Leadership, they had taught Admiral Joss on the Imperial Military Academy on Carida, was part respect, part fear. One should learn to inspire respect in those who are loyal, and fear in those who are not- and if a little fear was scattered around the feet of the faithful, then that too commanded a healthy respect.
Certainly the Admiral felt just that as The Heir turned to him now, gaze as calm and impassive as ever.
"Thank-you Admiral. Have the crews stand by. Verify that we're all present and correct then contact the Peerless and the Executor and confirm our arrival. All further comms are by running lights only until we've secured our target."
Joss voiced his confirmation, turning to the bridge officers to ensure that they had heard as the battered freighter dropped out of hyperspace at the busy outer orbit ring well beyond the distant Col Dinn orbital platform, responsible for all shipping, handling and duty processing for Bothawuii's planetary cargo, it and its two accompanying freighters immediately lost in the bustle of the loose groupings of freighters waiting for their turn at the Col Din platform.
They were running with what Joss would normally have considered to be a skeleton crew aboard one of the three anonymous, battered freighters that had rendezvoused with them at Obrai-Skai, though there were ten units of the 701st in the hold awaiting the green light, the dozen or so Bothan and Chadra-Fan crewers which the smuggler Karrde had provided along with his carefully camouflaged freighters looking decidedly and deservedly nervous in their company the last time Joss had been down to the hold to check preparations.
The Heir turned, pulling the black leather gloves he wore tight as he flexed his fingers, glancing up as Joss stepped back to his side, "Move to secure channel only. Let me know when the Fury is in place and our friends arrive. We'll go dark at that point."
Joss nodded, glancing to Mara Jade who hovered nearby, listening vaguely, re-checking the small holdout blaster she occasionally wore strapped to her wrist, a special-forces blaster rifle already slung over her shoulder.
Aware of his eyes on her, Mara glanced up at the Admiral, mind too locked on the moment to be bothered looking for clues as to what he was thinking. He raised his eyebrows just fractionally at her though, and the inference was clear; do your job- keep him safe.
It wasn't at all unusual for Luke to accompany ground troops on this kind of operation; in fact it was par for the course, but his would be his first sortie since his injury, and with Reece still onboard the Peerless, Mara would be his sole bodyguard. The strain of this knowledge was already beginning to pull her edgy nerves taught; Skywalker disliked having bodyguards at the best of times and two sets of eyes were far more able to keep up if he took it upon himself to leave them behind, as he had a habit of doing.
Still, his insistence on not only planning and overseeing but very often participating in field missions was one of the reasons why Skywalker had gained such a solid base of popularity among the military, Mara knew; his day-to-day presence in the Core Fleet, only ever returning to Coruscant under direct orders from the Emperor, meant that he was considered very much a 'military man', with real field experience and genuine tactical ability. The military were essentially pack animals, and there was nothing inspired loyalty like a sense of fraternity. Skywalker's willingness to listen to advice from those with experience also stood him in good stead, as did his backing of and faith in the senior officers he trusted, all factors which Mara hadn't failed to notice he'd been subtly underscoring of late.
"I'm sure I can leave things in your capable hands, Admiral." Skywalker said, glancing to Joss as he passed, casually confident. "Now... find me a freighter running under the name Attin'Cho- passive scan only."
.
.
"Ma-am- we have the freighter Attin'Cho on our scopes; bearing one-seventy by fifty-eight by nine-oh-one."
Captain Wyatt turned to her helm officer, her low, measured Mon Calamari tones making her words seem far more solemn then they were.
"Send a greeting and transmit the Alliance code within it. Keep us a good space behind that forward freighter." she added, bulbous head nodding in the direction of the freighter in the 'stack' before them, already aware that another dilapidated freighter had cruised slowly into the space behind them, half its running lights inactive.
But she wasn't too worried; they had chosen their queueing stack with care; one to the outside of the roughly-queueing cluster of weary freighters, all waiting to pay their duty and unload their cargo so they could fill up for the next haul. The Alliance freighter, battered and merchant-rigged, fitted into the bustle of the large port without notice, staying on practically the outermost stack, a good-sized exit to deep space to their port side. "Any sign of any trouble?"
"None, Sir. All the boards are clear, and the Sol has just sent confirmation that they're docking in order to load. They have one Star Destroyer near the Col Din Orbital Platform, close to them."
That brought Wyatt's head around, as well as Leia and Mon's.
"Does he foresee any problems?" Leia asked tensely- like Wyatt she'd originally been puzzled by Mothma's choice of Madine as commander of this operation; he was ex-Imperial army, and well-trained, but he wasn't generally placed in charge of a space-based mission, which came under the Navy's remit. She hadn't questioned it too much though, knowing that Mon and Madine often worked closely together, Mon relying on both his abilities and his opinion.
It was only during the jump here that they had been called into a meeting in which Mon had explained Madine's mission whilst she met Ollin'yaa; technology garnered in a deep-cover covert operation by the Bothans was to be transferred from the Col Din Orbital Platform to the second freighter, the Sol, commanded by Madine. The nature of that technology had opened Leia's eyes wide-
The Empire's new weapon, a Dynamic Electromagnetic Pulse Generator, was being built in the closely-guarded military docks in the Imperial Shipyards at Bilbringi, in readiness to be loaded into the new Super Star Destroyer Invincible, due to launch later that year. Madine was responsible for loading two duplicates of the weapon onto the Sol, secretly built at a separate site in concert with the Imperial original, using information from several spies within the shipyards.
This was an incredible break for the Alliance, and although the weapons couldn't yet be safely fired, they were already committed to an upcoming assault, the nature of which neither Mon nor Madine were willing to discuss, citing the ongoing problem of information leaks, leaving Leia uncomfortably aware that she had been excluded from this loop- which meant that she was in some way implicated.
Something to worry about later. Now however, her mind was on the success of the missions - both of them. If there was a chance that either mission would encounter difficulties, then Madine needed to abort his mission now rather than compromise it and lose the DEMP generators or alert the Empire that they had them. Everyone waited, eyes on the comm officer.
"Ma'am, the General reports that the Destroyer is in a standard holding pattern on the edge of their scanners; he says he's confident that there's no further risk implied by its presence. The Bothans say its been there for almost two days."
Leia turned to Mon, who relaxed a little, raising her eyebrows.
"Fine." Leia replied, "Acknowledge the message and tell him we're going dark now. We'll contact him when the meeting is over." Then, unable to shake some uneasy misgivings, added, "Ask him to break comm silence and let me know immediately if the Star Destroyer leaves Col Din."
She didn't like the fact that the Destroyer was at Col Din Platform; it had, after all, been the supposed rendezvous point for the meeting between Mothma and the Bothan leader, Ollin'yaa. It had been changed at the very last moment by an encrypted message from Intel Chief Tag Massa, who had chosen the new site herself; an innocuous tramp-freighter park well outside the Col Din platform consisting at any given time of about fifty or so dilapidated mid-size freighters and worse-for-wear merchant vessels huddled together in a synchronous orbit waiting for permission to unload their cargo.