Nobody could imagine a use for the sixteen crates, at a hundred per crate, of interrogation droids. But they imagined the things could be later stripped for parts, so they didn't throw any away.
Setting up and sorting out Shampoo's marvelous haul of an entire depot with its supporting stations was going to take some time, but some things stood out higher than others.
Among the supply ships recently taken had been some carrying slaves. While that was not so unusual, still indeed it remained reprehensible, and apparently some admiral had recently enslaved another alien world because between two transports they had millions of shackled fish-men.
Just looking at them made her hungry. So Shampoo wanted to get rid of the fish folk before dinner came with soy sauce and the scent combined with the sight to disturb her attempts at tranquil centering in the Force.
It was HARD! They looked so delicious!
Not wanting to have them around at all, lest she get tempted to eat one, she was struggling with how to get rid of them without involving kitchens or knives, when one of the aliens on an observation deck pointed out those two converted luxury liners they'd taken from Nabiki, saying they'd built those. The design was theirs.
The Jedi certainly had no use for them. Those ships were hot, uncomfortable, muggy, and had weird wavelengths of light in their controls, and with all of their other projects it wasn't worth their time to refit those problems out.
So she loaded the freed Mon Calamari slaves with blasters and other hand weapons taken from stolen stores, gave them their two cruisers, and whatever beings they couldn't shove in those cruisers she gave them transports to carry, then set them off with orders to go free their homeworld.
Their world had full planetary shields. If they got control of those back they could hold off Imperial reinforcements and probably retake the planet. And if that happened, cruisers and shields could give the Empire multiple headaches on a long campaign trying to retake the star system.
Anything that caused the Empire headaches and didn't bother her was good.
So they rigged their navicomputers carefully to erase all signs of the Jedi's sectors, or how to find them, made certain the secret was not in their minds, and let the fish folk go. The Mon Cals didn't even discover the loss of data until they were home, and then they had other business to deal with.
They caught the Imperial garrison off guard and overwhelmed it.
There was naturally some surprise involved in being met by millions of armed insurgents and a pair of fully functional cruisers coming at you from out of system when you were the ones supposedly in control of space.
The Mon Cals quickly mounted a defense of their newly recaptured homeworld and made desperate raids, crippling many of the Imperial bases from which a renewed attack might have been launched, carting off technology, parts and war material as they did so.
A deep shame for the local Moff, one serious enough it might have gotten him removed. But those with an interest in concealing the truth and the power to do so will always take every opportunity to hide their failures. The local Moff didn't report the loss until years later, when he was removed for other violations of his responsibilities and the new Moff was going over the private records discovered in the change.
By that time the Mon Cals had so fortified their system, and built such a strong fleet, they were a tough nut to crack. It took the Empire more time and starships learning this, and by then they had other problems than one low-priority aquatic world.
A water world very much grateful to the Jedi who'd set them free.
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(Posted Tue, 27 Apr 2004 21:07)
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