The Fog of War/Part 15

"We're gonna have to resupply soon," Kadelle said, looking over the cargo hold of the Rogue's Gambit. "If we can run the blockade we can stock up and be back inside four days."

"Milagro might be a wasteland in four days," Nal retorted. "Besides, who's gonna pay for all those supplies? Milagro?  The Republic?"

"They need us, Nal," Kadelle insisted.

"I told you before, Kad, we're not joining this resistance," Nal answered. "We're stuck here, so we need to make the best of it. No, I'm no friend of the Sith, and yes, I'm happy to make their lives hell for walling us in here.  But there's no profit throwing in with a doomed cause."

"Doomed?"

Nal sighed. "Look at them, Kad. A couple cops, a couple soldiers, and a whole bunch of scared civvies who'll fall apart the first time somebody with a lightsaber comes in swinging."

"What about the Jedi?" Kadelle asked.

"They're not in charge here, much as they may need somebody to remind them," Nal grumbled. "The galaxy's been at war for six centuries; if Milagro wanted to join the Republic, it would've a long time ago. The best thing you can say about the Jedi is they aren't the Sith."

"Maybe they can turn the tide."

"Maybe, but not likely. You've got to learn to read the charts better, Kad.  The Jedi have gotten one lucky break and chopped up one Anzat; that's not going to win them the hearts and minds.  Not when they're taking orders from that bald psychopath and toting around a Zygerrian."

Kadelle's face twisted; she found the Umbaran creepy too, and she was no happier than Nal to encounter a Zygerrian, let alone fight side-by-side with one, Jedi or not. That the girl had been one of the two to bring down the Anzat had bought her just enough breathing room with the Milagroans that they probably wouldn't shoot her in the back, but every time a new resistance cell sent delegates it was another wave of suspicion, shouted accusations, and half-hearted explanations. Kadelle thought the smarter thing would be to keep the girl out of sight, but she was at her master's side wherever he went, and the grim Pantoran was usually sulking to one side of each war council.

"Darakhan's a good Jedi," Kadelle said.

Nal hesitated, but it seemed even she couldn't debate that. "Darakhan's only one man, and one's not enough."

"Okay, fine," Kadelle said, frustrated. "Leave the Jedi out of it. The Milagroans still need food, and medicine.  The Gambit can run the blockade…"

"And where are we going to get these supplies, Kadelle?" Nal asked in exasperation. "How are we going to pay for them? The Hutts aren't going to bail out some meaningless world, not if it means going toe-to-toe with a Sith Overlord.  And if Milagro didn't join the Republic, why would the Republic cough up for Milagro?"

Kadelle thought about it. "'Read the charts', you said. What about Corellia?"

"What about Corellia?"

"It's galactic spitting distance from here, even the cops were saying it," Kadelle reasoned. "The Corellians can't be happy. Maybe they'd fund a resistance just to keep the Sith busy here."

Nal hesitated. "Maybe…"

"It's worth looking into," Kadelle nudged.

Before she could nudge further, the door to the improvised hangar bay opened and an army veteran-turned-resistance fighter stuck his head in. "You two coming?"

"Another operation planning session?" Nal asked with feigned sincerity.

He seemed to buy it, but shook his head. "The Sith are making an announcement."

Nal and Kadelle followed him into a conference room lit with lamps hung from the ceiling and connected by one long power cord. Jossi Feld, an army major named Zemma Rufos, the six Jedi, and a handful of soldiers were clustered around a holoprojector. Nal took a spot at the projector too; Kadelle stood between her and Mali Darakhan. She glanced at the tall Jedi's strong face, but his green eyes were fixed on the holo.

The Falleen Darth Vaszas dominated the signal again, but this time he stared right at the camera. "—is now under the control of Lady Vedya Gasald and the New Sith Empire," he was saying. For such a dangerous-looking man, capable of such brutality, he had a soft, gently persuasive voice. "Further resistance will only do greater harm to the people of Milagro. End this destructive conflict and we will work together to build a new Milagro, a co-equal cell of the body imperial.  Refuse…"

He trailed off regretfully, and the camera shifted abruptly to a number of Humans stripped naked and chained to a wall. Before them stood one of the Anzati; the predatory look on his face made the hairs stand up on the back of Kadelle's neck. He grabbed a whimpering, squirming Human by the hair and extended his proboscises into the man's nose.

As the Human jerked and twitched, Kadelle felt her stomach turn. Across the holoprojector, Zemma Rufos said, "I recognize him. That's the mayor of Rogeum."

"Not anymore," Sil Kadych observed.

The capital city's mayor had indeed stopped twitching, and as his corpse slumped, the chains wrenching his arms upright, Darth Vaszas's voice took over as invisible narrator. "Such a waste of life is regrettable," he lamented, "but so long as Milagro remains in a state of civil conflict, we must continue to employ our warriors to keep the peace. And while a single Jedi might sate their appetites for some time, it takes many common beings to keep them well fed.  Lay down arms and accept Lady Gasald's rule, and you will be honorable subjects of the Sith Empire.  Continue to fight, and you will be consumed."

Darth Vaszas cut off his narrative there, but the Sith left the feed live as the Anzati continued their feeding on the political and military leaders they had strung up. Feld and Rufos identified a few of them before a resistance soldier abruptly slapped a hand on the console and depowered the projector. His face showed all the nausea Kadelle was struggling to repress as he barked, "So what're we gonna do?!"

Kadych paced away, his pale eyes narrowed, palms pressed together and index fingers pressed to his nose as if in fervent prayer, though he was the last person Kadelle would've thought to resort to that. Kal-Di followed the Umbaran with his eyes, so Darakhan spoke for the Jedi instead. "We'll have to rescue them."

"A plan as brave as it is wasteful," Kadych answered before any of the Milagroans could speak. "Six Jedi aren't enough to protect all of Milagro; even if we managed to successfully infiltrate and extract them all, we'd have to do it again in three days when the Sith captured more hostages, on and on and on, with the Sith improving their defenses every time until one or all of us died."

Kadelle looked at Nal, wondering if her sister would appreciate the Jedi Master's objective analysis of the situation, but Nal's face was determinedly blank. It's not her problem anymore, Kadelle realized. What the Milagroans and the Jedi did or failed to do didn't interest her nearly enough as their own escape from the ravaged world.

"So we stand by and let innocent people die instead?" Jossi Feld demanded. There was a rumbling of agreement from the resistance fighters behind him; Kadelle saw Tirien Kal-Di's eyes shift to them, then back to Kadych.

"And instead you would…?" Kadych asked.

"Coordinate our forces," Feld replied. "Contact some other cells, get a diversion going, then storm the prison camps. They can't have Sith at all of them.  If we're lucky, we'll be able to rescue most of the survivors."

"And much more likely, you'll be massacred or added to Darth Vandak's menu," Kadych retorted. "They can have Sith Acolytes at all of the camps; they'd be fools not to."

"Then we'll kill them too!" a soldier snapped. "We got one already!"

Some of his comrades gave words of agreement, but Kadych stared him down. "Not every Sith Acolyte will be obliging enough to walk into a grenade for you. You'll never prevail against the Sith without us."

"Are you afraid to fight with us now?"

"There are six of us," Kadych reminded him. "And we can not act against the Sith so openly without compromising our anonymity. Once our presence is revealed everything becomes much harder—for you and for us."

"Fat lot of good 'anonymity' is doing us when our people are being led like nerfs to the slaughterhouse," someone grumbled.

"You Jedi like being philosophical," another said. "So here's a philosophical for you: when does 'anonymity' become 'hiding'?"

"I suspect around the same time courage becomes recklessness," Kadych fired back.

Kadelle didn't have to be a Jedi to sense the anger in the room. Even Feld and Rufos, usually voices of reason, looked piqued. Kadelle wished that Darakhan would just take over on the Jedi side, but she suspected their hierarchy would never allow for that. She saw Kal-Di and the faceless alien Slejux trade glances, at least as much as Slejux could glance.

"So we can't win without you and you're not with us," a soldier summarized. "Remind me whose side you're on again?"

Kadelle was afraid of how the Umbaran would reply, but Kal-Di suddenly stood. "We're not disputing that something needs to be done," he said, his voice grave but unhurried. "But that isn't the time for rash or reflexive action. Innocent people are in danger, and if we misstep they may all die because we weren't careful enough.  We don't want any more of your people to die, so we need to ensure this mission is planned exactly right."

Put that way it framed Kadych's reticence in a new light, but Kadelle wasn't sure she trusted her feelings—Kal-Di wasn't wrong, but he might also be using his Jedi powers to affect his audience. Kadelle looked up at Darakhan and saw he was studying Kal-Di too, but his eyes swept the room, lingered on Kadelle when he found her looking at him, then returned to the holoprojector. "He's right. When you only get one shot, you need to take a second to aim."

Jossi Feld frowned, but didn't protest. Behind him, a soldier started, "While you're sitting here aiming—"

"He's not wrong," Feld cut him off. He read the room, then looked back at Darakhan, ignoring Kadych completely. "And we'll take care of it. We'll take some time and come up with a plan.  When we do, we'll notify the Jedi, and you can tell us if you're in or out."

Darakhan and Kal-Di seemed to have a silent conversation, then both looked at Kadych. The Jedi Master waved a hand. "As you wish."

He stepped into the inside room the Jedi had commandeered for themselves this time; they always seemed to prefer a retreat of some kind, keeping themselves apart, except for Darakhan, who slept among his fellow Jedi but frequently mingled with the Milagroans. It was one of the reasons Kadelle respected him.

When the Jedi were gone, a soldier started to speak, but Zemma Rufos raised a hand to silence him, tapped her ear indicatively, and beckoned. The mass of Milagroan resisters followed her from the room. Kadelle made to follow, but Nal caught her by the arm, holding her to the back of the pack.

"They're coming to a boil, Kad," Nal whispered. "We need to be ready to go."

"All the more reason to know exactly what they're planned," Kadelle breathed back, following the Milagroans; Nal trailed after her.

She found a seat on a crate of grenades in the resistance's makeshift armory, crammed next door to its impromptu medbay; Kadelle thought there might have been jokes about it had Vaszas's announcement not come through when it did.

"Commander, I'm sorry, but I've had it up to here with these Jedi hiding here, eating our food, taking up our space, and doing nothing to earn it," one of the resisters told Feld.

There was a chorus of agreement, some grudging, others enthusiastic. Another soldier said, "It was Jedi who killed the Anzat."

"One Anzat!" a woman retorted. "What a triumph!"

"And one of those Jedi was the Zygerrian," another man pointed out. "How do we know they didn't come on the Anzat dead, cut his head off, and claim it was some great victory? Maybe they're just trying to buy our good faith."

"The woman they saved and her kids are out there, somewhere," Kadelle snapped before she could control herself, pointing at the larger part of the factory where the current bunch of refugees was sheltered. "Go out there and tell her the Jedi didn't save her."

She saw Nal's warning look from her peripheral vision. The man who had spoken flushed, but another resister said, "I'm sure she believes that's what happened, but who's to say the Jedi didn't affect her memories?"

"Enough," Major Rufos insisted. "We'll tear this resistance apart if we start seeing enemies inside. The Jedi aren't the enemy."

"No," Jossi Feld agreed, then sighed. "But they're not Milagroans either. This is our fight, and we can't wait for them to bless every mission."

Kadelle didn't think any of the others could see the tension in her sister's shoulders, but she knew Nal too well to miss it. They weren't Milagroan either, and if the resistance started purging "outsiders"…

"Sir, that transmission…" a resister said in a new, wary tone.

"The Anzati," Feld agreed. "We have to do something, Jedi or not."

"No, sir…I mean yes, we do, but…" He looked around. "Darth Vaszas was talking about how many Jedi would feed an Anzat. What…what if they do know the Jedi are here?"

Feld frowned. "If they could…I don't know, 'sense' them or something? What if they do?"

"Well, maybe it was a message, sir," the soldier ventured. "To us, I mean. Like…"

He seemed unable to get the words out, but one of his comrades saved him the trouble. "Like 'turn over the Jedi, and the "common people" are spared'."