[b]In the life of a Jedi & Friends.
The plight of a world...[/b]

They weren't followed at all, the resistance well used to the way the droids operated, it gave Tohkran no solace however as he thought about the people who died under his watch. He shook his head, in battle, in war, people died. If he had went in wanting to take everyone out alive then they all would have died anyway. He looked at his hand, seeing it shake and closed his eyes, meditating, trying to calm himself.

"Beard face, Tohkran." He opened his eyes and saw Thrall had approached him in the back of the speeder truck and patted his knee. "Mission success and minimal casualties, what more could we ask for?"

Tohkran sighs, "A swift end to the war?"

The sluissi let out a snort, "So do we all, but that ain't happening, now cheer up, got told we are almost at the base."

The trip, predictably, spent the last couple kilometres underground before emerging once more in the large landing pad that Tohkran had visited before, but now the roof was rising open and a pair of YT series transports had flashed up drives and crews that seemed to be partly celebrating. It seemed that cover was coming up soon a nasty storm.

Thrall looked at the small smuggler fleet, "Well they seem glad we got them that backdoor in the weather station."

Tohkran nods, "Yes." A small smile touched his lips, "We did good, I also hope that Quinlan Voss now is convinced of our intent to help."

It took a short while before Voss showed up but when he did his expression was less than pleased. Something seemed to be troubling the Jedi greatly in fact and the gaggle of people around him talking did little to comfort before, seeing Tohkran and his people, they dispersed ostensibly on other duties.

Tohkran saw him approach and frowned, not needing Thrall to state the obvious as the Sluissi commented dryly. "Trouble be looming."

Shaking his head he gesttured for Thrall to not be so much... himself and nodded to Quinlan Voss, "What's wrong?" He simply asked.

Voss looked deep into Tohkran's eyes as if judging what he saw before he spoke up. "While you and your people were establishing our link to the weather monitoring systems..." He paused for some moments, "We received notice that the southern-most base was destroyed, ... the CIS Governor deployed no less than a hundred droid commandos and managed to eliminate almost every man, woman... and child... who lived there as well as all the equipment stationed there. Close to a thousand people... gone."

Tohkran was stunned silent, Thrall not so much as he let out a string of curses in basic, huttese and his own native language. Tohkran closed his eyes, trying to imagine the mind of such a cruel sentient and merely shuddered. "What can I do to help."

Thrall had his narrowed his eyes, "What the boos is saying, what can we do to help. CIS and their clankers be damned, they won't get away with this."

Voss moved over to a control panel as he signaled Tohkran to follow. Taking a comm-link off the wall he keyed it to the whole base's intercom system.

"Ladies, Gentlemen and Miscellaneous, I have some good news. Our new friend Tohkran has managed to re-establish our connection with the Weather Monitoring systems, we can begin operating our smugglers again. Unfortunately I must temper the good news with bad. Today, the Senamay base was destroyed by the CIS... we have lost almost everyone from that facility, if you had family or friends in that facility, please contact the admin office to see if you're one of the lucky few to have surviving friends or family." 

He turned back to Tohkran. "The CIS are running an anti-insurgency facility on the Northern Glaciers. They're running their dropships and commandos from that facility, we..." a tear runs down one cheek, "We don't have the means to take it out and it's protected by a theatre shield preventing an orbital bombardment."

Thrall blinked upon hearing that, "Question... I assume they don't have the shield active if the blockade isn't reporting any hostile ships in the system?"

Voss shook his head. "No, it's active at all times. Any civilian ships that even pass into its engagement envelope are destroyed without question."

"Well that is a waste of power." Thrall muttered and pondered. "Well there goes the idea of just flying over with the cloaked ship and bomb it into oblivion... still could work though."

Tohkran frowned, "What are you cooking up."

"Well... if we can disable the shield... then the Illusion could blow up the base without effort and then make our escape, we overstayed our welcome with our cloaked vessel, the longer we stay the riskier it gets."

Tohkran turned to Voss, "How many troops are present."

"A complete unknown. We do know that the Commando Droids operate out of there, and we believe they have at least a Battalion of other droids, in storage or operation we don't know... but..." Voss paused thinking. "We've also heard they have Kaleesh troops there."

Tohkran shook his head, "For a frontal assault we would need to be able to land our troops on the surface... and I doubt ramming with a shuttle will work again."

"I wish we had any real intelligence to help you with." Voss said plainly, "But they guard that place tightly enough we have failed to get anyone near the place."

Thrall ventured forth a question, "How do they power the shield, do you know that?"

"Electrically would be my first thought." Voss replied sarcastically. "We don't know for certain, but we assume a reactor facility on the base. It's not being delivered by the planetary power grid, we know that much of a certainty."

Thrall snorts and glares at the Kiffar, "That's what I wanted to know, if they were either using geo-thermal energy, their own or tapping in elsewhere. No need to get irritated by it."

Tohkran stepped forwards, "What my friend is trying to say, we understand you are havign a hard time with what is happening and we want to help but. Hoping that you already might have some local intelligence of what to face." He thought. "Though if we have a means to infiltrate with a number of people, sabotage the generator powerign the shields, then we could use my vessel or launched squadrons to destroy the base."

Voss nodded. "If you go with such a plan, be extremely careful, while we don't know the exact specifics, we do know that there are heavy surface to orbit weapons emplaced there, and they're designed to fire on any target in their fire envelope."

Thrall snorts, "Just means to blow up more generators besides the ones powering the shield."

"And were it that easy we would have managed it long ago." Voss gives Thrall a withering stare.

Thrall stares back evenly, "Well we don't have any other option now do we."

One of the more weedy looking maintenance men nearby pipes up suddenly with a squeaky voice. A rodian fellow. "Hey Voss, maybe they could hit the submersible yard?"

Tohrkan rose a eyebrow. "Submersible yard? Why was this not happened sooner."

Thrall snorts, "Because there's a catch, there always is."

Voss turns to the fellow. "Good question." Clearly as surprised as anyone. "What's this about a Submersible Yard?"

"The CIS base near the Capital, took over part of the docks, they've had octopus looking craft moving in and out for weeks." The Rodian replied. "You said you didn't want any of us risking a job in the Capital that was too likely to draw attention, hitting those yards will probably draw lots of attention."

"A diversion..." Tohkran murmured.

"Give the man a prize for stating the obvious." Thrall said and then lapsed into silence, snapping his fingers. "Some of our commandos hit this submersible yard and while we have the CIS running about catching offworld sabotage teams we will infiltrate our primary objective, destroy the generators and mop up the place."

Tohkran looked aghast, "That might mean sacrificing the commandos for the diversion."

Thrall looked at his jedi friend with something that seemed akin to sympathy, perhaps even pity. "Yes, but we are fighting a war, sacrifices need to be made."

Tohkran sighed, closing his eyes and nodded slowly. "You are right. Unfortunately."

The Rodian spoke up more bravely this time. "Well that wasn't really what I was suggesting..." He paused. "The base is on the polar ice-caps, wouldn't a strike team, or more, in a submersible be able to bypass the surface defences and theatre shield both that way?"

Thrall looked from the Rodian and then at the Kiffar. "Why do you have that guy doing maintenance and not planning strategy? He seems smarter than the lot of us." He frowned, "Only problem is, if we do that, steal one of the submersibles, they'd report it and when we arrive at our objective they might already be made aware of the theft and suspect us of being infiltrators."

"Why not blow the whole Ice-pack?" Voss said with sudden inspiration. "Sink the base whole... you..." he pointed at the Rodian, "You're now one of my advisors."

Thrall smirked as he looked at the Rodian, "Congratulations and condolences at the same time." He rubbed his hands gleefully together. "Now that sounds like fun, right how to blow up a ice-pack. Do we have enough explosives... can give you a inventory of what we have... maybe some proton torpedo warheads might even do it."

"Well, now that we will be able to get our smugglers going again,... well their first job is to get a shipment of high-yield Baradium Bombs. But it could be weeks before they get back here. Mostly we're limited to Thermal Detonators and Concussion missiles, our Proton Torpedo stock is..." Voss checked on a datapad in his jacket... "Sithspit... we're down to three torpedoes..."

Thrall snorts, "You got a friendly cloaked ship in orbit with a lot of capital ship and starfighter class torpedoes, I think we got the explosives side covered." Tohkran was silent, he knew it had to be done but part of him loathed to even contemplate this action, Thrall seemed also a bit too eager for his taste to blow the icecaps and potentially kill a untold number of sentients, along with droids. Thrall either did not notice or ignored the look Tohkran was giving him and went through his personal computer. "Yup plenty of Concussion and Proton torpedoes, we also got a stockpile of proton bombs and rockets for our bombers, speaking of which can you use any spare equipment we have ,can have that brought down as well."

"Anything you could spare would be more than welcome." Voss said. "We're practically running on empty. If you hadn't shown up, I don't know if we'd even have lasted out the month. And my fate if they caught me would be less than pretty."

"If I may suggest something you all might have ignored." Tohkran said quietly, continuing when he had their attention. "Blowing the polar ice caps might be all well and good... but what might that mean for the planet, for the people living on it, hmm? We could hurt a lot of innocents by doing this, this would be a rather dark and grim act to do."

"Sea levels would rise, possibly a tidal wave, the coastal cities might get wet... but honestly Tohkran, the lives lost in such an act would surely pale next to those lost if the CIS continues assaulting us..." Voss said. "It may not be pleasant to contemplate collateral damage, but it is war, there will always be some."

Thrall nodded, "I agree, the needs of the many, yada, yada."

Tohkran frowned, "Have you already forgotten what you fight for?" He shook his head, "You are fighting to free this world, free these people, yes. But once they are free, what then? What will happen afterwards when all those that have survived are the ones who send men and women to die in suicide attacks, or the ones who killed the enemy at the expense of civilians. If you want to win a war you need to have the people on your side too. I agree, sacrifices need to made sometimes but none of you even considered the ramifications, or paused to contemplate it, it was just brushed aside as if it was nothing. That is getting too close to the dark side."

Tohkran frowned and then blinked, "Hang on... very well, we blow up the ice caps, but I suggest the following." He looked at Thrall, "I want the Illusion to be moved in position when it blows and want, I can't stress this enough, precision strikes from our concussion missile crews to create counter waves that would cancel the tidal waves that originate from the base destruction, only then would I approve of this plan. Agreed?"

Thrall shrugged, "Fine by me... will need to quickly escape because the blockade will find use sure enough when we do that."

Tohkran nodded and looked at Quinlan. "Well?"

"It's your operation, I have nothing to spare to aid you." Voss said with a shrug. "I wish I did so I didn't end up in this predicament. Can you see any issues with it..." He struggles for the Rodian's name.

"Orbos. And I don't see any issue with it, I'm not sure Concussion missiles would be powerful enough to counter the waves, but I can't be sure it wouldn't work either." The greenskin replied.

Thrall shrugged, "Can also launch some proton torpedoes, it's mostly about the timing however."

They continued to discuss some of the details and plan the raid on the submersible docks to gain the submersibles to get to the ice caps and plant the explosives. Once the plan was made several discreet transports were send back and forth, using the backdoor to the weather station to pick the times the CIS would not be paying attention to bring down the explosives and supplies from the Illusion of Grace and also almost all the troops currently present on the cruiser to aid the resistance for the time to come.

Once all supplies were made goodbyes were said, Tohkran was going to remain behind as agreed to aid the resistance in any way possible while Thrall, Goddor and Marack would head out with the illusion and perhaps acquire assistance from their friends and allies to help liberate Antar IV.

But that was for later and the plan had been set into motion, commandos were send in to the submersible bay, their approach proved to be somewhat problematic as they were discovered when they had just managed to get the release codes for the submersibles but the droids present were no match for the commandos who eliminated the security forces and headed on their way to the polar ice packs to plant the proton torpedoes rigged to explode.

The teams were thankfully not discovered as they planted the explosives at the designated points where they would do the most damage and managed to make a clean getaway before they detonated. Thrall watched as the base collapsed, polar caps collapsing on top of it and then it began to sink into the sea, he could not resist letting out a evil chuckle seeing the clankers get destroyed this way, it did not distract him however and the gunnery crews had their targeting parameters set and fired as the ship decloaked. Their aim was accurate enough and it looked like most of the tidal waves that were generated by the destruction of the base were stopped in their tracks. Thrall quickly ordered a escape vector to be made but the damage had been done.

Tohkran and Quinlan were on the ground and received the word after Thrall had gotten the Illusion out of the system, the CIS governor had upon receiving word of a cloaked vessel in the system requested reinforcements from CIS high command, a request which would be honoured according to Quinlan Vos due to the governor's connections.

That were problems for another day though as Tohkran studied his lightsaber and ignited it, he had stayed behind to help the fight, he just hoped his friends would be able to contact the other jedi, Neia, anyone who would hear their please and send help.

Because this fight had only just started...