Ten ships. The standard operational limit for an admiral's cognitive bandwidth. A battle group.
Our formation consisted of four corvettes. Tactical role: anti-fighter screening. Loadout: three turrets, one tractor beam. Their armor could only withstand light interceptors. Internal space was entirely sacrificed to house the tractor beam generators.
Length: 138 meters. Bridge dorsal, comms ventral. The standard, uninspired layout of current shipbuilding.
One frigate, 284 meters. Primary function: proton torpedo carrier. Target: enemy corvettes. In critical scenarios, it could plug gaps in our firing arcs.
A single proton torpedo could obliterate a battlecruiser. Consequently, storing them aboard capital ships was an unacceptable risk.
Next class up: the meat shields.
Four battlecruisers, each two kilometers long. Designed to absorb enemy fire. Fixed forward armaments restricted them to frontal engagements only.
The final vessel was an Alsakan retrofit of a Cal-class battleship. Our current location.
Three kilometers of floating scrap. A maintenance nightmare that devoured the budget of ten standard battlecruisers.
The Cal-class's fatal flaw was its abysmal combat readiness. Ancient hulls stuffed with obsolete systems. Endless retrofits resulted in catastrophic unreliability.
The newest Cal was laid down a millennium ago. The rest were salvaged Republic decommissioned junk.
Four thousand years ago, these dreadnoughts formed the spine of the Core Worlds' fleets. Now, only arrogant, wealthy sectors like Alsakan paraded these relics around.
In the Alsakan navy, this was the admiral's flagship. A command center capable of shifting the battle's tide with a single volley.
Two colossal Gauss cannons mounted ventrally. Half the ship's internal volume existed purely to feed those kinetic weapons.
One clean hit could erase a battlecruiser. The mere threat forced enemy commanders into evasive maneuvers, shattering their formation's cohesion.
Coruscant fielded Cals as well, but kept them unmodified, treating them as the obsolete line ships they were.
The enemy's backbone consisted of modern, highly maneuverable battlecruisers. Ten times cheaper to maintain. Hyperdrives that mocked Alsakan engineering.
Alsakan and Coruscant founded the Republic together. Yet, the center controlled the military contracts. Coruscant hoarded the bleeding-edge tech.
Alsakan was cornered into a defensive posture. Coruscant held all strategic initiative.
We were aboard the Cal designated *Pride of the Axis*. The crew's waiting lounge was its only redeeming feature.
Externally, it retained the Cal silhouette, but suffocated under bolted-on armor plating. The dorsal ridge bristled with turrets.
"How did you even meet that bitch?"
The door to my cabin slid open via telekinesis. A woman who had no business being here walked in.
"Nerves are detrimental to your health. Look at your hair. You've already gone gray."
I dodged the punch. Her fist dented the decorative wall panel. Erra was venting her fury on me.
If only I knew the cause.
I raised my hands, dropping the mockery.
"Remember the Sorzus Syn Academy? The final exam? Nomi is the assassination target. Her opponent commands this entire fleet."
She had the audacity to bring up the Academy?
This was not the intel I expected.
Should I put on a void suit and jump out the airlock right now? Suspended animation would guarantee survival.
How did she know this? My operation was perfectly set up. I was supposed to be peacefully intimidating local rebels on the surface.
I despise the Alsakan nobility.
"You could have told me sooner and sent Nomi to a rancor's ass. How accurate is your prediction?"
I was SorSyn's deputy. I could issue orders, but unlike SorSyn, I lacked the authority to override an assignment from the Alsakan royal family.
A Cal-class required hundreds of thousands of crewmen. Our small Sith detachment was spread thin across the entire vessel.
Erra was a staff officer. She should have secured a critical role. She never left variables to chance.
"It wasn't a prediction. I might have participated in the conspiracy. But that bitch asked for it."
Once again, she failed to articulate the core problem.
We were not on Korriban.
Was she actively seeking a lethal complication?
"ERRA! YOU PROMISED NO MORE CONSPIRACIES WITHOUT PRIOR WARNING!"
I paused.
"Fine. I cannot read your mind. Tell me exactly how this girl offended you. She only arrived in the system two days ago."
She remained silent, pursing her lips. I took a deep breath, suppressing the rising surge of the Dark Side.
Kallig had stepped on the same rake twice. Now her reference to the Academy made sense.
Twelve hours until the fleet engagement commenced. I needed to analyze the trap she had dragged me into.
Worst-case scenario: fake our deaths and return to the Empire under new aliases.
Sith alchemists controlled identification records. Forging a new identity, biological signature, and status would be trivial for me.
I just needed to locate a male and female Sith, and quietly dispose of them.
"Command never considered using Sith seers to locate salvage. Mind-reading led me to the nobles skimming Coruscant hardware. A basic mental trick secured their trust. I used my foresight to pinpoint high-value military salvage. We fenced the gear to the Hutts and split the credits. Alsakan received zero reports regarding intact enemy assets."
Why was I not surprised? Erra had executed similar fraudulent schemes back at the Sorzus Syn Academy.
Sorcerers were all bureaucratic parasites. It was the only reason the Kissai became the ruling caste.
"I dread the answer, but what was your profit margin?"
She silently handed me a datapad displaying a bank statement. The sheer volume of zeroes made my inner greed scream at the cosmic injustice.
It was enough to purchase a personal combat vessel.
"My net profit exceeded three million credits in a single week. I collected minor dividends from secondary operations, but that was spare change."
Assigning her to the staff was Alsakan's critical failure. They had locked a rat inside the grain silo.
And she still had the nerve to hound me over a hundred thousand gold debt. At least now I knew who to extort.
"Nomi arrived recently. Could you not simply offer her a cut? Your operation wasn't technical theft."
Surely they weren't assassinating her purely out of greed.
Erra sighed heavily and detailed the princess's interference. Desperate for political capital, Nomi had immediately drafted a reform proposal overhauling the salvage protocols.
Her efficiency optimizations freed up ten thousand military personnel, who were subsequently reassigned.
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"The primary beneficiary of the racket was Prince-Admiral Gero Crescentio Oakrun Mirs VI. The moment our revenue stream was severed, he requested my assistance. I conducted a ritual and mapped out the exact progression of today's engagement."
I stared at her in sheer indignation. Why her, and not me? While I played the loyal soldier, she embezzled millions and dug our collective grave.
While I slaved away assisting Lord SorSyn, this parasite acquired wealth effortlessly.
Undoubtedly, she was paid handsomely for a granular forecast of the upcoming battle.
She likely sensed the chronological static on the future battlefield, analyzed the vectors, and isolated the interference sources.
The Prince would target sectors void of Jedi. His political rivals would be fed into the meat grinder against Jedi precogs.
"Let me deduce. Mirs VI received Nomi's requisition, locking you into the assignment. They contracted you to facilitate her assassination."
Erra grimaced. The hatred in her voice eclipsed her petty grudge against Nomi.
"My forecast was framed as a strategy to capture the enemy admiral. In reality, boarding the enemy flagship will be a joint op between two vessels. Mid-assault, Sith Lord Dacis will request backup. We will be deployed to assist. A disguised Sith kill-team will execute Nomi. My job is to ensure the operation succeeds."
Logical. Dump a few Jedi corpses at the scene to take the fall. No military tribunal would ever unravel the truth.
"What is the complication? They aren't going to purge the entire crew."
Erra unfastened her bracers and rolled up her sleeves. My eyes widened. The veins mapping her forearms had turned necrotic black.
Her innate capacity was sufficient to read the baseline results of a ritual. This meant she had intentionally breached the safe threshold for Dark Side channeling.
Based on my theoretical knowledge: either a superior seer had intercepted her, or the Force itself had actively blocked her vision.
"As a fail-safe, I cast a secondary ritual targeting Mirs VI. It failed. Someone was shielding him."
I examined the necrosis. The corruption was too aggressive. It was a direct backlash from the Force. Kallig had attempted to observe a restricted timeline. The most probable restricted event was her own imminent death.
"Lord SorSyn's detachment contains several sorcerers, but they lack the output. It had to be a Sith Lord."
I broke eye contact with her decaying flesh and dug through my utility pouch for a suppressant alchemical draught.
"Correct. I redirected the scrying onto the entity blocking me. In one of the temporal branches, I watched us both get slaughtered."
I froze, staring at her in disbelief. She plucked the vial from my hands and gave a curt nod of gratitude.
While she applied the paste, I grabbed my lightsaber hilt and mentally inventoried my explosive charges and artifacts.
We had a tactical complication. Murder was the universal solvent for such issues.
"Sith Lord Dacis? The bald degenerate with the facial necrosis? Who else is on the roster?"
I needed his routine. Vices. Mistresses. Current coordinates. Sith were biological organisms, not droids. They had downtime. Therefore, they could be eliminated.
"Jedi, his personal retinue, and a squad of Alsakan elite troopers. For the record, he is not aristocracy. Just a byproduct of the Sith Academy."
The casualty list just expanded exponentially. If he was Academy stock, his theoretical foundation and Force technique repertoire were strictly limited. That made his assassination vastly simpler.
"This is the worst operational hazard you've dragged me into since the Sorzus Syn finals. No wonder Lord SorSyn ignored a walking corpse."
Nomi didn't actually expect to be shielded from internal purges just for possessing a pretty face.
"Who told you to socialize with her? Let us agree on mutual fault. He is merely a Sith Lord, but I require Force batteries for my spellcraft."
I eyed her arms with skepticism. Kallig was meticulously hiding the symptoms. I would have to harvest midi-chlorians from a captive Jedi and synthesize an experimental serum.
I would run clinical trials on a subordinate who recklessly abused their emotions and suffered flesh degradation.
If the trials succeeded, I would administer it to her. I refused to let her die before I did.
As a penalty fee, I would confiscate six—no, nine million credits. She was a wealthy target now.
Having finalized my extortion parameters, I withdrew several red crystalline shards from my pouch.
"Take these. But this time, profit-sharing is mandatory."
Erra accepted the stones, inspecting them as if they were priceless artifacts.
She didn't need to know I salvaged them from Lord SorSyn's waste bin. The Lord had constructed another mind prison, and the faceting process produced a pile of rejected slag.
"Fifty-fifty split... Wait. Is this lignan crystal?!"
SorSyn would have executed me for such incompetence. How could Erra misidentify it?
It was a direct insult to alchemy.
"Erra! I explained this. The cutting edge of a Sith blade is forged from an indestructible svolten-rhyolite alloy. Lignan acts strictly as a dark side capacitor and catalyst. Cortosis is applied as lateral plating to short out lightsabers. You literally forged your own ritual dagger! How can you not identify a synthetic crystal with unique parametric properties?"
She merely shrugged, blatantly ignoring my attempt to educate her on applied metallurgy.
"I could always bring up your catastrophic failure rates in divination and Battle Meditation."
It was not a lack of talent. The Force simply despised me. Those specific disciplines required symbiosis with the Force. My ritual execution was mathematically flawless.
"Irrelevant. Current objective: we poison Nomi, then brief her on the situation. If she proves uncooperative, the toxin triggers cardiac arrest mid-battle. We exterminate the Sith team, approach Mirs, and prove we are the superior asset."
I moved to my pack and began inventorying chemical precursors for toxin synthesis.
"You two synergized perfectly in the banquet hall. Let's assume we reach a consensus, and she agrees to fence Coruscant hardware."
What was that emotional signature? I had never sensed that specific frequency from her before.
"Elaborate. Her personality profile is almost as defective as yours."
I located the necessary vials and compounds. I was only missing a leviathan blood catalyst.
"Look who's talking. Forward that complaint to your paranoia."
It was not paranoia. It was threat assessment. Regardless, there were higher priorities.
"If Nomi possesses viable political leverage and abstains from betraying us, we administer the antidote and slaughter the Sith."
Erra ignored the tactical pivot. She smirked and sprawled across my bunk.
"It feels like the Academy again. I'll prep a minor ritual, then we phase through the bulkheads and pay a midnight visit. Wake me when you've prepped the reagents. I know your paranoia forced you to pack them."
I glanced back. She was already asleep. I exhaled slowly and subtracted the required reagents for shadow-walking from my inventory.
Sith doctrine was brutally logical. To guarantee an enemy's death, first eliminate the allies plotting to kill you.