This facility contained enough hypermatter to keep the entire Trade Federation fleet fueled for the next three months, almost a trillion tons of it. Now all of that power was just awaiting a spark.
...
Tan'ya checked her chronometer, confirming they had about an hour until the staff of the facility were due to start arriving at work.
Reaching up to her com-beed, Tan'ya pressed it three times, letting her men know it was now time to move to phase three of the plan.
As they converged on the landing pad, Tan'ya and her six House Guards. They climbed up the steps into the smuggler's nondescript cargo freighter, as he watched nervously.
"I, uh… I-"
"Be quiet." Tan'ya told him, as she slid into the pilot's chair. She quickly ran the ship through its start up procedures, and without hesitating or waiting took off. The planet's flight authorities immediately picked up on her ascent without a flight path, and shot her several warning messages.
"We'll get boarded!" The smuggler moaned, fearfully.
The freighter was just leaving the planet's atmosphere when two of the port's patrol vessels began to tail them. They repeatedly broadcasted demands and warnings that Tan'ya allow herself to be boarded, or they would ionize her ship. Ion weapons were a real threat, frying a ship's electronics, and crippling it, but not harming anyone inside. Even if they weren't to be blasted out of the sky, Tan'ya had no intention of falling into enemy hands.
She quickly typed up and sent a message from her holocom, then Phase 4 of the plan began.
A Lucrehulk waiting just beyond the edge of the Nonadon System was propelled into hyperspace, and left it almost immediately after as it raced towards the planet. The communications channel of the freighter was suddenly flooded with panicked calls, demanding the crew of the Lucrehulk respond, but no answer was received. As it passed, the two patrol ships fired on it, desperate to stop its descent, but lacking the firepower to do so in time.
Without waiting to see the results of her actions, Tan'ya accelerated towards the edge of the Star System, running hyperspace calculations as she did. Behind her, the descending Lucrehulk crashed into the hypermatter depot, and suddenly there was a blinding flash of white. Tan'ya and her men wore helmets, with light shielding, they winced slightly at the surge but were fine, but the Zabrak pilot cried out in pain, and fell to the floor in panic, covering his eyes with reflex.
He wasn't the only one. Tan'ya had to close herself off from the Force to drown out the waves of fear and pain rolling off the planet below. Bonadon wasn't a densely populated world, but the strategic reserve was planted right next to a company town that held tens of thousands. Even miners working thousands of kilometers away from the source of the explosion would have felt the ground shake and seen the blinding flash.
The men she was with felt nothing but elation at victory, and had no remorse even for the alien in their midst, even as he was crying out in pain and begging for help. They were chosen for that reason. They were the most loyal to Serenno in all the House Guard, the ones whose hatred of the alien was strongest. When they thought of a million alien lives on Bonadon, suffering and dying from radiation poisoning, they only considered it a punishment well earned.
Tan'ya swallowed, ignoring the sick feeling in her stomach. Now was not the time to be overcome by princessly squeamishness, they still had to make good their escape. No matter what else could be said, their actions today made victory against the Trade Federation possible.
No fuel, no fleet. It was that simple. With the Alliance controlling the Hydian and the Salzin Corridor, the Trade Federation wouldn't be able to import nearly enough starship fuel. With their strategic reserves destroyed, all Federation fleets now operated on borrowed time.
It was a great and necessary victory, but before her ship accelerated to hyperspace, Tan'ya couldn't help one glance back at the planet as it shrunk in the nav display, and the great black dust cloud that now rolled across its surface in a radioactive sand storm. People not caught directly in the blast could still survive. She had to remind herself that there were treatments for radiation in this Galaxy.
But we'll be blockading those, too.
Her transponder lit up with dozens of Federation patrol vessels, mostly light freighters, but also a pair of Lucrehulks, demanding she slow down and return for questioning. Rather than reply, she accelerated to hyperspace.
It was obvious where she was going, straight down the Hydian, and she did it that way for a reason. "Everybody buckle up!" She ordered. "Interdictor will be coming up in ten minutes!"
All her men sat down and strapped in, but the smuggler was still blinded and confused. "Who are you people?! Why are you doing this?!"
"We're part of the Alliance, and we've commandeered your ship." Tan'ya answered, then used the Force to direct him to one of the seats with. "Can you buckle yourself in?"
The poor zabrak whimpered, but did as instructed. He fumbled with the belts, but managed to get himself tied down after a few false starts.
"Sound off, anyone else injured?"
None of the House Guard replied.
"Alright. You, civilian."
"Me?" The smuggler said.
"That's right. We're going to be entering into combat soon, and potentially taking evasive action. Remain in your seat, the last thing we want is an unsecured body bouncing about the cabin."
"Combat?!" The smuggler moaned, and pressed his head into his hands.
The drop from Hyperspace to real space was a sudden lurch that pitched Tan'ya's stomach forward, much more harshly than a normal hyperspace deceleration would. Behind her the zabrak puked, and Tan'ya had to grit her teeth in frustration as the smell hit her nose.
In front of her, the Serenno House Fleet was arrayed, along with five Lucrehulks. Of the six that had been captured, one of them had been used at Bonadon, leaving just these five. It wasn't possible to really crew or maintain the battleships without access to Federation factories and the particular variety of parts they produced exclusively, but it was still possible to pilot and direct them due to their extremely automated nature.
To keep crew salaries low, Federation ships had an incredibly small bridge crew, with the vast majority of the ship's systems being automated by droids. That made it possible for the Alliance to put them to good use, after the droids were reprogrammed.
The Fleet was arrayed just beyond the edge of Federation space, at the furthest edge of the Cadomai Sector from the planet itself. It was only a thirty minute jump down the Hydian from Bonadon, and it was mere moments after Tan'ya arrived that Asajj reached out to her.
In her mind's eye, Tan'ya pictured two Lucrehulks giving chase. That was what had been in the system above Bonadon, and that was what was chasing her now.
Soon enough, the two Federation Patrol Fleet Lucrehulks ran into the interdiction field, and were dragged back to real space just in time to realise their own doomed fate. Accelerating to their top speeds, two of the Serenno fleet's captured Lucrehulks bore down on them like a pair of unstoppable asteroids, throwing aside all laser fire thanks to their powerful shields.
Like two interlocking chain links, both pairs of lucrehulks fit perfectly into each other's C-shaped curve, until their large, exposed engine core mashed into each other, and were crushed by each other's weight before exploding violently. Both the captured Lucrehulks and the Federation Lucrehulks were destroyed in an instant, throwing the eight smaller ships that remained of the enemy fleet into disarray.
...
Apparently, chapters write themselves faster when Power Stones are involved. Who knew? Feel free to test the theory go ahead, toss a few my way.
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