I am not named Disney nor am I British.

This story won the Large Story poll for May, bringing in 2,395. Horse for the Force came close with 2,372. Next month's large story poll over on patty on is between A Third Path and Horse.

I realize this is coming out rather last minute, which I don't really like, but I only finished it late Wednesday, and there was no way any of my beta-readers could look it over in a single night and day. That left me to do it, along with Grammarly. Let's see how I did LOL.

And now, without further ado...

Chapter 15: Feints, Follies, and Opening Gambits

As everyone on Coruscant feared or anticipated depended on who they were elsewhere in the galaxy events had begun to move inexorably towards war.

Anticipation was certainly what Dominus was feeling as he leaned back in his version of Sidious's throne room. His throne resided on a ship, a heavily modified Lucrehulk painted matte black, which had only a few hundred crewmembers with everything automated that could be, well beyond even most other Lucrehulks. Currently, it was in orbit over the Neimoidia, the homeworld of the people of the same name.

All around Dominus, the Veil of the Dark Side whispered and flowed, eager to his hand, letting Dominus reach out through it. It wasn't entirely his to control, mores the pity, Sidious had molded it to his own Force presence to a massive degree. Dominus had attempted to wrest control of it several times over the past few days as Sidious hid behind his Ysalamiri protection. Yet the control of the Veil eluded him, and whatever scant headway he had in molding to his touch faded the instant Sidious was in contact with it once more. But still, the Veil aided in letting Dominus reach out much, much further than he would have otherwise, even after coming into his true might as a Sith.

Yet, it is time, he reflected, Sidious is right about that. Time to force the game up to the next level, time to provide the spark the Confederacy-to-be needed to rally its people, and then, time to launch the Confederacy military. But most of those plans were already in motion, and he simply waited in the dark now, like a spider in his web for his prey. Ah, I do so like that analogy. Even if I have recently lost several of my web's hidden strings.

The instant several of his Bound died on Coruscant, Dominus had known. He felt their passing, even if they weren't truly connected to him in any appreciable way once the process which turned them into Bound finished. Oh, they had begun so. When he had started that process, Dominus had tied his own Force powers to them, overwhelming what was within, draining them like, yes, a spider with a fly, sucking up the blood and innards. But after that, he emplaced a simple set of orders leaving a mental shell he created while he was draining them, and the Bound was ready to serve. They could be activated by tying them into simple orders to respond to outside stimuli, or direct instruction if possible

Even more deliciously, each time Dominus did this, the Bound's Force power would feed his own, making Dominus stronger. It was a heady feeling, and in some cases Dominus had almost lost himself to the feeling, forgetting the need for the metal shell. But in conquering that feeling, Dominus proved he could control himself. And that was what made him a true Sith. A true master of the Force.

When the Bound died, Dominus felt the minute connection between them breaking, almost like a very subtle, very tenuous padawan bond breaking. But while most of the Bound currently within the temple might have died, I have seventy-eight more out there. Their deaths were nothing so long as they have done their job in destroying the archives so that their brethren cannot be found. Killing that decrepit bitch Jocasta would be a bonus but unnecessary.

Moreover, the attack will have shaken the Order, threatening their unity. The Order will be forced to look within, and there is no method they can use to discover my Bound, not until they strike. Their continued attacks here and there, randomly chosen, will threaten the Jedi Order's solidarity, and will show them to be just as susceptible to treason as the Republic itself. Both public opinion and internal opinion will turn against them, ratcheting their paranoia higher. And they will cling ever harder to the Force and as it grows stronger through the war, the Veil will influence them evermore. Sidious was right about all that, at least.

He thought for a moment, then opened up a map, showing where the Bound had been the last time he had checked in on them, then nodded arrogantly, seeing his memory had not tricked him. A group of Jedi had been sent by the Order to Kuat to oversee some of the new shipyards being built there, among whom were two Bound. Their going on a murder spree will show the public the Jedi cannot be trusted, that among them are psychopaths who could snap and attack everyone around them. Although I will have to wait for the most opportune time to contact them.

Hmm, for the next one, perhaps one of the Jedi stationed in the Core Worlds? Choosing one randomly could add to the horror. Humming in delight at the idea, Dominus began to go to work, smiling to himself cheerfully at the amount of chaos and darkness he would cause. And from that chaos, will rise a new order! Although, it remains to be seen if it is the one Sidious believes it will. Still, before that, the sparks on his own side would have to be lit, turning public opinion among the Separatist worlds against the Republic.

OOOOOOO

One of the so-called sparks occurred on the planet Castell. This, a major foundry world – a world whose main global domestic product was manufactured goods mostly based on various metals – was the home of the Gossam species. A reptilian species, the Gossam were almost entirely devoted to appearances and showing off on the personal level, and were mainly selfish, vain, grasping, and intractable on the business level. And on Castell, business was paramount, both because of the specie's tendency to follow those who could prove themselves successful, and because of one Gossam female in particular: Shu Mai, the President of the Commerce Guild and owner of the planet, having bought the entire thing.

Currently, President Shu Mai was smiling thinly, her blue scaled three-fingered hands folded into the front of her expensive, extremely well-made and varicolored robes as the hot winds of her homeworld played with them and the end of her head-covering, a semi-wimple that contained her sparse hair in a cone of gold and black. Her long neck twisted this way and that as she stretched out a few kinks. Odd, with all the sitting I do in my job, you would think I would not be susceptible to such pains.

The fact this act was also the equivalent of a full smug smirk was not lost on her fellow Gossam as they moved out of the building behind them. "You still retain our trust and a majority of the ruling Junta will continue to follow you," said one of them, moving up to Shu Mai. "We will not attempt to buck this continued connection to the Separatist cause. But be aware, many of us are still of the opinion that war does not pay. In the long run, we will never regain the wealth that you think we will."

"That is because all of you are short-sighted fools," Shu Mai replied tartly, then making sure none of the passersby bar her own security force were close went on. "And you know you never had a chance to turn them against me Do Sai. Even if you had, I would have simply had you all replaced. Remember who owns this world now. You, all of you, our entire species, are but squatters on my land. Pay, or payment will be taken from you. The rest of our species understands that you need to start doing the same. I have no more time for these petty insurrections."

The male Gossam named Do Sai, leader of a group of peace-loving fools who had somehow convinced her people to vote them into the ruling cabal of their planet made to speak. But then there was a sound, a loud *whoomph* the like of which Shu Mai had never heard before.

A second later a concussive force slammed into the blue-scaled Gossam, tossing her down the steps to land in a crumpled heap on the road in front of the governmental conference hall She looked up blearily, blood dripping from numerous stinging cuts, staring in shock at the front of the conference hall which was now a doorway into a fiery hell. Everything within was ablaze, and the front of the building was littered with the dead and dying.

Those mangled bodies represented the leaders of the planet, including Do Sai. Only one three-clawed foot remained of the man, the rest had been blown apart. Damn… Shu Mai mused, her thoughts moving slowly. I'm going to have to find replacements anyway. Time is money and that will take a few days.

As she watched in bleary-eyed shock, the entire building collapsed in on itself. Then one of her security guards grabbed her and hustled her towards a nearby car as several more raced forward, before falling back in the face of the fire as it licked out of the doorway.

"What happened, what happened?" She shouted, staring at the building.

"No idea Madame President, but we must get you out of here!" came the reply.

She nodded, but then stared as several people in the crowd that had gathered to stare at the building opened fire on her and her guards. The one who had been pushing her towards the car fell, gasping from a hit in the side and several others returned fire, many of the defensive cordon falling even as they responded. It was clear the attackers had the edge of surprise and numbers. "Down with the Separatists, down with the traitors!"

They also looked to be highly trained to Shu Mai's albeit untrained eyes. They were ducking and covering one another as they moved forward through the crowd and wielding well-maintained blasters. They were also extremely good shots, her defenders falling quickly to their fire.

But two Vultures crashed down into the streets a second later, having been on overwatch of the city during the earlier meeting. Once configured into their ungainly walker-mode, they instantly took the attackers under fire, the attacker's own weapons ineffective against the armor of the mecha-shifted fighters. In contrast, the Vultures gunned down seven of the attacks, forcing the rest back.

As Shu Mai watched from her hiding place beside her car waiting for the driver to power it up, her eyes tracked to one of the attackers in particular. He had pulled back and as she watched him, a human, he began to shout orders into a communications calm bead. From a nearby building, a concussion missile launcher flashed towards one of the Vultures. The Vultures couldn't activate their shield while on the ground, and it was blown into shrapnel in a rain of fire and flame.

But the two Vulture droids had bought the President enough time to get into her car, and one of her guards was driving her away now as fast as possible. Several of the attackers noticed and fired at the retreating car, but the car in question was heavily armored behind its rich facade.

Behind her, the President could see a small troopship slamming into the street. The sides opened and numerous infantry-type droids disembarked from their cages, moving forward as they fired.

"What happened?" she asked again. "Where did they come from?"

"They're not locals," said the driver, the only one of her commando corps that had survived the ambush.

An ambush, Shu Mai realized, which had to have been targeted against her. The shouts and slogans they had been parroting made that clear. I was supposed to be inside that building. If Do Sai's followers hadn't buckled so quickly under my authority…

"What do you mean?" she asked abruptly, frowning.

"None of them were Gossami ma'am, except for two of them, the ones who were shouting 'down with the Separatists'. All the others, most of them were human, and one of them was Bothan," the commando reported.

"A Republic kill team," Shu Mai gasped, leaping to that conclusion from a standing start.

The security officer shrugged, but the President realized that it honestly didn't matter if it had been a sanctioned kill team or a simple terrorist act. They weren't Gossami, and on Castell, there should not have been any humans or Bothans, not out here in a Colony Area world which had been a mainstay of the Separatist cause from the very beginning. This meant that the Republic had some complicity in the act which just destroyed much of her middlemen on this planet, costing her time and effort and no amount of PR work.

Shu Mai's reptilian features firmed as she realized how close she had come to death, not just inconvenience. There will be war for this!

OOOOOOO

Elsewhere, similar events were happening although not nearly as many or as sudden as the one that occurred on the magister's world. Instead, they were tiny pinpricks, such as one of Lucrehulk being stopped in its trade route and being ordered to heave to and prepare for customs inspection…

"We are the Trade Federation! Our ships are exempt from that rule," shouted the ship's angry captain as he looked at the communications screen.

The inspection ship was a small gunboat, accompanied by a dozen starfighters, but with four Consular class ships painted in Republic colors backing them. A mere local captain, he was part of the nearest Ord System patrol fleet, but he was lording it over the captain now as if he was Lord High Almighty.

"That rule has been rescinded, that law stripped from the books," the man on the other side said firmly. He wore a Republic Navy uniform and had introduced him as such. "You will heave to captain and prepare to be inspected, or we will fire on you."

For a moment, the captain was incredulous. The entire force out there wasn't a threat to a Lucrehulk, not even a noncombat vessel like his own. Lucrehulks had been built after all to ply the trade lanes where pirates and navigational hazards were made in abundance. These ships were no threat, and this little, pathetic whelp was going to make demands of him!?

A second later he had to amend that thought as a Republic heavy cruiser came out of hyperspace, followed by two more Consular class. The difference between the two ship types was striking. The heavy cruiser was of the class named, rather stupidly in the Neimoidian captain's opinion, the Dreadnaught class. It was at least a purpose-built warship, nearly six-hundred meters from bow to stern, the bow an almost pugnacious-seeming a jaw-like appearance.

The vessel had clusters of weapons blisters spread across the hull. It was decently armed for its size, and the shield and armor rating was okay for its size as well. But it had few in the way of starfighters in comparison to the Lucrehulk, few ion cannons, it's weapons were only mid-grade in size and only a few concussion missile launchers.

The Consular class in comparison was a much smaller retrofitted ship. It was technically termed a light cruiser but was really barely a frigate in size. Its speed in real-space and in hyperspace was great, but its armor, shielding, and weapons were nothing to write home about. They could be good against starfighters, but in a capital ship engagement was too small, too low-powered to matter more than cannon fodder.

"I repeat," the man on the other side said, now smiling in triumph. "You will heave to. The galaxy has changed, and the Trade Federation will no longer be allowed to make money off the blood of the conquered species."

For a moment, the Trade Federation captain simply glared, then cut the connection, turning his attention to his bridge crew. "Rollout the fighters! If they think we're going to give over our rights, they have another thing coming!"

As the vulture fighters appeared, flew out of the hanger and his shields came fully online rather than at the twenty percent most freighters kept them at, the Republic starfighters flashed forward to engage, the gunboat behind them.

The next second, both sides of the tiny conflict were trading blows, as the Lucrehulk moved forward to engage the dreadnought.

It would turn out that this action hadn't actually been a sanctioned Republic response, only a local tax collector acting out on his own and convincing a few captains to work with him. But by the time that came to light, it no longer mattered. Both the Confederacy and the Separatists had been itching for this war for so long, buoyed on by terrorist attacks, by the media, by legitimate grievances on both sides and their own fears. All these attacks did was simply create so many sparks to already oil-drenched tinder.

OOOOOOO

Having no knowledge of computer programming or anything that could attribute to the specific issue of the Hypercom Uplink Center no longer working, Harry, and perforce Aayla was not invited to the emergency meeting with the Senate following the Senate sending a demand for the Jedi to send a representative. Rancisis also decided that instead of announcing the news of the Blanked Jedi at that meeting, they would hold off on that for a day, until they had a better idea of how to detect them. Only then would they toss that particular gauntlet at C'baoth's feet and take the irrevocable step to denounce him as a Sith.

Given her empathic skills, Aayla made for an obvious choice to be part of that investigation. After all, while the men and women who had become Blank had thin mental veneers, that was all they were, a veneer. There had to be a way to detect them. So she, along with Master Yoda, Master Nar, and another Jedi Healer who had examined the prisoner worked together on that. But it was Aayla, with her Empathic powers which found if not a cure, then at least a solution.

Aayla sat next to C'baoth's victims, sadness welling within her held back by training, a desire to do something so that this could never happen again, and Harry's mental touch. Even now when she mentally probed the hollowed-out caricatures of seven Jedi which lay in the hospital beds around her with the Force, they looked almost normal to her mental senses. The shell that had been there, hiding the reality underneath, was still there.

It showed no understanding of the actions any of them had taken since they had gone crazy. Their 'selves' was seemingly paused almost from the moment before they went crazy, a still image of their mind and self from that point on. It was obvious now given that very image-like quality, but it was still disturbing. I would have to assume that if they were able to act out in the way they'd been programmed and then could somehow resume acting normally afterward. That makes them even more dangerous.

"Can you feel emotions from them through the Force connected to that image of their original selves?" Asked one of the Jedi healers working with her, while Yoda and Master Nar were comparing one victim to another.

They were trying to discover if there was anything similar in the outer shell they could detect and thus use to see through the outer shell without needing to either wait for them to go crazy or to use a full-scale mental probe since it was almost certain that such would set off the Jedi in question. Knowing who they were without setting them off would be ideal but was of secondary concern in comparison to actually discovering who they were in the first place. Then two, a full-scale mental probe made the Jedi doing it vulnerable which wasn't the best thing to do when faced with an enemy out in the galaxy at large.

"Yes. They didn't have any emotions while they were acting out but now that they are in status like this some of their emotions from the moment before they went crazy is slowly forming within the shell of their minds. Very slowly and muted to boot. Seeing this, I don't think this illusion of normalcy would be able to fool me if I was looking for it and there was no one else around obscuring their presence. But hiding in a crowd? Then they'd be able to hide even from my empathic skills. I wish I could do better…"

"Self-recrimination, serves us not," Yoda intoned, pulling back his own mental probe from one of the other victims, staring at them sadly. "That so many were taken, a sign of the dark times we live in, it is. Completely unaware, we were, of the danger within."

"I rather think that they themselves were mostly unaware of it as well master," Aayla replied, looking sadly at the two Knights she had subdued in the cafeteria. "At least from what little of the process I can picture."

Yoda nodded, his ears slightly drooping. As Grand Master of the Order, he had a better idea of the abilities of ancient Sith than any save perhaps Yaddle and Jocasta, and this felt like something he had read about a time or two. A brand of Force Domination many of the ancient Sith had used something similar to heighten their own powers, draining the powers of other Jedi or Sith.

"The illusion covering the hollowness within, a new thing it is," he said aloud. "Read of the like I have not. Even in sealed archives, open only to the Grand Master I have not. Orders embedded in a person's mind, a programming code almost, new that is as well though heard of the like, I have."

Mostly from discussions with Lily Potter, but even that spell as she had called it at the time had a limitation to it: the effect it had on the individual could be spotted by the wary who knew what to look for. The outer illusion of their original selves, however, hid that from view here. Still, it was obvious that C'baoth had discovered his own version of the Imperio at the very least, as well as that ancient Sith Draining technique, then added his own vile tough to it.

Her lips witching into a scowl, Aayla tugged on one of her lekku. "And no one noticed anything unusual about any of them?"

"Questioned several of their still-living acquaintances we have. Many died they did, in the commissary. Sitting together they were," Yoda said, shaking his head slightly at the shock and betrayal those Jedi must have felt before their deaths. "All agree. Sign of anything unusual, there was not."

Harry's mental voice interjected into Aayla's consciousness from where he was busy organizing the first group of younglings to head up to the Tyrant's Bane. "And remember love, some of these Jedi have been hiding within the Order for years. C'baoth's machinations go a long way back. Well before he officially left the Order."

Aayla replied in the affirmative and leaned back in her chair, now gently stroking her thumb down one of her lekku as she thought. "As I said, one-on-one they couldn't fool my empathic abilities. There is weakness there in the shell they don't seem able to handle emotions much, at best they feel a vague fog-like version of even the emotions of the most self-controlled Jedi I've ever seen. Hmm... I have an idea we could use to discover them. Or at least, weed them out."

Standing up smoothly Aayla moved to one of them, a hollowed-out Jedi who had been dealt with by master Koon. The sentient in question, the Vor had been choked into unconsciousness, proving that the hollowed-out Jedi could not ignore their body's needs as Jedi could consciously do to a certain degree. Placing both hands on either side of the avian lizard-like Jedi's head, Aayla closed her eyes and delved inward. But instead of simply pushing out a Force probe, she first constructed the connection between the two of them, then pulled back, maintaining that connection as she retreated into her own mental world.

Hovering around where her mental landscape met the greater Force outside of her body, Aayla's mental avatar cupped its hands in front of its face, as a small sliver of Force Light appeared. If the hollowed-out Jedi have a problem with feeling a full range of emotions, then perhaps something constructed from positive emotions can be used to, if not free them if that's at all possible, then to maybe overload the shell?

Her thoughts were kind of disjointed as she thought about it, but it seemed as if it could do something to the illusion covering the nothing with the victimized Jedi. The outcome she had no idea about, but she felt Harry's reassurance and support, as his own avatar appeared in their mental world beside her, his hand on her shoulder. With that reassurance, Aayla breathed in, then mentally thrust out the bundle of emotions and positive feelings that was the tiny needle of Force Light.

The technique flared across their conjoined minds, and the illusion, the thin veneer left behind after the Jedi had been hollowed out, burst like a bubble popped by a needle. Everything that had kept the victimized Jedi going, acting normally, seemingly alive if knocked at present, dissipated within an instant. In so doing it released not a full spirit, there wasn't enough left of the Vor to be called such but perhaps tattered tortured remnant of it, to join the force.

Yoda and the two healers instantly felt the change and hurriedly moved towards Aayla, while Aayla pulled back her hands, sighing faintly. Yoda glanced at the Vor Jedi for a bare second before shaking his head as Master Nar disconnected the now dead Jedi from the medical equipment monitoring him. "Regret, you should not feel. Dead already, she was. Released the remnants only, you have. At times, peace, all you can give your patients. Yet an answer to the question have you found?"

"Well, perhaps. Although what that technique does to Jedi who hasn't been hollowed out I don't know, Master Yoda," she said, looking over at the Jedi Healer, a human male. "With your permission?"

The Healer nodded permission, and Aayla reached forward to place a hand on his forehead. The Jedi healer twitched slightly as he felt the probe, then blinked as the feelings of joy, happiness, and yes, love that went into the Force Light Needle wash over him.

"Good grief," he breathed out, staring from Aayla to the doorway and back again. "Is that what you and Knight Potter feel towards one another all the time? It's so intense. How can you stand that?"

"There are far too many upsides of our feelings for one another to go into right now," Aayla replied drolly. "But you aren't feeling any negative effects?"

"Other than a certain hit to my mental equilibrium, and a bit to my emotional control, no," the man replied, standing backwards and looking anywhere but at Aayla as he centered himself in the Force.

Yoda promptly asked Aayla to try to use the technique on him, but her needle simply bounced off his mental defenses. "Still, way to discover and contain the Hollowed, this is. Ability to defend their mind, a sign of a Jedi in control of their faculties it would be. A hollowed Jedi, protect themselves they could not. Excellent work."

Aayla smiled thanks at that, bowing from the waste towards the Grand Master as she felt Harry's own congratulations through their link. But then she decided to bring up a little thorny issue. "That just brings us to the problem of how many Jedi would be able to actually use that technique. To take positive emotions, and mold them into a mental attack like that."

To that, Yoda could only first frown then sigh, nodding. "Teaching Force Light, difficult it is. But possible. A logical progression, this technique could be called. Four Jedi, within the temple now, use Force Light they can. This variation, teach them you will."

Aayla nodded acquiescence to the, and the two of them began to plan that out before the healer asked, "Should we... that is should we leave these poor creatures as they are?"

That brought Yoda up short, and he sighed once more, his body drooping, seeming older at that moment than at any other point Aayla had ever seen him. "No. Release them we must."

Nodding, Aayla steeled herself then made to touch the nearest Hollowed from where she sat, the Quarren she had captured.

But Yoda shook his head firmly. "No. Hrhrhrhm, Grand Master, I am. My duty, it is. Give them mercy, I must."

As the now silent healers and Aayla watched, the ancient Grand Master moved from one hollowed out Jedi to another, whispering words that only C'baoth's victims could hear, before placing a hand on their foreheads. Soon after, the Hollowed Jedi would die, their hearts stopped slowly, as if they had passed away in their sleep, completely painless.

To them anyway. The cost to Yoda was something else and it was one he refused to share with anyone. And as they watched him leave, none of the three remaining Jedi in the room could anything but bow their heads in respect and sorrow.

OOOOOOO

With Yoda and the two Jedi Healers working on the case with Aayla, Harry had felt he wouldn't have anything to contribute to that task, so instead worked with Jocasta in an effort to repair the damage done to the archives for much of that afternoon. Thanks to his abilities with the Repair Technique his mother had taught him, they were able to reconstruct quite a bit more of the data-slates than Jocasta had feared.

Not all of the data was saved by any means, there was a limit to what the Repair Technique could do on something so finicky as data-recording devices. But there was enough to help them start to look into who else among the Jedi Order could have come into contact with C'baoth once more.

Padme, on the other hand, was not so lucky as to get out of the meeting. She sat now in her hover chair, watching in something approaching despair as the past few days of progress towards if not peace, then went out the window.

"How dare you accuse us about proof!" Shouted the Neimoidian Senator. "It could just as easily have been the Centrist party!"

"What would we have to gain?" Asked a marginally more controlled Centrist senator. "We have nothing to hide from the galaxy at large, whereas you, and your actions in only curtailing your so-called terrorists," the man emphasized, "after you have been called out on the actions of a specific group say to me that you have everything to hide!"

"How dare you! Just because the Separatist party does not have the same apparatus as Republic Intelligence or the Jedi to help, does not mean that we are aiding terrorist attacks! Random acts of violence help no one!" Said another Separatist, one Padme recognized as another former pupil of Senator Bonteri.

That worthy sat her head in her hands and looking far, far older than she had even the day before. Padme, seeing her old mentor like that, felt a twang of remorse for what this whole debate was doing to the woman's health.

"Random acts of violence certainly help no one. But what about aimed attacks?" A fourth voice cut in, cold and sharp as it went on the attack.

Realizing this was getting out of hand, Padme looked to the Chancellor's box, where he seemed to be pouring over some data, conferring quietly with several men who had followed him out into the pod. Two of them she recognized as the head of the Senate Security Forces, Jerimiah Foch, and the head of Republic Intelligence, Armand Isard. Another man was with them, a younger man wearing the outfit of a computer technician.

I wonder who called this meeting. If even the Chancellor is still in the process of gathering data it's obvious we should've waited until we had more information to go on. Still, the chancellor is in no position just yet to contain the vitriol so…

Mentally straightening her shoulders and preparing herself for battle, Padme hit the control of her hover chair, rising to match those of the seven most prominent shouters. They had all pushed into the center of the hall without being recognized and were basically shouting at one another at fifty paces with the rest of the Senate had broken up into hundreds of small discussions or bitter arguments. Only about a fifth of the whole Senate was remaining silent and watching instead of taking part in the spleen-venting going on, the GDL Senators prominent among them.

"Gentlemen! Can we at least have some order here?!" She projected outward the instant her hoverchair was equal with the seven in the middle of the hall. "We do no one any good by simply attacking one another like this. I will remind you, ladies and gentlemen, that we as Senators have an image we must retain at all times."

"So you say! When your Peace Party seems to be all too happy to cozy up with the Centrists!" Shouted another Separatist senator. "Not one of you is able to see they are the instigators here!"

Another senator, a Centrist this time, also attacked Padme, the two Senators oddly united in their hatred towards the Peace Party. "Ha! That's a laugh when they've been doing all they can to be apologists for you! You're both traitors to the Republic, the Peace Party just as much as the Seps!"

That won a roar of approval from many of throats on the Centrist side throughout the vast hall, and Padme winced hearing it. I'd hoped that calls like that had stopped thanks to the last few days of more measured, reasoned discussion. But evidently not. It makes me very glad that the Jedi Order's already decided to step up our security.

However, that thought didn't stop her from replying. And her tone, cool and composed, cut through the frothing fury of her attackers. "How interesting. So anyone who has a disagreement with you is a traitor then? My work for the Republic stands on its own merits, but I do not make the mistake of connecting the Republic as a whole to the ideological concept of a powerful centralized government. Be very careful of throwing around accusations like that gentlemen, for it sounds as if you have devolved back to the childhood taunt of 'if you're not with us, you're against us.' Have we become so mired in our own ideologies that we cannot allow for the existence of others? What is the point of having a representative government at all if we are not allowed to be different from those around us? It is only through discourse that true understanding and consensus can be reached."

Her stern words, amplified thanks to adroit use of her hover seat's systems, actually won her a moment of silence. Or at least Padme thought it had at first. However, the sudden cessation of all noise pointed to something else, and after a second she turned her head to stare up at the Chancellor's box.

Palpatine was on his feet, hands on the front railing of the box, gripping it in his hands as he glared out into the Senate Hall. "Senator Amidala is quite correct. Not only in that this sanctified hall is a place of meeting and discussion rather than blind attacks on anyone different, and the fact that we, all of us need, to comport ourselves as fit our stations."

It was very clear now that the Chancellor was angry, and his hard, furious gaze raked the Senate Hall from one end to another. Very few of the senators who had been shouting a moment ago were able to meet his eyes, with Padme being one of only four throughout the entire hall to do so without a tremor. After a second she bowed slightly and moved her chair back to its former position. The others who had pushed their own chairs forward to be heard were slow to follow her example but eventually bowed to the Chancellor's will, unable to make themselves heard now with their controls having been subordinated by the Chancellor's override.

When everyone was once more back in the position, their hover chairs against the walls of the hall, the Chancellor continued, his image appearing in a series of holographic projections so everyone could see his face. "That being said, this is extremely worrisome. Not only is an attack on the Hypercom a strike at the very heart of the Republic, but we have also been reduced to using courier ships to relay messages. Those are of limited utility given the size of the Republic and our need for real-time data on what is going on out there, alas. Still, that is all we can do on that score."

His lips quirked wryly and some of the tension leaked out of him, and indeed the rest of the Senate, everyone there taking a cue from him. "I believe our Free Hypercom Transmission Act was perhaps the equivalent of locking the cage after the animal has escaped."

Then he shook his head, becoming serious once more. "To share with you what we have already determined about this attack on the very bedrock of the Republic, I call on these three worthies with me. First, Chief Security Officer Foch."

With that, he sat down and allowed one of the three men who had entered the Chancellor's box with him to step forward. That worthy saluted the crowd of Senators all around him, making a point to pivot as he did so that the salute seemed to be to the entire hall. He was a lanky, well-built man of middle age from Coruscant himself. He had been a firm proponent of the Chancellor's anticorruption policies and had basically almost entirely revamped the training, application, and everything else of the Republic security forces. There were still far too many people still on the payroll from before he had taken command, and a few had come in via glowing recommendations from various Senators rather than through his own recruitment drive, but he was still a very well-respected man.

"In working with the Hypercom security system and the local police the SSF has been attempting to discover how this disaster occurred. We are still looking into the reasoning behind it, and our investigation into the true players that set it in motion is ongoing. Essentially as I am all certain all of you are aware, there was no physical damage done to the Hypercom Uplink Center here on Coruscant. Rather, the Hypercom center has been sabotaged by a program, a virus. The program was installed into the Uplink Center by a technician, who was herself coerced into it. We are looking into how she was coerced, but I will not speak further on that score in order to protect those involved. The virus was emplaced initially four hours before the Hypercom failed, going about its work to spread throughout the system before taking the whole Hypercom Center down all at once."

The man's scowl was rather impressive, Padme reflected as she stared at the screen, the man going on with his report calmly and coolly as he explained without giving any real information away. "This was a security mistake, and the woman should have been discovered and detained upon uploading the virus. But much of the Cyberware security on the Hypercom is intended to stop viruses coming in from outside via various means, or to stop anyone physically trying to create their own hyperlink into the center. Internal cyber-security was a low priority before this, and the woman was a high-ranked manager in good standing."

Deeper into Chancellor's box hidden from everyone, Sidious allowed a faint smirk to cross his face, unseen by anyone. It was true of course, trying to get into the Hypercom from outside without the proper codes or passwords without being backtracked was next to impossible, and physically adding a new relay was insanely hard. But even the Uplink Center didn't realize that one of the conduits leading into it from its own underground complex allowed the Sith access to the Hypercom array and its signals at all levels. The Sith could have even inputted the virus directly that way, without anyone the wiser. That didn't mean they would stop looking, however, and so Sidious and decided to use local talent for this.

"Fearing that this might be the start of a new wave of attacks, the Senate Security Force has shut down all access from the surroundings districts into the senatorial district and posted security blockades at sub-level forty. No travel below that will be allowed. All travel outside the senatorial environs occurring above sub-level forty will be under guard and must be logged with my office."

From there Foch explained a few more security details, including the fact that he was moving to increase the physical guard detail stationed at the uplink center and a few other ideas to make certain that this never happened again. A random so-called buddy system would be instigated also in order to make certain that no one person had access to the Uplink Center's vast computer cores without oversight. That plan would be instigated in every uplink center across the Republic once they were once more connected to the Hypercom array.

Foch also fielded questions from the Senators around him. Many protested this new, extremely limiting security reform, while others pushed him to admit the woman in question had been a Separatist or Centrist dupe. He stood firm on his duty though, unshakeable in his belief that the Senate District needed to be further isolated, something even Padme did not agree with even if she saw the necessity right now. The other questions though Foch just refused to be drawn on entirely. "Motivation behind the action is already murky Senators, and as I said, it seems as if she was coerced. We will know more in time."

When the questioning seemed to be repeating itself too often the Chancellor stood up, ending it and gesturing the man to leave. "Now, I will turn this explanation over to Technician Stevens. After this, Director Isard will give us an overview of our attempts to bypass this issue and our ongoing communication efforts with the rest of the Republic."

Stevens flinched as all the eyes of the Senate turned to them, then straightened her shoulders and began to explain. He explained how the virus acted, shutting down numerous internal subsystems that carried and received incoming Hypercom information. Another aspect of the virus attacked the Uplink Center's internal energy subroutines. This caused the Hypercom Uplink Center's internal generators to also seem to be overheating at the same time none of the messages could be pulled, transferred, or in any way moved from the various datahubs, shutting everything down as an emergency massive measure, and other things of that type.

He was interrupted several times in this explanation since the Chancellor had to remove the blanket blocker from the room's systems during the earlier question-and-answer session. He tried to field some, but when they came too fast and furious, the Chancellor was once more forced to step in before saying, "But you should answer that last one. Is this virus going to travel throughout the Hypercom?"

"No sir," the man replied, now addressing himself to the Chancellor, in an obvious attempt to block out the many thousands of eyes on him from around the Senate Hall. "Any tech worth his pay would be able to spot it, sir. It was only the fact that it was entered into the system and then was brought online internally which allowed the virus to do so much damage. We routinely scrub all of our ingoing and outgoing traffic for viruses, and nothing is actually opened as you would understand the term by the uplink center itself. Most data bundles are just simply passed from one area to the next or opened at its designated sender point. This virus came in over the OS…" he paused, looking a little sheepish. "Er, that's the…"

"We understand the term operating system correct?" The Chancellor asked and when the men nodded went on. "Very well, but I want to be clear on two things. Are you saying that it can in no way travel the Hypercom array? And two, how long would it have taken someone to develop this virus?"

Padme blinked at that, the thought of how long it would have taken to come up with such a sophisticated program not occurring to her. Yet another sign that perhaps the Sith is also behind this.

"That depends," the man replied thinking hard. "Here on Coruscant or on other planets with a massive tech base, and hundreds of computer programmers and slicers? For a good team, possibly as little as two years. For anything less, that time would go up. The Virus is a very slick job, and the programming is tight all the way through. We're having a devil of a time getting it out now that it's invested in the Uplink Center's software. It would only have been vulnerable in the first forty minutes of its startup or directly prior. Now..." he shrugged. "We've got a slogging match ahead of us."

"So this attack was premeditated to that degree," Chancellor mused. And he wasn't the only one to visibly dislike the implications.

The Chancellor thanked the young man and gestured him out as well. The moment a visibly thankful Stevens left, one of the senators bounced to his feet shouting out, "I vote that we instantly authorize the Military Creation Act and declare war on the Separatists! Only they can be behind this!"

Before the Chancellor could even reply to that, the Senate Hall once more degraded into a shouting match, and Padme bit her lip to keep from cursing. It looked as if it was going to be a long evening.

OOOOOOO

With his work on the apparent job in the archives coming to an inconclusive end, Harry shifted attention to organizing the youngling clans and getting them up to the Tyrant's Bane's Bane from the temple. While Aayla shifted her time to teaching others how she had created her Force Light Mental Needle, Harry worked on getting each of the clans onto a corresponding shuttle and up to the Tyrant's Bane and probing all of the teachers who would be going with them: a group of twenty carefully chosen teachers, lightsaber instructors, and Healers, all of whom had evinced an unwillingness to wish to fight in the war to come but who still had a lot of knowledge to pass on.

As each clan and their handlers arrived in the Tyrant's Bane, they were met in the hangar bay by Zule Xiss and a few of the others already aboard the massive ship. She hadn't had much to do over the past few days bar training and meditating, not being much of a help on the diplomatic front. It had been something of a cool-down time to the woman, who had not stopped moving and doing and learning since coming aboard the massive ship.

The first group to arrive was the oldest group, those on the cusp of becoming padawans or who had already been passed over as padawans. They were thirteen to fifteen-year-olds for the most part, with the occasional sixteen-year-old mixed in. Not many of those, however. With Yoda and Rancisis pushing them, more and more Jedi who had forgone taking a padawan or had only taken one in order to become a Master were now being asked to go through the pull of available candidates, and precedent was always given to the older teens.

As the first group exited the Tyrant's Bane's largest cargo hauler, the red-skinned half-Falleen woman smiled bowing from the waste towards them, her hands hidden in her traditional Jedi robes. "Hello young ones, I am Knight Zule Xiss. Welcome to your temporary home. I realize that many of you might be concerned about what it could mean that you are being sent away."

She let the words hanging in the air for a moment and then nodded slowly. "Unlike the youngsters that will be following on your heels, all of you are aware of the universe at large, the tumultuous times we now find ourselves in. Yet you are not old enough, just yet, to affect matters and I urge you to realize that too. This is a time of learning for all of you. Embrace it and the Force will guide your paths all the better in the future."

"We are old enough to become padawans," said one of them, feeling greatly daring, and gaining strength from the apparently young nature of the Jedi who had greeted them. Far better to challenge someone like Zule then one of the older, sterner, and intimidating Masters, after all. "Surely that means we need to stay here in the Temple so that we can be of use in the future when our training can is completed. The Force does not call on a Jedi to run away."

"Perhaps if the Force was speaking to any of you strongly on this matter we would listen. Is that the case?" Zule asked archly. When the crowd of teens only looked at one another she went on before either of the four teachers, all older Masters Zule could not remember from her own time as a youngling, could do so.

"Until that is the case, we can only do what we can. And as our future, your safety is of paramount concern to the Order. And, to be fair, traveling on the Tyrant's Bane and what you find waiting for you in your new home is not going to be a sinecure. All of you will be helping your teachers with the younger clans and training them up too. And your own training will continue. Here on the Tyrant's Bane, we have access to quite a lot of training that you would not have seen elsewhere: new Force techniques, new ways of using the Force… like this."

Gesturing around them Zule brought attention to the hanger bay all around them, stepping back so they could move forward and spread out, the better to see everything. "Tell me what you see."

The younglings did so, and one of the older ones, a young male Twi'lek who had already been looking around spoke up quickly. "It's wider on the inside. A lot larger."

"We call it a space expansion technique," Zule said with a smile. "We create it by basically harnessing the Force into a series of physical forms, which shape the Force in a given area and in a very specific manner. We call them runes."

Now that they were aware of it, all of the would-be padawans and younglings were keeping around them astonished, and even the teachers were staring, although they were doing a much better job of controlling the reaction then the preteens and teens. "This is amazing, why have we heard of anything like this before?" One of them asked.

Zule shrugged. "Because we have been keeping it under wraps for a very specific reason."

"You mean the Sith?" Said one of the younger younglings there, looking at Zule inquiringly. "Everyone's been saying that they were behind the attack the other day."

Several of the young ones proved that they weren't all that far along in their emotional training then, broadcasting fear confusion in equal measure through the Force. But Zule simply smiled once more and nodded. "Yes, what you are seeing now is one of many secrets that we are going to spring on them at the most painful time possible."

Then her tone turned almost mocking, eliciting a smile from many of the faces in front of her. "Whenever the Sith appear, they always shout out about how the Dark Side is strong, about how only by giving into it we can gain strength. I say there is strength in knowledge, I say there is strength in the light, in unity and purpose. What do you all say? Will you help watch the younger set? Will you continue your training here, and on Ruusan with Master Fay?"

"Master Fay?" Said one of the teachers surprised. The name had gone over the younglings' heads, but they too were surprised at the name Ruusan being dropped, one they had learned from their own history was tossed out so easily. "But, did she not pass on into the Force?"

"Ahh, well some truths have unfortunately had to be covered by lies in the past. We didn't like it at the time, but the truth is something altogether odder than Fay simply becoming one with the Force." Zule's lips twisted as she said that, ruefully reflecting that truth was stranger than fiction here. "But I didn't hear a reply to my earlier question?"

At that the kids all nodded, talking excitedly to one another staring around them, astonished by the size of hanger bay around them, and intrigued by the idea of what they could learn here even if they were leaving the comfortable environs of the temple behind them. From there, she led them through the massive hangar bay, pointing out a few of the other Jedi aboard who was working there with a crew of Verpine on some of the Vultures or going over various bits of the Falcon fighters, checking on the runes inscribed on them or rearming a few.

A few of the younglings though were still looking askance even as the others began to realize how much this space expansion charm could mean in the long run. It was evident that they didn't like the idea of being cooped up in the ship, even a ship this size.

Spotting that Zule smirked at them and gestured them over. A little leery at how they had been discovered, they came forward reluctantly, but Zule simply asked solicitously, "Not fans of being stuck inside the ship?"

One of them, a young Sluisi girl, smiled a little sheepishly. "Most of us are volunteers in the gardens because we have never been at home on the ecumenopolis. We think that communing with the Force in such an environment is much easier, cleaner somehow."

"Living on Coruscant I can certainly imagine that to be the case," the young Knight replied with a smile. "However, I think we'll surprise you too." She clapped her hands loudly, magnifying the sound via the Force, and the chatter of the rest of the students and the teachers, who were now talking to a few green Jedi, Mak and Kass, looked at her. "Now I think you've all seen enough in here for now. If you follow me, we will get you settled down before the next clans to join us for the mission to the new temple."

"Temple?" One of the teachers asked in some surprise. Due to the secrecy behind this move, not even the teachers had been told what they would find aboard the bane. Indeed, the only person coming with them into Ruusan who did know was Jurokk, one of the primary lightsaber instructors and the commander of the Temple Guard. He had been assigned to help train the young Jedi along with numerous robotic trainers and other things of that nature which would be coming with him aboard the Tyrant's Bane later that night. He had been replaced, temporarily, by Jax Pavan, a Jedi Knight with a notable connection to the Coruscant underground.

"Oh yes, some of the education I've been talking about is going to stay here. It will not be taught anywhere else. So we organized a kind of Temple for ourselves. But I imagine it isn't quite what you're used too..."

For a time the group passed through the corridors of the ship which had not been enlarged as the cargo sections had been until they arrived at the hydroponics section, which would double as the main training area for the young ones aboard the ship, and which was very close to the living quarters of the ship. That area was still being worked on, but they had enough tents and other things to house all the younglings they would be taking in in the hydroponics section anyway. As they walked, she had explained why the Tyrant's Bane was a safer environment than the temple, and how they would be traveling to the Ruusan sector, where Master Fay would welcome them in. She would then work with them to create a new temple on the planet of the same name.

When they entered the hydroponics section, the reaction of the students one and all, was everything Zule had hoped for and she grinned as their shocked delight washed over her through the Force. "Still think you'll feel cramped now?"

Of course, meeting and greeting the sixteen different youngling clans, and the one hundred and twenty padawan-aged 'learners' who would be coming with them into the Ruusan sector got old quite quickly, so Zule was extremely happy to get an invite from Aayla to join her, Padme, Harry, and a few other senators for dinner that night. She spent a few minutes mock-complaining with the other two girls as Padme got ready for the dinner, which Harry was cooking for them all along with two servants from the Alderaanian delegation.

Her complaints stopped abruptly when Padme said, "I will trade places with you in a heartbeat. Shake on it?"

Zule quickly sat on her hands, eliciting laughter from the other two young women, as Zule responded verbally to Padme's gentle joke. "No thank you. I'll take the boredom of continually making pretty much the same speech only with different words to listening to other people shout histrionics at one another, repeating the same positions over and over again with ever-increasing volume."

"It's so painful because it's true," Padme moaned, shaking her head, leaning against Aayla for a moment as the Rutian Twi'lek put an arm around her shoulders squeezing her gently. Aayla, Padme had learned, was quite the cuddler and Padme gleefully took advantage of it and would, for as long as she could, considering that she knew that Aayla and Harry would probably be leaving soon. The two of them had some kind of secret that they were waiting to tell her but were putting it off until after the meeting was finished, and it didn't take a genius to know it wasn't going to be good news.

"But you were able to get out of it? I mean the meeting did end pretty quickly. You said you spent most of the afternoon and early evening networking after all," Aayla stated.

"Yes, cooler heads were able to convince everyone that until we knew who was behind the shutdown of the Hypercom system it was just another terrorist event only one larger, more planned and, though I don't agree with this, 'more heinous', that we would have to wait for more data on. We're waiting on the courier ships to get back, which the ones closest to us should do in the next few hours. The ones sent farther away will take at least twelve hours round-trip when you consider that they will have to connect to the Hypercom and download any news about what's been going on in the rest of the Republic." Padme sighed. "But, everyone on both sides knows that something will have happened. You don't blind someone like this, and not take advantage of it."

The two Jedi exchanged glances but said nothing to that, and Zule deliberately changed the subject. After all, to them, the other shoe had already dropped. "So, did these two tell you that Harry's going to get a padawan?"

"No, really?" Padme questioned, surprised. Happy for Harry, but surprised. "While I well remember Harry has taught before and seemed to enjoy it judging by what's he told me about it, I would've thought that giving him a padawan right now would be adding too much work on one man's shoulders."

"It probably would, if we weren't going to be taking the concept of 'it takes a village to raise a child' to heart when it comes to this new padawan," Aayla said with a laugh. "Teaching him, or her, will be an interesting project."

"That's one way of putting it," Harry sent to Aayla via their mental connection along with a few images, a little comical reel of Harry staring up at a twenty-four-hour clock that was covered with segments showing his work as Count, his work as a diplomat, his work as a war leader, and his ongoing experiments and training. The Harry figure was attempting to find a position to stick an ever-changing amorphous blob labeled 'teaching the padawan' into this already hectic workday, question marks rising up all around him.

Aayla chuckled, but there was truth to that, and yet at the same time, she knew that Harry was a good teacher and enjoyed it. She also felt that Yoda probably had some kind of ulterior motive or deeper meaning behind signing's to him and shared that with Harry. After a few seconds of thought, Harry agreed and allowed his own happiness at the idea of having a padawan out, causing Aayla to smile and turned the women's conversation to something else.

It might have well confused many people, including most Jedi, about why Harry and Aayla were acting so cheerful. Both of them were well aware of the fact war had been declared and that they would soon find themselves in the thick of it.

But the fact was, they were stuck here until at least the Hypercom was back up and the Jedi made their statement about the so-called Blanked in front of the Senate. But both also knew that if they stopped taking joy in life and the simple things, the universe around them would be a much darker place. In a way, that would mean the Sith had won a victory, albeit a small one.

About ten minutes later Padme and Zule looked at Aayla quizzically as she turned to stare at the entrance, before the door opened, and Harry poked his head in. "Are you three decent?" he asked, a sly smirk on his face.

"Are you asking because you wish we weren't, or because you honestly don't know the answer?" Zule asked, her nose wrinkling. She wasn't going out with the others but had enjoyed somewhat playing dress-up with Padme just now. Aayla and Zule, of course, were going to be wearing their Jedi robes as Harry would. That had pushed Padme into a mock-histrionic mode, as she bemoaned the idea of getting Aayla to wear something that would set off her skin just right were whatever.

"No, I'm asking because I think your guests are about to arrive. Good timing, as I'm nearly done cooking," Harry rolled his eyes. "And if you want to get fed Zule you're going to have to cut out the teasing."

Opening her door a moment later, Padme smiled as she waved in Bail and a few other senators. Several of them paused and breathed in, smiling as the smell of the food wafted out of the kitchen. "Come in. Knight Secura, Count Potter, you already know Senator Organa, but you don't know Senator Sparna Timo and Senator Alexis Vrail. The two of them are part of the senatorial budget committee, number-crunchers of the highest order."

"Yes, but not the chief number-crunchers. If you asked us to this evening of repast to explain the new budget of the Military Creation Act, we won't be able to help you. That task has been taken over by the Chancellor's main aide, Sate Pestage, Senator Mors and Senator Del-Ruun," Sparna said. He was a Nautolan who ironically did not represent his specie's homeworld but a Core World. His face was split right now with a wide grin as he detected some kind of fish in the offing.

In the kitchen, Harry frowned at that thinking. He'd met Pestage in passing over the past few days, but the man never really registered one way or the other, which Harry felt was a deliberate act on his part. Still, the man was one of the chancellor's chosen aids, so his being involved in that made sense.

In contrast the other two Harry only had vague images of faces picked out of a crowd of Senate one point or another, and which he could now recall thanks to his mental conditioning. One of them was an extreme elderly Zelosian who wore a pinstripe suit and an old-fashioned tie as if they were a second skin. The other one was a Bothan, he thought, a rather rotund example of the species if Harry was remembering the face accurately.

"Neither of whom I am friendly with," Padme acknowledged, shrugging her shoulders. "But you can at least tell us some of the priorities, and whether or not the wording of the act has been changed overmuch as was agreed in the full Senate hearing. If it hasn't then I and the Peace Party will be extremely annoyed."

"That we can do, so long as the food and drink is plentiful," said Alexis with a laugh. She too was a part of the Peace Party, while her friend was unaligned.

"That we can do," Harry parroted, coming out of the kitchen followed by Mala. Both of them were carrying trays, the Wookie female carrying several of them in her arms, with Harry only carrying one. "If that is, we can get some help to bring it all out."

"A Jedi who cooks," Bail chuckled. "Now that is an oddity that I don't think I'll ever get used to."

"Time to get used to it would be a lovely thing," Padme said, her tone sultry and implying far more than the words as she passed Harry, voice low only he could hear. He turned, and she winked at him, while Aayla giggled as she came out of the room with Zule to join the rest. And, just like Padme had complained, neither Jedi woman was in a dress.

The talk over dinner was quite informative for Harry. First, he discovered that the Republic had been making payments for several years now to create a fleet of ships in order to greatly expand the Ord system fleets, ostensibly, adding more to that fund as the secession crisis began. That project had begun as far back as the invasion of Naboo. Since the Secession Crisis started a few years back however, no one had been seeing any more ships coming out of known yards, the money disappearing into the black. It was only now that that record was being open to the general Senate.

However, it was only the past six months than any move to expand the pre-existing military academies had been made. There was an existing officer corps thanks to the system defense fleets of various Core Worlds, which would now all be seconded as Harry had hoped to the Republic Navy if it came to war. Unfortunately, that would also mean they would keep their existing ranks, and many of those fleets were very top-heavy.

It was not going to be a single united fleet without a lot of work for certain, since few of those fleets had worked together, and were very different in terms of capabilities. So the new ships and their crews would have to provide the backbone of the Republic Navy if not for the long term than at least the short term.

"Where we're getting those crews is a mystery, one that is not hidden in the budgets we've seen," said Alexis, munching happily on a kind of sandwich sort of thing, which Harry had called a soft taco. It was like a hot spicy pancake wrapping around the innards of a hot sandwich, and it was incredibly tasty because Harry hadn't used any vat-grown nutrition cubes or anything of that nature, which was so in vogue here on Coruscant, rather a kind of chicken grown here on Coruscant and shrimp from somewhere else. "Yet we have seen purchases that would indicate we would be landing troops: lots of landing vessels, troop transports, and armor for infantry. Nothing about armored vehicles or weapons though, which I find odd."

"It is odd, but not as odd as there being no paper trail leading to at least some kind of training being done. Especially for a land army. Though why the heck we're talking about a land-based army at all is a question. Surely the navy should have priority?" Zule mused, leaning back. She had taken part in the discussion about money and where they were getting it, having something of a head for numbers even if she rarely used it.

"Perhaps, but we would still have to control the planets that we reclaim for the Republic," Sparna shrugged.

"Not if you smash their orbitals entirely," Harry stated, his tone grim. "Destroy their orbital infrastructure, and yes it is possible to do regardless of their planetary shields, it's just tougher. Force the planet to look after its own devices, make agreements with the local government to bring in foodstuffs if need be, and then leave behind mines in sufficient number to interdict the planet. In that way you remove that planet from the war and make them indebted to you at the same time."

Bail was aghast. "You are talking about untold trillions of mega-credits! Some of the planets that have sided with the Separatists are incredibly important economically to the whole Republic. Furthermore, why are we even talking about this in the first place? I thought we were here to discuss ways of pulling back from the brink."

"And so? If they joined the Separatists, they will have removed themselves from the Republic regardless. Win the war first, then care about the aftereffects." "So long, that is he sent to Aayla, that you actually do smash your real enemy, rather than simply weaken them or force them back into hiding."

Aayla agreed, but Padme, Bail, and their guests all looked a little startled at Harry not addressing the second aspect of what Bail had said.

"Your speaking as if war is already declared. Is that a response to the Hypercom incident, or have you already heard something we haven't?" Padme asked bluntly.

Harry sighed. "A bit of both. I concur with those who say that the Hypercom would not have gone down if they didn't want Coruscant cut off from the rest of the Republic for a reason. I fully agree with the Chancellor's idea of putting the local defense fleet on alert, as that would've been what I would have done. Blind us, cut us off, then go straight for the throat. However, events in the Jedi Temple earlier this afternoon, point to Master C'baoth being the Sith that we've been after. I do not want to go into detail with here, but we the Jedi Order will be forced to make that declaration in front of the Senate tomorrow morning."

"You realize that that means war will be inevitable. You've been doing all you can to try to stamp out that fire since you arrived and now you're going to turn around and pour oil on it!?" Bail actually growled getting up and glaring at Harry.

While he agreed the Sith were a threat, he felt if they could hammer that point for long enough, they could force the Separatists to stop pushing their own agenda, uniting against this ancient and far more feared foe. But that would take time, a lot of it, and if the Jedi Order came out and declared C'baoth a Sith now, it would be a disaster, to his way of thinking.

"Twenty-eight Jedi who have come into contact with Master C'baoth in the past suddenly went insane yesterday, attacking other Jedi and killing many of us, attacking even the children," Zule cut Bail's impassioned speech before it could get going, her own voice just as impassioned. "They nearly killed Master Jocasta, our Chief Archivist, and several younglings. They would have a lot more damage if not for the Force making it so that some of the Order's better duelists were randomly spread at various weak points throughout the temple. If not for that, we would've lost hundreds of the younglings at least."

Bail slumped back into his chair, staring at the three Jedi aghast. "How, how do you know they were connected that is, you're saying they were connected to…"

"The attack began when a program left in the archive computers told them I was researching Master C'baoth and his previous encounters with Jedi over the past few years since his formal leaving of the Order. He, he did something to them, took their minds somehow," Harry shivered. "He didn't even turn them to the Dark Side he just made them husks, and then set them as guard dogs to attack someone tried to investigate him."

Aayla broke in now, with Zule holding her hand under the table. "As a Jedi, I have seen evil. I have seen horrors by the hundred and fought Sith blade to blade, stared into their eyes. I've seen the anger, hate, and rage there. But that, the emptying of anything from a person that made them a person in the first place, a unique individual? To stare into someone's mind see not that person, but an artificial shell covering the nothing within? That is worse than anything I've seen before or since. I'm not going to forget that feeling, ever."

"There is a truth that has been the same throughout the ages, going as so far back as to be pre-space travel. For evil to win, for it to conquer, good men must do nothing. I did not choose the means of this conflict Senator, that lies at the feet of Master C'baoth, and all those he has tricked or coerced, or yes, bought into his service. It is time to make a stand," Harry said, his gaze looking from one Senator to another.

For a moment, the gathering senators were silent, staring at Harry, overwhelmed once more by his sheer intensity, while Padme simply smiled, a small tender smile as she looked at him. Oddly enough she felt more in love with him for that stance despite the idea of violence going against her own principles in the main. Because Harry wasn't doing it for self-aggrandizement, he wasn't doing it for the law of the Republic or for anything as esoteric as a belief in one type of government or another. He was doing it because he had to, and because at heart he was just that, a good man."

Needless to say, the conversation after the point became stilted. Harry and Aayla were unwilling to divulge more about the attack yesterday in the temple without the approval of the Jedi Council and were entirely unable to answer any questions along the lines of what the Jedi would be doing about it.

That debate was ongoing even now, but Harry had recused himself from it entirely, already knowing at least some of what would be done. He had made suggestions, and when asked he would respond, but most of his thoughts on the matter of war the Jedi Council already knew. Besides, he had the GDL to see to.

With the two Jedi being silent on that point, the conversation was kept light Harry for a time, but most of the Senators now felt a little uncomfortable, and one after another made their excuses. Despite the fantastic food, the atmosphere had taken a nosedive.

Soon enough it was only Padme, Sabe, Zule, Aayla and Harry sitting around, Chewbacca and Mala were there too, but were busy having their own small side conversation, one that Harry wasn't going to approach for love or money, considering the topic they had somehow started to discuss: Children, and when they should have them.

"So, I'm not going to ask any more questions about what happened earlier today or what the Order will be doing. I'm going to ask you what are you two going to be doing from now on? Once the war is declared I mean," Padme asked, leaning back on the sofa after seeing her guests out.

All three of them had been grim-faced but determined. Whatever else, Harry's words about good versus evil had reminded them that the Sith were indeed evil, not just a different Force using sect. The Peace Party would not be happy with the war to come whatever happened, but they would at least see that this conflict had moved past mere political issues.

"Well first, we won't be taking direct part in the war for a while. We need our intelligence agencies to find us the most important targets possible before we hit it with the Tyrant's Bane. Before that, we'll be using it to transport all the children within the Order and a large portion of the Agri-corps into the Ruusan Sector."

"What," Padme asked quickly. "Children?"

"The younglings," Aayla explained, sighing faintly. "We intend to move them, all of them, to safety."

"You truly think it will come to that?"

Harry nodded his head grimly. "The Sith have hidden for a thousand years. A thousand years of planning, plotting, preparing. They've no doubt had setbacks over that time, but regardless, one of them would not be acting so openly as C'baoth without being very certain that the time has come to do so."

"You still think he's not the Master?" Padme questioned shrewdly.

"Every time he makes a move that paints a bigger target on him, the more I look for the shadows," Harry said, his voice turning cold as he shook his head. "No, there's another Sith out there, somewhere hidden, waiting. I just wish I knew what they were waiting for or where they were hiding."

"Do you still think they might be hidden among the Senate?" Senate Padme asked, scowling at the very idea.

"…I don't know," Harry said slowly. "Before my coming here, I would have said the idea had far too much going for it. But I think, given my training under Master Fay, I would've felt them even if they were under a Force Cloak even through the Veil. I would put Fay against even Master Yoda when it comes to sensing other Force users under Cloak. Certainly, I would have felt their influence through the Senate if they were using the Force to influence people."

Aayla shook her head, giving voice to an argument the two of them had already had that evening. "I don't agree with that. This is a bit of an old argument between us. I feel that the Sith will have developed their Force Cloaks to a far higher degree than any Jedi, even those of us who were trained by Master Tholme. Whereas Harry has trouble hiding his own force signature and just can understand that other people are so much better at it." She teased.

"Will you want me to continue to be your eyes and ears with the Senate?" Padme asked, frowning. She agreed with Padme on this one, though that was more because she doubted any Sith who had been able to hide for over a thousand years would have been so foolish as to use the Force to influence the Senate with all the Jedi coming and going.

Harry winced, shaking his head. "That's third on my list of the best ways you could help us, Padme. My second would be to have you back on Naboo helping them prepare for this war. And my first would be with you coming with us, but it wouldn't just be to defend you, or anything like that." He added hurriedly. "We could genuinely use your diplomatic skills in the GDL."

"And you would be safer," Aayla replied firmly. "Don't lie, Harry. That is the main point."

"I thought we already had this discussion," Padme asked, while Zule smirked and leaned back on the side of the sofa, watching with amusement.

"No, you preempted us. This time we have actually verbalized the question. That makes a difference," Aayla said, her tone turning almost prim.

"And I'm still going to refuse. It makes me happy that you want me with you, and want to protect me, but I am not a frail flower that needs protecting. I'm a senator, and my duty is to help the Republic. As much as would like it to be otherwise, we all have duties we have to perform that take precedent over what we want, even our relationship." Padme looked over at Zule suddenly, conscious that she had just said that aloud in front of an outsider.

But Zule just waved her off, standing up quickly. "As if I wasn't already aware of the way the wind was blowing. It's a pity though, with you already joining I suppose there isn't any room for a third girl?" She asked winking at Harry who blushed and looked away.

Aayla giggled, patting Zule on her side. "Maybe in the future Zule."

Padme rolled her eyes but didn't rise to the bait, thinking the two of them were just joking around. Although, I don't know if Zule is. It wasn't as if she didn't find Zule attractive, but she certainly didn't have the same emotional connection with Zule that she did with Harry or Aayla. Still, she trusted her friends and knew nothing would occur without her… at least being fully informed.

The Rutian Twi'lek's next move grabbed Padme's attention away from Zule instantly, as she nuzzled into Padme's side. This was followed by Harry taking her hands, staring into her eyes soulfully. "Are you certain that there's nothing we can do that would persuade you to come with us? I truly do fear for you being left here, and not because of just the Separatists or the war. Rather your own fellows in the Senate. Master Koon told us about how they were calling you and the other Peace Party members traitors again."

Trying desperately to stop herself from falling into the spell of those eyes, Padme breathed in deeply. Duty, duty damn it, remember your duty and your obligation to the Senate and the Republic. "No. I will remain here as a senator until I am either recalled, or my tenure ends peacefully. The Peace Party needs me at its head, and the Senate will need a voice of reason once everything comes undone. You said it yourself Harry, to combat evil good people must do nothing. I refuse to do nothing when my voice and my strength can be of use here."

At those words, Harry and Aayla both knew that they had lost this argument before it had even begun. But they had prepared for that. "Would you be willing to accept a guard?"

Padme frowned, gesturing over to Chewbacca. "What is he, chopped liver?"

Chewbacca looked up at that, eager to get out of the discussion about children with his wife. "Chopped liver is often tasty depending on what animal it comes from, but I have never aspired to be such. But what exactly are we talking about?"

Harry laughed at that, before translating for Padme, Chewie not having his little translation box at the moment. As Aayla explained, however, Chewbacca just nodded seriously. "You need a bodyguard that you can take to all those formal functions that I can't go to because I'd be too likely to rip off other senators' heads."

"I thought it was arms that Wookies tended to tear off when angry?" Harry asked quizzically, his lips twisted into a wry grin.

The Wookie in question rolled his eyes and waved that off. "It's a personal preference. You rip off the arm if you want to lord it over someone that you beat him. But you rip off the head if you are removing a problem."

"I knew it had to be something like that," Harry chuckled.

"Focus," Padme groaned with a shake of her head as Mala, Zule, and Aayla both rolled their eyes, a gesture that Wookies used just as often as most human-like species. "I accept a bodyguard, yes, so long as they don't attempt to try and control my movements beyond a certain level. Another Jedi, perhaps?"

"Good to have you then," Zule said, leaning back in her chair with a smirk.

"You? But Zule, I thought you were an important part of Harry's cadre," Padme asked, confused.

The Half-Falleen nodded firmly. "I am, but that's only because of my mastery of the Force techniques he introduced into the Order, not because I'm a great commander or overly powerful in the Force. Others can do what I can or learn to given time. I can be more useful here, keeping you safe than I can on the Tyrant's Bane. And I won't be the only one leaving the Bane now that our work here on Coruscant is finishing."

She frowned, then went on more hesitantly. "I have been kind of spinning my wheels aboard the Tyrant's Bane. I have loved every minute of my time aboard it, with Harry and with Aayla, but that is not enough for me to remain. I feel I can better serve the Force in other ways. Starting by protecting you and training you to look after yourself better than you have already."

The fact that she and the others had talked about this that morning and had felt this was a good idea was left unsaid. As was the fact that she felt her job on Coruscant wasn't quite done yet, while Harry and Aayla both felt their mission here was coming to an end now that they knew war was going to be declared tomorrow. With the Veil in place and no time to use the meditation technique here, that was about as good a sign from the Force as they were going to get.

"She's not the only one. Several of the Green Jedi will be heading back to Corellia from here and about forty of the Verpine have volunteered to move into the Temple and help bring up its electronic defenses. And of my cadre, as you put it, Mak and Kass will also be leaving soon. When the Tyrant's Bane reached the first agricultural world we are going to stop at to pick up more Jedi younglings they intend to take a pair of Falcons and leave on a Force Vision-based mission."

The two of them had been close-mouthed about the kind of vision they'd had back on Serenno, but everyone knew that they had had some kind of vision, much like Harry and Aayla had. The two of them just couldn't' share the feeling of it, only the visual aspect of the image.

Padme nodded as if she understood that, when she sort of did vaguely, although she very much preferred to believe that the future, large and small was not set in stone. And that looking into the future would just give you a headache rather than direction.

Then Aayla said firmly "Good. In that case, I think it's time to stop the serious session for a while. Harry and I are going to be leaving you for a time, who knows how long it will be before we see one another again, and there are traditions to be observed between lovers who are going to be separated."

While Padme blushed at those words Sabe looked over at Zule. "My room's available for the night if you don't want to go up to the Tyrant's Bane."

Zule nodded and the two women left the three lovers there, sharing a wicked giggle at the romantic-vid-like nature of the trio.

As the door shut behind the two of them, Padme opened her mouth to say that she didn't really want to go all the way just yet, but Aayla was kissing her before she could get the words out. Harry leaned in, working at her neck, then Aayla's as Aayla pressed up against Padme, their forms molding against one another as Aayla sat in Padme's lap. "Don't worry," he whispered into Padme's ear as he kissed it, then down to her throat before moving over to Aayla's once more, placing kiss a lick or between each word. "We won't do anything you're uncomfortable with."

OOOOOOO

With the precedent given, the Sith who had been Jorus C'baoth was easily able to sway the nominally antiwar leaning members among the Separatist's real leadership. Not that there were truly many leaders who felt that way left thanks to his skill with Force Dominance. Within an hour of the attack on Shu Mai, the cabal which would now openly run the new Confederacy of Separatist Systems had stepped out of the shadows, taking control of the entirety of the Confederacy smoothly thanks to the use of a vast number of guilds and bureaucracies they already led.

More importantly, the vast military machine that they had built almost entirely in secret had also begun to move. A war machine that was three times the size of the armed forces that anyone on the other side was aware of. Now the Lucrehulks, cruisers, smaller carriers, and untold billions of Vulture droid fighters poured out of their hidden bases scattered throughout Confederacy space.

All this was according to Darth Sidious's plan. Even at its initial conception, the Great Plan had called for the opposition force, whatever they were, to be the one to attack, to press the Republic hard in the initial years of the war. Dominus let a small smile appear on his face as he reached through the Force, using the Veil to reach even further than he would have been able to otherwise. He felt his so-called Master out there, felt him like a giant octopus, lurking in the deep darkness of the Veil, waiting, but far away. And even with his control of the Veil, there were some things that could be hidden from him, or perhaps explained away later.

Yes, this was all to plan as Sidious knows it. However, the targets of some of my fleets are not…

OOOOOOO

Timothy D'Sato was a minor sensor tech on the small, extremely bare-bones security flotilla that protected the system of Oculus 9, mostly from being discovered in the first place built. Oculus 9, like 10, 11, and 13 – the four systems had all been discovered by the same exploration ship – were all empty, supposedly devoid of life. Indeed of any planets around their small blue or brown stars. But the work here gave that image the lie, and it was a lie that the nine refitted Consular class cruisers and fourteen fighter squadrons assigned here were ordered to kill to keep.

To aid them in this task, the security flotilla had ceded to the system with several well-hidden sensor buoys that would allow them to discover anyone trying to hyperjump in. After which the security forces would hyperjump that position, a move made possible given the lack of navigational hazards in the system, and mouse trap their surprise guest.

Thankfully for the consciences of Timothy and his fellows, that hadn't happened very often. A few unwary merchants looking to shave off a few days of travel by cutting through this uninhabited system, and one time a small band of pirates who had thought to perhaps find a usable asteroid or something was about all. That had been the most fun Timothy had seen since being assigned here. Watching as his fellows over at the gunnery station took potshots at the pirates had been hilarious, especially considering how little gunnery practice they had gotten up to that point. If not for the fact that the pirates hadn't realized how outgunned they were, after all, the two cruisers were only cruisers in designation, they could've gotten away before their hyperdrives had been damaged.

This security was designed to defend the seven almost fully automated construction yards they were here to defend. These yards orbited one another in the deep dark of this system hidden well away from common shipping lanes and anything at all interesting, where they had begun to construct and build the ships that the Republic would use to bring the Insurrectionist threat posed by the Separatist party to an end. These seven, and the others which were hidden elsewhere in pockets of nothing spread through the Core and Expansion region like this were the center of the Republic's answer to the rising militancy of the Separatists.

Still, for the defenders, the importance of their task did nothing to alleviate their boredom. But that was about to change and very, very violently for Timothy and for the other defenders of Oculus 9.

Timothy was about to go off watch and had just pushed himself out of his chair to stretch a bit while he waited for his replacement when the alarms began to blare. Blinking, he quickly sat down, a small smile appearing on his face as he wondered if they would actually get some action at last.

But that smiled instantly vanished as he saw the number of hyperdrive flares appearing on his sensor screen, as well as how close they were. "What the hell!" He thought to himself, before paling as the ships instantly turned towards the shipyards, charging forward. He hit the alarm button, and the ready squadrons scrambled from the central-most construction yard, a larger command Type structure, as the captain of his cruiser charged onto the small bridge. The older man, also a human like Timothy though he was from a different planet, looked as if he had barely gotten to sleep at all and his uniform was badly rumpled.

"What's going… oh kriff…" the other man muttered to himself, staring in shock for a second before controlling himself. "Can you get me a number count?"

"Seven Lucrehulk class ships coming towards us, the other large ships out there read as eight Munificent class cruisers, real cruisers too judging by their size, not like us," Timothy spat before professionalism came to his aid and he continued. "Don't have anything else on those ships, no idea what armament they have or shielding rating. Twelve smaller ships beyond them, my computers are calling them frigates in size, and they're around our own weight class if we're being generous. To our own weight, not theirs."

"They are launching starfighters," the officer at the gunnery station intoned as his systems came alive, the screen filling with bright red dots of enemy combatants, his voice numb as he contemplated the horror that rolling towards them shortly.

"And seventeen freighters behind them," Timothy added. "Smaller than the Lucrehulk, I don't know their type."

"Troop ships," the captain said, make a note in the log. "Timothy, you should be more up to date on the newest ship designs than that."

"Yes sir," he said dutifully, although he knew that against that firepower, there was no chance of their surviving unless they run away. And that quickly.

However, the captain knew that too and began to converse quickly with his fellow Consular-class captains, in particular, the acting commodore onboard the Righteous Liberty. That worthy told him to leave, staring through the pickup at them. "You're the closes to the hyperspace limit and one of us has to get the word out. And I can't get a signal out, they're jamming something fierce. What about you?"

Timothy's captain shook his head. "No sir I can't get a Hypercom message out either."

"Then get out of here," the more senior captain said, his own ship peeling away from where it had been docked with one of the shipyards, racing towards the incoming starfighters as the ready squadron formed up around it, followed by the other Consular class ships, as other starfighters were scrambling ones and twos, and the shields of the construction yards began to power up behind them. Their weapons systems too, with each shipyard having defensive firepower equal to a dreadnaught like the Lucrehulks reported over Naboo years ago, had begun to go from standby to ready.

Yet the captain who had been breveted to commodore to command the defense fleet of Oculus 9 knew it wouldn't be enough. Not against the hammer coming towards them.

This was an unmitigated disaster, especially considering the fourteen almost completed heavy cruisers within those shipyards. Two of them were actually spooling up their engines, but Timothy knew there was nowhere near enough people aboard to fight those ships. It was a brave act, which might well keep them from being taken intact but it would be a drop in the bucket to the disaster that was occurring.

"Get out of here," the more senior captain repeated. "Tell the Chancellor, tell everyone! The Separatists have started the war, and they came out swinging for our intestines!"

OOOOOOO

The brevet commodore in charge of the defenses of Oculus 9 didn't know the half of it. The Republic had long been concerned about the Separatists growing military strength, but only Sidious himself had known precisely how low that estimate of their military strength was.

In point of fact, both sides had been hiding the vast majority of their buildup in the deep dark, with Sidious relying on hidden shipyards built and manned by Kuat shipyards, scattered around ten systems hidden within the Core Worlds. In contrast, the Confederacy had relied on upwards of twenty-two, even Sidious didn't know exactly how many, smaller shipyards, and five larger ones of their own to build the Lucrehulks that were the large, dreadnoughts class capital ships of their fleets.

Now those fleets moved, and they did not move as Sidious had instructed Dominus they should. Instead, Dominus had decided to land a few haymakers of his own before the war could begin 'officially'. Six of the Kuat owned hidden shipyards were attacked within five hours of the declaration of the Confederacy's official creation. The fleets attacking them had already been in position also hidden in the deep dark, just waiting for orders.

With Dominus giving them the green light those orders were carried out. These attacks destroyed not only the shipyards themselves, but every unfinished ship in them, untold quadrillions of mega-credits worth of work blown to scrap. What was possibly worse, was that they had also stolen every completed ship. While most of the completed ships had already been shipped off and were circling this or that Core World, their crews working up to speed on them. But losing a hundred and eighty-two Dreadnaughts-class heavy cruisers was a grievous total to the other side without even being able to shoot back. To say nothing of the impact on the logistical side of things.

Added to this were the attacks Sidious had known would be coming, including a dual attack on the planet Kuat, home of Kuat.

In many ways, Kuat was a very odd dichotomy, one that could be seen as an example of the dichotomy inherent in the Republic as a whole: grandiose, almost gross levels of industrial and technological capacity, and incredible, raw, almost natural beauty. The natural beauty was the planet named Kuat, as it had been expertly terraformed to welcome human-style life and had been carefully kept at that point. There were lots of people living on the planet, but their homes and even cities blended into the natural world, and fines kept environmental destruction to an absolute minimum.

In contrast, the blue-green planet was entirely ringed by a shipyard whose size was incredible even for the Republic. It was many kilometers wide and more than a down high as it orbited around the equator of the planet. And everywhere along its length were docking ports fit to swallow the most massive ship hole. Fleets could and had been built in these shipyards fit to rival the output of any five Core World sectors you could name.

The planet filled the viewport of the suite of rooms that the Jedi had been given over their objections. All of them would have much preferred to stay in the ship that brought them here, a consular class ship. But with the status-conscious locals, they had been forced to at least go through a few hoops in order to prove that yes, they really were important, and yes, they spoke for the Republic.

Currently, Master T'aal Ran and his padawan Dulcet Far, a Sluisi and human pair, were meditating, while Knight Alex Fiske was going over a past mission with his own padawan, a rather silent youth named Nech. They had called another planet via the Hypercom as he walked his padawan through how he had dealt with a particular political issue, that of a false accusation of corruption. With the Force only barely able to help him, he had to find another way to the truth of the matter.

As he was finishing up that call, another call came in over the Hypercom for them, and without thinking, Alex answered it. He blinked, staring at the face of the separatist leader Master C'baoth, his mouth opening to say something before master C'baoth intoned, "dispense with false pretenses. Kill."

At that line, Alex and Nech, or rather the individuals they had been, disappeared. What was left was the same sort of berserker as those faced in the Temple as they responded to the Orders that master C'baoth had embedded in their remaining psyche so long ago when he drained them of practically everything that made them individuals.

The two of them left the room, moving towards the two meditating Jedi. And even though they were meditating, master Timothy barely felt any warning through the Force before Alex was on him. He grabbed his lightsaber from his belt and turned twisting, his eyes wide. It wasn't fast enough, and Alex's lightsaber flicked on before he struck, stabbing Master Timothy his chest killing him instantly.

His padawan fared even worse, not feeling any warning. The first he knew of their danger was the sound the lightsabers made as they were turned on. His eyes opened wide, his hand scrambling for his own lightsaber before Nech cut his head off from behind.

The two Bound barely even glanced at the bodies of their betrayed fellows before they made the door, the lightsabers off once more as they moved out into the massive shipyard until they found their next few victims. The next few moments the two of them stalked through the corridors, killing everyone they came upon.

This actually wasn't all that bright. Once activated, as it were, the Bound was very much blunt objects, only able to follow specific, simple commands. There command now was to simply kill everyone.

However, as Harry and the others had found, despite being hollowed-out remnants of their true selves, the bound were still force users after a fashion. They proved this when security began to arrive at their position. Since they had been in the VIP quarters, many of the people they had been killing were important, and the local security forces were nearby.

They moved to stop the two berserk Jedi, even as they were somewhat confused by what was going on. Surely Jedi couldn't be doing this, could they? They were defenders of the Republic, representatives of everything right and just.

But when they found the Jedi hacking apart fleeing representatives of a nearby system who had been there to purchase ships, the security forces did what anyone would in their position. They opened fire. "Put them down!"

Two lightsabers whirled and twisted, blocking or deflecting their bolts, and more than a few of the security guards fell. The others began to back away, then flee entirely when the Jedi moved in their direction. Only two of the three squads which had replied got away fast enough to get the call out: "the Jedi have gone mad! Two of them are cutting down everyone they can find! We need reinforcements!"

Two more attempts to stop the Jedi were cut to ribbons as they moved forward, simply following the security troops now, since they were people, and their orders were to kill people. If the two Bound had been in their right mind or had even a bit of their faculty still available, they might have done something different. They could have cut their way down through the shipyard's floors to the nearest generator room. They could've boarded some of the ships in the shipyard itself, rig their engines to explode.

But they couldn't. They couldn't think. They couldn't feel. The Bound could only obey.

Eventually, the security guards got their act together and prepared an actual defense. Bulwarks made of ferrocrete were moved into the corridors of the shipyard facing the two Jedi along with heavy repeating blasters behind them. Despite the higher level of firepower, two Jedi could still block the dozens of bolts coming forward, but they were coming too fast and furious for either of them to make any headway forward.

Then from behind them hatches in the roof the hallway opened. These were emergency bolt holes that could be used in case of a fire. Now though, several more security guards appeared there, firing down through the bolt hole at the two Jedi.

Nech turned, his lightsaber flashing up to deflect several of the bolts, but not enough. One of them hit him in the shoulder, and he fell back, his arm useless. Another quickly hit him in the throat, and he fell dead.

Alex tried to deflect the bolts coming towards them. But from two separate directions, there was just no way he could do so and he too was eventually riddled with blaster bolts, falling next to his padawan.

There was a low cheer from the security group as he fell but it was cut off by the officer on the scene, the captain who had organized this ambush. "None of that! These are the only two that were reported to us, but there are two more Jedi here. We need to find what happened, and where they went!"

He looked around and found a sergeant and his squad. Ordering them to come with him, he paused before he grabbed a radioman and began to direct orders. "Cut this entire area off entirely lock the emergency hatches. I want security forces of at least two full squads strength moving on the floor below this level." Having used it in the ambush he knew the level above had not been attacked.

Soon he discovered he needn't have bothered but that did not bring him any comfort as he stared down at the bodies of the other Jedi. Both of them had obviously been killed by lightsaber strikes, which had caught them entirely unawares, judging by the placement of the bodies and the lack of any sign that they had attempted to protect themselves. "What the hell's is going on?! Jedi fighting one another, and then going on a killing spree? What is wrong with the universe!?" He whispered his tone one of horror.

The only reply he got, was the loud whooping of the alarm all and the lights turning red all around them as a voice over the intercom intoned, "Battle stations! security personnel to their stations. We have an unknown fleet in system calling itself the Confederacy of Independent systems fifth grand fleet. All naval personnel to their ships, all security personnel to their battle stations. I repeat…"

Several hundred fleets and army based attacks were launched in the same time frame. Most of them were spoiling raids but even these were not small attacks, considering many were led by at least a Lucrehulk, sometimes more.

Three other attacks were more serious, hitting systems that held important proton torpedo and concussion missile production centers. Two systems fell under their attacks, the more important of which was Xa Fel, a Kuat Drive Yards constituent in the Core Worlds where twenty percent of the corporation's hyperdrive engines were built.

The third, a planet near Alderaan, was saved by pure luck. An Ord fleet consisting of forty capital ships of various sizes had been engaging in unscheduled war games nearby, They were able to arrive and drive of the attackers but at a severe cost.

Yet those same Ord Fleets, or rather, their home systems, were also targets. Ord Pardron and Ord Thabl in the Mid Rim. Ord Canfre and Ord Mansax in the Outer Rim. More than a dozen others scattered around the Inner Rim and Colony regions. All of them fell, save for a few whose leaders had joined the GDL. Even without their original fleets, those systems proved too strong, beating off the attacks on them with difficulty.

Regardless, the tail for the taken systems was the same: their fleets were smashed, their supplies destroyed. And each such system represented more people under uniform and more mega-credits spent to build than nearly any single sector outside the Core could afford to lose.

And Dominus had not forgotten the Galactic Defense League. Indeed, he even followed Sidious's commands there, shifting targets in different places to hit the Hypercom Uplink Centers within GDL territory. There though, the good luck of basically attacking star systems without defenders ready to fight failed the Confederacy. The Republic and the Confederacy were not the only ones using the idea of hidden bases or fleets, and the GDL had been just as ready for war as the Confederacy.

OOOOOOO

Alarms began to howl through the goal them defense station over the planet of Enadmus, home of one of the Galactic Defense League's Hypercom Uplink Center. The planet really didn't have anything else going for it other than that.

Even a native like Commander Jack Grierson would admit that. Still, the HUC was enough to make it a target, and as the system's few sensor buoys went off screaming out their warning, he was once more thankful for the forward-thinking that had his president joined hands with the GDL. If we hadn't they would have found us practically defenseless!

This was now, not the case at all, a fact that caused him to grin as his Arrowhead flashed past the nearest Golan-Type defense platform. All five such stations in orbit over Enadmus were quickly beginning to be brought online.

That was the beauty of the design though few people understood the impact on a strategic level: everything that could be automated on a Golan Defense Platform was automated, and, unlike what his spies had told Dominus and the Confederacy, or indeed, the Republic as a whole, there were crews in plenty for those space stations on Enadmus, five hundred for each. Shuttles raced up to the Golan platforms behind Sky's squadron to, quickly bring them online, as the ready squadrons of starfighters, of which Sky was commander, and the four squadrons already on combat space patrol streaked out to meet the incoming fleet.

It was decently sized flotilla built around four Lucrehulk class, and oddly enough, only two smaller cruisers, which his computers told him were Banking Clan ships, retrofitted Munificent class. But those giant Lucrehulks had already disgorged their starfighters, and the Vultures were racing to meet them.

The commodore in charge of the Arrowhead squadrons was one of the few veterans that GDL had posted here, and he quickly realized that the odds were very much stacked against them. And in this case, they had their orders. "Lock onto those Vultures unload all proton torpedoes, one each Vulture let's see if we can keep the range open," he ordered.

With their proton torpedoes, they had a slight range advantage over the concussion missiles of the Vulture fighters, although they each carried two fewer torpedoes than the Vultures did missiles. They also had a slightly better-turning speed than the Vultures, so they had a chance at getting away before the Vultures could pull them into a dogfight.

He then picked out his greenest flight, which happened to be Jack's, and ordered them to prepare hyperspace coordinates. "Once you jump out open the message I just sent your system, it'll tell you where to go from there."

"What are you talking about?" Jack shouted, forgetting the discipline the commodore and the rest of the training cadre had been trying to instill in him and the other locals. "This is our home, we have to defend it!"

"Shut up!" the more experienced officer barked. "You think this is a fight that we can win on her own kid? Bull-kriff. They're going to blast their way into orbit. It's what happens after that which matters. Now obey your orders Lieutenant!"

The man cursed but obeyed, breaking directly back to the planet and then around it. There he would eventually hit the hyperspace limit and jump out on a random vector.

At the same time the planetary shield, the planetary shield that no-one off-planet bar the High Command of the Galactic Defense League knew about, came online and the senior captain smiled grimly. That's right suckers. This isn't going to be a smash and grab, you're going to be here for the long haul!

Following his own instructions, the commodore led his Arrowheads in, and they unleashed their proton torpedo on the Vultures at long range, before wheeling away. A few of his slower starfighter pilots were caught in the wavefront of the Vultures's formation but, most of them were able to get away quickly enough.

Two losses for the price of forty destroyed Vultures was a price he'd willingly pay. Admittedly, the torpedoes they had expended had probably cost about a third of the price of those Vultures, but that was fine. And now the Vultures are ignoring us while they fall back to their fleet. The commodore, nodded grimly as he noticed the green unit had already hypered out, smiling thinly as the rest of them regrouped and moved back towards the inner system.

Already the enemy fleet was slowing down, and he could imagine the consternation aboard those ships. After all, pummeling your way through a few starfighter squadrons and one space station, which was all public knowledge said Enadmus had, was one thing. Pummeling your way through starfighter squadrons and five operational and fully manned space stations, all in close orbit of one another, with a planetary shield backing them? That was something different.

Alas, the Separatist commander did not do the smart thing and pull back. Instead, they moved forward slowly. Their Vultures flew back, taking up a defensive formation for now, while the ships spread out slowly as they made for the planet.

"Form up on me, one formation this time rather than scattered squadrons. I want to see if we can convince their Vultures to try and come out and engage us again way from the guns. Blue Six, jump, I repeat, jump. The op-force wants to stick around to play, and that means we need the rest of our team on the field."

OOOOOOO

Elsewhere, the defenders didn't have quite as good luck. Several planets of the Galactic Defense League were suddenly besieged, while others were marked by intense if small-scale space battles, as the defenders were quickly pushed back. But the number of planets which had defenders of one Type or another, and in particular the number of planetary shields, had taken the attackers by surprise. But here, the objective

Reports were coming in from all over the GDL, and they painted an ugly picture, but one which was still manageable, Garm thought to himself, scowling and scratching at his nose in irritation. "They can't possibly think they have the Forces necessary to take all of these planets. Did we really get so lucky as to completely blindside them with how prepared our planetary defense forces are across the board?" He asked looking over at his analysts and Master Yaddle.

That worthy spoke up first, nodding her head. "Appears so it does, most interesting that is. A wonder it is, but what we had aimed for. Still, force strength, on their side it is. Greater forces than we anticipated, they have."

"And why do I think this is only part of their attack?" the general muttered. Then he sighed, slapping the sides of his chair and standing up abruptly, moving around the giant hologram that dominated the command center on Sorrento.

"All right, these," he said pointing to one attack and then another and then another, counting out fifteen attacks in all on systems which were not, to put it kindly, movers and shakers even among the GDL, let alone the at all important to the Republic as a whole. "These were obviously intended to be spoiling raids. Unless their commanders are complete idiots, they'll pull back rather than try to conquer those systems. And unless our admittedly somewhat limited read of C'baoth is completely off, they won't have the wherewithal to reposition beyond that."

"But these…" he paused pointing at two other attacks. "These attacks are too close to Rendili Stardrives for my peace of mind. And, they tie up our fleets from here," he said pointing to one of the GDL's official defense hubs. "Which could leave Rendili and its sector open to further attack."

"Send out a warning to Master Ti we must," Yaddle said nodding her head in agreement. "Targeting the Shipyards they must be."

Garm nodded, but then held up a hand before the mass of communications specialists could get to work. "And send out a signal to our forward commanders. Activate operation Hydra. They may besiege our planets, they may kill our civilians, but they will not take a single planet from the Galactic Defense League," he said, more for the recorder than anything else.

Across the Galactic Defense League, the word went out quickly through already established channels, something they had a massive leg up on the Republic, considering that the attacks on the Republic were on secret installations, which only the Chancellor and a select few senators and members of the bureaucracy knew about. In the Republic nearly an entire day was spent trying to get the word up to the chain to someone who understood what the survivors who had fled those installations were talking about.

In contrast, the Galactic Defense League had been waiting for the shoe to drop, and all of their planets, from Type One up to Type Three, quickly set themselves on a wartime footing. The Type Ones knew that they were bit players, but most of their starfighter pilots were hometown boys at this point, and that led to a certain determination to their defense as spoiling raids were launched at them. Those spoiling raids worked in many cases, wiping out the defenders. But they gained nothing for the doing and took some sharp knocks. This happened in several systems, mostly Type Two planets which were stronger than expected.

Whereas the main thrusts were against the Hypercom Uplink centers, three other planets were also targeted. None were fleet bases but they could be used as steppingstones to attack elsewhere both in the Galactic Defense League's systems and into the Core Worlds.

In one case another attack had been launched, and then, when the attackers realized what kind of buzz saw they had run into, retreated as fast as possible. This was the Sluisi planet of Malo IV which refused all communication from the incoming fleet, a fleet out of Sluis Van itself, a Commerce Guild member in good standing. Instead, they powered up their twenty-two space stations, as well as seventy-five full Arrowheads squadrons. That kind of defense would have done any Core World proud. To find it on a planet like this, which was barely Mid Rim in terms of industry, and actually fell behind that in terms of population, gave the attackers a significant pause for thought.

However it was the Hypercom Uplink Centers that came under attack where Operation Hydra truly proved itself.

Flag Captain Akbar looked at the reports coming in, then over at Admiral Dulnor. "The general has ordered operation Hydra to commence Sir, what is our target?"

"Do we have up-to-date information on the Hypercom world Enadmus? Where in the system is the Separatist fleet?" Unlike Ackbar, who was young for his rank, Dulnor was an extremely elderly Mon Calamari, his ruddy red-colored skin had turned a mottled grey, his barbels numerous, long and drooping. He was one of the few alive who could attest to having seen action, although nothing near this scale of course. Still, his calmness seemed to be reaching out to the rest of the bridge, instilling his younger officers with it despite the conflict looming over them all now.

"We do Sir. They are moving inwards and are well within the hyperjump limit now. But by the time Blue 4 jumped out, he was able to detect more ships inbound, retrofitted freighters by all account." Despite his youth, Akbar thought of himself as a professional soldier and would comport himself as such. The task of being flag captain, which doubled as the Admiral's tactical deputy and adjutant, was a tremendous honor for him at his age. I will be worthy of it. Our new allies and we will weather this undertow and come out the other end to sunny skies.

"Then, let us see if these retrofitted freighters are up to our own retrofitted cruiser," Dulnor replied, with his people's habitual, and ironic, dry humor in stark evidence. "We will mousetrap those freighters, then move on to the true threat."

Captain Akbar nodded and gestured the bridge crew to move. Around them, the flagship of the 4th Sector Defense Fleet began to power up its engines, as it's astrogation computers started to work on the calculations. While around them, the rest of the hidden fleet began to mobilize.

OOOOOOO

In Enadmus the Lucrehulks stayed back, while the starfighters and frigates moved in, dueling with their fellows and the space defense platforms. On his bridge, Admiral Tar Lukk cursed, slamming his hand down on his desk once more in anger. "Where did they get that planetary shield! If not for that, we could batter our way through those defense platforms quickly!"

They could probably still do that even now, reflected more than one individual on the bridge, but the Lucrehulks were the mainstay of the Separatist fleet, and would no doubt take an inordinate amount of punishment from the space platforms. Oh, the five of them were no match for the Lucrehulks really. But Tar Lukk was under orders to retain the Lucrehulks as fighting ships, and he was willing to use that as an excuse to not getting close. After all, if they could figure out what ship was the flagship, his own life might well be in danger and that would never do.

If any of them knew the cowardice that was at the center of his current tactics, none of his bridge crew were stupid enough to comment on it. Instead, they went about their business with efficiency, the efficiency of former merchant crews who knew their systems back to front, even if they didn't have the spit and polish or the mentality of a military unit just yet.

Calm down old boy, calm down, no need to rile up your bridge crew. Save it for the spymasters and their agents who have apparently missed whole Planetary Shield Generators! he thought to himself as he leaned back. The planetary shield generator is only going to slow things down. Once we have boots on the ground, we can overwhelm them in sheer numbers, that is the beauty of droids he thought to himself complacently.

However, the happy tone to his thoughts was short-lived, as is the sensor system blared a warning. "Sir, incoming hyperjump, multiple large hyperjump signals. They're coming out directly behind the supply ships!"

the Admiral had done the smart thing and kept the supply ships well back of the action, even further back than the Lucrehulks, who were just out of range of the space stations, the better to husband their Vulture squadrons, allowing them to reload concussion missiles, and provide close-in fire support against the enemy starfighters. He hadn't left them entirely alone of course, there was a full wing of Vultures behind them, which should've been more than enough to see off the one flight of Arrowheads that had jumped for hyperspace, or even what little forces could be spared for Enadmus from the nearest GDL hub system when itself was also under attack.

However, they were not up to the weight of firepower coming at them now. "Get me a read on those ships!" he bellowed, fear coursing through him as he saw the size of the incoming ships on his display.

"…We have several ships that are at least in cruiser range, around one thousand, three-hundred meters long. Eight smaller ships of the Archer class we think, missile frigates out of Serenno. The larger vessels… we don't have the ship Type in our books, Sir," the main sensor tech stammered. "The closest match we're getting is a Mon Calamari freighter?" He trailed off frowning.

The ships in question read as different from one another to his scanners. They were somewhat streamlined in shape, being long and cylindrical, but were also bulbous in segments, large swaths bulging out here and there. They seemed to have numerous weapons systems as well and the energy output he was getting off the strange ships was confusing.

For his part, the Admiral input a few commands into his own screen, quickly reading what they knew about Mon Calamari ships and he soon breathed a sigh of relief. Their defenses would probably be somewhat formidable, but they would lack any kind of significant firepower.

The missile frigates, however, were going to be an issue. The ones already assigned to the system hadn't come out to face his fleet. Instead, they had stayed inside the defense radius of the space platforms, which was smart of them and annoying to boot. But if they came out now, they and the ones coming behind could catch his fleet between their fire at range. No real threat, but it would slow their assault down further for certain.

"We also have six more missile frigates over here sir," the sensor tech said, indicating another group of hyperspace footprint that wasn't part of the fleet jumping their landing ships. "That could add a worrisome amount of firepower at long range."

"No matter, no matter," the Admiral said waving his hands, his fear leaving him as his anger began to assert itself. "If we keep the Vultures in close on defensive formation, their torpedoes won't..."

He broke off, as the unknown ships opened fire, and the Vultures and Recusant class destroyers that he had assigned to defend the supply ships died under hails of turbolaser, quad laser, and ion cannon fire. Far more firepower than the Mon Calamari freighters were supposed to have or could even power if they did have them judging by the information he had access to. "What are those ships again?" he asked, aghast.

"They're still reading as Mon Calamari freighters, sir."

"Extremely well-retrofitted freighters then," the Admiral said coldly, yet again regaining his equilibrium. "Still, with that kind of firepower added on, they must have lost some of those ship's normal defensive ability. We'll be able to take advantage of that."

"Sir, have you considered our position?" the Neimoidian admiral's flag captain asked quietly. Another Neimoidian, he was of the same age as the admiral, but not nearly as politically connected.

The Admiral turned to look at them one eyebrow rising. Despite his race not actually having any eyebrows, they used much the same body facial movement as a human would. "What do you mean?"

"Sir, we're deep within the gravity well, we can't hyper out, and we're stuck between the defense stations and that incoming fleet."

"True, but we don't have to enter the range of those defense stations. Our starfighters are doing a good enough job keeping their starfighters off and can do so on their own and the planet's missile frigates in turn. No, while this might have been planned out as a trap commander, they didn't bring nearly enough force to the party. We can wipe that flotilla out, and then come back to continue our siege of Enadmus."

With the Vultures wiped out, the incoming GDL ships started to launch their own starfighters, and instead of taking his next-to helpless freighters captive, were just destroying them, causing the Admiral to grimace angrily. There weren't actually many people alive on those ships, but that was three brigades worth of army troops, their equipment, and those ships themselves up in smoke. "Still, this was supposed to be a cakewalk, a show of force against the Galactic Defense League, that they couldn't be strong everywhere and to show everyone on the Republic side they couldn't be trusted to look after themselves. We've already lost more ships than was anticipated here."

"Perhaps then," the flag captain said thoughtfully "We should have chosen a place where we knew they weren't strong at all rather than a place we thought we had an accurate estimation of that strength."

"Perhaps," the Admiral mused "but what would've been the point. Knock off this planet, that planet who cares? No, destroying the Hypercom Uplink Center on Enadmus is the most important target. Move the fleet back towards these new ships," he ordered after a moment. "We will engage this new fleet first."

The other Neimoidian relayed his admiral's orders, while keeping his thoughts to himself. Something didn't feel right here, but he couldn't put his concerns into words any better than he had already.

Moments later however he didn't have to, as more starfighters and three gunboats burst out of hyperspace. They came in at an angle, cutting in as if they were going to join up with the planetary defenders, so the Admiral ignored them. But then those planetary defenders started to come out from behind the defenses of the space stations at the same time.

They were having a hell of a time against the Vultures paying for the privilege, but several of these newcomers were gunboats, armed with several quad lasers locking up four or five Vultures with every weapon system they had, gunning them down. These gunboats had been designed to take out starfighters, and though the Vultures quickly learned to use their concussion missiles on them rather than the other fighters, the Admiral had not recalled his starfighters for rearmament since the start of this battle.

And to his shock, those gunboats also seemed to have the defenses to take that fire. All four of them lost shielding and were damaged heavily, but they wiped out several squadrons' worth of Vultures, and the odds in the starfighter duel quickly evened out even as the gunboats retreated under the planetary shield.

The Admiral, however, ignored what was going on behind him to close with this new enemy, ordering the frigates forward on his flanks, as the four Lucrehulks moved into a line abreast, powering up their weapons systems. The modified Mon Calamari freighters did the same.

There were ten of them against four Lucrehulks, which should have been an uneven match. The Lucrehulks were much larger and much better armed. Indeed even against one Lucrehulk, ten cruisers the size of the Mon Calamari ships should have been overwhelmed.

But something that the Separatists had forgotten about was that the missile frigates didn't have to fire on their own scanner reading. They stayed well back, on the outer edge of their own range and well out of turbolaser range of the enemy, waiting until the Mon Calamari ships locked up the enemy capital ships.

For a moment, turbolasers blasted from both sides, a tumultuous concussion of force that would have deafened anyone had this meeting occurred in a planetary atmosphere. But sound did not propagate in space, and the two sides blasted away at one another with impunity. Shields flared as hits went home and the behemoths landed blow after blow against one another as the Mon Calamari ships moved deeper into the Luchrehulk's own range. The Munificent class cruisers also fired, their heavier weapons making a noticeable dent on the Mon Calamari shields.

But the Admiral's initial thought on those shields being weakened due to the necessity of the ships needing to power their weapons systems soon proved false. They were still as strong or stronger than any pre-war estimation had put them. When a sector of shielding fell momentarily, the overlapping shield structure the Mon Calamari favored came into play. As the battle continued, to the shock of many it seemed as if the Mon Calamari ships had three different layers of shielding.

The enemy's so-called freighters kept coming. And they were hitting back too. The Mon Calamari seemed to not have many heavy turbolasers, but they had many regular sized ones, broadsides of at least twenty of the cannons each, with more mounted on the prow. To back this up they had at least twenty plus ion cannons and more than eighty quad lasers each with an even larger number of defensive lasers. The Mon Calamari certainly understood the danger of starfighters. But they also didn't have any proton torpedoes of their own.

Still, he was confident in his own ship's shielding and sheer size advantage. Why none of the attackers massed even a third of the size of his Lucrehulks. He became ever more confident as the fight continued, each side wailing on one another as they closed. So much for the vaunted missile frigates of Serenno!

Concussion missiles and torpedoes flashed between each fleet, most of them destroyed by point defense or starfighters, who had been relegated to defensive positions on both sides. The missile frigate's impact on the battle was practically nonexistent at this point.

This changed abruptly when the starfighters that had previously been fighting it out over the planet broke through the Vultures he had left in orbit. "Sir," his flag captain said instantly "we have enemies incoming from behind!"

"What?!" the admiral barked back, twisting around. He had been concentrating so much on the capital ship engagement he had forgotten the dogfight happening behind his fleet.

"The starfighters from the planet! They and their missile frigates are incoming."

Order the Munificents to break back and engage," He said instantly. "We can't afford to break off any of the Lucrehulks. Switch our targeting parameters," he ordered abruptly. "Target one ship at a time, take it out, then move on. Even those shields can't stand up to our firepower once it's been concentrated."

On his own flagship, Admiral Dulnor smiled thinly as a report came in from one of the sensor teams. "Sir, we have isolated their flagship."

"Excellent." He looked at the angles, then shook his head. "Enadmus's defenders are not going to break through those two frigates. Order Green squadron and Twilight squadron in, get them to lock up the flagship, order the missile frigates to switch their targeting data to those starfighters. The fleet will continue to fight," he ordered formally even as his ship's shields began to show damage as well.

"Damage report forward, turbolaser batteries gamma and eta reporting several guns offline," another sensor tech reported. "Deep Dweller reports they have taken damage to one of their shield generators, and their primary and secondary shields are starting to fade in their aft quadrant."

"Order them to fall back behind the rest of the fleet," Dulnor ordered promptly. That was not only Mon Calamari doctrine, but he had been told that it was Galactic Defense League doctrine too. They had to retain their capital ships because they simply could not make ships as fast or train crews as quickly as the Separatists or even the Republic could once it began to gear up to a wartime footing.

He then turned to his communications officers. "Signal flotillas Dagger and Fire, they are to jump in and engage. Targets of opportunity."

A moment later, three more starfighters squadrons jumped in, attacking the Trade Federation fleet from an angle to their deep space side. More starfighters broke off from their defensive position around the four main Lucrehulks. Another moment later, two more missile frigates joined the battle, lighting up their own torpedoes instantly, and firing at a single Munificent near the back of the Trade Confederate fleet that had fallen out of position just slightly as it fought off the missile frigates and starfighters coming out from Enadmus.

Their heavy capital ship-sized proton torpedoes flashed out in a shoal of a hundred per ship. The enemy ship couldn't shoot them all down even with the aid of the few Vultures around it and enough torpedoes got through to overwhelm the shields of the Munificent. The next second more hammered in, cracking its spine open in a flare of protonic power.

The triumphant Archer class frigates were bounced in turn by vengeful Vultures who cut the angle on them before they could get back out towards the hyperspace limit. Their shields were hammered badly, and one of them lost shielding entirely. But that, plus fighting the new starfighters from the other side, had pulled more of the Vultures out of position from protecting the four Lucrehulks.

And this allowed the squadrons around the main GDL flotilla to get in close and finally lock on target on one of the Lucrehulks. The specific Lucrehulk being used as his flagship by the local Confederacy Admiral. More than half those fighters died, but they accomplished their objective, sharing their lock on data with the missile frigates.

A second later, the three missile frigates that came in with Admiral Dulnor launched their entire missile load as one, more than three hundred capital grade proton torpedoes, with enhanced range modifiers flashed out through his fleet, and through the defense of the enemy. Locked on as they were, no amount of chaff or ECM could break their electronic grip on their foe. Only active defense lasers could shoot them down, and with the Vultures screen weakened, the enemy didn't have enough space or guns to protect themselves.

A Lucrehulk ship was a dreadnought through and through. Years later, in another dimension far, far away it would take eight or nine first-generation Star Destroyers, the ships that would become the mainstay of the Galactic Empire, to take one Trade Federation ship out on an even footing.

However, that didn't mean they were invincible.

First ten, then twenty, then fifty proton torpedoes slammed into the shields of that particular Lucrehulk, and those shields held and then… failed. The next second, dozens of proton torpedoes slammed into the whole of the Lucrehulk, streaking through the damaged portion of the shields to spread their apocalyptic payloads. The defenses down, fifteen more got through all their fellows could do.

Even a Lucrehulk's tremendous bulk could not take that amount of punishment. It shattered, one of its giant C-shaped frontal nacelles simply broke off from the rest, as explosions began to rock its frame from the inside. Then still more proton torpedoes arrived, finishing the work and shattering the capital ship into dozens of pieces scattering them throughout space.

"Excellent!" The Admiral said although he had to grimace at the amount of punishment his own ships had taken. All of them were showing in the yellow in terms of shielding integrity on his screen, and that was getting worse as the fight went on. Another ship had fallen out of the battle line, twisting around and moving behind the others retreating from the fight for the moment.

Yet at the back of the formation, the defenders of the Hypercom planet had paid an exorbitant price, but they too had managed to take down the second Munificent sent after them. They had lost two of the missile ships who had strayed too close to the enemy's own heavy turbolaser range and didn't have the shielding necessary to take that kind of punch, but they had still done it. This meant both of the enemy Munificent class ships were gone, their Vulture fighters were now spread out on multiple fronts and were now being overwhelmed by gunboats as more of those arrived from the nearest GDL positions.

The three remaining Lucrehulks banded together, pushing their courses so close together they were almost in danger of their shields touching. This allowed them to cover one another in overlapping defensive fields of fire, and that, in turn, allowed them to slowly pull away. All three ships were battered but with this defensive formation, and slowly pulling their Vultures in close – those that could successfully pull away from their current battles and could reach them - they were able to ward off the next proton missile barrage.

But not the one after that. This one targeted the Vultures, destroying them by the hundreds as the Admiral realized they added more to the point defense of his enemies than he had thought before this battle. Once the vultures were gone, Dulnor closed, ruthlessly using his own fleets remaining numbers advantage and their far better shielding in order to circle the Lucrehulks, pounding them slowly into ruin. It was far slower than that first almost cataclysmic destruction of their flagship, but the battle was never in doubt once the missile frigates started to range on them once more.

It took a while of course, any space battle on this scale took a while, simply because the larger the ship, the harder it was to kill most of the time. For a moment, it looked as if the last two Lucrehulks would be able to get out to the hyperspace limit.

But then, the two missile ships which had jumped out after using all their missiles came back. The Mon Calamari ships passed on their targeting data, and the proton torpedoes flew again. One after another the last Lucrehulks died until finally the last one shattered under the rain of fire from the five remaining combat-capable Mon Calamari ships.

"Congratulations Sir," Akbar said slowly, staring at the damage the fleet had taken. "A tremendous victory."

"If a costly one, is what you mean to say," the Admiral said, voicing the same thought. "Our ships are going to need days of repair after this, and I shudder to think of the casualties among our starfighter corps. The sheer number of Vultures those Lucrehulks can put into the field…" he shook his head a gesture that nearly all bipedal humanoids shared. "Make a note, captain. They are far more dangerous in a defensive role against incoming torpedo fire than we anticipated. We are going to have to make changes to our doctrine going forward."

"Yes sir."

"Then call the defense stations. Ask them where they want our ships. We will not hyper back to base omicron just yet. Not until we are certain that we can do so unobserved. Keeping those bases secret is almost as important as winning this fight."

"Yes sir," Akbar said, nodding his head for a moment they were both busy for a few minutes the flag captain relaying orders to the fleet, while the Admiral worked with his staff, making notes, passing on observations, and essentially writing up an after-action report to send to GHQ. Then, as there was a lull in the activity, Akbar asked: "I wonder how Operation Hydra is going on elsewhere."

OOOOOOO

Elsewhere, the war machine of the trade of the Separatists ground under several GDL planets. But these were GDL planets that had limited defenses. The targeted Type 3 planets all turned back, or simply staved off assaults, whereas elsewhere around Type 2 planets, where the intelligence of the Confederacy had failed it slash and burn actions slogged down into slugfests with defense platforms or scattered hit and run defensive actions by starfighter squadrons with very strict orders of engagement.

The secret fleet hubs worked perfectly, bringing more power to each defensive point they could, coming at each attack that entered GDL space as the Mon Calamari Admiral had done, bringing disparate fleets them in at different intervals, to attack from different angles. Against more competent enemies this might have allowed for defeat in detail, but each portion of the attacking forces knew when to turn and run, and only one such assault failed against a Harch admiral named Trench, who in turn failed to take the planet, his fleet too heavily damaged to push past the orbital defenses.

Overall, Garm's training proved extremely effective at the command level, even if most of the troops were green. Casualties were incredibly heavy among the starfighter Corps in more than one combat zone. But as harsh as it might sound, the GDL had starfighters and pilots to spare. Their capital ships could not be spent anywhere near as freely.

Yet most of that was but a sideshow for the true main thrust against the GDL that the Confederacy had launched. Like the attack on the secret Republic shipyards, Dominus had wanted to land a true body blow, something that in the case of the GDL could have possibly knocked them out of the war entirely or forced them to amalgamate once more with the Republic. That target was Rendili Stardrives.

But Rendili Stardrives was not without its own defenders. Those defenders lacked somewhat in dreadnoughts-class capital ships – like everyone else facing the Confederate juggernaut - but they more than made up for in the number of heavy and light cruisers, gunboats, and starfighters. Lots of starfighters, and lights of heavy cruisers.

Shaak Ti looked on from where she was standing by the Admiral of the Rendili Defense fleet, giving her own thoughts occasionally but otherwise staying silent. While she had some training in command and tactics, she had no experience in running a fleet action, and no Force training specific to that need. The fact that she had not immediately tried to take command had seemed to surprise many and gratified the locals something fierce if the emotions they were all giving off through the Force was any occasion. That made her smile slightly as she watched the battle.

The enemy forces consisted of twenty Lucrehulks, thirty-two of their own Munificent class cruisers, and literally uncounted numbers of Vultures fighters, against which the locals had fifty-nine cruisers, five dreadnoughts, all old but fully upgraded ships, and twenty defense platforms of a local variety that were each larger if more crew-intensive then the Golan Defense Platforms. The shipyards around Rendili also had shielding and at least anti-starfighter weaponry.

In abundance, she thought as a squadron of Vulture starfighters strayed into the firing arc of one the space stations. The shipyard's defenders picked them off gleefully, and only one of the twelve Vultures that entered their range escaped. None of their concussion missiles had gotten through either.

"Do you think they can win through Admiral?" she asked cocking her head thoughtfully. She didn't think so, but she was looking for another opinion.

"No," he said firmly. "Not unless they bring in more ships. If they use this fleet to pin us in place here, then attack the planet from another angle, I would be forced to split my fleet in order to defend against the possibility of both orbital bombardment and against direct capital ship assault on the shipyards. None of the shipyards have weapons rated to defend against capital ships, hence my own forward position. But as you can see they are already enveloping us from above and below."

"They will not do so, never fear."

The Admiral looked at her, and Shaak smiled thinly. "Your sector in its entirety joined the Galactic Defense League, and there are only a few places outside your sector where a ship could jump directly to Rendili. I informed GHQ of this attack, and they informed me that operation Hydra had been launched. As we speak, Arrowhead squadrons and missile frigates are attacking those positions. They probably won't be able to do much damage, but they will certainly disrupt the supply train of this fleet and any attempt to directly reinforce it. They intend to try to besiege your planet. They will not succeed."

The man smiled fiercely at that, then laughed suddenly as something else got caught his attention. "Well, I don't think they're going to try much of anything after this but run with their tails between their legs."

As Shaak watched, a portion of the planetary shield slowly powered down in one specific segment. From the surface, there came a heavy spike of energy readings, and then a flash of yellow energy flew out into space. One of the Lucrehulks that was trying to move beneath the defending fleet in order to envelop it from below shuddered as its front shields were hit by a giant ion cannon blast as the planet's own defensive systems made themselves known.

Two more opened up immediately, then paused as the oceans around them flared into steam, working as heatsinks better than anything that technology could have created on that scale. The next instant, that same Lucrehulk twitched, it shields dying under three more blasts of the ion cannons.

Instantly one of the Archer class frigates opened fire, lashing it with torpedoes. Only about a tenth of that massive torpedo salvo got through thanks to the enemy fleet's defensive fire, but it was enough to ravage the targeted Lucrehulk from one end to another, taking out numerous systems, and putting the ship out of the fight, though not destroy it outright.

That missile frigate too retreated, moving underneath the planetary shield, as missile colliers rose from the surface to rearm it.

"They expected us to have been pulled out of position," the Admiral said suddenly, frowning. "Our concentration of forces is too great for this attack to win through, they had to have known that. They must be attacking elsewhere. Throughout the sector, as you said."

"Do you wish me to find out what is going on?" Shaak asked solicitously.

"If you could Master Jedi," the Admiral, a middle-aged human with a bit of a paunch and a normally merry face, said, his voice suddenly tight. "I have family elsewhere in the sector."

Shaak reached out and laid a hand gently on his shoulder, squeezing it but did not say anything. What could she say to that after all that would not come out as trite? Better to simply get on with it.

Indeed, this sector had come under heavy fire, but Harry, Garm, Yaddle, and Shaak had thought long and hard about this. While most of the planets in the Rendili sector still lacked planetary shields, they were home to numerous homegrown defense forces, each of which had been given more starfighters or missile frigates, hidden among their numerous, albeit smaller, shipyards. There weren't enough to defend themselves against the weight of numbers that the Trade Federation alone could've brought to each system. But, the enemy had made the mistake of spreading out its attacks too much when it came to the GDL and was now paying for it in they couldn't bring in enough forces to occupy the entire sector. The siege of Rendili itself was therefore vulnerable in the extreme to hit and run attacks. Rendili would not fall anytime soon, that was for certain.

OOOOOOO

On Coruscant, where news of these events had yet to reach them Bail looked at his fellow leader of the Peace Party, his face grave, but questioning as he looked at her, and more specifically a point on her collarbone. "Are you alright Padme?"

"Yes, I'm fine. Not looking forward to this meeting, but I'm fine physically," Padme replied wanly, shrugging her shoulders.

Bail nodded, understanding that point, but had to ask, "I understand, it's just you have a bruise on your neck there."

Padme fought back a blush and a completely salacious giggle. While they hadn't done anything beyond making out and some heavy fondling last night, Aayla had left a hickey there on her neck. Harry had left one just below each of her nipples. They stung slightly as her breasts shifted in her bra.

Yet even so, but the memory of last night was unable to block out the dread she felt for what was going to begin here. "What about you? Are you ready for this?"

"A question that rather covers a lot of territory." Bail smiled whimsically as he continued, his voice still just as quiet as Padme. But yes, I am I think. I will never reconcile the fact that violence is so prevalent in the universe, but I cannot deny that there is certainly a need for it now, if, if the ancient evil that is the Sith have returned."

Padme nodded once, and then they, as w ell as the Senators around them, were called in to take their places in the randomly chosen hover chairs.

OOOOOOO

Today, Harry arrived at the Senate with the Jedi observers, with Aayla beside him, rather than separate. This was going to be an action that came from the Jedi rather than Count Potter and the GDL. Harry was there only to explain his part in what had happened, and that the GDL stood with the Jedi in making this declaration.

He looked at the three other Jedi, all of whom nodded, with Aayla sending him a wordless burst of reassurance and confidence. "Don't worry, Harry. This is, when you get down to it, the easy part. The war will be the hard part."

Harry replied with his own wry chuckle down their link before the two of them followed the more senior Jedi through the doorway out onto the hoverchair waiting for them.

At the start of the meeting, it took a bit for everyone to realize that there were four Jedi there, rather than simply the first two observers. But the Chancellor brought this to their minds quickly by intoning, "Ladies and gentlemen of the Senate, gentle beings all. We are here in order to hear a report from the Jedi Order about their investigation into the latest round of attacks on our fellow senators. Further, I was informed that the Jedi Order has an announcement to make that will connect to that investigation, and perhaps shed new light on Master C'baoth."

Harry frowned. "Did anyone tell him what we were going to speak about?"

Master Billaba winced. "We might have hinted that our announcement had to do with the Order's response to Master C'baoth although we did not do more than hint at that."

"Doesn't matter now, does it," Harry tsked, knowing that sentence alone would have primed the Separatists for more bad news, and they would already be putting up their mental walls against whatever was going to be said. So much for shock value. Still, it has to be done anyway.

As the most senior Jedi there, Master Plo Koon stepped forward, nodding his head as the Senate's communications equipment went to work, replacing the Chancellor's face with his own on the various floating screens around the hall. "Senators, the investigation into who attacked Senator Amidala, Senator Organa and numerous others has been completed. Indeed, it finished last night, we were merely waiting for some computer data work to be included in this report. Jedi Knight Secura will explain these findings."

Aayla took her place beside the other Jedi who backed away, while the hoverchair moved around in the circle, allowing the holographic generators to catch her face. This was the first time that the majority of the Senate had seen her, and she allowed her grim expression, which went poorly on her beautiful face, to do its work before she spoke. It worked too, she could hear the whispers already, linking her with Harry, some about her beauty, some wondering what this was all about. It was simply another weapon when it came to public speaking.

"Senators, my name is Jedi Knight Aayla Secura. I was assigned with Padawan Skywalker into following clues left by the physical data we recovered in a second assault on Senator Amidala the evening after the main attacks on herself and the other senators had been launched. I understand there were four other attacks that night, the remains of which did not leave anything we could use to try to trace back the attackers. However, the attack on Senator Amidala was special, as it was halted by a Jedi on the scene: Myself."

"We were thus able to recover several different types of robotics, which had been made used to make several illegal spider-style assassin droids. They were each loaded with a type of dangerous paralytic poison. These were two data points we decided to follow up on, and which led to myself and Anakin into the underground warrens…"

From there Aayla detailed her and Anakin's investigation, leaving out the attacks by the locals, as that portion of the tale would serve no purpose. She also left out Chewbacca and his aid, which, while at the time extremely necessary, would only slow down her oration. He had agreed with that, saying, "I do what I do for honor's sake, not for recognition. For the honor of protecting Padme, and for friendship. With Padme and with the Jedi Order."

Her explanation went on for about thirty minutes, interspersed with questions asked by a few senators, who had a slightly better understanding of the mechanics of such an investigation. One questioned her closely on the various robotic parts, before seeming to be satisfied. Then came the first of what would the bombshells.

"We were able to trace the poison to a specific planet, the Separatist planet of Raxus Secundus. Furthermore, we have traced the money being paid to the mercenaries, and to the former bounty hunter, the shape changer Zam Wessel, to companies based there."

This, as Aayla and the others had feared led to a wild since the ration of noises and shouts, the Centrist and Separatist senators both up in arms. The Centrists howled about how this was a bloody dagger in the hands of the Separatists proving their culpability. The Separatist senators vociferously denied the entire story or at least that part of it, claiming that the Jedi had proven they were no longer neutral, could no longer be trusted, and so forth.

Aayla weathered the storm as calmly as Harry had, for much the same reasons: Her Jedi training, her time with her own Master, and Harry's presence within her mind, smiling, taking her mental avatar's hand, and simply dancing with her in their joint mind until the shouts and exclamations died down under the Chancellor's efforts.

After once more using his override control in order to regain control, the Chancellor opened the floor for specific questions. "So long as these questions are based upon what we have already heard rather than supposition about what they could mean."

Led by Senator Bonteri, the Separatist senators attempted to tear apart the information Aayla had conveyed to them. But Aayla's investigation with Anakin had been very thorough, and it became clear that either this attack had been launched by Raxus Secundus, and therefore either connected to the Separatist cause or funded by it in some fashion. Or an investigation team would have to go there to backtrack further. Senator Bonteri was all set to offer that, unwilling to admit that the Separatists could've been behind this, but there were others who had questions, most of whom were trying to rattle the young Jedi Knight in her position. They did not succeed.

"Very well. That is certainly damning evidence tossed at the feet of the Separatists," the Chancellor finally interjected, having been silent up to this point. "And yet, it is not enough to implicate Master C'baoth or even truly the leaders of the Separatist party. This could be another terrorist attack after all. Yet you said when you asked me to call this meeting of the Senate that you had definitive proof of Master C'baoth's culpability in this."

"With respect Chancellor, we did not. We said we had information to convey about Master C'baoth. His connection to my investigation is ephemeral at best, and not worth discussing at this time. No, our particular issue with him comes from another source," Aayla replied, showing no concern as she gently corrected the other man's leap of logic. "I will now turn this discussion over to Master Plo Koon, who will explain."

Padme's eyes traced to Bail, nearby, finding him looking her way. The two of them shared a sudden, silent communication, a weary message of and now the die will be cast, and all our work brought to naught. Then Padme shook it off, reminding herself of Harry's words last night. We might have been fighting the good fight up to this point, but the means of the conflict has to change now to match that of our enemies. The enemy, or at least one of them, has shown himself, and we must respond. If it is to be war… then so be it.

By the time she looked up at the Jedi's hover chair, Master Plo Koon had begun to speak. He was not a real diplomat. He could walk the walk but he was more of a justiciar, a student of law and ethics rather than politics. Regardless, he was well respected here and had been one of the Senate observers for the Jedi Order for some time now.

His voice, somewhat mangle by the translation software in his mask, cut across the Senate silencing any background noise there might've been a moment before. "Senators, gentle beings. Yesterday, an act of heinous evil was committed within the temple environs. An attack was made, long in the planning, thanks to a trap we, the Jedi Order had been blind to. Knight Potter and Chief Archivist Jocasta were going through our archives to search for information on Master C'baoth's past missions, when they stumbled upon the idea of checking to see if any of our fellow Jedi had meetings reported meetings with him or someone matching his description after Master C'baoth had retired from the Order."

"When this occurred, a bug left within the system alerted several other Jedi within the temple, who then preceded to mindlessly attack several sectors of the Jedi Order's temple. These were the archive center, where they nearly killed Master Jocasta and would have if not for night Potter's intervention, and where they did destroy several decades worth of priceless archival evidence. The youngling's in their school was another target, as were the solitary meditation rooms, and the commissary."

By this point, the silence of the temple was of the Senate was broken by thousands of shocked exclamations, cries of anger and shock, and disbelief. Practically every senator was on their feet, roaring questions, shouting in horror, or just shouting in an effort to be heard without any real idea of what they were trying to say.

But Master Plo Koon just kept on speaking calmly, sternly. Added with the Force his voice soon overrode every other sound in the hall, without even needing the use of the various equipment. Even if it did sound somewhat even odder than normal coming out of his mask. "The Jedi Order lost twenty-two brothers and sisters to yesterday, and it could've been far worse. The Jedi in question had not been subordinated via the Dark Side. They had not fallen to the Dark Side through any action of their own."

Master Plo Koon's voice somehow rose in volume, thundering now through the hall. "They had been drained. As if they were a cup that someone had made a hole in, draining everything that made them people, that made them individuals, their brain, their soul, call it what you will, everything had been gone, replaced only by a thin veneer of their original selves that could stand against casual inspection, that could even act as if the person was still alive. But they were not ladies and gentlemen. Someone had used the Force to do this to them!"

"And that someone is Master C'baoth. None of the Jedi who were so used had any other connection. With this evidence, the Jedi Order has no choice but to declare Master C'baoth a Sith reborn, and further, to declare war upon him. We hope that the Republic and its offshoot the Galactic Defense League will stand with us in this time of turmoil, and together we will defeat the Sith once more."

For a moment after Master Koon's ringing oration, silence filled the hall, the senators only slowly getting over their shock at the sheer volume of his voice as well as his denunciation of C'baoth after more than a year of tiptoeing around attacking the former Jedi Master directly. Then the noise began once more.

Many of the Separatist Senators sat in appalled silence. This was their worst fears realized yet couched in a language that they could not argue with. They would have to, of course, they would have to shout out that this was all a trick, that the Jedi Order had sided with the Centrists, that it was really someone within the Order who was the Sith which set this terrible attack in motion. If it was even real and not a lie itself. Yet all of them, from Senator Bonteri to the most vituperative Separatist follower, knew that they had just lost whatever kind of moral ground they might've been able to retain after the initial investigation by Aayla had been shared.

There was no going back now. They all knew it. And many of them were hoping that indeed, their fellow Separatists had seen this coming, and had struck already. The idea of the Sith versus the Jedi didn't really matter much to a lot of them, such was the power of self-serving self-aggrandizement. Others truly believed the 'Sith' in this instance was just bogeymen the Jedi were using to browbeat them back into submission to the Republic.

Others though, others had questions about this. They were now wondering if they had made a wrong choice in which political party to back. Many of them were even now reaching out to Centrist friends or GDL neutrals, wishing to abandon ship.

Eventually, however, the obvious question was asked by one of the Senators. "Does that mean the Jedi Order will agree to the Military Creation Act?" Senator Ask Aak bellowed, his voice somehow cutting through the tumult.

"With a few provisos to be discussed in the future… The Jedi Order will no longer argue against the Military Creation Act. We loathe the necessity, but cannot argue it is no longer needed," Master Billaba answered, speaking up for the first time.

"Then I move that we pass the Military Creation Act right now!"

"Seconded!"

The twin shouts came on the heels of one another, so fast they might have come from one throat. But they didn't. Nor were they alone for long.

With the revelation that C'baoth was indeed a Sith, even the Peace Party's bloc didn't try to stop the vote from occurring. The Separatists did, but even so, the vote was cast, and it was overwhelmingly in favor of the Military Creation Act.

"Very well. This a dark day in the history of the Republic. But there can be no doubt that the Separatist cause has been the cause of too much strife to ignore. With that being said, I must demand that the Senators who come from Separatist worlds please, remove yourselves from this body." The Chancellor intoned his voice heavy with sorrow and regret, but also firm with resolution. "You will have forty-eight hours to remove themselves from Coruscant. After that, you, your assets, and anything you leave behind will be confiscated. This includes any computers, personal datapads, or other electronic devices. Your ships will be designated noncombatants until you can return to your planets of origin, but I urge you to not tarry long in Loyalist space. Unless any of you have a final statement to make?"

"I do," Bonteri said, getting to her own feet, and shouting to be heard over the jeers, shouts, and exclamations that the Chancellor's calm words evoked. Soon, with the Chancellor's aid, her voice rang across the Senate as her fellow Separatists began to leave, some sadly, others proudly, most defiantly. "Violence has always been the first resort of the desperate and the insane. I don't know where either side in this conflict stands on that scale. I don't know the truth of what has been said here this day, though I, unlike my fellows, refuse to believe that the Jedi are lying. Still, even with that, the information could have been changed, misinterpreted, or simply falsified. Even this attack on the Temple could have been launched by someone other than Master C'baoth. But it is far too late now for recriminations or what-ifs. The die is cast. I just wish, with every fiber of my being that, it had not come to this. Farewell ladies, gentlemen. I rather doubt we will see one another again."

As the respected, venerated human Senator of Onderon left, there was a moment of sober silence. Then the Chancellor spoke once more. "A dark day as I said, but one that I had long feared might come. Indeed, my friends, my fellow Senators, I had long feared the return of the Sith. Indeed, I had long been aware of evidence of this, but to hear it from the mouths of the Jedi Order as a whole, that is something else entirely, and frees me from a certain oath I made to an old friend."

Everyone was looking at the Chancellor now, who inputted a series of commands, opening up a file that began to play a second later. "This was delivered to my office two months after the invasion of Naboo by a messenger. I have kept it a secret since, even from the Jedi Order due to what it contained. But my oath to that effect is now void thanks to the words of Master Koon."

The image which popped up was that of a middle-aged man standing in a white-painted room. He had long hair done up in a topknot and a beard. His face was grim, almost malnourished, and his eyes were deep-set, showing an astonishing lack of vitality for a Jedi. For such he was, going by the lightsaber at his side and the robes he wore.

"Chancellor Palpatine, congratulations on your ascension. My name is Sifo Dyas, and I am a Jedi Master. You might not remember me, but we met once at a party, where you, myself, and Master Dooku talked long about how the machinations of the Senate seem to have become almost self-replicating, and how much violence we Jedi had been seeing of late. We shared some concerns about whether or not there was something behind the scattered violence."

The image seemed to wait, then went on. "I realize that this is highly unusual, but I must ask that you keep this communication a secret, both from your fellow senators and especially from the bureaucracy of the Republic, as well as from my own Order. I have reason to believe that my Order is hiding a grave threat within it and if we have not been able to see it up to this point, who is to say where within the Jedi Order that threat lies."

As if he knew those words would have shocked his listeners Sifo paused once more, before going on. "On top of the concerns we shared, I have been sensing a shift in the Force, a change in the nature of it that goes beyond anything else I have ever felt. I have communed with the Force as deeply as I possibly could to get to the bottom of this. I have even traveled to several planets where there have been recent outbreaks of violence…and where Jedi have gone missing, searching for evidence to tell me how those Jedi died."

"I have come to a horrifying conclusion, to the only conclusion that I possibly could after the events on Naboo. I fear that the Sith have returned, clothed in the cloaks of my brethren within the Order. Yet I have no proof. I do have proof of a connection between them and the Trade Federation, however. A communication that…"

While the Senate, Harry, and the other Jedi watched, Sifo shared bits of evidence that pointed to the Sith being behind the conflict around Naboo as well as the ties that had at that point slowly begun to bind the Commerce Guild, Techno Union, and Trade Federation together. All of it was circumstantial but matched with what Harry remembered being shared around the higher echelons of the Order at the time. Indeed, some of it matched what Dooku must have discovered before going after the Sith Master at the time.

"But if we cannot find the Sith in the next few years, war might well be inevitable. To combat that threat, I have met with the clone masters of Kamino and House Andrim of Kuat. The Kaminoans will give us an army, and House Andrim has agreed to secretly create enough military material to arm them. To help them in turn from being discovered, I removed all mention of Kamino from the Republic's database, and from the Jedi Order's Archives, along with one other planet. I then helped Tyris Andrim fake his own death and disappear with an experimental mobile construction yard."

That cause some whispers of shock, and the Senator of Kuat, who was in fact, of House Andrim himself, to collapse into his chair, his eyes wide, and unseeing for a second. The loss of his nephew had been a blow to the entire house. To now hear he had been a part of this anti-Sith conspiracy was almost enough to make his heart stop with shock.

The recording went on. "After placing the Order, I and my acquaintance have decided to lead the Sith off. This is the last communication I will transmit to you or to anyone else. I will willingly sacrifice myself to lead the Sith away. When war is officially declared over the Hypercom, a special, well-hidden information packet will transmit itself to the Chancellor's office and to the Jedi Temple under the header 'the Last Will and Testament of Master Dyas'. Within will be the coordinates to Kamino. I hope that the clone army you find there will be enough to stem the tide I can see all too clearly rising to drown the galaxy in the near future. May the Force be with the Republic, Chancellor. I fear you will need it."

There the communication cut out, and Palpatine reached forward, pulling the data crystal out of the holographic device. "I tried to trace back where this communication came from and found it had been stored in a simple drop box at a local bank. I have no idea where this Kamino is, but they will be sending this army of clones out to the Republic, and we will make use of them." He smiled wanly, shaking his head. "An entire massive army, just waiting and ready to go. Truly, a gift from the Force."

The Senate seemed to pause for a moment, then the cheers for the Chancellor and for the Jedi Order began. They were so loud it actually hurt many of the Senators who came from species who had better hearing than the human norm.

Harry and Aayla, however, were appalled at what they were hearing. Harry stood up, wordlessly asking Master Plo Koon if he could take his place. The Kel Dor nodded, wondering what the young man would say now, while he personally was pleased with the fact that a fellow Master, even one he had rarely met, had seen this issue coming from so long ago.

"The Senate recognizes Count Potter!" The Chancellor boomed, and the jubilation slowly ended, as every senator there turned to Harry.

As Harry stood for a moment gathering his thoughts, Aayla helped him along. She couldn't reach out to clasp his hands in public like this, which were balled tightly at his lower back at the moment. But she had almost pushed all of her concentration into their mental connection, a simple message in her head. "I am with you on this Harry. Make them understand."

When Harry spoke, his voice was calm, contained, the perfect oratory weapon, his training from Master Fay showing through once more. "Ladies and gentlemen, fellow sentients, as I was one of those attacked yesterday, I knew that this announcement was coming. I was able to discuss it with my fellow GDL leaders here on Coruscant, even if I was not able to reach out to those beyond. The Galactic Defense League will stand with Jedi Order on this point, we too declare Master C'baoth a Seth, and will make war upon him, and anyone who has willingly decided to stand beside him."

"Willingly," he repeated, shaking his head. "I am not naïve my fellow statesmen. I know that whatever we Jedi might say about the inherent evilness of the Dark Side and the Sith, there will be billions of people, right-thinking intelligent people, who will think it simply spurious, who will denounce it, and willingly follow Master C'baoth even now. That is their right as sentients. The right to make their own decisions, the right to willingly follow whoever they wish. Willingly," he repeated a third time.

"Part and parcel of what makes the Dark Side so dark, is how it lends itself to taking away the ability for people to think for themselves, the ability to choose their own paths. The urge to dominate, to reign like a tyrant over everyone else around them, Force-sensitive and not. That has been true for every Sith as far back as our current records can go. And yet, it is not a desire solely found in those with the Force who have fallen to the Dark or who have been raised in that darkness. No, the urge to enslave others is all too prevalent in nearly every sentient race."

Now Harry removed his clenched hands from his back, clamping down on the guard rail in a white-knuckled grip. "Slavery, ladies and gentlemen, is all too large a fact of life in this universe, something that has shocked and appalled me since the moment Master Fay found me and brought me away from my primitive homeworld." The lie came easy now, after so many decades, and Harry went on without pause. "And that fact is once more brought to the fore by this clone army! What is the difference, ladies and gentlemen, of someone born in chains or someone who has been pre-programmed before birth? The answer is only in the type of chains!"

He gritted his teeth, shaking his head in a visible sign of his appall at the very idea that shook many of the senators there. "This clone army that has been created, we cannot put them back in their bottles, pardon the joke. But I urge this body to denounce this act. Use this army now yes but tell every single clone soldier among it that they need only serve for a set amount of time. Give them a goal to live by to see what they can do once they work out their tenure or the chemicals they need to survive the enhanced growth process. And do not renew this agreement with these Clone Masters, these slavers."

He raised a hand, making a sideways chopping motion. "The GDL will not use this clone army. We will not use conscripted soldiers, forced into fighting via the words embedded in their heads before they were even born. Before they even breathed free air. Not now, not ever as long as I lead the GDL. If we need more forces, we will get it from our allied bodies. We will not grow slave to suit that purpose, like and I urge the Senate to look very closely at the morality of this whole idea."

"I agree," Master Plo Koon said, leaning forward and nodding firmly to Harry, as he took his session next to him. "I believe Knight Potter said it himself a few days ago. Are we so nihilistic, that we will not defend ourselves? Are we so lost in decadence that we must create soldiers, as the Trade Federation has and the Separatists no doubt will going forward?"

Honestly speaking, the Kel Dor Jedi would probably have not even seen the argument on his own. He would have instead gone with the majority of the Jedi Order on this point, whatever their decision would have been. But now that it had been pointed out, Plo Koon, a native of a harsh, hard planet and a people whose manner of justice was black and white, could not deny the charges. As such he would not be a party to slavery on this scale.

There was a lot of anger at that shot across the bows, but Harry and Master Plo Koon took it on the chin, then kept on going, belaboring the point, that there was no difference between slavery and cloning. That there was no way that the clone soldiers should be treated the same as the droids soldiers of the trade Federation. If we are supposed to have the moral high ground, we cannot allow that."

While his public persona was frowning pensively leaning back and staring at the two Jedi as if in deep thought, inside the Sith Lord was furious and raging, thankful, for once that he had once more used the Ysalamiri to cover his Force presence because he wasn't certain if he could have controlled himself enough to keep his Force Cloak obscuring his senses. But no one could possibly have blamed him for that. After all, with a single well thought out speech Count Potter had just derailed the Great Plan.

Or did he? Sidious thought thinking furiously. Yes, the original plan did call for the Jedi to be ambushed and overwhelmed by the clone soldiers, but only once the war was close to an end, once the various power blocs within the Separatist party and within the Centrists had all been smashed or tied further to the Chancellor's power. When the training cadres for his Inquisitorial squads and everything else was in place. When Republic intelligence had grown to the size it needed to be when the Fleet and the Army were tied to him as an individual. When his cult of personality had become the norm throughout the Core Worlds.

Still, the clones are an easy solution to the manpower problem and Potter is making an assumption that there is only the one batch of clones. There are dozens of sets at various levels of gestation, and of course if the ones already up and about are people, the ones that are already alive within their tubes must be termed living as well, so cannot be disposed of. They will remain in play regardless of Potter.

That means that all I must do is, yes… all I need do is target the non-clone troops, make their casualties greater, wipe whole army groups out. The sheer size of this war will let that occur easily. And their deaths will feed the Dark Side too. I will have time to overturn this, I cannot let my anger at Potter's continued disruption of the plan blind me to the fact it is still working.

Indeed, it will not matter if, as I suspect, a large number of Jedi join the GDL. So long as the majority of Jedi Order can still be slaughtered, the rest can live on as a visible enemy to rally the new Empire against.

To that end, I will have to step up my various plans to ruin the public image of the Order throughout the Core Worlds, and elsewhere. And Master Coleman must die, he is the only one of them even now who truly understands the importance of public relations and how to use the various news media outlets, although Harry Potter is proving to be quite effective in that arena too.

Despite his self-control once more asserting itself, Sidious was not pleased at all by the discussion. Worse, his own persona made him actually have to speak up in favor of the idea. He did so now, adding the caveat, "With the proviso that we are able to meet the demands of this war going forward."

There was a lot of grumbling and scowling, much of the Senate not seeing the same moral dilemma that Harry did. Enough did however that the extra provision to the Military Creation Act was passed quickly. From there, the Chancellor moved on to other points. "In that case, a specialized courier message will take word to Kamino whereupon the Republic will take command of the troops. Master Plo Koon, will you or one of the other High Council members go to that planet to take command?"

"We will. We will travel on this specialized courier vessel of yours though it might not be might be me but I believe that it will be two of the high Council at the very least. Perhaps Grand Master Yoda himself," the Jedi Master replied.

The name of Yoda worked its normal magic, and some of the senators who were still grumbling about clones really not being any different than droids subsided, and Harry breathed a sigh of relief. For some reason, those clones bothered him. And he had been Master Fay's pupil long enough to know that that feeling was possibly the Force trying to talk to him through the Veil.

A statement Aayla too agreed with. "On the other hand Harry, this clone army and Master Dyas being involved is something Master Vosa and Master Vos might want to look into. If they ever get in contact with us again anyway.

Harry replied with the affirmative at that then Padme asked to be recognized, gaining their attention once more. "With everything that has been stated, I in good conscience cannot say that the time for war has not come, as Count Potter rather, stated, we must fight this war, or else the Dark Side will triumph. I am not judging Master C'baoth just by that statement, however. I am judging him by his actions. However, even in the depths of this despair, there can still be hope at the end of the tunnel. The hope that at some point, peace can come again. But only if communication between the two parties is kept open! Therefore I ask this body to reiterate our stance on the Free Communication Act! There must be no attempt in any further Acts or laws of this body to centralize control of the Galactic news outlets. There will be no attempt to stop the flow of information, so long as it does not have direct military consequences."

She continued in this vein for some time, until by the time she finished she received a standing ovation from both her own Peace Party and a large majority of the rest of the remaining Senate mainly because doing so, would give the Republic as a whole even more moral ground to stand upon in the future. If they'd needed any more than the Jedi and their basically throwing the gauntlet down at Master C'baoth's feet.

Sidious too acknowledged the idea. Not happily, but, with his now-revised estimate of how long this war was going to be, they would have more than enough time to add centralized control of the Hypercom network and all of its media outlets into the Special Powers Act that he had already rewritten up. Yes, now that war is declared, everything becomes much simpler.

"Very well, the Military Creation Act is passed, and will be written into law within three days' time," the Chancellor said, after a hasty consultation with a few of his advisors, and other senators. "But now I ask you formally Mr. Potter, what will the GDL do?"

"We will defend ourselves," Harry said bluntly, "and we will go on the attack as soon as we are able."

"Nothing more than that?"

"You ask me to make plans without all the facts accounted for?" Potter asked with a laugh that was both droll and dry.

"True," the Chancellor acknowledged with another laugh. "In that case Mr. Potter, can we expect you to take part in a planning session once the Hypercom is open, and all available information is available?"

Harry nodded at that, and Master Plo Koon intoned that Master Yoda, Master Rancisis, and one or two more might also take part.

"As no doubt, you will have to," the Chancellor said with a sigh. "After all, the enemy has Force users as well. We will need the Jedi to counteract them. We will need the Jedi to lead us in this war."

That roused the entire Senate into another round of cheers, and Sidious thought, rather neatly boxed in the Jedi. Yes, not everything was going according to plan. Harry's early dodging of the idea of using the clone troops was going to cause trouble. But it only meant that the Confederacy would have to hold the whip hand for a little longer in order to make the losses even worse in the first few years.

Then he could use that natural fear to make it as if even conscription could not give them the numbers they needed, and they would be forced to rely on the clones from start to finish.

That, and my own anti-propaganda campaign against him, yes, the plan is still viable. Now I only need to wait to see how well Dominus has done his part.

OOOOOOO

Even before the Hypercom came back online, news of the first more moves of the war was getting back to the Senate, and orders were going out.

Yet one of the first reports that came in once the Hypercom was online was the destruction of the shipyards. This made Sidious practically roar in anger as he sat in his secret throne. A moment ago he had been soaking in the Dark Side like a man who had been starving would an eight-course meal. The next, the Veil was almost roiling in his direct vicinity before he regained control of himself. Those had not been among the targets that Dominus was supposed to hit!

Thankfully many of the ships which had already been purchased before this had already been moved from the shipyards which had built them in order. Several thousand dreadnoughts, each of them smaller than the Lucrehulks, but still durable vessels had been delivered to various Core Worlds planets where they had been hidden or used as a training cadre.

But without those shipyards and with the damage done by the Bound on Kuat itself, shipyard construction across the whole of the Republic was going to be slowed tremendously, which meant on the strategic level, that the Confederacy also had the edge for a time, not just tactically. It could be made up of course.

The sheer number of worlds within the Republic and the Core Worlds made that a certainty even if none of them had even a fraction of the construction ability that the hidden shipyards had contained alone. But the Confederacy was going to have the advantage of going forward for quite a bit longer than the plan had intoned.

The Confederacy was supposed to only have the advantage for four months or so, then three and a half to four years of slogging as the war bogged down thanks to 'mistakes' made by its higher-ups, the Republic, and the Jedi in particular. Now, the Confederacy was making moves that he had not planned for. The destruction of those shipyards, the hit-and-run raids on the various proton and concussion missile construction planets, the taking of a few of them.

All of that pointed to Dominus playing his own game. And doing so weakened his assault on the GDL! There was no news of any Hypercom Uplink Centers being destroyed, and if anything, what reports he was getting – few and far between since the GDL's own intelligence apparatus was becoming very good very quickly - indicated that the attacks there had been mostly beaten off, sometimes annihilated. The fool!

But Dominus's act of rebellion, if they continued, would mean that Sidious needed to be prepared. He sent a message to Darth Noctis, hiding deep underneath the surface of Coruscant. "The false Darth is making moves that we have not planned for, showing a disturbing level of independence. We must deal with this. Go. Retrieve the Strategist. We will need him."

Her return reply was quick and almost brusque. A woman of action, Noctis, she who had been Asajj Ventress, had hated being forced into downtime here while Sidious and Potter dueled in the Senate. "And what have his demands? You know he will require they be addressed before pledging himself to our cause."

"They will be met. If Dominus is willing to go against us, he has the depth of force necessary to win the war outright in two years if we cannot bog the Confederacy down fast enough. They won't make the mistakes that I had envisioned them to make. We will need the Strategist to offset that move."

"Yes Master," Darth Noctis replied, before asking hesitantly, "And if it comes to it, should I strike at Dominus himself if possible?"

"Yes," Sidious said thoughtfully. "I doubt you'll ever be in the position to do so, but yes, if the moment arises perhaps. Though do not seek such out. We will need to be more careful with you in the future. There will come a time when the Great Plan will have need of your skills. In particular, there is a Jedi Master who must be dealt with quickly. In the next two months. I will lay the foundation for that project. For now, see to my order."

With that, he cut the connection, and Tossing aside the dark robe, he steeled himself then once more climbed up the little staircase up into the Chancellor's office, sitting at his desk.

Underneath his robe, Sidious had worn his normal Chancellor garb, and after flinching when he felt the Force was cut off from him by Ysalamiri, he made certain that her reach was not nearly far enough to reach the chairs where the Jedi would be sitting.

Soon after that, Pestage let in the men he would be meeting with. These were Director Isard, the local system defense fleet Admiral, an old man named Yularen were also there, along with a few other men and women. These people would become the Republic's military high command.

"Gentlemen," he said, wearing a grave, somber look, his entire persona having changed as quickly as someone else would change their clothing. "I believe we have a lot of work to get to, so let us get to it quickly."

OOOOOOO

Harry, Yoda, Plo Koon, Evan Piell, and Rancisis were ushered into the Chancellor's office, where they found a very busy conference already going on. Not that should come as a surprise to the Jedi, who had also been having a busy day. Harry, in particular, had been very busy with getting in touch with Garm, Yaddle, and through them, the other leaders of the GDL.

Flashback:

"So our plans worked?" Harry said, breathing a sigh of relief as Aayla let loose a mental whoop.

"Yes and no. The number of Lucrehulks they have to throw at us is deeply concerning. I'm getting reports from the Republic side as well as our own if slowly, and I have upwards of four-thousand of those things! If we assume that they keep at least half that number tied up in defensive operations, and we're not getting reports on every attack hitting the Republic, then we can bump that up to at least nine thousand Lucrehulks, with a commensurately large number of smaller ships. We just don't have the ships necessary to take that on. Hells, not even half or even a third of that. If they come at is in a single large campaign, we won't be able to stop them except perhaps in Corellia and Serenno."

"We will have to see what we can do about cutting down those numbers. But Operation Hydra worked?" Harry asked quickly changing the subject so neither of them could let slip how they were going to go about doing that.

"It did. We only lost three capital ships defending one of our Ord systems and thrashed at least five times our own tonnage." From there, Garm went into detail in the largest attacks into the GDL. This went on for more than an hour before he finished with the broad statement of, "Most of the time our damaged ships were able to pull back, retreat and jump out. Since no one knows on their side where our secret bases are that saved those ships, although our repair logistics at those bases isn't as high as I would like. We have around a hundred and eighty-two combined frigates, gunboats, and cruisers in need of repair after only a few days of open warfare. That needs to be addressed."

"Contact Master Ti. I think we need to purchase more of those mobile shipyards from Rendili. As many of them as they have and are willing to sell it to us this time. They might be slow and moving them will probably tie up a few of our capital ship divisions, but if we can keep the locations secret that'll give us that repair ability," Harry replied.

"Actually take it a step further," Aayla interjected, and Harry moved aside slightly so her face was in the pickup. "We can move those bases too, keep them hopping just in case. Set up a series of random dead systems where they can jump to either at need or on an equally random schedule. We need to keep our ships and people alive, however we do it. We can't let it become a slogging match."

"And if we can keep our ships alive, the experience of our troops will mount. We're already seeing a difference in that. Their Vulture droids are good, very good but they're, well, droids. They can't be as good experientially as sentient starfighter pilots. Although, our losses among starfighters are horrible."

"Understating it, the good general is," Master Yaddle stated, her eyes closed in the hologram in sorrow.

"Many of the worlds that have been attacked have lost practically all of their starfighter complements," Garm agreed with a sigh. "I think we've underestimated not only the number of Lucrehulks, but how many of those vulture fighters they can each contain. Even with our experience with your ship. With Vultures in such abundance, we're going to take a pounding in any fight, and they were extremely good in defensive formation against the missile frigates long-range missiles too."

"From what you said it was the missile frigates who made the difference offensively for certain, so yes, that will be a major point going forward. Still, what about the Mon Calamari fleets and the Dorneans? Did they amalgamate well with the rest of our forces?"

"They worked extremely well. Their fleets are good, professional units, and they've provided a stiff backbone to our less-experienced groups, and our people have proven more than willing to follow their lead when seniority calls for it. The gunboats from the Dorneans especially were very good. That's a damned great multi-tasking design they have. The Mon Calamari's ships are also excellent for the kind of war we envision, where protecting our ships and crews are paramount, and I'm very happy we have them. If we didn't have their capital ships to back up our own, we just wouldn't have had enough to go around."

"Good. Good." Harry leaned back, then smiled. "On the diplomatic front, the Jedi Order has agreed to many of the issues we discussed. You'll be getting a large complement of Jedi soon enough, under Master Plo Koon. One of them will probably serve alongside Master Yaddle, but the rest, will be shock troops or however you want to use them."

"Oh, thank the Force!" Garm breathed, leaning back in turn. "We can use them, we can seriously use them. I fully endorse your stance on the whole clone army thing Harry, the very idea is well it's beyond creepy to me! I'm not even happy with the idea of cloning in medical technology let alone cloning like that! But we will be hurting for real commando-style troops for a long while. How many?"

"I don't know yet," Harry confessed. "But a lot. The Jedi Order is going to put forth every Guardian they have, every Sentinel, and there's a lot more of those then are actually on the books surprisingly, as well as a lot of their Consulars in this war."

The vast majority of the new Sentinels and Guardians had previously been part of the Agri-corps before Master Yoda and Master Rancisis had pushed into their reforms, taking those young - for the most part - Jedi, and assigning them to different Jedi Masters of those two sects. This overrode a thousand years of tradition in that the Jedi had to choose to take padawans or not. They still could vet the choices, and choose who they could get along with, and some padawans could still be rejected, but not because of a lack of Force power, or age any longer.

That process had begun several years ago, and now it would add to the number of Jedi who were combat-capable. And Harry was happy to see it. "Every consular who is able to wield a lightsaber is going or fire a ship or the training to command an army. Other than that, I have no idea about their plans just yet. I've a meeting with the High Council, or representatives thereof, and the Chancellor and his counselors, this afternoon."

"Now, what about these new planets that have agreed to join us," Aayla asked. They had sent the list of those over in the first few seconds of this talk.

Garm waited until he could read a few reports off-screen before replying and when he did, he continued to speak in generalities as they had been all along. Encrypted or no, there was no way to give away information via an intercepted communique if nothing concrete was said. "A few of them we can take in easily enough. The Core Worlds will have their own defenses, their own planetary shield generators. We'll need to send in a few of our missile frigates to bolster their defenses, maybe a few more defense stations. The real problems will be a few of the Expansion and Mid-Rim worlds…"

The conversation bogged down into minutiae for a few minutes, then Harry spoke up, frowning as he looked at the general. "You're worried about something else, Garm. Tell."

"At the moment, the GDL is the sole really combat-ready enemy from the Confederate side," Garm said slowly, using the new term for the Separatists easily. "They're going to regroup, and they're going to strike back. Sorrento and Corellia can see them off, but a few of our other allies aren't that strong but are nearly as important," Garm firmed his shoulders, staring at Harry grimly. "With your permission, I'm going to hold back several of our Hub fleets from now on until they attack a Type 3 planet. And then I'm going to mousetrap them."

"You want the GDL as a whole to take hits, that we otherwise could see off in order to avoid taking one that would really hurt us," Harry said, leaning back in his chair. It was the kind of strategic decision that few Jedi would be really comfortable with making, one that set aside the good of the individual planets, for the overall strategic picture. "All right. However, I think that they're not going to hit any of those planets. Judging by what you've said already, I think they're going to hit the Dac Sector or the Dominus Sector. Send word of that effect to them from me and keep the two closest hub fleets to those sectors back instead of the ones you might have otherwise chosen."

The general's head flew back, but he was already thinking things through even as he opened his mouth to protest, and that mouth closed a moment later. "You're right," he admitted. "As important as the gunboats were though, I think it was the missile frigates and the Mon Calamari vessels working in tandem which really threw off the Confederacy admirals. Corellia isn't going to be a target, not yet, not until our mothball fleet is fully operational. And that'll take months yet."

The work on that had begun the moment Corellia had joined the GDL, soaking up megatons of resources and manpower. But it was bearing fruit, and the Corellian Navy was already the strongest in the GDL in terms of numbers and was growing stronger with every passing day.

"Now that war has been declared, will you have trouble crewing them?" Aayla asked.

"Be serious," Garm scoffed. "My home system will find the people needed, trust me. As much as we might be famous as merchants Knight Secura, or smugglers we're also famous for producing starfighter pilots, and soldiers. We'll find my troops."

Harry grinned at the older man, nodding firmly. "Good. In that case general, I'll leave you to it. Good luck. I'll check in with you when we arrive in Serenno though we won't w be staying there long."

"Understood. Are you willing to allow for an offensive before you head elsewhere though?" Garm had been told about the plan to move the Jedi younglings before this, but also wanted to see if Harry would be willing to hit the Confederacy for them. A single offensive attack, if aimed at a system that was important enough, could knock the Confederacy back on its rear.

"…No. When we go on the offensive I want it to be decisive. I don't want them to time between campaigns to think about what we've done. Make up a list of five planets close to one another in special terms. But that will have to wait for now."

"Can we reach out to Republic intelligence for more information while we're planning that?"

Harry frowned thinking. "If they reach out to us in order to share information, that will be one thing. But don't hint that we are already thinking of offensive activity. I want the Republic as well as the Confederacy to think that we are doubling down on defense, hunkering down against their attack."

"Done," Garm said, and after a few pleasantries, Harry cut the connection.

He looked over at Aayla, who had been silent for most of this conversation, working with two other Jedi on how to create the Force Light Needle that she had devised. She wasn't having much luck, unfortunately. While Master Giiett and a few, a very few, other Jedi could use Force Light, Yoda had decided to see if creating the mental equivalent was easier to teach. But it was actually proving just hard, given how much self-control and not reaching out to the Force emotions was taught by the Jedi Order. Still, Micah had been able to do it, as had Master Nar, and between them, they would be able to try and teach others when Aayla and Harry left Coruscant later that day.

She looked at the time, nodded and stood up, even as they started their own internal conversation. "Do you think I'm wrong? That we should hit something now? Even with the younglings aboard and our lack of information on targets?"

"No, I think you're right, I think it'll be the Mon Calamari who feel a hammer blow next time, and I think they'll pull back from trying to besiege Rendili soon. It's not working out for them, and it's tying up too many of the forces they want to use against the GDL."

"I don't know about that. You heard Garm say how many forces they might have. I would wager they can keep the siege going for a while and hit other systems too."

"Yes, but they'll want to keep the momentum rolling against the Republic too, Harry. We might have been the one to beat off their attack, but we don't have the logistical depth of the Republic, and I think they'll know that. They will believe they can take our best shots, and then strike back all the harder."

Harry frowned but nodded as that made sense.

With that conversation ebbing out, he asked lightly "So, do you have any idea what kind of apprentice I will be assigned? Someone young and naïve, or an old troublemaker? One who has been passed over a few times before."

"A troublemaker" Aayla replied simply, then grinned. "The best kind."

Harry agreed, and they joined the other Jedi heading to talk to the Chancellor.

"Count Potter, Masters Jedi, please join us. Can I assume that you have already received your own update on what has been going on since the Hypercom went down, Count Potter?" The Chancellor asked, getting up from his chair for a moment and gesturing the Jedi into a series of seats at the far end of the long table in front of his desk, the two pieces of furniture having been placed connecting one to the other. The table was already full to the brim with different data-slates, a few actual printouts as esoteric as that might be, and was set to the side a giant holographic device is showing the entirety of the Republic, which was continually updating in a series of beeps as new information came in.

"I take it this is going to be your war room then, Chancellor?" Harry asked dryly shaking his head as he pulled out a seat for Aayla. She smiled at him, always amused – and pleased - by the little gestures like that he did, as he sat down next to her.

"Hardly," Palpatine scoffed, shaking his head. "The local system defense fleet has a perfectly acceptable command center, which will be the titular home of the Republic High Command in the future. Right now, we're simply hammering out the details of what's already occurred, the various areas of influence, what to tell the public, what to tell the Senate, what our first moves must be, and last but most importantly, our actual command structure."

"A lot of that had already been discussed in the military creation act itself, but with the recent addition to the MCA of integrating all of the disparate smaller navies out there, we've had to work out seniority, logistics, areas of command and other issues," another man said. He was a little young than the Chancellor perhaps, with a thin a spare frame, and a gaunt face with serious dark eyes that made him look older. "My name is Wullf Yularen, or rather, Admiral Yularen now. I've worked with the Republic Bureau of Intelligence for many years, and know the strengths and weaknesses of the Republic Navy and its officer corps."

"The Chancellor is obviously the commander-in-chief," Master Rancisis said thoughtfully, "but who is going to be in overall command on the military side of things if not you Admiral? I regret to say that I do not know of anyone who has any kind of experience in something this far-reaching."

"Obviously one of you Jedi will have to take the post as Fleet Admiral Commanding," the Chancellor said almost brusquely, looking away from the Jedi as the hologram updated again, showing another Ord system in red now. "We are after all facing an enemy who is also led by a Force user. I can't claim to understand all the powers that the Force gives you, but I know if they exist, and I assume that they can help on a strategic level, considering how often Jedi have arrived on the heels of a problem occurring, or even before a crisis occurs."

"The Jedi Order as a whole is not an order of warriors, Chancellor," Master Rancisis replied, shaking his head while Yoda began to pile up a set of cushions onto a chair for himself, none of the chairs in the room able to change their height. The table was at such a height that he would have been unable to be seen if he hadn't, even if it was somewhat amusing. "While we do have our archives to fall back on, none of us have been involved in a war of this size. The largest campaign the modern Order has been involved in was simple single-sector or at most two or three sector-wide campaigns, which ended quickly. This war will not end quickly."

"But we will need your help against the Force users on the other side. If this Master C'baoth is a Sith, who is to say he hasn't gathered other Force users to him and trained them in this Dark Side of yours," Administrator Isard said shaking his head. "We've been getting reports occasionally of planetary attacks being led by people wielding red lightsabers. And judging from the history, that's a sign of the Sith, correct?"

"Red lightsabers, always the Sith have used. Artificial crystals they are. Blood a part of their creation it is," Yoda intoned. All eyes turned to them, finding the ancient Grandmaster now sitting in a meditation pose on a pile of cushions, which should honestly have looked undignified, but somehow with Yoda didn't. "Agree we do that the Jedi order, a part of this war we will be. But war and military, not for everyone it is."

"Yet surely, you can't deny that even a Jedi who does not train exclusively for combat can have an impact all out of proportion to any other single individual," Isard replied.

"Argue that I will not," Yoda allowed. "But, one-size-fits-all, it does not."

"Might I make a suggestion at this point?" Aayla asked.

"Certainly my dear," Palpatine replied, smiling at her in an avuncular sort of manner. "But can I ask, what position within the hierarchy of the Galactic Defense League do you hold? I understand that you and Count Potter are involved, despite all the issues inherent in that with the laws of the Ruusan Reformation," he teased gently, "but your actual position in the command structure was never explained."

"I am captain of the Tyrant's Bane, and I suppose tactical advisor would be the way to put it, socially, diplomatically and militarily. But that's just it you see. Master Yoda is correct, we Jedi might have the combat skills to be good soldiers, but we do not have the martial mindset. We do not think in terms of military gains and losses, lands conquered, logistics, or strategy. Perhaps a few of us could think in those terms, but not the majority. I would suggest therefore that instead of placing a Jedi in overall command, we have two advisors for that commander, but make that commander a military officer. And that instead, the Jedi act as special commandos, squad or at best battalion commanders, and more importantly, investigators and infiltrators."

Isard blinked at that, then nodded slowly. "It's well known that Jedi investigators can ferret out secrets quickly when others would struggle. I would dearly like to have a few hundred or so working with Republic intelligence as we shift to a wartime footing for certain."

"The Jedi order has decided that we will be abandoning the traditional team of Master and apprentice, or two to four Jedi sent for a single mission. When it comes to this war, that will not do," Master Rancisis said. "We will instead be working on squad levels, 12 Jedi at a minimum, for any combat-related mission. For other missions, we will revert to the four-man squad I believe would be the term."

"While I see the logic, you realize that that will cut down severely on the number of missions the Order can take," the Chancellor replied, frowning thoughtfully. "I can't argue with your reasoning, I'm just wondering if the trade-off will be worth it."

"Think in terms of worth we do not. Think of victory, we do. To succeed in three theaters of war better it is, than fail in eight," Yoda interjected. "Moreover, a general rule this is. Exceptions made they can be."

Yularen set that aside, leaning forward and staring at the two most senior Jedi. "I want to be clear of this though. You're saying you do not want to exert overall control of the war effort? Even if our enemy is a Sith?"

"We are saying that we cannot exert overall control," Master Rancisis said shaking his head. "Perhaps if the Veil of the Dark Side was not blocking our vision so much, we could try, but as it is no. We will be panning through the Jedi order for those among our brethren who can serve as commanders, generals, and even theater commanders, but none of us can act as an overall coordinator on something of this scale."

"Micromanaging is the enemy gentleman," Harry cut in, leaning forward now and taking part. "I might lead the Galactic Defense League, but my position is more like that of the Chancellor then of a dictator who commands at their every move. For the day-to-day operations and the fleets distribution and so like I turn to general Garm Bel Iblis. He is advised and turned by Master Yaddle, and a group of professional naval personnel."

"I'd wondered about that, your defensive posture seems to be something that old reprobate would come up with," Admiral Yularen replied with a smirk. "I worked with him in the Stark Hyperspace War incident and observed him in action on a few anti-pirate campaigns for the Bureau of Republic Intelligence. I also introduced him to the woman who had become his fiancée before he was recalled to Corellia and they joined your GDL. The relationship doesn't seem to have survived that move," he finished sadly.

Harry nodded at that but didn't reply further to that line.

While outwardly, the Chancellor seems to be taking all this in stride, inwardly he was scowling angrily. Yet in the main, he was philosophical about things. True, larger groups of Jedi would be harder to wipe out when it came time for the Great Plan to move into its last phase. But that was several years in the future. For now, having Jedi out at the pointy end served his goals well enough. And not having a Jedi in overall command of the war effort also served his plans very well indeed.

Although I will have to find something to do with Admiral Yularen. The newly-minted Admiral was staunchly loyal to Palpatine and could work as a temporary Fleet Admiral, but he isn't a brilliant strategist by any means. I will have to set him up for the fall in order to make room for my real Admiral… as well as creating a background for him. Yes, this can still work well for me. I need to keep that in mind, keep myself from being too fixated on one aspect of the Great Plan or another just because everything is more difficult at this point then I anticipated thanks to Potter and his influence.

"Very well, we can agree on that kind of structure at the upper command level for now," he broke into the ongoing discussion. "But you said you would be panning the Order? What exactly did you mean by that?"

"I would've thought that was obvious. We will not be asking most Consulars to take part in military action, it would simply be foolish. Of the Jedi Order, only about four, perhaps as many as five in fourteen of us are truly, as the Admiral would probably put it, combat-capable. We can all defend ourselves well enough, we can all fight off criminals, or even hunt down and arrest terrorists thanks to our Force abilities. But that does not mean that all of us would be able to survive in a true combat zone."

"Hence why you said they would be more active on the intelligence side of things," Isard said with a nod. "Makes sense. I'll be happy to work with the Order more directly from now on."

"And what else will the Jedi Order be doing?"

"For now, the Jedi Order will be sending three thousand of our members to work with the GDL, that will leave us with around one thousand, maybe as many as one thousand four hundred to work in direct combat. The majority of the rest of the Order will work in either the intelligence division directly, the various diplomatic fronts throughout the Republic since even if this war has begun diplomacy has not. And we will also be creating hospital ships. We will need ships and crews of course, but we are already bringing together groups of twenty Jedi who can act as healers, nurses, therapists, and so forth."

"That will be a help once we get to the point of having boots on the ground against the droid armies," Yularen said, scowling. In every report that had spoken of offenses happening on the ground or even in boarding actions, it was obvious that the Trade Federations droid armies made up the bulk if not all of the Confederacy's land army. "Though I don't like the idea of losing that many Jedi to the GDL."

"Considering that at this moment, the GDL is the closest of the two militaries to intact, I think it makes more sense. While we were not nearly as targeted as the rest of you, and I won't try to say we would have been able to stop the steamroller that hit you if we had been, that means we can start thinking about offensive actions sooner than you can," Harry interjected. "We need the Jedi to act as starfighter pilots, training cadre, and investigators just as much as you do."

"And what will the GDL be doing? Do you truly have the military capability necessary to perhaps launch small-scale offensives? At the moment, I am very concerned that the Confederacy's buildup of ships and troops means that they will be able to stay on the offensive for far too long, destroying our ability to build up the strength necessary to do the same. We have to do something to knock them back on their heels," Palpatine said.

"The GDL is already launching small-scale raiding actions. We will not be launching full-scale offensive missions just yet. We would rather prefer to sit on the defensive, force our enemies to commit to a set number of attacks and then continue to mousetrap them," Harry replied with a nod. "Commerce raiding in Confederacy space: hit and run raids built around missile frigates and gunboats, rather than cruisers. The Rendili sector, in particular, is the hotbed for that kind of thing right now. They are attempting to siege Rendili itself, and that makes them vulnerable."

"We also need more information on their defenses. where are there shipyards, where are the repair facilities, their droid factories. It's obvious that they have to have hidden them almost as well as the Republic did their own build-up," Aayla said allowing a scowl to show, much like the admiral's had a moment ago.

The Admiral agreed with that, and Isard proposed to share information with the GDL and vice versa as well as how specifically they would go about it, codes, and communication protocols, but then asked, "But this brings up an interesting point. Part of your presentation earlier today was about C'baoth having somehow influenced Jedi, making them ticking time bombs. Is there any way to discover if the Jedi has been so suborned? Who among you can we trust?"

"We have actually determined a means of discovering who among us has been so…so hollowed out," Aayla said with a shake of her head. "With your permission, gentlemen? I can show you an example of it."

The Chancellor instantly nodded, leaning forward his eyes eager. It was well known that the Chancellor had a bit of a young child's fascination with the Force, one he was rarely able to exhibit in public as it would not do his persona as a stern man of law to act like a kid in a candy store. He watched in delight as Aayla slowly formed a small sliver of insanely bright white light in her hand.

"This is a physical representation of what we call Force Light. Essentially, what we can do, is to create a mental representation of this technique and through the Force, poke another person's mind with it. The veneer of the victim that Master C'baoth somehow leftover the gaping emptiness within his victims can't handle this kind of technique."

"Knight Xiss and Master Giiett, already clearing the Jedi within the temple they are. Nearly finished we are. Recalling other Jedi we will be in order to test them in turn," Yoda explained. "Worked through the night we have been."

"That's a solution for now, but these turned Jedi are still going to be out there, still able to do a lot of damage if they don't return," Palpatine replied, still staring at the thing in Aayla's hands, while inwardly Sidious was thanking his own foresight for having been so paranoid as to have the Ysalamiri emplaced on a tree underneath his desk. If I hadn't…

"Also organizing teams to go out to Jedi we are. Unable to respond, or unwilling to respond a Jedi appears, a team sent out to them will be." Yoda's ears twitched, his species equivalent of a shrug. "Simple a solution it is not. Quick it is not. Yet a solution it is."

"Well, I suppose if you're happy with it," Isard said, also staring at the pinprick of nearly painful light in Aayla's outstretched hand. "And you say you are already nearly finished clearing all the Jedi that remains within the temple?"

"We have," Master Rancisis replied. "That amounts to only a fifth of the total Jedi Order, but it is a starting point. And all those currently within the temple will be available to join in the war effort immediately either at the front or espionage as their specific skill set calls for."

"In that case, let us get down to specifics," the Chancellor began, while inwardly he was once more seething in anger. The Bound had seemed to be an elegant evolution to the Force Domination that Darth Dominus was so good at. A way to make the Jedi distrustful of one another, and a way to make the public distrustful of them all the faster. The second part was still going to happen of course, but not at the scale that he had hoped to see. Curse it! Still, so long as they don't couple that with a PR campaign to show that they know about the Bound, and are trying to deal with the problem, we can still turn a lot of public opinion against them on this point.

For the next few hours, the meeting continued, with Harry sharing what little he wanted to about the GDL's capabilities, talking about the action reports that he had been sent by Garm and taking part in a discussion on where to send specific Jedi. Many of those Jedi would work with Administrator Isard as agents or as trainers for agents. The remit of Republic Intelligence was going to be wildly expanded now that the Republic had declared war, which in many ways Harry was not comfortable with. Still, he could not argue that it was necessary. You needed to have a counterespionage force and an espionage agency in a war, it was that simple.

On the military side of things, specific well-known or highly respected Jedi would be sent to various trouble spots, systems which had to be on the Confederacy's next round of attacks, while others would be said to the various Core Worlds where the fleet that the Republic had been paying for as part of its own build-up to war would be.

Chief among these would be Master Piell, who with a team of twelve Jedi would take command of one of the reinforced fleets and try to retake a system that was well known as one of the Republic's chief manufacturers for proton torpedoes and concussion missiles. Without that system, a lot of their long-term logistical needs would be far more difficult to meet. That would be the first semi-offensive action that the Republic would take and even that was a risk at this point given the drubbing their logistics had taken.

Elsewhere, teams of Jedi would be sent in to bolster defenses, in some cases taking command of those defenses. In other cases they would serve as shock troops, despite the disdain that Master Yoda and Master Rancisis held for that label. At the same time, Master Tiin would be sent with a group of a hundred Jedi to take command of the clones on Kamino. With them, they would then meet and man a number of the fleets that had already been built and hidden throughout the Core Worlds. With those ships they would bolster the defenses of over two hundred important systems as the majority of the Republic hunkered down, taking a defensive stance for now until Republic intelligence could do its work, and find out the scale of the enemy forces.

The idea of taking offensive action against the homeworlds of the Techno Union, Commerce Guild, and the Trade Federation was discussed but eventually discarded. Yes, those planets were important, but mustering enough force to take them would make those fleet in turn a strategic target. One the Republic could ill afford at this point, thanks to the opening moves of the Confederacy. They needed to hold on until their own repair and construction facilities could be rebuilt and enough troops trained, enough personnel gotten to the ships that had already been built before they could take the offensive. This war was not going to end any time soon, and they had to prepare for that.

"And not to belabor the point, but we need information," Harry said looking over to administrator Isard, who just nodded his head. "By Garm's estimate, we might be dealing with a fleet of eight thousand plus Trade Federation Lucrehulks, with an equivalent number in every other class. If they use those numbers right, despite what we just said they might win this war before we're able to get back on our feet. We can only pray that Master C'baoth and his admirals don't realize that and are leery of losing their numbers advantage."

"Honestly speaking, when spread across the entire Republic that actually isn't all that large a fleet," Yularen said waving that off. "They might have power to the point in more than a dozen theaters, but we can bog them down I think, grind those numbers away in siege warfare before taking our own offensive. But we do need to hit strategic targets when we do."

Isard simply nodded his head, and soon after the meeting, or at least the part where the Jedi could contribute, concluded. As they were leaving the meeting with the Chancellor, Harry reflected that the position of the Galactic defense league was quite odd in a few ways. They were allied with the Senate and the Republic, but they weren't part of it.

Indeed, by day's end the GDL Senators would be leaving here as well, to head to Corellia. There they would act as a new GDL-only Senate, making policy and decisions. They were allied with the Republic, but there were still the underlying issues that had forced them to create the Galactic Defense League in the first place. A reinforced flotilla would escort them there made up of the newly activated Corellian-style dreadnaughts.

For himself, Harry was obviously also going to leave shortly, but he was not going to go to Corellia, or even Serenno, not even after he dropped off the children and Jedi in Ruusan. He was not the kind of leader the Chancellor was, someone who could lead from far away from the front. No, Harry had to be front, with the Tyrant's Bane and with his lightsaber in hand. More importantly, when they faced off against the Sith, both C'baoth and whoever else was out there, Harry had to be there.

"I could wish that we didn't have to separate the GDL Senators from the rest, but with the war taking precedence, I agree the underlying problems aren't going to go anywhere. Still… it will be interesting to see how the Republic as a whole acted in this war. Especially with this first move to use clones," Aayla sent, her own thoughts mirroring Harry's.

"Exactly. Part of what Garm and the rest of us have being doing from the very beginning is to make it clear to our constituents that if war came, we would face losses. It's why we've embraced the tactics we have, the whole strategy that is at the center of our plan for this conflict in fact. But losses are still inevitable. If the Republic doesn't start to prepare its populations for that reality it could get ugly very quickly in a lot of ways. We could see a push to continue to use clones going forward."

The very idea was horrifying to both of them. Using non-sentient robots Harry could understand, using robots to fight was simply a way to save people's lives, just like Harry was willing to do with the Vultures. But if you were going to grow people simply to toss them into a war they had no choice but to fight, that was just wrong.

Aayla agreed with that idea and was glad that at least the Jedi they had interacted with understood that there was a difference between right and wrong, and the Light and Dark Sides of the Force. As Jedi they had to be both centered in the Force and good people, they couldn't substitute the first for the second. "I don't know if I could've been a party to using what amounts to slave labor, Harry," she admitted looking a little guiltily at the other Jedi next to them as she sent that mentally. "Even if the rest of the Order agreed with it. Not given how my people basically sold themselves into slavery in order to get off Ryloth."

"I know, love. But at least Master Koon and I were able to persuade the Council to that point," Harry replied. His mental avatar's hand found hers as they stared out over their mental landscape, the Dark Side of Ryloth gleaming from the lights of the crystals that contained Harry's memories, as the stone-clad ship of Aayla's mind hovered in the nighttime sky above them.

Their discussion was interrupted by Master Yoda turning his wise old eyes on them and poking them hard in the shins with his gimer stick one after another before they could react. "Just because aware you think you are of the world around you, does not mean aware you truly are, hrhrhrhm," he intoned. "Losing yourselves in the moment, a bad sign it is."

"Sorry Master, we were talking about the whole Senate and Galactic defense league line there. I am just wondering how the rest of the Senate will take the GDL Senators recusing themselves for the duration of the war," Harry intoned, simplifying his and Aayla's discussion.

Yoda nodded. "An odd conundrum it is. Still, other things to concentrate on you have. For one, meeting your new padawan you will be."

At that, Harry blinked. "I thought I was going to get a choice of padawan from the available pool?" He asked, although he honestly hadn't really looked into that kind of thing just yet. While he was looking forward to having a padawan, the actual process of choosing one hadn't really been on his radar with everything else on his plate.

"In this case, you will not," Master Rancisis said. "In the past that is how this worked, however…"

Master Koon smiled behind his mask. "If you will, Harry, this youngling is one I found personally. She is, I feel, an excellent prospect, but one that needs a certain type of Master, one who will both challenge her and accept her personality without…without breaking it to fit the common mold. When the discussion of assigning a padawan to you personally came up, I naturally thought of her."

"And she will be ready to leave later today?" Harry asked being unsurprised when the three Masters all nodded. "Very well. I can promise you, Master Koon, I will try to get along with whoever this is, and I certainly won't ever attempt to change her personality. Beyond making certain she matures in the Force anyway," he finished drolly. "I'm willing to put forth to work if she is to make this work."

Yoda smiled, and now patted Harry on the knee reaching up slightly to do so. "All we can ask, that is. Interesting it will be, see the results of a single student studying under you."

"Yes, that phrase is being tossed around quite a bit today," Harry replied with a chuckle. "But if you don't mind Masters, Aayla and I will be leaving you right now. We wish to say farewell to our friends before heading back to the Temple."

Yoda harrumphed while Rancisis raised a wintry eyebrow. It had been noted by many of the High Council how close the two odd Knights were with Padme. But given the other oddities the two of them exhibited, it barely mattered to any of them, and the exact nature of that relationship was unknown. When asked, Harry had simply said they were friends and had been since before the mission into the Ruusan Sector. Now Padme was willing to spy on the rest of the Senate for them looking for anything that could hint at Sith influence. That she had kept contacting Harry and Aayla would neatly cover passing on anything of that nature.

That all didn't make Rancisis any happier about Jedi forming attachments, but that was an argument he knew he wasn't going to win, particularly with these two. So he simply nodded and watched the two of them move off. "Are we making a mistake you think, favoring Harry Potter as much as we have?" he asked suddenly. "I am remembering the tale of Skere Kaan."

"Ironic that is, considering Kaan's ghost, Harry did vanquish." Yoda actually let loose a chuckle at that. "Arrogant, Kaan always was. Certain in his path, Kaan always was. Either of those, Harry Potter is not. Too much Light he has within him."

Plo nodded agreement, adding "Too much justice too. So long as he retains his humble nature, his understanding that he cannot affect everything, and his connection to Aayla, neither of them will fall to the Dark Side."

Rancisis sighed but nodded once and followed the other two towards the bridge that would lead them to the Temple.

The two younger Jedi descended deeper into the central tower of the Senate district before passing through two covered bridges into another massive tower where Padme's quarters were. There they found the young Senator going through something on a data-slate, frowning pensively. She'd been busy most of the morning and into the afternoon with her own meetings, having put herself forward as part of the military oversight committee, a band of senators who were supposed to oversee not only the expenditures for the military, but military actions, and how the military interacted with the civilian populace. Which did not mean just the Jedi or the Senate, but the common people.

Nearby, Zule was talking to Chewie about exercise times the various levels of paperwork they needed for use of the firing ranges and hours of operation. Most of the training she'd put Padme and Sabe through would probably occur in the Temple though, but she wanted to open it up for any other Senators who felt the need to learn how to defend themselves. And who, honestly, had the physical ability to do so. She would also be working with Master Giiett, who had taken over leading the protection detail for the Peace Party, who the Jedi Order still felt were the kernels of what would be the beginnings of peace in the future.

When Mala nodded the two Jedi in, Padme smiled at them both, but it was a wan, sad little thing in comparison to her normal beaming warmth. Aayla instantly moved towards her, pulling the other woman into a hug. "You could've chosen to come with us you know," she teased, but very gently. For someone like Padme leaving her duty aside like that was no real choice. It was simply an impossibility.

"And you know full well I couldn't have," Padme replied voicing that thought without any heat. She kissed Aayla's cheek, then as Aayla stepped aside, only to feel Harry's arms around her, in turn. It made her remember the moments they'd had since coming back together, and now her two new lovers were going away again for who knows how long. Still, I knew what I was getting into when I agreed to be in part of this relationship.

With that in mind, she leaned up upwards and kissed Harry on the cheek feeling his arms tighten around her before he slowly pulled away. "You're leaving I take it?"

"We are," He said, his eyes flicking over to Aayla and Zule who shared a very un-Jedi like hug of their own. "We have to get going with the war on it's only a matter of time before the Sith target the Agri-worlds. We have to get to them and get the Jedi there off before that happens." Turning back to Padme, he waved a finger in front of Padme's face admonishingly. "Listen to Zule and Chewbacca when they tell you something is dangerous, just because you can handle yourself doesn't mean you can get in over your head. I know you too well to hope you'll just stay here on Coruscant safe and sound."

Padme blushed at that, while Zule laughed, shaking her head. "Oh you don't know the half of it. Did you know she was already asked to take a mission to an Ord system due to rumors about graft in the local government? This after the Confederacy has proven those places are targets."

"Hush you!" Padme admonished, but once more there was no heat in it. "I wasn't going to accept it anyway," she added lamely.

"Riiiigghhht…" Everyone there, even Mala intoned, causing her to blush hotly, and she looked away from them with a pout. She wasn't that bad, was she?

Harry still had one arm around her, and pulled her against his side, as he looked over at Zule. "And you, always beware the shadows," he said more seriously.

"We'll try to stop back every three weeks," Aayla promised. "A month at most, to check in with you and the Chancellor and his military high command."

"I'll hold you to that," Padme said firmly, nuzzling into Harry's shoulder. "I will miss you both desperately. I hate sounding so maudlin but that's the truth."

"We were together for so short a time in person it's only natural, Harry soothed, while Aayla bid farewell to Sabe in her room and came back. "But we have to go. You are not the only one who has to answer the call of duty after all."

Padme nodded wordlessly, then leaned forward, kissing Harry hard on the lips. By the time the two of them finished stealing one another's breath away, Aayla was there, leaning down for her own ardent kiss. How long Padme just kissed them both, moving from one to another as Zule began to snicker in the background, she didn't know. The Half-Falleen wasn't snickering when they ended though. No, she was simply staring at the trio, a reddish hue to her pale red skin longing and something else in her eyes that Padme couldn't quite identify in the pleasant haze of Harry and Aayla's kisses.

Harry slowly got up, and just as slowly pulled Aayla to her feet. Padme followed, and slowly walked the two of them out of her suite with Zule next to her. At the door, she paused, staring at her lovers. "May the Force be with you both. And… may it bring us all together again soon."

The two Jedi smiled raising their hands in formal farewell as they repeated the words back to Padme. "May the Force be with you too, Padme. And," Harry added, remember we love you, no matter how far apart we are."

Padme was still smiling happily at that as Zule slowly closed the door after her two friends. Then she smirked wickedly, pushing Padme in the shoulder. "Well, it seems as if you'll have a lot of energy to spare with those two out of the way. But don't worry, I have many ideas on how to take advantage of that happy state of affairs."

The young Senator's whimper caused Chewie and Mala to roar in laughter.

Lost in their own mental realm, Aayla and Harry barely noticed the trek to the bridge that led to the temple from the rest of the Senatorial District. There they paused halfway along, staring out over the expanse below as the meditated on the reality of shadows, depths, light, and life for a few moments, not so lost in their own mental plain, as in their thoughts for the future. But then they began moving once more. The future waited for no one.

When Harry and Aayla reached the Temple, they found Master Koon talking to a young woman on the steps leading up to the entrance. An entrance that was now guarded not by two Padawans, but six Jedi Knights, all of them kneeling in a mediation stance, but waiting there.

The girl in question was a Togrutan, her skin far lighter in than the Crimson red of Master Ti's skin color a light orange. Her montrals were much smaller her long lekku thinner and a bit shorter than Aayla's. She seemed sixteen, or so, judging by her body type, lithe, built for speed and movement, endurance overpower. She was currently hopping on her feet like someone who had a little too much energy most of the time, with thin but slightly puffy cheeks, her baby fat not yet paired away along with pouty lips and a chest showing through her Jedi robes that showed she was a girl even if she had not achieved the full, womanly figure of Aayla or someone of similar age like Padme. At her side she had a lightsaber, it's small shaft indicating it was probably a shoto.

Upon seeing her, Harry felt the Force within him reacting almost instantly. Aayla felt it too, and she shifted to look at him quizzically, then to the newcomer who had whipped around to stare at the two of them. "Well now," Harry said mildly, although he was rather shocked inside at how quickly that connection had begun to form. "I think that I need to be introduced to this young lady Master Koon. Would I be wrong to say that she is the padawan the Council has decided to see if I am compatible with?"

"So your Harry Potter," the girl said, before Master Koon of speak, a gross breach of decorum. She cocked her head thoughtfully, looking him up and down. "Well, you're certainly as tall as I would've thought, although I don't see how your hair is 'long enough to blow in the wind romantically' as the newsfeeds put it. And your shoulders aren't nearly 'as wide as a mountain, brimming with power' either."

"You shouldn't listen to that drivel," Aayla said with a laugh. "It just looks windswept all the time because no one can do anything with it, that's all. Trust me, Master Fay attempted to put it in a padawan braid every few weeks without any success. It would just burst out of the braid and go back to this look he has now. And don't get me started on what it did to scissors."

"Huh, that's kind of hilarious," the girl replied, with a laugh.

"Yes she is your new padawan, her name is," Master Koon began with a shake of his head.

"I can speak for myself!" The girl interrupted, then she seemed to remember herself and paused bowing to Plo. "Oh, I'm sorry Master, I just…"

"You're just concerned about rejection and are covering that with a sense of humor. I understand. It's not the best way to combat concern, but it's understandable," Harry replied, then smirked. "And I would have thought that the fact our Force cores are already trying to bond would have told you the I wouldn't be rejecting you. Welcome aboard."

"Er, just like that?" She asked looking a little concerned, as if she wanted to run away, or disbelieved how easy this was. "Most the time, when the Masters spend any time around me I, well they don't seem to get along with me."

"That easy. Unless that is, you're not up to it?" Harry probed and was rewarded by the girl puffing herself up noticeably. "Tell me, do you have mastery of the three Clan Saa techniques?"

The girl scoffed, shaking her head. "Of course! Their mandatory now before you can even be considered to be a common padawan."

"I'd heard that, but it's good to have confirmation. In that case, I suppose the question is, do you want to become a padawan?"

"Well yeah!" The girl said, tugging at one of her lekku unconsciously. "And I'm not just saying that because, well, I have been kind of passed over before this. But also because I don't think being with you is ever going to get boring."

"'Being with you', is it?" Aayla said with a laugh, reaching forward to poke the girl in the cheek. "And how am I supposed to take that?"

The girl blinked, cocking her head in confusion and Aayla laughed. "Nevermind, I forgot, you've been raised entirely in the temple and its inherent indoctrination."

"Oh, that…" The girl pondered for a moment then nodded. "Yes, I can see how my words could've been taken I suppose. But I didn't mean it like that," she added hastily, looking at Aayla then back to Harry. She could now kind of feel the bond between them and it was surprising to see it, like a weird band of light brighter than the rest of the area around it to her Force senses, which Ahsoka knew was kind of weak. Yet she could also now kind of feel something else now that she was looking for it. And when Harry smiled at her, reaching out a hand she hesitantly took it.

Harry squeezed gently. "Greetings padawan, I am your new Master, Knight Harry Potter. Might I ask your name?"

The girl now evinced a blush, realizing that she hadn't actually introduced herself yet, and she didn't have to look to Master Koon to know that he was smiling behind that mask of his. "Erm, my name's Ahsoka, she said at last. Ahsoka Tano. And um, thank you for having me?"

While Aayla giggled once again at the wording – still kind of hyped-up after their recent farewells to Padme – Harry simply smiled warmly at the young girl. "Well Ahsoka Tano, I think we need to get to know one another. I believe we have a lot to teach one another, me teach you about the Force and life in general, you teach me about patience and the limits thereof."

The girl blinked, then realized she just been zinged, and pouted at him. "Hey!"

"If you can't take the heat, you might wish to stay out of the kitchen," Harry continued teasingly.

"Ooh, low blow! When have you ever let anyone in the kitchen?" Aayla asked with a laugh.

He turned to look at Plo, asking, "Will Yoda be ready to leave with us soon? I understand the rest of the High Council who had wished to go with us for that little Force experiment won't be coming with us due to recent events."

"He and Master Rancisis are still talking with the High Council and the Council of Reassignment. Master Yoda will be along within another hour or so," Plo replied, nodding his head and giving no indication of the fact the council had hoped to try and meditate on the future using Harry's Force Light Constructs. Yoda would be the only one to go with them, as he had a ready-made excuse: he would be meeting with his former padawan, who had been sent into the various Agri-worlds and, according to what the rest of the Senate knew, fortifying them.

Harry bowed his head to that, then looked over at his new padawan, who was looking at Master Koon. That worthy smiled behind his gas mask, the skin around his protected eyes crinkling as he, gently reaching out a hand and rested it on her shoulder. "You can feel it already can you not? The Padawan-Master bond forming. I had hoped for this, and I'm happy for you."

Ahsoka smiled shyly, glancing towards Harry then back to Master Koon. Then in a very un-Jedi like move, she threw her arms around the Kel Dor Jedi.

He simply chuckled an odd but still warm sound from behind his mask as he raised an arm to hug her back. After a second he then very deliberately stepped away, forcing her arms to fall away from his own around his shoulders. "Be well young one, and remember the first lesson…"

"Is to always accept what comes with an open mind, to always be open to learning new things, for the moment we choose not to, is a moment we stop growing in the Force," Ahsoka said with a smile.

"Well said," Harry smiled too, then gestured the girl to follow Aayla and him into the temple than to the temple's landing bay on its other side.

"You know there's a lot of rumors about you right?" Ahsoka asked a second later, the apparent silence of the walk getting to her rather quickly.

Harry realized he would have to work on her patience a good bit. Still, he supposed he could indulge her a bit. "All lies and damn lies," he said, affecting an Outer Rim brogue twitching his head to the side to give her a wink, which caused Ahsoka's smile to become a grin. Harry was most definitely not a stuffy Jedi.

Soon after that, they were sitting down in the tiny cockpit of the Tyrant's Bane's shuttle. Aayla moved to take over piloting, while Harry turned his chair to his new padawan. "All right, some ground rules. In public, you should probably call me Master Potter. When we're alone however on the Tyrant's Bane or elsewhere, I prefer Harry. I'm not one for putting on airs, and you'll find me rather easy-going about modes of address. Aboard ship, you'll have your own private room, it'll be small but still better than I bet you are used to in the temple. We don't live in tight quarters on this ship."

For some reason that caused Aayla to giggle and Ahsoka looked between the two, wondering if there was some joke here she was missing. She certainly was she decided but could wait to be let in on the punchline.

"For the first few days were going to be getting to know one another mainly. Both you, me, and the rest of the ship's crew, including my blue-skinned lady here." And I need to see what our budding bond does to Aayla's and my own Force bond, he thought, a concept that Aayla agreed with wholeheartedly. She too could feel their bond and was wondering what that meant going forward as it strengthened.

"Tomorrow, we're going to through your paces physically. I'll want to see your force techniques: Grab, Push, Shield, Stun, Color-changing, and anything else you can think of that you can do. We'll also be lightsaber dueling."

At those words, Ahsoka's eyes lit up even further, and she leaned forward eagerly. "Why not today?"

"Because today, I'm going to have to give a speech to the youngling clans, keep in touch with the GDL and inform them of what I was just talking to the Chancellor about, as well as field any last-minute questions from the GDL Senators before we leave orbit."

"Um, can I ask a question about that? I mean the Jedi are supposed to be on the Republic's side right? So, what is this whole Galactic Defense League thing about?" Ahsoka asked. "I mean, we padawans were told about it, but not why the High Council decided to kind of back its creation."

"What is the Republic then?" Harry asked instead of replying, leaning back in his chair.

Ahsoka's eyes narrowed. "This is one of those questions where you're just asking me to see what I'll answer right, rather than there actually being a right or wrong answer."

"I wouldn't say that. From my perspective, there's certainly a right answer, although I'll admit that's to most Jedi it would seem to be the other way."

"Okay, in that case, I would say that we are taught that the laws and regulations of the Republic are what make the Republic what it is. That respect for authority and government is what makes the Republic."

"And you believe that? What does the Force tell you on that one?" Harry asked.

Ahsoka frowned. "I… haven't actually asked the Force about that question before. I don't think anyone has. The very idea is kind of…"

"Kind of strange? That would be because the Force doesn't care about that kind of thing," Harry said with a smirk even as he reached out with the Force to Ahsoka's mind with a technique that he had learned from Master Fay, gently putting pressure on her mind.

"The Force certainly doesn't care about laws or Republic or Senate. As my padawan, you will be learning a lot more than you might think. Because beyond the Force, I will be teaching you about right and wrong, when it is appropriate to use the Force and when a bit of common sense can help you find the answer to your problem just as quickly. And yes, I will also be teaching you about politics. But I will always be asking you to find your own answers. I will give you the tools necessary, you must come to your own conclusions, alright?"

That question seemed to have an odd weight to it, as if the words had a special kind of weight to them, which pushed on her mind until she had to think of them very, very deeply. By the time she had finished, they were through Coruscant's planetary shield, moving to the Tyrant's Bane. This had taken time, since now that war had been declared, the shield was now on twenty-four seven and you had to create a full flight schedule with Space Control for even a move like this one.

"I understand. I will try to learn whatever you can teach me." Ahsoka finally replied, then smirked, "Just understand I'll be much more interested in some lessons than others."

"Heh, perfectly understandable. In that same vein, I should probably warn you. For the first few days, in fact probably for the first few weeks if not a month, you will be almost entirely confined aboard the Tyrant's Bane."

Ahsoka frowned at that, then asked, "Are we really going to stay on the ship for that long?"

"Don't worry, you'll find it isn't necessarily a hardship," Harry said with a smirk. "But you misunderstand my point. You will be remaining aboard ship because you will be in training. Specifically, mental training."

"Meditation and stuff like that?" She asked sighing. "I suppose I should have expected that. I'm okay with that kind of thing already, but I suppose it's one of those 'always more to learn' things."

"Yes and no. Your meditations and everything have shown you how to reach out to the Force, how to take in the sensations of it. But how much of that type of mental ability could you turn into defending your mind from a foreign intruder?"

"You mean another Jedi or a Sith? Like with those Blanked Jedi?" Ahsoka asked, shivering. She was young, not stupid or naïve. "Probably not a lot," she admitted. "I bet I could feel the intrusion, maybe could fight it off after I feel it depending on the strength of the other Force user, but keep it out in the first place? That I don't think I could do."

She then blinked, clicking her fingers. "Erm, is this anything to do with a kind of meditation called mental landscaping? Or something like that? I've heard Master Sektani and a few of the other teachers mention it."

"Sort of, yes. Eventually, you will create your own mental landscape," Harry said with a nod. "Although as young as you are…"

"I'm Sixteen!" Ahsoka interjected, an automatic response to that, annoyed at practically every connotation one could think to be called young, much like most teens. Something that even most Jedi would-be padawans were not immune to.

"And at your age, your mind is still going to be growing, shaping itself. That isn't a knock on you, Ahsoka," Aayla said softly. "In fact, if that wasn't the case, you would be closed-minded, which is not a good thing. Look at what Master Koon told you about the first lesson."

"Exactly," Harry said with a nod. "Instead, right now we will be teaching you how to defend yourself. I will also be teaching you as much as I possibly can about ethics and morality, not just the Force, as I said. The Force can define the Jedi, but the actions define the individual. Do you see the distinction?"

Again those words brought with them a pressure that made Ahsoka consider them carefully, and she bit her lip with her sharp Togrutan teeth as she thought. Then she slowly nodded. "Yeah, I can understand that. Odd way of putting it, though. I mean a lot of the time we're taught that well the Force is the answer to everything that…"

"No you're not," Harry said with a laugh. "Or if you are, I want to talk to your teachers. The Force is more than a tool, the Force can become a way of life, but, it is what we do with that life that defines us."

Ahsoka groaned. "Is it always going to be this way? Me being forced to think about all this moral question stuff?"

"You'd much rather slice something with your lightsaber a take it?" Harry asked, grinning.

"Well… yeah," she said at a little abashed, having expected to be shot down. Harry's easy-going amusement with her actions was something unusual. Not even Master Koon was this accepting of her somewhat wild nature.

"Then perhaps you need to learn when and how to hit, rather than simply how."

She raised her of finger to comment, then scowled. "Okay, I can see that one."

By this time, the shuttle had reached the Tyrant's Bane, and this shuttle settled down easily under Aayla's direction. And unlike the other younglings, Ahsoka realized something was up the moment she stepped off of the landing ramp. She stopped at its foot, staring around her. "Okay," she near-whispered, her voice coming out as a little shocked. "Unless you figured out a way to connect all eight of the cargo areas into one area and then sort of cram them all into one another, there is way too much space in here!"

"As I said," Harry chuckled. "You won't find yourself cramped aboard this ship."

"H, how!?" Ahsoka gaped.

"Space expansion technique. One of many you'll be learning from me." Yes, Harry reflected. This could be fun. Too often we've been concentrating on what our Force techniques can do of late, rather than what they are: uses of the Force which show just how powerful and amazing it can be.

While Aayla agreed wholeheartedly, Ahsoka's eyes narrowed, and in the next second, gave another sign that she was destined to become a Guardian rather than a Consular or Sentinel. "Can you add something like that to, say, proton torpedo magazines?"

"Yes," Harry nodded to where the Tyrant's Bane's accompanying missile frigates lay. They should not have been able to look so small in the hanger bay, even if they were small enough to be housed in the larger ship in the first place. Instead, they looked not small exactly, but not exactly cramped either.

Then Ahsoka caught a glimpse of the Falcon fighters and pointed them. "And those? I've never seen ships like that before," she almost cooed, looking at the starfighter's sleek and deadly lines.

"That would be correct. The Falcons are a design we created on her own. Without Force techniques that you will be taught here, those ships would be death traps: their shielding and armor too flimsy to protect them in a dogfight. With it, they are actually quite decent starfighters. Easily better than anything else we've seen in space. But they can't be used by anyone but a Jedi or the best pilots, they're still a little too finicky."

"I want one," Ahsoka said instantly.

"How are you rated as a pilot?" Aayla asked. They hadn't been told anything about Ahsoka's skills before this after all.

"Pretty darn good, not up to the level of say padawan Skywalker which everyone else has heard about, but I win way more than I lose in the simulators," Ahsoka admitted.

"We'll see then. Aayla and I and many others are pilots as well. We'll see what we can do to help you there. And if you prove an able student, then you can do the runic work on your own Falcon fighter in the future."

She grinned at that but was still staring around her even as Harry went on. "Now, let's give you a tour."

By the time the tour was over, Ahsoka was jabbering excitedly about what she was going to learn, what this ship could mean in the long run, and where they would be going from here on. Any lingering wariness of being assigned to a Master in the first place and to one so young-looking, Harry was barely nine years older than her after all, had waned.

Moments later, the ship's intercom blared as Harry was showing Ahsoka his and Aayla's room. "Oh, this is my room. Aayla and I share it. If the door is locked, do not come in. I cannot stress that enough."

"Unless that is, you want to get a first-hand anatomy and reproduction lesson," Aayla said with a giggle.

"That finally won a blush from the young Togrutan, and she stammered and looked away in shock.

"Stop trying to cause her to die of blush," Harry said mildly, although internally he was laughing, and the sense of amusement came through their link clearly.

"Harry, Aayla, Master Yoda has come aboard, and we are clear to exit orbit." Kass's voice intoned from a nearby intercom.

"Excellent. Let's get this show on the road then, Kass. Aayla and I will be up to relieve you. If you could have Mak meet Master Yoda and guide him to the hydroponics section. I'll be heading there to greet the youngling clans. He should have the coordinates for the Agri-world we'll be heading to. I want us gone from the Coruscant system within the hour," Harry replied, turning and leading his Twi'lek lover and his new padawan back down the hall.

OOOOOOO

Sidious stared at Dominus through the Hypercom connection, his teeth showing in a snarl of fury from underneath his hood. "You failed," he hissed. "You overreached in your attacks on the Republic. In attacking the hidden shipyards and all those Ord Systems you allocated too many of your ready forces and couldn't overwhelm the Galactic Defense League! You couldn't even destroy a single Uplink Center, let alone take their Ord systems! You have failed the Great Plan!"

Dominus however simply sneered. "This was but a prelude. Even as we speak, more attacks larger by far are being sent out, to various Core Worlds. Entire sectors will start burning soon. Surely you can already feel it, the Veil feeding off of the deaths? The anger and fear of the dying."

"I can, but you were supposed to remove the Galactic Defense League from the board. Instead, their position is strengthened."

"Bah, not enough. Their pinprick attacks might bother my supply trains, my smaller units. But if they face a full fleet? They will fall like everyone else!"

Inwardly Sidious sneered at his would-be apprentice's overconfidence. It was one weakness that had downed many a Sith, and Dominus was well on his way down that road. Yet I still need to use him, for now. I must put him back in his place. "I'm going to give you one chance to show me that you are not incompetent. Now that the war has begun Dominus, remember you are not indispensable. I can quite easily replace you if need be from within the Confederacy High Command. The Great Plan calls for a villain. There is nothing in it that says it needs to be you."

Dominus scowled, but then Sidious reached through the Force. With the Veil's help, strengthened by far than it had been even so long as a week ago, Sidious was able to reach far beyond where he could have otherwise. He also had the taste of Dominus's Force presence, which made it easier, aided by the image in front of him.

It was still hard reaching this far, but Sidious did so and kept any strain from his face or voice as the other man began to choke for air under Sidious's Force Choke. "You will have one chance, as I said, to prove that you can still be relied upon. The Tyrant's Bane has left orbit. It has Yoda and Potter on it. It needs to be destroyed. You will do so. Gather a minimum of eight Lucrehulks for the task. Remove Harry Potter, and the Galactic Defense League will no longer be anywhere near as dangerous, and Yoda is a magnificent target of opportunity. We will only try this once, I will not make a mistake and concentrate too much on one troublesome Jedi."

It didn't occur to Sidious that the number of shuttle trips to and from the Bane could have been more important than simply Jedi coming and going to talk to the Green Jedi he knew were a part of the ship's crew. He might have if he hadn't had to spend so long under the effect of the Ysalamiri that afternoon. But as it was, Sidious had no idea that the Jedi were preparing a mass exodus. Not yet.

"…V, v, very well. Where are they going?" Dominus asked, gagging, his eyes widening almost comically as he was forced once more to realize that as strong as he had become, Sidious was still his master.

Sidious released the technique and went on as if he hadn't just been threatening to kill the other man. "I believe that they are going to different Agri-worlds for some reason. I will get you the precise coordinates quickly. Do not fail me again, Dominus."

"I will not," Dominus growled. "The Tyrant's Bane will never reach their second destination. I will see to it."

End Chapter

WOOOT! The talking is now done, the violence has begun! From here on the pace of the story will pick up as Harry and company are forced into the war headfirst, while Padme learns that the Senate floor might not be nearly as safe as she might think, and also that she only thinks she's exercised before. Also a return of Master Fay and Lily for a time before Harry drives home the fact that the Confederacy too should be prepared to feel the sting of war.

As stated at the beginning this story will not appear on the monthly large story poll for May. the May poll is instead between A Third Path to the Future and A Horse for the Force.