After Master Jedi Meilis left, I remained alone for some time until, on my orders, Grodin Tierce arrived.
A brainstorming session was needed.
And not just using my gray matter, but also with the help of a "devil's advocate," which Tierce could be.
If necessary, of course.
Mr. Ghent hadn't arrived yet, so I had time to evaluate the data the Jedi Shadow had handed over for review.
At the same time, judging by the volume of information, the Lady Jedi had managed to correct it from the original.
After which she created a new file, moved the corrected information there, and then transferred the document to my disposal.
Which means restoring the original is impossible — Mr. Ghent's clones from the analytics department already tried.
Meilis covered her tracks, then.
Let's note that thought — she is cautious and doesn't intend to trust anyone blindly, even in this situation.
This indicates that the Sephi didn't waste time during the flight with Delta Squad and prepared counterarguments to capture my attention.
The fact that she wasn't surprised by my survival also points to one of three things: either she didn't know about my death at all (which is doubtful, since it was blared from every HoloNet receiver), or she simply wasn't interested in that fact and therefore reacted indifferently to what she saw.
Or she has excellent self-control, even in stressful situations.
There was also a fourth option: she was smart enough to realize the report was a deception.
I lean towards the last option.
The lady has a sharp mind and good tactical and strategic training, which has allowed her unit to operate outside the law for a long time without being destroyed.
"Your opinion, Lieutenant Colonel," I said after the hologram finished playing the personal files of the clones imprisoned in some special Imperial prison.
So special that there was no mention of it in the Ubiqtorate archives.
Which is already a rather unusual situation.
If Imperial Intelligence, even its top echelons, doesn't know what happened to the clone commandos, then everything was done so secretly that they couldn't even find mentions of it.
The data from the Imperial Security Bureau, the Empire's counterintelligence, is also empty.
Official Ubiqtorate data on each of the clones we saw indicates they died under various circumstances.
Some — from armed rebellion, disobeying orders, anti-Imperial activities, defecting to the enemy, desertion; some — due to suspiciously frequent accidents at the Imperial Academy, where some clones were sent after being discharged and replaced by recruits, as instructors.
And then… died.
"Suspicious information," Tierce stated. "The contradiction in data suggests that clone commandos and Alpha-type Advanced Recon Commandos could win the Clone War, but couldn't pilot walkers, grav-cycles, APCs, conduct mine clearance, or repair gliders? The causes of death are suspiciously peaceful. Though there are those who supposedly died during military operations. But what were instructors, which they were, doing there? It looks more like they were deliberately pulled from their positions and sent somewhere they were guaranteed to supposedly die. The lack of relatives and their status as clones ensures that no one will investigate the causes of death, even the most absurd ones. Given the new information, I prefer to lean towards the view that someone or something deliberately covered up the survival of these clones. And they were clearly placed in stasis intentionally. But by whom, when, for what purpose, and in what condition they are now, I'm not ready to say. Too little initial data for analysis."
If they were placed.
If they survived.
If they are where the Shadow says they're being held.
If all this isn't a trap.
Too many ifs.
Especially — the location of a secret prison, unknown to anyone except a Jedi Shadow.
Why is this information known only to her?
According to her, she got it from Alpha-66, an ARC who became a mercenary leader after demobilization.
At some point, the Empire came for him and tried to capture him, destroying his group.
And the job was carried out by clone commandos.
Unidentified, but he recognized some of them before killing a certain number.
And from them (using torture) he obtained an explanation for the hunt on him and his subordinates.
Allegedly for being disloyal to the Empire.
Which could be true, since according to the same "Deltas," Alpha-66 provided his mercenaries' services to Imperials, criminal elements, and… in short, whoever paid the most.
At the cost of his group members' lives, he managed to escape and began raising old connections to understand what was happening…
And he realized that clone commandos of all types, both inside and outside the Empire, were becoming fewer and fewer.
At some point, Alpha-66 became part of the Sephi's combat unit fighting the Empire in the Sumitra sector.
He shared with her his assumption that clone commandos could be brought back and turned to their side.
Especially those who were "free agents" and had been captured by Imperial commandos working in secret.
The only problem was that freeing them would require an entire army — that's how well-fortified the fully autonomous commando prison was.
But there is no confirmation of this information — only what Alpha-66 got from the commandos he managed to kill.
A fully autonomous secret prison, for commandos in stasis…
Consequently, no garrison — only combat droids, an automated defense system; probably not even an active transmitter exists, to maintain the object's secrecy.
Using stasis as a containment system was also a clever move — no expenses for food, guards, and so on.
It sounds too intriguing not to attempt to rescue our fellow clones and offer them a chance for revenge against their captors.
Alpha-66 clearly knew how to set priorities.
He didn't have time to implement his plan — one morning, in the Sephi's camp, they found him hanged in his room.
Which is… rather crude work.
Let there be no signs of struggle or forced hanging, but why would a clone commando, especially an "Alpha," without any explanation, go put a noose around his neck without showing any predisposition for it beforehand?
There wasn't even any depression observed in the mercenary.
No, he was simply "cleaned up."
Moreover, they came exclusively for him alone.
And I suspect the ones doing it were the same kind of clone commandos as himself.
Imperial troops or assault commandos would not simply eliminate the clone, but would also make life as difficult as possible for the underground.
Consequently, whoever organized Alpha-66's elimination either had no desire, or the resources, or the conflict with the Sephi and her squad to finish them off.
A typical single-target task.
Someone was clearing clones out of the way.
And not just any clones — we did find ordinary soldiers, and they weren't exactly hiding.
Specifically commandos.
The best of the clones available in the Imperial Armed Forces, possessing colossal experience.
Yes, some escaped retribution.
And there's a logical explanation for that.
The "Deltas" were outside the known galaxy for a long time, working in remote worlds on the edge of Wild Space.
To be more precise, after the Nagai-Tof War, they signed a contract with the Nagai and, together with them, caused trouble for the Tofs, who had been exiled from the known part of the galaxy.
That probably allowed them to survive the hunt for clone commandos.
Why the members of the Skirata clan survived is also clear — the "Nulls" are the best at covering their tracks.
Well… If the information from the Jedi Shadow is correct, and the clone commandos were indeed neutralized by the Imperials for one reason or another, then the answers might be in the Emperor's files from the library on Mount Tantiss.
The analytics department is already working on finding information, but the data encryption is extreme.
Otherwise, we wouldn't have been cracking the chips with this data for so long.
Since capturing the library, we've managed to decrypt maybe one hundred and fifty crystals.
And there are thousands of them.
And there is little hope that a separate file related to this operation exists.
Because Palpatine's library is strictly cataloged, and if a file is labeled "Eye of Palpatine," it will only contain information about that project and its changes, nothing more.
That's how we learned many of the Emperor's secrets… Although most of them we had already discovered and studied on our own, in one way or another.
Including the personnel of Dark Side adepts, the past of Executor Sedriss, whom Palpatine had been tracking since the latter worked for Imperial Intelligence, the technical capabilities of both asteroid dreadnoughts, general information about Byss's defense system (but that's exactly where some specifics would have been more useful), data on the Jedi and Sith holocrons moved to Byss from the treasury on Wayland, an indication of the treasury in the Ashen Worlds for which Object One was sent, and so on…
But one must also understand that a significant portion of the information chips were "cleaned" by the Emperor's messengers, so the chance of learning anything about the reasons for the attack on the clone commandos is small.
Everything Palpatine "worried about," he erased first.
But I find it more likely that since the operation to extract the clone commandos happened after the Battle of Endor, it's unlikely to have been ordered by the Emperor.
Probably, someone among his subordinates was at work.
Someone vested with enough authority to order a large-scale operation with meticulous destruction of evidence.
Someone who had enough resources and personal operatives to pull it all off in secret from Ysanne Isard.
The real one, I mean.
Someone who already covered his true actions with death.
"Sate Pestage," I said, putting the puzzle together.
Grodin immediately understood what I was talking about.
But instantly developed the thought in a different direction.
"The Grand Vizier could indeed have cleaned the archives," he agreed. "Specifically, when he took over the Ubiqtorate, he could have eliminated the operatives and all evidence using Imperial agents. The question is, why did he do it? It's unlikely that the clones serving the Empire were truly destroyed or captured as a result of battle. A Kaminoan clone is a model of obedience. Even the 'Alphas,' though more independent than all other clones, could not disobey an order. Say, the Grand Vizier, the first figure in the galaxy after the Emperor, gives a private order to simulate his own death. Then he orders the obedient commandos to eliminate or capture the 'free' commandos and deliver them to a prison for freezing. Would they execute such an order? Of course. Because they receive it from the acting head of state, who assumed the post after the Emperor's death. In that case, a logical question arises: why did the Grand Vizier need specifically commandos? I suspect the 'free' ones were given an option: to go voluntarily with their Imperial brothers, or be destroyed. And if so, then the target must be such that you could set not only absolutely loyal commandos against it, but also those whose loyalty you aren't sure of for various reasons. And what could this target be? It's a fact that it's not me — otherwise we would have encountered these clones during the campaign against the Ubiqtorate. Or at least found some of them among the guard of Sate Pestage, who was pretending to be Blackhole. But no. Even his parody of Blackhole's 'shadow stormtroopers' were ordinary people, stormtroopers who had undergone additional training. However, that's not entirely accurate. Into his 'shadow stormtroopers,' Sate Pestage recruited Imperial assault commandos, judging by the personal files of the corpses. Consequently, one can conclude that Pestage deliberately pulled the elite of the Empire's Stormtrooper Corps to his side. I repeat the question: why? If he had regular assault commandos, why did he need clone commandos? Their level of training isn't that different. But at the same time, according to the information from the Master Jedi, the prison also holds clone commandos who never served the Empire, for example, from the 'Ion Group.' Those who survived meeting Darth Vader.
In short, their story is this.
The four clone commandos from that unit had experience fighting one specific Jedi.
On the same side, naturally.
In the last hours of the Clone Wars, both the commandos and the Jedi participated in the battle for the planet Murkhana, an important world of the Confederacy of Independent Systems.
There, the commandos received the well-known Order 66.
They were tasked with ambushing the Jedi, but the squad commander, like his subordinates, did not believe the order was authentic.
Because they knew the Jedi and their service to the Galactic Republic quite well.
So he did set up the ambush.
But he disabled the armor and weapons of his fellow clones who attacked the Jedi.
And thereby allowed them to escape.
Later, Anakin Skywalker, who had arrived on the planet, already dressed in a stylish black suit and possessing fresh frosty breath through the life-support respirator, executed half the squad and ordered the rest taken prisoner.
Then they were… What was done with them?
No, not killed.
The two survivors were caught and imprisoned.
But what prison? Was it named in the literature?
The book "The Rise of Darth Vader" is dedicated to these events.
The prison… The prison… It was named in the book.
I know it… But I can't remember.
Clearly, in the past, I wasn't interested enough to read about it more than once or twice, so it didn't stick in my memory.
Alright, let's take another approach.
This is clearly a problem described by the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus.
It's called the "serial position effect," according to which the beginning and end of information are remembered best.
Therefore, there's no point in sitting and trying to remember the name of that planet.
I need to "ruminate" on the situation.
Sooner or later, the information will come.
Why is the planet's name so important?
Because when going to Murkhana, Vader was tasked by the Emperor himself with punishing the rogue clones.
Not sending them to prison, but punishing them.
And Darth Vader didn't have the mental flexibility for punishments other than death — death and no discussion.
Why did he spare their lives?
Why were loyal clones sent to the same prison where the rogue commandos were held?
And I can only think of one version that would explain why the Grand Vizier decided to get his greedy hands on these not-so-young veterans of the Clone Wars, rather than just limiting himself to "shadow stormtroopers."
There is only one place that clone commandos knew much better than any other units of the Imperial Armed Forces.
"Kamino," I said. "Pestage was preparing for an attack on Kamino."
Tierce was clearly thinking in a different direction, as he didn't catch my train of thought.
"Possibly, sir," he agreed. "But the goal could have been different. Without Pestage's own records, it's impossible to say for sure that his plan was connected specifically to that planet."
I reminded him about the frozen clone commandos and the assault commandos as "shadow stormtroopers."
"Their only difference is that the clone commandos were born on Kamino and most are now old," I continued. "But they also trained primarily in the factories where they grew up. No plan, no technical documentation can replace the experience of infiltrating Kamino's cities that clone commandos possess."
"Yes, but he had resources to get in there without the commandos," Tierce countered. "A whole fleet of Star Destroyers."
Right.
He had as many as ten Star Destroyers at his disposal.
Until I took every single one from him.
"He showed up at Pestage's after he staged his death on Ciutric IV," I corrected. "After he became 'Blackhole.' Whether or not he was hiding the project from Palpatine is impossible to say — we'll never know without more information. However, this plan could be far bigger than it seems. Commandos outperform most soldiers and have extensive combat experience. They could have been preserved as knowledge templates for cloning. Or as Pestage's reserve, if he wanted to take control of the planet himself and become the new Emperor. Given how devious the late Grand Vizier was, every hypothesis has merit. Isard indicated that after Pestage took over the Ubiqtorate, he never showed up in the Deep Core. So if that arrangement was discussed between him and Palpatine from the start, the Vizier might not have feared the Emperor reading his thoughts and his desire to seize a clone army for himself. Too little information, but forming hypotheses means identifying possibilities. We eliminate the unlikely and impossible — what remains is the solution we're looking for.
"Using clone commandos — including those who deserted, disobeyed orders, or were even demobilized and went into civilian structures — is far too unwise," Grodin Tierce said. "Stasis won't break them — brain activity isn't working, so the point of confinement as re-education doesn't work. Pestage wanted to preserve the clones exactly as they were when they were frozen, until the time was right. A strike on Kamino? Yes, the most obvious option — a backup plan in case the Silri Syndicate slipped out of Palpatine's control."
"And agents planted inside the Syndicate could easily have provided Ubiqtorate forces a path straight to the planet for a lightning assault," I continued. "And the commandos, even those who'd left the Empire, would have gone along with it. Without much trouble, Pestage could count on the clones' attachment to Kamino as their homeworld. It's the only place they could consider as such without the influence of Mandalorian instructors."
After all, during the attacks on that planet in the Clone Wars by the Confederacy of Independent Systems, the clones had fought with inspired ferocity precisely for that reason.
Yes, even though they were created to—
The Nulls, which Skirata had trained for exactly that purpose, would have been especially helpful to Pestage.
But the Vizier never found them.
"Now I understand, sir," Tierce nodded, then pointed to the hologram of two clones — the surviving members of the Ion Group. "These were nearly the first ones sent to that prison, sir. They were supposed to be executed, but were taken prisoner and imprisoned instead."
"Even if they were meant to be publicly tried and executed as a warning to other clones, what was the point of keeping them alive?" I asked. "Vader came to kill the Ion Group. Leaving them alive is illogical. Anyone might have acted against the logic of an order, but not Darth Vader. Not back then, when he hadn't yet gained the strength and influence he had at the end of his life."
"It was probably some project of Vader's," Tierce suggested. "After all, the clones who became Imperial Commandos were subordinate to him."
"Exactly," I said, sinking into my thoughts. "The Grand Vizier could easily have picked up someone else's initiative. Why he became interested in commandos is also clear. The only question is why Vader needed this and why we still haven't found anything about it in Palpatine's library..."
I didn't exactly disbelieve that the Emperor knew nothing of his apprentice's schemes, but at the very least I treated that assumption with considerable skepticism.
On the other hand, this secret might have been so dangerous to the Empire that Palpatine demanded maximum secrecy.
And what could be more dangerous for a young Empire, relying on a clone army fresh off victory in the war with the Separatists?
The same thing that made the Emperor send not clone liquidation squads, but Darth Vader himself, to destroy the clone commandos who had disobeyed orders.
And it wasn't just that Palpatine intended to make the former Anakin Skywalker get used to being the Empire's Executioner, relying on the Dark Side of the Force.
Palpatine solved problems comprehensively, combining one with another and serving them all under the same sauce.
The execution of the renegade clones was a show.
And, as we know, a trick is made of several parts.
Officially — a test of the new Darth in combat and his ability to obey a Sith's orders.
Unofficially — to get to the bottom of the problem.
And for that, there was no need to keep all the renegade clones alive: only the commander who gave the order, and at least one subordinate, were needed.
They were the ones who survived.
"The Empire kept two clones from the Ion Group alive to study their disobedience," I said. "During the Clone War, the Grand Army of the Republic had special units that hunted down deserting clones. Clones for 'secret operations.'"
The very existence of which was a secret from both the army command and the archives.
I could recall something interesting from memory.
It was assumed that this unit received its orders directly from the office of Supreme Chancellor Palpatine.
"Later, they were used by Intelligence for covert operations alongside other clone units suited for that kind of work," Grodin said calmly. "By the time of the Battle of Yavin, there hadn't been a single clone in Intelligence service for nearly fifteen years."
"And the reason?"
Right, who better than an Imperial Guardsman to know the fate of that kind of soldier?
Maybe he was just a disenfranchised bodyguard, but he certainly had ears.
"Old age, death on covert operations, and many other things," Tierce answered. "The Imperial Guard conducted an investigation; the death of each fighter was reliably established."
"Each one?" I clarified.
"There were just over a hundred of them in the entire Grand Army of the Republic," the Lieutenant Colonel explained. "Each had individual markings, secret bio-implants, and other things that allowed for corpse identification. In the Republic Army, they managed to work unnoticed; in the Imperial Army, they were almost immediately under suspicion when they tried to infiltrate. And they were eliminated by personnel as spies and saboteurs of an unknown enemy."
I nodded in understanding.
This wasn't about clones armed with vibroblades who trained with Padawans to kill Jedi.
The clones for "shadow operations" were far more secretive and independent combat units.
You don't need many of them to purge the "defective product" from an army created by exemplary cloners.
When your business has hundreds of years of successful production, the bulk of the "merchandise" will be of acceptable quality.
Of course, no one is immune to defects.
Not even the Kaminoans.
"Is that the official version?"
"Of course," Tierce answered calmly. "In reality, all the clones knew the rumors about liquidation squads weren't just rumors. Over the years of the Clone Wars, enough information about their work had accumulated in army units. Given that the killers were raised and trained separately from the other soldiers, no fraternal bonds formed."
In other words, the liquidators "got burned" in tight-knit units hardened by war.
To the high command, the clones, anonymous in their white armor, were just numbers on personnel rosters.
But to each other, they were individuals.
And any change in behavior from any one of them was immediately noticed.
Well, that cleared things up.
"Presumably, Darth Vader, possibly in coordination with the Emperor, began — or perhaps the Emperor, using Vader as an extension of his will, began — an operation to determine the reasons why clone commandos disobeyed Order 66."
If desertion could still be chalked up to defects in the production of enormous batches of clones (especially when the rate of leaving one's post was within the margin of error across the entire army), then disobedience to the Order — which was mandatory, the very reason this entire army was created...
Yes, Palpatine clearly had to investigate that.
Well, the rest is already known.
Pestage was probably involved in the project, as the Emperor's most trusted person.
After the latter's death, all data was reliably destroyed (if anyone even dared to store such information anywhere but in their own head), and Sate turned around and decided to subjugate all the commandos.
The likely target — Kamino.
If, during the time from the establishment of the New Order to the Emperor's death at Endor, the Empire had managed to figure out the reasons why the clones didn't follow their programming, then...
"If the Emperor knows the reasons that allowed clone commandos to disobey orders, or decide to retire instead of becoming instructors, then that information could be used to create clones on Khomm," I said.
"In that case, the galaxy will face millions of cloned stormtroopers, each potentially possessing the knowledge of a shock- or clone-commando and — at the same time — programmed for absolute loyalty to the Emperor's orders," Tierce concluded.
Which means no retreats from battlefields.
There would be fights to the last tibanna charge.
No surrender — a war of annihilation.
You can't help but wonder: did my actions make the future this dangerous, or am I just uncovering the "hidden pitfalls" that led, in the history of this universe, to the resurrected Emperor Palpatine's attack becoming one of the most horrific pages of total genocide across entire planets in the galaxy?
Sure, I can console myself with the thought that Palpatine's most competent commanders have been destroyed.
That the Perimeter exists, that we have a clone army and mercenaries, that we're building enough equipment to replenish our reserves as quickly as possible...
But that's all wrong.
Completely wrong.
If Palpatine clones commanders — even if not the brightest, but stubborn ones who'll fight to the last — I'll have to rethink my strategy of opposition.
The enemy won't retreat, which means our losses will increase exponentially.
If there's no need to conserve personnel, and they can always be replaced with new clones and ships (and the Deep Core has thousands of warships and plenty of shipyards), then even the "layered" Perimeter won't be a panacea.
And if so, then the Dominion's passive defense strategy needs to be re-evaluated.
Not even today or tomorrow.
Yesterday.
"Inform Captain Tszhel and Mr. Ghent that I expect to see them as soon as the last one arrives," I declared.
"It will be done, Grand Admiral."
"Inform Captain Pellaeon that the Guardian needs to be brought to jump readiness," I issued another order.
If Tierce was surprised, he didn't show it.
"I'll do it, Grand Admiral."
"And one last thing," I signaled that our meeting was over. "Send a courier to the General and provide him with Captain Tyberos's report on Admiral Arkh's tactics for breaching the minefield. Contact our forces on Horn, in Karthakk, and on the nearest controlled planets. We need as many cheap freighters with large cargo holds and medium-sized scrap metal as possible. The more, the better. They need to fill as much of our warships' empty cargo space as possible. This order does not supersede the fact that convoys with space mines must arrive from Karthakk."
"Permission to carry out, Grand Admiral?" Now Tierce was clearly bewildered.
"Permission granted, Lieutenant Colonel," I nodded, addressing the encrypted communication line.
I need to issue a number of orders to my agents and industrialists, not to mention Grand Moff Ferrus.
If Palpatine intends to simply overwhelm us with the sheer mass of his ground and space forces — mercenaries, criminals, or his own units — then we must preserve as many of our own armed forces in a combat-ready state here and now.
The plan to strike Kamino needs to be supplemented with a number of points that will minimize our losses.
How much the enemy will lose doesn't particularly interest me.
But first, I need to understand if I'm right about the purpose of freezing the clone commandos.
If Palpatine got the answers...
If I'm right...
In over a year of being in this universe, I've never so desperately hoped I was wrong.
* * *
The President of the New Republic, Borsk Fey'lya, was clearly in a foul mood.
"Silri promised me victory at Karthakk!" His voice was more like an animal's growl.
The growl of a beast in despair, cornered, barking desperately in an attempt to intimidate a stronger opponent.
"Maybe so," Darth Ziilenlos agreed calmly. "However, as far as I know, she's dead, and her fleet is destroyed."
"And with them, the special forces ships of my fleet are lost!" the Bothan shouted.
Despite his characteristic phlegmatism, Ziilenlos winced — the Bothan's scream was jarring.
"I truly offer my condolences," he said, setting aside the datapad with reports.
Now that he had time to listen to the hysterics, he carefully examined his interlocutor's hologram.
Yes, the Bothan's fur was standing on end.
He was enraged.
And he was in despair.
Clearly, the loss of an entire fleet hadn't gone unnoticed by the New Republic (or the figures closest to him).
Excellent.
Everything was going according to plan.
"To hell with your condolences!" the Bothan said defiantly. "We've lost the reserves needed for an offensive on one sector of the front against the Empire!"
""As if you would have achieved anything there"," Ziilenlos thought phlegmatically.
"In that case, I would recommend you switch to a purely defensive posture," he said.
"I have people I trust more than you and Silri on matters of military strategy!" Fey'lya snapped.
"Yes, Admiral Asyr Sei'lar," Ziilenlos said, demonstrating his awareness. "If I were you, I'd have someone more competent evaluate her actions at Rendili. She made several significant miscalculations that prevented you from achieving success."
"She didn't plan the operation!"
"But she was the one executing it," Ziilenlos insisted. "Are you sure you can trust someone who was captured by Grand Admiral Thrawn, and who even collaborated with Ysanne Isard?"
The Bothan puffed up so much he could have been used as a toilet cleaning tool.
"Don't play your clever games with me, Ziilenlos," the Bothan warned. "You won't drive a wedge between me and the heroes of Bothawui. I've been playing these games too long not to recognize manipulation. Your hopes that you can drive a rift between me and my circle and force me to come to you for help are foolish and ignorant!"
""Oh, really?"" the ancient Sith thought. ""As far as I can tell, you're doing exactly what I planned. Denying the obvious so you can fall flat on your face. And on the brink of your despair, there simply won't be any other options. You're mine, down to the last tuft of your underfur.""
"As you wish," he said lightly, picking up a new datapad with reports on the work at Rothana. "I'm beginning to suspect you called to inform me that our deal is off?"
"So you can be perceptive after all?" the Bothan sneered. "Exactly. The New Republic no longer needs your help in acquiring military assets across the galaxy."
""And I no longer need to help you launder money, most of which I got, while you stuffed your pockets with a few million,"" Ziilenlos mentally replied.
But aloud, of course, he said something entirely different.
"As you wish, Mr. President. Our cooperation is completely voluntary. If you need me — you know my personal communicator frequency by heart."
"Grand Admiral Thrawn would rise from the dead before I contact you again!"
It took an effort not to laugh.
Power corrupts weak-minded beings.
At the top of the political food chain, surrounded by sycophants and hypocrites, you always lose touch with reality.
And what once made you good becomes the very gravitational anchor that drags you to the bottom.
But the Bothan would be very surprised when he realized that Ziilenlos simply left him no choice.
He would come — when the time came.
And he would do what was necessary.
"In that case — I await your call," the Sith replied, disconnecting the hologram first.
A small jab at the Bothan's ego, so he'd feel stung for a while and wouldn't rush to call the known transmitter frequency at the first sign of trouble.
Fey'lya wasn't useful to the Sith in his current state.
He wasn't useful for solving ordinary problems, either.
Only when a sentient is in despair, when he understands that his next step is a path into the abyss where all hopes will be shattered — only then should one answer the call for help.
And the Bothan's pride, combined with his immense ego, would make everything happen exactly as planned.
He would refrain from turning to the Sith until the very end.
Ziilenlos ran his eyes over the lines of the reports and looked at the commander standing before him.
"Are the repair works on the Mandators proceeding on schedule?" he inquired, noticing the update on that operation's progress.
"Yes, my Lord," the clone answered. "Each ship has combat watches and full droid watches formed. The armor reinforcement process is underway. The delay in weapon deliveries is due to your decision to fully re-equip the Keldabe-class ships and the fighter groups."
"That's correct," the ancient Sith nodded. "I didn't acquire star dreadnoughts from Kuat to leave them in their previous condition."
He couldn't possibly have afforded to fully crew all the ships of his fleet, even if he wanted to.
He wasn't about to allow mercenaries or former pirates — all that filth, hired just to be the "fodder" that would be sent to slaughter later — aboard his starships.
Nor was he willing to wait for the next generation of clones, initiated by Silri, to emerge from the tanks.
That had happened after she betrayed the Zann Consortium.
No living soul off Kamino knew exactly when Tyber Zann had subjugated that world and brought it into his service.
The most accurate date was "after the Battle of Yavin."
Which, if you take the date from the Great Resynchronization, occurred in the thirty-fifth year, third month, and seventh day.
That is, ten years, three months, and fourteen days ago.
But the truth wasn't in those numbers.
Tyber Zann had exploited the six-month lull that followed that battle.
The Empire besieged Yavin for six months to destroy the members of the Alliance to Restore the Republic.
And it would have besieged it even longer if, in the last weeks, it hadn't learned that Kamino no longer obeyed them, and that contact with the fleet protecting that planet had been lost.
All because, exactly one month before the end of the siege of Yavin IV, when the Empire was trying with all its might to crush the insolent rebel insects that had popped up all over the galaxy, the Zann Consortium attacked and subjugated Kamino.
Silri didn't know how Tyber Zann and his fleet had managed to break through the minefields of Kamino and Rothana, but he did it with practically no losses among his forces.
He crushed and destroyed the enemy, subjugating Kamino to himself.
And he did it with a single purpose: to create his own clone army.
He had done an excellent job in that field.
A true manipulator, he used aliens for fighting, while his clone army was to be purely human.
The first generation of clones grown on Tyber Zann's orders, and the subsequent ones, were developed with the help of creatures that blocked the Force — ysalamiri, as Silri called them.
By the time of the Zann Consortium's destruction after the Battle of Endor, this generation of clones, and the others that followed — except for the youngest clones who had just left the incubators — had already reached a certain stage of maturity and were ready to intervene.
But the order to deploy them was sabotaged by Silri.
She understood perfectly that the foresighted Zann was banking on the clones' loyalty to him alone.
To capture Kamino, she needed to destroy those clones — she caused them to crash on the minefields.
The clones didn't reach Rothana, couldn't use the ships built for them, and so both Kamino and Rothana lay defenseless before the division that Ziilenlos, discovered by Silri, brought on now-ancient starships four millennia old.
The slaughter was truly horrific.
He lost ships, many subordinates, but he captured the planets Silri had pointed him to.
Not for her sake.
Not for the greatness she had promised but couldn't achieve due to her innate empty-headedness.
Even then, having studied the current realities, he understood what needed to be done to realize HIS plan.
The Zann Consortium fell, and Rothana and Kamino, protected by minefields reinforced according to his design, withstood the onslaught of both the fleet from Kuat and the Imperial fleet, and all other uninvited guests.
The Empire and Kuat feared what would happen if uncontrolled forces operated from Kamino and Rothana.
So Ziilenlos cut all contact with the outside world.
Through agents, he managed to instill the idea in all interested parties that the planets were simply destroyed, and wasting forces to break through the minefields to them was foolishness.
The only thing he hadn't anticipated was that Silri's stupidity might outweigh her sense of self-preservation.
She and a number of ships were operating outside the safe zone of the Syndicate's territory, trying to subjugate more and more remnants of the destroyed Zann Consortium.
Ziilenlos suspected she was looking for traces of the Kaminoan scientists Zann had hidden for some purpose.
Since he'd done that, the secret that prompted such a move must be significant too.
But having achieved nothing after all these years, Silri finally started listening to him.
And then they ran into Grand Admiral Thrawn.
Which, not being a fool, had also decided to get his hands on the remnants of the "Zann Consortium" that he knew about.
He'd had to maneuver his plans because the surviving Zann wanted to use Thrawn's hands to eliminate the "Syndicate."
He'd managed to deduce that Thrawn was interested in cloning via the Spaarti system, and Ziilenlos had put the obvious puzzle pieces together.
Zann had taken the clonemakers because he had a secret cloning base that had apparently fallen into Thrawn's hands.
Based on this, a plan to destroy that base was devised, but it hadn't worked.
Thrawn's successor had proven far too perceptive to fall into the traps Ziilenlos had set.
Magash Drashi and the poison in the horns, along with the detonation of the decoy cloning cylinders.
The Nightsister Baritha and the minefield access codes.
The lure to Rendili...
The enemy was intelligent and talented enough to think several moves ahead and understand their enemies.
It commanded respect.
If Revan were alive, he would have appreciated such talent.
If such a sentient swore allegiance to Ziilenlos himself, they could conquer the entire galaxy.
True, they'd have to face Emperor Palpatine in combat, a pathetic imitation of a Sith.
Well, he had done enough to make his enemies destroy each other and weaken their own positions.
All he needed was a little time for the cloning of his own army to be completed.
Silri was stupid, and he had actively helped her tighten the noose around her own neck.
Not only had her thugs damaged a huge number of cloning cylinders in all the cities of Kamino, they had also killed practically all the ysalamiri.
Silri hadn't known where those creatures came from.
No matter how much Ziilenlos himself had searched, until recent events he hadn't been able to make any progress in that direction.
As a result, for the speedy functioning of the "Silri Syndicate," they'd had to use combined methods of recruiting their armed forces.
She dreamed of vast clone armies and had ordered dozens of "Lucrehulks" from Sith Space.
Dozens of "Keldabes" and hundreds of "Crusaders" were being built according to improved designs by Mandalorian scientists and engineers—clones who had been spirited away and replaced.
And in thousands of cloning incubators, clones were maturing...
She needed strength, so Silri was recruiting all sorts of scum whose utility level was absolute zero.
At the same time, Ziilenlos was carefully studying the cloning technologies the Kaminoans could provide him.
Thanks to his intelligence, after Talon Karrde's organization was crushed, he'd managed to find out that Karrde had a base on the planet Myrkr.
And that the ysalamiri lizards he was interested in were right there.
But when he sent scouts there, it turned out the planet was surrounded by minefields and patrolled by invisible Dominion ships carrying Force-sensitives on board.
The scouts, disguised as smugglers, were destroyed without any questions.
Ziilenlos realized that pushing into Myrkr was absolutely pointless.
He understood it would draw Thrawn's attention to the ysalamiri and their homeworld.
The Grand Admiral clearly knew how to calculate situations, just like his successor, and therefore they were ready for an assault on the planet.
And as soon as the "Syndicate" ships showed themselves there, the Dominion would understand why the lizards were needed by the "Syndicate."
And then leading the enemy by the nose wouldn't work, no matter how much he wanted to.
This was another reason the ancient Sith had fallen out with the Night Sister.
She didn't know how to wait.
She didn't know how to plan.
And so she didn't notice that he was conducting experiments in Timira City on accelerated clone growth—just as the Kaminoans had done with blood samples from Jedi Falon Grey, and later by Darth Vader with his apprentice Galen Marek.
Unfortunately, the experiment could only produce two stable samples—the rest went mad sooner or later.
And it didn't make much difference whether the clones were Force-sensitive or not.
Madness pursued them.
In the end, only one of the two samples becomes stable—and that requires enormous mental strength.
Even the ysalamiri's protection didn't help—psychopathy manifested, but later than without the lizards.
Darth Ziilenlos had cloned several of Palpatine's servants—those he was confident he could handle.
Useless trash.
But he understood the pattern—only someone with great Power could tame the madness.
Weaklings were fundamentally unsuited for it.
The stronger the Force-sensitive, the greater the chance of success.
So he tried to revive Darth Vader's project, since he had the necessary samples.
Well...
Timira City had been a good city, as was the equipment that was lost when the structure was flooded.
Just one insane clone of Galen Marek was enough to destroy an entire city.
Ziilenlos, who nearly lost his life, was forced to watch as an entire city, with valuable equipment and the bodies of the dead Force-sensitives he had tried to clone, fell to a depth of several kilometers.
Well... That led him to conclude that creating Force-sensitives was a one-way street.
And that would be the end of the one who created them.
He also learned that the Kaminoan cities are located above the mouths of underwater volcanoes, which formed in deep antiquity due to the Kaminoans' predatory method of mining minerals.
Those volcanoes triggered a cataclysm that first blanketed the planet's atmosphere with tons of ash from the eruption of what were then surface supervolcanoes.
The ice age and extinction weren't long in coming.
And then the surface disappeared under layers of water when the giant polar caps melted.
The Kaminoans tried to use the supervolcanoes to evaporate the impending flood, but only made things worse, finally ruining their atmosphere.
As a result, they simply mined materials from the volcanoes to build their cities on the surface of the supervolcanoes, gradually lengthening their supports to avoid complete submersion.
And, out of old habit, they mined metals there, expanding the number of their cities.
After all, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, isn't it?
So mining metal from the supervolcano under the city would be more economical if done that way.
Well...
Darth Ziilenlos loved the sciences.
And he proved to the Kaminoans that a "straight line" could not only connect two points, but also separate the head from the body of their kin if they didn't reveal all the details about themselves, their cities, and their technologies.
True, for that the "straight line" had to be a lightsaber.
But those were details.
In the end, he switched to a more effective method of creating clones.
Naturally, he produced his soldiers without Force sensitivity to avoid excesses.
The failure with Timira City gave him a push in the right direction for developing the technology to replenish his army.
The ysalamiri he had weren't enough to produce clones in every city of Kamino using the accelerated program.
As a result, in most Kaminoan cities except one, the "Silri Syndicate" clones grew the normal way—maturation accelerated by two times, followed by training using Kaminoan technologies.
Now they were children, the oldest of whom were not yet six biological years old.
Or thereabouts.
Darth Ziilenlos was not at all interested in these runts, programmed to serve the "Silri Syndicate."
Too small, these bastards, already trained to fight and fanatically loyal only to Silri.
The fact that she would never return didn't bother them.
But Ziilenlos could use them for his own purposes, for which he had been spending Silri's money for years.
Right now, he was only interested in one city on the planet.
The one where, according to the terms of his cooperation with Silri, he was producing clone soldiers for his division and fleet specialists, using the slowly dying ysalamiri.
Who knew that those creatures could only live by eating trees from Myrkr, whose supply was almost exhausted?
Still, they had fulfilled their mission.
Very soon, his clone army would be born, along with the starships he now owned thanks to the late Night Sister.
He just needed to spend a little more time for the clones to mature with the ysalamiri, and he would get an excellent, fully trained, reproductively mature clone.
He just needed to train and drill him.
Because Darth Ziilenlos wasn't considered a student of Darth Malak and one of the outstanding commanders of the Sith Empire created by Darth Revan and his late teacher for nothing.
He calculated risks perfectly.
And, like his opponent from the Dominion, he loved setting traps.
Even if the previous ones had failed, the finale of this set would be his.
The Dominion dreamed of getting Kamino and Rothana?
Well, they would get them.
The details weren't that important.
The result was what mattered.
"Movement detected near our borders?" he asked his subordinate.
"No, my Lord. After three Dominion ships attempted to breach our minefields, they withdrew. The observation drones were destroyed, and the breaches in the minefields have been repaired."
"And no further movements from the Dominion?" Darth Ziilenlos asked in surprise.
"No, my Lord. Their combat operations are taking place in the northeast of the galaxy against the forces of the Galactic Alliance."
"That's impossible," the ancient Sith shook his head. "The Dominion doesn't retreat. It withdraws to regroup. They're probably cracking the codes to our minefields or stocking up on kamikaze ships to break through. Change the codes again and declare a military alert."
"I hear and obey, master," the commander gave a slight half-bow, then froze.
Ziilenlos had seen this before.
The commander was receiving information through the comlink in his helmet.
"My Lord. Observation stations are detecting ships approaching that are transmitting our access codes."
"The current ones?" Ziilenlos asked.
"The ones that were active during the 'Silri Syndicate' operation in the Karthakk system."
"Oh," the Sith smiled. "So that's the plan..."
"Shall we proceed with the 'Alpha' option?" the commander of the Sith army asked.
"Of course," Ziilenlos nodded. "Why else would I have provided them with Silri and the full set of data I needed? Time for a slaughter, General."
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