22 BBY
A dust storm howled outside the facility, one that would drive people indoors even if it wasn't already deep into the planet's night cycle. Tan'ya timed their attack to coincide with the late hour, so that the only people in the facility should be the night shift, and the weather only made things easier. No one was likely to be out on the streets of the worker's village, reducing the chance of a good samaritan reporting what they saw to the planetary authorities.
Spreading her consciousness over the entire facility, penetrating all the domes and walk ways, she found just a handful of personnel still at work. Someone was in the office upstairs, working on some kind of report at this late hour, and another was sitting in the security room, feeling very very bored. Tan'ya had a vague impression that he was playing around with the planetary map, rather than keeping an eye on his security monitors. There were a few others around the place, carrying out various tasks with bored indifference. The rest of the facility was patrolled by security droids, who had no presence in the Force at all.
Despite the importance of the Federation's Strategic Hypermatter Reserve, this facility hadn't been threatened since it was first created. There was a legion of droids on standby, but as long as no blaster shots were fired, the facility's sensors shouldn't go off automatically.
The temporary storage room they were in was locked from the outside and password protected, but the staff of this facility weren't above selling information for credits. One of the House Guard used a simple drill to bore through the storage room door, then he fed a cable with a computer jack on the end of it through. Using the Force, Tan'ya guided the cable to the digital lock's terminal and plugged it into the port. The slicer spent a few moments working his machine, before it buzzed and the door unlocked.
Next, Tan'ya reached out with her mind and connected to the bored security guard sitting in his office. She used the light side to wash away any feelings of irritation, boredom or discomfort, and allowed herself to be filled with peace, before carefully, slowly sharing those feelings with him. It took a while, but slowly as she meditated, she felt ease and comfort spread through his body, before finally his consciousness wavered and he fell asleep.
Tan'ya separated her consciousness from his and shook herself awake. "Let's go." She ordered.
As one, the team of royal guards moved through the massive facility, all the droid patrols and sensor areas known well in advance thanks to their informants on the inside. Without anyone the wiser or a shot fired, Tan'ya and her crew entered the security center, and found their lonely neimoidian security guard asleep in his chair.
Perhaps it was just a result of the lingering feelings she shared with the poor man, but she couldn't bear to watch as three of her House Guards moved in sync, one wrapped a strangle cord around his throat, and the other two to hold his arms in place. Awoken suddenly, the poor security guard struggled and fought, but to no avail. His bulbous eyes almost seemed to pop out of their sockets as they became more and more bloodshot, before finally all his kicking and struggling ceased, and his mind faded out. None of Tan'ya's House Guard felt even a moment of sympathy for the hated alien. Without a word said, they bundled the dead man into the break room, and hid him in a cabinet.
The one office drone working late hours was given no chance to alert anyone or raise an alarm. Tan'ya felt the last moment of his life as he panicked when six black armoured figures appeared, and shared in the sensation of the lukewarm caff stim that spilled over his lap in the rush to stand up. His death was quick; shot several times in the chest, frying and bursting his heart in moments. One by one, her men efficiently hunted down all the remaining workers, until at last no life signs remained inside other than her own men. With access to the facility's security systems, it wasn't long before they had control of the entire building.
The last thing to check before they proceeded with the next phase of the operation was their smuggler on the landing pad. He was still there, as ordered by his boss in the Ring, apparently sleeping the night away. He didn't need to die, but they did need his ship. Tan'ya took out her compad, and sent him a message, instructing the man to meet their representative at the landing pad door.
Of course he was surprised when he was greeted by a pair of fully armoured House Guards, but his instructions were to let the men aboard, and he didn't dare resist. With his two new supervisors in the pilot's cabin with him, there was no risk that he would attempt to do something foolish or heroic.
With all the preparations in place, Tan'ya began to do what she really came here for. It took her and her slicer about twenty minutes to upload a new routine to the system's droid control computer, and only ten seconds to dismiss all the warnings that immediately popped up.
Awakening from low power mode, all the droids in the largely automated facility got to work following their new instructions. They went through, and began opening every single seal on every single individual vial of hyper matter in the facility, exposing them to the evening air.
Often overlooked, but never unimportant was the role of resources in a war. From the ancient days of bickering city states, through the medieval period and the invention of gunpowder, the ability to wage war depended on the gathering and maintaining of certain materials. From simple food that fed soldiers, to fodder for horses, to black powder for guns, and eventually diesel for machinery. All of these things were the fuel of war, and when considered in their own eras, victory would be impossible without them.
In the Galaxy's current era, true power came from starships. Obviously, infantry forces played an important role in taking and holding worlds, but fundamentally, victory at a Galactic scale was only possible with the ships needed to move men and materials between the stars. The Federation had more ships, and so they had an advantage over the Alliance that could not be easily overcome with things as common as clever tactics or heroic bravery. Victory against the Federation would only be possible if they no longer had the advantage in starships, and those starships were dependent on hypermatter.
Hypermatter was a synthetic material that could only be made on high gravity worlds whose surface was carefully cut away to expose its core to the radiation of particular stars. These blasting pits existed all over the Galaxy, as the conditions necessary to make them were not rare, but building and maintaining them was extremely expensive. In addition, the effect that hypermatter blasting pits had on a natural environment were absolutely devastating. The Corporate Sector had several blasting pits, but not nearly enough to cover the needs of the heavily industrialised sector. Most of their hypermatter had to be imported.
Which was why Tan'ya was now here, in the heart of the Sector, where the strategic hyper matter reserve was kept. Hypermatter was an extremely potent material, the same properties that allowed it to propel ships at faster than light speeds made it horrifically dangerous.
Many times throughout history, poorly maintained ships had been lost when their fuel vaporised in a chain reaction. An uncontrolled hypermatter destabilisation was an event of incredible power, fully capable of destroying a full sized battleship with just a hundred thousand tons of the stuff.
This facility contained enough hypermatter to keep the entire Trade Federation fleet fueled for the next three months, almost a trillion tons of it. Now all of that power was just awaiting a spark.
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Apparently, chapters write themselves faster when Power Stones are involved. Who knew? Feel free to test the theory go ahead, toss a few my way.
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