Hero of Cartao I: Hero's Call, by Timothy Zahn
Posted: 2003-05-22 11:59pm
The Clone Wars: The Unofficial SiteThe Clone Wars: The Unofficial Site wrote:Key Characters
Kinman Doriana, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, Pilester Binalie, Corf Binalie, Jafer Torles, Commander Roshton, Darth Sidious,
Setting the Stage
The Clone Wars have been raging for nearly a year. Thousands of cloned soldiers have found and died and the Republic has begun to find ways to begin new cloning operations. During the war, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine and his staff came across a small world named Cartao, known for it's manufacturing of specialty products, specifically Spaari Creations. The company was known for it's rapid production changes, which prompted the Supreme Chancellor to look into the matter for the war effort. If all went well, Spaari Creations would be soon manufacturing cloning tanks.
The Battle
Episode I : "Hero's Call"
Shortly after the Republic began looking at Cartao, Chancellor Palpatine dispatched his aide, Kinman Doriana, to inspect the Spaari Plants and turn them over to Republic control. After a quick flyby in a transport, Doriana met with the ruler of Cartao, Lord Pilester Binalie, to inspect the manufacturing plants and find out how they worked. During this time, Binalie's son, Corf Binalie, and the regional Jedi guardian, Jafer Torles, noticed the incoming transport and went to investigate. Together, the group went to the Spaari complex. After a brief inspection, Doriana told Binalie that the Republic was to commandeer the plant to manufacture cloning cylinders. Binalie protested that the planet was trying to maintain a low profile for the duration of the war, and becoming a major manufacturing figure would indubitably invite Confederation invasion. Doriana convinced the man that the manufacturing would be discrete and that he had no choice in the matter. He also presented Torles with orders from the Jedi council to cooperate. Lastly, Doriana told Binalie that the current human workers would have to be pulled off of the job to maintain secrecy, and told him that several workers were infected with Plyridian Fever, which required a mandatory quarantine. The lord reluctantly agreed, pulling the workers off after two became ill. Doriana called Commander Roshton, who led the task force in charge of manning and running the plant. In thirty minute intervals, the Republic sent in approximately nine hundred clone troopers for security and just over a thousand to run the plant.
After Doriana finished his first call, he made another, to Darth Sidious, and informed him of the occupation. The Sith Lord was pleased, and told him to inform him when things became interesting.
Shortly after the Republic caretaker force landed, Corf Binalie and Jafer Torles spotted a Trade Federation C-9979 Landing Ship, the invasion army that Binalie had feared. The Jedi destroyed three STAPs over a sensitive area near the plant, alerting the alien workers inside. Inside the plant, Roshton noticed the alien's agitation and realized that the planet was being invaded. After checking the communication systems and finding them jammed, he alerted his soldiers, who began to set up defenses. From the command base, they found that the Landing ship was close by, and that it contained about five thousand battle droids, eleven MTT transports and one hundred fourteen tanks. The clone soldiers set up layered defensive lines inside the plant while the workers were evacuated.
The Trade Federation commander called on the Republic soldiers to stand down and deployed their own soldiers. Binalie told Roshton that there would be no combat in the plant; the machinery was too fragile to withstand a firefight. The soldiers would have to fight outside, where, without air support, would be slaughtered. The Jedi Torles appeared, and talked to Roshton for a minute, outlining another option. Roshton then ordered his soldiers to concentrate their fire on the lead MTT, just coming out of the landing ship, destroying it and giving the Republic soldiers time to evacuate the plant. The wreckage blocked the exit to the landing ship, preventing it from deploying any more soldiers. From their new positions, the cloned soldiers were able to destroy several ATT tanks over the stretch of forbidden ground, agitating the workers and preventing the Confederation forces from using the plant. In the meantime, they called for reinforcements.
Episode II : Hero's Rise
Coming in Insider #69!
Episode III : Hero's Fall
Coming in Insider #70!
Outcome
The Republic was able to gain their cloning cylinders, but details of the rest of the battle are still unknown at this time. It has become clear though, that the Senate have given the Supreme Chancellor more power to wield in the war effort, but also that there are strains between the Supreme Chancellor's office and the Jedi Council. In addition, it has become clear that the Chancellor's aide, Kinman Doriana, is linked to the Sith Lord, Darth Sidious, and allowed the Confederation to know the location of the Republic's energies in the war effort. It is very possible that this also occurred during the Battle of Pengalan, where the Republic faced a costly battle to destroy Confederation manufacturing plants. Due to Roshton's quick thinking, the Republic soldiers were spared from destruction.
Sources
Hero of Cartao Trilogy (Star Wars Insider #68-70)
(summarized by JediTrilobite)
Notes on Spaarti and Cloning:
Spaarti Creations is a biotech company that does oddjobs about--the factories are located deep underground in tunnels burrowed by a sentient species of workers known as the Cranscoc.
The Cranscoc reproduce slowly and only a handful can serve as Twillers, or a unique bioregulators for the complex fluid retooling processes that maintain and reconfigure the facility. Through these processes, notably the versatility of Spaarti Creations to reconfigure its production lines discretely, overnight, and with unique technologies makes it desirable as the Republic choice for the production and installation of the new Republic-designed clone tanks. As a result, the Cranscoc Twillers are the only way of getting the speed and discression the Republic wants for it's new production lines. Only the Twillers can manage the fluid-retooling that Corf Binalie feels is neccessary for the kind of operations that Spaarti Creations specializes is in.
According to Kinman Doriana, the new clone tanks were designed by the Republic, and take advantage of technological developments that Doriana says were missed by the isolated Kaminoans. According to the TOS Databank, the new clone tanks are, however, based on Kaminoan cloning vats.
The new cloning tanks can produce fully-equipped soliders in one-tenth the period it takes the Kaminoan process.
This tells us several things:
1.) Either the flash-learning process that makes training obselete for Spaarti clones was the technological advancement unavailable to the isolated Kaminoans...
2.) ...or the Kaminoans lacked the ability to grow a cloned human from zygote to full adult in the tank but had knowledge/access to flash-learning or related technology...
3.) We know from the Thrawn Trilogy that the minimum safe growth period for Spaarti clones is one year. Since the Kaminoan clones take no less than ten times as long--we see that ten years appears to be the limit for Kaminoan-style clone soldier manufacturing.