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At the same time that the space battle entered its second phase, the rest of the Jedi had turned their attention to the rest of the operation. Quinlan's starfighter again raced forward, joining the dozen troop transports, while on board one of them, Master Fay went to work.
OOOOOOO
Sitting in a mediation pose with her eyes closed and her hands pressed together it in front of her face, Master Fay concentrated, sending her mind out into the Force, hunting for the minds among the defenders of this putrid place who stood out from their fellows. Despair, hate, fear, fear, fear. The fear of the slaves being kept here beat at her senses like a tsunami, heightening the power of the veil of the Dark Side as it tried to close in all around her, drowning her in the Dark.
Yet despite that, the minds she was searching for burned even brighter to her senses because of it. They were the sources of much of the fear, the source of a lot of the hate directed towards the attackers, yet tempered by calculation and avarice.
Once she had found them Fay lashed out, her mind flicking forward like a master swordsman's rapier, attacking her targets with both force and pinpoint accuracy despite the Veil, despite the sweat now beading her face. On the bridge of the space fortress several people suddenly collapsed, their minds cut off from their bodies as if they had been puppets and someone had just cut the strings.
On the planet below, several more fell similarly. There she paused, feeling something odd from several minds around the individual she felt had been the leader of this organization. They were colder, more controlled then she expected, with no hint of panic. Deciding that they might be a band of reptilian sentients, she put that observation to one side for now. After all, Trandoshans in particular believed slavery was a natural part of the universe, and often worked for criminals of all stripes.
She could feel panic rise up from the mass of the slavers' and pirates' minds all around her, but that no longer mattered. Opening her eyes she smiled wanly at the concerned face of Loowsherino, the leader of the largest group of warriors whose ship she had been assigned to. "I am all right. I have disabled the leaders among the opposition. That should keep them from becoming organized against us. There are a few scattered slaves throughout the rest of the station and the fortress, I am afraid. But if we can take the junction between the slaves' housing and the rest of the base we can hopefully stop anyone from trying to use the majority of the slaves as shields or hostages."
The large, russet-furred Wookie chuffed good-naturedly, pulling Fay up to her feet as if she were a child. "/Bah as if that would have been enough to stop us from slaughtering them all and freeing their captives! Still, it will make it easier./"
"On that note, I also found the slaves. They are being kept in that separate bio-dome to the left of the main installation. The environment is not pleasant, but it is a multi-tiered thing. If we take control of the entrance to it, I do not sense that they have any electronic means of striking out at them."
Loowsherino nodded his big, shaggy head and raced up to the cockpit from the main holding area, relaying the commands to the other ships of their landing force as the starfighters and cruisers moved in on the star fortress. Master Fay followed only slightly more slowly. Dooku promptly reorganized the transports, sending the one containing Harry off slightly from the others.
Luckily the installation was sprawling enough that the only size of shielding which would have covered it all was a planetary sized one. Planetary shield generators were massive installations and expensive and time-consuming to build, such that few planetary governments beyond the Mid Rim could afford them. No pirate band or organized crime syndicate could ever have built one. The Black Sun at its height might have been able to, and certainly the Hutt clans could do so with their combined wealth and resources, but no smaller group could.
The transports came in from the opposite side of the planet as the cruisers went to work on the space fortress. By the time they entered the orbital installation's weapons' arcs, the defenders were fully occupied with attempting to save their own skins, paying no mind to the transports below them. The base did have some anti-air weapons, but the Nabooan squadron Dooku had assigned to guard the transports blazed forward, engaging each in turn as they showed up.
Harry's ship hovered right above the junction between the slaves' group jail cell and the rest of the base. He took a moment to think that it might have made sense to keep the slaves separate for any number of reasons, in particularly defensive ones, but it was going to bite them on the ass now. Once the ship was in position, hovering directly above the junction, he nodded up at his mother. "You're up, Mum."
"See you in a bit, Harry," Lily said with a chuckle, fading through the floor of the ship and making her way down. As a ghost, she, of course, was not affected by the lack of air outside, and they had done this kind of thing before.
With his mother gone Harry quickly turned to the Wookies, who were looking at one another quizzically, wondering what the young Jedi had said and why he had seemingly addressed thin air for a moment there. "Gather around, everyone. I know you all are wondering what we're going to do here, since we can't take the chance of just blowing our way into the base. What you are all about to experience is a secret, and as such I will ask you to never tell anyone else about this." Harry grimaced. "And you also might find it distinctly unpleasant, but it will get us down there without us needing to blow our way in."
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