Bothawui

[Johanna Bryce]

It took all of thirty minutes for it to become clear why Captain Bryce and her Talons had been dispatched to the Outer Rim.

 

Upon setting foot on Bothawui and being shepherded to a fortified room about ten meters below the surface of Drev’starn, it took all of thirty minutes for it to become clear why Captain Bryce and her Talons had been dispatched to the Mid Rim. It was an enclosed, hermetically sealed chamber in which she received her briefing from a Colonel Dun’nosu. But it was more than the sound-proofing and hermetic seals that secured the chamber. The shock trooper felt strangely… buoyant on her feet, and every step seemed to require a moment of calculation. She allowed herself to wonder how else this briefing room might be secured--perhaps suspension in a vacuum by miniaturized tractor beams?

 

But that was speculation regarding the stereotypical paranoia of the Bothans, and the fact that the cream-colored hackles of the Bothan Colonel were raised suggested that her liaison was almost terrified at the prospect of imminent invasion.

 

“You see, Captain, there has been a significant build-up of Sith fleet elements in the Arkanis sector for some time. Personnel transports and escorts have recently gone missing from this staging, leading us to believe that an invasion of the sector has begun.”

 

“If I remember correctly, Geonosis and Tatooine sit on the intersection of the Corellian Run and Triellus Trade Route.”

 

“Accurate. Despite the poor development of those two systems, they command a dominant position over that sector’s trade. And from there, the Sith have easy access to Ryloth. Or Naboo. Rodia. Bothawui. And even Nar Shaddaa,” Dun’nosu stated with a knowing look on his long face. At least, that was the approximation that the human imagined.

 

“Well, last on my update, the Galact--the Rebel Alliance had made significant strides in blunting the Sith advance through the Core Worlds. They’ll need to divert resources least they risk losing control there. We may have time. Before our situation becomes untenable. My lads have some unusual specializations that may help break up the Sith advance here--zero-gravity maneuvers, capital ship sapping.”

 

“Our own developments have advanced along these lines. Once your Galactic Alliance fell apart, we were left to defend our territories without heavy capital ships--your MC90s and Star Destroyers, for instance. We have had to become somewhat adaptive in our own fleet elements. For instance… our Koth Melan-class Stealth Cruiser.”

 

The holoprojection between the two officers disintegrated and bloomed again into a hazy image of the bulky, blocky Bothan Assault Cruiser. However, this particular vessel had been stripped of most of its armaments--most notably the array of proton torpedo tubes that made the ships so dangerous in a close-quarters brawl--and had been festooned with a forest-like array of comms antennae. Johanna squinted at the ship. To her untrained eye, those rails and towers had almost no value at signal reception--they were almost entirely transmit-only. The jutting bridge superstructure of the Bothan Assault Cruiser was also shortened and the armor plates on its flanks were replaced by thin skirts of an unfamiliar design. She leaned forward and examined the side skirts.

 

They were composed of thousands of linked holoprojector cells.

“You… you made a stealth hacking cruiser?”

[Johanna Bryce]

For the next few hours, Koth Melan and a host of escort spacecraft were descending into the upper reaches of Bothawui’s atmosphere. Not that Captain Bryce could see the fourteen vessels that were preparing to receive their transports, as the ships were hundreds of kilometers above them. She and Colonel Dun’nosu stood over the bleached walls of the military base, looking over the roofs and towards the snowcapped peaks of the Kurual'grast Mountains to the east.

 

“For our own part, we’ve made substantial progress in our lighter units--especially coordination between our corvettes and fighter-bombers. The new Senth-class corvette from Naboo is death on interceptors--excellent firing angles over a very broad flying wing. Unfortunately, the Sith have made their own advances. In particular, there’s a new class of Star Destroyer with upgraded turbolasers that our fleet has had quite a bit of difficulty with. We’ll be sending you its specs… for mypart…”

 

Bryce turned a half-circle, displaying the mass of a light jetpack module that was attached to her armor. “We realized after our raid on Kuat that our capabilities in zero-gravity operations were significantly lacking. My Talons were tasked with disabling a Golan platform… we took higher casualties than necessary because the hangar was seriously damaged on our approach. Solution: develop zero-gravity sapping and assault maneuvering units, as you see here. We found the heavier jetpacks favored by other units unnecessary and excessively heavy--and maneuvering in zero-gravity is a matter of planning your moves, and firing in short, disciplined bursts.”

 

The Talon Captain turned and focused on a distant rooftop at the periphery of the base. “Standard fuel mix for the primary engine--but we’ve added a microrepulsor array for making fine adjustments in flight. We equip soldiers with heavy weapons and demolitions with more powerful units, obviously, but the controls are otherwise identical.”

 

The Bothan Colonel stroked his cream-colored beard. Or whatever the Bothan equivalent of a beard was, considering that the species was covered from head to toe with short fur. “These new capabilities in extravehicular sapping would obviously synergize with our new stealth technologies.”

 

“My thoughts exactly. If you’d like a demonstration…”

 

“By all means.”

 

Bryce took a deep breath and donned her helmet. As the atmospheric locks engaged and she began to breathe recycled air, a head-up display appeared with pertinent information for flight: fuel and atmosphere supplies, atmospheric temperature, pressure, wind speed; distance markers to vantage points and watchtowers surrounding the base; ammunition reserves and a miniature map which would normally display the locations of her squad. It was a lot of information for a green soldier to manage, but zero-gravity was not a notoriously treacherous environment to fight in. That data would keep her alive during maneuvers.

 

The tall Bespinian set off across the bleach-white roof at an easy trot. As she neared the edge of the room and nearly fell into the street traffic of the base, Captain Bryce triggered her thruster unit with a sharp burst, propelling her nearly fifty meters into the air. After she reached the apex of her thruster-assisted leap, she was essentially guiding, drifting towards a vehicle depot on the gentle propulsion of the unit’s repulsorlifts. But merely making a leap of a hundred meters and returning would be a mediocre demonstration of her unit’s capabilities, she decided. Halfway through the jump, she altered course in a sharp ninety-degree turn, instead making for a slender communications tower at the center of the base. Her boots instantly magnetized upon contact with the slender steel-and-fiber tower, and although the entire structure swayed a few centimeters upon landing, the shock trooper remained fixed to its side as though she were welded to it. Her push-off sent her gliding over the base and towards a collection of parked cargo speeders--several of the Bothan mechanics were glancing up from her work and pointing curiously at the armored figure drifting in their direction.

 

A second micro-burst gained another ten meters of altitude, and the Bespinian used the extra space to return to Colonel Dun’nosu, drifting from side to side over the rooftop until she finally touched down.

 

She removed her helmet and realized that had been grinning throughout the entire demonstration flight. “As you can see, our lighter design lacks the speed and endurance of the heavier units you might be familiar with, those favored by the Mandalorians, for example. But our goal wasn’t long-distance flight; it was short bursts for rapid redeployment--or maneuvering in null-gravity.”

[Johanna Bryce]

The next several days were spent surveying the highlands surrounding Drev’starn. Under normal circumstances, Captain Bryce would have found the thin air and fierce winds of the mountains refreshing--almost like the platforms that were suspended in the upper atmosphere of her homeworld, Bespin. However, these circumstances were while carrying a heavy load of communication gear--even heavier than her typical combat load of twenty kilograms of armor and weapons--and surveying positions to protect Bothawui’s anti-orbital emplacements.

 

In no less than eight crags of the Kurual’grast Mountains, the Bothans had already fortified their capital city with planetary turbolasers. Bryce shouted orders to four of her Talons to deploy their MANPADs not at the peak of the nearest hill, where there was a risk that their position could be silhouetted against the horizon even in spite of the tree line, but just slightly under it. The Bothans’ sensor arrays in these mountains would provide valuable targeting data even in absence of line-of-sight.

 

Sweating under a load of communications gear, Johanna took a moment to breathe and studied the turbolaser emplacement behind and about fifty meters below her on the rocky trail. The massive, cylindrical cannon resembled the W-165 cannon developed by Kuat Drive Yards--perhaps too closely to have been obtained through legal means. It was likely a stolen design, she reflected. At two more locations closer to the enormous cannon, the fleet’s engineers were building small bunkers of durasteel-reinforced plastoid for repeater emplacements--as were the Talons and Bothan marines at the other seven turbolaser cannons.

 

Captain Bryce sighed and returned to a jogging place up the side of this particular mountain, scattering gravel and dust down the trail below her. This communications gear was intended to synchronize the entire defensive operation, to share tactical data between Bothawui’s orbital platforms, the local sensor arrays, and the multitude of portable missile batteries that were being emplaced all over the mountains. Their position would not be unassailable--this terrain was treacherous and the mountains were riddled with hundreds of goat paths so narrow that only a single person could walk through at a time, as Bryce was discovering as she trudged up this mountain. No position was unassailable--and she and her Talons only had a few weeks, or even a few days before the notice finally arrived that contact had been made with the Sith.

 

But it would be costly to attack these batteries, and would force the Sith into directly assaulting Drev’starn.

 

____

 

The notice came at midnight that day and took the form of an urgent pound on her cabin door. Groaning at being awoken from recovering from several days of nonstop activity

 

The notice came at midnight and took the form of an urgent pound on her cabin door. Groaning at being awoken from recovering from several days of sleepless activity, Johanna rolled over with all the grace of a sleep-deprived bird of prey and stumbled towards her door, blindly donning a shirt. She attempted to growl a pithy complaint at her rouser, but it merely came out incoherent and mildly obscene.

 

“Talons are diurnal animals,” was what she thought she said as the door to her cabin opened. “Sir!” The Talon followed with a crisp salute, upon realizing that her visitor was the cream-furred Bothan colonel.

 

“Get your gear, Bryce. We know where the Sith are going. Koth Melan will leave the moment that we are on board.”

 

Ten minutes later, Bryce’s squadron had fled into hyperspace.

 

[Johanna Bryce]

Several days later, Johanna Bryce was summoned to a briefing room with Admiral Klatchka. This was a meeting that the Rebel Talon had been dreading; Naboo had been lost, several of her men had been slain with no hope of their bodies being repatriated. Worse, her action at Theed had accomplished little for the loss aside from the destruction of several troop transports and a single naviputer that had not been wiped by the shuttle’s crew. Her shoulder still aching as she took a deep breath prior to entering the briefing room, she knocked and was surprised to find three of her Talons along with the middle-aged Admiral Klatchka.

 

While the Mon Calamari seemed to be in a grim mood, the solemnity did not seem directed at the commander of his ground troops.

 

“Captain, glad to see you up and about.” He waved a webbed arm towards the round table in the center of the room. “Sit. We have little time. The situation has become dangerous for the Rebel Alliance. With the loss of Naboo, the Sith have gained a safe staging ground to launch further attacks into the Outer Rim. Nar Shaddaa is now within the grasp of the Sith.”

 

“So we are to redeploy to Nar Shaddaa? Sir?”

 

The Mon Calamari fixed a single pale eye on the Talon. “Wrecking Machine and most of the Fourth Fleet will lie in reserve in preparation for such an attack. That said, our special forces must secure a base of operations for withdrawal in the event of failure. I draw your attention to a space station in the Galactic Core, known colloquially as ‘Outer Heaven.’”

 

A holograph of the space station appeared before them. Unusually for an isolated space station, the hull if the station appeared dominated by a vast cityspace. It almost appeared as a miniature Coruscant, albeit significantly more run-down. A miniature Nar Shaddaa, perhaps.

 

“Despite its reputation as a den for mercenaries and less savory scum, the staton does boast many of the facilities required to maintain larger vessels. More importantly, it has never been under significant threat by either the Sith-Imperial or Republic militaries. We can expect it to be a softer target than the typical Imperial fleet. We have prepared a dossier on the station, but you will receive a full briefing upon your arrival at the rendezvous point at Mon Calamari. Good luck, Captain. I hope you won’t need it.”

Several minutes later, the four Talons boarded the DP20 Frigate Marathon and were dispatched into hyperspace.