How to Take an Empire

Chapter Fifty-Six: Idea

The elder council left Ahsoka in the room by herself once their meeting was over. After only a few minutes, Diya came in, Rex following behind her.

"What did you say to them?" Diya demanded.

Ahsoka shrugged. "Nothing special."

"Nothing special? They came out of here talking about you as though you were the one who invented the vaporator. You had to have said something special."

Ahsoka smiled a little and said, "Just because you know some of my secrets doesn't mean I tell you all of them, Diya."

Diya scoffed. "Oh, trust. I know that. One of these days, I'm going to get you to tell me how you met tall, dark, and psycho and how you managed to get pregnant in the midst of a war."

Rex let out a suspicious sounding cough that Ahsoka was sure covered up a snicker based on the amusement she sensed from him.

"One day," Ahsoka assured her. "But right now that's irrelevant. We have to get someone into Jabba's palace, and we don't have a lot of time to do it. Give me the specific details of your plan."

Diya went over their plan from the beginning. Ahsoka made the younger woman repeat every part that they might be able to adjust and turned over every detail in her head. There was a lot they could tweak. A lot that they would inevitably have to as plans never went exactly as they were meant to when it came to these sorts of things. And for all Jabba's strengths and paranoia, he also had many personal weaknesses. But there was nothing they could do to deactivate the minefield without someone on the inside.

"And you've got no one else inside that could manage it?' Ahsoka asked.

"It took us months to get Jabba to trust our spy enough that they had enough access and proximity to be able to sabotage the minefield," Diya said. "There's no one else with that kind of proximity that could manage it not only before Jabba managed to kill them, but also before the Empire's own spies in that place contacted the Empire about the rebellion. And then we'd have a whole other problem."

Ahsoka sighed. Unfortunately, their entire plan hinged on eliminating Jabba. Eliminating Jabba meant breaking the power structure of Hutt Space. Then the Rebellion and the Liberty Resistance could fill the power vacuum and take over channels Jabba had in place to patrol and control the hyperspace lanes. With control of the hyperspace lanes, they could effectively cut off a substantial part of the Outer Rim and even an outer edge of the Mid-Rim, containing planets like Naboo from the Empire, disrupting both supply lines and military access.

Even if they won the battle against the Empire when they came to Tatooine, the victory would only be temporary if they didn't remove Jabba.

"I'm all for just raining bombs on the palace from the above," Diya said with a shrug.

"We want to get rid of Jabba, but we don't want to kill innocent people. There are people there, forced into slavery through no fault of their own. They deserve to be saved. Besides, that kind of attack takes a level of tech and precision we don't have right now."

"It seems pretty necessary to me. There's not a slave, present or former, who's not willing to die for the cause of eradicating slavery. And I've spoken to many. Slavery is a worse fate than death to them."

"Diya, that's not our call to make. If it comes to that, that's a choice we'll let the people who have been part of that institution and their leaders make on their own," Ahsoka said. "Besides, I don't even think we're anywhere near that desperate."

"You've got an idea?" Rex asked.

"Yeah. A good one. Relatively speaking."

"With all due respect, any time you have a 'relatively speaking' good idea, that means things are probably going to hell," Rex pointed out.