The last bastion of the Templars

[Irys Arist'lar]

The swirling blue visage slowed to a set of infinite blue streaks, which suddenly collapsed back to white pin pricks against the darkness of realspace. From her command chair Irys could see several picket corvettes and frigates drop out ahead of them.

"Is there anything out there?" Irys asked as the fleet started to fall into position. The Monitor class vessels started scanning space around them. These were the coordinates that they'd found on geonosis, where apparently the separatists had stored a secret fleet hundreds of years ago.

"Nothing in the near vicinity ma'am," came the reply.

Irys sighed, such a shame. "Ok hold position and wait for reports from the scouts," she commanded. Maybe the fleet didn't exist after all. Unfortunately whilst they had the position they had no clue what velocity the fleet had been left with relative to the galactic core. They could have drifted some distance.

"Prepare some of the fleet for return, no need keeping so many cruisers out in dark space for..."

"Ma'am, they've found it."

"Already?" she asked of the officer looking up from his station.

"Lucky first jump, it's all there. As many able thought, all dormant in...hold on. The recon crew report they're not alone, there's another vessel in the dormant fleet. Gunray class."

"Get us in hyperspace." Irys replied stoically.

 

[Raziel]

Raziel looked down at the flat image before him. There she was. They’d been combing ACA space for months, following all the leads from Monastery and had come up with nothing. Yet now they had her. His eyes traced the sleek lines of the Gunray-class Star Destroyer. The Righteous Fury, formerly the Righteous Indignation, but apparently the extremist remains of the Templar order lacked a sense of humour.

Most of that order had either joined the Knights Obsidian, scattered, or died during Salem’s revolution. However, a Jedi Master with extremist views which – Raziel had since found – appeared to a product of his own dabble with the Dark Side as a youth. Master Ackoam had turned the remnants into religious zealots. They’d been harassing ACA space, calling themselves “Moral Arbiters” and executing sinners on the spot. Apparently mercy was a great a crime as using the dark side of the Force.

How unfortunate that it had been the military to find them. Out in dark space where they had been searching for the Geonosian fleet they’d been searching for since nearly being killed in the depths of that world. Somehow, they’d been well connected enough to get there ahead of the ACA fleet. If they’d activated the dormant fleet and found enough droids to crew them, they probably could have started a crusade through ACA space.

The navy had disabled the ship during a small skirmish, but had yet to board the vessel. If the Obsidian Order had found them, they would have been quietly pushed into the nearest star. The military had protocol. The Templars were asking for negotiations, but scans revealed they had started reinforcing the hangars with droids and had enough supplies to hold out for months. Clearly they were looking to go down in a blaze of glory.

Raziel had no intention of letting them go down in such a blaze of glory, but he was making some assumptions about how pivotal their figurehead was in drawing up his plans. He’d need an elite team, the best soldiers he could find in ACA space, slicers and any Jedi he could muster. He put out the call.

Raziel pulled in a team of some of the best special operatives he'd worked with at Spynet, ex-special forces who extracted agents from enemy territory, and started to hatch a plan in the command centre of their Cruiser over Bothawui. The ANS Disturbed Slumber, Contention-class, waited in high orbit over Bothawui flanked by several smaller troop transports. Any aid would be instructed to come to the vessel for briefing. A shuttle was already arranged for members from the Obsidian Order on Roon to be brought here.

[member="Seto Du Couteau"]
[member="Krytu"]

 

[Barkt Melan]

1:34 AM, Bothuwai Time
Some small apartment in Drev'starn

It was surprising what got you out of bed somedays. Sometimes you slept through any alarm. Somedays, you awoke to the sound of a datapad on vibrate.

And if you were this bothan, somedays you woke up to urgent summons from the government. This was one of those days.

"Getting up at night?" Nallai asked, woken up by the noise and his movement. He had been hoping it wouldn't.

"It's morning, tecicnally. And it's a security call." He said, slowly blinking to help his eyes adjust to the darkness. He didn't like it. He never knew when the call would come, and if it would mean that he would never come home. She sat up, hugging him. Still what other choice did he have?

"I guess I'll see you once this is over?" She asked. Her way of trying to make sure he came home safe. Slowly standing, he dressed, then walked to a locked cabnet, which preformed an eye scan before opening. Inside were his father's toys. Guns, datapads, other tools. All in there. But he was looking for two things in particular: a datapad, his standard for any mission, and the most expensive piece left there, a Verpine Shatter Pistol. The heavily modified ones that could shoot darn near anything. Near priceless, and something that could very well be an heirloom. If it didn't fall and break. He had his other weapons, sure, but this was a good one for those pesky Force users. Sliding it into a cross-draw holster, he slipped out, noting that Nallai had slipped back asleep.
He would be ready soon enough. He could catch some sleep on the way.

[member="Raziel"]

 

[Seto Du Couteau]

Seto hands followed the designed path of his saber's hilt, it was his family's combat weapon. Two handed blade made from metal Seto had forgotten the name off, but he guessed some strong material. The history lesson the blade was foggy in his mind and Seto merely needed to make a mental note to ask his butler about the blade a bit more. Though alongside it on his waist was his training lightsaber from the Order. Seto smiled as he still felt the phantom aches from the training he himself had forced to do to gain the knowledge to wield the most lethal and elegant weapon ever known in the galaxy. Seto's eyes traveled to his standard blaster pistol on the other side of his waist as he walked towards his ship.

His pilot already prepping the ship for launch, Seto merely nodded in acknowledgment as he moved towards the empty copilot seat. His eyes looked around, his hands straightening out his tie as he continued to straighten out his usual garb of clothing. His vest and button shirt remained as if they were just pressed and cleaned, Seto admired his staff's pristine work they had on his clothing for a few moments before his pilot began to take off. Seto reviewed the message he had received from his instructor and but all wondered what he would be doing for whatever mission his instructor had wished for him. Shrugging he knew the only way to figure it out would be to go and see it for himself. Not so much a risk, but still, Seto took the gamble anyways.

His ship quickly entered hyperspace and Seto quickly grew bored. Nearly wondering if he should have brought more company Seto began to exchange a few words with the pilot. Learning his name to be 'Jeremy' it was all that he could from the man before his pilot grew uncomfortable and Seto simply moved around his Luxury ship. Though it wasn't long before Seto returned to his seat as his ship broke out of hyperspace and into the Bothawui system. His pilot quickly and easily maneuvered their ship towards the ANS Disturbed Slumber, a Contention-class ship as they were told via the Comms of where and what to do to meet.

Seto began to move towards the boarding bay to enter the ship, turning to face his pilot "I'll take the rest of here alone Jeremy, I'll call you up if anything pops up," Seto said as he quickly left to meet up with his instructor. His feet echoed in hallway as he moved with purpose to the debriefing, his fingers ran through the black dyed part of his hair. Seto looked annoyed by such habit, wondering what could be making him feel nervous enough to do such a thing. His expression though returned to his signature bored look as he entered the room where he would be debriefed.

[member="Raziel"]

 

[Raziel]

[member="Seto Du Couteau"]
[member="Barkt Melan"]

Raziel looked about the room at the small group who had assembled for the task. The lights were dimmed, the flickering holo displaying the Templar vessel cast blue shadows across his features.

“The Navy has already started to reactivate the geonosian fleet, but the Templar cruiser is still adrift nearby,” he said. “They won’t surrender and insist we come aboard. We know they just want to make a glorious last stand, but politically we can’t get away with air-locking the lot of them. Rather than starving them until they lose the will to fight we’ve made to decision to mount an assault,” Raziel explained, feeling out the emotions of those around him.

“The Templars were loyal Jedi, most are now part of the Obsidian Order - those that survived Naboo - but these ones have been radicalised by one man. A man, terrified by his own brush with the dark side, who has laid out a new foundation, or “moral code” for them. We’re not sure what techniques he’s using, but the Templar’s we’ve captured recently have been near completely devoid of emotion. We’re going to take a gamble that if we can deal with this Master Ackoam, their will for the fight might get sapped.

“So, the navy is going to mount an assault down a number of breaches from port and starboard with droids. In the meantime, we’re going to latch a Scion-class stealth ship to the upper hull and try and assault the bridge. It’s going to be a small team, and we’ll need to move quickly and quietly. The Templars didn’t have the resources to completely re-write ACA command systems, so they’ve used open source code to secure their systems. This means they’ve got vulnerabilities which will give us access,” he said, looking to the technical team.

“Any thoughts or questions so far?”

 

[Seto Du Couteau]

Seto raised his eyebrows, sneaking and stealth attacks were not exactly his forte by any stretch of the imagination but then again there was a first time for everything. ​But I'm not exactly sure beginners lucks would qualify for this Seto thought as he shifted his weight unto his other leg. Strange for him, entering into the more murkier parts of politics with the Abrion Corporate system but Seto wasn't entirely sure of his own gamble in this mission. Eyeing his instructor for a moment he looked over at the holo images to further think about the plans laid out for them.

"Why can't we just detonate a few charges into their ship's core and be done with it? Or do we actually need to confirm the deader's actual death," Seto asked, shrugging once he rather enjoyed a more simple approach to such matters at hand, lower risk and lower reward but still, you get a reward regardless. "Surely you don't expect some sort of Broad Cast Crew out here ready to show the entire galaxy what has happened," Seto added. He thought himself practical, if not just direct with his actions, it was not if he playing a sabaac game or anything. No need for deceit or bluffs, just be forward, directly forward.

[member="Raziel"]

 

[Raziel]

Raziel turned his gaze down to the lectern in front of him, suppressing a sigh. "That would be...inappropriate," he said. At the same time he reached out to his student's mind to relay a different message. The military have their doctrine and record keeping and report to the government. No dice I'm afraid. In truth he would have thought much the same. It would have been easy enough to make the event seem accidental. A damned shame the Navy hadn't vap'ed the ship and left it a gradually expanding cloud of detritus.

"If we can't force them to surrender, the commanders may be more amenable to a changing tack," he admitted. If the general got word that he'd been so candid, he would probably have a strop. "Anything else?"

 

[Barkt Melan]

Barkt had been silent for a while. His mind was trying to run the specs of the ship in his head. But he was guessing, mostly. "That's a Grevious-class, right?" The ship could be something else, but he was pretty sure he was right. If this was as big as he thought, it could get hairy. "Also, which open source engine did they use?" It could very well be similar, if not the same, as a standard civilian encryption. And those, with military-grade equipment, could go down easily. But some were better than others.

[member="Raziel"][member="Seto Du Couteau"]

 

[Raziel]

Raziel slid a datapad across the table to the Bothan. "Spynet managed to track the people who developed their physical access system. But it was only for the smartcards for opening doors and different areas of the ships. Take a look at the specs. As for the command and control systems, I'm afraid we don't know," Raziel replied.

"I'd suggest you prepare a broad spectrum of attacks for known issues with standard off the shelf systems, hopefully they've left some holes!

"Anyway, we're going to prep two teams, the second stays on standby. Each team will take 4 Jedi, a squad of Hailfires for scouting, two fire teams of special forces and a technical team. We go in four hours."

[member="Barkt Melan"]

[member="Seto Du Couteau"]

 

[Barkt Melan]

"Hmm." Looking over the datapad's info, he frowned. That was less of an answer than he wanted. He had hoped for specifics, because there were a group of major ones with good security, and gaggles of cheaper models that had enough exploitable holes to pan for metaphorical gold. But if they had the resources for the high-grade stuff, then he would have to prepare. Four hours. That may be enough. With our to five major ones, he could only have an hour per. Hopefully it would be enough.

The first program was the easiest, if you knew what you were doing. The Auto-6 engine used a simple system that was relatively secure unless someone knew it. And having programmed it onto the old Reek ships, it was one Barkt knew well. The Firewalls were simple enough, but it took some time to get the code right. Leaving it to compile, he moved on.

The next two, a pair made by the same company, were similar, and a quick modification to the same code could pull open the systems. Simple coding was all this one was.

And then there was StrongArm. The most expensive one on the market, it really didn't have a weakness that was easily exploited. Having finished the others already, and putting together another program for the simple ones, he now had this one obstacle. Most Systems had a known weakness. But the Strongarm Software was near impregnable. The company was good. Maybe, though, he could find a hole....

So after reading as much as he could, it seemed that the program had a couple points that were vulnerable points of entry into the systems. Funnily enough, the weakest protected system was the Artificial Gravity. That could be useful.

Looking over the pile of datapads, most finishing the compiling, he sighed. This would be fun.

[member="Raziel"] [member="Seto Du Couteau"]