Recordings from the Holocron of Kira Keldav – Session 49

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With Kira temporarily lost in Hyperspace (and Hypertime, Paratime, and Space), Ben believing on fair evidence) that he was dead and a force ghost, Jacob believing that he was doomed to be haunted by Ben (even if Ben was currently working with Smooche to rig a transdimensional hypertunnel so they could isolate Lecrouss from the kids he’d set up parasitic links to), Lazlo seriously wounded (if recovering), Alys was left trying to run a planetary insurgency from her pocket datapad.

Fortunately, compared to keeping the usual party of lunatics organized, keeping a planet running was relatively easy.

Jacob, meanwhile, had work to do; he had to single-handedly clean up all the Sith War Droids in the stasis field – mostly by tossing them out one at a time in front of the youngsters with the missile launchers for a skeet shoot and by parking droids directly in front of missed shots. Then he just had to pulse the field, let the missiles hit, start it again, and clear up survivors. It was time-consuming, but straightforward enough.

Lazlo had decided that all this was silly, and had gone off to locate Zandramas’s local Sith representatives to reason with them. Everyone else said that the idea was ludicrous – but he felt that it had to be worth a try. They couldn’t ALL be crazy! When in doubt, go confront some Sith!

Special Agent Nimh Tahl’s Field Report

I barely got on planet before the planetary shields went up and prevented further traffic to and from the planet. From what little information I could gather, it appeared that some lunatic was launching a suicide attack on the Sith fleet in orbit. I gave the odds of successfully causing significant damage to the fleet as abysmal. At least the customs office was agreeable to letting me on the planet. It seemed that the reason “Tracking Down Kira Keldav” had received it’s own category in the approval process. Given the number of bounty hunters still arriving when I went through, I guess that is to be expected.

Once I was planetside, I needed to track down where that group of Keldav’s had decided to hole themselves up. The spaceport tavern was filled with people trying to flee the planet, but who were now stuck with the planetary shields up. It didn’t really take any effort whatsoever to get information about Keldav and the others from them, simply because it was the talk of the place. The news holo behind the bar was recounting the myriad exploits and stunts attributed to Keldav’s group over in the city of Derallas. Civilians were evacuating the city like a sinking ship, while Sith and Bounty Hunters were converging on the place like maggots to a carcass.

Well the chaos certainly seemed centered there. Although I had my doubts whether or not the group was actually there. Given the amount of people hunting for them, to stay ahead of the circus they had to be fantastically good, fantastically lucky, or not actually there. Still, the Sith and the Bounty Hunters had to be chasing something. And that made it my major lead in finding them. Still it would be prudent to have an idea what I was looking for as opposed to just joining the swarm of idiots.

Finding a secluded spot, I opened up the hidden panels on my lekku and swapped out for the general sciences module and the hyperspace/subspace module. The sensation of portions of my mind suddenly becoming unreachable was now quite familiar to me as the social module and the infiltration module disconnected. It took several minutes for the new modules to integrate into my consciousness.

The evidence points to Keldav’s group having found new or lost technology of some sort. Alright, time to swap droid modules then. Reviewing the data again with the technical skills now at my disposal, it was obvious that some of it had to be unusual hyperspace phenomena. But not all of it could be explained that way. There was a significant portion that could only be explained if subspace was involved on some level. Hmm, with all the ships buzzing around that city and the hyperspace Artificer Smoche also there, trying to track the group down by scanning for hyperspace signatures was a lost cause.

That left scanning for subspace signatures. That definitely would reduce the amount of extraneous signals fouling up my scanners. It was a good thing I brought my sensor pack with me. Alright, with that plan in mind, I needed to make my way to the city of Derallas. I didn’t have a speeder and my funds for renting one were rather limited at the moment. I always liked to have a bit of extra cash in my pockets for emergencies. Then I spotted another convoy of soldiers and droids preparing to leave the port. It didn’t take much thinking to figure out where they were going.

Swapping modules again for the infiltrations and social modules again, I walked up to the convoy and began to work my way towards asking for a ride. Why other species found themselves attracted to twi’lek women was beyond my powers of deduction, but it still served me well when I needed to manipulate people to get what I needed. It was a simple matter to start the “innocent bounty hunter girl” act to get some sympathy from the soldiers and a ride aboard the convoy heading to Derallas. Unfortunately, the soldiers wanted to small talk the entire trip and it was taxing my abilities to keep the facade up the entire time. I was thankful for the lessons in socializing Ishtar Zarnassus put me through so many times.

I had finally run out of practiced conversations to use when the convoy finally arrived at Derallas. Stepping out of the troop carrier, I found the city to be an overwhelmingly quiet place. A substantial portion of the city’s population had left after the arrival of so much firepower to this place. I could hardly blame them as I saw another three convoys like the one I had arrived on also unloading. It seems Keldav and the others had annoyed the Sith badly.

I swapped the social module for the hyperspace/subspace module when suddenly the sky flashed with a brilliant white light. At first I thought it a nuclear strike, but the lack any blast wave disproved that. As my eyes regained focus, I could see the planetary shields lit up and an enormous halo of plasma and electrical discharges in the sky. My scanner pack showed that a layer of the upper atmosphere appeared to be ionized as a radiation storm raged underneath the shields. That had given everyone not shielded or underground a substantial radiation dose, but counting the rems showed that some medical attention within a week would treat any adverse effects. A quick inventory of my equipment showed it to be mostly unscathed, including the droid modules.

I really didn’t need portions of my mind to be malfunctioning at this point.

Unfortunately, the Sith battle droids didn’t seem to cope nearly as well as everyone else. I could see obvious signs of malfunctions as the droids began to wander aimlessly or engage in other aberrant behavior. The Sith Commander was busily trying to get his soldiers organized to bring the droids back under some modicum of control. I felt it best to get out of the way.

Finding another secluded spot in an abandoned restaurant, I quickly began a scan of the area. Unfortunately the radiation storm still raging above was going to make some things difficult, but I could still pick up readings from around the city. The regional hypermatter reactor was obvious on the scanners despite all the metal and concrete shielding. Smoche’s ship was also easy to pick out given the sheer number of weirdly tuned hyperspace fields coming from the spaceport. There were a couple of other odd signals deep below the city that the Sith and Bounty Hunters seemed to be converging on too. I then detected a weak subspace signal that appeared to be moving.

After changing my position a few times, I was able to triangulate the source as definitely moving away from one of the other odd signals underneath the city. Whatever it was, it was several hundred meters underground and moving East by Northeast at a clip of 25 kph. Hmm, that course would take it outside the city. Pulling up a map of the surrounding terrain revealed no cities or towns in that direction for hundreds of kilometers. While it was possible that they were hoping to lay low for that long, the radiation storm and disruption to the Sith battle droids suggested that the group was actively trying to mount some level of resistance to the Sith occupation. It was entirely possible that the radiation storm was caused by them trying to eliminate the minefield.

Hmm, I suppose a poorly tuned hyperdrive colliding with one of the mines and then scattering against the shield could account for the radiation signature I am seeing right now. An incredibly reckless, if ingenious, way to eliminate the minefield holding the planet hostage.

Alright, no cities or towns in the direction the subspace anomaly is heading within what I would estimate to be a reasonable timeframe. Ergo, they are heading to something else. Overlaying a subterranean map over the projected course revealed a number of limestone caves approximately thirty kilometers out. The largest such cave had an entrance on the Ember Mill farmstead. That seemed like a probable target then.

Transport wasn’t readily available at the moment as either everyone with transport had left, or had locked up their vehicles to prevent theft and looting. Heading out to the farm on foot was going to be time consuming, but I wasn’t about to ask for a ride from anyone that might have an interest in tracking down Keldav and his group. Luckily whatever was generating that subspace signal was very slow moving and I was almost able to keep pace with a brisk walk.

Walking down the road, I saw a number of transports and other vehicles head towards Derallas with I can only guess to be more bounty hunters, droids, and soldiers. A few of them looked at me curiously as they passed by, but I wasn’t who they were looking for. Luckily a truck carrying a family passed going the other direction and asked if I needed a lift. Taking them up on the offer, I climbed into the back of the truck and asked them to drop me off at Ember Mill. That got me some quizzical looks, but I brushed it off as where I had left my transport.

That shortened my trip dramatically and gave me a bit of insight into what was happening in the city. Rumor was that Keldav and his group had managed to defeat most of the Artificers chasing them by sending them to an alternate dimension or something. Accessing my hyperspace module, I was able to recall certain theories that suggested that alternate realities were possible and that certain hyperdrive modifications might make travelling to them possible. Trouble got to be that all probes sent that way never returned and thereby, no one was willing to risk their lives to test a theory. It was an astoundingly unpopular field of research too.

Is it possible that this group of Trouble-Magnets has figured out the problem? That seemed unlikely, but the fact that two of the party members had bounties in the tens of billions and yet still remained uncaptured was testament to how much this group seemed to defy the odds.

The truck dropped me off at Ember Mill and then continued on it’s way away from the city. A quick look around showed the entire farm to be deserted save for the droids still tending the fields. How long the place has been this way was difficult to perceive, although the fact of humanoid footprints attested to the idea that it has been weeks at least and possibly months. This definitely seemed like a planet that was willing to let droids handle everything with the absolutely minimum supervision they could get away with. That was going to cost them when they found out the malfunctioning droids were now classifying the crops as weeds.

Meanwhile, Ben had finally persuaded Smooche to assemble the hyper-portal properly, as opposed to simply throwing together a sloppy test lash-up and fudging with his force powers – and he COULDN’T talk him out of pouring his personal force-energies into it to “improve the performance”. Only the force knew what that would do to the system given how sensitive the trans-dimensional hypertunnels were to force energies!

Oh well. They had to get it to the stadium so as to be ready to pass the kids through it – and there wasn’t enough time to argue with Smooche over every little thing…

I quietly skulked through the fields towards the cave. It was certain that some sort of defensive perimeter had been established and I didn’t want to trip it off just yet. The subspace source was obviously nearby – although it’s activity had dropped considerably – according to the scanner as I got closer to the cave. Confirming my deductions, I found a number of sensor nets and alarm systems scattered along the ground. Once I got in sight of the cave itself, the defenses became even more obvious to pick out. Someone has fortified a cave in the middle of a farm field with a mobile subspace source underneath. The sheer mount of radio traffic coming and going from here was also a giveaway that something way up.

I contemplated several different routes into the cave, but found the sensor web to be too dense to navigate quickly without tripping an alarm. Oh well, it wasn’t like I was here to kill anyone. I just wanted to ask some questions right now. Stepping out of the field of crops and into the line of sight of the sensor net, I started walking to the cave. Quickly enough I was challenged as a hidden commlink spoke.

(Droid) Halt, identify yourself.

(Nimh) Special Investigator Nimh Tahl, looking for Kira Keldav. Is he here?

A female voice came over the commlink then. Based on estimated age, linguistics and accent, I was willing to wager this was Alys Nere.

(Alys) Kira isn’t here at the moment, what do you want?

I couldn’t believe how much she just gave away with that. Had I been a Sith or a Bounty Hunter, that would have been all the confirmation I needed that some of Keldav’s group was here. They might be assuming that anyone who walked up and asked for Kira already knew that, but you’d think they’d be more cautious anyway!

(Nimh) I am investigating the disappearance of Dorothy Glithe, and Kira Keldav is one of my major leads on the case. May I come in and ask some questions?

(Alys) Fine, come on in then.

She obviously sounded stressed over the commlink. Walking into the cave, a pair of armored bounty hunters intercepted me and patted me down looking for weapons. They found my twin blasters, but I wasn’t trying to conceal those anyway. Much to my surprise, they handed the blasters back to me and waved me on by. Apparently the blasters weren’t considered much of a threat. Also odd was the fact that bounty hunters were working with Keldav’s group. Perhaps their services had been bought?

Inside I could immediately identify Alys Nere, Khadim, 10CH, the Artificer Ichara, Shipwreck, and De’Arc (wait; wasn’t De’Arc in pursuit of this bunch? They had to have come up with something really good to get him to renounce his apparent vendetta). The rest I could only presume to be bounty hunters in the service of the group. I saw what appeared to be a boring machine of some sort at the rear of the cavern. At a glance, I would say that a subspace refrigeration system was what I had been tracking this whole time. Alys Nere looked to be busily hammering at a datapad and not receptive to questions at the moment. Most I got out of her was short, terse answers as she never once looked up from that datapad. Eventually I found that Khadim – a curious creature, it was like talking to another Syndat in some ways – and 10CH were more receptive to answering my questions.

Unfortunately, I found that Kira Keldav was now missing after an altercation with the Sith Lecrouss and a hyperspace accident of some sort. They all seemed to agree that the odds of surviving that mess were astronomically slim at best. On top of that, Ben Therus was supposedly dead, but still wandering around as a Force Ghost. Alys Nere was apparently trying to coordinate a planetary revolt from that datapad of hers, and in the meantime, the group was trying to send a thousand children to another universe to sever the links the “Necromancer” Lecrouss had put upon them. All this with the help of the Artificer Smooche.

To be honest, this was sounding more and more like this group was hallucinating badly. Especially the nonsense about non-Force powers.

It was only going to be a matter of time before this location was compromised as well. If I was to get what information I could out of this group, then I needed to maximize their freedom to the best extent possible. I suggested that they begin packing up with the intent of leaving soon. Alys Nere brushed that suggestion off as too dangerous to flee over the surface. I glanced at the boring machine at the back of the cave and asked why they couldn’t use that again.

That finally got the answer of they were concerned with the lack of communications while trying to run an insurrection. Obviously several hundred meters of rock would shield radio communications completely. I really thought it odd that they hadn’t considered the obvious then. I proceeded to point out the fact that they had a subspace transmitter system in their possession, and that rock would not interfere at all with those transmissions. Alys rebutted with the remark that while this would allow her to transmit, it wouldn’t allow the planetary network to receive. Again I pointed out the obvious: they were working with the hyperspace Artificer Smooche, and he very likely had a subspace receiver system and could thereby act as a network bridge.

Alys seemed skeptical about the idea, and De’Arc threw the last objection my way.

(De’Arc) Alright, supposing you can rig that up to transmit signals, how are you going to keep the boring machine cool?

(Nimh) You have to balance the amount of thermal noise generated against the signal strength. That becomes a simple matter of tuning once you get the setup right.

(Alys) Well, if you can do it, then we can leave once it becomes necessary…

I grabbed a toolbox from one of the piles of crates and got working. Opening the access panel, I saw the field configuration was much like how I deduced. It was just going to be a simple matter of connecting the communications set into the subspace field output and feeding enough gain to the communications signal to wash out the noise. Voila, instant transmitter. Reception was a trickier matter as the same antenna transmitting would also be receiving. Alright, transmit on carrier frequency A, and receive on carrier frequency B. That meant I had to build two frequency modulation devices and the appropriate band-pass filters. Luckily there were plenty of electrical components lying around to use.

I would have much preferred a digital signal processor, but I didn’t have the time needed to build the appropriate drivers into the computer. That meant a certain level of noise was going to be a fact of life. That would impair bit-rates and effective transmission distance, but given how far we were expected to be going, that shouldn’t be an issue. I sent the carrier frequency configuration data to Smoche. He didn’t seem pleased to be working on a subspace system, but went along with the request anyway.

Ben, meanwhile, had arrived at the stadium with the transdimensional hypertunnel generator and a couple of Smooche’s droids to assist him (although he still hadn’t figured out how they could see him at all; it HAD to have something to do with Smooche funneling force-energies into them) – and found it hard to attract Jacob’s attention… They couldn’t transmit into the field effectively either. Oh well, he was DEAD! That should put him out of the reach of a stasis field!

He shrugged and walked on in – and as he made the phase-transition into the field, he abruptly found himself unable to move – and in serious pain?!?! How was that possible! It hurt to breathe!

Wait, he was breathing! How could… Ow!!! Every attempt to move made it feel like he was ripping apart inside!

Ben, in shock and pain, tried to use the force to shove himself out of the stasis field – pushing away violently. There was a brief, tearing, pain as he… ripped free of the matrix of scattered atoms and particles that was all that linked his own, phased, form to his home universe.

As he materialized elsewhere… apparently back aboard the asteroid – he developed a fearsome headache to go with the pain from what seemed to be a wide assortment of tiny internal injures – and seemed to be… alive and solid again? Had someone been making clones of him while he hadn’t been looking?

The pain was a bit much for concentration though, and it just got worse as he staggered towards the infirmary – where he was ALREADY being treated for a massive headache! How…

He was in an alternate timeline! How had that… He hadn’t died, he’d gone FADED! Oh Shit! That meant… he was lost in infinity!

Meanwhile, he was bellowing orders to get him to the far end of the asteroid and – preferably – into one of the spare ships and several light-seconds away! At a minimum!

Jacob finally completed his task with the War-Droids, and headed out to talk to Smooche and set up the hypertunnel gear – which, as he and Smooche focused their powers into it, opened up in an area filled with pretty lights, tens of thousands of buttons, and levers, and dials, and a bit of dust. So many pretty buttons! And a huge viewscreen showing a wonderful tapestry of glowing colors!

Oh well, he had to get the kids to safety before he could press more buttons.

But when he turned off the stasis field, Ben just… dissolved. Did stasis field kill force ghosts? That would be HORRIBLE! He would have to find a way to test to see if Ben had just returned to the force or if he was… gone for good.

Herding the kids through wasn’t that difficult, even if he had to use a lot of force to keep them from panicking – but Lecrouss managed to possess one of the last ones – and proceeded to toss Jacob around like a basketball, demanding to know what he’d done with so many of “his” children.

Fortunately, at least in Jacob’s view, the force LIKED pushing buttons – and a few moments of stasis slowed things up for long enough for him to carry the kid through the portal.

Smooche came along – and was quite delighted to find out that this was Ben’s Life Star – and that it had been abandoned in the edge of a supernova remnant for more than four hundred years. Some lunatic – presumably another alternate Dkira – had set off a wave of supernova in several major areas of the galaxy; the Life Star had been constructed to save the threatened worlds – but, as the wavefronts expanded, the task had finally been too large; saving worlds had exposed the ship and crew to ever-larger amounts of radiation – until the last few rescues would leave the ship radioactive for centuries to come and the crew past the terminal limit.

He was more annoyed to find out that the local Ben was dead. Another dead one! What use was that!?!?

Alternate Ben, Alys – as President of the Republic – and a skeleton crew had conducted those last rescues, and the ship had been left to drift in the system of the final one as a fitting (and far too radioactive to recover in any case) tomb.

Now, centuries later, the radiation was down to liveable levels – and it (and Bens notes) were in the hands of Jacob, Smooche, and a few thousand children.

Smooche was in heaven – he could NEVER have gathered the resources for such a test system or for hyperdrive coils of such power – and wanted to take it for a test drive.

Jacob pointed out that they had an active portal entrance on the bridge, and it would be a bad idea to move the ship while that was true – but that simply inspired Smooche to shut down the portal, rather than preventing him from playing with the ship.

Uh-oh. Now THEY were lost too! At least they had plenty of resources to work with.

Even if the local galaxy seemed to be strangely quiet, and not very vital, and – once outside the supernova remnant – they seemed to be occupying a void in space, with no stars for hundreds of light years. There should have been several major pockets of civilization left, where the planets had been evacuated to for safety!

They’d have to figure out what was going on. At least the kids were good at getting droids working again – and there were plenty of interdimensional travel instructions.

Back “home”, Lazlo had located the Sith Command Post – located in one of the best tower-top restaurants in the city (which made some sort of sense) – and gotten up to it by the simple expedient of surrendering to be taken in.

Unfortunately, the two Sith manning it were the FATTEST human being he had ever seen – who seemed to be obsessed with nothing but cooking (and was convinced that it was the most important thing in the cosmos) and a skinny fellow who was obsessed with efficiently operating and directing droid hordes…

Possibly a good thing! The things were hopelessly incompetent on their own! Just look at how badly they’d done searching him!

Sadly, the ensuing discussion burned a great deal of time – and did not go well. Blast it! Were ALL Sith hopelessly irrational?

Oh drat! All the ones who were willing to work with ZANDRAMAS were hopelessly irrational! All the ones who were saner either went elsewhere or were eaten!

He finally managed to recruit the fat one by promising him ingredients from throughout the multiverse. The thin one was technically searching for Kira, but as long as Kira was missing, he was harmless enough…

A good thing too. Lazlos brief attempt at physical opposition revealed that the little planetoid of fat was a telekinetic of immense power – probably due to the constant practice of moving himself around!

Actually making the changes and building the necessary circuits took longer than I would have liked. It didn’t help that the explosions and sounds of blaster fire kept distracting me. Wait, blasters and explosions? Turning to look at the cavern entrance, I could see a small battle in progress as attackers attempted to push their way into the caves while the bounty hunters on this side defended – albeit mostly through remote-operated booby traps. Well, they could probably hold up any attempt to advance through the caves for quite some time that way… Still, I hurriedly finished my work and then announced we were ready to begin loading and departure.

Khadim and 10CH started loading supplies back into the boring machine, but the others stubbornly remained where they were. Then I detected a new set of vibrations through the floor. These were more rhythmic than the others and seemed to echo through the bedrock more. Let’s see, limestone cave, so many meters underground, vibrations of a given magnitude and frequency, would suggest a powerful set of explosions coming from above the cavern system. At a guess, I would say ship mounted weapons trying to blast through the layers of rock and soil directly into the cave. We should be seeing direct signs of that in a moment.

Moments later, the first cracks in the ceiling started appearing. We probably had a few minutes until a major structural failure, but the others still didn’t seem to have noticed the new attack vector. Sigh, you’d think people this frequently in combat would be more aware of their surroundings. I proceeded to point out the imminent collapse of the cavern and that finally got people moving. Everyone loaded into the boring machine while the bounty hunters provided cover fire as the hatchway closed. Two of the bounty hunters looked to be significantly wounded as others dragged them into the boring machine.

Finally the hatch closed and De’Arc drove us into the bedrock. The sounds of blasterfire became distant as we were surrounded by a layer of magma and an increasingly thick layer of bedrock. With wounded onboard and no one seemingly having any medical expertise, I rummaged around in my pack till I found the droid medical module. Swapping that one in place of the infiltration module got a lot of looks from the others as they watched me open a panel in my lekku. I ignored their stares as my mind took a few minutes to readjust to the swap.

Then I looked at their wounds and was easily able to estimate severity and treatment requirements. Pulling out the medkit, I worked at cleaning the wounds and inspecting the injuries for any unforeseen damage. Satisfied, I applied bacta to the most damaged areas, bandages on top of the rest, and then applied a localized anesthetic. The cracked ribs would take some time to heal despite the treatment, and the other one would have a slight limp for a day until the bacta took hold.

(De’arc) You’re a Syndat aren’t you? I’ve only heard of them before now.

(Nimh) Yes, I am a Syndat. It has it’s uses.

I then checked on the refridgeration unit to verify everything was working properly. It didn’t look like the battle had damaged anything and the tuning was holding up for now. It might need a slight adjustment in a few hours, but until then things were looking good. Alys was in contact with her resistance force via the repeater system Smoche and I had set up. She was complaining about the data rate, but I ignored her comments as idle stress. Supposedly I am to make a small apology to help relieve the tension and as an acknowledgment of her frustrations, but I never was one for the paying heed to social cues unless necessary.

Then things started getting really weird. The report from Jacob and Smoche was that Ben’s ghost entered a “stasis field” and then dissolved once the field was shut down. There went one of the my leads. Jacob and Smoche then proceeded to start dumping children through a hypertunnel system to another universe they knew little about. Once the children were all sent through, Smoche and Jacob went through themselves and promptly shut the gate behind them. Alys began swearing up a storm at that point about how they would never find them again. Apparently whatever targetting system they were using wasn’t very reliable in some fashion.

There went yet another of my leads.

To make matters worse, the one called Lazlo then came on the commlink and announced that Alys needed to evacuate the city within the next sixteen hours. When Alys asked why, Lazlo told us that the Sith Menethil was going to be blasting the stadium with the full weaponry of his personal ship (Lazlo had finally found a point of leverage by pointing out that Lecrouss’s ambitions would end cookery and flavor). Apparently Menethil and Lecrouss had a sudden falling out with each other and Menethil was now going to nuke Lecrouss (in the name of cookery) when he reappeared from hyperspace.

Alys put out the word over her communications that the city needed to be evacuated, and the Sith obviously did similarly as the bounty hunters, Sith battle droids, and soldiers vacated the city quickly. That gave this group a clear path into the city. Once inside the group broke up scouting for anyone that had not heard the warning or was choosing to ignore it. I ended up paired with Lazlo. Grabbing a datapad, I called up a map of the city’s population distribution. Overlaying that on top of a cutaway section of the city, I then called up additional maps showing distribution of income and general demographics.

Alright, cross-referencing that map against the list of people known to have relocated since the disaster began, gave me indications of which sections of the city were well evacuated and which places we needed to focus our search. With the city segregated into sections based on likely remaining population, I started running through the maps and demographics block by block and giving more detailed analyses of the population distribution. Eventually, I had to start incorporating droid communications traffic analysis into the picture in order to help track down the remaining stragglers in the deeper levels. Luckily, Lazlo’s Force senses enabled him to hunt down the people I told him were likely to be in a given location.

That still got me odd looks from everyone as I poked at a datapad for a few seconds and would then point to a building and announce how many were likely to remain inside. I was sure there was going to be questions aimed at me soon enough, but my focus was on finding as many people as we could before the attack came and the city was wiped away.

Hours later, we had gone through most of the city and evacuated everyone we could find. I had a sneaking suspicion that their were squatters and homeless still in the deepest sections of the city, but unfortunately we were out of time. I loaded onto the last ship to leave the city minutes before the attack came. We took off over the horizon, sticking close to the ground. The radiation storm that had been roiling the sky had finally died down enough to let the stars be visible again. Then the sky lit up like the morning dawn instantly as Menethil’s ship launched it’s assault on Lecrouss. Transmitted images came in moments later showing the city replaced with a crater over 45 kilometers across.

I had my doubts that any Sith could have survived that.

Next Alys started rattling off a list of troop movements and communications she had received via her contacts. It sounded like the resistance had successfully managed to capture the shield generators with their stasis systems, and the Sith still weren’t sure what was going on. Droids were apparently able to move about in the stasis effects readily and so the order had come down from up top to gather what forces were still available and take retake one of the shield generators. Additional troops would then be sent through the hole in the shields to assist in taking the other eleven generators.

Tactical analysis showed that defending the first shield generator was going to be the single best chance this group had to break the occupation and liberate the planet. Unfortunately, that would then leave me stuck here until the siege ended. Trying to convince Alys to leave the planet in the confusion was going nowhere and she was wanted by too many people to remain hidden on an occupied planet for long. Sadly, if I wanted to get much information out of Alys (and the others if they do actually come back), then I am going to have to ensure the liberation of this planet goes well.

How did I get into this?

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