Chapter 9 The Road Ahead
Terran Year: 2204 | GrS Year: 32,424 | BBY: 3672
Nal Hutta – Gluttony Spire, Upper Chamber of the Besadii Syndicate
The stench of rot, spice, and riches lingered in the hall like incense. Smoke coiled through vaulted ceilings of blackened bone and oxidized gold. Voices slithered in Huttese, slow and indulgent, as the great clans of the Besadii gathered for their monthly profit review.
But this meeting had been called early.
And it wasn't about spice, slaves, or spice-slaves.
A flicker of static broke the chatter. Then came the low whine of a transmission — tight-beamed, encrypted, and anonymously flagged. Tassaa Besadii, the eldest in attendance and one of the few who still remembered the Black Sun purge, blinked her bulbous yellow eyes as the holo-projector stabilized.
The footage was grainy, half-corrupted by solar radiation, and riddled with delay blips. But what it showed was unmistakable: orbit over Velis-Ka engulfed in battle. Crimson Maw defense ships being carved apart by sharp-angled, hard-armored vessels. Gunmetal-gray carriers with red star sigils loomed over orbital platforms, raining fire with dispassionate efficiency.
On the ground, flashes of surface engagements—landers spewing troops, gun emplacements erupting, slave pens breached under covering fire. No negotiation. No posturing. No theatrics.
A brutal, professional purge.
The footage ended in a fuzz of static, followed by a corrupted message header: Origin: Observer Vessel ZH-07 — one of theirs.
A Nikto steward leaned in toward Tassa and muttered, "We've traced the leak. The footage was sent not to us... but to Hocha the Hutt. One of ours betrayed the vessel. A slicer, likely. He sold the footage before the ship even pulled away."
Tassa grunted, unimpressed. "Typical."
No one in the room expressed outrage. Duplicity among observers was an expected risk — even tradition. That the traitor had profited from it simply proved his cunning.
Across the stone dais, Gorga the Hutt let out a low, appreciative chuckle. "Efficient. Cold. Not cruel... calculated."
He rotated a heavy golden ring around one stubby digit. "This so-called Dominion doesn't burn for pleasure. It burns to erase. To purify."
Another Hutt across the chamber, his tattoos marking him as aligned with Anjiliac interests, spat a glob of green sludge into a slave's mouth. "They're methodical. The Maw had no idea what it awoke in that shadowy force forsaken sector."
Tassa waved a hand and a second message was pulled up—audio only.
Crimson Maw encryption.
The signal was weak, panicked, and deteriorating—clearly broadcast during the final moments of the Velis-Ka collapse.
"...Dominion forces... full fleet deployment... we're overwhelmed, shields failing—requesting support, Cartel... anyone..."
It cut off in a howl of interference.
The room fell quiet for a moment.
Then Gorga's droid translator spoke with droll programmed amusement, "No response was ever sent."
Gorga's smile widened, flabby jowls rippling. "Of course not. They brought it on themselves. They were just too weak."
Tassa leaned forward, eyes narrowing. "That corner of Wild Space was always dangerous. The Maw were placeholders, expendable, 3rd rate, allowed to go in there and do as they wished. But now... the galaxy has seen the smoke. The Sith are watching our borders more than usual. Even Republic scouts hover too close to Varl lanes."
A Klatooinian lieutenant cleared his throat. "Do we retaliate?"
"Retaliate?" Gorga scoffed, slapping his tail against the dais. "No. We don't even know where they're from, and look at their forces they can cut through a fortified orbital ring like vibroknife through a Twi'lek dancer." He gave a garbled chuckle "Though it was just Crimson Maw, but the costs and return are not proportioned, we would have to find them first and in that part of space you can jump into the heart of a star if you are not careful."
"We observe," said Tassa, coiling her tail beneath her. "Discreetly. And if they expand toward our holdings... we offer them someone else's to burn first."
The assembled Hutts murmured in approval.
No outrage. No vengeance.
Just calculation.
The Terran Dominion wasn't a threat. Not yet.
But it was no longer a rumor either.
The skylanes above the Galactic Capital pulsed with their usual rhythm—transports gliding through artificial weather, holosigns flickering with trade ads and Senate campaign slogans. From orbit, Coruscant still looked like the center of civilization. But within its layers, the foundations trembled with quiet uncertainty.
The Senate rotunda was subdued this cycle. Not because of war, but because of a rumor that had crept like smoke through the halls of power. A single data packet—heavily redacted, poorly timestamped, and flagged as "unverified"—had circulated through the Republic's Outer Rim intelligence cluster just days prior.
A planetary outpost—Velis-Ka—belonging to a known weak but viscous slaver confederation had been utterly annihilated. Not by pirates. Not by Hutts. But by a previously unrecorded military force bearing no galactic transponder codes, no known simbols, and no history within the galactic record.
Footage followed. Scrambled, hazy, but undeniable.
A Terran fleet—heavy, crude, but coordinated—destroying Crimson Maw vessels in orbit and deploying mass landers to the surface. Slave pens breached. Hostile forces exterminated. Infrastructure reduced to molten slag. Of the non-Terran slaves rescued, only a few had been granted temporary transport. Most were released into space with scavenged ships and rough astro-maps. The rest—thousands of humans, Terran origin or otherwise—were taken. Silently. Systematically.
And it was all done without a single transmission.
Within the Senate chamber, the discussion had already begun.
"—we are not here to excuse slavers," said Senator Lin Voro of the Atrivis Sector, rising from his pod with carefully measured restraint. "But we must not ignore the brutality involved here. A system was erased without warning or diplomacy. Entire orbital habitats were detonated in front of fleeing civilians."
He gestured to a still image from the leaked footage—an orbital station splitting in two under a railgun barrage.
"This is not peacekeeping. This is unneeded brutality."
A smattering of murmurs echoed around the tiers.
Senator Bana'ru, a Mon Calamari representing Outer Expansion Zones, flew upright in his repulsor chair. "The Maw deserved no quarter. That much is clear. But I question this Dominion's intentions. They showed no desire to establish communication. They did not offer safe passage to the non-human victims they freed."
The Muun delegate from Harnaidan added with a raised claw, "Indeed. They only evacuated those of their own species. Even humans not of their territory were taken without documentation. The rest? Thrown into converted slaver shuttles and pointed at space."
Chancellor Alya Gerand, presiding from the central spire, tapped her hand once for silence.
"We are faced with a developing reality," she said calmly. "A power has emerged in the northeast fringe beyond even Wild Space. Not aligned with the Hutts. Not Sith. Not pirates. A new player."
She turned her gaze upward to the central holoscreen.
"Intelligence believes they are native to a system previously ignored by the Maw—likely human. Recently industrialized. Possibly post-crisis. Their technology is mismatched. Their tactics, however, are consistent with a structured military hierarchy."
A Senator from Chandrila rose. "Are we treating them as hostile?"
"Not yet," Gerand replied. "We have not been contacted. Nor have they made demands, try to gather the slaves they freed, maybe they will shed a bit of light."
Another voice rang out—Kalda Tress, the outspoken Senator from Arkania. "But we must issue a formal statement. We cannot condone this… one sided slaughter, there are procedures that need to be followed, even for slavers. They did not even take any prisoners."
Gerand nodded.
That afternoon, the Republic Diplomatic Corps released an official communique:
"The Galactic Republic acknowledges reports of extreme conflict and structural collapse at the former Velis-Ka system, previously occupied by known criminal elements. While the Republic does not condone the activities of slavers, we express concern over the methods used in their eradication and the reported neglect of rescued non-human populations. The Republic calls upon all emerging powers to respect the dignity and sentience of all species, regardless of origin."
It was a statement of principle. Nothing more. No direct warning. No sanctions. No fleet movements.
Behind closed doors, however, briefings were compiled. Probes were rerouted. Advisors were assigned.
The Senate had seen new powers rise before, and will continue to do so for millenia to come.
But never so far from known lanes, so far in the east and not the usual west where known civilizations like the Chiss are.
Dromund Kaas – Imperial Logistics Corps, Subsector Vault 17
The elevator ride down had taken nearly seven minutes, moving deeper beneath the storm-wracked crust of Dromund Kaas than most military personnel ever dared. Past the surface towers, beyond the public archives and administrative bureaus, the red-lit corridors of Vault 17 held the forgotten remnants of old campaigns — mothballed equipment, black ops intelligence, and service records deemed too anomalous to destroy.
Lieutenant Commander Karven Trell had been one such anomaly.
He sat alone in the debriefing chamber, still wrapped in remnants of his old officer's coat. A cracked rank insignia was still bolted to his shoulder — Logistics Corps, Outer Sector Tasking Division. Years ago, his ship had vanished near the edge of mapped space during a logistical operation for a different taskforce, presumed lost to the Crimson Maw. No distress signal. No debris. No survivors.
Yet here he was, breathing Kaasian air again for the first time in years
His appearance was not the result of a daring escape. It had been deliberate.
"I was released," he told his interrogator — a faceless Intelligence officer hidden behind a polarized mask. "They didn't want me. They wanted what I knew." He could not tell them he wanted to be set free, that would show weakness that he couldn't escape some flimsy pirates as a soldier of the empire, even if he was just a logistical officer
"Who?" the voice asked, cold and mechanical.
Trell blinked slowly. "Terrans. Human... but not ours. Organized. Militarized. They've been killing the Maw. Not raiding — erasing them, their technology is somewhat crude and behind but effective."
He leaned forward on the table, his voice low, steady.
"They don't ask for surrender. They don't make broadcasts. They move in coordinated strike waves — cloaked transports, at least cloaked to the pirates, retrofitted freighters, planetary assaults backed by fleet bombardment. No Jedi. No Force signatures. Just raw precision. And hate."
Dromund Kaas – Military Intelligence Command, Spire of Doctrine
Hours later, Trell's full debrief — attached to a sealed crystalline data wafer and verified by biometric pulse patterns — was elevated through the appropriate channels. It reached the attention of Lord Erazin, Sith overseer of frontier operations under the Sphere of Expansion and Diplomacy.
Tall, masked, and bearing the title of Blade of Kaas, Lord Erazin had made his name during the subjugation of the Tolgari Sector. His methods were clinical, devoid of spectacle. His quarters, like his speech, were devoid of ornamentation.
The data projection of Trell's testimony hovered in front of him. His eyes, blackened with a red-orange tint through the use of the dark side of the force, they didn't blink once.
"The Maw didn't stand a chance. They were spread thin, lazy, cocky, with no coordination and poor equipment and even lower morale. The Terrans exploited every weakness. They struck slaver outposts on asteroids, repurposed depots, and even managed to tow capital wreckage from battlefields.
"They only extracted humans. Their own. Others — Twi'leks, Rodians, even Imperial citizens, humans at that — were released or redirected. One shuttle I saw bore former Sith border inspectors... they let them go. Seems they only want their own and humans from scattered colonies making them easier to integrate."
Erazin's jaw tightened.
That implied discipline. Strategy. Ethics.
The Sith were many things — brutal, cunning, remorseless — but even they did not give back what they had taken. Should it be the sith fleet that took out the Maw, all the slaves would have been brought back into imperial space and forced to work appropriate jobs.
Ziost – Black Stone Citadel, Inner Conclave of Lords
The report was brought before the Conclave of Lords, a lesser-known but deeply influential cadre of Sith tasked with long-range defense policy and expansionist doctrine, and other menial tasks, too low for the Dark Council and Darths.
Within the stone chamber, beneath a canopy of red braziers and holofields pulsing with strategic maps, three lords debated the implications.
Darth Calyx, a scholar of enemy psychology, examined Trell's phrasing with care.
"They let him go. After interrogation. This was not intimidation. It was... message delivery."
Darth Solence, draped in layered robes of shadow-silk, whispered, "Humans alone. They claim no Republic affiliation. Nor do they follow our doctrines. But they strike with conviction. Could this be a colony that never reached Coruscant's light?"
"They have weapons unlike ours," Calyx said. "Slugthrowers, while outdated and barbaric, seemed to make it work better than any we have in the galaxy. Hardened armor that while not as versatile and light as theirs, was impressive. Primitive but effective. If they mass-produce, they could become a regional threat to anyone they perceive as an enemy."
Lord Erazin, having delivered the report, said nothing until the others had exhausted their assumptions.
Then he simply spoke.
"They hate slavers. And they are expanding, potential for conflict is there due to our use of slaves, while not as extensive it's still there."
"And if they reach us?" Solence asked.
"Then we make them choose: submission or annihilation," Erazin replied cooly.
"No action yet?" Calyx asked.
Erazin shook his head. "No. Not yet. Let them burn the Maw and any other rabble there. The fewer chains in the galaxy, the fewer alliances to unravel later."
Solence tilted her head. "And if the Republic finds them?"
Erazin turned toward the holomap of Wild Space.
"Then we strike first — before either side learns too much."
The name Terra was entered into the Sith Imperial archives under a new designation:
[Observation Class Red – Human-Origin Faction, Non-Affiliated]
Status: Potential Threat – Expand Monitoring
They were not to be contacted. Not to be antagonized.
Not until the Sith were ready or until Dominion was worth the imperial effort.
Terran Year: 2219 | GrS Year: 32,440 | BBY: 3657 (15 years after the Maw stronghold was destroyed)
The fires of vengeance had cooled — but only slightly.
Fifteen years had passed since the last Maw stronghold burned in the orbit of Velis-Ka, since over 300,000 sentients were pulled from slave cages under a sky laced with orbital fire. Terra had not declared war, nor announced peace. It had vanished from galactic records again, slipping like a shadow behind its old routes, building, organizing, watching.
And then it began to spread.
Mars Orbit – Dominion Stellar Command
The first phase was inward. Mars, once a rugged second world, now stood as Terra's twin in all but name. Its cities stretched across cratered plains under glimmering red sky, with farming domes feeding billions through deep hydroponic canyons and fusion-rigged oceanic converters. Orbital elevators ran like arteries into the sky, connected to Highdock infrastructure where fresh starships were born monthly — carriers, landers, and cruisers alike, with dozens of starship docks littering the landscape of the red planet.
The Vallis Magnus Ring on Mars alone held a population rivaling pre-war Earth's northern hemisphere. Education was strictly Dominion-aligned. Children were taught history. War was not glorified — it was structured. Lessons from the Crimson War had become a required curriculum. Every citizen knew how to shoot. Every worker was assigned both civic and defense duties.
Terraforming of the Martian surface continued in controlled zones. Forests of carbon-processing towers rose like alien spires, slowly changing the atmosphere to a breathable mix. The air was still thin, but no longer deadly. Terra had made it livable, if only for the loyal.
Jovian Moons – Callisto, Europa, Ganymede
The outer colonies had once been corporate mining sites, riddled with radiation shelters and broken ore tunnels. Now they housed military colonies, tactical training grounds, and deep-space signal observatories.
Callisto became the site of Dominion Black Fleet Command — a hardened facility buried beneath ice and silicate, coordinating long-range patrols across the heliosphere. Its massive underground hangars could deploy an entire strike group within seven minutes of activation.
Ganymede hosted cryo-rigs and orbital platforms dedicated to engine research and low-gravity maneuver simulations, its skies thick with training vessels and testbeds. Defense satellites orbited in pairs, armed with precision coilguns and particle disruptors to track unauthorized entry.
Europa was less visible. Most Terrans didn't even know it had been colonized.
Below its frozen crust, under kilometers of processed meltwater and alloyed tunnels, Dominion Intelligence ran the Eidolon Vault — an encrypted listening post and high-security research complex. There were no windows. No names. Only classified operations and sub-warp signal intercepts. Most of what passed through here never reached New Avalon without being filtered through layers of strategic analysis.
Velis-Ka, despite being only a few jumps beyond, was left untouched. Its skies were still scarred from the last engagement, and Dominion command had made the decision early: no flags would fly there. Only warning beacons. A graveyard in space, kept undisturbed, monitored by long-range probes and thermal scans, like a cursed memory best left quiet.
Luna – New Avalon Peripheral Command
Earth's moon had become its eye. Orbital cities and observatories lined its near side, while the far side hosted defensive arrays and hyperspace pulse disruptors. From here, Dominion Fleet movements were tracked, cores managed, and interstellar expansions approved.
Colonial Command had long since left Earth itself — too public, too sentimental. Luna became the silent administrator, detached from nostalgia.
Extrasolar Expansion – Barnard's Star and Gliese 832
Two years prior, after exhaustive scouting and gravitational mapping, Dominion vessels launched controlled settlement missions to Barnard's Star — the closest viable system for sustained habitation. While barren of intelligent life, its inner planets showed signs of microbial potential and mineral-rich crusts.
Domination did not proceed blindly. Terraforming ships preceded every colony fleet, deploying atmospheric reactors and orbital climate regulators before a single citizen landed. Each settlement was hardened — no open domes, no leisure districts. These were defense colonies, mining hubs, research nodes — each one a fortress disguised as a city.
Gliese 832, farther out, became the site of the Dominion's first deep-space fueling platform — designated Station Farsight. Constructed in parts, towed across hyperspace lanes, and anchored into the orbit of a gas giant, it became the primary launchpoint for long-range patrols. Crews rotated every 14 months. Civilian access was prohibited.
Expansion was quiet, deliberate, and deeply paranoid.
No Terran colony transmitted public messages. No settlers were allowed to use open galactic channels. All interstellar communications were bounced through signal silencers and multi-encryption layers. The Dominion was growing — but not to be seen. Not yet.
Political Restructuring
With territory came reform. The Dominion High Council expanded from 12 to 15 representatives — one per continent, and three for off-world regions. Mars, Luna, and Jovian Command were each granted their own continental status, their representatives vetted by the Internal Stability Bureau.
Elections remained, though monitored. ISB audits grew more frequent, particularly in outer systems. Loyalty was emphasized, not ambition. Any sign of ideological deviation, especially regarding xeno sympathies or calls for open diplomacy, triggered immediate investigation.
The Commissariat of Expansion created the Dominion Celestial Registry — a record of every known star, hyperspace lane, and navigational hazard within 80 light-years of Terra. Maps were updated weekly. Every scout ship returned with data. Every slipstream anomaly was catalogued.
Their greatest fear was no longer pirates, nor remnants of the Maw.
It was being seen too soon by foes too powerful for them.
The expansion of the Dominion was not a conquest, but a migration. A methodical, iron-framed march across the void.
With Earth unified and the scars of war sealed beneath steel and propaganda, the High Council turned its focus toward securing not just their solar system—but all that lay just beyond.
Mars, once a struggling industrial colony, now buzzed with orbital elevators, alloy smelters, and power collectors beaming Helium-3 from automated harvesters on its moons. Terraforming still progressed at a slow but steady pace, with imported lichen strains creeping across valleys and bioform reactors deep beneath the crust warming the soil by half a degree every five years.
The Martian sky remained red. But it was their red now.
Jupiter's moons—once sterile rocks—were being transformed into the bones of an empire. Callisto, already a black-fleet stronghold, had expanded to accommodate an entire division of auxiliary carriers and sensor arrays. Europa's under-ice facilities now ran long-wave scans and deep-code AI-less simulators for Dominion Intelligence, helping chart out hypothetical invasion scenarios of potential galactic powers.
On Ganymede, thousands of settlers lived in pressure domes — engineers, dockworkers, and their families. Children there learned orbital mathematics and alien species recognition before basic Earth history. Above them, the skeletal frames of new carriers floated in drydock orbitals—each hull one more tooth in Terra's expanding maw.
Saturn's moons were less forgiving, but not ignored. Enceladus had been chosen for an ice refinery and communications booster network. Titan, while too volatile for direct colonization, hosted high-atmosphere drone platforms and siphoned data on long-range galactic drift.
Further out, unmanned probes stretched Dominion eyes across the dark. At the edge of known space, beyond the scars of the Crimson Maw campaign, automated sensor buoys maintained a tight net around the Velis-Ka system, watching for any signs of movement. No ships entered. Nothing escaped.
Inside the Council chambers of New Avalon, new maps were constantly drawn and redrawn. No longer content with the few systems known to the ancient Terran astronomers, Dominion stellar cartographers now wielded full galactic datasets—stitched together from Maw databanks, salvaged navicomputers, and field recon. Every unknown hyperlane was noted, analyzed, debated.
Still, caution ruled the day.
The Dominion did not yet settle Velis-Ka. Though it had become one of the most strategically vital regions in their outer perimeter, it remained off-limits for colonization. The system was left untouched—a graveyard, a warning, a pressure valve. Its orbits were laced with passive monitoring stations and ghost drones with automated self-destruct protocols if tampered with. Officially, it was listed as a quarantine zone for "classified hazardous remnants."
Unofficially, it was considered a kill-zone—just in case.
Politically, the Dominion restructured itself further. The original model—continental representatives managed by the Triumvirate—remained intact, but evolved.
Each outpost, lunar city, and off-world settlement now had a Regional Steward, chosen by the Council but technically subordinate to the relevant Continental Representative. These Stewards had wide-ranging authority: from law enforcement to trade supervision, but always under the eye of the Internal Stability Bureau, whose agents never identified themselves and always arrived with sealed orders.
With expansion came bureaucracy—and with bureaucracy, the quiet friction of distance. Some settlers questioned their limited access to Earth-based privileges. Others murmured about increased surveillance protocols off-world. But none of the murmurs reached public channels. Not when encryption was monitored and every net-node relayed through ISB filters.
Colonial life was harsh. But it was Dominion life. And for most, that was enough.
Still, a few isolated commanders and scientific officials began to question long-term ideological rigidity. Would Dominion structure hold across star systems? Would colonies three light-years away still obey Earth's political gravity? Could loyalty survive distance?
These questions were not voiced aloud. But they festered in private reports—buried in transit logs, fuel requisition data, and internal journals. Reports that the ISB collected. Archived. Monitored. And flagged.
As Dominion ships spread outward, terraforming planets and strip-mining moons, they brought with them a vision forged in blood and vengeance. One planet at a time. One dome at a time.
The galaxy beyond still turned unaware. But Terra was no longer sleeping.
It was growing.
Terran Year: 2220 | GrS Year: 32,441 | BBY: 3656
The transmission was short—compressed in static, laced with panic.
"…Zygerrian slavers… old site… humans… repeat, they're… killing—"
Then silence.
The message had been relayed through a decaying satellite relay near the edge of the Gliese 581 system. The signal bore Terran civilian encryption but was decades out of date. Older still was its point of origin: a long-abandoned human outpost left from a failed pre-Maw exodus attempt. Before the Crimson War. Before Terra.
That anyone still lived there was a surprise.
The High Council convened within two hours. Commander Thalia Rho—pulled directly from expansion fleet drills near Barnard's Edge—was already inbound aboard the VSS Halberd. Admiral Taggart issued the directive personally: investigate, confirm, and if hostile forces are confirmed—remove them.
No broadcast. No formal claim. Just another surgical stroke.
The outpost was listed in old Earth archives as Styx Station, a subterranean habitation module carved into a minor moonlet orbiting the gas giant Reus. Originally settled by a breakaway mining syndicate, it was presumed dead when contact ceased in 2089.
It wasn't dead. Just forgotten.
The Dominion strike group exited hyperspace in a tight wedge formation, with the Halberd at the center. Two Ironhold-class transports flanked its sides, while four Shrike-class interceptors fanned forward in scouting formation. No other ships were registered in orbit.
But the moon's surface told another story.
Burnt hulls, slave pits, and smoking barracks lay strewn across the main settlement crater. The base was barely functional. Power readings were unstable. But there was movement—and biosigns. Dozens. Maybe hundreds. Some clustered in holding areas. Others corralled near landing pads where slaver craft still sat.
Scans confirmed their origin. Zygerrian design.
Slavers. The word itself sent rage and disgust throughout the fleet.
Commander Thalia Rho stood at the Halberd's observation platform, eyes locked on the barren crater through reinforced glass. She didn't speak as the data fed into her HUD—atmospheric toxicity, heat signatures, structural weakness.
She tapped her comm.
"Deploy Rapid Assault Division:Raptors. Secure the east bay first. If any of them try to lift off, I want them scrapped."
"Understood," came Lieutenant Karra's voice over the comm, cold and steady.
The dropship launch sequence initiated.
Three Atlas-class landers screamed down through the moon's thin atmosphere, flanked by Shrikes on overwatch. The Raptors—a rapid-assault ground team under Karra's command—made planetfall in under a minute. Dust and gas kicked up in thick plumes as retro-thrusters flared against the shattered landing zone.
Resistance came immediately.
The slavers had spotted the incoming vessels too late to run, but not too late to fight. Ground emplacements—cobbled together from scavenged turrets and repurposed hull plating—opened fire on the landers the moment they touched down.
But this wasn't some fringe pirate band. This was Dominion steel.
Karra led the assault herself, her squad pouring out of the Atlas under overlapping suppressive fire. Rail rounds and plasma bolts raked the slaver defenses. Flashbang drones detonated above the emplacements, disorienting their gunners. One Maw-built cannon managed a shot—striking the forward ramp of the third lander—but failed to penetrate.
Dominion troops moved with brutal efficiency—clearing the pad, locking down the hangar, sweeping corners with HUD-synced weapons fire.
Inside the holding zones, what they found hit harder than any enemy bolt.
Civilians. Emaciated. Huddled in makeshift cages—some too weak to walk. Many were human, others not. Rodians. Twi'leks. Devaronians. Some even wore tattered uniforms from years-past, Republic expeditions. It wasn't just an outpost.
It was a dumping ground.
Up above, the Halberd locked its ion lances onto the escaping Zygerrian corvette trying to break for orbit. The vessel—a rust-worn P-75 runner—managed to light its drives but got only 800 kilometers off the moon's surface before its reactor overloaded from concentrated pulse disruption.
The explosion bloomed in silence. A brief star of justice.
On the ground, Karra ordered the cages cut open. Food rations were dropped. Medkits distributed. The Ironhold freighters descended shortly after, their cavernous holds already prepped for recovery.
Commander Rho landed an hour later. Her boots struck dust and bone as she walked through the crater's broken rim.
"This was a ghost," she said to Karra, voice flat.
"It's ours now," Karra answered.
They left none of the slavers alive.
By the time the last Ironhold broke orbit, Styx Station was marked in the Dominion Registry as "Reclaimed – Site 1127-A."
Casualties:
Dominion: 7 dead, 19 wounded
Civilian rescued: 416 (Terran origin: 239, Human non-Terran: 101, Alien: 76)
Slavers neutralized: 52
Enemy vessels recovered: 2 (damaged, towed)
It was a small battle. A forgotten moon. A buried past.
But for Terra, it was a warning.
There were still slavers. Still outposts.
Several weeks later
The destruction of the Zygerrian outpost at Styx had revealed far more than Dominion Intelligence initially expected. Cracked flight logs and dying transponders hinted at a web of activity—a patchwork network of slaver outposts, staging hubs, and supply caches clustered in neglected corners of space, loosely tied to the shattered remains of Crimson Maw trade lines.
What began as containment soon escalated into a coordinated campaign.
Operation Broken Fang was approved by the Dominion High Council with little debate. Three simultaneous incursions were launched by strike elements from the 5th Expeditionary Fleet. The targets were not well-fortified, but they were fast, slippery, and heavily entrenched. Zygerrian slavers had spread like mold into the remains of abandoned Maw infrastructure.
Arieti Station, nestled deep within a cracked asteroid in a red dwarf system, was the first to fall.
Atlas-class landers deployed Karra Wynn's strike force under partial ECM cover, using magnetic descent rails and micro-thrusters to land in blind zones along the station's ventral shell. Instead of launching a frontal assault, Raptors breached the underbelly with thermite drills and moved inward through filtration shafts.
Inside, the station was a maze of rusted catwalks, flickering auction platforms, and makeshift cells. Zygerrians fought like cornered beasts, wielding black-market blasters and shockwhips, backed by hulking Nikto mercenaries in scavenged armor. The Raptors answered with coordinated breach-and-clear movements, room by room, covering each other's angles with rail-carbines and point-defense drones.
Karra herself led the charge through the eastern pen rows, gunning down a slaver commandant who had tried to use captives as living shields.
128 human prisoners were recovered. The remainder were Twi'leks, Gran, and even a few Gamorreans—all malnourished, several too weak to walk. Zygerrian survivors were executed on-site. The Dominion left no warnings—only wreckage and silence.
The second strike was against Site Besh-113 with Commander Nicholas Voss, grandson of the famous Marcus Voss. The attack was on an ancient fuel depot moonbase orbiting a decaying gas giant. Dominion ships did not land this time.
Instead, from high orbit, the VSS Heretic's Wake launched a pinpoint strike. Vulture bombers cratered surface defenses and softened hardened bunkers before Ironhold-class freighters moved in to dock. Salvage crews in EVA suits moved like wraiths across the station exterior, cutting their way into the vaults and hangars.
Two freighters, both previously registered to Terran civilian shipping companies, were recovered under Maw markings. Their frames were scarred but intact. One still carried its original flight AI core, a valuable data cache of early Crimson slave routes.
No prisoners were found. The slavers had long since abandoned the depot—only their wreckage remained.
But the third operation, conducted against the entrenched Zygerrian site on Lossa Minor, was the bloodiest.
The slavers had turned an ancient geothermal installation into a fortress. Atmospheric jammers scrambled orbital scans. Surface batteries tracked skyward. The Dominion couldn't rely on stand-off strikes. They needed boots on the ground.
Admiral Taggart approved a full combined-arms drop.
Atlas-class landers screamed through low cloud cover under covering fire from Shrike squadrons, their hulls trailing plasma burns and countermeasure flares. Raptors deployed first, securing a wide canyon outside the bunker's main blast doors.
Then came the Crawlers.
Low-slung and wide-bodied, Crawlers were heavily armored tracked vehicles designed for close-quarters fighting and debris-strewn terrain. They rumbled out of the Atlas dropships one after another, turret-mounted rail repeaters already spinning, hulls coated in ablative plating and magnetized dust to reduce scanner signatures.
Each crawler carried a full fireteam inside its rear troop bay, capable of deploying under pressure. In this battle, they were used to bulldoze through makeshift defenses—barricades, rock walls, plasma turret nests—grinding forward under fire while Raptors used them as mobile cover.
The Zygerrians fought viciously.
Several waves of their own combat skiffs circled around the canyon, attempting to flank the Dominion troops, but were cut down by overwatch snipers and directed airstrikes from Vulture gunships orbiting above the clouds.
Inside the bunker, fighting turned claustrophobic.
Explosives were used to breach sublevels. Dozens of Raptors fought room-to-room with bayonets, breaching charges, and close-quarters blaster fire. One detachment used micro-drones to flush out defenders from vent shafts, only to be ambushed by three Trandoshan bounty guards in the dark.
Dominion casualties were real—11 dead, 31 wounded, several gravely—but they won.
And the prisoners?
417 recovered. Of those:
54 were Terran-born humans taken during the early days of the Crimson War
92 were non-Terran humans, mostly from old Outer Rim colonies
The remaining 271 were a mix of Duros, Mon Calamari, Twi'leks, and even two ex-Republic technicians
Operation Broken Fang lasted 32 days in total.
In its wake, Dominion forces had:
Destroyed 7 slaver facilities
Liberated 1,203 civilians
Recovered 5 ships
Executed 86 slavers on site
Those not of Terran origin were offered exile aboard stripped-down slaver transports, refitted with navigational cores and basic food stocks. Some refused—too traumatized or afraid to travel again. A few even requested to stay in Dominion-controlled zones under surveillance.
But those of Terran blood?
They returned home.
Some broken.
Some silent.
All of them changed.
The message was passed in encrypted Dominion signals, repeated across the war rooms of Earth, Mars, and Europa:
Slavers will find no sanctuary.
2 months later
The private audience chamber aboard Borga the Unspoken's barge was draped in shadow and decadence.
Gleaming bone chandeliers cast dull gold light across tapestries spun from Twi'lek silk, each embroidered with the blood marks of conquered sectors. The air reeked of spiced smoke and ozone from incense and exhausted repulsor heat. Borga reclined on his throne—a half-molten durasteel platform inlaid with trophies: shattered helmets, charred insignia, fossilized bones from extinct pets and ex-lovers alike.
A projection hung in the center of the chamber. The replay was grainy, fragmented, but no less terrifying for its lack of fidelity.
The Dominion Fleet had emerged from deep space like a swarm of silent fire. No warnings. No declarations, any attempts at hailing them or surrender were met with purposeful silence. They swept in with grim order, carving apart Crimson Maw defenses with precision orbital fire. The footage—partially obtained from a desperate Crimson distress signal sent through a proxy network—showed Bastion-class warships blotting out the sky and Ironhold freighters offloading troops into the blackened clouds of fire.
No demands. No parley. Just execution.
"Pause it," Borga rumbled, his voice a deep slough of Huttese syllables soaked in contempt. A Nikto technician halted the holovid. "That ship…" Borga gestured with a meaty arm, "was not in the earlier fleet lists."
"It matches nothing in known Hutt, Republic, or Sith registries," replied the Nikto. "Designation markers scraped. Armor composite unknown. They're building differently."
Borga stared, unblinking. "They are not pirates. Not conquerors. No trade routes were taken. No tributes demanded. They do not want anything... except blood, freed human slaves and ships."
Silence fell over the chamber. Then a second figure entered—cloaked, filled with cybernetic enhancements, a Zygerrian. The slaver lord Ravix Thol bowed once and hissed:
"They razed six outposts. One of them was mine. Kara'teth, a processing node that's served my clan for two decades. Gone. My guards were torn in half, some hanged outside its walls. My cages burned. My stocks—freed."
"And?" Borga asked, voice dripping in oil and threat.
"They didn't even loot," Thol whispered. "They left behind my vault. Sliced the locks open, scattered the credits across the floor like… trash. They only took prisoners. Human ones, some mineral ores and ships."
Borga's tail twitched.
Nar Kreeta – Kajidic High Convocation
The Council chamber was a slab of grotesque opulence—columns carved from ivory trees of Iridonia, crystal screens displaying traffic logs, bribes, assassinations. Several Kajidics were present: Besadii, Gorensla, Desilijic, and smaller minor clans who spoke in whispers unless permitted a louder voice. Some attended via hologram, wrapped in layers of deniable interest.
At the center, Borga the Unspoken presided, his barge tethered in orbit above. The footage played again, this time stripped of visual corruption and broadcast in full.
The silence was suffocating.
"It was not just Velis-Ka," said Borga. "Besh-113. Arieti Station. Lossa Minor. All gone. All scrubbed."
"This… Terra," spat Volo Besadii, a sluggish mass of corrupted tissue and stimulants, "They hold no territory. They don't tax. They don't ransom. Why do they fight?"
A scantily clad Twi'lek slaver matron from the edge of the chamber offered a trembling hypothesis: "Revenge."
That word hung longer than any weapon, sending the chamber spirling with theories.
Zygerria – Slaver High Council
Far from the opulence of the Kajidics, the core worlds of Zygerria were already aflame with internal panic.
Crimson Maw remnants had been their buffer, their front line, and their export partner. Now that buffer was ash. In recent weeks, 10 outer outposts had gone dark—some transmitting static, others nothing at all. Wreckage floated in former slave corridors like bones in space. Salvaged ship logs showed strange Terran tags scrawled in foreign language.
They didn't broadcast their identity. But they didn't hide either.
Worse, reports from liberated and re-captured slaves said the Dominion only took Terran-born humans. Other slaves were released—given derelict ships and coordinates. "We were not worth their effort, they just stuffed us in a ramshackle floating scrap and pointed us in the opposite direction from them," said one freed Nikto to a Zygerrian interrogator.
The Zygerrian High Prince, draped in opulent clothing and wearing enough precious metals and materials to buy a small shuttle, Vek'orr, pounded his claws against the council dais silencing the murmuring chamber.
"We are not dealing with people. We are dealing with a doctrine." He paused before continuing with a snarl on his face "A doctrine that places our customers, history and tradition as something to be eradicated at their FUCKING leisure" He raged to the assembled council.
Nar Kreeta, Later That Week
Back in Hutt Space, under tight security, the Kajidics gathered again. This time, with more urgency. A new data leak had emerged—traced to a spy aboard the Hutt observer relay during the Velis-Ka massacre. The spy had sold the data to a rival Kajidic in exchange for transit and credits. The betrayal sparked multiple assassinations. Three Hutts died in a single hour.
No more speculation.
Now there was confirmation.
And no more room for pride.
"We will not provoke them," Borga said, slicing his fat hand through the air. "We still do not know where they are, or how many of them there are and their full capability"
"But we must know them," hissed Volo Besadii. "How far they reach. What they want. Who commands them."
"They want vengeance," Borga replied, "and they don't care if it costs them credits, ships, or lives."
One Nikto leaned in. "Then how do we profit?"
"We wait," Borga whispered. "We sell what we know. To those who will fear them more, like the Zyggerians who recently have been getting shot out of space left and right by them." He gave a disgusting smile. "Of course, for the right price."
And so the orders were given:
Do not engage Dominion ships
Do not sell Terran slaves openly
Do not trade in systems adjacent to the Velis-Ka Graveward
The Kajidics, while vile and brutal, were not stupid, they knew when to push and when to pull. They will wait for an opportunity, even if they have to wait decades, skilled and powerful Hutts have long lives.
In the shadows of their empires, the slavers were sent into a buying frenzy, all ships, all mercenaries, all weapons were bought or stolen.
Four months after the Velis-Ka operation
Location: Dromund Kaas – Imperial Intelligence Complex, Western Spire Sublevel
The chamber was dark and angular, buried deep beneath the Kaas Citadel, lit only by recessed crimson lights and the shifting projections of galactic star maps. Each hologram bled static where once there were known Crimson Maw strongholds, Zyggerian depots, or slave trade beacons. Now those markers were overwritten by a single, emerging pattern: blacked-out systems, scorched worlds, and silence.
Commander Varix Drel stood beside the primary war table, the datafeed branching out into six holopanels. Opposite him, observing with a stern detachment, was Lord Kareth—a rising figure within the Sphere of Military Offense, known more for precision than fire.
"The pattern is no longer isolated," Drel began, gesturing toward the fringe sectors bordering former Maw-controlled space. "What began with Velis-Ka has expanded to thirteen confirmed locations—asteroid outposts, prison moons, slaver spires. Each obliterated with military efficiency. No occupation. No communication. Just devastation."
Kareth's gaze flicked toward one pulsing icon—formerly a Zyggerian transit hub. Now simply marked with a skull.
"And this force—'Terra'—still has not made contact?"
"None. They leave no ambassador, no emissary, no demand for tribute. Not even force forsaken notes." His voice was somewhat intrigued.
Drel paused, adjusting the encryption key on the next holopanel. "We intercepted this from a scrambled, short-range transmission relayed between two Terran ships. It wasn't meant for external broadcast—military-grade encoding, likely a fleet-level priority order."
He keyed the file. The chamber went still.
A clipped voice played through the speakers, low but laced with seething venom, the translation modules working perfectly.
"Taggart to all fleet commands in zone—
Zyggerian personnel found on Platform Kresh-2 and freighter Helix Nine are to be executed upon confirmation of identity.
No detainment. No quarter.
They sold Terran lives into chains and laughed as our cities burned.
Now they answer for it."
The silence that followed was deafening.
Varix Drel looked to Kareth. "There was no hesitation in the follow-up logs. Orders carried out within the hour. Shot on the decks or spaced."
Kareth didn't blink. "That isn't diplomacy. That's retaliation."
Drel nodded once. "And it's being carried out without hesitation. They prioritize human captives—especially Terran origin—but have also released thousands of non-human slaves. Many Zyggerian outposts were taken without warning. Entire stations emptied, their databanks scrubbed. They're hunting anyone tied to the trade networks. Efficiently and brutally."
Kareth turned away from the projection.
"Have we confirmed the extent of their fleet?"
"Minimal in number, but severe in performance. Primary vessels run hybrid tech—some reverse-engineered from Crimson remnants, others purpose-built. Their carriers are kilometers in length, able to deploy entire battlegroups in-system. Railgun spinal cannons. Modular shielding. Their fighters use both blaster and ballistic weaponry—unusual for humans, but effective. And they've started fielding prototype stealth ships." He paused before answering. "All data we have of them is when they go up against small outposts and old slaver ships, If they go up against our or Republic standard fleet they might have been decimated, their shielding is old tech same with most of their weapons. However their ballistic weapons are something we have never seen and pose a significant threat especially the big railguns on the front of the carriers. Their ground capability is unknown."
"Command structure?"
"Unknown. But the same voice appears repeatedly in transmissions. Taggart is not ceremonial. He gives orders and watches them carried out. Intelligence suggests authoritarian central command, with no known alien advisors."
Kareth moved toward the sealed lift doors at the rear of the chamber.
"I'll take this to the Council."
One hour later – Kaas Citadel, Dark Council Assembly Hall
The chamber was vast, flanked by spires of burning crimson light and lined with ancient Sith statues. The full Council was not present—only those of Military Offense, Intelligence, Expansion, and two silent observers, identities cloaked in the force.
Kareth stood at the center ring, the glowing sector maps illuminating the devastation at the edge of the known galaxy.
"The Crimson Maw is no more," he said flatly. "The Zyggerian syndicates are collapsing. Not from our hand—but from an unknown human force, calling itself the Terran Dominion."
He let the words hang.
Darth Anoveth, head of Intelligence, responded first.
"No claim? No ideology?"
"They make no demands," Kareth said. "Just precise annihilation. Their actions suggest vengeance. Possibly cultural trauma. Their weaponry, tactics, and infrastructure suggest rapid militarization. Industrial growth on par with the middle of small galactic states, rapidly rising, focused on strike capability."
Darth Quorrel, representing Military Offense, spoke next.
"Do we know where they originate?"
"Outer northeast—past the Zyggerian frontier. Likely from the Wild Space corridor or beyond the Uncharted Reaches. Their entry vector suggests they did not emerge from within the known galaxy."
Anoveth frowned. "Yet they have our language, albeit and old dialect. Human biology. Some of their recovered transmissions talk about torture and execution of slavers as if they are a Sith interogator, but their doctrine—"
"—is something else," Kareth finished. "They are not aligned with the Republic, or the Sith. They reject contact. They kill with no hesitation. And they have left no survivors among slaver fleets with signs of visable torture."
Quorrel's eyes narrowed.
"Have we seen enough to mark them hostile?"
"No," Kareth replied. "Not yet. They have not crossed into Imperial jurisdiction. But they are expanding. Probably terraforming their nearby systems. Monitoring fringe hyperspace lanes. And building."
Darth Valken, overseeing Expansion and Colonization, spoke at last.
"Observation only. No probes. No infiltration. Watch them from a distance. They clearly distrust aliens. The moment they detect us, they may react... poorly."
"And if they turn inward?" Anoveth asked. "If they reach the Stygian Caldera?"
"Then," Kareth said, "we will do what the Sith have always done. We will adapt. And crush."
Elsewhere in the Citadel, a silent datavault deep within the Intelligence Nexus archived the cracked audio recording—Taggart's voice, sealed under high encryption.
No official Imperial response would be sent.
But a new file was created that day within the Dark Council's Black Dossier.
Project OBSIDIAN
Status: Passive Monitoring
Target: Terra Dominion
Classification: Unaligned Human Civilization
Threat Assessment: Rising
Do Not Engage
If Presented a chance, establish contact.
Location: Coruscant – Republic Senate Rotunda, High Intelligence Briefing
A storm of muted holoscreens glowed against the circular briefing chamber within the Intelligence Wing of the Republic Senate.
Within the chamber, a closed-door briefing was underway. Present were key members of the Republic Security Council, several Senators from the Outer Rim Oversight Committee, and representatives from the Strategic Information Service (SIS).
Floating at the center of the room was the intercepted audio—an encrypted military exchange between Terran vessels, cracked with effort by SIS black ops. Though short, the voice was clear and irrefutable:
"Taggart to all fleet commands in zone—
Zyggerian personnel found on Platform Kresh-2 and freighter Helix Nine are to be executed upon confirmation of identity.
No detainment. No quarter.
They sold Terran lives into chains and laughed as our cities burned.
Now they answer for it."
The transmission ended.
Silence lingered.
Then came the voice of Senator Alren Velso, representative of Chandrila and a senior figure in interstellar humanitarian law.
"This is a human-led force. No doubt remains. And they've launched what can only be described as retaliatory crusades—without warning, without dialogue. This—" he gestured toward the holo "—this is barbarism."
From across the chamber, Director Calien Nivon of the SIS folded his hands.
"Perhaps. But the targets were criminal slaver outposts and Maw remnants. No formal worlds. No established Republic contacts. And they haven't struck civilian infrastructure or made territorial claims."
Another senator, Leia Marris of the Meridell Sector, shook her head.
"They executed prisoners. That cannot be brushed aside."
Nivon nodded. "Noted. But understand: their broadcasts show clear trauma responses. They were likely raided themselves—maybe enslaved, for how long we dont know or what toll it caused on their peoples. What we're seeing is vengeance, not conquest. Dangerous? Yes. But targeted. So far."
Velso scoffed. "And when their scope widens?"
The briefing continued for another hour. Footage from after-action reports—grainy sensor feeds of Terran drop pods descending onto slaver moons, burning structures, and liberated prisoners—flickered onscreen. In some, Zyggerian crews were rounded up. In others, ships exploded mid-dock, clearly sabotaged from within.
A pattern had formed. One no longer isolated to Wild Space.
Later – Office of Chancellor Lira Thalis
Private Consultation
The Chancellor sat before a transparent steel window, hands clasped before her chin. Across from her stood Director Nivon, looking equally unsettled and intrigued.
"They've made no contact?" she asked quietly.
"None. They avoid comms. Evade probes. Even captured civilians speak of Earth—or Terra—as a world somewhere beyond even Wild Space, possibly uncharted."
"Yet they speak an old dialect of Basic."
"They are human."
Thalis exhaled. "That transmission, Nivon. That man—Taggart. His tone. That's not a military broadcast. That's an executioner reading scripture."
Nivon nodded once. "But only to slavers."
Chancellor Thalis turned to the starlines above the skyline.
"Continue monitoring. No diplomatic overture yet. But prepare a formal communique. If they expand further, we will need more than intelligence briefings. We'll need answers."
"And what if they refuse diplomacy?"
Thalis's gaze hardened.
"Then we'll have to decide whether to tolerate a scarred neighbor—or confront a rising empire."
2 weeks after the Republic Intelligence Meeting
The leak did not come through official channels.
Two weeks after the Republic Intelligence Directorate's initial assessment of the Dominion threat, an encrypted file appeared across several neutral space information hubs—pirate nodes, rogue relay stations, and third-tier slicer markets. It was quickly traced to a fragmented transmission—once carried aboard a disabled slaver relay drone recovered near the edge of Hutt space. The origin? Terran fleet coordination.
Sliced open by a freelance technician—likely unaware of what they'd uncovered—it took only hours for Republic analysts to confirm its authenticity.
The voice was unmistakable.
"Taggart to all fleet commands in zone—
Zyggerian personnel found on Platform Kresh-2 and freighter Helix Nine are to be executed upon confirmation of identity.
No detainment. No quarter.
They sold Terran lives into chains and laughed as our cities burned.
Now they answer for it."
There was no stammer, no rage, just a razor clarity. No one spoke in return on the channel. They didn't need to.
Shortly after the file surfaced, a second, more disturbing data fragment emerged.
It was a hallway security cam footage—uncoded, partially degraded, timestamped just days after the final battle at the Crimson Maw stronghold. Unlike the precision of the earlier strike footage, this was unfiltered, raw, and painful in its humanity.
The video showed a Terran marine, no older than sixteen, standing alone in a ruined corridor littered with scorch marks and bodies of the slavers and allies,the remnants of a battle with a slave convoy. He was dressed in standard Dominion armor, The armor is bulky and angular, forged in a matte dark gunmetal-gray, the kind that seems to swallow light in dim corridors. Its surface is broken by sharp ridges and reinforced plating that gives it a blocky, no-nonsense silhouette—like a human tank carved for urban warzones and orbital sieges.
Crimson trim runs along the shoulder plates and down the outer arms, flanking a broad chest plate stamped with the Terran sigil: a six-sided shield with gold filigree, protecting a lone star embedded near the heart. Across the back, a small power spine hums softly—housing backup energy cells and cooling vents that hiss faintly with steam during exertion.
The helmet is fully sealed, shaped like a narrow, intimidating wedge. A single gold-tinted visor slit wraps around the front like a predator's glare, with no visible eyes behind it—just the unreadable glow of a mirrored lens. On either side of the helmet, recessed comm ports and filtered vents give it a utilitarian, oppressive edge. Some units bear painted unit insignia or tally marks scratched into the plating.
The arms and legs are covered in segmented armored greaves, with layered knee and elbow guards over a pressure-sealed bodysuit of textured black fiber. Every motion gives the impression of controlled weight—like a walking weapon, compact and cold.
Boots are heavy, magnet-capable, and built to grip anything—soil, steel, or debris. Holsters and hardpoints across the hips and thighs carry compact munitions, blades, and utility kits. On the battlefield, Dominion infantry look less like soldiers and more like executioners from a war-fueled future—faceless, silent, and mercilessly efficient. Though the plating on his shoulder was dented, the helmet latch loosened and probably cracked if the bloody gash on his young face is anything to go by. His rifle, unfamiliar to the watchers, was gripped tight to his chest, his breathing ragged, fast.
An alien approached him—non-threatening, hands raised, no weapon in sight. A weequay his clothes were torn, one eye swollen shut. His gait was slow, unsure. A survivor.
The marine backed up two steps, nearly tripping on a slaver's body. His rifle raised out of instinct, eyes wide. He didn't fire—but didn't speak either. His lips trembled, jaw locked in a mix of fear and desperation. His body was frozen—not from indecision, but from pure conditioned terror.
From somewhere offscreen, a voice called to him.
"They're unarmed. Stand down."
"I—I wasn't gonna shoot."
"Yeah right, one more step and you would have unloaded the mag kid."
The clip ended there.
Republic analysts would later uncover more videos, from camera feeds from recovered slave ships and outposts—brief scenes of Terran troops helping wounded Twi'leks onto makeshift shuttles, patching up human and near-human children alike, even providing food to emaciated civilians. But these moments were undercut by others—where Terran medics hesitated before treating non-humans, where officers double-checked identities and kept weapons at the ready even when facing the helpless.
On some feeds, survivors could be heard whispering about the Terrans as "cold liberators." Grateful, yes—but watched. Always watched.
Location: Mandalore – Fortress-Kra'tal, Sundari Region
It was not the galaxy's screaming governments or panicked merchants that drew the Mandalorians' attention.
It was the footage. Not the politics, not the speeches. Just the clean, brutal execution of war, something Mandalorians are known to do regularly.
From high atop the basalt terraces of Fortress-Kra'tal, the warlords of Mandalore watched the footage play across a holoscreen in the main hall—a stolen transmission, replayed without commentary. Crimson Maw ships being shredded by precise orbital fire. Dropships descending under covering salvos. Ground teams pushing through entrenched slavers with cold coordination. Prisoners executed without hesitation. Orders delivered in tight, calm voices.
The room remained silent as the images played. Most of the Mandalorians wore their armor, even in council—iron-gray, hunter-black, storm-blue. No one removed their helmets.
At the center, seated on a throne of forged durasteel and carved stone, sat Mandalore the Resolute—the current ruler of the clans. Older than most, scarred from dozens of campaigns, his armor bore the history of generations. Beside him, lieutenants from House Ordo, House Vizsla, and newer bloodlines stood quietly, arms crossed or resting on the hilts of vibroblades.
When the holovid ended, no one spoke at first.
Then Mandalore leaned forward slightly, voice slow, voice filtered through the vocoder of his helmet.
"They fight like they've bled. Not for honor. Not for conquest. Just to erase weakness, even if they are working with literal scrap, I recon for them the technology is their current pinnacle."
Alor Jek Haran of Clan Ordo spoke next, shifting slightly in his stance. "They show no ceremony. No battle cry. Not even trophies. They kill to erase the stain, not to celebrate it and profit from it."
"That," said Alor Kressa Vorn of Clan Betna, "makes them dangerous."
Another stepped forward—Alor Neral Vizsla, her visor gleaming red in the dim light. "We've hunted the Maw ourselves, 3rd rate at best, cowards who ran at the first sight of our ships. Never saw them fall that fast. Not without a Beskar fist behind it."
Mandalore nodded once.
"They've tempered themselves in the crucible. Made a single blade from a shattered people. That makes them kin to us—once."
"But they are not like us," growled Jek Haran.
"No," Mandalore agreed. "They kill to cleanse. We kill to grow."
He rose then, the room falling into full attention.
"Mark them. Watch them. But do not dismiss them as children or prey. If they come to fight us, we will teach them what it means to stand against iron. But if they fight to remove the rot from the stars, then perhaps…"
A pause.
"…perhaps they are not enemies."
There was no vote. Mandalorians did not debate like senators.
They recorded names. Watched battles. And remembered.
At that moment, across the scattered worlds of Mandalorian space—from the domed cities of Concordia to the deep forests of Dxun—warbands began uploading footage, analyzing weapons, tactics, squad formations. Armorers crafted test replicas of the Terran infantry loadouts. Trainers studied their doctrine. Hunters watched their eyes in helmet feeds.
Not to mimic.
To measure.
Because if the Terrans were coming, the Mandalorians would be ready—not with fear, but with blade and fire.
And if the Terrans were worthy of challenge?
Then they would be welcomed, one day, into the only court Mandalorians respected:
The battlefield.