Leia was rather placid as she stared reflectively at the comm vid screen.

"Well, I believe the Republic's motives are probably known by you, the Republic wants Coruscant for many of the reasons that everybody else does, the main one being the Imperials, who we meant to beat in getting here and succeeded in doing. On the assumption of such being known by you, what is it that you want? Or more specifically, the people...."

Leia reached out with the Force down to the planet, looking for one presence among too many to count. But something about this man felt odd, and so she decided to try and feel it out.. whatever it was.

Xarrin shrugged at the screen, his hand idly snaking inside of his jacket, to feel the ysalamari tube he'd been wearing since in office.

"The people want you dead, and the hell away from my planet. Barring that, they want to fight you; provided they lose, they don't want to see an invading ground force."

Crae chuckled lightly.

"I'm supposed to throw everything I have at you, watch it all die, and then hand over my planet to you very quietly. I would rather not go through the first step. If we can convince the people we fought, and lost, then there is a chance this can end without a billion riots planetwide."

OOC: Posting in a rush, forgive the choppiness or maybe uncovered ground


Someone tapped Leia lightly on the shoulder, almost as if afraid to touch her. She turned around to look at whoever wanted her, and found it to be a harried looking Intelligence officer. She turned back around to Xarrin.

"Excuse me for a moment" She leaned forward and locating the sound pickup, she turned it off, then rose from the station and walked out of range of the vid pickup.

"Ma'am, he's lying" The officer said simply as he appeared by her side, and handed her a wad of duraplast paper.

"What's this?" Leia asked, flipping through the pages of crammed, incomprehensible text.

"The top sheets are the Coruscant main database that I hacked maybe 8 days ago. Look here..."

He pointed to the middle of the page.

"This guy's name is Xarrin Crae. 8 days ago, the Governor's name was not Xarrin Crae, it was him." The Intel tapped the page.
"For a long time Coruscant's government has been in turmoil, they've changed governors I don't know how many times. The people, most of them, probably have no idea who their governor is, or if they do, how he came to be. They probably don't care, either...."

"I don't have time for the whole nine yards, get to the point" Leia interrupted sharply. That made the intel flinch, but he continued.

"Well, the gist of it is this: That guy like hell knows what all of those people down there want. He may know what his guys want, but not the whole population of Coruscant. He's only been in office a week, and I have funny feelings about how he got there. It's impossible, inconceivable! All stats show that he's full of a great deal of BS. He probably has by now gotten groups started that will incite riots with propoganda, and I've seen a lot of it on the holonet. But really, we could take Coruscant by force if you wanted and have a lot less trouble than any previous attempt. These guys are no Imperials, and they're probably starved for recources..."

Leia held up her hand. "Thank you.." she glanced down at his rank badge "Lieutenant, I commend you for your work and dedication, and I appreciate it. But I must take and run, I'm afraid, I've got a call on the impatient line"

She slid back into the comm station seat and reactivated the sound pickup. An icy edge slid into her voice as she spoke.

"I apologize for the delay, but it was quite necessary. Now, where were we...? Ah yes.

Mr. Crae, exactly how much of the population of Coruscant do 'your people' represent?"

She practically spat the last sentence at him.

Xarrin laughed Leia's surliness off. It was only a matter of time until she figured out just how he got into office; the truth was, he really did get his information in legitimate ways.

"My men represent one percent of Coruscant's population. And my opinion is not based on their advice; were it, I would currently be stealing from the population and bombing spaceports.

"Do you think I am an idiot? What kind of two-bit idiot's array operation do you think the government runs? Only the upper hierarchy of the Coruscant leadership has changed; I get these ideas from polling statistics and experience. I guess you've forgotten Coruscant's history; we've been conquered a lot. The people here don't like incoming armies, because every time an army comes, things seem to get worse: hence, they want to fight you. This is logic and facts, not political agenda."

Xarrin sneered the last words, and reached for the 'disconnect' button, then reconsidered.

"We don't have a big army. We don't have the resources you do. And you know what, you could just blast my fleet, come down here and kill every single person on the streets, and then start imposing some sort of bloody house arrest curfew bullshit. But that's a little too Imperial for my liking, and probably for your's, too.

"If you don't want to kriffing co-operate, if you'd rather slaughter my men or deal with mass rioting and rebellion, then you can go on accepting the advice of your clearly-ignorant intelligence operatives. Or you can do the right thing, think this through, maybe use some of that Force intuition you love so much, and we can do this real nice-like. You're coming here like a warmonger, conquering my planet, and I'm trying to be a bloody charitable humanitarian- yet I'm being questioned. What are you suspicious of? I'm not asking for anything- no money, no political position, not a damn thing. I don't want anything from you. I just want to save lives, and if we join the New Republic without at least a percieved fight, then there will be mass violence. Remember what happened last time the New Republic conquered Coruscant? The Krytos virus.

"Now, what will it be- slash and burn my forces and oppress riots like Imperials, or co-operate? At the very least, listen to what I will propose."

A Force bubble... he's hiding...

Devious. Well, at least he wasn't dumb.

"I have no intentions of attacking. And I know you know that, as you no doubt have scrounged up every bit of information you could find on both myself and the faction which I represent since our last chat. So spare both yourself and the rest of us the time, ultimately we are both on the same side of this war. You said you had an idea to serve all purposes well. I am more than willing to listen, so let's hear it"

Xarrin sat back, pulling open one of the drawers of his desk and retrieving a datapad. He typed up a few pieces of data on it, then refocused on Leia.

"I have two squadrons in the air, three Corellian Corvettes, and a Dreadnaught. Somehow, we have to convince the people I fought and lost utterly. But without losing any of my men.

"What we have working for us is that my men are unorganized. They don't know for sure who else is in the fleet; if they saw a bunch of comrades fall, maybe they would stand down.

"You're a Jedi... can you make that happen? I need them to see your overwhealming force blast several large ships, to convince them that they've fought, but scare them enough to make them surrender."

Xarrin paused, and rubbed his eyes wearily.

"If you can do that, I'll make the problems on the ground go away, and we can all go home happy."

"That would take a tremendous effort on our part. We'd have to project the image into each crew member's mind that would see of such an event occuring. Sensors, what's out there right now?"

"Two 'vettes, Ma'am."

Leia leaned back in her chair, noticed Xylon was pacing slowly in front of the comm station. The Intel officer hovered still near the back of the bridge.

"That's not too bad." Her attention shot back to the Intel officer, who involunrarily snapped to attention.

"What sort of group should we project coming up to bite us, and from where?"

"Probably some small cruisers, Carracks maybe, a couple of corvettes. That's stuff they'd probably have lying around somewhere realistically. The only valid place for them to magically appear from with the present supervision is onplanet"

Leia looked thoughtful. "It could work. There's only two ships, Hex and I could handle it pretty easily, to stay on the safe side."

She glanced sideways at Han. "No offense, that is..."

Leia stood up abruptly, and looked down at Xarrin's image.

"We'll give it a go, we're capable of producing a small flotilla of four or five ships, 3 corellian corvettes, two carracks most likely. And we'll do it now."

Xarrin merely nodded gravely.

Leia suddenly grinned. "I'll terminate the transmission rudely, for touch"

She cut the transmission before Xarrin could reply, and walked forward to stand beside Xylon.

"Well, I can't say I didn't take at least some satisfaction in doing that. But hey, I'm human!"

She knelt on the deck and heaved a breath. "Okay, let's do this. Xylon, take the Corvette that's closer in, we'll have to half link to get the timing right. Three corvettes, two carracks. Captain, have the whole fleet fire in tandem, but don't worry about it because Han, we're going to link to you and give you a Force signal to fire and where. So slave all of the ships fire controls together and deploy them properly, because you'll see the thread just as they will..."

She quit speaking as she zoned into the Force, reaching out subtly to the minds of her assigned ship, picking out the gunners, the bridge. Then she reached out to Xylon, felt that he had done the same, and on some inexpicable cue they suddenly made a small flotilla of starship pop into existence in the Coruscant atmosphere, just short of sensor range but closing quickly towards the Republic's ships above.....

Lastly she reached out to Han, linked him into the now three way bond. All he had to do anyways was aim and pull the trigger....