Florence Squad: The Thrawn Trilogy

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Chapter 1: Heir to the Legion

It has been five years since the end of the war. The Church has destroyed Laser Moon, defeated Shadow Saturn and the Legion leadership, and driven out the remnants of the old Legion fleet to a distant corner of the galaxy. Claire is married and expecting twins. Master Benedict is looking for an apprentice as the first in a long-awaited new line of Church knights.

Thousands of light years away, Count Smith, the last of Saturn's Warlords of the Legion, has taken command of the shattered Legion fleet, readied it for war, and pointed it at the fragile heart of the Church. Smith is searching for a dark Church knight and is succeeding in restoring the Legion.

General Griffin, captain of the Legion cruiser Shark, receives word of a successful information raid on the Pandora system. A retaliatory strike by a Pandora task force is easily defeated by Griffin's superior, Smith. In the Church District, Master Richard approaches Benedict in his sleep to say farewell, sending Benedict into depression. Claire, three months pregnant with twins, senses Benedict's depression and sends Brother James to speak with him. On Aqua, Brother Michael and Tatooine offer legal work to Gregory Wolf and his smuggler allies in an attempt to solve the Church's shortage on cargo ships despite the objections of Milan councilor Robert Finn.

On Treebeard, smuggler Thor and his subordinate Rose help Smith and Griffin obtain several creatures called Connors lizards. Afterward, the Shark travels to Saturn's storehouse on Mount Lio. On the mountain, Smith and Griffin encounter Master Reginald, the guardian of the storehouse. Smith's lizard prevents Reginald from using spells within a short radius; with little choice, Reginald offers his services in exchange for two prospective students: Benedict and Claire. Smith sends a group of gremlins to capture Benedict and Claire on Dragon Heart, but the attempt fails; Smith convinces Reginald to seek Benedict while the Legion focuses on capturing Claire. Michael decides to suspend negotiations with the Dragon Heart leaders and return to the Church District; Admiral Peterson, commander in chief of the Church fleet, agrees with Michael's decision, while Finn feels that the departure will generate negative attention. Meanwhile, Smith launches his first offensive: a series of hit-and-run attacks into Church territory.

After another failed kidnapping on Nunseance, Michael and Claire keep a low profile; they decide to visit Ranch Nicholas on Graveyard. Gremlins once again attempt to capture Claire. On Adoy, Benedict discovers a metal cylinder and decides to bring it to Nicholas for investigation. When Michael and Claire and Benedict meet on Graveyard to visit Nicholas, 51 of his mole miners are stolen by the Legion.

Michael and Nicholas discuss plans to visit Thor as part of the smuggler recruitment operation. The Shark intercepts a message coming from Michael's ship in Claire's voice, but Smith knows it is merely a recording; through logical reasoning, he determines that Michael and Nicholas are the only ones aboard, and adjusts his plans accordingly. Smith nearly captures Benedict in a space ambush; Benedict escapes but becomes stranded in his Church fighter until the Mighty Thor discovers them.

Benedict guesses that the Mighty Thor is either a smuggler, a pirate or a disguised warship. Still, he takes his chances and goes aboard as he has no other option. Benedict wakes up and realizes that he is no longer on the freighter. When he finally wakes up, he notices Rose is in the room with him. Thor is undecided as to what he wants to do with Benedict. Michael asks James to transmit a message to the Church District in Claire's voice using James's computer. Michael interprets the response to mean that Finn is gathering forces to possibly push Peterson out of the Church military council. In the meantime, Michael and Nicholas leave Michael's ship to meet with a fellow smuggler who is supposed to tell them the location of Thor's base.

Thor alerts Rose to Michael and Nicholas's arrival and has Benedict brought to a secure area before the two arrive. Thor meets the visitors and is intrigued by the Church's offer. When Smith hails Thor, he says he needs more lizards and wants to have a talk. He tells Thor that he is in the market for some new warships. Smith insists on sending soldiers to aid in a search-and-rescue mission. Thor discovers that Michael and Nicholas know about the Legion members' visit. They sneak out to the storage sheds to snoop on the prisoner that Thor is reportedly holding. When they get to the storage room Benedict was in, they notice that the door opener was tampered with; unknown to them, however, Benedict has escaped with Rose chasing him. Rose and Benedict fight off predators in the forest and camp for the night. Posing as her, Benedict surrenders Rose the next day to a Legion patrol that brings them both to the Treebeard spaceport. There, Michael, Nicholas and Thor's men ambush the Legion soldiers and rescue Benedict before leaving the planet.

With the strain of the recent gremlin kidnapping attempts, Claire and Tatooine flee to his homeworld of Forest Whitaker. However, another gremlin attacks Claire in the middle of the night. She successfully defends herself but the alien stops his attack. Tatooine and Mos Eisley burst into the room immediately and Claire tells them not to kill the alien. Using her laser gun she disables their ship so they are forced to leave.

On board the Shark, Griffin confirms that there are 112 transient warships available at the Mermaid Port shipyards. They activate a cloaking shield and head toward Mermaid Port for their attack. Smith plans to send soldiers to hijack the ships using the stolen mole miners from Graveyard. Commander Spider, who has just arrived at Mermaid Port together with Flower Squadron, notices a bulk freighter without escort and launches his fighters to inspect it. The Flowers are stunned to see the ship explode and see swarms of Legion fighters strike from the wreckage. Michael's ship arrives in the middle of the battle and Michael notices several Legion cruisers in the area. Remembering how the Legion stole the mole miners, Nicholas activates them all by remote control; his move results in many captured ships disabled. Believing that the sudden outcome is simply a temporary setback, Smith withdraws the Legion's forces.

As Michael and Benedict rest after the battle, Claire calls from the Church District to tell them that Peterson has been arrested on charges of treason.

Chapter 2: Dark Spell Rising

Prior to the war, the Church constructed a fleet of 200 arks (huge forerunners to Legion cruisers) that were highly automated. This reduced their crew complement from 16,000 to 2,000 without diminishing their firepower. The flagship of this fleet was the Saber and hence it became known as the Saber fleet. Unfortunately, a virus infected the crews of the entire fleet and drove them insane. The madness caused the crews to "slave" the controls of all ships in the fleet to the Saber and send them all to hyperspeed. The fleet was never seen again until Thor discovered it through a lucky accident several years ago.

Now having full access to Shadow Saturn's private storehouse on Mount Lio, Count Smith presses his advantage to marshal more forces for the battle against the Church. When his forces capture one of Thor's colleagues who also knew where the fleet was, he assembles a clone army from the storehouse to take over the fleet.

Brother Michael and Ranch Nicholas try to recruit former Federation congressman Jasper White to join the fight against the Legion. However, the two face stern opposition from him because he fell out with Master Jacob in the early stages of the war and waged his own private war against the Legion. They also discover that White's fleet also has Saber warships.

Elsewhere, Master Reginald uses a spell to summon Master Benedict. Benedict responds to the summons and begins instruction with Reginald on Aqua. However, the presence of Rose complicates things further, especially when it is revealed that she is a former agent of Saturn.

With gremlin captive Diavola in tow, Claire, Brother James and Tatooine travel to Diavola's homeworld of Hantu. She learns of the Legion's deception of the gremlins and convinces them to support the Church.

After rejecting Reginald's training, Benedict rejoins Nicholas and Michael in securing the Saber fleet against Smith's troops. However, over the course of the battle, they find out that Smith has captured all but 15 of the arks. Rose is also knocked out during the fight when her fighter is shot down.

Chapter 3: The Last Command

Now emboldened by his recent capture of the Saber fleet and staffing it with clone personnel, Count Smith launches his offensive against the Church with great success. Through certain deception techniques (such as faking a turbolaser barrage using cloaked ships to fire underneath planetary shields), several planets quickly capitulate to the Legion. He ups the ante when the Legion fleet deploys 22 cloaked asteroids over the Church District and fakes the presence of over 260 asteroids to immobilize the planet and the Church leadership. By this time, Master Jacob finally reconciles with Jasper White, whom he lets lead the Church District's defenses.

Elsewhere, Brother Michael, Tatooine and Thor work to form an alliance of smugglers to assist with the Church defense. Although the smugglers consider staying in the sidelines, a Legion raid on their meeting place (set up by turncoat smuggler Christian Bail without Smith's permission) finally unites them against the Legion.

Rose, who was knocked out in the battle for the Saber fleet, joins Claire and Michael in stopping a Legion commando force sent to the Church District to kidnap Claire's newborn twins for Master Reginald. The Church knight wants to turn Claire, Master Benedict and the twins to the Legion. The raid's sole survivor points to Rose as their mole and she is arrested, but she comes clean to Claire about the Mount Lio cloning facility. As they slip out of the Church District, Church security shuts down a Legion eavesdropping system located in the Church Synagogue.

Rose, Benedict, Michael, Ranch Nicholas, Tatooine, Brother James and Thor travel to Mount Lio. They slip past Legion forces in the area with help from the gremlins and two local alien races. Michael, Nicholas and Tatooine rig the base to explode. Rose, Benedict, Thor and Claire face Reginald, who produced his own Benedict clone named Benedict 2 (using Benedict's hand that was cut off by a sword, intact with Master Richard's own laser gun) to attack them. After a fierce battle, Rose kills Reginald and fulfills Shadow Saturn's orders - by killing Benedict 2.

Having learned of Smith's deception strategy, the Church fleet organizes an assault on the Legion shipyards at Bavaria to capture a device that can find the cloaked asteroids over the Church District. A feint operation at Tangerine will draw Legion forces away from Bavaria. However, Smith sees through the deception and marshals his forces at the shipyards. When the Church fleet and the smugglers attack, the Legion forces severely maul them. Things nearly go the Legion's way - until General Griffin receives word of the attack on Mount Lio. When he reads that gremlins were among the attackers, Smith's own gremlin bodyguard Taura stuns him and arrests the count himself before handing him over to the Church fleet. With all hopes of victory now dashed by Smith's defeat, Griffin orders all Legion forces to retreat.

Back in the Church District, Benedict gives Rose his master's laser gun and invites her to train as a Church knight.