The Naboo Plasma War : Episode VII

Despite my resistance to Amidala's plan, I had to give her credit. It wasn't a bad plan, it had a fair chance of working. I mostly believed that it would be less costly and less risky to settle in for the long haul, rather than try and end it all at once. Her plan seemed superficially similar to my memories of the movies, but after I had checked it against the notes I had begun keeping to help prevent forgetting important memories, there were significant differences.

Attempting to draw the Trade Federation garrison out of Theeds simply would not work, and Padme realized that. The widespread fighting meant first that the Theeds garrison was much larger for one. Plus, massing a giant Gungan army to draw them out would merely result in them diverting assets from other areas rather than weakening the Theeds garrison. They had more than enough droids for the task.

Jar-Jar Binks had been aboard the Royal Cruiser when it had been destroyed. He was dead, and I wasn't entirely sure how to feel about that. It had been easy to hate him when this had been a fictional setting, but here, he was indeed a real, and generally well-meaning person. Ironically, his presence had proven unnecessary for Gungan military cooperation. The changes my actions had brought about meant Gunray had significantly more resources at his disposal; Naboo had never been pacified, so the other Lucrehulks had never been recalled. This in turn meant the Gungans had been unable to avoid getting caught up in the war and faced with a mutual foe, the resistance and the Gungans were more than happy to coordinate their efforts.

Her plan thus involved a massive assault on the capital, and any forces that could not be diverted for the assault were to launch assaults on other targets in an attempt to tie down as many Trade Federation assets as possible. Despite her problems with the existence of the Naboo Militiamen, Padme couldn't deny their necessity. Naboo's Royal Security simply lacked the numbers and equipment to fight the Trade Federation in the open. The Militiamen on the other hand, while they hadn't had time to be fully trained, had plenty of combat experience at this point as well as a fair stockpile of heavy, if often outdated, weaponry. Naboo had been around for a long time. While the cities took pride in how long one's family had lived on Naboo, the rural areas took it so far as to place an almost religious value on "family heirlooms."

NX Police cruisers would provide air support to the assault. The few N1 starfighters that had made it out of Theeds would be held in reserve until the resistance could retake the royal hangars. Then they'd converge and join the air battle. With multiple Lucrehulks in orbit, not even the most optimistic of them believed they had a chance of shutting down the droids by destroying the control ship. All of the lumbering titans were capable of directing the droid armies on the surface on their own. Hopefully, they'd be able to capture Nute Gunray and intimidate him into giving the shutdown codes for the droids if not, placing gungan shield generators over Theeds would give the resistance a true fortress to stage from.

It was rash, yes, but it wasn't impossible.

My control screen flashed. The signal had been sent. With the press of a button, the prototype D-13 droid starfighters left my hangar for the first time, plummeting down towards the planet to join the assault.

-----

Captain Kael of the Naboo Royal Security barely glanced at his comms as he received the signal. Captain Panaka had made a last-minute adjustment to the plans, after learning that Lieutenant Sykes had managed to retake the Naboo Airbase south of Theeds. The prototype within would be extremely useful.

"Sykes, there's a pair of AAT's guarding the southwest road into the city."

"On it sir."

His men waited low, blasters ready and hidden among the rocky outcrops along the roads, a few hundred meters from the tanks. Above, the low roar of a large aircraft steadily grew louder and louder. The droids must have noticed the noise too, as the AATs elevated their turrets and began firing into the air. Unfortunately, while dangerous, the hovertanks were poorly suited to hitting aircraft, and the NB-1S Royal Bomber was more than capable of shrugging off the few hits that landed.

The AAT's disappeared in the flash of an Ion Bomb. When the light faded, they had been reduced to burning, twisted wrecks. The bomber flew past them escorted by NX police cruisers. Captain Kael waved his men forward, and they sprinted towards the entrance of the city. Using the destroyed tanks as cover, Captain Kael began exchanging fire with battle droids. The liberation of Theeds had begun.

-----

Qui-Gon Jinn had been in the Jedi Order for a long time. He had seen and done many things in his service to the Force. Qui-Gon was, all in all, rarely surprised by anything life threw at him. That said, he would have been... skeptical if someone had told him he'd one day be crouching behind a speeder, providing cover for a Trandoshan mercenary as he provided first aid to a wounded civilian, seemingly endless battle droids bearing down on him.

Technically speaking, he was supposed to protecting Queen Amidala as she leads the charge on Theeds. While it was a style of leadership Qui-Gon felt many people could afford to emulate, it was making his job rather difficult. Case in point, his charge, and his Padawan were separated from him by open road, the two of them behind a Champion repulsorcraft as it exchanged fire with an AAT down the road. For most people or most Jedi for that matter, this would not seem like a particularly difficult separation. Unfortunately, in this case, Gunray had managed to get his hands on E-web repeating blasters and concentrated them in Theeds. The E-web was making him highly uncomfortable being even that far from his charge, but he had faith in his Padawan, and the medic had needed help getting to the civilian.

As a Trandoshan fired a rocket at the E-web, Qui-Gon resolved to reflect on the circumstances leading up to this turn of events. He may have misjudged something somewhere.