The Force Wills - Chapter 85 (Patreon)

Surviving in a constant underwater environment was not easy for us landlubbers.

Every Devilfish sub had most of its mass dedicated to life support systems and each could practically sustain three squads of troopers with oxygen generation. They also contained supplemental food rations, which was another complication. These had to be capable of being squeezed through a tube, which was inserted into a dedicated port in every SCUBA trooper’s helmet. The trooper armor also had special accommodation for waste disposal, which was connected to a specialized port on the Devilfish to be drained, where it was disintegrated.

The one thing that hadn’t really been planned for was being able to get some rack time. Often troopers had to sleep out in the field away from forward operating bases, but here you had the problem of a rather noisy oxygen regulator and the rumble of bubbles escaping with every breath you took. Falling asleep with that constantly in your eardrums was not easy for anyone.

As a Jedi, I had the internal control to dissociate my hearing, but for a togruta that was viscerally uncomfortable. Even though I had plenty of practice with deafness from when my montrals had been injured, it was not an experience I wanted to inflict on myself via the Force.

Relief did come for us thanks to Administrator Pombe and the fact that the mon cala had to actually test and rate their ships to operate in atmospheric environments common to all land walkers. The very manufacturing building they had fortified had a giant test chamber inside, which could generate a variety of environments on command. Furthermore, as luck would have it, there had been a modular passenger ship inside the chamber undergoing testing when the war broke out.

It only had a bunkerage capacity of three hundred, but it did allow us to organize sleeping shifts where the SCUBA troopers could get out of their suits and sleep in a more natural environment. The Refresher systems were unfortunately not installed yet in the ship, so that still had to be handled by the subs.

Chewie and Padme were sent off to get some rest immediately by Anakin, whilst both he and I toughed it out to wait a further six hours for the second rotation shift.

In the meantime, we along with Senator Tills, Ackbar and Prince Lee-Char met with Pombe, her secretary and a dozen shipyard engineers and scientists in a conference room on one of the highest levels of the building.

The administrator had the rarest form of pigmentation among the mon cala; pale green with camouflage type streaks, whilst also being short, barely reaching 1.6 meters. She complemented this with a strappy red outfit, that had it been on a human woman would be quite risqué, but was par for the course in semi-formal mon cala fashion.

Introductions were made all round but Pombe immediately got down to business after she gave a perfunctory bow to the prince. It didn’t seem to me she was much of a monarchist. There were also five quarren among the engineers. I could sense they were angry, weary and sadness hung on them like a heavy cloak. Clearly demonstrating that the League didn’t speak for every quarren on the planet, especially among those whose profession required rational scientific thought.

“Thank you for relieving the siege on this building,” she said with a nod. Her blue eyes gave the prince a brief look, “Those League worms might have fled and thrown down their arms, but this shipyard is filled with many items, technology and combustibles that can be used to hurt us badly.”

“We have established a proper perimeter, administrator,” Anakin retorted.

“I’m aware,” she said dryly. “Those traitors I’m ashamed to say were very clever engineers under my supervision and your troops must not hesitate on the triggers when they come back.”

“I’ll spread the word.”

“Good, now what plans are there for getting us all out of this mess?” Anakin gave me a pointed look. “Please tell me there is one,” she said with exasperation.

I spread my senses fully into the room around me, putting everyone under the equivalent of a fine tooth comb through the Force.

Immediately I felt something rather alarming; one of the mon cala engineers, a male with silvery skin, standing across from the table was boiling with emotions and intent, clearly psyching himself up for something. He was incredibly nervous and angry. Technometry also showed he was carrying a compact, high energy source. Clearly he was armed, but so was everyone in the room at this point, even Senator Tills had a hold-out blaster. He was rigidly keeping his intent focused on the wall behind the administrator.

His heart was racing.

The mon cala engineer whirled bringing up a small blaster, aiming in a flash at Lee-Char.

“For Freedom!” he shouted and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened and he looked down at his blaster stupidly.

Ackbar had his own spear blaster up in an impressively quick move for someone still injured and fired at the traitor.

Nothing happened and it was Ackbar’s turn to growl at his gun.

Everyone else in the room dove for the floor, whilst Senator Tills also tried to bring her blaster on to bear on the traitor.

“Enough!” Anakin shouted, his voice pulsing with the Force to make everyone hesitate for a second in their next action.

I raised my hand and every weapon in the room, shot up against the ceiling.

Anakin raised his own hand and threw his version of the Force Stasis against the would-be assassin.

For a few seconds everyone was dead still until Ackbar swam to the door and called for two knights.

Pombe raised herself to a standing level with a pull of her hands and her mouth scowled at the assassin. “Ruhab! You insane glottlefish! What could possibly possess you to try that?”

Anakin shook his head, “He can’t answer, I’m restraining him completely. Just in case he tries to commit suicide in some manner. Ahsoka, can you Sleep him?”

“Mon cala brain is a bit too different, I’m not comfortable trying it without possibly killing him.”

“By the Daca, he’s not some criminal fiend or assassin, I know him! He’s one of the best sublight drive engineers I have.”

“I’m sorry, but we can’t take that chance. Ahsoka…”

I pulled out a DC-15S sidearm blaster from the pouch in the small of my back, flicked it onto the stun setting and shot the hapless assassin.

“Thank you,” Anakin relaxed the Stasis and let Ruhab float freely.

The knights grabbed him by the arms and swam out of the room quickly.

Pombe practically facepalmed as the others in the room floated back to standing positions, “I don’t understand. He had the prince dead to rights, thank goodness his blaster was faulty.”

“I doubt that,” Ackbar grumbled. “The chances of my weapon also being faulty beggars belief. Commander Tano, do we have you to thank for that?”

I nodded and let everyone’s weapons float back down from the ceiling. “He needs to be interrogated. We must know if he was acting out of his own will. That can’t happen if he’s dead. No race acts in unison, there are always outliers and individuals, but the fact that a mon cala that just tried to assassinate his monarch out of the blue, when Administrator Pombe professed disbelief that he’d ever do such a thing… That strikes me as very suspicious and points to brainwashing.”

“We’ll certainly be scanning for that,” Ackbar folded his arms. “Are you all right, your highness?”

Lee-Char nodded and waved off the concern, “I’ve just come through two battles, captain.”

“That is the battlefield, highness. An assassin and a mon cala at that, just tried to kill you in person. That is personal and it can rattle even the most stout of heart.”

I could sense the prince was certainly feeling quite unsettled and his nerves were giving him minor tremors in his right hand.

“I’ll be alright, captain. Let’s get on with our business. Clearly the assassin was also put here to disrupt us and our planning.”

“That’ll certainly do it, they’ve certainly sown a seed of doubt in who we can trust,” Pombe grumbled. “Now tell me, how are we getting back the capital?”

“We must first devise a solution for the karkarodon cyborg jellyfish that is swarming the capital,” I said, swimming forward and slotting in a data chit from my armor to a holoprojector on the central table.

A high resolution scan shimmered into being.

The shipyard engineers leaned closer with interest and digested all the annotations that M8 had made about it.

“How did you get such scans? Remarkable detail,” Pombe asked, who looked rather fascinated despite herself.

“My armor can also be said to be a class one archeological droid, from a certain point of view,” I said with a grin. “M8’s been hard at work analyzing things, but devising how to counter the shields will require professionals.”

“These are not just shields,” said a quarren engineer, pointing at the tentacles hanging below. “They visibly function as such, but your droid indicates that when shot the effect on them is different, the resisted energy isn’t radiated at all. It has to go somewhere… It literally absorbs blaster shots?”

“What form of shield could possibly do that?” asked a mon cala scientist. “A shield based on deflector principles doesn’t act like this.”

“An entirely novel particle could be in use here, a whole new technology.”

“Possibly, but let’s stick to the practical,” Anakin said. “The energy is being pulled in, what next?”

“Storing it, no, no, first converting it.” The quarren’s tentacles quivered with excitement. “Plasma and magnetic converters, perhaps it's then turned to help further power the shield itself and the cyborg jellyfish’s systems.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” disagreed another scientist with a pompous scoff.

“Are you blind? Look at the data!”

“I am not blind, it’s just premature to make such speculation until we can conclusively determine the particle or waveform being used by this shield.”

“We don’t have years for you to write a Coruscant Prize worthy dissertation-”

“Enough,” Pombe snapped, slamming her hand onto the table. “Your typical ice-lobster behavior is not going to cut it, not today. We need a practical solution that we can put into the hands of the troops or mount onto a sub as soon as possible.”

“You might as well be asking for us to reinvent the Kwa Infinity Gates.”

“There you go again, overblowing things as usual.”

I tuned out the ensuing argument at that point and swam away to a corner of the room, bringing up M8s scans for myself in my HUD to review.

These shields had a nasty resemblance to another cybernetic species I knew from another universe. I doubted that these jellyfish cyborgs could truly ‘adapt’, since they didn’t have mind boggling computational resources linked via subspace behind them, nor that these shields were that dynamic. It just so happened that they were designed to hoover in the types of energy that were most commonly used by the galaxy in terms of weapons.

Types of energy.

I rushed forward and by this point the eggheads in the room had clustered into distinct cliques that were brainstorming and arguing around hand held holos.

The din in the room was quite considerable and I wished I could properly whistle.

I could do the next best thing in this environment.

Between my hands I Pushed the water away from a singular point, until I had a vacuum sphere the size of a football.

I let go and the thump of water radiated out into the room and gave everyone the mildest of pushes. It did the job of getting the eggheads to pay attention at least.

“Now that I have your attention, instead of arguing minutia, think of these things as sea sponges. Now we just have to give it something that it can’t absorb or if it tried, it would end up being destroyed,” I said to the whole room.

“Ion?” asked a quarren scientist into the silence.

“Too commonly used,” I shook my head. “It needs to be exotic.”

“Anyon particle?”

Pombe laughed in derision, “Oh, now you want us to build disintegrators?”

“Could you?” I asked in turn.

“Never mind the illegality of it, we’d need to build them rather big to have any effect on the enemy. It’d take at least a day to build one, since we’d be working by hand and fabricator droid. Retooling a production line would also take too long.”

“Breaking Republic law is a decision that can only be made by the prince,” Ackbar said sternly. “If we build and use disintegrators, it is he who would have to answer before the Senate.”

“Given we have two officers of the GAR here, who are seemingly making the suggestion,” Tills gestured to me and Anakin. “Will you also stand before a Senate judicial committee if it comes down to it?”

‘Skyguy?’ I thought to him.

‘I really hate those weapons, Snips.’

‘I don’t like them either, let’s at least make them a last resort?’

Anakin nodded at Tills, “Yes, but we’ll use them only when no other options are possible. I have a feeling the solution is in hand, but we’re just not seeing it.”

Pombe looked to one of the engineering groups, “Iheb, take your department and begin work on it immediately.”

The mon cala in question nodded, before he and two others swam out of the room.

“Now, more ideas people, I want to give these monstrosities explosive indigestion! Think!”

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A knock on my cabin door disturbed me out of my sleep. I rolled over on the comfy bed and just wished I could tell the galaxy to frak off.

Another knock and the door chime followed.

“Yes, yes, I’m coming,” I grumbled, a quick look at my chrono told me I’d only managed five hours of sleep.

I only had panties and a boob tube for sleeping wear, so I wasn’t exactly presentable. A quick burst of my senses told me Anakin was still asleep in the room to my right, Chewbacca was in the opposite room and my visitor…

I walked forward and thumbed the controls to let the door swish open.

“Your highness,” I bowed my head briefly to Lee-Char. “How can I help?”

“Sorry for interrupting your sleep, I barely got any myself,” he looked as embarrassed as a mon cala could. His emotions were a tight ball of anger and despair. “I just need to talk to someone who isn’t looking to me for…”

“All the answers and won’t judge you?” I asked lightly with a smile.

“Something like that,” he admitted.

“Ackbar is a knight captain, military, not exactly someone who can be an advisor for everything to you, Senator Tills expects a miracle from you just because you now technically wear the crown,” I surmised for him, then stepped aside to let him walk in.

“Yes, thank you.” I closed the door and sat down on the bed, whilst Lee-Char found a chair. He looked around the cabin with a wry smile. “You know I think this is only the third time in my life I’ve been in a non-aquatic space.”

“You seem to handle it very well,” I complimented.

He chuckled, “You didn’t see me at the airlock, I fell right onto my face. I last had familiarization training over two years ago.”

“Your duo of knight bodyguards down the hall will have an interesting story to tell when they retire,” I teased him.

“I’ll swear them to secrecy on pain of death,” he said mock-severely.

I laughed, “Now what can I help you with, your highness?”

His mood fell again, reaching into a pocket of his royal uniform to produce a small holo emitter. A tap brought up a screen that showed what looked like a reconnaissance video. A long line of tiny figures backlit by the darkening waters as dusk approached.

“Scouts are keeping an eye on the capital, they spotted this.”

The view zoomed in further and it showed mon cala bound around the wrists, with collars around the neck, being escorted out of the city by armed League quarren and the occasional aqua droid.

“Where are they being taken?”

“Towards the League base, the CIS Trident ships are there decloaked and waiting.”

“How old is this intel?”

“Four hours.”

Now I saw the problem. “They’re enslaving the people of the capital, they’ll likely take a fair number offworld before we can launch our counter-attack.”

“Exactly!” He stood up and awkwardly began pacing, still clearly struggling to find his land legs. “Yet here I am, their prince, safe, free, whilst entire families are broken apart or being lost to that devilsquid Dooku!”

“Until we counter their karkarodon weapon it will be pointless to attack, highness.”

“I checked in with the teams working on the problem, they’re still just arguing in circles. Every solution they devise is either impractical or there is just no time to implement. I’m very close to ordering them to ignore everything else, build disruptor cannons and strap them onto every sub we have.”

“We very recently had to make use of Tenloss disruptor weapons to survive a trandoshan attack in Kashyyyk. The difference was that the weapons were enemy salvage and it was asymmetric warfare.”

Lee-Char’s eyes stared at me in confusion, “Asymmetric?”

“Warfare when a weaker opponent uses unconventional strategies and tactics against a superior foe. We had to make use of whatever was on hand to survive.”

“And this doesn’t apply? My people are being enslaved, many knights and your troops have died against a superior technology that hasn’t been seen before.”

I hated this.

This kind of dilemma was exactly what Palpatine wanted. Compromising principles and law in the face of death, suffering and annihilation. How many times would we walk this slippery slope? If we excuse the small things, then it would become easier and easier to justify reaching for the unthinkable things, all in the name of survival. Disintegration tech was what I knew we would need in large numbers to fight and survive in the future against the Vong. Setting the mon cala on the path to integrate it into their future ships…

The price for this was now right in front of me.

“When all our troops are rested and fed, I will call Master Koon.”

“Are you bringing in more of them? I thought you were struggling to equip them for underwater combat.”

“Yes, but we’re not calling in more clones. The CIS has shown their hand at this point, I think it’s time we called in our Idiot’s Array.”

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“All right, we’re all here Ahsoka, what’s the rush?” Anakin asked.

“Yes, we’ve barely finished mounting the single disruptor cannon onto one of your Devilfish subs, you’ll get maybe two shots off before every enemy swarms the thing and destroys it,” Pombe said. “It’s a miracle we even managed that-”

“The longer we delay, the more people are marched into slavery-”

“And that’s horrible, yes,” Anakin agreed. “But we’ll achieve nothing if we can’t make a scratch against the-”

I held up a hand, “Naboo plasma.”

Anakin frowned and shared a look with Padme, who was floating next to him in the conference room.

“What about it, Ahsoka?” she asked.

“It’s unique in the galaxy as far as we know, a regenerating resource in the porous crust of Naboo, used in many applications - including the blaster on your hip.”

“Wait, are you suggesting that the karkarodon cyborgs can’t absorb Naboo plasma?” Pombe asked.

“I shot at them as we were fleeing, Ahsoka. There was no difference that I could see,” Padme pointed out.

“Of course not, your blaster is merely powered by the Naboo plasma in a cell, it still uses standard tibanna gas in the bolt. I’m talking about introducing a large amount of pure Naboo plasma for these shields to absorb.”

Anakin’s eyes lit up with realization of what I was getting at. “It requires specialized systems to make proper use of Naboo plasma due to its varied unique properties; there's no way these cyborg shields can work with it. The gungan boomas are literally the plasma stabilized and forced into a fragile shell. You could easily take out AATs with a large booma.”

“How certain are you of this?” Ackbar asked, he was thankfully looking much better and on the mend.

“It’s not like we can test this. The only way will be on the battlefield.”

“Let us finish at least four more disruptor cannons, that way you have something to fall back on,” Pombe suggested.

“How long?” I asked.

“We’ve got the procedure down, and it should go faster now. If I put all my teams to work on it, eight hours.”

“Even though we have the means now, we still need to decide on a battle plan to retake the capital. With the government complex in enemy hands, it means they have access to the system wide scanners and satellite network. They’ll see any ship approaching the planet and will have early warning of an attack,” Ackbar explained.

“So we’ll need to launch a covert mission to disable those, ideally just before the ship carrying the gungans makes a microjump beyond Dac’s mass shadow,” Anakin mused.

“Microjump? Is that implying what I think it is?” Ackbar looked very interested.

“Yes, but explanations can wait. Padme, contact the gungans, tell them to get ready for deployment.”

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I carefully gunned the throttle of the Devilfish sub and tried my best to ignore the large disruptor cannon rather crudely welded onto its hull.

The engineers had to strip out a lot of the internal life support equipment to make room for the systems and extra power generation. It was looking like something that Macgyver would be quite proud of. There was no hydrodynamics to the cannon at all and it was slowing down the sub quite badly, but not unacceptably.

Anakin was piloting another sub, whilst three senior clone troopers handled the remainder. We were only bringing two squads of mixed clones and mon cala knights with us, and in the interest of keeping everyone as rested as possible, they were all clinging to a dozen more subs in formation behind us.

The rest of the SCUBA troops were moving on another line of approach to the capital at a shallow depth, with no attempt at any stealth. They were the big distraction, which would let us move quick and quiet below as many thermoclines we could find, as close to the ocean floor whilst still remaining at the depths the clone SCUBA gear could handle.

Would Tamson buy this?

Doubtful. He knew that we didn’t have the troops to contest him and as far as he knew, we still didn’t have any answer to the karkarodon cyborgs. He knew that the shipyards didn’t have weapons ready for practical deployment and even if they did, the shields would hold long enough for his greater numbers to overwhelm us.

He would therefore assume we had a plan, another pincer attack from sea and space. Therefore he was going to prepare an entirely new trap for us.

What had he not used yet?

My mind supplied the answer and the probability lines confirmed it.

“Commander?” Lee-Char, hanging on the sub’s railing, looked at me with clear worry. 

“Yes, your highness?”

“Are you sure this is going to work?”

“As sure as anyone can be in war. There is an old saying, ‘you go to war with the army you have, not the one you want’.” I turned to my left where Chewie was hanging on to the sub. “Chewie, you looked at the modifications to the sub, what do you think? Is it going to blow up on us?”

“These mon cala do amazing work for having such little time.” The big wookiee shook his head. “As long as we keep our fire rate reasonable. They’re using ocean water as coolant for the cannon, not efficient at all but that’s the compromise they had to make to speed up manufacture.”

One of the mon cala scouts was leading our way at the moment, using the knowledge of the terrain to send us through paths, gullies and even ancient lava tunnels to obscure our approach.

Our journey to the city outskirts was just over three hours this time and we concealed ourselves in a deep cave shrouded with plant growth to observe the distant city.

It was now local morning and the sunlight was steadily illuminating more and more of the terrain, the water turning from black void to bright blue and green.

There was still vast amounts of life in the city as you didn’t empty a place home to over a billion mon cala and quarren in one day. We could see that the Separatists and Tamson were trying their level best though. There wasn’t a water lane between the buildings that didn’t have squads of League quarren and droids patrolling or rounding up mon cala citizens.

My Farsight also picked up that the mon cala citizenry were not taking this lying down.

An explosion from a building destroyed eight droids instantly and killed four armed quarren who had tried to enter it.

A mon cala used a hunting blaster to nail the optical sensor of a droid.

A small gang of citizens used traditional spear guns to silently take out five League quarren, before commandeering their scooter and weaponry.

I couldn’t help but chuckle as I saw numerous other examples of innovative and creative traps being used all over the city. I also made many mental notes to remember some of them for the future.

“What could be amusing about that, commander?” Lee-Char gestured at his capital city under occupation.

“Your people are resisting. In some cases, in a rather humorous manner, your highness. Do you wish to see?”

“Really? How?” he asked with astonishment.

“Take my hand.”

The moment his webbed hand touched my gloved palm, I pushed what I was seeing through the Force to his mind very gently.

I could immediately tell my differing perceptions was a problem, as his mind didn’t know what to make of my form of hearing and other senses, so I filtered out everything except vision and even there was a problem. Eventually I managed to channel it so it seemed like to him, he was watching from only his left eye.

“Amazing,” he murmured with wonder. “Is this how you see the world, commander?”

“Somewhat, your highness. You can see your people are fighting back. There is still hope in them and that is because of you. They know you’re still out there or else Tamson would’ve paraded you out to them already.”

I let go of his hand.

The mon cala scout returned a few minutes later and bowed to the prince.

“Highness, our path seems clear, we must use minimal thrust on the subs if we want to avoid detection.”

Lee-Char visibly steeled himself, “Thank you, lieutenant. We begin now.”

The assault squads pushed themselves out of the cave, through the foliage and we immediately nosed the subs down and dove into the deeps of the city.

We were already at twenty meters and let gravity do most of the work at giving us acceleration.

My eyes couldn’t help but glance at the depth gauge in my HUD.

In less than fifteen seconds we were already at fifty-five meters and the yawning, hungry deeps below seemed to go on forever. It didn’t help that we also had to maintain light discipline and as the depth meter kept ticking upwards, so the light began to dim.

The nearest building soon became the only visual reference we had.

Finally, we reached the bottom at 130 meters.

I did not want to think about the amount of water above me, pushing on my armor. At this depth, everything was a hue of ultra dark green and we could only vaguely make out each other’s shapes in the water.  

From here we had to communicate with directional links to minimize any electronic signature and only use the sub’s propulsion in the shortest of bursts, using our slowly undulating legs to add more thrust and steering. SCUBA systems were also switched to rebreathing mode.

It was my turn to lead, as I had to sense and temporarily short out the hard line sensors at this depth.

Our progress through the city was even slower now, as Tamson had aqua droids at this depth as well, watching out for exactly this trick we were pulling now.

We tried to avoid contact as much as possible, waiting for patrols to pass by, but it was inevitable that we would have to open a gap with subtle force at some point.

That moment came just a few hundred meters from the government complex.

The droid patrols here were in groups of three, maintaining a perfect clockwise route around the complex, with spacing of barely fifty meters between them. 

‘Ready, Snips?’ Anakin thought.

‘Ready, Skyguy.’

We could hear the steady whine of the aqua droid’s propellers and active thrusters approaching in the dark gloom.

Hidden behind the looming curved edge of a building, we waited for the moment.

Now.

I reached out with the Force, pulling on the electricity within the droids and twisted, adding power from the ambient flow of electrons everywhere.

Inside the droids, current suddenly went in directions it was never meant to and voltages spiked beyond safe limits.

The three aqua droids sparked and died, their propulsion systems failing.

Anakin reached out next, his telekinesis grabbed hold and pulled the droids away and out of sight.

“Chrono is ticking, move!” he ordered.

Despite our hurry now, we had to keep noise discipline. I feathered the sub’s thrusters with the lightest of bursts and through the Force grabbed hold of the other subs to give them a slight Push.

With that, we were inside the complex perimeter and the job now was to actually find the building that housed our objective. It would’ve been quite easy from above, but it was a different story from below.

The building was smaller and suspended between two larger buildings that were built into the sea floor. It was only fifteen meters in height and was one of five such suspended buildings in the complex. All the antennas and transmitter dishes had to be as high as possible to minimize the amount of water interference in the signals that worked in the EM spectrum. Hyperspatial signals didn’t care, but not everything could be done in that realm. 

“M8, begin passive scan.”

“Yes mistress, scanning… Sorry, mistress, no signals detected at this depth, we need to be higher.”

“It was worth a shot anyway.”

I gave a gesture upward.

Anakin nodded, the squads turned our subs upward and we began to ascend.

The first local thermocline approached rapidly and at ninety meters we stopped again to take readings.

The next thermocline at forty meters acted as a ceiling for our scans.

‘No droid patrols at this depth,’ Anakin thought.

‘They don’t have infinite droids, Skyguy. It seems like our diversionary approach is working at least somewhat. Oh, by the way, Tamson has a trap waiting for us.’

I could feel Anakin’s glare at me, ‘And you didn’t mention this before, why?’

‘Well, our disruptor cannons will go far to blunt it and the gungans will come as a nasty surprise to Tamson. He’s clever, ruthless but has a substantial superiority complex. He believes all land walkers and even other aquatic cultures are inferior by nature.’

‘A little more warning than this next time, Snips.’

‘You know how it works, Skyguy.’

We resumed our slow, silent ascent and the moment we poked our heads above the forty meter mark…

“I have it mistress, bearing 103 at fifteen meters,” M8 reported.

I gestured immediately in that direction.

The squad whirled around to their right.

“I see it,” Anakin said. There was only one suspended building in that direction.

“Everyone, spherical defense formation around the general,” I ordered.

Anakin stared at his objective for a moment, “Send the signal, Ahsoka.”

I tapped my comlink as the squads moved, even as I could feel Anakin call on the Force.

He raised his hands and slowly closed them into fists.

The Force became a hurricane of invisible power that concentrated to a singular point.

One of the suspension struts, nearly half a meter of solid durasteel alloy began shaking and trembling.

It audibly groaned in protest and acted like a giant xylophone on the water, as it vibrated, causing huge amounts of cavitation.

The strut snapped with an awful, high pitched tearing of metal, a sound that traveled for kilometers.

With the structural forces compromised, the loads moving in directions that had never been intended, a chain reaction began that caused more struts to bend and break. It happened in the blink of an eye and the entire strut simply sheared itself off from the building it was supporting.

The breaches caused at the connection points were so violent, it caused water displacement that the ocean reclaimed with a fury, sending out shockwaves.

Gravity took its inexorable hold with an eager vengeance.

The building began listing away from us and finally tore free of the last supports it had before being pulled down.

It crashed and bounced off another building, denting and tearing its exterior plating in an awful racket that I felt even in my lungs.

M8, bless her, turned on the sonic dampeners in my helmet instantly at the proper frequency to spare my montrals.

Thank goodness that worked, thanks Skyguy, I thought privately. It was nice to know that now I had some effective protection from that form of attack.

The communication building was now finally free to plunge into the depths below and it went briefly dark as it switched over to emergency internal power. It wouldn’t matter though as all the sensitive antennas and dishes on top were practically wrecked.

“Enemy contact, 270!” shouted a trooper. 

Three aqua droids had spotted us.

That side of our formation immediately opened fire.

Chewie’s bowcaster roared in answer, punching a hole through the torso of one.

The second droid took a storm of hits, turning it to a wrecked sieve.

The third died when I willed my Destroy Droid technique to wreck its internals. It visibly sparked and twitched before it lost all power and sank.

“Well, that’s the door chime rung,” Anakin said wryly, igniting his lightsaber.

The Darksaber’s crystalline burst chimed in the water as I ignited it, along with my other blades.

My comlink chimed with a signal.

“The Revenant is now powering through Dac’s mass shadow; they’ll deliver the gungans in approximately fourteen minutes. Our diversionary attack in the west has engaged the enemy.”

“Now we just have to survive that long,” Anakin sighed and pointed to the east, in an upper quadrant.

Two squads of aqua droids were coming and three cyborg jellyfish slowly coming up behind them.

“Frakking shabla.”

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He awkwardly tightened the armor on his chest and still couldn’t decide whether he liked it or not.

Quite a few of his warriors really didn’t like it, especially as it slowed them down in the water, but there was no choice if his people wanted to truly be able to defend themselves in a galaxy at war. They had trained with all the new methods and techniques that cooperation with the Naboo had given them and Roos Tarpals couldn’t help but feel slightly confident for the first time in over ten years. The harsh lesson of the Trade Federation invasion still cast its ugly shadow. Now it was time to bring some light to chase it away.

He pulled out the power pack and reinserted it back into the silvery, even beautiful Naboo rifle in his hands. No longer would they be fighting with spears, atlatls, electropoles and cestas against the damnable CIS or other enemies of Naboo. They would still use boomas, those were too useful to leave behind, but new methods of shooting them were being devised by gungan and naboo engineers.

He turned around and regarded the twelve thousand warriors of the Gungan Grand Army that was under his command.

Now he truly felt like his heart wanted to burst with pride.

They were all in formation, in blocks of eight by eight, something carried over from the old traditions that couldn’t be shaken. It was only useful on land but kept everything organized. Their rifles held at what the Naboo called ‘port arms’, gleamed in the overhead lighting of the hangar decks of the massive star destroyer.

Nearby movement attracted his attention and his eyes widened.

“Representative Binks! Holster that weapon immediately!” he snapped in gunganese.

Jar-Jar was fiddling with the blaster and its barrel was dangerously close to being aimed at some warriors in the nearby formation.

Roos cursed himself for his reflex order, as Binks jerked with fright and the blaster pistol sailed into the air.

Every nearby warrior deployed their energy shields from their forearm gauntlets in the next moment.

His eyes followed the blaster as it began its journey to the hanger decking, a few running steps later he plucked it out of the air by the barrel.

Roos checked the weapon and was gratified to note that its safety was on at least. “Representative, you will only draw this weapon once we’re in the water, is that understood?”

“Yes, General,” Jar-Jar sheepishly took back the weapon. 

The instructors had tried to get the excitable veteran of the Naboo invasion trained on the rifles. Both the naboo and gungans had given up when the senate representative had somehow nearly burned down one of the gun ranges with it.

Roos thanked Oma-Oma that Boss Lyonie at least had more sense than the old Boss Nass and had not given Binks his generalship back.

He felt the ship begin to shudder under his feet as they hit the atmosphere of Dac.

“General Tarpals.” A naval clone approached. “We’re five minutes to the drop zone. The battle has already begun in the waters, so you’ll be dropping into enemy fire.”

“Tanken Lieutenant,” Roos nodded. How he disliked Galactic Basic, why couldn’t the galaxy have developed a language slightly easier for the gungan mouth and tongue to speak?

He walked forward to address his warriors, giving one brief blast of the horn to gather the attention of those in the back. He tapped his comlink to carry his voice to everyone.

“Warriors of the Gungan Army, we are here not only to rescue an old friend of our people, but also to show the galaxy that we deserve to stand next to the Naboo!”

A shout of agreement echoed throughout the hangar bays.

“We are here to fight and show the soulless CIS that if they return to our world, that the waters will be defended!”

“YES!”

“That the Naboo don’t stand alone!”

“YES!”

“We go now to aid the mon cala, another people of the sea. A mighty people, who build massive ships that roam the stars. In them, I see what we also could be in the future. They could become our teachers and guides. What say you?”

“YESSSS!”

“The quarren are our enemy as well, but only fire on them if they are armed. Understood?”

“Yes, bombad general!”

The giant starboard doors of the hangar bay opened to his left and wind began blasting through the massive space.

Roos turned to walk to the edge.

Beyond was an alien sky and a blue ocean below stretching to the horizon.

The destroyer was slowly lowering itself, the thrust and repulsor fields churning the water, radiating outward in rapid rippling waves.

“Stand ready!” he shouted.

Thousands of rifles were charged, “Ready!”

Roos looked down, judging the distance as the massive ship lowered itself to a point where the ventral hull was almost kissing the water surface.

He shouted the traditional call to battle, blasting his horn to echo throughout the hangar bay.

In the time it took to secure his horn to his belt, a dozen warriors had already leaped over the edge, diving head first into the ocean.

He ran, jumping from the last secure foothold on the deck, pushing himself four meters away from the hull, before gravity took over.

With practice and experience of thousands of dives, he positioned his body for a water entry.

Moments later the warm embrace of the alien ocean surrounded him with barely any shock, his body cutting through the surface smoothly, with only the tiniest of splashes in his wake.

He immediately kicked his legs once, powering into a descent aided by gravity to make room for more of his warriors.

All around him the ocean churned as gungan after gungan dove in.

Below him he saw a vast underwater city rapidly approaching. Even the mighty Otoh Gunga in the depths of Naboo was insignificant in comparison. The style of building wasn’t to his taste, but it was impressive nevertheless and only solidified the wisdom of pursuing a closer alliance with the people of these waters.

But it was a place in turmoil.

Below blaster shots were being traded and he could hear the many sounds of underwater battle all throughout the vast city.

A small group of clones, mon cala and two Jedi were under siege, using the spire of a building for cover against a horde of droids who had been made to fight in the water. There were also some giant abominations that seemed to be both machine and ocean creature! Clearly the CIS was not content with merely exploiting but also perverting nature in service to their war machine!

Just the sight of these made it clear to Roos that the danger to his people was even greater and he would make sure to bring the remains of both back to Boss Lyonie.

His comlink began chirping. “Skywalker to Tarpals! You see the big green jellyfish cyborgs… booma it. Booma them now!”

Roos could immediately understand the urgency, as those jellyfish began shooting mounted Repeaters. He could also see that no weapons were having an effect on them.

“Understood General,” he returned, switching frequencies to his warriors. “All warriors, drop one of your boomas only on the big green machines! Open fire on the rest! Shields up!”

Roos pulled one of his own boomas from his belt, twirled around and threw it at the closest jellyfish cyborg.

He brought his left arm forward, activated his shield, tucked his body behind it, peaked his rifle beside his shield, aimed and pulled the trigger.

Hundreds of boomas began dropping through the water, followed by aimed volleys of hundreds of blue blaster bolts.

He watched as the jellyfish took many booma hits, the precious Naboo plasma flaring and sparking on the shield.

The creature began writhing, sparks and shorted electricity snaking between its long tentacles. Its movement became chaotic, the green luster flickering on and off. The Repeaters on its side stopped firing.

More boomas landed and now chunks began being scorched off.

Blaster fire also began hitting it, tearing holes into its metal and organic hide.

Finally, it stopped moving and began sinking - dead.

All the droids suffered a similar fate. The sheer amount of boomas and massed blaster fire was impossible to avoid.

Any fire that the droids tried to send upward simply bounced off the gungan shields.

Roos watched in awe and no small amount of satisfaction as nearly an entire battalion of these aqua droids were swept from the waters within less than half a minute.

The Jedi broke from their cover and boosted through the water towards him.

“General Tarpals, thank you for your timely intervention,” said Skywalker.

Roos powered down his shield, bowing his head to the two Heroes of Naboo. It was amazing how the years marched on. He remembered that little Jedi boy on the steps of the Theed palace well and now here he was, very tall, with his own apprentice, who had also saved his home from the vile machinations of the CIS. The exploits and name of Jedi Ahsoka Tano was well known among the gungans.

“It’s mesa honor, general. What do yousa need from us?”

“We need to take back the government complex below us. The majority of our troops are fighting elsewhere in a diversion. I need you to send at least one regiment of your warriors to bail them out, flanking the enemy in the process. Once that is done, the combined force must return.”

Roos nodded, tapped his comlink and spoke rapidly to one of his gungan commanders. 

It wasn’t long before the 3rd Gung Battaltion, 2300 gungan warriors were organized and rapidly swam away to aid their allies.

Tano stiffened, bringing her lightsabers up and pointed to the east of the complex. “Ready your gungans, general.”

Roos looked in that direction…

Nine large Trident assault ships appeared just one kilometer away out of nothing but the ocean itself.

Cloaking devices, he realized with dread. That the cursed CIS could even make their ships invisible in the ocean was not going to make the Bosses happy.

They twirled and rotated, opening their articulated tentacles, the internal bay opened and sleek alien forms began to swim out.

“Ahsoka, how many karkarodons could we be facing?” asked the General.

“Assuming they squeezed themselves in, about 1200. And we have no idea how many Tridents are just waiting to decloak to deliver more.”

Hull panels on the Tridents opened, revealing Repeaters and other support weaponry.

“Perfect, just perfect.”

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A/N: In the timeless words of Hannibal Smith, 'I love it when a plan comes together.' Ripples and butterflies galore in terms of the gungans, some planned, others just happy accidents. Naboo is now a whole different prospect to invade. Hope you enjoyed, have a great weekend and stay awesome folks.