Rebel Yell: VN Ysadora
General Summary
With a cold.
The Mismatch's hold is full of 'em.
Okay, really we're going after a "Lost Fleet" that supposedly -- according to this journal Eleni's friend Parnell 'call me Mak' Makola either won in a bet, or was given as payment for a debt, or Smurf knows what the hell happened -- shows up out of hyperspace in this one particular nebula fringe, every three years. It's supposed to be a group of Republic ships loaded down with several varieties of Unobtainium, mostly Mandalorian iron and cortosis. Why not a tanker ship full of kolto, while we're at it?
Clearly, I'm not buying this legend half so much as my friends seem to be accepting its accuracy. This may have something to do with the craptastic nightmares I keep having when I'm meditating.
Anyway:
Once we got into the area, and checked in with Starport Authority, we started scouting for signs of the ghost ships. A distress signal, from a ship being attacked by "pirates", diverted us to their rescue.
Yeah, the "pirates" turned out to be a batch of Dathomirian Nightsisters with plasma whips. Danar beat one in a banter war, saving the Zabrak guy she'd been torturing; we took out a pair in the galley, then fought three of 'em up on the bridge.
The lead Nightsister nearly had Eleni kick our asses on our behalf; fortunately, Eleni's stubborn enough to shred a Master-level "illusion spell", given a couple breaths to think about it.
It could've been worse, of course. We've also been warned that the Straw Hat Gang is operating in this area. The local group's boss may be a colorblind Cetagandan named Buddy. With a parasol. And a lime-green lightsaber. And a "Zorro" fetish. Holovid couldn't sell this crap. Anyway, having watched the video a few times, Danar says he can take that turkey, thank Crom.
We still need to check up in the Nightsisters' ship for more problems, and get that ship into SPA control, and get back to finding the Lost Fleet.
In the Nightsisters' ship, we rescued a couple of brainwashed slaves, mostly by knocking them unconscious -- but one, Elber the Weequay former slythmonger, we talked down before the bridge fight really got started. All prisoners and victims have been turned over to Quad Sarkin at Lammax Station, who would really like it if we'd come in and fill out the flimsiwork, but can be persuaded by urgent logic such as "I think your main problem is still out there, and we're going to go look for more people in trouble, and we don't have time right now for writing statements."
A little deeper into the Geric Nebula, we found a clump of eleven dead ships, a mix of stock and bulk freighters. These are hulled and scored and, in general, reduced to the point of being "space trash". While we were looking those over, the "Lost Fleet" convoy warped out of hyperspace above us: one destroyer named Vigilant, several support ships, and NO life signs. Or resonance in the Force, pretty much. We have one hour to figure out how to get them to not disappear. Once we dock in the destroyer, and split up to investigate various areas, we discover that there are old bodies in a lot of the corridors -- clone troopers, Mando raiders, and Smurf knows what else. Pirates, probably.
The sergeant currently running CnC when I arrive is Sev, who (despite still being Not There according to the Force) has an entirely reasonable awkward-uncomfortable reaction when I check that he knows "we" (meaning the Jedi Order) love them (meaning the clones). I have a policy of always checking that early, after having met the blond cousins. Actual commander of the mission is an ARC named Loren, not a Null but the first generation of ARCs after that; he knew Razak, at least by reputation.
It's a bit of an adjustment, dealing with these folks without any background info communicated via their interaction with the Force, but then that's probably why it's me trying to rescue them, and not one of the other Jedi flunkies. Or the Council, for that matter. Although, now that I'm trying to persuade them to leave the areas of interference long enough to reestablish comms contact ... and get independent (of me and my PDA) confirmation that the Trade Federation war ended 25 years ago, and Chancellor Palpatine was really Darth Sidious ... it'd be useful as hell to have Master Ani to hand in person.
I think these poor guys are droids. Maybe cyborgs. It'd explain the "not living", given that R5 generally doesn't light much of a spark either. And I've run into ghosts haunting a ship's computers before, too.
Yeager handed over, Force help us all, a newsreel collection edited to seem that Order 65 was issued. Danar tried to fix it. Or inflame it til it blew up. I got blamed for their work, as is only fair.
After seeing the newsreel, Loren asked me for confirmation -- which I can't -- and then asked "Representative Vorpadaran" to go get some independent confirmation, which I guess is where the new Tapani Alliance Senate's Security Council comes in. In order to get it, of course, Loren had to postpone indefinitely the convoy's next scheduled jump, and move to the edge of the Geric Nebula for a clearer signal. While Danar was on the secure channel, and Eleni was taking research notes for her next sociology thesis, Loren apparently popped from thirty years' stress: he confessed the mission's entire history, and what he sees as his "treason", to me and Yeager. They were under the command of Jedi Master Sela Venn, ordered by the Chancellor to take a boatload of supplies to General Obi-Wan Kenobi. Master Venn also had an off-the-books mission: to smuggle certain medical materials and information, gathered by Kaminoan rebel Taun We, to a retired Jedi who would then get a geneticist team to start reversing the clones' accelerated aging. Shortly after the start of their mission, they were hailed by another fleet -- which turned out to be non-Kaminoan clones, who attacked upon realizing they couldn't pass.
The Coruscanti? clone fleet used two weapons in their attempt to kill all living beings aboard Master Venn's fleet without damaging the ships: first was some sort of aimed radiation attack. Master Venn managed to absorb into herself the entire radiation blast, preventing it from affecting any of the fleet. While that radiation was then killing her, toxic gas canisters hidden within the basic construction of the convoy ships themselves opened up and poisoned almost everybody. In order to save themselves and their mission, Loren dug through the data being shipped to General Kenobi. He found some Separatist schematics for cybernetics in the packet, and got the repair and medical divisions working on quickly adapting this information into a means of halting the toxin, keeping them alive and functional.
Loren left the decision of whether to undergo this process up to each individual. Some chose cryosleep instead, but enough opted for the cybernetic procedure to keep the ships functional and defensible.
They were supposed to meet the now-deceased Master Venn's contact, an unnamed, supposedly exiled former member of the Jedi Order, at a Jedi outpost. By the time the convoy got there, however -- having been delayed by the fake-GAR Fleet attack -- no one remained, and signs of a battle were present. Without knowing whether their contact had escaped to meet them elsewhere on their secret route, and desperately in need of repair supplies and medical treatment, they adopted the Mandalorian-style group name of "Clan Venn" and proceeded to follow a highly classified hyperspace route that looped them in and out of the Tapani Sector, without benefit of navbuoys, for the next thirty and more years. In the process, they found Mandalore, the legendary lost side route, and a LOT of would-be boarding parties.
Speaking of boarding parties....
Right after Loren had uploaded data toward the Jedi Temple and then officially arrested himself (!), Yeager spotted two groups of ships incoming at the same time, and aiming for opposite ends of the convoy. One set, ignoring hails, turned out to be a bigger Nightsister raid; the other claimed to be Jedi Knight Terec, of whom I had certainly never heard. Yet he knew Nightsisters were a problem (and offered to help solve them), and that the Jedi Temple is now on Allandor (not Olandor System). Anyway, Terec arrived in a Ghtroc 720 freighter, which I put off from docking with the Vigilant by claiming that the bays had been drained of their atmosphere to discourage Nightsister slaving attempts.
Meanwhile, Eleni and Danar launched in the Mismatch and attacked the two manta-shaped boarding craft detaching from wings of the Hapes Nova Cruiser, leaving its complement of Mankvim-814 light interceptors for Yeager and the Vigilant's complement of fightercraft to take out. Once they had all those cleaned up, Mismatch went after the Nova itself -- which was having power troubles, due to taking a dead freighter upside the hyperdrive, in a now-classic application of the "Momentum is a bitch" principle -- and snuck through their still functional shields to blow up most of the Nova's guns.
Despite all the right words, of course, Terec's ship docked with one of the convoy's emptier freighters, so I asked Yeager and his wingman, Acer, to "win quickly" in their current dogfight and get after that probably-not-a-good-guy set. Shortly after, I had to ask Eleni and Danar to get in there as well, for Yeager had found a Wookiee where a Wookiee ought not to be, and then he had stopped communicating. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do if Eleni and Danar needed backup; I'd asked the minimal staff aboard that freighter to evacuate to the opposite end of the ship, drop all bulkheads, and keep 'em tightly sealed.
Somewhere in here, Danar apparently rescued someone named "Aola". I have yet to meet her. She makes him feel very Vorish, you know, make sure things are done the honorable way.
Not-KitKat wrecked some external jamming, in true KitKat fashion, shortly after Eleni and Danar had gotten Yeager back onto his feet. Almost immediately, Master Ben called up to provide the traditional master-to-padawan inquisition I'd been lacking. He relayed the origin of Jedi School Flunkout Nossk Terec, and that Senator Skywalker had organized an emergency session of the Security Council in order to issue Order 65, which he naturally indicated must be MY fault. The Clan Venn guys got a good chuckle out of that, since I spent the whole fight sitting on the floor in the middle of the bridge serving as Morale Support, and later informed me that Master Kenobi clearly hadn't changed a bit.
Given that, and the earlier comment on my ftp password that I must've studied under Master Skywalker, I can't wait to see what they have to say about Master Yoda.
Anyway, we won, and thanks to the last-minute arrival of a battle fleet out on test-repair maneuvers (led by Gregor's Pride, which means Admiral Vord'arcy), almost everybody got arrested that needed arresting. Unfortunately, the Nova itself did manage to squeak into hyperspace just before it could be grabbed.
Rewards Granted
Addendum 1: the cortosis boxes
Most of the cortosis had been forged into four chest-sized secured boxes, protecting the data and biological samples smuggled from Taun We to Master Venn. The tiny remaining nugget will help serve as funds for Clan Venn's future; they gave an empty box, now that none are being used for said super-protective storage, to Eleni Benacor and another to Danar Vorpadaran.
Commemorative tins, sorta.
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Notes
Addendum 2: the geneticist conundra
Yeager confided in me the location of another piece in the "clones age too fast, you stupid Kaminoan designers" puzzle. Since Clan Venn had a piece, and I know Spar walked off the planet with a piece, I gave Yeager my word that I will get a recommendation for a highly competent, apolitical geneticist team for hire -- probably from Countess Vorkosigan, she's got all those hospitals and runs a string of medical school scholarships with a service requirement -- and I'll provide the money for their hiring. But the team will work for the guys, which gives the Beskar Aran and Clan Venn some control over how this process works.
Eleni also volunteered to try to talk her Reverend Mother into taking a whack at the problem. I'm almost completely in favor of it, and I'm definitely grateful: on the plus side, R.M. is going to be the equal of the best geneticist I can find anywhere off Kamino, which is the same as saying "the best in the galaxy anywhere." The tiny negative would be that I'm not sure she'll cede the clones in question any say over how their problem is solved. They've had a whole lot done to them over the years, and I can easily imagine their sense of not having any choice in their own destinies.
But, y'know, the most important part is to get it solved.
Now I've got to figure out where I'm getting the money, without violating my own ethics, and without shorting the Order on our suddenly intensified duties....
Report Date
05 Dec 2014
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