Star Wars: Rise of the Battlemage

We spent an hour or so with the kids and Sheora, before eventually we went our separate ways. Despite skipping out for a few hours, Princess Leia did insist that she actually did have to perform her duties, and Luke hadn't actually moved into his temporary quarters. When the four of them left, it was just Ahsoka and I. As we walked through the station, a thought occurred to me.

"Ahsoka... did you tell Luke…?"

"I did," She responded, pointedly not looking at me as we walked. "He did not believe me at first, but after telling him what I knew of his fall…"

"How did he react?"

"It took some time for him to come to terms with it, but once he did…" She trailed off again, she shook her head. "He became determined to redeem him."

"Yeah, that's not very surprising. Its possible, but-"

"What!?" She asked, whirling around to face. "How could you-"

"BUT… "I said, cutting off her words before it could turn into a tirade. "But, just because he might turn Anakin away from the darkness does not mean he will be miraculously cleared of his crimes. I'll be the first in line to make sure that doesn't happen."

"And how would you do that?"

"I don't know, honestly. I mean, I have a few ideas I want to keep close to my chest for now, but… yeah, I don't really know."

The first idea would be creating a prison on Myrkr, assuming that it existed in this Amalgam. The Force neutralizing Ysalamir, as strange as their existence was, would be able to keep Anakin pretty contained. Though, honestly, with his level of plot armor, I had a sneaking suspicion that the only realistic way to keep him contained was to convince him he needed to be.

As I admitted my dilemma, I could see that Ahsoka was clearly struggling with a lot on her mind, trying to come to terms with what I said. I stopped in the station hallway, forcing her to as well.

"Look, he did a lot of fucked up shit before and after taking his new mantle," I agreed. "But there is something to be said about the level of manipulation he was under. I mean Palpy is an honest to god, old-style Sith, not some new-age dumbass with dark eyeliner and parents who just don't understand. He is capable of some devious Force shit, and worse, he is a master at implementing them. I mean, look what he did to you."

"What did he do to me?" She asked, looking part affronted and part worried.

"His bullshit was how you almost got banished from the Jedi," I explained. "He was obsessed with Anakin being his apprentice, but he needed him to fall. Your influence was a threat to that plan, so he threw you to the wolves. Now, Anakin stopped you from getting thrown in prison, but the damage was already done."

"He was responsible…?"

"Of course he was, Palpy had his fingers in everything, Ahsoka," I assured her gently, shaking my head. "But that's kind of just a side point. The main point is that even if Anakin did some monstrous things, we still need to take everything that Sidious did to him into account. I'm not saying we wave it all away. He murdered kids, after all. No amount of mind fuckery, save maybe straight-up mind control, can cover for that. But don't be so quick to condemn Luke's efforts, if for no other reason than to make punishing him for his crimes easier."

She stood there, for a long moment, her mind clearly not on the station, but far away in the past. Eventually, she shook herself free from whatever she was thinking about. She nodded, though at first, she didn't respond. When she eventually spoke, it was not about Anakin.

"I need some time. To meditate, rest, and consider your offer," She explained. "I feel… unbalanced after all of… that, and the mission... Even with it ending successfully."

"Yeah, of course, take whatever time you need. I know you have your ship, but feel free to borrow any of the empty rooms here at the station. There are some nicer ones in our section that we refurbished with actual beds and furniture."

Her eyes widened for a bit at the idea of an actual bed before she nodded.

"Thank you, I think I might just take you up on that," She said with a smile.

I gave her some quick directions to where the Skyforged quarters were, which was pretty close since we were still near the guest space. Before she could leave, I reached out and put my hand on her shoulder.

"I'm not sure if this will help, but try to focus on the fact that you're okay," I said, the Togruta's eyes meeting mine. "There's a lot of shit going on, so it's hard to remember sometimes, but you're okay, and you're doing good. What's in the past is in that past. Learn from it, but focus on the future. You're okay, and you're doing a lot of good. That's worth a lot."

For a moment, she was silent before eventually she nodded. She patted the hand that was still on her shoulder before she silently walked away, disappearing around a corner.

When she was really gone, I mentally cursed myself, wondering why I had felt the need to bring all of that up. Sure, the conversation was something that probably needed to happen eventually, but…

I let out a long sigh before looking around for a moment. It took a few seconds to try to recall Omega Station's internal layout, but eventually, I headed off toward the hangar that Miru should be working out of. I spent the next few hours checking in on everyone who had stayed behind when we left for our rescue mission. Miru was still working on the last starfighter, a pair of clones, one of which I recognized Toggle, helping her out. I could see both of the LAATs were also being worked on, though I could only see a few repair bots around them.

After that, I moved on to Pola's workshop, stepping inside to find him pulling apart the beskar weave from the civilian clothes we had worn on Foless. He promised that once he was done making all of our uniforms, he would start working on some normal-looking clothes that were still protective. The mission on Foless had proven it was a useful concept, so he was determined to refine what we had worn. He also confirmed my fears that we were running dangerously low on beskar. He had enough to finish the uniforms, and the clone ground team already had their armor, but the undercover armor would probably end up using up the last bits, with only a few outfits to show for it.

"In that case, hold off on the incognito armor," I said. "I'm hoping that we get a new member soon, and they are going to need armor."

"T-that's really gonna drain us, Boss," Pola said, shaking his head.

"I know. Luckily, I dropped some hints to Princess Leia that we would be willing to make some beskar for the Alliance, in exchange for help on another precious metal heist," I assured him. "I'm sure that will catch their attention."

"Is… that wise?" He asked, looking at me with concern. "Just handing it out?"

"Beskar is tough, but it's not indestructible. I mean, just a few beskar weapons would level the playing field, though it might get us a lot of attention from Mandolorians. They don't like that," I explained. "Sure, it is an advantage, especially when attacking someone who doesn't know you have it, but if we decided to… let's say go hunting for someone who stole some of our armor, with the right loadout, taking them down wouldn't be much harder than taking down a normal person."

"If you say so, boss."

From Pola's workshop, I continued to explore the station, checking up on my people and getting a feel for how the repair process was going. The clones were settling in nicely, eager to be working and even more eager to be done with the Clone Wars. It was nice to watch them develop more individualism as they performed tasks very different from what they were made for.

As for the repairs, I could tell the rebel engineers were doing good work and making significant progress. One of the reactors, the one torn to pieces by the half-destroyed control droid on the munificent, was already well on its way to being up and running, meaning that our weapons would soon have all the power they could need. After that, I continued until I was on the munificent itself.

I was almost immediately greeted by a pair of Rebel soldiers, who correctly identified me and took me to see the man in charge of the ship-turned-station addition. He was an engineer put in charge of the droid repair and production facilities that were just starting to be put together on the ship. He gave me a quick tour before dropping me off at one of the ship's massive droid-holding bays.

It was a simple room, with row after row of storage space for collapsed and folded-up battle droids.

"As we have been going over the interior of the ship and cleaning up Omega Station itself, we have been moving the droids around to bays like these," He explained. "The ship has a few dozen of them, way more than we need. This one and the one next to it are reserved for you and your team, so we moved the intact droids here. When we start the repair process in earnest, we will send your portion here as well.

"Have there been checks to see if these work?"

"No, but the ones we have found around the ship, whole but tossed around, have been marked with red dots of paint on their chests," He explained. "The rest were securely stored when we found them."

I walked around the bay, doing a quick general count of what we had. I noted several dozen commando droids, three hundred B2s, and nearly two thousand B1s, about a fifth of which were naval droids. It seemed like two-thirds of all the droids were marked with red dots, which meant they would need a full workup to make sure they were reliable enough to be trusted.

Still, even with that limitation, we now had a sizable force of disposable troops and a good chunk of Commando droids, who, at this point, I couldn't really consider fully disposable. Don't get me wrong, for important things, I would spend them quarters in an arcade, but between BX-01 and his team making it out of our heist mission intact, as well as all of their other stellar performances, I wasn't willing to just throw them away on a lark like I was B1s and B2s.

Perhaps even more important than the large number of droid troops were the naval droids, which would massively lower the strain we were about to take on by adding a carrier of some kind to our fleet. They weren't a one-to-one replacement for biological officers, but they could certainly fill in for specific positions. They were just passable as crew members, which was good enough for now. Over time, as our organization grew, we would lower the ratio as we could, like we did with the recent addition of the clones.

When I finally left the munificent behind, I contacted Tatnia through my comms, explaining that I wanted all of our larger ships to have at least fifteen B2s on board to act as emergency security and disposable cover, should they need it. The Starcaller would have three or four BX-units tucked away in its smuggling compartment, just in case. I wish I could do the same for the Staggering Bantha but it would ruin its cover, especially since it didn't have any smuggling compartments.

With my walk just about completed, I made my way to the gathering area my crew and my people frequented. A quick look around and I spotted Vaz and Nal, both sitting on a couch, looking at ships. When I realized what they were doing, I joined them.

"Is this what you are looking at for the carrier?" I asked, dropping down on the couch with them.

"One of the options," Nal said, passing his datapad to me so I could look at it closer. "Considered this ship but discounted it. Too much for us to maintain."

`The ship he was showing me was a design I didn't actually recognize. It was called a Valor-class carrier, and it was an older ship made by one of the hundreds of ship-making companies that came into being around the Clone Wars. They tried to make a profit off the conflict but just couldn't push into being remarkable enough to stick around when it ended.

Nal was right. It was too much ship for us, both too big and, according to his research, not worth the added effort. He also showed me another of the options, a Marauder-class corvette. This starship was also a lot more than what we were looking for, easily classified as a light capital ship. It wasn't even really a carrier, it just happened to have a hangar bay big enough for twelve starfighters, though it was so small I wasn't sure that was true.

The difference between the Marauder and the Valor was that the Marauder would make a great addition to the fleet, as it was a powerful ship in its own right. It would be an absolute nightmare to staff, but it would make a great flagship.

The last option Nal was looking at, and the one he was planning on bringing to my attention, was the Deep Space Recovery Vessel, or the L-2783. This starship was more hangar than ship, with a massive open hangar built under a decently made living and crew space. It was only lightly armed but had powerful shields and an incredible amount of space. The hangar bay itself was big enough to easily fit the Talos Chariot, though it wouldn't be able to fit through the hangar doors.

Not only did it have plenty of room for all of our starfighters and more, it had plenty of room to comfortably house the pilots. With space to fit a crew of a hundred, with a hundred more passengers, there was plenty of space for everyone. We would likely refurbish a lot of that space to focus more on comfort than to just cram every single bed we could into every nook and cranny, but even with that, plus any more upgrades we would do, there was plenty of room. Especially because a significant portion of the hundred max crew was for working on whatever project the ship was tasked with, whether it was salvage or repair.

It even had a pair of powerful tractor beams for recovering wrecked ships or stranded pilots. It was exactly what we were looking for, and I agreed wholeheartedly that it was absolutely the right choice for us.

But even better than all of that, Nal knew exactly where we could get our hands on one without paying a dime.