Jabba smiled inwardly. Not a bad afternoon’s work; he thought smugly.
Not bad at all….
Bria Tharen walked briskly down the corridor of her command ship, the light cruiser Retribution. She was on her way to review her troops before their planned raid on the slaver vessel Helot’s Shackle.
Inwardly, Bria was excited and eager, but her features were composed and her bluegreen eyes were as cold as deep glacial ice.
Mentally she reviewed her battle plan, analyzing it for weaknesses, making sure she’d covered every possible contingency with a backup option. This operation should go down smoothly, but the Helot’s Shackle was, after all, a heavily-armed Corellian corvette, a formidable vessel in her own right.
Retribution was almost the same size as the Shackle, so they should be relatively evenly matched. Bria’s vessel was a Republic Sienar Systems Marauder-class corvette, sleek and streamlined, capable of both space and atmospheric combat. The Marauders were among the most common capital ships in the Corporate Sector’s picket fleet. The Corellian underground had purchased this Marauder second-hand from the Authority, and given it to Bria for her flagship.
The Corellian commander had an operative working on the space station orbiting Ylesia. The operative had tipped Bria off a few days ago that the Ylesian priests were planning on shipping out nearly two hundred Exultation-addicted and malnourished slaves to the mines of Kessel.
For a moment Bria wished she could give in to her own desires and go out with her people in the first boarding wave. The troops aboard those three shuttles would see the maximum amount of combat, make the most kills. And Bria had a personal grudge against this particular slaving vessel. Nearly ten years ago, Helot’s Shackle had narrowly missed capturing Bria, Han and their two Togorian friends, Muuurgh and Mrrov, as they’d made their escape from Ylesia.
Bria sighed, but she knew that her place during the first wave was aboard her command vessel, coordinating the attack, identifying pockets of heavy resistance in order to best allocate her troops for the second wave.
This was Retribution’s fifth mission for the Corellian resistance, and Bria was glad to be back in action. During her eight years with the Corellian underground, she’d done whatever she’d been assigned to do, and done it well. But she had hated the undercover spying projects .
. . and hadn’t much liked “liaison” work. She’d been glad to leave them behind and get back to real fighting.
It was Mon Mothma who had made it possible for Bria to go back into the real action. The renegade Imperial senator had both the influence and the eloquence to convince individual resistance groups that a Rebel Alliance was a necessity. The Senator was better at it than Bria had ever been, and spent all her time traveling from world to world, meeting with underground leaders. Just a month ago Bria and the rest of the Corellian resistance had celebrated the signing of the Corellian Treaty.
Publicly, Mon Mothma was credited with engineering the Treaty, and there was no doubt that she had helped. But Bria had heard a rumor that Corellia’s own Senator Garm bel Iblis had secretly been one of the main architects of the Treaty. In addition to Corellia, the other signatories to the Treaty were Alderaan and Chandrila—Mon Mothma’s home planet.
Traveling system to system, world to world, Mon Mothma made contact with resistance groups where they existed, and created new groups where there had been none. The former senator’s fame was both help and hindrance; on the one hand it gave her access to important nobles and leaders of industry, but on the other hand, especially in the beginning, some groups had expressed the fear that she might be an Imperial plant, sent by Emperor Palpatine to test their loyalty.
The renegade senator had faced death many times, both from Imperial troops and from suspicious resistance leaders. Bria had met Mon Mothma and conferred with her soon after the senator had fled the Emperor’s charge of treason. She’d been impressed—almost awed—by Mon Mothma’s quiet dignity, her unswerving resolution and her formidable intelligence.
It had been one of the high points of Bria’s life when Mon Mothma had shaken her hand and told her that she, Bria Tharen, had been one of the people who’d been instrumental in getting Bail Organa to change his mind about Alderaan’s pacifism. The Viceroy was now committed to the thought of armed revolution against the Empire. He faced considerable resistance from his government, however, and, so far, Alderaan’s efforts at arming itself were small and extremely clandestine.
The Corellian Treaty had inaugurated the Rebel Alliance Bria and the other Corellians had been working toward. The individual Rebel groups would retain much of their autonomy, but, in theory at least, strategic command of the Alliance was now vested in Mon Mothma. To date, the fledgling Rebel Alliance had not been tested in battle. Bria was hoping that would soon change.