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Opening her eyes, Master Fay looked at Vos and Obi-Wan, who had come out of their own entrances moments ago and had been looking at her ever since. Obi-Wan shook his head slowly, awed by the other Master's abilities. Master Fay looked down at the image, scowling a little. "I could wish that my ability with the Force lent me an ability with pen and paper, but such is not the case."
"At least your writing is neat," said Quinlan dryly, smiling at the older woman. "We have a target then. I will look through the Jedi archives of this sector, see if I can figure out where this system is located. If we don't have to follow the entire route, we could save quite a bit of time..."
OOOOOOO
About a day and a half later Harry and the others meetup with the Kuat bought and Sorenno citizen flown starfighters and the cruiser squad the Chancellor had seconded to their command. With that fleet also came four large transport vessels, larger than the cruisers but much smaller than the Lucrehulk, so small they looked as if they could fit into the larger ship. Dooku was not so foolish as to launch an operation of this size and possible complexity without briefing his unit commanders.
At present Master Dooku was using the Lucrehulk as his flagship, though he would change to one of the cruisers for the actual attack. It was the only ship they had which had a large enough briefing room for all the disparate leaders, though at first Harry hadn't realized why that was the case. He got an idea when over a dozen large, furry non-humans walked down the halls of the large transport vessels.
He blinked, cocking his head thoughtfully as he stared at them as they marched up to shake hands with Dooku. "These would be Wookies, correct? I've heard of them, though I've never seen one in the flesh before."
Fay nodded, smiling slightly. "I haven't ever dealt with them in a group like this before, though I had a fascinating discussion with a Wookie Master by the name of Tyvokka at one point a hundred years or so ago. I was saddened to hear of his death."
One of the larger, older looking Wookies with fur going silver in spots clasped forearms with Master Dooku, saying something in his own language. Harry reached out with the Force, translating the words just a little too slowly to get the first few sentences. "/…and we are happy to lend you some aid in this. Slaving scum should be wiped out from the entire Republic, and any time we can help that happen we will!/"
"On that we are agreed. Indeed, this will not be our first mission again slavers in the past few weeks. You might not have heard as yet, but Jabba the Hutt met his end when he got in the way of a retrieval mission of ours," Dooku said dryly. "We offered him a way out, of course, but I can't say we were saddened by the necessity of his death."
The Wookie laughed, clapping Dooku on the shoulder hard enough to stagger the older man, then he gestured to his fellows, introducing the first seven Wookies as clan or family leaders. The words had an odd connotation in Harry's mind: it was the same word spoken several times, but the meaning his Force technique translated it to was slightly different each time. "That's the trouble with Force translation. You get an accurate translation, but not the social meaning of some of the words. At least, I don't. Are you getting anything, Aayla?" Harry asked through their link.
"Nothing more than you are," Aayla said, looking at the Wookies in fascination. "They're supposed to be super strong, you know. Not actually very warlike at the societal level, but then they don't have to be given how strong and nasty they can be in a fight."
"I certainly wouldn't want to fight them," Harry returned fervently.
Lily too was looking at the aliens in fascination, though that wasn't exactly a first. She always looked at aliens with fascination. It was one aspect of being in a new dimension she had yet to get used to.
Moments later the teens were sitting down with everyone else in the briefing room, watching as the older Jedi walked through a presentation on the mission. After talking about the background of the mission, Dooku went on to explain what Master Fay had sensed through the Force of their target. "…so we will undoubtedly meet space-based interference with this mission. As such, we need a plan of attack from the get go."
Harry listened intently for a few moments while the Wookies, cruiser captains, and starfighter pilots all debated, frowning as he realized that none of them had any better suggestions than simply coming out of hyperspace near enough to the planet to get a drop on their enemies. That was okay, but what if the enemies were ready for them? What if that star fortress had its shield up?
Harry lips pursed as he stared at the holographic screen, leaning back and shaking his head. There just has to be a better way of doing rhis kind of thing. Hyperspace and the ability to jump in and out is such a tremendous tactical and strategic tool, but it doesn't seem to be being used very well a lot of the time.
Thanks to Master Dooku, Harry had read a lot about different fleet operations in the last thousand years and even in the New Sith Wars. Few and far between was a phrase that sprung to mind to describe the records from that time, but there was just something about them that bothered him: they were too uniform, too brute force versus brute force. There were exceptions to the rule, but for the most part, one fleet would hyperspace in and attack and succeed or be driven off, with little variation in the approach.
As he thought that, Aayla bumped her shoulder against his, commiserating. The two of them had talked about this in their mindscapes several times, and though she hadn't seen it before Harry had pointed out to her, once Aayla had seen it she could not deny it either.
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