The glare of hyperspace hummed overhead outside the window of the bridge, as the clatter of keys echoed quietly, the beeps of monitors and idle chatter of battledroids at their stations filling the silence. Looming over it all, General Grievous, Supreme Commander of the Droid Armies of the Confederacy of Independent Systems, glared silently at the stars outside the viewport, as if he could burn the destination to ash with pure disdain.
To his right, lounging in an officer's seat, the fingers of a blindfolded young woman, clad in black, danced across keyboards and touchscreen monitors. 1's and 0's flew across her obscured vision; though she didn't seem to acknowledge them, as a holographic screen projected to her left flickered through menus and protocols. Darth Sinnali, she was called, and her proficiency in her task was guided by more than mere skill. The deft dexterity. The blind surety. Every movement was guided by the Force to aid the Sith in doing what needed doing within the relatively slim timeframe they had.
After a long while, a deep sigh of relief escaped Sinnali, as she gave a groaning stretch, arcing her arms over her head and slumping back in her seat was a smile.
"Are you finished sabotaging my army yet?" Grievous husked, a glower in his slitted, golden eyes.
Glancing over her shoulder up at him -even though the blindfold seemingly made the act pointless, Sinnali grinned widely. "Oh,
relax. You know perfectly well that I'm doing nothing of the sort." Her fingers skimmed across her screen, eliciting a beep from the general's station, and Grievous snorted, before accepting the prompt to open the data packet and pore over what his co-commander had done.
After several minutes, Grievous's claws rapped out a pattern on his armrests. A growl of reluctant approval escaped his throat, and he had to suppress of wheezing cough at the irritation it elicited. "I see..."
Sinnali rolled her eyes... not that any could see that, but the slight rotating tilt of her head indicated as much. "As far as I'm aware, we should be safe now-" Grievous scoffed. "-from friendly fire."
What exactly she had been writing was alternative targeting and enemy profiling programming for the Malevolence and its droid army. Among many things that were of distinct -and reasonable- concern to this local universe's Admiral Yularen, the droids' preprogrammed enemy profiles were one. If they were meant to ally themselves with the Republic for this venture, then the last thing they needed was for their droids to gun down Clones, Jedi... or anyone else for that matter without explicit instructions to. To describe it as a "diplomatic incident" would be too light a term in the current crisis, and battledroids were not exactly known for being the brightest tools in the shed. If all else failed, fall back on programming, so she meant to nip this in the bud.
To that effect, she had designed a secondary enemy profile packet, one that would be uploaded to both the Malevolence and the droids aboard it through their main command hub aboard the flagship. And furthermore, she had needed to go to the trouble of altering the security clearance of the droid army on every level to ensure that none of the local Separatists potentially dug into places they weren't welcome. So, in the end, there had been introduced several new layers of clearance. She and Grievous obviously sat at the top, followed by the Republic, then their fellow universe hoppers, then any other Separatists. And she'd needed to make sure that all levels of that clearance, save for the very top, required she and Grievous's personal approval to exploit. While the droids had generally been set to a default behavior of "nonhostile" outside the Malevolence, any intruders to the warship without visitor clearance would be dealt with as normal, and they would deserve it wholly.
The main goal, in the end, was simply to ensure that when they dropped out of hyperspace, the Malevolence and its droid crew didn't automatically lock onto all the Republic vessels around them with their weapon systems with hostile intent. Rather, they were given explicit instructions to the contrary. The weapons were not to be warmed without either Grievous or Sinnali's personal orders, and all power that would normally be allocated to them was to be redirected to strengthening the deflector shields in case anyone on the Republic's end got trigger happy.
And, of course, all these new security protocols were essentially being contained as their own program. Sinnali hadn't laid a finger on the original programming, merely copied it and adjusted the duplicate. All these changes were wholly temporary and easily reversed or overridden at a moment's notice with either of the co-commanders' clearance.
"So?" Sinnali asked, throwing one arm over the headrest of her seat. "Does it all check out?"
Closing his eyes, Grievous gave a low hiss of a sigh. "Do it."
Grinning, Sinnali navigated the menu's deftly, and with a few more damning key presses, the deed was done.
The Malevolence was now officially ready to fight alongside the Republic without an "incident".
"Five minutes until arrival, Sir," a battledroid announced from the navigation station.
Grievous nodded and silently returned to glaring at the stars, practically counting down every damning second in his head.
"
So," the silence was broken again. "Excited to fight
alongside the Jedi for once?" Sinnali received the molten fury in his gaze with a chuckle and shit-eating grin, raising her hands defensively. "
Alright, alright, baby steps. I get you. All in good time."
Not wanting to give the Sith the satisfaction of seeing him lose to his temper again, Grievous manfully suppressed the slew of Kaleesh expletives that wanted to escape him, only for his fury to bubble harder at the fact that Sinnali could probably hear them anyway from gleaning off his surface thoughts. A growl of frustration rumbled up his throat, only to cause the cyborg to abruptly erupt into a fit of wheezing coughs. Thankfully, Sinnali remained silent henceforth and didn't make light of his moment of weakness, apparently appreciating that she was pressing the edge of his patience at this time of mounting stress.
The sign that arrival was immediately imminent was Sinnali straightening up in her seat. Grievous stiffened to attention as well, as the blur of stars before them began to slow, before suddenly snapping into a familiar vision.
Far below, the colossal city-planet of Coruscant sprawled in all its impersonal, industrial glory.
Sinnali had to admit though, that more striking than the planet she had seen hundreds of times before or the threat she knew was lurking upon it, what really sent a chill of wariness down even her spine was the Republic fleet of unprecedented size currently looming around the planet. If that sort of collective firepower was ever turned their way with any level of real coordination, she doubted even the improved Malevolence would make it out unscathed, even if it was in full retreat from the word "go". For all its firepower, the Malevolence was still designed as a solo ambush predator; engaging in pitched no-holds-barred slugfests with all comers was not in their interests.
Even now, she could see the ongoing bombardment of the Jedi Temple and its vicinity, and a sentimental part of her couldn't help but greatly lament the loss of so much knowledge. Her hunger to learn and improve in the Force was far from limited to the Dark Side, after all, and even if it was perhaps a distant fantasy, some part of her had always hoped to have the chance to consult the Jedi Archives again, to luxuriate in partaking of their holocrons...
But sentimentality was for later.
"
Showtime," she whispered. Exchanging a nod with Grievous, Sinnali carefully double and triple checked the integrity of their deflector shields and that not a single drop of power was presently flowing to their weaponry, as the Malevolence hailed the ship they were told Yularen would be aboard, the Resolute, the (in)famous flagship of Jedi General Anakin Skywalker's fleet in the Grand Republic.
"This is the CIS Malevolence II, arriving to aid the Republic in the Galaxy's time of need."
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