Adenna Alluyen

Adenna Alluyen walked through the moonlit streets of Fondor City, hunting for a particular tavern. She had been seeking information from a spy network that she had possessed and developed from the time even before she became Grandmaster, a network that she had used on Thalassia to hunt down criminal elements. There were many contacts, smugglers, and port officials who had feet in both the legal and less than legal realms who were not truly bad people and were willing to work with her for either money or a desire to maintain some level of balance for their soul by doing good to balance the bad. Though it sometimes grated her, she accepted that to defeat the greater evils of the slavers and, later, the Sith, she needed to get her hands dirty and work with those who did likewise. After the Battle of Fondor, she put feelers out for anyone capable of salvaging any of the damaged or destroyed Sith ships among her fairly small network here. It took a little time, but apparently one of her contacts had managed to come through and provided her with that information. They wanted to meet at the Hopping Hydrospanner, so she came to the planet to do so. She walked into the tavern and was immediately greeted with the various scents and sights of a lower class establishment that seemed almost too cliché. She would have preferred to meet elsewhere, but her contact was skittish and she wouldn't risk spooking him too early. Scanning the room, she quickly located the table where she was to meet him and took it. A waiter came and, not wanting to look out of place, she ordered a mug ale and a small plate of fried tubers to munch on. The order arrived and, to Adenna's surprise, it wasn't as horrible as she feared. It took another eight minutes before her contact arrived. A thin human with a pockmarked but cleanshaven face took a seat across from her and immediately ordered a pitcher of the same ale she was drinking and began explaining his plan. Roth Eldemon was a foreman in one of the smaller shipyards specializing in repairs orbiting the planet and, while they had faithfully built ships for the Empire while occupied, he had never been a fan of the Sith. Now that they were gone, he was wanting to do his part to fight back, but his smaller shipyard had not been able to secure any of the contacts from the Rebels. They wouldn't be going out of business, not with a good number of civilian and planetary government contracts, but he still wanted to fight the Sith. In the recent battle, there were many ships that had been destroyed, including a Sith Vigil-class corvette Sibyl. He and his salvage crews had won a bid on the hulk and he thought that, with a good bit of repairs and reconstruction, that the corvette could be rebuilt into good working order. He was willing, for sufficient funding to cover the supply and material costs, to donate the labor hours of his shipyard to the project if the ship would be used to fight. Adenna smiled and accepted the offer, but the two still spent the next half hour and another pitcher of ale haggling over details. She paid a third of the estimated costs up front. By the time they were done, she felt hopeful that the trip was worth it. Dropping sufficient credits to cover their tab, she stood back up and left the tavern with a promise to return in a month with the rest of the money and to pick up the corvette.

With so little crude matter holding her back, it was quite simple for Adenna to be ready to deploy. She had never been one for material possessions and knew that food and basic needs would be met on the ship. She needed little in the way of weapons, though the silver blade of the Imperial Knight's generic lightsaber that was given to her was strange. Perhaps, if there was time, she would work on another lightsaber, but for now that wasn't important. Fighting was all that truly mattered and she would do her part. As long as the Rebels were going along with that plan, she would stay with them. If they didn't and allowed themselves to get mired in the pointless battles that only cost lives, she would find her own way to strike at the Sith. Jedi were generally useless in fleet battles, but they could do an incredible amount of damage on the ground and behind enemy lines.

Adenna nodded at the suggestion. "I regret that we couldn't do anything for Mon Calamari before the Sith arrived in force. As much as we wanted to protect it, to do so would have spelled a great disaster among the Jedi fleet and the result would have remained the same. One of the harshest lessons we will need to learn is that sometimes, sacrifices must be made even if they were hard. It would do nobody any good for us to die on our hilltop in a blaze of glory fighting an impossible fight then forfeit the rest of the Galaxy as result. Better to allow single planets or entire sectors to fall while preserving our ability to fight so that one day, we might return to liberate them. Some will die, but some will also live. "Allow me some time to prepare and I shall go with your team to Mon Calamari and see what can be done. It would be good to stalk the Sith for a change, and I hope we can find a way to save those that can be saved on that planet. Even a partially successful uprising would delay production in the shipyards and cause the Sith to have to devote more resources to the planet." It was a cold calculation, one she couldn't make in times past. Any uprising would likely cost millions of lives, but she would not deny any people the right to fight for their planet if they desired it. Better dead fighting than living as a slave or in constant fear of when the jackboots of the Sith Empire would break down your door. Parting ways outside the Medical Center, she went through to the areas that held the Jedi administration and training areas. Some of the Padawans and Knights recognized her, though their reactions differed. Some were pleased to see her, others offered a cautious nod of recognition that bespoke them not knowing exactly how to respond. She didn't take offense at this because there would inevitably be some question as to her place and role here. Adenna was not a fool enough to believe she was universally liked or even had a majority approval of what she had done as Grandmaster. There had been things she would have done better in hindsight, but there were things she would do exactly the same. To second guess herself was a waste of time so she would not indulge it. She learned from her mistakes and would do what she could not to repeat them and begging forgiveness or apologizing to get some measure of acceptance was an exercise of extreme pointlessness. She went to one of the lesser repositories of data and was glad that her basic access levels hadn't been revoked. Using her biometric data and two passcodes, she managed to pull up a series of files containing data that would not have otherwise been stored in a place like this. Concealment in an unlikely place among millions of petabytes of data was as much a safety net as throwing everything in a highly protected firewall that was sure to draw attention. She copied the documents onto a Jedi datapad that was available in the repository. It wasn't that she was concerned about the safety of the Rebel datapad that had been given to her, it was just that a failsafe was encoded to the data that would trigger self deleting protocols if it were transferred into anything but a pre-encoded Jedi device. This data would be of great use to her in the next couple of months. She would have to spend some time going over what had happened in her absence, but that could wait for the trip to Mon Calamari. Her next stop was to track down where her personal effects had been taken. It wasn't shocking to find that they had been removed from the Grandmaster's quarters and put into temporary storage. It took a little administrative work to track that down and have the box containing them brought out for her to access. From there, she was able to acquire her own robes, gear, and a memento or two. She went to the training center to change in the rooms there, but didn't leave behind the things that the Rebels had given her. The lightsaber was going to be quite useful, though the rest of the gear would be returned. Putting a few other things into a duffel bag and slinging it over her shoulder, she made her way out of the Jedi buildings and into the Rebels areas where she would meet with the former Imperials and eventually head out on another mission.

As they stepped into a turbolift that would take them out of the medical wards, Adenna allowed the corners of her mouth to curve upwards slightly at the Empress' response. It was quite ironic, truly, that she would find an ally in the Empire that had plagued her childhood. Her first battle scars were from an Imperial stormtrooper, a fact she never forgot even though her body had far more marks had been added since. "The first step is to start spreading out our resources," she said. "When your enemy is stronger, you can't let yourself be caught where they can pin you down and crush you." She had fought plenty of pirates and slavers around Thalassia and throughout Hutt Space after the temporary peace treaty was signed creating the Galactic Alliance. The slavers had started out standing firm in their nests and refusing to hide or run. They had been slaughtered like the animals they were. Only after several had been wiped out did the rest of them figure out they needed to hide and spread out their resources. Those had been harder to kill and took more time which was entirely the point. "Scatter the fleets, decentralize our forces and leadership, and keep on the move while we gather new forces. Go from planet to planet and try to recruit and amass supplies, but don't stay long enough to bring the wrath of the Sith down on us. Before our resources are completely gone, start building small shipyards all over to construct smaller ships like fighters, freighters, corvettes, and some frigates. We can't necessarily hold the major shipyards forever so we need to be able to build smaller forces that can scatter and cover more ground. Recruit not just soldiers, but merchants, bankers, miners, factory owners, and everything in between so we can keep a steady flow of supplies to our forces. Raid the enemy where they are weak, steal what we can and destroy the rest. Stop these major battles and stick to the shadows engaging only in skirmishes." The lift finally stopped and they stepped out to the first place Adenna recognized: a large central terrace that led outside to the grand entrance of the converted Hutt palaces that had been occupied by the Rebels as their headquarters. Taking a moment to fully orient herself, she began heading towards the areas that the Jedi had taken over. Even if things had changed in her absence, there would still be a great deal of things there that she could make use of. Hopefully, the new Grandmaster hadn't taken all off her datapads and information since she had taken a small amount of effort to make sure most things were hidden in case the planet was ever occupied by the Sith. With that, she would regain some access to the resources she had spent the last two years or so building up, resources that would be a good help. "Above all, we need to take the advice of Master Eleison," she admitted, "advice that I did not immediately see the value of. How many Imperial Knights still stand at your call, Empress? I mean to take as many of them and any Jedi willing to take the burden and start hunting Sith one by one. I aim to infiltrate Sith planets and stalk their nightmares. I mean to make them fear the darkness as we start picking them off one by one. I bear no illusion on the cost that it will bear our souls, but sometimes sacrifices must be made for the greater good and I am willing to sacrifice my soul to save the innocent."

Adenna nodded in acceptance of the offered clothes and weapons. The Jedi Order had plenty of armories and stockpiles for the soldiery that had joined, at least, they had when she was injured. She would need to see what happened to all of the plans and supplies she had been laying out for the last year and a half. Accepting the presence of those with her and simply not caring at this point, she removed the hospital gown and began changing into the tunic. Her mind was occupied on preparing lists of what needed to be done to further prepare the Jedi and Rebel defenses and then launch a strike back at the Sith. She wasn't sure what sort of authority she had left, but until someone came and stopped her, she was going to continue on taking charge as best as she could until she found someone else who was a more capable leader for her to follow. With the clothes on, she began strapping the offered belt and basic equipment on. It wasn't what she was used to, but it would work for now and she was grateful for it. "I hope to get in touch with the Jedi leadership and figure out what is needed. I do truly hope you are maintaining your own authority and haven't given it over to a bunch of squabbling bureaucrats who will just bungle things. The Galaxy has had enough of the pettiness of those who think power is the end goal of everything." With the equipment now in as good a setup as possible, she brushed herself off one last time to make sure she wasn't missing anything. With hardly a pause, she started for the hallway, the first time she had left this room in months. She had spent the last day or so lying in bed thinking as best as she could in her lucid moments. Some of her memories had been hazy, but by drawing on the Force to supplement modern medicine, she began to rapidly improve. Seeing Empress Zinthos here was the final piece to springing back to action. She meant what she had said about lying here too long. She wasn't completely sure how to get out of this medical maze, but she figured that if she kept following the flow of smaller hallways into larger ones, she would eventually find a hub of sorts to get out of here. That, or the Imperials with her would guide her. Mostly, she wanted to move and right now, it didn't matter where they were going because her muscles ached to be used. "I have considered our situation in this war and am tired of being quiet simply because it is the nice thing to do. We have been bungling this whole war from the start. The Sith struck at us and we did nothing. They struck again and we then did almost nothing. Again and again they have attacked and we stood back and either launched futile attacks at them or simply reacted, and often poorly. "As much as we don't want to admit it, we are no longer the Galactic Alliance, Galactic Empire, or even the New Republic or Imperial Remnant. We are a Rebellion, and it is time we started acting like it. I tried building up the Jedi's military and I don't think that was wrong, but I fear that if we try to act like we are capable of going toe to toe against the Sith Empire, we will be doomed. Our problem is not that we don't want to fight, it is that we simply don't know how to fight our current foe, and the damned Spider has been playing with us while spinning his webs for years now." Glancing back at the Empress and fully aware of the potential sensitivity of the subject, she continued, "I have studied history and know how the Empire and the Imperial Remnant fought. They always struck from a place of power, following traditional aggressive military doctrine while using superior numbers, superior discipline, and superior technology. The Empire won your battles, yes, but you also lost because many more and became a Remnant because you faced beings that adapted. You grew too used to people fighting as you believed they should and relied on your military strength to carry the day. When you faced Rebels who hit and ran, feinted and evaded, and fought with pure heated passion instead of cold duty or desire for power, you lost your grip on the Galaxy." It wasn't that she wanted to be cruel or anger those with her, it was more that she no longer cared about being polite when the fate of the Galaxy was at hand. "When the Sith emerged, you faced them the exact same way: with pure, raw, force. The only problem was: you were now facing a military force that fought almost exactly like you, but this time, they had the superior numbers and strength. Instead of bending, you tried to stand firm and broke. You broke at Kuat and then Carida and have never recovered. You launch fleet after fleet against the most powerful enemy targets while throwing away thousands of lives and ships we can't replace. We were fortunate on Corellia, but even there disaster was avoided only by the smallest of margins." Adenna had always been a good bit direct sometimes to fault, but after her injury, she decided that she no longer had time to play games and cater to everyone. As Grandmaster, she had tried to make peace and reach out to various people. She wanted to be the prim and proper Jedi, the good person who didn't anger anyone or rock any boats. She wanted to build a consensus, to make sure nobody got angry with her, and to do what she could to promote unity and harmony among the scattered and varied beings who were united only by opposition to the Sith. She was so paralyzed by the fear of making a mistake and too unwilling to swallow her own pride to take the chance even when she wasn't afraid. No more. Now, she didn't care. She wouldn't be nice any longer and didn't care of she rubbed people wrong. Silence had killed billions. She meant to fight and would take along anyone who was willing to join her as long as they shared her goals. She wouldn't cater to the political winds or step softly because it might hurt feelings to do otherwise. If people didn't like her, so be it, she would continue on alone if she had to. "We need to start fighting smart, not on their terms. We need to stop hitting the enemy where they are strong, but instead where they are weak. We need to stop fighting obvious targets, but go where they don't expect us. We need to stop throwing away our precious few resources making doomed stands, but rather save them for when we have the advantage. We need to be wise with our numbers and resources while we still have them lest we soon find ourselves without anything to stand against the Sith. Hit them in the dark, from behind, while they sleep, and while they plot their schemes, but never while they are arrayed for battle and ready to crush us. "I have no power, but I will offer advise to any in power who will listen. I will carry the war to our enemy with my own bare hands if nobody wishes to listen to me or aid me. I will serve where needed, lead where called. I will get my hands dirty and sacrifice my name, my pride, my honor, and even my soul if that is what it takes to fight this evil. What I will not do is stand back and do nothing or help others slide down the path of destruction." She stopped and looked squarely at Empress Zinthos. "You lead the Rebellion itself and I respect that. You can ignore me and dismiss my rants as those of a madwoman if you wish. You can allow your pride and honor to force you to continue down this losing path and I will not judge you. However, if you wish to go along the path I aim to trod, then I will gladly accept your presence and together, perhaps we can start to change this war a little. At the least, if it truly is a doomed cause, then we can make such an end that the Sith will howl in anguish and gnash their teeth at the memory of us."

Though the Empress attempted to minimize parts of the gravity of their situation, Adenna could sense the strain in her voice. There was a sense of finality, of inevitable defeat that frightened her. The struggle against evil was never ending, but it had to be fought regardless of the cost. "Better to die fighting than submit to evil," she muttered, mostly to herself. Weak as she was, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and grimaced at the hospital gown she was robed in. It definitely wasn't her normal attire, but it was what she had. Confidence was needed, even if it seemed she no longer led the Jedi Order. Adenna would never submit, but would resist and fight regardless of the odds. "Honor is irrelevant," she replied to the woman before her. There wasn't any harshness in her voice, nor was there any sense of incrimination or judging. She was simply stating a fact. "We fight to oppose evil and the Dark Side and to protect the innocent because there is no other option left to us. You can call it 'honor' or 'duty' or whatever you wish, but never let that distract you from our actual purpose. We fight because we must and because failure means the death of trillions and a tide of darkness that would consume everything. We can't fight for our own selves, we must fight only for others. Victory or defeat, honor or dishonor: it is all meaningless as long as we fight and do not submit, for as long as we refuse to submit there is still some hope in the Galaxy." Standing up caused a great deal of pain in her disused muscles, but she ignored it and reached out to the Force to gain the strength it offered. "I have laid idle here for too long." To the Empress and those with her, she added, "Is there any here who can get me some proper robes and join me in opposing the Sith scourge?"

Adenna smiled at Zinthos' words. She had not always been too fond of the Imperials, but war made strange alliances and created new ties. "My body will grow stronger with time, but that isn't what I need." It was a true statement, though she was more than frustrated that she couldn't hasten things along. She had been going in and out of healing trances, but all of her attempts to utilize the nanites within her body that could so quickly speed things along had been for naught. She was puzzled about their inactivity, but would puzzle that riddle later. "What I need is to know what is truly happening in the Galaxy. How are the Jedi? How has the war been going? I was told I have been out for near a year, so a lot has surely happened." In her lucid times between trances, she has wracked her brain for new ideas and plans for how to continue the fight against the Sith. With how long she had been out, she presumed the Jedi found some other person to lead, but the nurses and doctors told her practically nothing. It frustrated her to no end not knowing what was going on and how she could continue to fight. Ever since Ilum and ridding herself of the plague of dark side influence that befell her, she had been constantly working towards crushing the Sith and freeing the Galaxy. To be flat on her back now was a test of her Jedi patience and serenity.

Pressure upon her bed and the sound of her name snapped Adenna out of the nightmares and confusing scenes that had been visiting her. Her blue eyes opened and took a few moments to adjust to the light and the figure standing over her. It took her a few moments to put a name to the face of the woman she had worked with and spent a significant amount of effort to heal months--years?--ago. There was a tiny bit of irony at the role reversal at play, but that was quickly shunted to the side. Her voice raspy from disuse, she responded, "Yes, it is. I am glad to see you recovered. That makes one of us, at least."

Blue eyes fluttered open to be greeted by the sterile, bluish white light of a long term care ward. Adenna didn't know where she was or what happened, but as she lay there, her senses slowly began to return. She wasn't in pain, but she also couldn't move which was slightly disconcerting. She was still too groggy to grasp that for now, she was still trying to figure out what was going on. Memory was still a little foggy, but she knew she had been fighting someone, then....nothing. It took a little time for her senses to begin to return. When she was finally capable of moving, she tried lifting her hand and found it gently restrained. That simple move must have triggered some sort of alarm, because within moments, a nurse rushed in and immediately began summoning others to assist him in taking her vitals and recording her responses. Whatever words they were trying to speak to her didn't quite register, though she could at least hear the sounds they were making. After a while, the excited frenzy died down and all but one of them left. Soon, even that last one left and a small hovering droid came in to monitor her. She drifted off to sleep watching its blinking lights and wondering what happened and where she was.

Adenna's attack, as off kilter as it was, managed to strike a target which was quickly hit by one of the three troopers covering her. For that, Adenna was partially satisfied, but she didn't have much time to dwell on it as she immediately moved to focusing on the second Sith trooper as he opened fire with his own blaster. Without incoming fire to worry about from the two reduced to one on their left, the trio of Jedi Order Armed Forces troopers could focus on the incoming threat from the right. Even as their own cover was being disintegrated, they reacted in the only way they could: they fought. Retreat wasn't an option for the three, so one of them lobbed as many frag grenades at the lesser armed or armored colonial forces on the line as they could to keep them busy. The other two poked around the front and the rear of the splintering speeder and targeted the three Sith troopers who were sprinting out in the open, hoping to kill as many of them as possible before their position was overrun. If they were overrun, they would die, though they also knew their brethren behind them on the lines would get their turn and the cause they died for would carry forth even without them. Adenna didn't focus on the fate of the trio of brave troopers, she had her own fight to face. With her feet now firmly planted, she stood firm against the close range onslaught. Being shot was nothing new to the Grandmaster—it had happened twice in her past—she was not the same person being shot that she was then. She was older and more in tune with the Force. Since she was already drawing upon it, she choose to delve entirely into Living Force and all of the power it could give to protect those who surrendered to its flow. Her attention to the minutia of battle faded as she abandoned her self and embraced the Force itself. Her eyes closed and she remained still, standing defiant and ready. Her lightsaber, once a flurry of activity as it deflected blaster bolts, slowed and lowered itself as she no longer needed to rely upon its crude physical material for protection. Instead, she trusted the Force. She became a conduit, a focal point of the Force that allowed energy to enter and flow through her before being redirected back out. Blaster bolts hit her, shredding her armor and the robes beneath causing sparks and a small amount of smoke as the cloth burned. To the panicked observer in the middle of the chaos of battle, it might even look like she was being shot and in immediate danger. However, once the energy from those blaster bolts hit her skin, instead of harming her, they were absorbed and caught up in the eternal river that the Living Force flowed through. Then, though her physical eyes didn't register it, the jagged lines of chaos within the Force warned her of much larger explosions as two high explosive grenades went off on the ground before her planted feet. She had only the briefest of times to thank the Force that these were not frag grenades before she had to focus her mind on the task at hand. The energy from the grenades enveloping and being absorbed into her was far too much for her to safely store for long, so she now found herself needing to redirect this sudden spike in energy elsewhere. Without hesitation, she choose to turn that attack back upon the one who sent it to her. Being so fully ensconced in the Living Force left little room for self, so when Adenna unleashed the entirety of the energy she absorbed from the handful of blaster shots and the grenades back at the commando and the flank of Sith or colonial troops, she did so with a truly terrifying amount of power that ripped and shredded and hurled anything in its path aside. In this moment, there was no Adenna, only the Grandmaster of the Jedi and all the strength of that storied Order. ((3))

Streets of Carannia With the area between the Jedi advance and the bank partially cleared of enemy forces by the removal of their cover and the grenades, Adenna could now focus on turning one of their flanks and shattering the entire line. It was by no means secure at this point, but that was what she was here for and once that was a safe one for the extraction of the team inside. Of course, the addition of two more Jedi behind their lines would make things quite interesting, but for now, they had yet to emerge from the bank so it would be her job to go in and get them. The Sith troopers had split, apart, but that didn't overly concern her because now she could deal with them piecemeal. Now that the enemy had split in two and effectively abandoned the center, she could divide then conquer. Adenna slammed the wrecked speeder down into the permacrete street keeping it propped up at an angle that would provide her and the four with her cover from one of the two divided flanks. Now, with only about half the firepower aimed at them, she could go on the offensive. She yelled for the four troopers to focus fire on the flank where two of the armored Sith troopers had relocated. Even as she did, one of them flew back with multiple blaster impacts in her chest, but that didn't alter the plan. Adenna was tired of this ranged fight, it was time to get up close and personal and end this in a way Jedi were best at. Gathering up the Force, she jumped and used it to carry her with great speed on a shallow arc straight at the enemy position. The move got her close, but it did come at a cost. With the constant stream of fire coming at her, she couldn't block everything. One bolt glanced along her medium armor and, while much of its bite was deflected or absorbed, enough still remained to scorch her rib cage under her left arm. Another dug into her right thigh where she was less armored. She cried out in pain as she landed beside the planter her foes were using as cover, but the battle instinct kept her moving even if the swing of her lightsaber at the armored troopers was thrown off. The nanites that flowed through her body quickly deadened her screaming nerves, but they would take time to start healing. She was where she wanted to be and with three others offering covering fire, but it had cost her and that was simply the price of war. Now that she was close, she aimed to use her Force enhanced speed and the glowing firebrand of a lightsaber to clear the Sith out. ((2))

Streets of Carannia As the glorious sound and chaos of battle enveloped her once again, Adenna fell into lockstep with the Force, letting it guide and direct her. Her senses were flushed with adrenaline from the flight or fight instincts and her increased heart rate sent more oxygen to her brain and muscles, all molded and guided by both combat experience and the Force itself. It might be slightly un-Jedi of her, but Adenna loved fighting because it was so much more simple than the other aspects of life. Fight, evade, overcome, kill, or die: there were no other options in battle. Trusting on the thirty troopers at her sides to protect her flanks, Adenna kept her focus predominantly forward, looking for the hastily entrenched enemy and their attacks. For the moment, she was on defense since her primary weapon was of limited range. That didn't bother her because she had additional troops fighting with her providing the ranged offense with their blaster rifles and grenades. Her orange blade was a glowing whirl as both it and her own body danced around evading shots and returning others to sender. Step by step, she and her charge advanced quickly, narrowing the space around them until there was only around forty or so meters separating them from the Sith perimeter. Men fell behind her with smoldering wounds from enemy blaster fire and she paid them no heed at this moment except to calculate her lessening resources. Time for mourning and caring about the fallen would come, but not now. Her hearing picked up the whumph of a grenade launcher discharging and her eyes saw the arching projectiles heading straight for her. Reacting with hardly a thought, she sent a small, focused telekinetic push to send the grenades back the way they came while they were mid-air. Rather than sending them flying back, she felt the wave of deep pressure in her gut fractions of a second before the heat from the explosions washed around her as her push tripped the impact fuses detonating them instead of sending them back. Her own telekinetic push kept most of the explosion from her, but the blast threw men on either side of her across each side of the street. Those closest were killed, those a bit farther were wounded but out of the fight for a bit. Her ears were ringing slightly from the explosion, but her combat focused mind put that aside for the moment. Adenna didn't spare the time to look back since that would take her attention off of the enemy fire. Her lightsaber parried a few crimson blaster bolts that lanced out at her, though she didn't spend the focus to redirect them at specific points, merely to get them out of her own way. Her own men returned fire, but at this rate, they were exposed and vulnerable now that their advance was halted. Frowning at this, Adenna decided to change the field a little. Relying on whomever was still behind her to keep the Sith's fire mostly at bay, she expended a bit more Force energy and reached out to the makeshift defenses that the Sith defenders were huddled behind, then pulled. Some of the accumulated rubble simply flew towards the Jedi forces a several meters and stopped when she ignored them since they were no out of position, but there were some wrecked speeders in the line, one of which would make a good temporary shield. Once the area between the lines was slightly more cleared out, she continued to tug one of the speeders towards her as a new rolling shield while she advanced. Four troopers dug in behind her and the speeder as its top was now facing the Sith lines, offering them a great view of its roof and seats, but no direct shot on the five behind it. Gesturing with a hand to the men with her, she smiled slightly as they returned the favor and hurled short fuse frag grenades over the speeder and into the Sith lines. She didn't care much if they killed anyone at this point, she simply wanted to clear the area and keep her enemy distracted while she and her men got closer. ((1)) Serenno Orbit With their targets either hit or the strike called off due to enemy fighter pressure, the surviving Jedi fighters and bombers began returning to orbit around the remaining Jedi fleet. As soon as most of the responding fighters reported back and were reformed into some semblance of squadrons, the fleet readied to make two micro-jumps. The first would take them to where the Justice's Mandate was waiting not far away, and the second would take them back to orbit over Carannia, hopefully in time to engage the Sith fleet that was converging on that location and offer those on the ground a chance to lift off once they finished there.

With the absence of the Justice's Mandate, a portion of the skies over Serenno no longer held orbital support for the Jedi bombers in that area. Those squads were alerted by the rest of the fleet of their new situation and began preparing for attacks from above as soon as the Sith fighters were able to pinpoint their locations and deploy. Flight leaders had the ultimate call whether it was safe or not to hit their targets, or if they needed to abort and began evasive maneuvers. Those bombers that were still under the protective screens and eyes of the rest of the scattered Jedi fleet continued their bombing runs, though with some squadrons of fighters moving to screen against the inevitable incoming Sith squadrons. That the planetary defenses hadn't launched was good fortune for the Jedi, but it also made them wary since they could still launch. They needed to hit hard and fast then move on as soon as their ten minute warning had passed. The slower bombers with their EMP weapons were not under the constriction of time, so they were able to drop their load and head back to space as soon as they reached their targets. Some bombers were intercepted early by the ever expanding swarms of Sith squadrons and took heavy losses, but there were still some that hit their targets causing chain reactions along the power grid. Power grids were hit and certain cities went dark. For the fighters and heavy bombers going to the factories, they spent most of their ten minute warning time going to the target, but that didn't stop some of them from having time to buzz the area first. To their dismay, they didn't see a stream of evacuating workers and it became clear that the civil authorities or the factory owners didn't take their threats seriously. Some pilots were more than hesitant to drop their payloads and asked for confirmation from their commanding officers as to what to do. The general in charge of the fighter wings knew that there would be civilian casualties, but they had planned for this possibility. If the Jedi held off their attacks, then their word would never be taken seriously again. The Jedi had warned their targets and given them time to take cover, and it was not their fault their enemy ignored that. This was war, and war was full of dead and dying. If the Jedi didn't strike now, then in the future, even greater numbers of people would die when they did strike, all because their threats couldn't be taken seriously. At the ten minute mark, those fighters that were not being harassed by Sith forces unloaded their bombs or missiles on the designated factories. Explosion after explosion ripped through them, killing worker after worker, but also shredding the production lines, storage tanks, store houses, and military tech labs that had been fueling the Sith war machine. The Jedi pilots didn't relish their duty, but they knew it had to be done so they did their job and kept the word of their commander. Perhaps next time, their next targets would take the Jedi seriously and evacuate their workers, but the Jedi could not control what the enemy did. * * * * * There was some ineffectual AA fire from the Sith landing craft that jostled the three Jedi assault shuttles, but their shields held. The Jedi assault team landed outside the perimeter that the Sith troopers were setting up around the bank and began pouring out with intense cover fire as they took to the streets. Two of the flanking shuttles worth formed a defensive flank, laying down blaster fire and grenades against the Sith troopers while the thirty men in the center shuttle charged. Adenna, with her orange lightsaber and blue dyed medium body armor was at the front of that charge, deflecting away shots with her lightsaber in one hand and firing a heavy sidearm with the other. As soon as the shuttle touched down, all of the doubts in Adenna's mind evaporated and she focused entirely on the task at hand. It had been too long since she had been in combat like this, but she missed it. Gone were the weeks of sitting behind a desk or working in training simulators with recruits. Gone was the need to be political or think about the bigger picture. All that was before her now was an enemy, a mission, and lots of determination. She and her thirty men charged in, weaving around haphazardly parked speeders and debris from buildings that were kicked off by stray blaster bolts in this rapidly developing battlefield. What civilians were there had already scrambled away with the arrival of the Sith troopers, so at least they weren't too much of a factor. As she charged forward, Adenna drew upon the Force to prepare her for the inevitable clash where she got in close enough to the enemy lines to unleash chaos the likes of which only a Jedi in her prime could deal.

To Captain Gustav's surprise, it didn't seem that the local Serenno garrison was taking their threat seriously and deploying their defenses. That was more than a little bit insulting since it showed that the Sith supporting planet simply didn't consider the Jedi Order as a threat, or perhaps they didn't even think that the Jedi would actually carry out their word. He was relieved that they weren't scrambling their fighters to oppose the Jedi bombers and fighter squadrons, but that didn't mean the Sith weren't trying to get into the game. Their fighters might be a bit behind due to needing to make their microjumps and then deploy and get down to the scattered squads on the planet. Jedi fighters would need to attack their targets then come up to meet the Sith forces to give their bombers a bit of cover while they scrambled out. As soon as the Sith fleet reverted from hyperspace on top of his flagship, he began ordering a microjump of his own. The plan wasn't to get into a potentially costly space battle, but to wreck damage on the planet and get out. The Justice's Mandate angled as it exchanged some salvos against the Sith fleet for a few seconds, then flashed away into hyperspace. Three seconds after jumping, they returned to realspace and began positioning to return back to Serenno when the opportunity arose. * * * * * When the Sith fleet made their micro-jumps away from the airspace over Serenno's capital, Carannia, the StealthX scout quickly noted it and sent word to the waiting assault shuttles. Adenna smiled slightly and strapped herself into one of the crash seats as the shuttles made the micro-jump into Serenno's airspace. Three shuttles reverted into realspace above Carannia and began an immediate landing approach to offer support to the team that was down on the surface. Adenna clutched the harness holding her in as the shuttle rocked and shook around her with the rapid descent. It wouldn't be long before she, long with the rest of the ninety Jedi troopers that were part of the relief force, would touch down and chaos would likely ensue.

When the Sith fleet arrived over Serenno, the scouting StealthX set sensors to active and took in as much data as possible before shooting it off to the rest of the fleet and powering up engines. As long as nobody approached the difficult to see ship, they would remain to continue to scout, but would flee at the first sign of attention. They were a scout, not a brawler. Onboard the Justice's Mandate outside the Serenno system, Captain Gustav smiled at the news. He had suspected the enemy would attempt to come and they had done so in full display. There would be no question that this was a Sith target and that it was defended by an enemy fleet made this even more a legitimate target. He had never had any doubts of that, but knew how the public relations could play out, and having a Sith fleet here prior to the arrival of a Jedi one would play into their hands better, or at the least, it would limit Sith propaganda efforts. "The enemy has arrived," he said over short range comms to the fleet. "It is time to begin executing Plan C." When the Jedi had been preparing this mission, they had intended on hitting multiple potential industrial targets throughout the planet. They had selected four major locations at differing points around the planet so that if enemy resistance arrived, they could hit something on the opposite side of the planet and buy themselves a little time. There were some setbacks for that, but it afforded them some additional options and forced their enemy to make some choices. As cold as it had seemed, early on when discussing things with the Grandmaster, it had been made clear that there were two acceptable outcomes of this mission. Either successful retrieval of hard currency from the Treasury or destruction of one or more of the industrial factories supplying the Sith war effort would be considered a successful mission. Protection of the Jedi fleet from heavy losses was also a requirement, though successful extraction of the infiltration team was not. If the eight members of the infiltration force were lost, then that was a most unfortunate event but not catastrophic. It was pointless to spend potentially thousands of lives in the fleet to save eight. There had been some disagreement among the Jedi military leadership, but the Grandmaster had insisted: the Jedi would no longer allow their own people's lives to be used against the Jedi by sacrificing countless numbers to save them. Everyone in the Jedi Order and its military were volunteers in this war and knew the risks. It was a cold military calculation, but it was determined necessary to win. Since the fleet had already been ready, they jumped within ten seconds of the announcement. * * * * * * On the far side of Serenno, opposite the newly arrived Sith fleet, a Jedi fleet dropped out of hyperspace after performing two microjumps from their prior position. Immediately, Captain Gustav sent a pre-recorded transmission out to the planet on a broad band public wave. "This is Captain Vlasmen Gustav of the Jedi Order Armed Forces to the government of Serenno. We are here to bring a reckoning for your part in aiding the Sith Imperial war machine. To that end, we will begin bombardment of the GalStar Machinery, Eurgani Industries Incorporated, Relvan/Gandor Shipping, Portsman Munitions and Explosives, Sooru-Hoffman and Partners Limited, and Incandron Industrial Tech Research facilities or factories as well as the Sith Imperial Academy. All have clear ties to the Sith Empire supplying its war machine as it invades the Galaxy and must know there will be repercussions to their war profiting. In addition, any governmental facilities or power grids may be targeted for ion bombardments. "To the people of Serenno, the Jedi understand not all of you may support the Sith Empire. Because of that, and our desire to protect innocent lives and make this war about the choices of your own government, we will hold our fire upon these facilities for ten minutes so that the workers may escape. Make no mistake: after ten minutes, we will destroy those facilities, but we wish to give you all an opportunity to evacuate and will not fire upon any surface transports assisting in those actions unless they demonstrate hostility or attempt to protect or defend those locations. "Your ten minutes starts now." With that, the transmission ended and the Jedi forces readied themselves for the Sith response. Despite their claims, only three of the facilities mentioned were on the targeting range, but they didn't want to give away too much, and had needed to remain adaptable in regards to what the Sith were doing, so they had included all the names. Besides, one captain had argued, if the Sith were forced to evacuate all of the facilities, it would provide at least some small measure of disruption to their operations. The Jedi fleet was arrayed not in singular battle formation, but rather in siege bombardment formation. They were scattered around the hemisphere opposite of the Sith fleet, capable of targeting multiple locations but not offer much battle resistance. Knowing the Sith would either have to make multiple hyperspace jumps or orbit the planet to get into attack position, each Jedi ship was on high alert and ready to reposition to jump within moments of a Sith arrival. Each ship from the Justice's Mandate down to the smallest fighter had at least four hyperspace routes pre-programmed so they could escape from multiple routes. Further, they also had return jumps plotted from each escape route so they could return to strike if the opportunity presented itself. If the Sith approached the Jedi forces, they would simply withdraw or jump into hyperspace in seconds to avoid heavy losses. Even if the Sith spread out to engage the Jedi, they would not be able to cover everything since the Jedi brought so many small ships as well as multiple flights of bombers already positioned to drop small electro-proton bombs on major power generators and multiple regional government and policing facilities. They were focusing on the power grids supplying the most industrialized areas of the planet open to them but wouldn't kill anyone directly. Chaos would ensue, but cities wouldn't be leveled or civilians burned to char. Any planetary defenses were legitimate targets and would be blasted either from orbit if there were no civilian cities nearby, or by fighter and bomber squadrons. The Jedi would be like a cloud of wasps: small but extremely numerous and maneuverable, swooping in on a planet to cause maximum chaos, disruption, and in some places, destruction. For the landing teams, they had their own plan and had not yet made the jump to the planet. Instead, they remained in their original, deep space location. Though it frustrated Adenna to be out of the action, she had helped develop the plan and understood why she was still being held in reserve. Jedi Order Armed Forces Fleet Destroyer Group Turbolasers: Focus Fire Callsign: Justices Mandate Experience: Green, 1XP Nebula class Star Destroyer Justice's Mandate (20/20) Defensive Escort: Suppressing Fire Callsign: Hope Experience: Green, 1XP Nebulon B frigate (3/3) Nebulon B frigate (3/3) Lancer frigate (3/3) MC-30 frigate (3/3) Raider II corvette (2/1) Raider II corvette (2/1) Hammerhead Torpedo corvette (2/1) CR90 corvette (2/1) Asset Denial Force: Surgical Strike Callsign: Shocking Surprise Experience: Green, 1XP MC40A Light Cruiser Shocking Surprise Nebulon B frigate (3/3) Assault Frigate Mk II (3/3) Vigil class corvette (2/1) Marauder corvette (2/1)