De Imperatoribus Galacticis: Chapter the Twenty-Second.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

De Imperatoribus Galacticis

"On the Galactic Emperors"

Chapter the Twenty-Second.

(As continued from Chapter the Twenty-First.)


Durrano Sector
The Great of the Dashkarbat Dynasty.


“I assure you that I am fully in charge here, Commodore. There is nobody else you need to speak to,” Guri said, smiling politely. The Imperial across from her had no idea what she was, of course, but that was the whole point. No Old Imperial would treat even an HRD as the equal of a human. Guri, on the other hand, was more than an equal. This stalwart servant of Hamner's certainly fit the bill as one of the officers Guri had dealt with before, flattering and insinuating her way into usefulness and power for her master. But those days were now long gone, and the Imperial was the Suppliant.

“You have significant forces in both the Durrano Sector and the surrounding sectors which refused to acknowledge the rule of the Warlord Tienyz, or revolted from it after his actions at Third Coruscant as your own sector forces did. Those forces could be an important component of the destruction of Sule's fleet, Madame, and you can't ignore the great value that would have. Sule has proven himself no friend of the Durrano Sector, but Hamner Davion is the legitimate Emperor, by legitimate rank, and he is prepared to deal on far more favourable terms with you.”

“Independence. If you want our fleet, you will give me independence for these sectors. We no longer trust the central government and no longer desire to be associated with it.” Guri replied, calmly, with a smile. “You are an Ambassador Plenipotentiary and Extraordinary, are you not... Your Excellency? That means you have the power to grant us what we want, for the full support of our fleet, which will surely be given without hesitation if you agree.”

“I will not deny that, Madame, but you can scarcely ask for such a thing as independence. The galaxy has been united for twenty-five thousand years. There have been great wars and periods of centuries of chaos, but always, always, the galaxy has been restored to unity. Establishing a seperate nation is an unthinkable effort. Do you really think that a few sectors can resist the power toward centralization from the great populations of the core?”

“Your Excellency,” Guri purred, “I do not presume to argue with your history lesson. No, I do not think that our independence will become a permanent thing. As you said yourself, the Republic has been destroyed and refounded on several occasions, and before the Republic there was the first unification of Xim the Despot, and the short-lived confederacy of the Hutts and the Corellians which followed him in turn. All of this is the ancient history of our galaxy, and it is true, that even when flung apart, the nations naturally coalesce into one once more. So why not give us what we want? It is scarcely a matter of concern for a man who shall have the whole of the Core and the Colonies uncontested, for they are the true jewels in the crown.

“What does it matter if there are some independent nations in the Inner Rim for a few hundred years? It shall in the end be just a footnote, a minor detail of galactic history which will be the concern only of historians in another one or two thousand years. The man who establishes permanent rule over the core—which we both desire to be Hamner Davion—shall have his name remembered for a hundred thousand years, and when the great strife of the past century is ended, the man who has ended it shall see his name ranked with that of Xim, gloried and storied and feared all at once. He will not be denigrated for having broken up the galaxy, for that simply will not happen—what is torn asunder always coalesces. That is the way of things.

“You wil be giving us what we who live now desire most, and for the future, no doubt the independence will be lost by the desire of those who are born, and grow up, and live then, and desire unification with the rest of the galaxy when its troubles are over. Or else they shall be born into folly, and provoke a war, and see the inexhaustible resources of the Core crush them entire. But either way it does matter to us; we think of the living, not those who are not yet born, and the living desire independence, and desire to maintain it for as long as they live. Let the future be the future, and be content that it shall end as the past has ended before it.”

“Your arguments, Madame, are certainly sound,” the Commodore and Ambassador replied after a moment, rubbing a hand across a gray-sideburned cheek in thought. “But it has grave implications in the propaganda war which must necessarily accompany this forging of alliance. Sule's partisans will certainly accuse His Majesty of dividing the galaxy up for his own personal gain, of putting his aggrandizement ahead of galactic unity. And there are many who will listen to such accusations; your fleet is important to us, Madame, but not so critical as that we need it at the price of alienating the populace of the Core.”

“Our support alone may be regarded in that way, but what if I could promise you far greater support than just that which I can myself draw upon, Your Excellency?”

“I would have to say I agree with the particular reservation that this support must indeed be in ships, and troops, and material, noticeably far greater than what you yourself offer.”

“What if I said I can end the Vong threat to the galaxy for good? That I can even provide the former Vong ships to you to reinforce your ranks? Would you go ahead and give us independence then.”

The Commodore barked in laughter and shook his head. “Madame, those are grand promises upon which you cannot deliver, so do not think to make them.”

Coldly, did Guri reply: “I can deliver on them, and we will not ask for an Imperial Rescript declaring the independence of our sectors until they have been delivered upon, Your Excellency. Is that sufficient for you?”

“Tell me how. In detail.”

“That is not for me to do,” Guri replied, now again with a sweet smile, leaning forward across the table toward the Commodore, prettily, like living sugar. “Let me bring in the man who will explain this little effort of our's for you, in detail.”

“Go right ahead,” the Imperial answered, only slightly flustered.

Guri leaned back and pressed down on the activation key for an intercom set into the table controls next to the holoprojector. “Send in the special prisoner,” she ordered simply.

Hamner's Ambassador was not a stupid man. He tensed at the words 'special prisoner', and waited expectantly.. It only took a few minutes, as a matter of fact.

He was rewarded for that nervousness with exactly what he feared, and at the same time anticipated, since it meant that Guri was deadly serious. Surrounded by a whole squad of eight guards with stun prods, hands chained behind his back, legs shackled, Nom Anor was led into the conference room. The Vong had had one eye ripped out by Guri and a secret bio-weapon removed from behind it, and it was with his one remaining eye that he gazed from Guri to the Old Imperial.

“What may I do for you, Guri?” He asked, smiling mirthlessly.

“Tell the Ambassador about your plan, which you so loved to elucidate upon to me in an effort to gain your freedom. Tell it to him in detail. If he approves of it, you have earned your freedom indeed. Well, when it succeeds, that is.” A soft laugh.

Nom Anor bowed his head, and looked to the Ambassador. He did not seem to mind standing. “Well, if you don't mind, I shall begin then.”

A grunt was the reply he got, continued a moment later. “Go ahead.” What was said next would decide a great many things...


Hapan Star Cluster
The Planet Hapes
Hapan Royal Palace


The Imperial Admiral bowed deeply before the Hapan throne. “I am Admiral Harlann Quir, Your Majesty, and I have arrived from His Majesty the Emperor with tidings of alliance. Our foe is a common one; we must stand opposed to the scheme of the Warlord Sule to cement total Imperial power. I hold full powers Plenipotentiary and Extraordinary to conclude alliances and sign treaties.” A pause, and another bow. “Your Highness Princess Organa. My powers extend to concluding treaties with the standing Republican resistance forces under your control which have been operating in conjunction with the Hapan government. I offer terms for you as well.”

“You would do well to remember that the Vong are the foremost threat to us all, Ambassador, and choose your words wisely on that account,” came the thin, reedy, ill voice of Teneniel Djo, a frail and emanciated figure upon the Hapan throne. “I am not going to harm the effort against them, and even now it is a known fact that the forces of your so-called 'Warlord Sule' are locked in mortal struggle with the main Vong fleet. There will be Stab-in-the-Back from the Hapan Star cluster.”

“Our fleet shall of course avoid the main body of Sule's fleet for as long as he is engaged in combat with the Vong. Let him fulfill his own propaganda! He has declared himself the defender of the galaxy, that he will ignore even his own power base for the sake of the defending the galaxy; let me do this. I do not propose any attack on Sule's fleet. I instead desire your cooperation—the cooperation of both Your Majesty and Her Highness—in an advance upon Coruscant.”

Coughing. She slumped back in the throne, Teneniel did, a horrible and pitiful sight, but still fully in control of her faculties it appeared, as she continued calmly. “Ambassador, I have no desire in deploying my fleet against a world held by the civilized peoples of this galaxy, and diverting it from the task of liberating thousands of Vong-occupied worlds which has been ongoing from the moment of Sule's great success at Talfaglio.”

“Let us be realistic, Your Majesty. There are thousands of planets under the control of a—granted, very populous and very wealthy—group of sixty-three planets.”

“Sixty-four. You discount my homeworld, Ambassador.”

“Forgive me, Your Majesty,” he bowed promptly. “But we know little of the situation upon Dathomir in the Milky Way. My gravest error.”

Teneniel just waved her hand tiredly, indicating for him to continue, which he promptly did.

“Though each planet of your cluster, Your Majesty, is surely as wealthy and populous as a core world, you still would have the gravest of times in gaining control over such a vast expanse of space permanently. It will not be easily done. It will not be easily controlled after you have succeeded, which I acknowledge that you shall; you need free shipyards, connections with the great commercial web of the galaxy, to make your efforts lasting.”

“And what would the price of these be? To bow before the Imperial throne? To see our military power steadily subsumed into that of the fleet of the Davions? I am not a fool, Ambassador. The Hapan Star Cluster has suffered enough under the power of the Empire. The Republic left us alone to our de facto independence, and we trusted them for it. The Empire occupied us, and we would expect the same treatment from you. I shall, for the sake of my nation, hold what I can and make it a part of my country and if you do not like that we shall have the resources to put up a much harder fight than you got out of the last time around, that you may be assured of.”

“Independence is not off the table.” Harlann noted that the Princess Organa was strangely silent, mulling over his words; at the last statement, however, she spoke up.

“Independence is not off the table? Then what do you suppose to provide of us, Ambassador? For the Republic, for Liberty? Our own enclave, like the Empire?”

“Of course not. We know that the people of the galaxy have the right to choose. His Majesty is quite willing to submit his continued right to rule over all areas—save for the Milky Way and Remnant Territories, of course—to a plebiscite. There shall be a yes-no vote on the rule of Hamner Davion as Emperor, and if he loses it, then a constitutional convention will be called, including both Imperial and Republican factions, with the goal of drafting a galactic constitution which shall be submitted to a second confirmation plebiscite upon its ratification by the members of the convention. All of this is detailed in an Imperial Rescript of which I have made a copy available for you, Your Highness.”

Leia calmly turned her attention to a padd held by one of her aides and brought it up, reading through the contents of the formal Rescript calmly. On the throne, Teneniel Djo had closed her eyes, and it seemed to all in the room that she had fallen asleep. Harlann waited rather nervously at this, for it was not at all clear what she would say. Their own archives suggested that this delusional primitive would be easy enough to convince with a few promises of glory, but it had not turned out so, though he still had hope. He had more hope in for convincing Leia, for the situation of the Republicans was at the moment really quite desperate and there was little for them to do but cooperate with one or the other of the Imperial factions; surely they would support the weaker as a rational matter?

The wait pressed onward, and the attendants looked to be ready to empty the room so that Teneniel Djo could be taken to her private apartments for a medical checkup and rest. But then there as movement. Her eyes did not open, but she waved her hand slightly, and the attendants stiffened and stepped back. Leia gasped softly, and Harlann looked to her, thinking for a moment, and realizing abruptly that it was quite possible that Teneniel was in some form of Jedi trance. His own body stiffened neigh-imperceptibly, then, and the whole of the room settled down to a tense waiting, save for Leia, who continued to study the Rescript and make her own considerations on the situation quite silently.

Only silence did reign in those long minutes. Nobody could be sure of what was precisely going on, and more importantly, over what the Queen would say when she recovered from her state of trance, or rest, or whatever had precisely possessed her, which none fully understood. It was unsettling to the Imperial, to the Rationalist in Harlann, and he waited it out by force of will. A decision needed to be made here, one way or the other, so that the appropriate planning could begin. To distract himself, he looked from time to time at Leia, trying to divine her thoughts as well, but not succeeding with that elder trained diplomat.

Teneniel stiffened, herself, and straightened, eyes slowly opening. Her face was a mask of Royal Will, devoid of emotion and filled with intensity as she stiffened and seemed in a moment of surety to regain her old vigour. In a moment of sudden, coiled effort, she sprung to her feet, eyes blazing coolly at Harlann, and rigid silence filleed the room, everyone anticipating the Sovereign's words, and Admiral Quir unable to help the impulse to quail under that gaze.

“No. That is not how things are supposed to go. Now OUT!--and begone from our space in twenty-four hour's time!”

Harlann only smiled grimly, clicked his heels, and bowed in mock politeness to Teneniel. “Your Majesty,” he said, and then spun on heel and marched out of the throne room.

As Teneniel slumped down, breathing heavily, her attendants rushed in close to her in worry, but again her hand waved them off. “No, no. I have rested long enough. There is only one thing I want you to do.”

“Your Majesty?” Several asked at once.

“Prepare to dictate instructions to Fleet Command... Secret orders of a strategic magnitude. Clear the Hall for them.”

In the confusion, as the non-essential attendants and suppliants were forced out, nobody noticed that Princess Leia had already left. As Teneniel began to issue the rambling instructions, punctuated with dates and specific deployment orders, but changing in a heartbeat to long dissertations on the suitability of one person or another to a certain post, or a critique of their failings and inner thoughts, the staff, used to these sorts of things in the months of her illness, dutifully took the core of what she had written and transcribed it into the necessary form for the high command of the Hapan military to act upon.

Through the corridors of the palace Leia hurried toward the shuttle landing bays, where Harlann was now heading himself, though at a more relaxed pace, to return to his VSD and plot his next move from there. Leia passed him through the corridors of the palace, which she had learned to navigate far better than he, upon what was his first, and most likely last, time within the Hapan Royal Palace. So it was that the aged but still pleasant figure of the Princess was waiting for him, as though she had not hurried at all, outside of his shuttle.

“Ambassador.”

“Your Highness,” Harlann answered, and bowed. “Is there something I can do for you? I am not in a great hurry, after all, for we shall be gone in six hours, let alone twenty-four, but I am scarcely welcome here now, thanks to the temper of the Queen.”

“As a matter of fact, there is something you can do for me—for the Republic, Ambassador.”

“Yes?” His face could not hide his ambition.

“I am pleased to inform you, Ambassador, that you have an ally in the forces of the Republic, as long as you are prepared to accept, on the basis of your powers Plenipotentiary and Extraordinary, certain stipulations which desire to insure that the Will of the People is met.”

It was desperate, but Leia knew that she had to play the one card that seemed left to the Republican cause—they would Divide and Conquer, allying with the weaker of the two standing Imperial factions to shatter the greater, and then turn against their so-called allies in the next move, and fight to the bitter end to triumph over them and thus guarantee the ultimate and final refounding of the Galactic Republic. There was no other chance left, and where the power of Sule made them retire and seek refuge, to prepare to form another Rebellion, the division between Sule and Hamner offered a chance that they would likely never have again, to win the contest in the field instead of having to rely on a second guerrilla movement which might not win for decades—or forever.

Harlann smiled. “We are all looking out for the interests of the people of the galaxy according to our own viewpoints, Your Highness, and I have no desire save that to accomadate their will in a fashion which is preferably non-violent. Furthermore, I assure you that we have no desire to do anything save to advance upon Coruscant, and thereby regain the symbol of governance of the galaxy; we will not force a battle with Sule's fleet while he is campaigning on the Outer Rim against the common threat to us all. My promises to Teneniel Djo apply just as much to the Republic in that regard.

“Of course, I shall have to hear your stipulations before I can offer up a formal arrangement for us to sign, but I am quite certain that they can be accomadated satisfactorily.”

“I agree completely, Ambassador.” Leia smiled, and hid within herself the plots for the future which now turned in her mind, the shivers at the idea of this desperate hope bearing fruit, and buried deeper than those in turn, the fears for her family which she had to hide for the greater sake of the success of democracy throughout the galaxy, and the last chance to rekindle its dying embers. “My stipulations are really quite minor, I assure you....”


Imperial Starfleet
Dantooine System.


Elise clutched at the armrests of her command chair and watched, and watched. It was a sight hideously beautiful. The flares of the ships going up around them were continuous. The bridge windows were reflecting with real light, not with holographic projections, at this distance, and they had to automatically tint themselves at each flash, for each was like a supernova, a brief artificial sun, as another Vong ship was destroyed in a sleet of radiation. The flashes of the exchange of energy fire and the detonation of missiles provided smaller events which were constantly lost in those great and energetic detonations happening all around. Dozens of Vong ships were being destroyed a minute for the loss of one or two Imperials in the same period.

Fire flashed around everywhere as the effects of defeat compounded themselves, as the Imperial advantage grew and grew and the firepower of the Vong forces collapsed precipitably as they suffered more and more damage. Steadily the Vong were destroyed. They could not go forward or back; they were trapped at close quarters, and those who tried to escape were particularly savaged by fire from all sides, hulls shattered, dovin basals knocked out, joining the great number of wrecks fortunate enough not to go up with an atomic fury as those great flares had, as tens of thousands died in an instant and ships were wiped out in powerful detonations of their own stores of munitions or fuel, turbolaser bolts striking home everywhere, all around, leaving devastation in their wake and guaranteeing the victory of the Centre.

Elise pushed herself to her feet, watching as the unabated fury of artillery and missile fire from the Imperial ships, the vast cannonade of high-energy particles, maintained a crushing, brutal tempo which was bearing home against weary and damaged ships. Each time one of the Vong ships was destroyed, or clearly crippled, the fire of several Imperial vessels turned to another Vong ship which was already under the fire of several vessels itself, and the intensity thus doubled, the lifespan of that ship was correspondingly reduced. There was nothing to be done about it now. Victory coursed through Elise's veins, and she could taste it, feel it. Here it ends!

A family avenged. A friend avenged. And the trillions whom they represented, the innocent dead, to be avenged also. Here, the great power of a barbaric people would be shattered upon the Plain of Mars, their fleets crushed, their warriors slaughtered, and their Worldships open to attack. The Empire would leave nothing; the name of Yuuzhan Vong would be wiped from the history books, their race would be extirpated to the last hunted survivor. The carellons would ring with resplendant music, with the sound of the ages, hailing the victory of the defenders of civilization, welcomed to their bittersweet reward by the martial crescendo of cannonades. One last push had done it.

The Vong had other ideas. They now gambled with one last desperate tactic. To cut short the stirrings of victory in the hearts of the Empire, their most damaged ships went forth with a brave sacrifice, pressing in to ram. They closed, those cripples, moving at their best speed. But with distances of only a few kilometers between the ships, they were at a serious disadvantage, for they could not accelerate to any appreciable speed to speak of in such a short run-up to a collision. Thus the only real danger was from dovin basals impacting with bare hull, undefended from their grasping, hungry gravitational energies by the device of the energy shield, upon those ships where (and there were many) the shields had failed over the course of this combat in some place or another.

This threat was quite genuine. In quick success five, then six, then seven Imperial ships were lost to the ramming efforts. Some of the Vong ships even survived halfway intact do the device of the dovin basals protecting them from an actual collision, though they were all crippled, for the absorption of so much matter as to tear the guts out of a heavy line-of-battle ship was sufficient to overtax their dovin basals, and so even those which seemed to miraculous survive as cripples prolonged their existence for but a few seconds or minutes. They made their presence felt, however, and the Imperials responded instantly, hardly unfamiliar with kamikazis, that most familiar foe of the Milky Way.

Elise was torn back to life when she saw the spectacle begin to unfold, and her orders were issued promptly and without hesitation. “All ships defend themselves with tractor beams as a last resort. Coverage is to be provided by other ships of a ship's particular squadron when it is targeted for a kamikazi effort. Any Vong ships which try to close the range should be assumed to be acting in a kamikazi role, and the maximum firepower should be directed upon them!”

“Transmitting orders now,” Hallsburg called out dutifully, and they were punched out to the fleet commands in a stacco of laser pulse transmissions, relayed ship to ship through the now appreciably weakened jamming of the Vong fleet.

Pellaeon had already issued similar orders. Everywhere they were executed at once, and most of the commanders of the fleet's heavy ships were Old Imperials, well used to the necessity of defending against kamikazi attacks. They had, in many cases, already reacted, and though there were some ten ships lost to the kamikazis initially, over the rest of the course of battle only another five followed them do their doom, and none more powerful than an Allegiance-class; all, in short, acceptable casualties for so great a victory as was continuing to shape up in the flash of high-energy flares and the pulses of radiation from the continued and constant death of more and more of the last Vong heavy force.

After this momentary respite the rest of the battle was a tale of woe for the Vong. The torrents of fire only increased on the survivors and the disparity in firepower increased and increased, until it had developed almost exponentially, and the drumbeat of death, the flares of the ships dying all around, reached an immense roll which resounded in radiation throughout the Dantooine system. And then it was over. The Vong had refused to run. They had stood their ground until the bitter end, and fought hard. The Imperial fleet was attrited for it, but their heavy forces were still in good shape. Many had lost their shields and suffered damage, but few had been destroyed, few had been crippled, and most could be repaired by their own efforts or by the efforts of the repair ships holding back at Ord Mantell in the fleet train. The battle in the centre was finished, but on the flanks the situation could not have been more serious, nor more dramatically reversed.

On both flanks the Imperial light were on the verge of collapse and general destruction. They had fought hard and they had paid the price for it correspondingly. Both forces had lost more than 70% of their strength by the time the main body in the centre had completely annnihilated its opponent! But somehow those tattered remnants had kept fleet coordination together, and had kept on fighting. Losses among the starfighters were nearly as bad; more than 55% in all; and the whole situation was one of despair and doom, for the jamming guaranteed that they had little idea of the situation in the centre of the fleet. Sule's allies had paid dearly for his victory, but they were about to be relieved, and avenged. The solid Old Imperials had held the line, just as they asked. Nothing less had been required of them but to fight to the death, and with the grim efficiency of rigid obedience, they had refused to break, to sway, to fall back, no matter how hard they had been pounded by the greatly superiour numbers attacking them.

Pellaeon's image swelled to live on the flagbridge of the Conquérant, cool, grim, serious, in short, entirely unaffected by the greatest victory he had just won in his entire military career, unless one counted Talfaglio, which Pellaeon would never presume to dispute with the memory of Mystrela di Kuat. He still had men in mortal danger, and that was the critical issue for him now. Half the battle was won, and they were in the most perfect position imaginable for the second half, but that second half would still have to be fought.

“Elise, I want you to take your segment of the main body about as once. Recharge your shields as much as possible as you swing around behind the Vong left flank, but your first and most important goal is haste! We can't leave the Lights on the line for much longer, so we must get in position to block the Vong retreat before they are completely annihilated. I'll leave the rest to you—I have my own situation on the right flank to deal with, of course,” he concluded, and then the hologram immediately cut out.

Elise didn't wait a moment in proceeding to execute the orders. She spun on heel to look back to the communications deck. “Commander Hallsburg—Fleet Signals! All Taskforces under this flag's authority! 'Fleet pivot to port, course fourty-eight point eighty true, elevation six degrees. Execute immediately at full acceleration. Stand by to execute negative parabolic from gridpoint K-17 on my further signals. All ships devote maximum energy to shield regeneration and stand by for resumption of combat.'”

“Transmitting, Admiral” came the command back, swiftly.

Elise was rather pleased, Hallsburg's attentiveness to detail and duty had improved further ever since the very difficult communication situation around Coruscant at the third battle of that name, and she was now seriously considering putting him in for a promotion to Captain, and the XO's position on one of the Communications Cruisers. It was certainly a reward for someone who had been good and then forced themselves, it appeared, to get even better than that.

But now there was not much time for such musings. As the command was obeyed, her half of the main body of the fleet, replete with and led by six Executors, swung about, still very much in disorder from the close action but the Taskforce commanders having to reorganize the squadrons under them on their own, for Elise cared only about speed and left them the lesser duty of restoring order and discipline and the advantage of unit cohesion. But that was their task, and they performed it admirably even as the same feat was replicated by Pellaeon's portion of the fleet. Heading out at maximum acceleration they cleared away steadily to each side, and within three minutes had passed the field of jamming and were even with the desperate fights occuring still to the rear.

At this point the Vong had a full understanding of what was going on in those forces, and independently attempted to extricate themselves. But the time had come for the parabolic shift to be executed. Elise issued the order, and then went and sat back down. At once the fleet began to pattern their course into a broad arc around an artificially designated point in space, swinging end behind the Vong forces who were now trying to pull back and avoid just precisely this incoming double-envelopment, the complete reversal of what they themselves had been in the process of attempting.

Disengagement from combat was not something that happened quickly, though it might be done without great effort if the enemy was so exhausted, or lacked the moral will, to sustain the action when it was attempted. The Vong expected their opponents in the Light, on the verge of annihilation, to be in just this position. They were, however, not. Their commanders acted with an instinctive understanding of the situation, and as the Vong tried to get away, they clung tooth-and-claw to the retreating Vong squadrons, their outnumbered forces hitting hard despite their damage, and despite the damage still greater which they took, the savaging of the battered survivors of an already neigh-decimated force. There was no hesitation, for it was a gamble, to win or lose it all, to hold the Vong in place long enough for the two halves of the main body with the heavy artillery of the fleet to come up behind the Vong forces, to throw out their grav wells and hold them here in real space and pound them into annihilation.

These Yuuzhan Vong had met the match for their warrior's courage in the solid adherence of the Imperial officers to their instructions and the obedience of those officers by their men in turn, so that when the order was given to hold, none dared nor thought to retire from battle, but instead fought in their places, and held their ships in formation like rocks, every one solid and unrelenting in its place, attacking when attack was impossible and fighting to the end, not because they were fanatics, but because they obeyed and were ruled by Law, and it was their immuteable Laws which commanded obedience, and obedience to those powers that decreed: HOLD! And so they had held their ground. But there was something fundamentally beyond that in their spirit, an irreproachable elan.

Their casualties were greater than seventy percent, but of course this did not matter. Five hundred years before there had been a war fought on Earth, by an army steeped in a tradition of conquest. They had lost. The Imperial Army of the Emperor of the French, Napoleon III, had fought with outdated tactics, had been outnumbered due to their poor system of mobilization, and had scarcely won a battle in the whole war. But their were stories, and they were entirely true, of units of the French infantry which had been ordered to attack into the face of murderous fire from the Krupp howitzers and Dreyse needle-guns of the enemy, time and time again, until their units had lost not less than 90% of their strength, until mere platoons represented what had been regiments, but their eagles were still born before them, the orders of the highest ranked survivor still obeyed, and lines still formed. Some of the men begged their awed generals for a chance at one last charge of the bayonet, to win by dint of superhuman effort or join their comrades in the grave. Not even when nine out of ten men were killed or wounded had regimental cohesion failed them. They were soldiers, not mere warriors.

So to were the officers and the sailors of the Imperial Starfleet. They had stood their ground to the point where they had suffered the insufferable, endured the unendurable, and now they attacked and pursued despite having just suffered those great losses, having seen the annihilation of their comrades and their units. This sort of fighting spirit had an inestimable power in battle. Here it entangled the Vong as they presumptiously attempted to retire without continued combat, and forced them to hastily form rearguards and shift the order of their withdraw, such that they could no longer quickly extricate themselves, fully aware that as they were forced to take the time to do this, great fleets were bearing down upon their rear of their respective formations, threatening them with annihilation from the big guns of the Star Destroyers. Those ships were now racing to approach their maximum range, and the turrets were swinging out and preparing for action.

Even so, the Vong still had one last hope: There were still thousands of ships in transit to the field of battle, and if they arrived at the right time, they might yet serve to carry the day. And so with this knowledge to motivate them, a surer thing than the intangible that drove the Imperial light to attack, they fought on in good order and braced themselves for the coming onslaught.

They did not wait long.


Vong-occupied Outer Rim,
On the Worldship of
Supreme Overlord Shimmra.


It was like a fine poem, a perfect piece of swift, energetic dancing. An artwork of motion. And every movement contained death. The Vong warriors fought seriously now. Whereas at first they had desired to capture the Jedi, now they tried to kill them. But they fought that those two, whatever they were, had a resiliency greater than that. They drew on their inner strength, and they danced a dance of destruction. Their sabres were guided, their blows precise, their movements an art of efficiency. Here they were much more hard-pressed, but they also did not stand in one particular place, but instead moved together, acting in concert, moving together and fighting together with warnings and encouragement given through the higher power of the mind.

Their sweat flowed freely and mingled with the blood of their enemies upon their bodies. They were always together, never more than three feet from each other and usually far less, even with their bodies touching, each covering the other as necessary. They wreaked a carnage which seemed impossible for two mortal human beings to achieve. They thrust the contained energy of their blades through the smallest gaps in the armour of their foes, and resorted to the force to turn the air around the Vong, whom they could at least not affect with such arts, into a weapon against them and a shield to defend themselves. When the press began to great, the effort of a sudden wall formed out of the air, compressing and slamming into a number of Vong, drove them back and dealt fatal blows to many in the process besides.

They kicked, and sometimes they punched, or struck with the hilts of their sabres, as the Vong warriors moved in. They fought, and fought, with every artifice available to them, and their opponents died. Sometimes they struck home, too, and neither of the women was unwounded by that point, though the ugly severity of the scar upon Miat Temm's face remained by far the worst blow. Yet here, steadily, their opponents still were gaining upon them. The fight was a swift thing of beauty for the two, but it was a fight in which they were slowly being overcome by an enemy which had not just these thousands, but millions of warriors standing on behind them. If they stood and fought, surely they would be overcome, yet they were a hundred feet from their goal and so they did just that, and fought on.

A chorus of dead provided the unheard crescendo of the battle. They were not the souls that the two reaping angels delivered to the hells below, but those haunted shades who had suffered and now shrieked with vengeance, the hot blood of enemies slain in battle by their champion and her partner a signal release, the release of a blood debt, of a primal law. Entrails scattered through the mess of mangled and rent bodies, and they pushed forward through the press, toward the waiting group of Vong warriors who did not press forward, toward the elite men led by the Second of the Guard, who waited patiently for the two dealers of death to reach them. Warrior after warrior fell, struck down, relieved of the contents of their torso, vital organs punctured by blazing heat, decapacitated or rendered useless by the removal of several critical limbs.

This is the real thing, now, Jaina, Miat thought brilliantly. They want us dead, and they're to find out how hard of a task they have to reach that point, with the two of us together!

Jaina did not reply, though a trace of a grim smile touched her lips as another wall of compressed air was flung out from a gesture of her's, driving back their foes further, just to have them rush on again, over the shattered and dying near-corpses of those who's innards had been pulped by the move. The situation was desperate, and Jaina did once doubt what Miat had said. Her love for the affair was a dangerous, deadly thing, but Jaina could not resist being caught up in the romanticism of it. Two against thousands!

It was almost like being awed with something that you yourself with doing, an experience, a feeling that Jaina could not quite fully place, but yet was experienced and enjoyed to the full, a propelling vigour in the heat of battle. It drove them on through the fight, and fight onward they did, even as the intensity of the combat, the nips of the enemy amphistaffs, came closer and closer to the point where the damage would be done, where they could not keep up, where they would be overwhelmed. The point had not happened yet, though, their heartless victories continued in a sort of black beauty which could not be denied, but was a thing of the moment, a thing which could not last.

It did not last. Miat finally overextended herself, pushing on to hard, just a bit further ahead of Jaina than was safe and allowed for the two, partenered in all things as they had become, to defend each other. The Vong pressed in immediately and Miat soon found herself fighting nine or ten at once.. No, twelve or fourteen, it began, even as she hacked several down, for others took their places and more still pressed in. She fought them with incredible vigour, and with such confidence that Jaina, striking down her own foes all around in the heat of the most intense press imaginable, did not realize it until she felt the searing pain through their link of Miat taking a serious and bodily blow.

Jaina felt something pour through that she could not describe. A rage hideous and powerful, an anger at the injury that Miat had taken, an irrepressible force of lustful madness. There was nothing, and then there was everything, and she drew on it and struck out. Dark energies flowed from her body forth against her opponents, and struck them down and down, and killed all around her, save for the object of her desperation, save for Miat Temm. There was an intensity to the strike, and ease of the kill, that was astonishing, but Jaina instinctually understood the reason for it in that same moment. The Vong lacked the force—and the force was precisely what allowed one, when it flowed through their body, to withstand these forces which she had only unleashed once before, the dark energy of the Sith. The Vong had no defence for a power that sapped their life-force, for they lacked a connection to the greater life-force which extended to even a non-sensitive being a measure of resistance, and to those skilled in the force, a greater measure.

Thus it was that even the touch of Jaina's force-lightning was death for the Vong. Death, and more death, for she did not simply release it once in a paroxysm of rage, but let the pain and anguish of Miat's wound through the link flow into her and, for as long as that pain lasted, she struck out again and again. Even the skill of the elite warriors did not matter, for any Vong died at the touch of that dark power. The Second of the Guard realized it at once and turned back and away from the power with the rest of the men, lest they fall also to that dark touch. It was like an ancient Goddess walked against them, reaping, and their stories and tales left the Second with no doubt of the horrible power and fate behind this one, who was most assuredly the twin of the one they held, for their could be no other with those forces at her back.

Abruptly Miat's pain cut off. Jaina thought her dead, and in the intensity of her rage at that thought, drew forth with greater power still. A vortex seemed to appear around them, and the dark energies she flung out scorched and scarred their way across the very worldship, shattering and burning through the rock of the hull, smashing the corridor, and still killing and killing. It was a thing of eldritch power. Warriors in the prime of their lives were struck down at great distance by the awesome force; the thud bugs they tried in one more desperate effort, and they had to few to count anyway, were all destroyed in a heartbeat as they were flung on toward Jaina. The malestrom was only ended by the exhaustion of the feeling of rage within Jaina, to the mellowing down to grief that followed, sputtering out in fits and starts until the unleashing of dark energy stopped entirely.

There was only silence. Nothing else came, through corridors filled with blacked and cut-through dead, all of them dead, every one dead, not a living soul amongst those piles of bodies. Jaina dropped to her knees, lightsabre deactivated, panting in desperate grief. She gathered herself together, and drew herself forward to Miat's body, looking down at her horribly pale, almost translucent flesh, and bowed herself forward over the other woman, clutching at her body and drawing up her head to plant a kiss of grief against her cold lips, uncaring of the presence of that hideous scar.

Miat Temm's eyes snapped open at the touch of Jaina's lips, wild, brilliant in their mad fire.

Jaina lurched back, her own eyes wide open, and she inhaled sharply in a gasp to look upon Miat Temm, fully alive. Her mind clutched for an explaination, and.. “You.. You're drawing on the force to staunch your pain and your wound,” came out at last in a desperate rush of words, a confused jumble filled with the dark thoughts inside of her.

“Shh, Jaina, shh. Control. I am alright, and so are you. I will be fine.”

“You're wounded!” Jaina snapped. “There is nothing you can really do, the way that you are holding back your pain and the effects of that injury! You can't, Miat! Not forever.”

“It doesn't need to be forever. We won't be here forever,” Miat said with a dry laugh, and began to push herself up to her knees, a hand reaching out casually for her sabre which was flung into it by the force in a heartbeat. “You have cleared the path for us, Jaina, now let us go to your brother. We scarcely have the time to waste, after all, as you yourself have said.”

Jaina inhaled heavily a few times to calm herself and nodded. “Alright.” A pause, and her eyes, suspicious, looked around as though she hadn't really seen the destruction around her the time that she had gazed about before. Her look filled with dread at the realization that this was the work of her own hands, something that she could not describe, at the feeling of the dark power coursing through her... The power that was all her's, from her, for her, for her purposes and strength. She looked down to Miat, and could not find the words to speak. She did not raise her voice against the woman, and thus did Miat push herself up and smile softly, even sadly.

“You are on a very lonely path, Jaina, as am I—but it is a path that will free us from the madness of the spirits and from the whole of the galaxy. It is the path of immortality.”

“Immortality is found through the force,” Jaina snapped back automatically.

Miat simply leapt to her feet, and laughed merrily, mockingly at the idea. “From a certain point of view it is, but only from that point of view—and it is one that I hardly find admirable, though I suppose the one who came before me did.”

“What do you mean!?” Jaina leapt up as wel, and looked on grimly to Miat. “You have brought us together down a dark road!”

“You have chosen your path, and if it is a dark path, it is only dark because it is lonely, Jaina. Now come on!”

Chastised, Jaina followed Miat in obedience, on into the special prison block where they knew Jacen to be. There was no more opposition. It was deserted of living Vong, who now fell back and tried to cordon the area off rather than dare contest with what was surely the power of a Goddess—or two. It bespoke of ancient things, of the making race of the deities and of the age of heroes and of myth, and it frightened those who were superstitious, which was almost all of the Vong, universally, with their bloody Gods.

They strode together, Miat drawing on the power within her to ignore her wounds, and Jaina's introspective silence slowly gathering an understanding of what she had inside of herself. It did not seem like the 'dark side', it seemed like simply an inner energy, something drawn from a different source than the force, no merely a part of it, an evil part; it seemed that there was no such thing there, just that which was within her, and served her. This understanding came to her in the walk of silence, and by the time they had cut their way into the prison block it possessed her with curiousity and wonder and fear, so far that had it not been for Miat Temm's snapped warning--Jaina, be ready-- in her mind that she would not have seen the waiting amphistaffs of the guards.

They struck together, and only had fourteen opponents to deal with. Fighting as one, they made short work of them, and save for a cut along her jumpsuit they had not a touch on them for the result of that fight. The bodies of the warriors who had faced them were gored and ripped apart by the sabres, often from the inside out, pieces of their bodies scattered around as they slumped to the ground, dead, their bowels loosing in death and adding to the stench of the end of a living being as blood was left to dry all around their squalid forms, and with it fried bits of things worse than blood.

Ahead, then, was only an Inquisitor in their path. He steeled himself for death, knowing he could not stand against them. Jaina walked forward, and then ran, kicking him aside and not even bothering to kill him. She stopped short, at the cell in which she now knew her brother to be, and looked on for a silent moment. The rage coursed again.

It was only a half-thought thing, but the Inquisitor's body burst into flames as though of its own volition, and the screams of his death as he was burned alive filled the chamber as Jaina cut through to reach her brother, scarred and mutilated as he was, looking up silently, with a mask of death upon his face. It was not the happy reunion she had imagined. There was only silence, and horror upon Jacen's face. She floundered for words, and at last, smiled sadly and simply handed him the lightsabre off her belt that Miat Temm had crafted for him.

He took it, and then spoke his devastating words, overcoming the feelings of pain in his tortured body in a way that would have pleased the Vong, but for entirely different reasons: “My sister, you walk a lonely path.”

Jaina's eyes widened once more, and she sunk to her knees in bitter horror at the calm and condemning countenance of her mutilated brother.

Then Miat Temm stepped up behind her, and looked into Jacen's eyes. “Yes she does, Jedi, but I walk it with her, and,” she added with a wry grimace of humour: “I scarcely think that you have failed to learn a few lessons of meditation in this place, yourself. Now, shall we not speak of..” A heavy breath, there, and her voice was softer: “What we both must do, and Jaina also?”

Jacen snapped on the lightsabre his sister had just given him. Neither Miat nor Jaina made a move, and he did not, certainly, make one himself. He just held it activated. “Speak, then, and speak quickly--for we do not have long, and I cannot trust one who has touched my sister so.”

“Very well, I will begin. But remember—Jaina has taken her own course, and has her own purpose, and if you find truth in my words you cannot turn her aside from it simply because of your fancy for your own kin.”

A calm look, from Jacen, a look of a man who had suffered worse than death and who's gaze could contain oceans of emotion, seas of endless depth and understanding. “I know. Our destiny is in our hands.”

“If we choose it to be,” Miat replied, and then she began to speak words of philosophy, surrounded by implements of torture and death, and with impending death looming over them. But they were words that had to be said, and so of course they were.




De Imperatoribus Galacticis will be continued in Chapter the Twenty-Third

[phongn]

Very nice, Marina. Though would Leia really be so desperate as to do that?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Very nice, Marina. Though would Leia really be so desperate as to do that?

Is it desperate? It's very sound strategy, the sort of thing that a good rebel leader would have to be able to do--you have to be prepared to coldly exploit factionalism in your opponent like that to run an effective rebellion, and I think that her making that move is only giving her the due credit she deserves.

[phongn]

Very nice, Marina. Though would Leia really be so desperate as to do that?

Is it desperate? It's very sound strategy, the sort of thing that a good rebel leader would have to be able to do--you have to be prepared to coldly exploit factionalism in your opponent like that to run an effective rebellion, and I think that her making that move is only giving her the due credit she deserves.

Fair enough, and I had forgotten that Sule's fleet is currently crushing the Vong so that threat is more or less gone ... but if she is successful then she'll ignite a war that will devestate the Galaxy Far Far Away, if not more. Is it really worth all that for the Republic? Neither Sule's Empire or Hamner's are Palpatine's.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Fair enough, and I had forgotten that Sule's fleet is currently crushing the Vong so that threat is more or less gone ... but if she is successful then she'll ignite a war that will devestate the Galaxy Far Far Away, if not more. Is it really worth all that for the Republic? Neither Sule's Empire or Hamner's are Palpatine's.

To many crisises, to many memories of past glory, to ideological. Call it what you want, but Leia has invested so much blood, sweat, and tears into Republicanism, seen her homeworld destroyed by its enemies, that she can't give in to its ideological foe.

To the knife.

Sad. But that is the way of people, and causes.