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For a few hours, it seemed as though Admiral Slaughter had dropped off the face of the galaxy. Even the Barabel Jedi Healer who had been assigned to shadow the Admiral and ensure that he didn’t overexert himself into an early retirement somehow managed to lose track of her ward. Everywhere Master Zal searched, he found a small army of cooperative noncoms and lower-echelon officers who were pretty sure that they had seen Admiral Slaughter meeting with Viceroy Longfang, or visiting with wounded soldiers in the medical ward, or practicing at the small arms range… or really, anything that seemed realistic for the middle-aged soldier. One Captain who had known Slaughter since their days in the Republic Talons completely lost her head and claimed he was on a conditioning run. “A conditioning run.” “Yessir, Master Jedi, sir.” Captain Johanna Bryce of the Talons piped up cheerfully. “He’s rather anal about pesh-trill. Kinda maddening.” “The man has lost the use of his legs, soldier. What kind of fool do you take me for?” The Barabel fixed the tall woman with a cold-blooded glower. “Someone who needs to re-assigned to the front, Master Jedi. He’ll be fine. He’s probably holed himself in a room and is yelling his head off at Fondor or Corellia or summat. Having a wonderful time. He’ll be fine.” Captain Bryce’s prediction proved to be correct. At that moment, Slaughter had sealed himself into one of the compartmented rooms within the Alliance complex and driven out all but a few officers on his personal staff. The Admiral had pulled himself out of his wheelchair and sat cross-legged on the cold concrete, surrounded by a madman’s network of holograms, paperwork, spreadsheets, three comlinks, and a half-eaten ration. His ire had already been visited on Fondor and would soon be inflicted on the Corellian Engineering Corporation. A third irate conversation would soon visit the Chief Engineers who had been tasked with breaking old starfighters out of mothballs. He rubbed a hand across a day’s worth of stubble and contemplated the calculated insanity that lay around him. The infantry forces stationed on Korriban were not a significant concern. It was highly unlikely that those forces hadn’t already been removed to more important planets–probably Onderon, or Kamino, or even Umbara. The real concern were the anti-orbital assets. Ground-based turbolasers were murderous on the light ships and frigates that comprised the vast majority of his task force. Fidelity lacked sufficient firepower to duel with a garrison’s worth of turbolaser batteries. Local point-defenses ruled out the possibility of a frontal assault. The Alliance couldn’t afford the time and ships required for a blockade… But in those limitations, Slaughter saw his strategy. The Admiral was familiar with his reputation as a fighting-Admiral. His history was that of a mixture of aggression and relentlessness. His previous attacks on Sullust, Onderon, and other planets had been slow, grinding affairs that slowly built up pressure on hostile defenses. His formations were typically dense, mutually-supporting squadrons of cruisers and corvettes that were meticulously designed for a combination of firepower and area denial. He was somewhat attached to a single ship, that old MC90 cruiser Fidelity. He was excessively reliant on vulnerable corvettes to support his starfighter squadrons. He did not shy from confrontation. For the first time in several days, Bruce actually smiled. He would present the Sith with exactly what they expected–a competent, but somewhat conventional Admiral of the Galactic Alliance. Then he would destroy them with the lessons he had learned from the Rebellion. _____ Thousands of kilometers above Ylesia, what would have been a skeleton of a task force in the days of the Rebel Alliance began to take form. Fidelity, an old, battle-tested MC90 cruiser that hadn’t even had a chance to paint over the scars of Nar Shaddaa, would form the nucleus of that squadron. Approximately its same size but considerably newer, Benediction, a Nebula-class Star Destroyer from Fondor kept station only a few kilometers away. The unfortunate Star Destroyer seemed cursed to forever be rushed prematurely into service: the vast majority of her weapons had yet to be installed and she had only been given a coat of bone-white primer, and internal compartments had been gutted for additional hangar space. A dozen-odd corvettes and other light ships moved about the task force on picket duty. About half of them were old Raider II-class corvettes and “Hammerhead”-corvettes from the early days of the Rebel Alliance, but there were a few newer ships: Imperial Vigil-class corvettes and Naboo designed Senth-class corvettes. Those latter ships resembled enormous flying wings and were studded with a frightening array of quad laser turrets, each effectively a no-fly zone for hostile starfighters. Those flying wings were so small in profile that they sometimes disappeared from sensor sweeps–and their crews had reported that the handling of those ships resembled that of an enormous starfighter. Several other ships served as tenders and escort carriers. Those were almost entirely heavy freighters with only a few crew members, barely enough to service a few starfighters. Still, in this time where the Galactic Alliance was desperate for every weapons platform, even a refitted cargo ship was a valuable resource.