AU: Not Milliways continuity: The Foundry -Reprise

[last_kallig]

Ibani is at a corner booth in Milliways, examining a tactical map of the Kurost sector of the Mid-Rim, specifically the Nanth'ri system.

She's half in, half out of armor, a look worn by many commanders in many worlds and many times. A look that suggests that the Commander was either interrupted en route to sleep or has given up on it entirely.

She has a small stack of holopads set out on the table, listing various groups and their locations, most of them are crossed out. The two on top are for a Major Bessiker and the Sith Hiran Bessiker, his son.

She'd hoped she would never need to enter the Foundry again, but events have conspired against her.

Her stomach sinks as she recalls what she's fairly sure will be Major Bessiker's last message to her or to anyone, that a group of fanatical Jedi had taken the Foundry. She's checked again and again, and there is no one she can send, no one she can spare.

If she can't find an answer here, she'll be going alone into what the data tells her MUST be a trap.

(OOC: dialogue in italics is taken from/adapted from Ibani's canon.)

Comments

[acertainpov]

"You don't look a day over nine hundred," says Ben, who went completely grey practically overnight at around the age she is now. "And I should know, that's the same age as Master Yoda." Give or take a decade.

He sits himself in the booth opposite her, pushing back the hood on his robes to make his head visible.

"Is there something you wish to share?"

A problem halved, and all that.

[last_kallig]

"Flatterer," Ibani teases.

She sighs, glancing at the map again, even though she can see what's there now with her eyes closed. "I want to tell you, but I'm not sure I should," she says, looking him in the eye.

"You told me once that you wouldn't recognize as Jedi, Jedi who wanted to exterminate everyone with Sith blood in them."

"Is that still true?"

[acertainpov]

Ben's expression hardens, momentarily loses that soft edge that's always made him so easy to underestimate. He closes his eyes and opens them, then he's back, but his tone is steady.

"With what I have survived since then, you think I would waiver in that?"

There are so few of them left.

[last_kallig]

"No," Ibani replies, exhaling. "Forgive me, my friend. My fatigue must be getting to me."

"They must be stopped, at any cost. None of my people can come with me, they're all tied up on other fronts." She gestures at the stack of holopads.

"If they do not flee, I will not be able to afford mercy, Ben. Capture would, in their case, not be a kindness. There are...limits in what I can control when I am not directly present." Her tone turns bitter at that last sentence.

[acertainpov]

"Tell me what you want of me."

It's been a while since he used his lightsaber. It could do with the outing. but more than that - he's had to stay inactive through so much horror, so many people he could have helped. The inaction is weighing on him, and if she's offering him what he thinks she is - that chance to do something tangible, he'd be cruel not to help.

[last_kallig]

She wishes she could read him in the Force, could read more of what he feels from his face. But Ben is Ben, and she's used to his silence by now.

She puts her hands on the table, near his, but not touching. "I would like you to come with me, to fight them, to stop them."

"You have your own responsibilities, I know." He's never said what those responsibilities ARE, but it doesn't matter. "I am as certain as one can be in a situation where combat will be involved that I can buy you sufficient time to escape, to get back to Milliways, whatever might befall the mission." She leaves unsaid that if things get THAT dire 'buying time' will almost certainly involve her death one way or another.

"Help me, Ben, please. You are my only hope in this."

[acertainpov]

Ben's arm moves, rotates at the elbow just a few degrees, so his wrist slides out of his volumnous robes in and just touches Ibani's hand.

"I'm a lot harder to kill than you seem to be givng me credit for," he remarks wryly.

It's strange, still, to have to prioritise his own survival like he does now. Not stepping up and joining the rebellion is one thing. Leaving her to certain death - he probably couldn't do that. SO he'll just have to make sure neither of them die.

He smiles, wry and Kenobi-like and turns his attention to the stack of the holpads. "So where are we going?"

[last_kallig]

"Good," Ibani says, her smile proud and fierce at his remark about being harder to kill than she had been giving him credit for. The Force is full of the feeling of immense relief and her body language reflects that.

"We call it the Foundry, no idea what its original builders called it. It's old, unspeakably old, twenty thousand years is the low end of our estimate of its age." She pulls up a map of the complex with the hand that Ben isn't touching. (She wants the physical contact too much to break it.)

It's a space station/factory complex carved into a truly enormous asteroid, and the outside of it is bristling with nasty looking guns. It doesn't look quite like anything built by the modern sapient species of the galaxy, but like something more primordial. "The alien race and culture that built it is gone, but they combined the Force with technology in ways we still don't understand," she explains. "The Foundry is capable of producing very nasty droids at a staggering rate, enough to wipe out the more than 97% of the Imperial population that have Sith blood in them."

She smiles bitterly. "Which was also their plan 20 years ago when I fought and killed a Jedi called Revan there. The Jedi Council and the Republic both claimed that they had no knowledge of what he was planning, of course, despite the very obvious presence of other Jedi and a large chunk of the Republic Navy."

[acertainpov]

Ben leans forward, using his own free hand to rotate the map, looking at it from a number of angles. He doesn't ask how the Foundry manages to be so specific in its intended victims: anything capable of destruction on that scale doesn't need to be too specific.

In a way it's a factory capable of producing the droid versions of those individuals Vader is currently sending out after the surviving Jedi.

"And now they are returning?"

Part of him wonders if the best way wouldn't just to be to destroy the asteroid, if the weaponry for that can be found.

[last_kallig]

"Yes," Ibani replies.

"Certain acquaintances got me access to the staffing and security information around the Foundry. A week ago, Darth Acina mysteriously removed all of the ships that were stationed to guard the place and all but a single squad of Imperial soldiers from the Foundry itself. I presume she also arranged for that sudden lack of defenses to fall into the hands of certain Jedi."

She smiles wryly. "A trap for me and a trap for them, I think. She would know I would not allow the Foundry to remain in their hands. She stands to profit whoever is victorious. Heads I win, tails you lose."

She sighs. "It would be simpler if we didn't need the Foundry's manufacturing capabilities to keep up with the Republic. We haven't got anything approaching their industrial base or their population."

[acertainpov]

"She sounds delightful," Ben observes.

"So how many Jedi are we talking about, here? And what size army do they command?"

Never mind that even in his time, the idea of Jedi commanding armies was anathema to the concept of Jedi itself, and that's how they fell ten years ago. It just makes it easier to help her against them.

[last_kallig]

"By the standard of my so called peers, she's not that bad," Ibani replies, tone wry. "She's competent and not cruel for amusement's sake. Honestly, I'd be willing to overlook her attempt to get me killed, except that her attempt is also putting the people of the Empire at risk."

Ibani's expression becomes hard as diamond for a moment. "It seems I'll have to make it very clear that whatever threatens the people of the Empire will not be tolerated."

She shakes her head, and her expression softens. "But that's for later. I'm afraid I don't know how many we'll be facing, either Jedi or droids. One of my people sent me a message right after the start of their initial attack, which is why I knew the place was taken at all." Ibani says 'my' the same way Ben might have once referred to the clones under his command.

"The message said he didn't hear any guns firing, and they only pushed through from the landing bay at one point, so I expect they were in something small, shuttle sized. As for droids, there could easily be hundreds by now. Depends on how long it took them to figure out how to switch the Foundry over to making what they wanted."

[acertainpov]

They were always Cody's men, never Obi-Wan's. It may have been a little thing, but on this they have slightly different outlook, although thet doesn't mean Ben doesn't catch the meaning.

However, the best way of taking on hundreds of droids is with dozens of clones. An ex-Jedi and a Sith will have to do.

"And what's the traffic been like since? Are they in touch with their allies? Receiving deliveries?"

[last_kallig]

"No traffic as far as I can tell," Ibani replies. "No transmissions have been picked up, and nothing's come in or gone out of hyperspace around the Foundry since they took it."

Her smile turns wry. "It's possible they actually ARE there without official support, this time."

She pulls up holo-images of the droids. They look substantially tougher than the the rank and file of droids he faced in the Clone Wars. "They're equipped with bioscanners to pick up certain specific gene sequences unique to the Sith species, which is how they select targets. So they'll likely ignore you until you actually attack one in favor of trying to turn me into ash."

"They've got enough cortosis alloy in them to make fighting them with a lightsaber trickier than usual. You'll need to hit a joint to take off a limb in one blow, or find a gap in the body plating to kill one with a single hit."

[acertainpov]

"Any ray-shielding? Autonomous or centrally controlled?"

If there's one thing Ben Kenobi has experience and strategies for, it's fighting massive armies of varying kinds of droids.

[last_kallig]

"If they have any shielding they failed to use it last time," Ibani replies. "They're just tough with a lot of firepower. Which works well enough when there's enough of them."

"They're somewhat vulnerable to force lightning." Which reminds Ibani that, well, they probably ought to talk about the Dark side.

She glances away, then turns her eyes back to him. "I've never used the Dark side around you, I've been very careful not to. With these odds....I'm not going to be able to hold anything back in battle."

Despite her best efforts, some of her uncertainty about what his response might be to her statement leaks into the Force. Will he wind up hating her for being what she is, after all these years?

[acertainpov]

Ben meets her eyes steadily, thinking for a few seconds as he feels out her uncertainty, her worry. When a line furrows the space between his eyes it's from her need to hide herself from him.

"It would be foolish to hold back on something that could mean the outcome of the battle," he says after a second.

And. That's it.

(He's fought alongside Asajj. She knows her own self, and her limits.)

Ben turns back to the plans.

"So how do we gain entry?"

[last_kallig]

Ibani is relieved at his response, and doesn't even try to hide it.

"That might be relatively simple," Ibani explains. "I can stretch a force cloak to cover both of us and a starfighter."

She pauses, then flushes slightly. "At least if your piloting skills are better than mine. Holding up a force cloak like that is mentally taxing and, well, we're likely to go splat if I have to try and pilot the damn thing at the same time."

It's not her fault her education was mostly murder focused, damn it!

[acertainpov]

Right. He'd forgotten about Force cloaking. That's better than any trick Ben was thinking of. And he nods once to show his approval of the plan.

"I can usually land a starfighter," he allows.

An actual landing, where not only can the passengers walk away, but the ship also survives. He's got high standards when it comes to landings.

(It's also a welcome change to have a partner who wants to avoid going splat.)

"And what is our primary objective? Wresting control rather than shutting it down, I assume."

[last_kallig]

"Wresting control, yes. Also either force the Jedi to leave or kill them." Ibani suspects it's going to be mostly kill them, Jedi can be stubbornly resistant to the whole idea of 'run away to fight another day'.

"We may run into Jedi who can use force cloak as well, the Jedi call them Jedi Shadows. Not sure if their training otherwise mirrors mine as an assassin, never had the opportunity to ask."

[acertainpov]

"And leave without any of the droids, I imagine."

Even one droid with that programming would be too dangerous to let out.

"Well," he gives the plans and the holopads another cursory look over, and sits back against the seat back of the booth, "you better get some sleep and a good meal in you before we go out again."

He'll deal with Jedi Shadows and other new tricks when he sees them.

[last_kallig]

"Definitely," Ibani agrees.

She smiles wryly at his comment about her getting some sleep and a good meal in her. "Not sure I can sleep, not and stay asleep, at least. The Force has been very...insistent about showing me the consequences of what will happen if I, we, fail at this."

Ben can imagine the content of those visions, we're sure.

[acertainpov]

Visions can be a pain like that, really.

"Well that I can help with," he says simply. "If you wish it?"

[last_kallig]

"Please," Ibani says. "I've been awake for, ah, about three days now."

She gently takes his hand. "I wouldn't trust anyone else to help me like that, you know. I've had it hammered into me for too long that being vulnerable is dangerous."

He could do much worse to her than KILL her, if he were a different kind of person.

"Does my room here work for you?" Unless he wants her to use his room!

[acertainpov]

Another wry smile.

"I was wondering when you were going to invite up there."

...sometime's Ben's mouth just runs on autopilot.

He closes his hand over hers - dry and sand-worn as always but gentle with it, his thumb gently tracing circles on the back of her hand.

"Come on, let's get you some rest."