4.07

The Chiss flotilla had been in-system for five minutes and vicelord Siv Kav had yet to answer their hails. It was a degree of naval unprofessionalism that spoke of either immense scorn towards the small Chiss task force, or utter idiocy. Unfortunately for our task force, both applied to our illustrious leader. Father was but a non-Neimodian captain that preferred independent command over advancement in the Federation and would never bother to open communication with aliens anyway, whereas Kinman Doriana was officially just a senatorial aide and representative with no military authority in this mission.

"Cabal, answer the Chiss cruiser's hail, if you please," I said from my own private chambers where Father had pretended to confine me for my own safety. "Rolling superposition encryption, I'd rather not be overheard." The drawback to millennia of advancement in mathematics and computers was that the only safe encryption was one unbreakable regardless of computational power. Exchange of one-time keys being inefficient at galactic levels, it was one of the main contributing factors to there not being a galactic internet or stock market. For communications at fixed points within a star system though, the Doughnut had one large advantage; size. Give the data basic encryption to disguise the content until it was solved, then split the transmission into multiple antennas into different parts of the ship so that the original signal is reconstituted via superposition at the intended receiver's location while being gibberish in all others.

It didn't take long for the Chiss to catch on and send back their own transmission split across all three of their cruisers; a few minutes later I was looking at an uncommonly handsome, blue-skinned, red-eyed face, a small warship's bridge in the background. The ridiculously humanoid alien raised one dark blue eyebrow as it took my image in return; a just as pretty golden-skinned, dark-haired teenager slumping on a luxurious four-poster bed, with the rest of the room haphazardly filled with datapads, shoes, revealing dresses, ornate jewelry, and art from half a hundred different worlds, all in wildly varying styles with nothing in common beyond their aesthetic appeal. Almost as if they'd been randomly picked from a galaxy-wide list of expensive cultural items - which, of course, they had.

"That is a surprise," Thrawn said in strangely accented Basic - because who else could it be? "Given the method of communication and the fleet gathered in this system, I was expecting someone of a more... military demeanor."

"Oh, you know how the military is," I retorted in an airy tone that fooled nobody. "Everyone is promoted according to aristocratic pedigree or monetary contributions, and even in the rare cases of merit, everyone is eventually promoted to their level of inability." No reaction at all from Thrawn of course, but I had more than my eyes to read him. He liked those not so subtle snide remarks about the Chiss' militaristic aristocracy even less than facing a total unknown that apparently had some knowledge of him. "In this case, I suspect our glorious leader sees only a tinpot alien dictator with a tiny flotilla from some uncivilized world not deserving any response, which only proves the magnitude of his bigotry. Or his stupidity - I have yet to decide which is greater."

"I see..." He probably did, his eyes roving back and forth like a professional Starcraft player's, taking in every single detail visible through the screen. "Then why would a young merchant princess clandestinely contact a presumed alien dictator, if you don't mind me asking? It seems entirely out of character for the Trade Federation and the Arkanians both."

"Well, I did want to see the Chiss in real life, for once. Your uniforms are as gaudy as described, though certainly worn well in this case. Custom work, I presume?" I made no attempt to disguise my staring at him intensely - he was really too pretty for a blue man - which served as an excellent disguise to what I was actually doing. Even the most delicate of connections to individuals you knew well were difficult, Force artifact or no. "Captain - no, Commander - of... Picket Force Two?" I raised both eyebrows almost comically at that. "Are you sure you have clearance for the first contact with foreign institutions, beyond the Ascendancy's borders at that?" Information on the Chiss had been extremely hard to find, even with Hutt's help and considerable resources, but foreknowledge had helped - as had to pay several Chiss exiles on Serenno, Count Dooku's own homeworld. I'd planned the encounter with Thrawn with more forces and a greater degree of freedom in mind, so angering him, unsettling him, and confusing him enough for a plan hastily reworked over the past week would have to suffice.

"The sworn servants of the Ascendancy do not need its permission to fight on its behalf." He shook its head as if to dislodge some notion or fancy not relevant to the matter at hand. "And I doubt you have any more authority to negotiate on the Federation's behalf. Should I then contact your superiors in this matter?"

"Perhaps you should. I daresay they'll pick up on your hails any time now." I gave him an indulgent, very much mocking smile. "As for how that conversation and its aftermath will go, I will not spoil the conclusion if you're eager to see this through."

Then before he could reply to that, I cut the connection in his face.

xxxx xxxx xxxx

​

"Astra, you should return to your cabin," Father said as he concentrated on the primary viewing screen. "Battles are no place for a merchant princess."

"Come on, hiding there was deathly boring!" I whined. "We're in the toughest ship there is - what's the worse that could happen?" I ignored more than a few strange glances from the rest of the bridge crew in favor of further pretense at being a brat. "So, have we won yet?"

"On the contrary, Siv Kav just lost three squadrons of fighters," Father replied while glaring at the screen as much as he wanted to glare at the vicelord. "See there? He sent them out at their maximum controlled range, where the enemy refused to engage until they had to come back due to limited endurance. A few repetitions of that -"

"And the bad guys hacked the control signal," I finished for him, ever the dutiful 'student'. "What kind of encryption the Federation is using nowadays? Losing the fighters like that... it's kinda dumb, right?"

"Very," he agreed, not a trace of the humor he was feeling at this charade. If we didn't have to worry about the rest of the Federation asking for all our bridge logs after this debacle... "An automatic algorithm using a repeating series of about a hundred keys. Just looking at a single command might give enough information to break the encryption, if it was the same across all one thousand fighters." Which was the kind of amateur mistake Earth had stopped doing back in the second world war.

"There go twelve million credits down the drain," I sing-songed, in a rather awful tone too. "But why are the enemy ships attacking when there are five thousand more fighters in the Darkvenge and Keeper's complements?"

We got the answer to that before Father could speak up. Thrawn had nine Chiss heavy fighters available, ships of the same weight class as the Doughnut's own pocket cruisers, but armed in an entirely different manner. Instead of heavy energy weapons and shielding, the slightly smaller craft were missile boats with multiple light torpedo tubes each. As the Vulture droid swarm approached, they went into rapid-fire, each sending fifty missiles against ten times as many light fighters. The rockets detonated early, vanishing from the plot except for small glittering hazes of apparent debris. Then entire groups of droid fighters went offline as soon as they entered the debris zone.

"Tactical, magnify and enhance, full spectrum." At Father's order, the plot changed considerably. Where it had only showed debris there now were kilometer-wide filaments shining in the electromagnetic spectrum. Small groups of Vultures had already tried to fly through most, getting tangled and disabled by the static charge in the ridiculous-looking but effective space nets. "Conner nets," Father 'explained'. "Microfiber sheets invisible to basic optical sensors that carry a powerful ion charge. A pirate's weapon," he spat in the end, which was true enough. Not that any ship above a small transport had anything to worry about from conner nets.

Having disabled a good portion of the fighters, Thrawn was now throwing powerful jamming from his command cruiser. Had Siv Kav used a system anywhere close to the power of those on a droid control ship, there wouldn't have been any problems. The Doughnut had one at a quarter the power and could have still controlled the now leaderless Vultures, but we chose not to do so. The Hardcell transports were now firing their capital missiles, which was an even poorer tactic against craft agile enough to dodge them and with the ability to use net-missiles as counters. We didn't even have to comment on the Trade Federation's poor military doctrine on record; the combat plot was more than enough on its own.

Then the nine Chiss heavy fighters came closer to the three Lucrehulks, their attacks getting dangerously close to the vulnerable fuel cells on the Hardcell transports. Letting Vulture droids get smashed was one thing; full ships were another thing entirely. So with decisive alacrity, Father spoke up.

"Weapons, lock anti-air on targets, a hundred guns per bogey, acceleration cone coverage." In space, fighter craft was relatively tiny, very fast targets. Even with lightspeed anti-air, it was possible for them to dodge after the blaster bolt was fired but before it could reach them due to lightspeed lag - especially since good organic pilots had a small measure of precognitive reaction through the Force. But no matter how fast a small craft went, how much it could change its possible position was limited by its acceleration, and the potential changes for the flight time of lascannon shots were limited to a narrow cone in space. Instead of firing upon one position, the Doughnut's guns were firing at all of them.

It took hundreds of simultaneous AA shots to checkmate a single fighter - making dodging mathematically impossible - but with over five hundred quad guns brought to bear on just nine attackers, the result was a foregone conclusion. One moment, nine Chiss heavy fighters were harrying the missile transports. Three seconds later, nine expanding clouds of debris were all that was left. The crews' death had already been felt through the Force before the light of the explosions could reach our ships' sensors. Through the weak, barely established connection in the back of my mind, I felt surprised, anger, sorrow. Not nearly as much as another commander might have felt, but then this was Thrawn. Someone that would eventually grow to be the greatest tactician in the Galaxy - or rather would have been.

"Those small cruisers are coming closer. Do they think they can win where their fighters failed?" I 'asked' Father while concentrating on that anger and sorrow, stoking them, feeding them. And when the time was right, just the seed of an idea given. Another Force-user in the canon future would have Force-choked Thrawn across a holocall and almost succeeded but for Sidious' pawn. Not having the power for that aside, killing him was not my goal.

"No, they're launching missiles," Father countered. "Stand-by point defense."

Indeed the small cruisers launched anti-capital-ship torpedoes, ten of them each. The size of small fighters but faster, those would normally contain enough explosives to heavily damage a cruiser each if they detonated against its shields. Very little threat against a Lucrehulk, but Father did not leave anything to chance. He had been warned after all. The anti-air batteries fired, prioritizing the missiles aimed at the Doughnut. In short order all twenty of them had been shot down. 'Unfortunately', the anti-air defenses on the Keeper and Darkvenge were severely lacking, or maybe Siv Kav didn't bother using them, trusting on his shields. It would be the last mistake he ever made. Three out of five Chiss radiation bombs detonated almost point-blank, saturating the Darkvenge with wavelengths lethal to organics. Two did the same on the Keeper. Had those bombs hit the Doughnut, the thicker, insulated hull and the secondary shielding would have absorbed the radiation. On the two standard Trade Federation ships, I felt every single organic crew member die as if microwaved instead. That result left an ashen taste in my mouth, for all that it had been the plan all along...

"Engage the interdiction fields!" Father's sharp command made the crew scramble to obey as I sat down in the nearest chair, face paler than usual. Death - especially death dealt ultimately on my orders - was a thing I needed to get used to if we were to win the Clone Wars... or any other war to come. But I did not have to like it. "Long-range ion cannons, shoot these alien scum out of my space!"

Heavy guns intended to engage star destroyers at stand-off ranges fired. Three small Chiss cruisers unable to escape into Hyperspace did not stand a chance.