Chapter Text
"Father? I mean, General, sir. They're ready for you."
Echo's eyelids fluttered as he uploaded. It was getting harder to return to his physical body when his mind could jump through hyperspace faster than a starship. He'd found what he needed for the demo. Four raggedy-ass Imp ore freight haulers. Poor bastards.
A gentle touch on his shoulder caused him to open his eyes and suppress shreds of frustration that he had to come back yet again. It wasn't yet time to disappear.
Siva's earnest young smile transposed itself with her baby face, all pink cheeks, huge golden eyes, and black curls sticking every which way.
Echo blinked, returning to the present-day view of the serious young officer. She stood smartly in regulation red and blue of the New Galactic Fleet. His old lightsaber hung from her belt, symbol of her role as a Peacekeeper.
Her rambunctious and fiery siblings took after their mother, but Siva had taken after him. His pride in her seized his heart and stole his breath. His eyes drank her in, as if to fix the memory.
As if...
"Sir, are you alright?"
"Wool-gathering. An old man's prerogative."
"Ha! You're only thirty-three, technically. Come on." Siva didn't help him stand, but she hovered.
He straightened slowly, grateful for his long coat. The server vault his brother Tech had built him was cold. He flexed his cybernetic right hand, an old habit. He hadn't needed a scomp link in years and didn’t miss the wretched thing.
Siva's lips tightened at the grinding noises from his prosthetics. Even with state-of-the-art upgrades, some days he still sounded like old bones. He was surprised she hadn't guilted him back to the medbay for repairs, but Siva picked her battles. This week it was regular meals.
Almost twenty years of civil war had taken its toll, but the New Galactic Fleet had united with thousands of home-grown rebel cells to root out the Empire's poison. Imperial forces were divided and in disarray. The Emperor had fled Coruscant; Vader had disappeared. The Imp fleet attempted to rally around their half-finished planet killer.
But Echo was done playing the game by their rules. There were more powers in the galaxy besides Light and Dark, and Echo had a new plan.
They walked along the halls of the Truth of Florrum, a Venator-class Star Destroyer now serving as fleet command. Where other ships entered hyperspace with a lurch and a prayer, the Truth roared and purred, perfectly attuned to the wash of energetic particles, as well as nourished by them. She had been Echo’s first experiment years ago. Now all Fleet ships used Echo’s upgrades.
“Have you heard from your mother?” This was family code for ‘she is angry with me again and won’t call.’
Siva understood the family code, having been steeped in it. “I heard from her five rotations ago. Her Peacekeeper battalion is coordinating the evacuation of Davi Calisto, since the planet has been rendered uninhabitable for decades, maybe centuries.”
“That’s the one bombed with asteroids, correct?” He sent part of his consciousness through the nexus to that system’s hyperspace comm relay and found it dark. He infiltrated it and cozened it back to reluctant life. It had overloaded. The comm buffers, choked with thousands of pleas for help, would take days to clear. He searched the files in an instant, finding his wife’s personal code in several messages. She was alright, if mightily upset.
“Yes, sir. It’s beyond horrible. I thought there was a treaty against that.”
“Hmm? Oh, planetary bombardment was obsolete, not interdicted. But it is also cheap and effective. The Imps sent tramp ships with tractor fields, not even one destroyer to protect them, and look what havoc they caused. People vaporized; cities melted down to bedrock.”
Siva stopped and faced him. “You almost sound like you approve.”
“The Empire innovated. We must continue to innovate as well. I don’t mean to sound cold, but-.” He was cold, getting colder by the day. Cold was hard to escape. It crushed him under the weight of his predictive models as he tried to squirm his way out of the coming collapse. To find Siva’s future in equations and algorithms.
“Father, what are you planning?”
He held up a finger. “Patience.” He tried to sound calm and wise when the terror of his visions made him want to shriek.
Siva frowned, studying him. He smoothed his features and attempted to control his breathing. Siva was force-sensitive, more perceptive at reading people than even Hunter. Echo had to show her only strength and confidence.
They entered the strategy room and found his trusted staff, both live and holo-projection, waiting with various postures of impatience. Bail Organa was a holo. His brothers Hunter and Tech were live, Hunter having just arrived with his squadron. Admiral Hatch stood by the table, buzzing with barely repressed energy. He was one of many clones who, like Echo, never acclimated to peace. Rex was returning from the field and had sent a short text message of success.
“Thank you for coming.” Echo waved a hand to activate the holo-table, which raised a few eyebrows. He could’ve playacted that he needed to touch it to activate it, but he was tired and in a hurry.
“Let’s get to it. Tech knows I’ve been working on methods to sabotage enemy shipping. My plans depend on approaches that are innovative,” he glanced at Siva, raising a wry eyebrow, “so I prepared four demonstrations to prove my theories in practice.” He reached out to his hyperspace nexus. Truly, this was becoming easier and easier.
He displayed the view out the windshield of a small, dingy Imperial ore freighter. “I tapped internal and external cameras, so brace yourselves. This won’t be pretty. Watch what happens when I turn off the navi-computer’s fail safes.”
The streaks of hyperspace changed to a misty blob. Warning claxons sounded and cut off mid-screech as the ship imploded, wrenched apart by pressure and radiation.
He heard Siva’s tiny gasp and steeled himself to continue.
“When I rewrite navigation data to send a ship towards a gravity well, instead of away.”
A ship materialized within a star’s corona, vaporizing in a miniscule flash next to the star’s massive violence.
“Open a new jump point inside a ship travelling in hyperspace.”
The ship and crew turned inside-out by exposure to x-rays from the gravitational wave. The flash of white left dreadful ghostly after-images over the stars.
“And unleash a virus that stops the engine, then destroys navigation data.”
The wounded ship stopped dead and tumbled out of hyperspace, breaking apart wrenchingly.
Echo scanned the recordings, verifying the kills. The room was quiet; too quiet. Even Tech was quiet. That wasn’t good.
He looked up to four sets of horrified eyes. “What? How is it any different than blaster fire?”
But Hatch’s eyes gleamed. “How many can you do at a time?”
“Enough to count. But I won’t destroy what I can salvage.”
Bail Organa spoke. “Those weren’t simulations?”
“No, and the three hundred and sixteen souls aboard those ships were a drop in the bucket compared to the billion killed by the Empire on Davi Calisto.”
He changed the holo-projection to an artificial satellite containing one enormous concavity resembling a too-symmetrical asteroid strike. “Intel shows the Empire’s planet killer is ready to move. Do you want me to sit on my hands till it shows up in Alderaan’s orbit, Bail?”
“No, but-,”
“No buts. The Emperor is aboard his planet killer and the time to strike is now.” Echo leaned over the table. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”
---
Tech and Hunter cornered him afterwards. Hunter studied him worriedly.
“As pleased as I am that you finally shared your plan, you must be careful,” said Tech. “You do not want to set off a chain reaction catastrophe in hyperspace.”
“I drop debris into real space or vaporize it. I’m not tampering with subspace structures yet, only the machines that ride them.” And hyperspace comm relays, libraries, and the livelihoods of billions of star riders who would be grounded with brutal finality, but Echo didn’t say all that.
Hunter sensed it, anyways. “How long have you been able to remote detonate spaceships?”
“A few months.” Eight months and some change.
“This is a game-changer. How did you figure this out?” asked Hunter.
“Practice.”
“On what?”
“Remember how the joke went around that the Empire had started fielding green pilots?”
Tech pushed his goggles. “Yes. The number of incidents became statistically improbable.”
“So, I added drug smugglers and slavers to the tests. Nobody will miss them.”
“You blew up civilian ships. Isn’t that an Imperial tactic?" Hunter's voice lowered with intensity. "You didn’t fight this hard to become like them.”
“I eliminated criminals the Fleet will have to hunt down eventually. This isn’t about what ships I blew up, but how I did it. Don’t worry. The technology is inaccessible.”
“Any system can be sliced,” said Tech.
“Have you been able to slice me? I can feel you trying, and you’re the best.”
Tech and Hunter exchanged looks.
Hunter chewed over and discarded several things, pushing a hand through salt-and-pepper hair. “Echo, this crazy plan of yours – Tech says you’ve been withdrawn for months. Are you alright?”
“Perfectly fine. Just busy.” Echo turned to leave. “I can see you looking at each other. I’m not crazy. I want to end this war, lads.” He turned back and confronted them. Hunter’s eyes bored into his.
“Remember Anaxes?” asked Echo.
“Of course, a lifetime ago.”
“You had your doubts, but you followed my plan. Trust me now. Or keep grinding on like we’ve been doing for another twenty years. I want a different future for Siva’s generation, maybe even for us old warhorses. Who knows? I might take up farming.”
“Hah!” Hunter’s face held very little humor.
---
Rex stalked into Echo’s server vault, helmet off and eyes wild. “You’re a right bastard for sending my team to dig through the Tribunal’s wreckage! I’ve already done it once.”
“Glad to see you too,” Echo snapped. “Would you rather I’d asked Ahsoka to do it?” He regretted the harsh words instantly but couldn’t call them back.
“No! Never. But it felt like we were desecrating the graves of our brothers.” Rex leaned heavily against the desk and shook off Echo’s comforting hand. “We didn’t go over the … the field, but we were karking close, with heavy excavators.”
“You found it?”
“Just like I said. Almost intact. It’s in Tech’s lab.”
“Thank you.”
“Next time you dig up a graveyard, count me out.” Rex made ready to sweep out.
Echo caught his arm. “Every planet is a graveyard for us clones, Rex. This galaxy is soaked in our blood. If my plan works, it won’t be desecration. It will sanctify that ground and anoint it with purpose.”
Rex looked angrier than he’d ever seen him. “That ground was already sacred, anointed with blood, like you said. I hope you know what you’re doing, Echo.”
Rex stomped out.
Part of him wondered how he could abuse his brother’s love with such a heartless mission. Would Rex forgive him?
Then he remembered Siva and her siblings, and thousands of children like them, part of the first generation of clone/nat-born pairings like his own. All were precious and new. No undertaking was too hard, no price too great to pay. They must be protected at all costs.
And given time to build the future.
---
Tech had already restored power to the antigrav of the artifact. The Mandalorian Sarcophagus hovered in the center of his largest lab, being cleaned by Tech’s assistants. It was a three-meter-tall iron gray tomb, covered with elegant relief carvings of Mandalorian helmets and warriors battling a legendary foe – a Jedi.
Tech snapped photos as he hopped around and between his workers. “Careful! It is almost 4,000 years old,” he called to the assistant finessing the power board. He very nearly tripped over a cable.
Echo caught Tech’s arm to steady him. “Easy. How long till it’s working?”
“There is no time to be easy. Do you know what this device is?”
“I hope it is used to imprison force wielders, like Ahsoka and Rex told us.”
“Yes, but it is more.” He towed Echo out of earshot of the assistants. “It is also a torture chamber, used for live burial and sensory deprivation of Jedi captives.”
“Good, good,” Echo nodded absently.
Tech smacked his arm to gain his attention. “No, Echo. Not good. This is dangerous, something that should never see the light of day. This knowledge should have remained buried.” He bit his lip, like he shocked himself, as if he’d spoken a dreadful curse.
“Then what I need you to design for it will please you.” Echo outlined his project in quick strokes, knowing Tech only needed the barest inspiration to spark a wildfire of invention.
And Tech was off, muttering, “A liquid metal framework could be easily snapped in place, with a generator to spark anhydrobiosis … and a reservoir for graphene.” He turned to his cluttered workbench.
“Time, Tech?” Echo reminded.
“Eighteen hours for refurbishment, and another twelve for the framework.”
Thirty hours. Echo hummed to himself and walked out. The only path forward was through, with resolve and will. He tapped his wrist comm. “Hatch, pass the word. Start Safe Harbor.”
He called it Safe Harbor, because ‘Marooned planet-side for life’ was a tough sell to a fleet of hardened spacers.
---