Chapter 87
Ord Sigatt Orbit, Ord Sigatt System
Noonian Sector
Jedi Master Luminara Unduli’s face gave no hint of her inner unrest as she stared through the viewport of the shuttle. The shuttle’s cockpit was silent except for the low hum of its systems and the occasional crackle of the comm. Outside, the void was dominated by the immense silhouette of the Separatist superweapon. Her lightsaber felt heavy at her hip–nay, her entire body did–as if there was a great weight in the air, the very presence of the warship almost tangible force of its own. The Jedi Master could believe it.
She could feel the pilot’s nervous energy as they brought the shuttle closer, Clone Commander Gree’s jaw setting as they were brought alongside the massive behemoth lurking in the void, as if it took all of the clone’s willpower not to gawk like a new like a trooper on his first deployment.
“How generous of the Separatists,” the Clone Commander said tightly, “Inviting us to a tour of their latest superweapon.”
The superweapon was a battleship, longer than a Venator and twice as heavy. It was shaped like a tuning fork, two great prongs jutting out from the bow of the hull housing the two largest artillery pieces Luminara had ever seen put to space. She stared down their hollow throats, each large enough for their shuttle to fly down their lengths, and traced the lines of the hull, the glowing lines of power conduits and faint glimmers of running lights that seemed to pulse like the veins of a living thing.
Repair dogs and their remotes floated about it and crawled in and out of its guns like tiny, furious ants, coordinated by a small army of EVA suited engineers and technicians clambering throughout the network of gangways and catwalks spanning the length of the vessel. External and internal damage from its latest engagement, perhaps? But how so? There was no name plaque, but the mid-section of the dorsal prong bore a distinct emblem: a modified Separatist Hex, but from each of the six faces extended the reared head of a serpent, all snarling in a clockwise arrangement.
The shuttle lurched, captured by the warship’s tractor field, and was drawn closer and closer to the prongs–until they slipped into the space between them, engulfing the shuttle in darkness. The only light source now was the bright horizon of stars bound top and bottom by the prongs, and the small, glowing hangar bay at the end of the tunnel, from which a steady traffic of repair drones buzzed to-and-fro. The heavy weight she felt before was now magnified tenfold, like being crushed by an ocean’s depths.
“Take it as a sign of goodwill, Gree,” Master Luminara murmured softly, “Not all intentions are borne out of hostility.”