breaking as she came along with me, her whole body tensing and then melting against me as another wave of pleasure rolled through her.

Only then did I let myself go, burying myself deep inside her ass one last time and coming hard, groaning as I emptied myself in her.

We stayed like that for a long while afterward, my cock still buried in her, my hand gently cupping her breast. Just breathing, skin against skin, the quiet hum of the training hall around us.

Eventually Shakka let out a soft, content sigh and moved her hips so my dick left her body.

Knowing what she wanted, I lay on my back, and a moment later she snuggled up to me, her body warm and pliant as we both lay there in relaxation, enjoying the feel of each other as my hand drew lazy circles on the soft skin of her back.

It took several minutes before she mumbled, "May I ask something totally related to sex, but unrelated to anything else?"

"That's a curious way of asking, but go ahead," I chuckled. "What's on your devious mind?"

"My droids tell me that you visited the infirmary a few days ago and spent some time looking at the bacta tanks." She chuckled. "Especially Gunnery Sergeant Vess, which also happens to be the most voluptuous and yet well-trained woman I have ever seen. Is there a story there?"

That made me laugh softly. For some reason, Shakka enjoyed, and was extremely turned on by, stories of me having sex with other women and regularly asked me for them. I did tell her those stories but made them as anonymous as possible since I didn't want her to be able to tell who I was talking about. A position she understood, but short of lying there was no way around this one.

"Yes, two things actually," I said and told her the story of how Anitama, armed with a Songsteel blade and a stun grenade, had squared off with a Sith to protect what was left of her squad, only to be thrown around with the Force, which was what had caused her neck injuries. That made her lift her head and look at me.

"Shit!" exclaimed Shakka. "The woman has nerves of durasteel."

"Oh yes," I agreed with a smile. "But she's also the happy and bright marine I told you about. The one from the party on the Hawk."

That story, disguised as a former encounter with a marine, had really turned Shakka on.

"Oh... the one that thinks you're just Pilot Al?" the doctor asked with a laugh.

"Yes, that's the one."

Shakka laughed softly as she thought back. Then she shivered and bit her lower lip. "Do you think she could be persuaded into a threesome? Because she sounds just as hot as she looks... and she looks hot!"

"I honestly don't know but considering the male-to-female ratio in the fleet, it's not impossible," I told her. "Just don't ask while she's your patient, because that makes you her commanding officer and thus suggesting something like that would be an abuse of authority and against the Code of Conduct."

In theory the medical corps was another branch of the fleet than the marines, which took Anitama out of the chain of command, but by definition a Medical Officer outranked a person in their care, which made it a violation of the Code.

Shakka grimaced and nodded. "Thanks for the warning. I had totally forgotten about that one... mostly because it has never been an issue before."

I nodded. "Fair, but just remember it."

"I will... Hmm... she's out of the tank now. Do you want to go visit her?" She hesitated but then added, "It will be your only chance. She'll be transferred back to the Hawk in a few days."

I hesitated for a moment. "Both yes and no. Yes, because it's the right thing to do. No, because I don't want to give her a shock, and going there will cause the others to call me 'sir' or Commodore."

She looked thoughtful for a moment and then nodded. "Yes. Come down tomorrow after dinner. By then, Lieutenant Kestel will have been moved to a cabin along with PO Renci, and I can move Gunnery Sergeant into the private room." Her voice became professional as she continued. "But no hanky-panky. She'll need more healing before she's well enough for that."

I snorted at that. "Like I would ever do that."

"I know," she grinned. "But you always look funnily insulted when I suggest something improper, so I just can't help myself."

----------------

There's an old saying that no plan ever survives the meeting with reality, and that was confirmed when I arrived in the infirmary the next day, dressed in normal clothes and a typical pilot jacket. Just to complete the outfit, I had even mussed my hair and ordered the tiger droids to stay in my quarters.

It must have worked, because nobody saluted me on the way, and I even passed Lieutenant Cabur without her lifting an eyebrow.

I smiled to myself. After all this time, there was something strangely liberating about walking around without being recognized.

However, due to a delay somewhere, Lieutenant Teren Kestel and PO Renci were still in the private room with guards at the door, and just as I noticed that, I heard Anitama say, "Al?" from one of the beds.

With a smile I looked over at her. "Ah, there you are."

Despite the brace around her neck, she smiled back. "Good to see you again. I was starting to think you had forgotten me... or didn't know I was here."

Walking over to her, I grabbed a chair and placed it next to her bed so I could sit down and relax. "Well, you had to get out of the tank before it made sense to come visit you."

"True that."

"So, how's my almost favourite power-armor-wearing female friend doing? Are you okay?"

That made her chuckle. "I'm fine... just please don't make me laugh. It really hurts... but thank you for coming to see me. I'm getting bored out of my skull here."

"Yeah, I know what they say," I told her in a dry voice. "Once you've wrestled with a Sith, there's nothing quite like it."

That almost made her laugh again, but it was cut short by a grimace. "Al! I told you not to make me laugh."

"Sorry."

"And what was that about 'almost favourite'?" she asked, lifting an eyebrow. "You got other female power-armored friends stalking around?"

I considered my answer for a moment. "Aside from the fact that stalking isn't really possible in power armor, the answer would be yes... but the 'almost favourite' is because I have known her for years, while it's not that long ago the two of us met." I sent her a smile. "And before you ask, no, I'm not taking her to bed."

"So, you didn't lie when you said that there was nothing wrong with a body made for power armor," she chuckled. "Anyway, what have you been up to?"

"Besides a trip around the moons, not much." I took a datapad from my pocket and handed it to her with a smile. "Here, you can borrow this. It contains some of your favourite books... and a few new ones."

She arched her eyebrows. "You can actually remember the books I mentioned?"

I shrugged with a chuckle. "Titles like 'The Smuggler's Moon' and 'Bantha Season' are kinda hard to forget... And I asked the computer to find and download some similar books, so you should be covered while healing."

Anitama took the datapad. "You're a lifesaver... or at least a sanity saver... but won't you miss that datapad?"

"I think I can survive a few days or weeks without it," I said with a faint smile. "Oh, I included a few instruction manuals, just in case you wanted something hardcore to read."

"Now I'm getting suspicious," she said as she eyed me. "Instruction manuals for what?"

"Well," I said slowly, "I couldn't find 'Surviving the Sith for Dummies,' so I ended up with a few fencing manuals."

That almost made her laugh again, but she did control it. "You're not going to let that one go, are you?"

Grinning, I shook my head. "Nope."

"Idiot," she mumbled with a big smile. "But seriously, thanks for the books."

I was about to say that it wasn't a problem when Shakka arrived, looking as sexy and professional as she always did. For a second I wondered why she showed up, but then remembered that it was time for her after-dinner round.

"Ah. Hello, Al," she said with a short nod to me as she looked at the readout on the bed for a moment. "This is looking good, Gunnery Sergeant. You'll be out of that bed and ready to get back to the Hawk in a couple of days."

"Thank you, doctor," Anitama said with a smile that, somewhat to my amazement, reminded me of the smile some of the male marines sent the gorgeous red Twi'lek. "I must confess that I look forward to getting out of here."

"What?" Shakka said with mock surprise. "And miss this holiday?"

That made Anitama's smile fade a little. "Pleasant as it is, R&R isn't really a holiday."

"True," Shakka admitted. "But try to think of it that way, because you're not going on active duty for a couple of weeks anyway, so you might as well enjoy it."

With a smile she turned and walked over to the next patient.

"Frak," Anitama mumbled. "A couple of weeks!"

I chuckled. Having been around marines a lot, I knew that most of them hated being idle. Not that they wanted combat either, but just something meaningful to do. "Relax. Take a course or something."

"Oh yeah... like what?"

"Well, you're a Gunnery Sergeant... Something you can do without moving your head too much, like leadership or planning," I suggested. "Or power armor systems, for that matter."

"That..." she said slowly as a smile spread on her face "... is actually not a bad idea."

I bowed in my seat. "Thank you."

"I'll look that up later," she placed the datapad on the bed. "Right now, I just want to talk."

We talked for almost an hour before she started to get tired again, and Shakka came back to tell me to leave before the infirmary went into night cycle.

I stood from the chair. "Get better, Anitama."

"I will... and thank you for visiting me."

The warmth in her voice made me smile.

"You're welcome. I'll see if the schedule allows for another visit. Then you can tell me what course you have chosen... though I will still recommend 'Surviving the Sith for Dummies.'"

She chuckled. "Get out."

"I'm going, I'm going," I chuckled and looked at Shakka. "Have a nice evening, doc."

"Thank you, Al," she smiled.

Still smiling, I walked out of the infirmary.

-----------------

"Sir, may I ask what you said to the Jedi after I had left the room?" Resa asked the next day as we were taking the lift down to Regon Harbru's room. "He apologized to me as soon as he saw me yesterday."

"Oh, I just told him that I expected members of the crew to be treated respectfully," I said lightly. "You included."

She was silent for a moment. "Thank you, sir."

"No need to thank me," I said. "I would have done that for any member of the crew."

She sent me a brilliant smile. "That is exactly why I'm thanking you, sir. Not many people would have done that for a droid."

"Resa, you're a sentient being and part of the crew," I said slowly. "Not defending you would have been gross negligence of the Code of Conduct... and any crew member doing that would be charged with it." I chuckled. "Me included."

She nodded, but the smile on her face didn't leave as the lift stopped and we walked on to visit Regon Harbru.

The Jedi was sitting in a chair, watching one of the old holodramas from Majestic's database when we came in, but as we entered the room he looked over at us with a smile. "Hello again, sir. And hello, Resa."

"Hello, Regon," she said in a friendly voice as I nodded to him.

Looking behind me, Regon asked, "This might be a stupid question, Thalen, but are those tigers always following you?"

"More or less, yes," I chuckled. "To be honest, I'm so used to it that most of the time I forget that they're there at all."

He smiled and leaned back. "So, to what do I owe the honour?"

"The Kuna-12 system," I said as Resa made the screen change from the holodrama to a map of the solar system. "Before we arrive, I would like two things. A description of which planet you were focusing on and a recording of you telling your Padawan Jessa that you're here searching for her, so we do not scare her into trying to hide." I gestured at the screen. "We'll broadcast it as soon as we're sure that no enemies are hiding in the system."

"Sounds like a good plan." He looked at the screen. "How accurate is this map?"

"It's built on the scanner data from the Sith task force the moment they captured you," said Resa as icons of both the task force and Regon Harbru's ship appeared on the display. "Which should make it easier for you to pinpoint the moon."

"Not that we believe that she's still there," I added calmly. "But it's a place to start."

Harbru studied the map and then nodded again. "You're right. Jessa is brilliant and curious. She would not sit still and wait to be rescued." He leaned forward to point at a moon. "She started there, but she would have spent the waiting time carefully scanning as much of the system as she could..." The smile faded. "...at least before the rationing would force her to meditate to conserve energy."

That caught my attention. "Is there a power that allows this?"

"Yes," he said calmly and thought for a moment before adding, "but it's a difficult power to master, and while she has done it a few times in training, doing it under pressure when your life is at stake is something completely different, and I'm not sure she has been able to do it."

"We can hope," Resa said mildly while I studied Harbru. When we thawed him, he had been worried and desperate. Last time he had been more collected but clearly still marked by the ordeal. That was clearly over now, as he seemed calm, collected, and thoughtful. Exactly as Melbate in the holocron had described a Jedi.

Harbru nodded absently in agreement with what Resa had said and looked at me. "I assume that the reason why I'm in here is due to you not wanting to give me too much information about your ships, but just in case we encounter a Sith task force again at Kuna-12, what will you do?"

"That will depend on the size of said task force," I told him. "There are at least two Sith fleets and one large Sith task force here in the Unknown Regions. Any of them will make me withdraw from combat. Anything smaller than that we can handle."

The tiniest flicker of worry crossed his face. "Two Sith fleets and one large task force? That's... a lot."

"Yes, it is," I agreed. "We know that one of the fleets has at least twenty-four core ships..." He looked slightly confused, so I added, "Core ships are dreadnoughts like the Harrower-class and cruisers like the S-class or BSX-5."

He thought about that for a while. "You're telling me that even if we do find Jessa alive and in good health, there's no way home to Corellia?"

"Yes, that about sums it up," I answered, adding, "If your Padawan hadn't been stranded, I would have sent you home to the Republic since we had a couple of cruisers going that way, but as it looks right now, taking a smaller ship is close to suicide. Not only are the Unknown Regions notoriously difficult to navigate, but even if you use the Force to do that, you still have to avoid Sith patrols, task forces going through the area, and roaming pirates." I smiled humourlessly. "Normally this area of space is a lot more dangerous than the rest of the galaxy... Now it's a death trap for anything less than a small fleet."

"Which you have," he stated with certainty in his voice.

"Just enough to give us a fighting chance," I confirmed.

He fell silent once more but then asked, "Just out of curiosity, how would you rate my chances of getting home in a small ship?"

"You have the numbers, Resa."

She nodded. "We did the calculation recently, and even when using the most favourable variables, the chance of getting anything less than a cruiser from here to the Republic is about five percent... or one in twenty if you will... If you use the Force to astrogate, you remove only one variable, bringing it to ten percent or one in ten." She grimaced. "Not exactly what I would call favourable odds."

"So, what are the options?" Harbru asked after another moment of silence.

"None really," I said truthfully. "I could hand you and your Padawan a hyper-capable shuttle, but with the distance to Republic space you would not have fuel for a detour in case you detected something. That surviving Jedi you told us about must have been the luckiest guy in the galaxy, because any shuttle I can think of would have trouble reaching that far."

"He traded something to the Kzii in the Otri system," Harbru explained. "I don't know exactly what it was, but it must have been very valuable to them, because they repaired and refuelled the shuttle."

I considered the implications. "I assume you visited the Kzii, got his arrival vector, and conducted your search from that."

He nodded. "The journal I found told me that he took two jumps before arriving at the Otri system and that the system where the ship crashed had three rock planets and a single gas planet."

Aware that he had most likely told us more than he intended, I asked, "Do you happen to remember the vector?"

"I'm sorry, but I will not give you the vector until we have rescued Jessa," he said calmly.

"That is fair," I chuckled. "If our positions had been reversed, I wouldn't have given it either... Can you answer what kind of shuttle it was?"

"Yes. The Kzii identified it as a Drall-class Long-Range Shuttle."

A few seconds later the specs showed on the screen. Built by Corellia StarDrive, the shuttle was fifteen meters in length, required a single pilot, and could transport four to six passengers. The x3 hyperdrive was top of the line for the time it was built, and all in all it seemed like a solid craft... exactly as I would have expected from the same company that had built the Thranta-class.

Its only weak point here in the Chaos was the food. As standard, it only carried a month of supplies, but then again, if you didn't carry passengers, you could just throw in ration packs instead.

"I don't get it," I said slowly. "Why didn't the Jedi bring the holocrons with him? There should be plenty of room in that shuttle... even if he stacked up on rations."

Harbru didn't say anything, so I continued my line of thinking.

"Resa, calculate how much room the rations would take and then do an estimate of how many holocrons there could be in that shuttle."

"Forty if packed carefully. Fifty-two if not."

Things clicked into place, and I looked at Harbru. "So, your Jedi packed rations enough for the trip and filled the rest with holocrons, leaving twelve he couldn't find room for."

"Yes," Harbru allowed himself a grimace. "But the holocrons from the shuttle were brought to Coruscant and were lost when the temple was razed."

I thought about it for a moment. Holocrons were always described as something so incredibly rare that people spent decades searching for just one of them. There were at least two holodrama series that had a holocron, or the search for them, as the major plot item. Yet a single ship had carried a whole lot of them, and we were on the hunt for a dozen more.

The only reason why I didn't dismiss the whole affair was the circumstances Harbru had described.

I had asked Melbate about it, and since it had happened only a few decades before the holocron was made, I had gotten a detailed description of what had happened.

Exar Kun had wanted the immense knowledge stored on Ossus so badly that he used some kind of Sith super weapon to detonate the stars in a nearby star cluster, causing a shockwave to move across space and forcing the Jedi Order to evacuate Ossus.

However, since the shockwave moved in real space, that still gave the Jedi time to react and try to save as much knowledge as possible. It also gave Exar Kun and his second in command, Ulic Qel-Droma, time to land his troops on the planet to loot at least some of it before the Jedi could whisk it away.

To make a long story short, Exar Kun got away with some loot, Ulic Qel-Droma was taken prisoner by the Jedi, who then fled the planet just in time before the shockwave hit and seared the planet, destroying countless artifacts and holocrons the Jedi had collected over thousands of years.

This scenario was the only one I could imagine where the Jedi Order would throw a bunch of holocrons into a ship and have it take off, hoping that it would reach its destination. It didn't even have to be only holocrons. The ship might have transported other things like ancient Jedi artifacts and whatnot that would take up more space than holocrons.

The presence of two legendary Sith on the planet would also explain why there was just one Jedi guarding it, as everybody else would be needed to stop the Sith.

"Harbru," I said slowly. "If there are some artifacts on the ship that will endanger my crew and you have not warned me about them, I will be extremely cross with you." I looked over at him. "And be aware that I will destroy any artifact that I deem a danger... Historically significant or not. I don't care if we find Qel-Droma's long-lost lightsaber or Exar Kun's toilet. If it seems dangerous, it's gone."

Harbru still looked calm as he said, "I understand that your responsibility is to your crew, but some knowledge, even dangerous knowledge, exists so it can be guarded, not erased."

I sighed. "Someone will read it sooner or later. As one of my crew pointed out about a week ago, Exar Kun, Ulic Qel-Droma, Darth Revan, and Darth Malak were all Jedi before they became Sith." I gave a small, tired shrug. "So, if you allow people to read it, you're creating your own enemies. If you don't allow it, you might as well just destroy them."

Somewhat to my surprise, Harbru considered what I had said and then finally said, "You're not wrong... and that troubles me. The Order keeps such knowledge because we fear what will happen when it's lost and we fear what happens when it's found." He sounded weary as he continued. "If we find something dangerous, I will tell you so it can be destroyed. Not because I agree with you, but because I will not gamble with the lives of your crew."

I bowed slightly to him. "Thank you, Jedi Harbru."

He bowed as well. "You're welcome, Thalen."

"Now that this is settled," I said with a light smile, "we need to clear one more thing. Once we have reached our goal, we will be sending a force back to the Republic. That is one of the few ways we can get you safely back. Are you willing to take this trip, or would you rather have a hyper-capable shuttle and see if you're among the one in ten that can make it back to the Republic?" I thought for a moment. "And just so we're clear. This will likely be the last chance in at least a year you have to go home. We're moving further away from Republic space, not closer, so if you choose to stay, it's for the duration."

He thought about it for a while, clearly weighing the pros and cons of my proposal, but finally he looked at me. "Do you have to have an answer today, or can it wait?"

"Take the time you need," I told him. "Just be aware that as long as you haven't chosen to join us, your freedom will be severely limited."

"I do not need that much room to meditate on this," he replied calmly.

"Very well," I inclined my head. "We will leave you to it then."

"And the recording can wait until some other day," Resa added with a smile.

"I would appreciate that."

-----------------------

"Bring up Kuna-12 and the Otri system," I told Tavune an hour later when I was back on the bridge. "Then dial the star map back 347 years and see if you can find a route going from Kuna-12 to Otri in two jumps in a Drall-class Long Range Shuttle."

"Yes, sir."

"Sneaky, sir," mumbled Resa from her place at the science station and sent me a smile.

"Only if it works," I replied and looked over at the Nav section. "Astrogator Munmaki, I would like your opinion on this."

"Yes, sir," the blonde Yrlan smiled and looked at the tactical plot as two routes showed up.

"Here you go, sir," Tavune said. "Two routes."

"Thank you." I leaned forward in the seat. The two systems that were one jump from Otri were Zerek-7 and Vev-45. "Tavune, please remove all planets within one jump from Zerek-7 and Vev-45 that don't have the same 'one sun, three rock planets and a single gas giant' structure as Kuna-12." I thought for a moment and added, "And remove any system with a habitable planet, water, and anything else that can sustain life."

"That's unusual," Marie Munmaki commented. "Most systems have at least five planets." She tapped a few keys. "According to the database, only five percent have exactly four planets."

"And even fewer have exactly that three rock planets and a gas giant structure," Tavune said as systems started to disappear from the plot.

I nodded slightly as I leaned back in the seat. There were only four systems left on the plot, with one of them being Kuna-12.

"Tavune, could you please check the notes on those systems and look for any mention of a destroyed ship?"

"Do you think that the ship has already been found, sir?" Resa asked quietly.

"No, but the reason why the ship ended up out here was that they were pursued... most likely by a warship of some kind," I explained. "However, if that ship didn't pose a threat to the Jedi, I assume that it's because it was destroyed."

"Or landed in a different system," Resa countered.

"That is possible," I admitted. "But then the Jedi wouldn't have known that it was no longer a threat." I smiled. "I know it's a long shot, but it's not like there's a lot to do while we're in hyperspace, so we may as well play around with this for a bit."

"Sir," said Tavune. "The only system with a logged wreck is Kuna-12. According to this note, there was a wreck of a Mandalorian Jehavey'ir-type assault ship there, but it was found and looted by scavengers more than a hundred years ago."

I thought it over. The timeline fit, as the Jehavey'ir-type assault ship was part of the lessons from the Naval Academy about what the Republic called the Great Sith War or the Exar Kun War. Kun and Qel-Droma had hired or tricked the Mandalorians into working for them, and it was entirely possible that a Mandalorian ship had been sent off to hunt down the Jedi ship. Especially a Jehavey'ir, since that was exactly what they were built for.

The presence of a Jehavey'ir wasn't proof, but it did give the Kuna-12 system a higher chance of being the right one compared to the rest. That meant that while we were there anyway, we might as well do a complete scan of the system just to be sure.

"You know, sir," I heard Marie Munmaki say. "I never understood why we spent so much effort to get the charts and databases of every enemy we encounter when the maps we already have are so good." She smiled a brilliant smile. "But I'm starting to see why."

I nodded as I smiled back. "The maps we have are good exactly because we have the star maps and data from so many ships. In an ever-changing region like this, every map helps, and older ones make it easier to predict the movement of the systems over time. Exactly what you need to navigate."

"Yes, sir," she agreed. "Without the data from the ships we took in Grinda and Jenth-32, we wouldn't have been able to plot the course for the S-class cruisers."

"Exactly," I said as I stood. "Tavune, get hold of Lieutenant Maxwell and have him prepare two search patterns for the Kuna-12 system. One for enemy ships and one for a wreck on one of the moons." I smiled. "We might get lucky."

"Yes, sir."

------------

When my shift was done, I changed into civilian clothes and walked down to Raika's Rest for some chocolate coffee.

I had hoped to talk with Raika, but discovered that she was off duty, so I just took the cup of hot liquid and walked out to sit on the terrace, where I sat down at a table to relax.

Evenings were usually a busy time in the Hangar Park, but tonight was different, as it was remarkably quiet. I wondered about that for a while until I realized that it was due to having fewer people on Majestic than I was used to.

As the Dreadnoughts were the ships with the toughest shields, the thickest armor, and the most room, Majestic and Glorious were the designated places for couples with children and we had just sent almost six thousand of them off with the S-class cruisers. Not that all of the couples with children had come from Majestic, but as far as I could calculate, there were now four thousand fewer people on the ship than there had been a week ago, and the absence of that many people was tangible.

Not that it would stay that way for long. As far as I remembered from my talk with Elise Samko, there were almost a thousand couples with an equal number of children on the Star Wanderers and as soon as Second Squadron arrived in the Kuna-12 system, half of them would be transferred to Majestic along with a thousand people without kids.

"Commodore, Samko here." Elise's voice suddenly said in my earpiece. "Do you have a moment to talk?"

"Sure, but come to the Hangar Park," I replied. "I'm drinking a cup of coffee, so you might as well join me."

"Deal. I'll be there in ten."

True to her word, she arrived ten minutes later, looking just as beautiful as ever, with the red hair creating a nice contrast to the grey uniform.

"Wow. Quiet in here," she remarked as she sat down.

"Very," I confirmed and slid the extra cup over to her. "Here you go."

"Thank you, sir." She accepted it with a smile and folded her hands around the cup before leaning back in the seat. "This is nice. We need more meetings like this, sir."

"That'll depend on the subject," I chuckled. "What's up?"

"We tested the three royal heirs, and they're above average in just about everything," she started and took a sip from the cup. "That's unusual, so I had Shakka run a test on the samples she took when they arrived, and they are Genies."

Lifting an eyebrow, I said, "I have no idea what that is."

"Genetically modified individuals," she explained with a smile. "And don't worry, I didn't know either and had to ask the XO about it. It's a genetic therapy meant to ensure that extremely wealthy families, rulers among them, will have heirs that are smart, stable, and can handle stress."

I placed my cup on the table. "Hmmm... what does that mean for us and them?"

"Well, they're not super humans, but they will learn faster than the average person and remember it better," she said with a shrug. "The laws of the Republic limit what can be done and according to the XO, these modifications are quite common among the elites."

I thought it over for a moment. While it most likely would have been a problem in just about every other navy, that wasn't really the case here. We regularly had to promote people at a much faster pace than in the Republic Navy to fill out the duty roster of new ships.

"Fast track them," I decided. "Give them a few months at the lowest ranks and rotate them into a new department whenever you think they've learned enough. Then promote them and do it again." I drank from the cup. "How did the test go?"

Elise grinned. "Take a wild guess, sir."

"Command and diplomacy?" I guessed. "That's what I would have insisted royal children should learn."

"Close," she chuckled. "Add logistics and you would be right on."

"What about communications?"

"For Lysara, yes. Aren showed greater aptitude for logistics, while Alric not only wants to be a pilot, but also shows talent in that field," she grimaced. "Which is less than ideal."

"Only as a fighter pilot," I smiled. "We need shuttle and capital ship helmsmen as well."

"True," she flashed me a smile. "I'll start with pairing him up with Lieutenant Cabur or Satomie. They both think that starfighter pilots have a death wish, and that might rub off on him." She nodded, more to herself than me, and continued. "We can make Aren a personal assistant to the XO... and..."

"No," I interrupted. "Sorry, but the aide to the XO is always an officer."

"True," she grimaced and thought it over. "I could assign him to Chef Winston, since she's in charge of the food, but she'll eat him alive."

"Have him do the basics here and then send him to Glorious," I suggested. "Captain Meistrin could use a few more people."

It was also highly unlikely that both Dreadnoughts would be taken out in the same combat, so spreading the heirs across two ships was a sensible way to ensure that at least one of them would survive.

"Ahh, that's a good idea, sir. Then we can bring him back when he has the right rank." She paused to drink some of her chocolate coffee. "Can I borrow Tavune? Lysara could learn a lot from him in the communication department."

That made me smile. "Excellent choice. He'll need some people to command soon."

"Oh." She lifted an eyebrow. "Is this a secret?"

Chuckling, I shook my head. "No. In about a month, Tavune has finished the education as a Lieutenant... and by that, I mean the Chiss version, not the DDF version. Both Captain Meistrin and I are going to sign off on it, so when we return to Chiss space, he will be an actual Lieutenant in the CEDF."

That made her laugh softly. "If he ever wants to return. Him and Eho seem like a good couple."

"They are and I'm not forcing him to do anything. This is just to make sure that if he ever returns, he'll have something to show for his time here. His rank in the DDF will be Lieutenant, Communications."

Samko lifted her eyebrows in surprise. "You're bumping him right up to Lieutenant?"

That made me chuckle. "Please take your pad and check Tavune's rank."

Giving me a curious glance, she took her data pad from her pocket and did as I asked, then she sighed. "According to this, he was signed on as crew in Alpha Viga. Promoted to Specialist after Epsilon Eta and then Junior Bridge Officer or Ensign in the Snare system, where he also started the education as Lieutenant." Shaking her head, she looked up at me. "Everything is signed by you, Meistrin or another Chiss with a CEDF rank."

"Exactly by the book," I smiled but then added, "Except for the fact that he doesn't know. He still thinks he's just 'Tavune'. A civilian tech that signed up with us in Alpha Viga."

She rolled her eyes. "That's why you're always using his name and not a rank."

"Exactly. He's too good to lose," I said thoughtfully. "He thrives in a navy, that's clear."

Samko nodded. "He really does... Hmm... Have you done that with others?"

Shaking my head, I sighed. "No. I could do it with Tavune but remember that as far as the CEDF is concerned, I'm just a lowly Lieutenant Commander. The pilots we brought along were already Lieutenants and the Marines are Yaki's department. She has promoted a lot of them as the Black Dragons got more non-Chiss members, but as a Lieutenant, she cannot promote anybody to the same level as herself and neither can I."

"Oh well," said Elise with a chuckle. "To be honest, I think that most of the officers here would crush it if they ever joined the Republic Fleet."

"I hope so, but that would depend on the Admiral and the chain of command," I said and drank from the cup only to discover that it was empty. "Hmm, do you have more we need to debate, or can we consider the meeting adjourned?"

"That was all."

"Good... Then I'll get us two cups more, so we can sit and relax for once."

She smiled brightly. "Sounds like a plan."

---------------------------------------

The Kuna-12 system

Dreadnought Majestic

"There is only one tactical principle which is not subject to change.

It is to use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of

damage, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time."

From the Holy Book of War

The trip to Kuna-12 took exactly seven days, and as usual I was on the bridge along with Iska when we arrived. So were two of the royal heirs, as Samko had assigned Alric to the helm as an observer and Lysara to communications, also as an observer. It was more to give them a feel for how life on a bridge worked while they were taught the basics of being spacers.

As both the star maps and Harbru had told me, the Kuna-12 system was an unremarkable system with three rock planets, a single gas giant, and a total of thirty-three moons, the majority of which orbited the gas giant.

Iska released the scouts and then looked at me. "This is a boring system if I ever saw one."

I nodded in agreement. "Yes... but according to Harbru, the Padawan was searching the third moon of the gas giant when the Sith arrived, so let's focus on that first."

Iska nodded and activated the all-ship channel. "Welcome to the Kuna-12 system, ladies and gentlemen. Let's search this system exactly as planned."

I glanced at the tactical plot as the defensive screen left the four capital ships, followed by scout squadrons. The defensive screen stayed close, while the scouts fanned out as they sought out the most obvious places to hide a large ship: the asteroid belts.

As expected, they didn't find any lurking fleet, Sith or otherwise, but at least now we knew for sure.

"Tavune, send the broadcast and be prepared to connect..." I stopped as a wave of unease washed over me. Just as it had done in Grinda, but greater.

Looking at the plot, I discovered that we were too close to the gas giant to escape its enormous gravity well, meaning that we couldn't just leave the system. To complicate matters further, there was no way we had time to get the scouts back into the hangars if things progressed as fast as they had in Grinda.

Without hesitation, I hit the all-ship channel. "Core. Standard battle formation towards the jump point and launch all fighters." Looking at the tactical hologram, it was clear that if an enemy dropped in from hyperspace, it would have to go deeper into the system and past the moons to get to us. "Aureks, I want a close defensive formation by the ships. The rest go hide in the sensor shadows behind the moons. Astras, do the same."

I had expected Iska to look at me as if I had gone insane, but instead I saw her check that everybody was on battle stations. "Karstein, weapons ready now."

"Yes, sir."

There was silence on the bridge for the next couple of minutes, but the chill in my spine was still there, so I just waited, hearing whispers from the various stations as the fighter squadrons were launched and raced behind the moons.

Suddenly the chill in my spine intensified as Tavune called, "Mass alert! Fleet size! Repeat, major fleet size!"

The plot suddenly changed as no less than fourteen dreadnought-sized ships appeared by the jump point along with a host of screen- and picket-sized ships. Glancing at the numbers on the screen, I saw that the computer had counted twenty-eight screen ships and twelve pickets. Another chill ran down my spine. It seemed like Tavune had been right. This was indeed a major fleet, which meant that we were in deep trouble.

Then I remembered the replenishment ship from Grinda. It wasn't all large ships that were as dangerous as their size would seem to indicate.

"Tavune, do you have an ID on those ships? Are they Imperial?"

"Negative, sir." He replied immediately. "I'm working on it, but they're unknown types." He cursed. "Sorry, sir, but they're launching fighters."

"Tell me more when you have a number," I replied and looked at Resa. "Resa, get on scan and give me a picture of those ships. I want to know what they are."

"Yes, sir." The droid said and started working.

"Tavune, broadcast the 'we're not hostile' signal," I ordered and had barely finished the sentence before he replied, "Done, sir."

I stared at the target identification screen, but it still said unknown. In one way it was a relief, as the computer would immediately have recognized the typical Sith or Republic ship types, and those were generally the most advanced ships around. So, whatever this fleet was, they were likely not as powerful as they looked on the plot. However, with the numbers they had, they didn't have to be the most advanced ships around to take us.

"Astrogator Munmaki." I said, causing the Yrlan to look over at me.

"Yes, sir?"

"Calculate a route out of here for the fighters to a place where they can rendezvous with Second Squadron in case we have to retreat. They might have an uncomfortable few days in hyperspace, but at least they will live."

She paled. "Yes, sir."

I sent her a smile. "Relax, Astrogator. I'm just trying to cover all possibilities."

She nodded and went to work.

Suddenly a picture showed one of the enemy ships, and I had to look twice before I understood what I was looking at. It was that weird a sight.

The ship was a one-kilometre-long giant wasp-like insect that someone had strapped ion engines on, which was creepy enough by itself, but to make it worse, it had gun emplacements along the sides of the spine.

Another picture appeared, this time of the screen-sized ships. They too were insect-shaped, but unlike the first, there weren't any visible turbolaser batteries.

The third picture was their picket ships. Still the same kind of giant insects, but smaller than the screen, though it resembled that in everything except size.

The last was the smaller craft that behaved like fighters. That too was shaped like an insect, but the ion engines were built into the body and there were what looked to be laser cannons on each side.

I turned towards the engineering section where Keller was sitting. "Chief Engineer, do you have any idea about what that is?"

"Both yes and no," Keller said slowly. "I've heard about a type of ship like this before, but I've never seen one in person. They take some big and dead space-faring insects, hollow out the body, and use them as hulls. The body of the dead insect is as hard as durasteel."

That made me turn around to look at him. "So, you grow them instead of building them?"

"Yes... though someone has to construct the engine, computers, weapons, and whatever else they install in there." He sighed. "I'm sorry that I cannot tell you more, sir, but for once I have no clue about them."

"Sir," called Resa. "Look at this. The computer has identified the engine signature as belonging to Centurion-class battleships."

"That's... different," I said and looked at the screen. The Centurion-class battleship dated back to the Jedi Civil War, and it was a ship I was very familiar with. Not only had it featured prominently in a lot of the battles from that era, but we had encountered several of them in the Snare system and had gotten the details about the type from the holocron.

One-point-three kilometres long, but armed only with six medium turbolaser batteries, six heavy ion cannon batteries, and six point-defence light laser batteries.

I felt the Calm of Battle descend on me as Tavune said, "Transmission received and translated, sir: 'Surrender or die.'"

Nodding, I turned towards the screens again. "Time to contact?"

"Four minutes, sir," answered Iska. "They're not that fast."

Thinking for a moment while looking at the overall situation, I said, "It wouldn't hurt us if the enemy thought we were panicking. Turn the fleet and go to full speed. Vector 176, -30. Have all four ships take different routes so we look scared."

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Iska chuckled as she said, "Yes, sir."

We couldn't risk running for long, as that would leave our starfighters and Astras on their own, but changing position would force the enemy to go deeper into the gravity well of the gas giant, which would make their missiles less accurate and force them to pass the moons at a closer range.

It would also move their fighters even further away from the screen, leaving both them and the core without any fighter cover and thus open for attacks from our fighters.

"Four hundred and twenty fighters," Tavune called, intensity in his voice. "Coming in hot."

Looking at the tactical plot, I shook my head slightly. They weren't coming in hot; they were coming in stupid. Straight lines, racing directly towards us. They had to be confident that their sheer numbers would overwhelm our defensive fighter formation and point-defence. Four hundred years ago, when that tactic was used successfully, they would have been right. Not anymore.

Four of the giant insect-like ships held back, and I guessed that they were the carriers for the 'fighters', while those big ones who charged us were the battleships. Ten was better than fourteen, but not much.

"Incoming pictures from the scouts," said Tavune and a new, clearer picture of the battleships showed up. Taken from the side, it was clear to see the batteries, and it was exactly the layout of the Centurion-class.

"Screen engine signatures match those of a Derriphan-class," I heard Resa say.

Another Jedi Civil War era ship, the Derriphan-class had heavy armor and was armed only with three large missile launchers and a single point-defence battery. They were also even slower than the Centurion-type core ships, which was never good for a screen.

Another interesting fact about the Derriphan-class was that its shields were really bad. I didn't know why it was the case, but it was. To make up for that deficit, the original had extremely thick armor, allowing it to soak up an immense amount of damage before breaking apart.

"And the picket?"

Resa frowned. "Same as the screen, just smaller."

I nodded slightly. If they had limited models to work from, somebody might have decided to just scale a screen down.

"Chief Engineer Keller, could the Derriphan-type insect ships have as much armor as the original Derriphan?" I asked as I looked over at the engineering section.

Taking an extra look at the images, Keller lifted his eyebrows and shook his head. "It's always possible, but judging from the pictures, I highly doubt it." He sent me a smile. "So, unless they have installed Centurion-type shields, they will have weak shields."

"Thank you."

Since I had the time, I looked around on the bridge. Iska was quietly giving orders, Keller had gone back to study the pictures of the enemy ships, Tavune was explaining something to a pale Lysara Trex, and Alric, the other heir, was sitting in silence, eyes slightly wide in the pale face as he watched Pilot Satomie do her work.

"Turn and close formation," I ordered. "Link defensive grid and get our Aureks inside the formation."

"Yes, sir," Iska said with a feral grin and went to work, while I turned my attention back to the attacking force, letting my mind roam freely.

If those were Centurion-class layouts in giant insects as core ships, Derriphan-class layout in smaller insects as screen and picket ships, and Sith-style fighter layouts in even smaller insects, attacking with a four-hundred-year-old battle plan, they were in for a world of hurt.

To make it worse for them, the fighters were almost a minute ahead of the battle formation and that distance only grew.

That suited me fine. If I could avoid it, I didn't want to get within range of the heavy ion cannons. Six per ship meant sixty from all ten, and if they shot at the same target there was a good chance that the target would be out of the rest of the fight... if they weren't taken out by the missiles from the screen.

"Medium range for the heavies," declared Karstein.

"Coordinate with the cruisers and fire staggered salvos."

"Done, sir," he answered with a grin as he pressed a key.

The first salvo from the heavies tore through space, hitting the five lead screen ships with pinpoint accuracy straight in the head of the insect. Their shields were just as weak as I had suspected, and the effect was immediate as they suddenly lost speed. Then almost a hundred medium turbolasers fired from Majestic and the three cruisers. Not all hit, but my Battle Meditation had done its job and the majority hit even at extreme range, disintegrating or damaging the screens around the five damaged ones.

"Friendlies!" warned Karstein as our Dragonclaws attacked the remaining screen ships in trios, ripping engines off the hulls with their lasers, dodging their weak point-defence to go for their engines with lasers and ion torpedoes, crippling those who were hit.

The plot lit up as trios of Dragonfangs attacked the core ships at the same time, the heavy lasers flaring angrily while proton torpedoes bloomed like miniature suns against the hulls of the insect-like ships, tearing through shields and armor.

Further back, four entire squadrons of S-13 Superstings swarmed what I assumed were the carriers, exploding cannon batteries and engines alike as they strafed the giant insect ships.

One of the damaged screens was rammed from behind by a core ship that simply didn't have the time to stop or evade, causing both ships to explode.

However, even as the screen ships died, some of them still managed to fire off missiles as the gravity well of the gas giant caught them and pulled them down towards the surface.

"Porcupine! Porcupine!" came the warning from the tactical section. "Seventy-two incoming missiles."

"Focus point-defence on the missiles," snapped Iska. "Aureks, take care of the remaining enemy fighters."

Seeing the problem, I focused on the attacking enemy fighters. There weren't that many left as the point-defence had done a good job, but as the focus shifted to the missiles, the survivors came in again.

Without even thinking about it, I reached out through the Force and directed a squadron of Aureks towards the nearest group of enemy fighters. To my surprise, they did exactly as I had intended without me even having to use the comm.

On my screen the enemy core and screen were now a collected mess of ships, packed so close together that they couldn't easily manoeuvre. There also didn't seem to be any communication between the ships. At least not one fast enough to link their point-defence into a collective whole and as a result the Dragonclaws and most of the Dragonfangs attacked them with impunity, blowing up ship after ship.

A single squadron, the 101 or the Void Dragons, of Dragonfangs were hunting the picket ships. As I watched, the icon representing Lieutenant Maxwell blew up one of the picket ships, used the vectored thrust of his craft to turn with impossible speed, and blew up another ship, while his wingman took down a third.

With a slight nod, I looked at the enemy carriers, who had had their speed reduced even more by engine damage. I frowned. One of the S-13 squadrons had turned back in an attempt to strafe another carrier on the way out.

Hitting the switch to the comm, I just had time to order, "Scout 4, break off!" before they flew in between two carriers and the lead S-13 was caught in a crossfire that tore one wing off the ship and sent the scout spiralling away.

"Keep to the doctrine," I warned the scouts. "Strafe and get away safely." Then I switched channel and ordered the Astras to go to full scanner power and see if they could catch some of our damaged fighters or their escape pods.

"Aft-starboard shield back online," came the call from Keller at the engineering section.

Closer to us, the lasers of the point-defence stabbed through the air, killing missile after missile.

Fifty left.

Then they entered EW range and half of the missiles broke their lock, making them race aimlessly into space.

Lasers burned through space from our ships and more missiles disintegrated.

Twenty left.

Anti-missile rockets fired, adding to the chaos.

Fourteen left.

The point-defence fired again, destroying six missiles more.

Eight left. Two were racing towards the Majestic, six towards Vulture.

A last-ditch spread of rockets took out one of the two heading for Majestic and three of the ones going for Vulture. The one aimed at Majestic hit the front shield and exploded without causing any real damage. Vulture wasn't as fortunate, as the first two slammed into the shields in rapid succession, bringing down the shield. The last missile hit the armor, and while it didn't penetrate, it still exploded and tore armor off the ship.

The screen was more or less dismantled, so I directed Karstein back to shoot at the core ships and had the fighters go hunt the picket ships instead.

"Tavune, send out a request for their surrender. This is becoming a slaughter," I said as I studied the plot. Their carriers were heavily damaged, and while at least four of their battleships were still in reasonable shape, others were plummeting into the atmosphere of the gas giant and would likely be crushed there. That fate was followed by most of their screen, and their fighters had been taken out by the faster, more manoeuvrable, and shielded modern fighters. Even the greenest of ensigns should be able to see where this was going.

Realizing something, I asked, "Resa, do the scanners see any escape pods? Because I haven't."

"No, sir," she answered after a few seconds' pause. "Either they haven't used any or the pods are almost fully organic, making them hard to see. One moment."

Just as I turned back to the plot, two of the remaining battleships fired a salvo of heavy ion shots that hit the Vulture right where the missiles had taken down its shields. The Wyvern-class immediately went dark and started to 'fall' into the gravity well.

"Falcon and Eagle," ordered Iska. "Get tractors on Vulture NOW."

The two cruisers manoeuvred closer to Vulture almost immediately, but even as they did that their turbolasers returned the fire with a full salvo, shredding the two attacking battleships to pieces.

I was about to say something when Iska continued. "Helm, put us between Vulture and the remaining enemy core ships."

It was an extremely good call. The two cruisers could easily stop Vulture from falling into the surface, and with Majestic as a wall between our damaged ship and the enemy, they couldn't keep pounding on it, taking it out permanently.

Majestic's guns fired again, spearing one of the few remaining core ships in the middle of the insectoid hull, breaking it in two.

"Wow," I heard Karstein mumble. "Well done, Corporal Naddin."

Assuming he was talking to a gunner, I ignored it as I studied the plot. There were only two enemy battleships left, but instead of running or surrendering, both ships were charging forward, directly at the Majestic, shooting their cannons as fast as they could.

"They're trying to ram us," stated Iska.

Checking the distance, I nodded, but didn't even have to give an order before two trios of Aureks came swooping in and fired ion torpedoes directly at the head of the ships, taking down the shields and damaging the hull. The moment the Aureks were gone again, Majestic's gunners fired again with every weapon that could be brought to bear on them.

The effect was spectacular, as the bolts from the heavy turbolasers smashed into the heads, disintegrating both of them. The following salvo from the medium turbolasers flew through that hole, reaching deep into the enemy battleship.

Both ships exploded in expanding balls of light and fragments of hull.

Crossing my arms, I looked at the plot. "This is ridiculous. Tavune, repeat the request for their surrender."

Another enemy ship blew up, just as Tavune answered, "I've already done it three times, sir. The first time they refused, and they didn't reply on the next two."

Activating the all-ships channel again, I ordered the starfighters to disengage from the capital ships if it could be done safely. Not that it would do much of a difference, since there were only two 'carriers' left of the enemy fleet. The rest had been destroyed. Either when our capital ships had shot them or when the fighters had destroyed engines, causing them to fall into the gas giant, pulled in by its gravity well.

So were the two 'carriers', but due to them being further back, their fall was slower, and there was a chance that we would be able to use the tractor beams to keep them, and whatever crew they had, from being crushed. Not that I intended to move from our current position before Vulture was up and running again. This battle was over, and I had no intention of risking any people.

"I found the escape pods, sir," said Resa quietly. "But it's just as strange as the rest."

A picture appeared on one of the screens, showing a cylindrical capsule made almost entirely by the same insectoid material as the rest of their ships. It wasn't even the strangest part. That was the giant piece of material that was connected to the escape pods and dragged behind it.

"A parachute?" blurted the Chief Engineer. "They're using a parachute?"

"What is that?" I asked, since it wasn't a familiar term.

"Very old tech," Keller said with a sigh and looked at me. "A large piece of cloth-like material that acts as an airbrake, allowing the pod to land safely." He hesitated for a moment but added, "Unfortunately for the enemy, it only really works in an atmosphere, so those who have used them have been killed by the pressure of the gas giant."

I grimaced. There was no planet with an atmosphere in the entire system, which to me indicated three things. First of all, the enemy fleet was supposed to conduct their combat near a planet with an atmosphere. Second, this battle happened because someone saw a smaller force and thought that it would be a good idea to take it. Third, the enemy fleet had been on the way to somewhere else. Most likely a system with an inhabited planet that they had planned to attack.

"The Vulture is back online," Tavune said, interrupting my thoughts.

"Good." I turned towards Iska. "Captain, take us closer to those carriers and get a tractor beam on them so they don't fall further into the gravity well."

"Yes, sir."

I sat down in the chair and let go of the Force, feeling exhaustion wash over me. I could really use some sleep right now.

"Send the Kolereths out to pick up any survivors we can find... and have the scouts scan every moon. We still need to find that Padawan," I said and gestured at the plot. "They can do that while we check if those ships can be persuaded to surrender."

"Yes, sir."

"Thank you... and send out the recording with Regon Harbru on all channels. If the Padawan is still alive and awake, she might as well see a familiar face."

He chuckled. "Yes, sir. Shall I route the signal directly to his room if we get an answer?"

"Yes, but warn him first," I said and turned towards the screens, where one of the one-kilometre-long core ships was drifting towards the gas giant. "Captain, have Eagle and Falcon drag that Centurion-type insect ship away from the gravity well while Vulture and Majestic go for the two carriers."

Iska nodded. "What about the screen ships?" She gestured towards the plot where a couple of the screen ships were being dragged towards the gas giant by the gravity.

I shook my head. "We can't save both, and the larger ships are likely to have larger crews, so go for the big one. Chances are that the crew on the smaller ones have already bailed out... hmm... Resa, do you have an estimate on how many of those organic escape pods were used?"

"Only partly," she answered. "According to the computer's estimate, each of the core ships carried eighty of these and each pod has room for a hundred humanoids. The screen ships carried two different types. One is the same as the core ships and the other one is smaller, with room for about fifty. Each screen ship has ten large and one small one." She paused but then added, "Most of the core ships released their pods as they were hit."

There was silence on the bridge for a moment before Iska said, "That's a lot of people."

"Yes," I agreed. "So much for that invasion force."

She looked over at me. "What?"

I sent her a gentle smile. "Captain, would you willingly go into space combat knowing that your escape pods didn't work?"

"Not if I had a choice," she admitted. "But they did."

"Exactly. I think that this fleet was on their way to invade an inhabited system. Those escape pods can land troops as well, and a quick orbital bombardment followed by the landing of a hundred thousand troopers would take most unprepared systems... especially with four to five hundred fighters to back you up."

"Excuse me, sir," Tavune said, "but why did they attack us then?"

"Honour, malice, culture, whatever," I answered. "The Mandalorians can't be the only culture that has war and conquest engraved in their culture, and since they didn't surrender, I think it has to be something like that... but I guess we'll find out soon. If I'm right, there's a good chance that another fleet will arrive in a few days, carrying the rest of the troopers meant to occupy the target planet... only it will have a lot fewer warships and more transports in it." I looked at the screens again. "But enough guessing. Let's make sure that these carrier-types don't drift into the gravity well. I want to know more about why they were here and why they attacked us."

Tavune rubbed his face. "Are you saying that we just saved another planet from an invasion, sir?"

"Most likely," I answered. "It's the only thing that makes sense, but as I said, we will know more later."

He opened his mouth to say something but closed it again as something on his station caught his attention. Blinking in surprise, he said, "Hold one, sir," and turned his attention to whatever it was. Then he grinned. "The Padawan is answering. She's alive and her ship is on..." He looked at the readout "... the second moon of the third rock planet."

A location marker appeared on the plot to mark it.

"Excellent. Warn Regon Harbru and connect them. If she's not able to fly here on her own, we can come and get her... and tell her not to move until we have cleared the system."

"Yes, sir."

Looking at the screens, I could see the giant insects coming nearer as we flew closer. From this close a distance, the giant insect was chilling to look at, and I could imagine the fear it would strike in a civilian population. Of course, the 'design' had some serious limitations, like the inability to have an armor belt for extra defence and the lack of forward-facing weapons. They also had to be grown instead of built, and it would take a very long time for anything to be that large, making the grow time a bottleneck when building a fleet.

That was for the best, I silently decided. At least for the galaxy at large. If the Mandalorians or the Sith ever found a way to overcome those shortcomings, the galaxy would burn... again.

"Commodore," called Tavune. "The Padawan's shuttle is working, sir. She can be here in about thirty minutes."

"Is the system cleared?"

"Yes, sir."

"Excellent. Tell them that she will get an escort." I told him. "No reason to lose her now."

"Yes, sir." Tavune said with a smile.

"And Tavune, since we don't have a tactical officer, I would like you to make a breakdown of this battle..."

"I'd better go fetch Regon Harbru, Captain," I told Iska. "You have the bridge, Captain."

"Yes, sir." The purple Twi'lek replied with a smile and turned back to the screens.

I walked out, smiling slightly to myself. One of the many advantages of having competent people around was that it freed me from having to oversee everything myself.

------------- To be continued ---------------

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