Chapter Sixty Four

About a day and a half later Harry and the others meetup with the Kuat bought and Sorenno citizen flown starfighters and the cruiser squad the Chancellor had seconded to their command. With that fleet also came four large transport vessels, larger than the cruisers but much smaller than the Lucrehulk, so small they looked as if they could fit into the larger ship. Dooku was not so foolish as to launch an operation of this size and possible complexity without briefing his unit commanders.

At present Master Dooku was using the Lucrehulk as his flagship, though he would change to one of the cruisers for the actual attack. It was the only ship they had which had a large enough briefing room for all the disparate leaders, though at first Harry hadn't realized why that was the case. He got an idea when over a dozen large, furry non-humans walked down the halls of the large transport vessels.

He blinked, cocking his head thoughtfully as he stared at them as they marched up to shake hands with Dooku. "These would be Wookies, correct? I've heard of them, though I've never seen one in the flesh before."

Fay nodded, smiling slightly. "I haven't ever dealt with them in a group like this before, though I had a fascinating discussion with a Wookie Master by the name of Tyvokka at one point a hundred years or so ago. I was saddened to hear of his death."

One of the larger, older looking Wookies with fur going silver in spots clasped forearms with Master Dooku, saying something in his own language. Harry reached out with the Force, translating the words just a little too slowly to get the first few sentences. "/…and we are happy to lend you some aid in this. Slaving scum should be wiped out from the entire Republic, and any time we can help that happen we will!/"

"On that we are agreed. Indeed, this will not be our first mission again slavers in the past few weeks. You might not have heard as yet, but Jabba the Hutt met his end when he got in the way of a retrieval mission of ours," Dooku said dryly. "We offered him a way out, of course, but I can't say we were saddened by the necessity of his death."

The Wookie laughed, clapping Dooku on the shoulder hard enough to stagger the older man, then he gestured to his fellows, introducing the first seven Wookies as clan or family leaders. The words had an odd connotation in Harry's mind: it was the same word spoken several times, but the meaning his Force technique translated it to was slightly different each time. "That's the trouble with Force translation. You get an accurate translation, but not the social meaning of some of the words. At least, I don't. Are you getting anything, Aayla?" Harry asked through their link.

"Nothing more than you are," Aayla said, looking at the Wookies in fascination. "They're supposed to be super strong, you know. Not actually very warlike at the societal level, but then they don't have to be given how strong and nasty they can be in a fight."

"I certainly wouldn't want to fight them," Harry returned fervently.

Lily too was looking at the aliens in fascination, though that wasn't exactly a first. She always looked at aliens with fascination. It was one aspect of being in a new dimension she had yet to get used to.

Moments later the teens were sitting down with everyone else in the briefing room, watching as the older Jedi walked through a presentation on the mission. After talking about the background of the mission, Dooku went on to explain what Master Fay had sensed through the Force of their target. "…so we will undoubtedly meet space-based interference with this mission. As such, we need a plan of attack from the get go."

Harry listened intently for a few moments while the Wookies, cruiser captains, and starfighter pilots all debated, frowning as he realized that none of them had any better suggestions than simply coming out of hyperspace near enough to the planet to get a drop on their enemies. That was okay, but what if the enemies were ready for them? What if that star fortress had its shield up?

Harry lips pursed as he stared at the holographic screen, leaning back and shaking his head. There just has to be a better way of doing rhis kind of thing. Hyperspace and the ability to jump in and out is such a tremendous tactical and strategic tool, but it doesn't seem to be being used very well a lot of the time.

Thanks to Master Dooku, Harry had read a lot about different fleet operations in the last thousand years and even in the New Sith Wars. Few and far between was a phrase that sprung to mind to describe the records from that time, but there was just something about them that bothered him: they were too uniform, too brute force versus brute force. There were exceptions to the rule, but for the most part, one fleet would hyperspace in and attack and succeed or be driven off, with little variation in the approach.

As he thought that, Aayla bumped her shoulder against his, commiserating. The two of them had talked about this in their mindscapes several times, and though she hadn't seen it before Harry had pointed out to her, once Aayla had seen it she could not deny it either.

The nudge to his shoulder brought Harry back to the here and now, and he listened as Master Dooku outlined his simple, but hopefully effective plan, which actually did, to Harry's relief, go beyond the "jump out as close as possible and hit them hard" concept. "Knight Vos will first lead Naboo's two squadrons of starfighters in a single wave. We only have two squadrons of them, but that is a large enough threat to hopefully pull out all of the mobile defenses our enemies can call upon. Precisely an hour afterwards Master Fay and I will lead in the main fleet."

Calling their forces a fleet was a misnomer, it was more of a small flotilla. The Republic Navy had sent eight combat-modified Consular class ships. These were the mainstay of the Republic Navy at this point, cheap to build and maintain, easy to modify/upgrade, and with both decent speed and shielding for their size. Their offensive punch consisted of several turret mounted quad lasers and two forward facing turbolasers most of the time, though the RN ships had targeting software for concussion missiles or proton torpedoes, though few had the actual weapon systems.

In contrast to that, both the Kuat designed starfighters and the Naboo designed ones had homing missile systems. The two Naboo starfighter squadrons were bolstered further by three more starfighter squadrons piloted by the Sorenno starfighter corps. This meant that not only was this battle to crush the source of the pirate infestation, but it would serve as a testbed for the starfighter-heavy concept that the counts had decided to attempt.

Master Fay stood up, gathering the attention of the crowd of officers and starfighter pilots with an ease that Harry always found astonishing from his soft-spoken master. Even the most rowdy of the pilots in the back of the room, who hadn't really been listening to anything said so far, stopped speaking and paid attention. "Some of you may know how we Jedi use the Force to do what we do," she said, smiling sweetly at them all. "One of the things Jedi can do that most people do not know about is that we can coordinate jumps through and into hyperspace to a far finer degree than that of even the most advanced computer systems."

Without a gesture or other sign of a signal, Aayla stood up, moving from where she had been sitting next to Harry to stand between Master Fay and her own master. Her shorter stature in comparison to the two adults should have brought some mutterings from the crowd, Lily reflected later, but most people didn't see a Jedi's age. They saw the robes and the lightsaber, and that was it.

"With the aid of padawan Secura, myself and Master Dooku will be able to feel out where Knight Vos is in relation to the rest of the target star system. With that knowledge and with our own abilities, we will be able to calculate a hyperspace jump into the system directly on top of the defenders."

There were some shouts of surprise at that, and Aayla felt Harry's sudden intense interest in the conversation, as if he had just realized something, sharing it with her a second later. He had heard about this part of the plan before, of course. He had even seen the Explorer do that kind of thing at a time or two, and they had certainly done it over Tatooine. But suddenly it came clear to Harry what that ability could mean in terms of tactics and strategy. Going to have to do something nice for Master Dooku at some point. His lessons on tactics and strategy are beginning to make an impact on how I think. The idea that he had simply not been mature enough before leaving with Master Fay on their journey to understand such things didn't actually occur to Harry, as it never did to the young.

One of the light cruiser lieutenants was slowly shaking his head. "I'm still worried about the lack of capital ships, Sir. If they have more capital ships, then we could be in trouble."

Harry spoke up for the first time, shaking his head. "I realize why you are saying that, Captain," he said, making no sign of having seen the man straighten as Harry got his rank correct, which few outside the navy did. His real rank was a lieutenant in the Republic Navy, but any officer in command of a ship was automatically called captain regardless of actual rank.

"However, I think you need to read about what happened over Naboo recently. Starfighter pilots can bring more power to the fight than you might be aware of, and sometimes even more than capital ships, such as is the case here. Yes, traveling through hyperspace is still an issue for many starfighter designs, but as you can see from the fact that all of our starfighters are actually here, it is no longer an insurmountable one."

There was some muttered laughter at that, and more than one of the starfighter pilots banged their fists on the seat beneath, them grinning impishly at their opposite numbers among the light cruisers. For his part the lieutenant who had spoken up only nodded thoughtfully. "I'll read up on that battle, Master Jedi. It's true I don't know much about starfighter doctrine since the RN has so few starfighter squadrons of its own. But that brings up another question. What is our ROE in this operation?"

Master Dooku fielded that question easily. "Our rules of engagement are simple: our fleet will defeat anything in space that has a weapon on it with extreme prejudice. I am not interested in taking any prisoners at the expense of our own lives." There were some mutters of appreciation for that, a few overdone but mostly heartfelt. "However, when we move to land ground troops we will need to be aware that we might run into noncombatants, specifically the Nabooan citizens who were taken en-masse recently."

He had to stop for a moment as a growl of anger rose up from the Nabooan starfighter pilots. Though their society was a pacifistic one, with most of their limited tactical doctrine based around the idea of defense first and only, these pilots were still soldiers. And they hated the idea that they had failed their people so badly as to let them be taken off to be slaves.

The sound was matched with an exuberant roar from the Wookie contingent, causing Dooku to smile a wintry sort of smile. Defending the slaves would not be an issue with this group, though his next statement would be rather hard to follow up on. Or it would be if not for Master Fay's unique gifts with telepathy. "We also want at least a few prisoners from among the installation technicians and workers. We Jedi will handle that part of the operation, however, along with our infantry force."

Master Dooku gestured to one side, and the leader of the Wookie contingent stood up from among his fellows. The fact that there were so many so-called leaders among such a small force made Harry wonder about how the Wookies decided such things. "These Wookies and their families and tribes have graciously agreed to join us in this endeavor. We will be leading them into the installation and the space fortress however we can, but I refuse to make plans of that nature this far removed."

Again that brought some nods of approval from the soldiers around them, and Dooku ended the meeting with, "We leave within the next hour. I suggest you all get some food or rest, and then head to your ships."