A/N
Hello once again, everyone. Sorry for the bit of delay, but I regrettably had to go and get one of those new-fangled 'lives' the kids are so into these days. Stupid thing, I'd like to return it.

However, I do have something for you guys. This is the second-longest chapter I've ever released, and for good reason. We're really starting to kick off the plot now. Only chapter 30 has more words than this one, but I'd like to think this one's higher quality makes up for the ~100 fewer words. Before the actual chapter, I'd like to take the time to do two things I didn't get a chance to in PMs. Feel free to skip this if you want.

First, congratulations to Captain SteeleStag for being the first to pick up on something (or at least being the first to point it out) that I've been working towards for ~2 years now. Check out their Chapter 39 review to see what I'm talking about.

And second, Kaiser Chris pointed out a bunch of flaws in some of the earlier chapters. I have one thing to say to this: Yeah, he's absolutely right. The first 20 or so chapters honestly are a bit of a mess sometimes. You might have noticed the heavy influence I had in the first several chapters from Matthew Stover's (guy who wrote the Revenge of the Sith novelisation) writing style. That kept it mostly on track, but from chapters ~5-20, I was diverging quickly from canon, and at the same time establishing my own writing voice. So a bunch of errors, like the ones he pointed out, slipped through. It doesn't help that 13-year-old me was probably going for what sounded cool over what would be realistic. ;)

Once I eventually finish this story, I'll probably go and rewrite the earlier chapters to bring them up to the same level as the more modern ones, and also edit out as many plot-holes as possible. So if you see anything, please, point it out to me. I won't take offense, I'll just shake my head at how odd the thought process of 13-year-old me was.

Enjoy, everyone! All the bonus points in the world if you can name the speech the end of this chapter is based off of.

All things considered, this meeting was long overdue. Vader had been away from Coruscant for months now, and while he would have preferred to do this as soon as possible, the Grievous problem had held his full attention for far too long. He had a short window between missions right now. While he had no clue how long it would take to root out a galactic scale insurrection, he was willing to bet it'd take a very long time. This could very well be the last time he'd be on Coruscant for up to a year.

The Stormtroopers flanking the door of the Imperial Department of Military Research (the colour of the building was as dull as the name) let him pass without incident. He marched alone through the corridors, the barren grey walls reminding him somewhat of the Star Destroyers he'd spent so much time on recently.

In the main lobby, Vader took a left down a long, straight passageway. Doors leading to the offices of junior staff were spaced a few metres apart on either side, though these weren't his destination. At the far end of the hall, he took a right, leading him deeper into the facility. Then another right. Left. Right. And then he stopped.

Before him was a nondescript door, nearly identical to all of the others in the building to the unaware. 'BEVEL LEMELISK' was emblazoned in a bold white on the semi-opaque viewport. 'MANAGING DIRECTOR: PLANETARY ORE EXTRACTOR PROJECT' was written below in slightly smaller print. The sinister undertones of that message would be lost on most, but not Vader. He knew exactly what it really meant.

Not bothering to knock, Vader turned the (apparently unlocked) doorknob and stepped through the doorway. The office was surprisingly spacious, given what he'd seen of the rest of the building, and appeared even larger due to the lack of any personal artifacts. But Lemelisk apparently liked it this way.

Sitting at the desk in the centre of the office and at him warily was the aforementioned Director. The man was pushing 60 by now, though from his appearance you'd have probably guessed he was in his 80s. His hair had gone completely white, wrinkles creased the entirety of his face, and he'd been rapidly gaining weight, if the increase since their last meeting nearly 6 months prior was any indication. But the man's pale blue eyes still held the same sharpness to them. While his body might look like it was failing, his mind was still healthy and as quick as ever.

Lemelisk seemed content to let Vader speak first, and the Sith had no qualms in obliging him. "Greetings, Director. I'm here to speak to you about the Extractor project. Would you care to explain your apparent lack of progress?"

While he did flinch slightly, the man didn't seem to be overly frightened, which was good. If he wasn't scared, he likely didn't think he'd messed up. "While I do apologise for the delay, Lord Vader, you must understand the technical challenges associated with a task of this scale!"

"Spare me the details."

The man nodded. "As you wish, my Lord. But allow me to say, one does not create the ultimate power in the universe overnight."

Behind his mask, Vader rolled his eyes. This project would never create anything more than an oversized, if deadly toy. It might have its uses, sure, but it would never be anything of significance compared to the Force. The only reason he outwardly supported the whole endeavor was because of the Emperor's command.

"I understand that, Director, but you've had almost a year. The prototype was finished months ago. Since then, you've had hundreds of trillions of credits diverted from the conventional military forces. And yet, somehow, with almost unlimited resources, construction of the full version hasn't even started. So I ask you, Director, what is the delay?"

Lemelisk was looking a bit more apprehensive now. "We've run into some issues with the scale, my Lord. The kyber crystals have no issue focusing a beam at only a few hundred kilometres, as we proved with the prototype. However, when we increase the distance it has to travel, the beam dissipates. At anything over 3,000 kilometres, it becomes completely useless except as a source of light."

Vader stared him down. "And how do you plan on fixing this problem?"

"Either we need far more kyber crytals and a larger design, or some major advances in power technology," the scientist told him, "The funds we've received have been put to use; my research teams have informed me of a 10% increase in the effective range already!"

"You'll have to do better than 10%, Director. The Emperor," Vader not-so-subtly threatened, while folding his arms over his chest, "has been promised great results."

Lemelisk closed his eyes and sighed. "I'm well aware of the Emperor's expectations, Lord Vader. I sometimes wonder if they're too high to achieve."

For a moment, Vader didn't respond, surprised the man would dare speak of Palpatine that way in front of his widely-known enforcer. While he may privately agree to some extent, he couldn't let that kind of talk go unreprimanded.

"Be careful how you speak of the Emperor," he growled, lowering his voice even further than normal. "Some of his more patriotic supporters might... take offense."

With a sigh, the scientist nodded. "Yes. Yes, of course. We wouldn't want to offend his Majesty, would we?" He paused for another moment. "Lord Vader, I'm not going to make any promises I know I can't keep. What the Emperor asks... Look, what we're doing here? All of this is completely revolutionary. As far as I'm aware, no-one has ever even attempted weaponising this sort of technology before. We're pushing boundaries daily. The issue isn't funding; we have plenty of that. No, the problem is time. I have no doubt that we'll eventually be able to accomplish what the Emperor asks. It just won't be as fast as he'd like."

"What sort of time frame would be realistic, then?" Vader asked.

"Its hard to say." Lemelisk was keeping his voice carefully neutral now. "Before we received the extra funding, I would have said upwards of a decade. Now, with nearly unlimited credits to spread around? I honestly can't say with any precision. The actual construction shouldn't take more than a year, it all depends on how quickly we can overcome the power issues and hit the target distance. Perhaps two years, total?"

Vader wasn't feeling particularly generous at the moment. "You have six months to begin construction. There's a great deal of money being dumped into this project; and we'd hate for it to go to waste, wouldn't we? A lot of powerful men are betting on a usable weapon being built at the end of all this. I will have someone checking in on you periodically, and there will be consequences if you fail to deliver."

Lemelisk slumped in his seat, a defeated air about him. "Yes, Lord Vader."

The Sith nodded, satisfied. "Good day, Director. Do not disappoint me."

And with that, he swept out of the room, dark cloak billowing after him.

Space is, as most people know, very big. So big, in fact, that to call it merely 'big' would generally be considered something of an understatement. While hyperdrive technology connected the galaxy, that was simply for moving from point A to point B. There was still a vast distance between those two points that remained unknown; it had merely been skipped over.

This was a fact Grievous happily planned to exploit with the Shadowfeed broadcasts. If he so desired, (and he never would, it was risky to the point of suicidal) he could park the Independence just a few light years away from Coruscant itself, broadcast the feed, and jump out of the area before the Empire could get a ship close enough to attack. It would be incredibly foolish, but not impossible to pull it off.

No, instead he'd found a nice empty spot on the fringes of the Chommell Sector, with nothing nearby to disturb them as the message was sent out. Boring, perhaps, but much safer than immediately beside Imperial Centre.

This was the first time Grievous had been onboard the Independence in quite some time. It was perhaps a bit odd, but he found that he'd missed the ship. It wasn't that the Horseman of Death was a bad vessel by any means, he just preferred his old Lucrehulk over the Republic-designed dreadnought.

Sarden, predictably, complained an awful lot about space travel for the first several days. Grievous's patience for the unwelcome noise extended to snapping at the Koorivar to get used to it, and the general thought that was rather generous, by his standards.

The other new arrival had far less of a problem with finding her space legs. Grievous's command structure was barely existent most of the time, seeing as it was just him and a bunch of droids, and Oshan had settled into it right at the top by simple virtue of her being an organic and knowing what she was doing.

His paranoia (well justified, in his opinion, after the Triberis debacle) was showing, though. He made sure she didn't have the power to do anything without his approval, and the droids would only answer to her so long as he told them to. She'd seemed a bit annoyed at the lack of trust at first, but hadn't complained thus far. Grievous knew that system couldn't hold up for long, especially if he expanded his ranks to include many other organics, but it would work for the time being.

With the first Shadowfeed broadcast fast approaching, Grievous was a bit upset he had to be the one on the projector for it. He'd personally thought Sarden's experience in these sorts of things would make him a better choice. Even putting Oshan out there would be preferable; a pretty face went a long way in media, he'd noticed. Grievous was more of a doer than a talker, to put it mildly, and he was literally designed to strike fear into the hearts of his enemies.

But as Sarden had put it, "This is your movement you want to start. Not mine, and not Oshan's. I'm here to write the words, you just need to give them a voice. The two of us can handle the broadcasts after this, but the first time, it has to be you addressing the galaxy as a whole to get this thing started. Now go clean all the bits of blood off your armour and put on a clean cloak. We're going for the moral high ground here; you can't look like a serial killer."

Grievous had begrudgingly complied. He saw the man's point, he truly did, but he wasn't a politician. He'd suck it up and act like one if it was necessary, but that didn't mean he had to like it.

The three of them stood in the communications room next to the bridge, ready to record and release the culmination of two weeks worth of work. Grievous stood in front of the recorder, fidgeting occasionally. His armour was clean for the first time in months, and he wore the formal white and red cloak he seldom used anymore. Sarden and Oshan stood to the side, with a B1 manning the camera.

The first take was a disaster. The second through fourth takes weren't much better. After the fifth take, Sarden stopped him and said, "Remember, General, you don't have to believe a word of it, you just have to act like you do."

"What if you have him go through it line by line?" Oshan chipped in. "Work on the inflection and pacing of each piece one at a time, then string them together at the end for the final recording."

Nodding thoughtfully, Sarden grinned, "Not a bad idea at all..."

It took 3 hours to go over each line in the speech, making sure he could say it perfectly to Sarden's high standards, with appropriate gestures to boot. Then he would have him do the different lines together, just two or three at a time at first, gradually increasing the number and length of the lines until, after the 6 most agonisingly boring hours of Grievous's life, he could perform the speech in it's entirety to the taskmaster's satisfaction.

"I think," The Koorivar said after his third time through the entire speech without messing up, "We're ready to record."

All of them returning to their original positions in the room, Grievous faced the recorder, back straight and chin up, ready to simply have this torture over with.

"All set, General?" Sarden asked.

"Let's get this over with." Grievous grumbled. "Droid, ready?"

A thumbs up from the machine. "Good. Begin recording."

"People of the Galaxy, I wish you a good morning, afternoon, or evening, wherever you are. I come before you now not as an ruler, unlike our dear leader Palpatine. I do not want to be an Emperor, that's not my business. No, today I come before you as one who has fought, and as one who continues to fight.

"I used to be like so very many of you. An inhabitant of a little world called Kalee in the Outer Rim. So small, and insignificant, that it was completely ignored by the Republic, even as we were invaded, and we pleaded for help from the Senate, from the Jedi, from anyone. Billions on my world in abject poverty, uncounted trillions throughout the galaxy. The Republic had never helped us, they only ignored. The Empire would never help us, they only harm.

"Just under four years ago, the people of the galaxy finally had enough. Dooku, Count of Serenno, saw the problems the galaxy faced, and began orchestrating a movement to escape the corruption of the Republic. The Confederacy of Independent Systems was born, and when the Republic's spies on Geonosis were captured, the Jedi led an illegally raised army of slaves to their rescue, grown in vats and conditioned to die for a Republic that offered no future to them. Many claim that we lost the war that followed. Perhaps we did, but I'd argue the Republic lost more than the war; they lost their ideals. They lost their morality. Could the Republic truly claim to win, when in doing so they became a sick perversion of themselves?

"Greed and fear has poisoned the minds of the senate. It has barricaded the galaxy with hate, and now it marches us into bloodshed and misery. Even now, my voice is reaching billions throughout the galaxy - uncountable men, women, little children, so many races and species and aliens of all description - all victims of a system that makes men torture the innocent and kill without reason.

"To those who can hear me, I say, 'Do not dispair!' The yoke of misery and oppression hanging on our necks is but the passing of greed. The ambition and lust for power of one man who fooled the galaxy. Dictators die, and the system they build will pass, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. So long as men die, liberty can never truly perish.

"Beings of the galaxy, I ask this of you: Do not give yourselves to thugs! Do not submit to those who despise you, enslave you, and exploit you! Who drill you, indoctrinate you, use you as cannon fodder! Don't let them tell you what to do, what to think, and what to feel! You are not mindless automatons! You are not droids! You are living beings!

"You may ask, 'What power could we possibly have; the miner from Kessel, the scientist from Muunilinst, the farmer from Ryloth? What power do we have against an Empire?' To that I say: The power is within you! You the people have the power to say, 'NO!' To say, 'I do not want to be a slave! I do not want to be cannon fodder! I want freedom! Freedom on my terms, most importantly the freedom to choose!' I say to you, you can choose! Choose to fight! Against tyranny and oppression, against the status quo, and against the ambitions of one man. One Emperor and his lackeys cannot hope to stand against the united power of the people, when their will is to say, 'NO!'

"Then, in the name of freedom and justice, let us use this power, let us all unite. Let us fight for a new galaxy! By the promise of these things, a dictator has risen to power, but he won't fulfill that promise, and he never will! The Emperor may have freed himself, but he has enslaved the people!

"So the mantle falls to us, the people of the galaxy, to fulfill that promise. Speak to your friends, organise your cells. Go underground, or better yet, into deep space. Engineers, scientists, a droid factory can be built anywhere. Use that to your advantage! Attached to this transmission are the schematics for a compact factory that produces battle droids. Supply the raw materials, and you'll have built an army from the ground up! Prepare, and when the time is ripe, we shall reclaim the galaxy from the hatred and ambition of dictators! Don't fight for slavery, fight for liberty! Say no to tyranny, and strive for freedom!

"Beings of the galaxy, I say to you, in the name of all things good and decent in this existence, let us all unite!"