So here's the thing.
People gotta eat. So while “Black Sun” and “The Commonality” were busy measuring dicks and trying to blow up each other's shit, Captain Flabbergast and her motley crew approached the planet of New Alderaan at rather a leisurely pace, answering all of the hails from the planet promptly and following all of the stated protocols without delay.
It was just an ordinary medium freighter, hauling a hold packed full of nerf jerky to the little out-of-the-way world. Flabbergast hated the stuff, personally, but she loved to haul it. No freezing equipment necessary, none of that bulky carbonite packaging required. Just one solid block of merchandise, ready for offloading and sale.
The captain pondered the system's civilian traffic for a moment. The ruckus on the surface seemed to have thinned out the space lanes a little, but Black Sun wasn't stupid. Okay, well, Black Sun
was stupid, but not
that kind of stupid. They understood how money worked, how to keep the credits rolling.
There would be no disruption of New Alderaan's civilian traffic. She doubted the new Vigo would even try changing the planet's name, despite the apparent Jutraalian sentiments of his regime. Making people change their star charts all over again just tended to piss off spacers, and that was bad for business.
Business . . . aww,
hell.
Captain Flabbergast had just realized those Black Sun bastards would have surely hiked up import tariffs by now! This was going to cut into her profit margins so bad . . .
She wondered if she could get her special guest to reimburse her for lost profits? “Hey, Iffis?”
“Yeah, yeah, almost there!” the jittery Squib blurted out, frantically typing away at the datapad he'd plugged into the freighter's comm station.
“No, it's not that,” Flabbergast began, already having second thoughts about bringing it up to the oddball Squib. Maybe she should just wait until she got out of system and call HQ . . .
“I've got it!” Iffis exclaimed, raising his hands in self-praise and accidentally dropping the datapad, which pulled the cables out of the station and sent a loud
clang through the bridge as it struck the deck. “Oops . . .”
“Well hurry up before we get too close to the planet and they pick up the signal!” the Captain scolded the temporary crew member. She didn't like unexpected guests on her ship, but the “hazard pay” she'd been offered was just too good to pass up. Plus, it was for a good cause, she supposed . . .
“Hang on, hang on,” Iffis mumbled to himself, plugging the datapad back in and checking to make sure everything was still in order. “Yes! We're good!”
“Then drop the package and shut that gadget down! I'm not getting put in a Black Sun prison over this.”
Iffis typed a short command into the datapad, and the prerecorded message went out through the ship's temporary, secondary, tight-beam transmitter. It was a bit of an odd angle, and the relative motions of both the transmitting and receiving vessels had to be accounted for exactly, but Iffis looked rather pleased with himself, so Flabbergast took it as a good sign.
“Message away!” he exclaimed, still typing away. “Powering up the micro-hyperwave-transmitter,” he informed, still typing away. “Shielding looks good; there should be no detectable leakage for the planet to pick up.”
“
Should be?” Flabbergast repeated, horrified by the uncertainty inherent in the comment.
Iffis paused, perking up as he considered the question. “Well, I mean, I've never actually
tried anything like this before. I suppose there's some chance New Alderaan Customs or something is doing a focused sensor scan on us at
just the moment I push the 'transmit' button. What, you want me to abort the whole thing?”
Grumbling, Flabbergast looked over the Squib's shoulder, as if
looking at the incomprehensible mess of code and readouts would somehow make it safer. “Just do it already!”
“And . . .” Iffis made a big show of pushing the button with his index finger, “done!
“. . .
“. . .
“I don't think we're dead yet. Seems to have worked!”
* * *
None of them suspected. Not a one. Greg Radagast had been praised for bringing the group remote access to the hyperwave transmitter. He'd made a sheepish attempt to give Bhen credit, but they wouldn't hear of it and he let the issue drop quickly.
Five or six of the younger ones were admiring the case of rocket launchers stacked up in the corner, praising the New Aldera Security quartermaster for her part in getting the anti-tank weaponry to them. The Ryn who'd saved her life when the first squad of Black Sun enforcers rolled in hadn't even been allowed into the meeting.
Bail Vox, the Alderaanian native who'd quickly rose to lead the group of freedom fighters, had probably already forgotten that it was his Ryn mechanic who'd put him in contact with the other big names in this group here. He certainly didn't realize that more than a dozen other Ryn had worked behind the scenes to make sure
he'd be the one supported by his countrymen to take over.
Bhen smirked at the thought of it all. If she were a human, like most of the people in this room right now, she knew the thought would have angered her.
How can't they see what's happening here! she would have raged.
Why won't they give us the respect we are due! she would have gone on.
But Bhen was not human. She was Ryn. And it was precisely because of that fact that she and her fellow Ryn were capable of doing what they had done. It was precisely because these people
couldn't see how valuable the Ryn were to them, that the Ryn were able to be of such value.
Anyone else would have been stopped by the Black Sun enforcers and interrogated. Anyone else's motives would have been called into question by their supposed friends. Anyone else's schemes would have been discovered. But not the Ryn's.
The Network was invisible. It couldn't be anything but that, made of Ryn as it was.
“We've made contact with three more cells on the outskirts of town,” a doe-eyed youth reported excitedly.
More Ryn maneuvering, of course. Bhen knew two of the Ryn responsible by name. She doubted anyone else in the room even realized they'd been involved.
“Now that we've made contact with the Commonality -” Bail began, and Bhen thought
through the Ryn Fleet, “- we can coordinate our attacks on the ground installations with their push into orbit. All we've got to do is wait for an update.”
The update they were waiting for, of course, was almost certainly being delayed until the Ryn task force being assembled had worked out a plan of attack with whatever ships the Commonality had sent this way.
That would surely get lost in the after-battle shuffle as well, leaving the Ryn and their Network to soldier on, unseen and unheard.
* * *
Ryn Construction Fleet Hephaestus, in orbit of some backwater world, a few hundred light years from New Alderaan
Colonel Ellen had transferred to one of the smaller fleets specifically so this sort of thing wouldn't happen again. She wanted to be done with fighting. She wanted to be free of the entanglements of command, free to wander the stars without the burden of the lives she'd cost the galaxy.
But fate would not release the killer of Athan Sahalan. She would suffer every day for the blood that was on her hands.
The little work fleet was still receiving up-to-the-minute hyperwave transmissions from the little band of freedom fighters on New Alderaan, informing them of such mundane things as Black Sun foot patrols and the number and type of ships landing at the New Aldera starport.
The Colonel had already gotten an “operative” (just some random volunteer from the fleet) on-world, who had confirmed to the loyalists that the fleet was receiving their signal. She'd already sent a message through the Coalition HoloNet to the Commonality capital at Columex, but given the reports of recent Reaver activity in the region, the message would be taken by courier ship the last leg of the journey, so it was likely they hadn't even received her report yet.
This wasn't really the sort of thing that the Ryn usually got themselves involved in, especially not without backing from the Cooperative government, but this was different.
This was about Black Sun.
And a Ryn never passes up a chance to punish anyone whose sordid history includes the establishment and operation of slave breeding camps. So the Fleet Elders had decided that, as limited as their resources were, this was a fight the Ryn had to enter.
The data burst from their “spy ship” (some random freighter captain who'd agreed to ferry their eccentric Squib volunteer in-system, pretending he was a crew member, for a modest fraction of the fleet's discretionary allowance) had already arrived and been analyzed. The civilian-grade sensors of the medium freighter couldn't tell Ellen much about New Alderaan's captured defenses or Black Sun vessels in-system, but it was more than nothing.
The quick ping of the system's hostile assets was only a secondary objective, anyway. The important thing had been to get a ship in-system that could deliver a message to the Commonality task force present, and the colonel wouldn't know if that had been successful unless or until the Commonality commander managed to contact her.
It was a race against the clock now. Ellen was sure she could muster some support from the Cooperative military if it came to it, but her little escort group was here, now, and every hour that passed, Black Sun was entrenching itself further at New Alderaan.
She looked at her fleet roster one more time, trying to judge how many of the light and medium escorts she could pull away and still leave the construction ships with an adequate defense. Her own ship, the
Corona-class frigate
Reverence, was certainly the newest vessel in the entire fleet. They could spare a
Carrack-class, maybe the
Rascal, and one of the converted Dreadnaughts could be pulled off of manufacturing duty. Their combat systems were kept in operational order, but Ellen would feel better if the non-combat crew was offloaded before they set out. She'd have her pick of the corvettes, gunships, and patrol craft, as well.
She just hoped the makeshift task force would be enough. “Communications, signal the following captains to break from the fleet and assemble at waypoint one. We need to work out a squadron formation before we get the call.”
* * *
CNS Providence, Combat Bridge
New Alderaan System, Black Sun Territory
The communications officer, diligently checking local channels for any useful information, was simply stunned when his console indicators lit up out of nowhere. They were receiving something, something big. It wasn't a normal hail, not like that at all. It was, well, it was a data dump. The ship's buffers were soaking it up, and the moment the signal (which he'd already back-traced by trajectory to a rather unassuming civilian freighter on approach to the planet) cut out, he extracted the file for study.
It was a holo-message!
“Captain,” the officer spoke up, excited by the possibilities. The young man had grown up on stories of the intrepid R2-D2 and his message from the beautiful, regal Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan. “We've just received a holo-message from a passing civilian freighter, tight-beam signal to avoid detection from the surface. Shall I play it, Sir?”
Captain Yemin nodded to the young man, turning his attention to the bridge's main holo-display. “Let's see it.”
”Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi; you're my only hope,” he thought as he pressed the button to play the message . . .
Only to be met by some Ryn woman in a military uniform. “This is a message for the Commonality task force within the New Alderaan System. Do not respond directly to this transmission, as the signaling vessel would be targeted as a collaborator by the Black Sun forces in-system.
“I am Colonel Ellen, commander of the Ryn Defense Forces assigned to the
Hephaestus construction fleet. We are currently stationed approximately four hundred light-years away from New Alderaan, and are in position to deploy as many as fifteen light and medium capital ships to assist in the routing of the Black Sun forces present in that system.
“In addition, we have access to outgoing communications from Loyalist resistance forces organizing planetside. Upon receiving their initial hyperwave transmission, I dispatched an operative with a key phrase to survey their operations, and confirm the authenticity of this Loyalist cell. That key phrase was transmitted through the Loyalist comm line less than three hours ago, assuring both their identity and commitment to this task.
“As you view this message, I will be assembling my task force in anticipation of your return communication. Attached are the galactic coordinates of the
Hephaestus fleet. If you can establish communications directly without alerting Black Sun forces to the presence of allied vessels nearby, then do so. If not, I suggest you dispatch a courier ship along the route to Columex, and have it alter course after leaving the system.
“Allied ground forces are aware of your presence and are laying plans to disable as many ground based defense installations as possible to make way for your approach toward the planet. They await only a message from another operative supplying them with a timetable for action.
“As New Alderaan is a Commonality member, I of course defer to your command. We await your reply and stand ready to render what assistance we are able. Colonel Ellen out.”
