Saga of the Bridgers-Year 4

Chapter 4: In the name of the Rebellion

March 7.

Almost two months since Mandalore, and since Jaral had officially took command of the entire Rebellion. And exactly a month since she turned 20.

These two months had been quite intense for the young woman. As she reorganized the strength of the Rebellion across the galaxy in a handful of major bases. Yavin was her main center of operation, yes, but she also had some large outposts created on Dantooine, the place where the rebellion was born; then Raxus, where many sympathizers of the old Separatist Movement had kept on the struggle against the Republic when it turned to the Empire; finally, with the help of Cham Syndulla, the Rebels started to send men and materials to Ryloth, to help the Twi'lek in their resistance. This was also intended as a way to train the rebel troopers: the Twi'lek had been fighting for decades, meaning that they were masters of asymmetric warfare, exactly the kind of doctrine that Jaral intended to adopt.

Much of her free time was spent reading and reading again 'The Art of War', which she find incredibly interesting and useful. All those ideas about out-smarting your opponent, deploy your forces in a way that nullified the enemy's numerical superiority, know when it was time to fight and when to retreat and, finally what was probably her favorite quote:

'To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence:

Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance

without fighting.'

She still wasn't completely sure how such a thing could be possible, or at least if it was possible against the Empire, but it was a very intriguing concept. Jaral spent a lot of time confronting her strategy with Admiral Raddus and other esteemed military minds of the two Alliances, who, on their part, where very impressed at her creativity and multi-tasking capacity.

Someone else, though, was having less fun: the Ghost crew.

Sure, Ezra spent a lot of time improving his Jedi training with Kanan and Jaral, when she had the time. The three of them also had some more time to confront their knowledge of the Force with Thabo, who explained many things about the 'Flux', as they called the Force in the Milky Way.

For example, Thabo explained that the psionics had a higher percentage of population that could get glimpse of the future. To the Ordo Quaeris, the Flux/Force didn't simply bind living beings together, but it also bound time. One of the first psionics, Emperor Federico XX, had had two major visions in his life that changed the course of the Federation's history: first a warning against the invasion of Earth by the Covenant, then another one against the Reapers, even if it was 40 years into the future and he died shortly after having the vision, passing it onto his great-grandson and next Emperor, Lorenzo.

All interesting concepts, but Ezra was still bitter that, even with the Rebellion gathering so much strength, the goal of helping Lothal seemed so far away.

The crew had very little free time on their hands, in general. When there wasn't a drill, there were supply runs to do, or help with the maintenance, but there wasn't much action, because Jaral wanted the other units of the Alliance to make experience. And on that side, at least it was working: Wedge, Hobbie and their Rogue Squadron was increasing its fame significantly as the Captain led more and more successful raids against Imperial installations. Squads of saboteurs, trained by the Alliance Marines, had also proven their ability in sabotage and search&rescue missions on worlds heavily controlled by the Empire.

Darvos spent a lot of his time in the communication department as well. He had successfully nullified the algorithm that Iulius had used to tamper rebel communications and find Atollon, and what was best, he had reverse-engineered it to encrypt rebel transmissions in a way that, Darvos was sure, even Iulius would struggle to break without his brother noticing.