War is simply the continuation of political intercourse
with the addition of other means.
(Carl von Clausewitz).
***
The holograms of the Jedi Council members winked out and left me alone with my thoughts. Half of them were obscene. I wanted to smashsomething. To smithereens.
Great. Just great. Just great… Jabiim, damn them all! I was unlucky to get dragged into this story… I honestly forgot about this whole thing. In myprevious life there were endless arguments on a forum about the exact date of the Battle for Jabiim. Someone—citing a comic—argued it happened before the Battle of Muunilinst because our beloved Anakin was still Kenobi's Padawan—yet Ventress was already there, and she appeared during the fighting on Muunilinst. On the other hand, some official reference said it happened in the second year of the war. Now they tell me it's at the start of the third month. But everyone agreed on one thing: Vietnam and Verdun were nothing compared to that meat grinder. If I remembercorrectly, the Republic took a crushing blow there, losing a huge number of clones—several hundredthousand—all its equipment, and what little trust it had left among the locals in just two months. The results were so devastating that the Chancellor ordered the details to be kept secret. Even so, panic spread among civilians on Coruscant—the CIS wasn't being restrained, and they trumpeted the disaster across the galaxy.
My memory added another note: it was then the 501st Legion first appeared—guarding the capital and helping to suppress riots. I never cease to be amazed—was this planned by Sidious, or did he improvise? Either way, he profited from it. And now they're sending me into this shit. Ugh. I need to calm down. There's nothing I can do—well, there is, but… it's unlikely to be anything drastic.
No, but why me? I'll find out who to thank for this joy—I'll remember. And this Amidala—what hutt did she forget at the Council meeting? InPalpatine's company, of all people. AAlthough... who was in whose company is still a question. The Chancellor… if I hadn't known he was a Sith, I would never have suspected him of being, um… gifted. Such a polite old man. And such kind eyes. Like Lenin's, damn it. He plays the role perfectly; you could say he's grown into it over the years. Stanislavski would have shed a tear.
Meanwhile, the datapad chirped loudly, announcing the arrival of the files. I reached for it mechanically.
"General Vikt." Moff Terbon's voice cut through my reverie. He stood nearby and had heard our whole exchange. "Not my affair, but weren't you a little harsh with the Council and Senator Amidala?"
"Oh, I softened it..."
"Is it that bad?" The man frowned, realizing that I had not caused panic for no reason.
"You have no idea how bad. Mark my words—we'll wash ourselves on Jabiim. With blood." I watched the other officers in the conference room from the corner of my eye: some were there on duty, some waiting to report, others off duty but pulled in by curiosity or professional instinct. Since we'd been speaking in rather raised voices, they'd heard the Council conversation perfectly. I think they appreciated my speech and will remember every word. "It was high time the Republic intervened, and now there's a reason to do so. But the moment's been missed. We have only one option left: try to clean up the mess politicians made with their tongues."
Moff Terbon was distracted by his own incomingmessages, which gave me space to move to a corner and work through the files.
The first was an official document—an order from the Jedi Council. Those bastards move fast. Translating from bureaucratese into plain speech, it said this: I, Jedi Knight Mikore Vikt, together with the units under my command, was ordered to land on Jabiim to support the local "Resistance," sabotage the mineral extraction by any necessary means, and seize control of the deposits of these minerals for Republic. Of course it would be preferable to flood the mines and destroy them, but who would refuse a free lunch? So I had to secure them carefully, so that I won't be blamed for it later. And the locals would obviously not be happy if I practically destroyed their only source of income. Also: prepare a staging area for the landing of the main troops, scheduled to arrive "presumably in two to three weeks." Fuck—will we hold out that two to three weeks? Or does no one care?
The second document was a solid mandate giving me authority to carry the assignment out as soon as possible. Complete carte blanches, in general. But even here, you can't go entirely wild— it's unlikely that you'll be able to get outsiders involved. The most we could do was replenish the corps with whatever it needed. However, I don't need any extra troops — I don't know how to deal with the ones I already have. So this piece of paperpaper was a small comfort.
The third file was intelligence: rough maps, a planetary summary, local demographics and so on. Well, what do we have here? Population: about one hundred million humans. Yes, I did say that, humans. "Xenos" were within margin of error—about one-tenth of one percent—practically negligible. Some twenty million live in cities; the rest in settlements—"villages" or workers' towns. Jabiim has been mined for a long time—the first shafts opened three thousand years ago. There's even a local term: "Jabiim ore." As far as I remember, what they have found now lies at great depths, closer to the planet's core, so to speak, but this is not a problem for the locals — they have simply only now reached it.
The fourth, very short file contained two messages. One said three elite Alpha-class saboteurs would be sent to me. Are these the ones Fett trained himself? Not bad. The second noted a transport convoy due at Lantilles in a few hours carrying new equipment samples and reinforcements for the sector's fleet. I was allowed to prioritize removal of equipment for the corps' needs. Hmm—are they going to foist a 'runt-AT-AT' on me? Sad. These shit things cannot be compared to their Imperial counterparts. Weaker armor, shorter. Or is there anything else interesting? I'll take all the AT-XTs I can get. They're decent machines.
So. What do we have in the end? Jabim. A planet in the Outer Ring. The natives were extremely unfriendly: over seventy percent supported the Stratus Nationalists—whose commander, by the way, is brilliant at combining positional warfare with guerrilla and sabotage. While poorly trainedand haphazardly armed militias held prepared lines and droids carried out frontal assaults, his elite sabotage units, including Nimbus, carried out sabotage operations behind enemy lines, i.e., on our side. He had at least a hundred thousand fighters under his command, and given his skill at rallying the masses to "fight the vile invaders" (which from their perspective sounded more then plausible), a million fighters didn't seem impossible. Add an unknown number of combat droids. Let's assume the worst: at least a million of them—CIS would guard such a prize witheverything it had. It's an ugly picture against my—let's say—forty thousand. A steamroller. The number of troops loyal to the Republic, still the same ragged militiamen, is questionable, butclearly no more than fifty thousand at best. Now ion storms didn't seem so terrifying—otherwise they'd have simply wiped us out from the air. As it stood, we had a chance to fight back. If we can even make it to the surface.