4.05

The easy success of the archaeological slash counter-terrorism expedition was followed by the establishment of a small but highly profitable weapons production facility in Grakkus' territory. Contrary to common misconceptions, I was not a consummate merchant princess; I left the organization part of the whole endeavor to Ratty, Sing, and more qualified subordinates. Between training, studying the four Jedi holocrons in the Hutt's collection after paying an exorbitant admittance fee, and using the Force to cheat on the stock market and various business deals, I had my hands full. We were still waiting for Tibanna shipments from Bespin, cybernetics from Arkania, and droid forges from Metalorn before our first T-666 factory could start full production as well, which meant even more things to arrange and oversee.

Day after busy day, and only Astra Andrim's approaching fifteenth birthday made me realize I'd been in the Star Wars galaxy for three whole years. Certainly an occasion to celebrate; I'd have arranged for a party if not for a very familiar sight upsetting my entire schedule a month before my official age of majority by Kuati standards - by which they meant when a noble scion was expected to wed and provide heirs, the anachronistic oligarchs. One moment I was sitting in my new office, leveraging energies produced by a local gang war into influencing the stock trade, the next I was looking up, prodded by the Force to look at the night sky through the window. Seconds later there was a huge thermal bloom that sensors and infrared eyes across the planet could see, and the disc of the Doughnut jumped out of Hyperspace to take a temporary orbit as a small moon.

Odd, and possibly important. Father was not supposed to arrive for weeks still.

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By the time Aurra and I arrived to the ship's bridge, the Doughnut was already back in hyperspace, hurtling down Shag Pabol and the Kagaa Run at the best speed its improved hyperdrive and reactors could manage. Father had already jettisoned the cargo we'd been waiting for before we'd even come aboard and it had been Ratty's job to organize its collection and transport to our planet-side facilities. Next stop Bothawi, to unload exotic meats, high-tech optics, and several million tons of top-of-the-line hair care products. If one had to describe the Bothans in one sentence it would be as "anthropomorphic lions that run the Galaxy's greatest spy network", so the cargo made perfect sense. The haste on the other hand did not.

"We have less than two weeks to prepare, so better make it count," were Father's words upon meeting us. Instead of the usual pleasantries we were presented with fourteen miniature carbonite cases each, and more urgency. "The latest batch. Astra, Doctor Magrody proposes you move to phase two. Oral intake seems to have reached a plateau for you." Great, because that's what I wanted for my birthday present; medical injections of something so unusual, unstable, and potentially dangerous that Arkanian mad scientists were not certain of the results. So only more of what I'd been doing for the past two years, or so.

"Why all this hurry? Are we expecting another assassination attempt?" If we were, the Kuati would not find me nearly so easy a target this time.

Scowling at nothing and everything, Father told me. It was worse than any assassination attempt.

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Bothan space left behind, we were hurtling down the Reena Trade Route with the Doughnut's engines close to redlining and the cargo bays full with Tibanna harvesters straight from Bothawui's small craft shipyards. Small was relative of course; at over fifty thousand tons each, the harvesters were half the size of an old Earth supercarrier each, and a hundred and twenty now filled the bays. I had not seen them being loaded; the first dose of the new medicine had knocked me out for an hour, then left me too nauseous to stand for another seven. Maybe it was being five years too young, maybe it was something wrong with the dosage, maybe this batch being collected years before its original discovery in canon had caused side effects. Whatever the cause of the backlash though, we could not afford to wait as had been the original plan.

From the Reena Trade Route we'd turned into the Corellian run. From there, we planned to turn again on Arkanis, taking the Triellus Trade Run to Naboo, Eriadu, and finally Bespin to offload the gas-harvesters and load up on Tibanna. We would need it. But first, with the Doughnut speeding across the galaxy at a rate civilian hyperdrives were too inefficient to manage for long, we'd need to refuel. One of the closest available stations in our route was Radnor, which was also a planet full of very high tech weapons manufacturers.

Our arrival to the otherwise provincial, undeveloped Mid-Rim planet was greeted with surprise from the orbital control authority; the last time a vessel of our size had visited it had been four decades before during some major internal disputes in the Trade Federation's upper echelons. Fortunately, they did welcome us after hearing of our fuel shortage. As my brewing migraine from the continual warnings from the Force could attest, it had not been a sure thing. In fact, only an agent of ours in the system messaging us about recent developments let us make the deadline; for some reason, the expected upheaval was happening early. Sure enough, not even a few hours later, we got a message from the station master.

"Aubendo orbital control to Trade Federation ship, this is a priority one warning." The man's face was pale even in the low-resolution holoprojector, shock and horror plain in his expression. "I repeat, this is a priority one warning. As of now, Aubendo is under quarantine due to lethal airborne toxin spillage. The toxin is rapidly spreading from the industrial to residential areas. You have ten minutes to evacuate all cargo haulers and small craft before the city's theater shields activate to contain the outbreak."

"Are you mad?" Father said with such apparently genuine shock and outrage that I had to applaud his thespian skills. "If you isolate the city, the toxin will saturate the air and kill everyone within!"

"It is the only thing we can do," the shocked traffic coordinator replied in a tone that practically shouted his desperation for any other solution. "We don't have anything that could contain such a massive toxic leak. We... we'd lose the capital but save the suburbs at least." Of course they didn't; such a spread in so short a time smack in the middle of the capital... it couldn't have been designed better to negate their countermeasures. I could already feel the first deaths...

"Maybe you don't," Father countered "but I have a full load of atmospheric gas extractors - and this toxin of yours is airborne."

As the ship's cargo bays opened and the automated harvesters spilled out, I shuddered. We'd known this was coming, had surveillance on the ground and a plan in advance to stop the catastrophe... and still we'd almost been too late. With the echo of thousands of deaths hammering against my senses, I turned to Aurra Sing.

"Go down there and get the Avoni ambassador to admit everything. Arrange for the deceived researchers to seem to have perished in the toxin leak as we planned, and bring them back to the ship." I growled out as another half thousand people died as the toxin spread further. "And Aurra? The ambassador doesn't need to survive after admitting the plot on camera."

When the Avoni fleet dropped out of Hyperspace two days later, ostensibly to provide humanitarian aid but in reality to conquer a planet they expected to be crippled, they found every single armed ship on Radnor waiting for them. And then the Doughnut activated the gravity mines to prevent a hyperspace retreat.

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I eyed the syringe with apprehension. Fear was the mind-killer. Fear led to the dark side. Fear was also a very logical emotion to have when you knew things were about to seriously suck. Yet necessity trumped fear, so I attached the syringe to the portable cooler, dissolved the carbonite containment, and filled it with the clear liquid carried from the other side of the Galaxy at great expense. Then without further ado, the reinforced needle pierced my skin and delivered the medicine.

My awareness of the Force flared, almost as much as the first time I ever touched it after my near-death experience. I saw the lights of all living beings within a vast radius, not just how they congregated around planets, not just how they connected to an impossibly vast network, but all points of that network, from all angles, in the past, the present, and future. My awareness flowed through the Web of Life, and I was the Web Itself. Then the vision grew beyond my ability to hold, had long since surpassed my comprehension, and the image shattered in fragments beyond count.

I did not fall unconscious this time. One can get better at anything with repetition, including taking psychic hammers the size of star clusters in the face. Gasping, I forced my eyes to see normally, my awareness to return to the confines of my body rather than try to spread across all of the Galaxy. At my side, Aurra Sing held my hair back as a dry heaved; lucky her, she wouldn't be going through this for years, if ever. Counter-intuitively, one needed to already have some strength in the Force before any enhancement could be applied, but a given method only worked up to a point. I'd reached the limits of oral Bota intake weeks before, but that didn't make the injections pleasant. Maybe if I'd had another half decade to prepare...

"Realspace translation in 3... 2.... 1..."

The ship shuddered minutely as reality reasserted itself and the firmament was once again full of stars. No sun or planet nearby though; we were in deep space with nothing important nearby... unless one counted two Lucrehulk "battleships", six Harcell-class transports converted to missile boats, and seven Trade Federation escort cruisers. Something beeped in the console of the communications officer, and the young woman turned towards my father.

"Captain Andrim, the Darkvenge is hailing us," she informed him. "Kinman Doriana would like a word."

Yeah, that had not been in my plans at all...