When Commander Cameron had asked if their ground troops could bring the assault ships, advancing a few hundred metres above the ground, down on top of the army they were escorting, the Steel Talons engineers at the Perch had run some rough calculations. Taking into account the combined firepower of the GDI divisions' artillery and tanks compared to the strength of the navy's heavy railguns and the strength of an Acclamator's shields which they estimated based on how much fire they'd soaked up during the battle in orbit. When he pressed them, seeing as time was precious, the answer he got was fire everything and don't stop shooting till the damn things exploded if he wasn't willing to wait for a proper answer.

While the artillery and heavy tanks attacked the ships they needed protection, so Cameron had the GDI army form into three lines. In the first were Whale IFVs, Marshall MBTs and Phalanx walkers which would cross the rise engage the ground troops. Behind them the second line which was made up of the army's lighter units, nearly 20,000 armoured infantry and Tiger support walkers, which penetrate the clone lines to keep to close for the ships' turbolasers to bombard them.

Meanwhile the massive Mammoth tanks, Mastodon walkers, Guardian and Oxen artillery units and the Commander's Goliath, would position themselves on and just behind the rise and concentrate their massive amounts of firepower on the ships. He'd also ordered the Orcas and Storm Hawks at the perch to load their massive anti-ship missiles and join the attack once the ships' shields were down, in spite of the defences they'd have to charge. To minimise the damage the Acclamators' turbolasers could do Cameron had spread his troops out as much as possible.

When the lines were formed and his subordinates had confirmed that they understood their orders, Cameron activated his radio and ordered "All units, advance."

The video he had of the thousands of armoured vehicles and infantrymen heading into action didn't have sound but Cameron mentally added the roar of electric engines and tracks and the thumps of the heavy walkers as they marched towards the battle. As they moved forwards Cameron began rubbing a ring on his right middle finger with his thumb, it was a habit of his that he unconsciously did when he was nervous, one of his ancestors had apparently shared the habit because part of the ring, the palm of the obsidian hand that was set in the centre, had already been smoothed and slightly worn away when his father had given him the family heirloom.

The tanks and walkers were fed targets by drones as they advanced and as they began to climb the rise they depressed their gun barrel and fired as soon as they their guns faced the clones. The first units to cross the rise were Marshalls and Whales, closely followed by the Phalanxes, who had been advancing while crouched to stay hidden for as long as possible but as the tracked vehicles crossed the rise they rose to their full height, allowing them to fire over the tanks and APCs, and began firing their main railguns at vehicles almost nine kilometres away, a range that the Republic army, except for their artillery and the assault ships, was unable to fire back at. The lead Republic vehicles, the AT-TEs, took most of the hits, with most only taking one railgun round or missile that hit their vulnerable glass cockpit, blew pilots into bloody chunks and penetrated through the thin cockpit rear wall, deep into the vehicles. Many of the walkers hit collapsed without power or pilots but a few exploded, sending flaming debris shooting into the air. The GDI vehicles' secondary weapons, grenade launchers, lasers and rapid fire railguns, began shooting into the clone infantry they could spot behind the lead republic vehicles.

The surviving AT-TE pilots realised how vulnerable their cockpits were to the railguns and turned around and started advancing in reverse, so that their thick rear armour pointed towards the enemy. Now instead of killing each heavy walker in one or two hits the GDI army's railguns required several shots to bend and deform the AT-TEs' rear armour before a railgun could penetrate the vehicle. They also started taking fire form the Republic artillery and long range blaster cannons but the high explosive shells flew forward only to exploded in between the two armies thanks to the GDI laser point defences which detonated them far from where they could do damage and the blaster cannons were designed to kill infantry and light vehicles, not the heavily armoured GDI force.

As the units behind them began to move up the assault ships turned the turbolasers on their underside towards the ground and fired, sending massive blasts of plasma into the GDI ranks, despite their heavy armour the tanks and walkers were not the space faring battleships the turbolasers had been built to destroy and several vehicles were completely vaporised by every blasts, vehicles that were near the impacts found their armour boiling away in the heat and a few Phalanxes were toppled by the blasts of superheated air. But the GDI soldiers did their best to ignore their losses, as they'd been trained to do, and fired at the enemy they could kill, the clones.

The next wave to come over the rise was made up of power armoured zone infantry and Tiger support walkers, which stood about twice the size of a man. When they reached the top of the rise they didn't start shooting like the armour had, instead the lighter units engaged their jetpacks which sent them hurtling towards the clones. Before they even hit the ground the infantry and Tigers had started shooting into the tightly packed ranks of clones, rapidly firing railguns and sonic grenades scattered the white armoured soldiers and anti-armour missiles slammed into tanks and walkers, eliminating many walkers but only destroying a few of the more heavily armoured tanks.

When the soldiers cut their jetpacks they landed in the midst of the Republic army, forcing the commanders of the assault ships to choose whether to bombard the GDI troops right below them, which would kill thousands of their own clones. The GDI troops were in a very vulnerable position by placing themselves in the midst of the enemy army, but it was safer for them there then with the first line, where they would be more vulnerable then any other GDI unit to a bombardment from the ships, the ships could not bombard the GDI troopers without killing hundreds of clones in the process, and as an added bonus their actions had thrown the carefully organised clone lines into chaos. Automatic railguns opened up, spitting hundreds of rounds a minute, and the clones began to fall in droves, although only third were actually dead, their armour was somewhat effective against blaster bolts and bullets from chemical slug throwers but it had never been designed to defend against the superfast projectiles spat out by the railguns. Many of the GDI soldiers didn't even aim, they just pointed their guns at the clones and held down the trigger and soon the ground was running with blood and clones covered in gore and small chips of bone from their fallen borthers marched towards their enemy looking more like zombies then soldiers.

The clones returned fire, but their response was limited because most of them didn't have a clear line of sight to the GDI soldiers thanks to the clones surrounding the GDI troops, but the Tigers stood in plain view of most of the army due to their height each began to take thousands of blaster bolts and dozens of missiles, which overwhelmed their ECM and laser defence systems, and soon the walkers had to duck down and cease engagement or they would be destroyed. The infantrymen's heavy powered armour could protect them from even the heaviest clone blasters but within a minute the squad medics found themselves having to deal with wounds as the zone suits' inbuilt life support systems were overwhelmed by the sheer number of minor injuries.

Finally, right behind the last Tiger to jump into the midst of the clones came the army's heavy units. Mammoth tanks roared forward on their massive tracks followed by the huge four legged mastodon walkers, the six legged goliath and the artillery units, tracked Guardians and Oxen walkers. The walkers had been ducking down as they approached the rise but now they rose up and unleashed their full firepower against the first assault ship. Railguns, some larger then the ones fitted to capital ships, and thousands of missiles and high explosive shells lit up the battlefield as they slammed into the ship's shields. The commander of the assault ships realised what Cameron's intention was and the ships stopped firing at the first line and switched to bombarding the third.

Now the Republic Army's remaining AT-TEs were close enough to the GDI second line that their anti-tank mass drivers would be effective. Some of the Whale's were destroyed in one or two hits, they were no where near as heavily armoured as other vehicles, and some Phalanxes toppled over as they took hits to their vulnerable knee joints but most of the GDI vehicles only took light damage in the initial exchange and continued to fire at the clone army. But soon even the Marshall tanks were beginning to suffer losses as their durability went up against the sheer weight of numbers of the Republic army was bringing to bear and numbers won.

As the third line was ravaged by turbolaser fire, extra support was rapidly approaching in the form of dozens of Orca and Storm Hawk fighters. Anti-fighter lasers on the assault ships began firing at the approaching craft and within moments the first Orca burst into flames as a blaster bolt pierced armour and ignited its fuel. By the time they reached launch range for their missiles another three fighters went down, but with their missiles released the fighters were able to turn for home. The anti-fighter laser cannons switched to targeting the missiles but they were unable to shoot down any of the small and fast weapons. When they hit the ship the shields began to flicker then they collapsed and the massive amounts of firepower previously kept at bay began to ravage the ship's hull.

As the ship's forward repulsorlift engines began to cut out and its nose tipped downward, Cameron ordered the men of the second line to get out from the clone ranks before the ship crashed to the ground. But many were pinned down by the clones that surrounded them and dozens were shot out of the sky as they tried to jump away, others were unable to get away in time, their jump packs were damaged by enemy fire or they were trying to save injured comrades who were unable to escape on their own. When the ship crashed to the ground just over three hundred humans died, along with thousands of clones.

The third line switched its fire to the second assault ship but even as the first rounds impacted on its shield the assault ship was gaining height, apparently the Captain didn't want to risk losing his ship. This was bad news for the clones though because now GDI's heaviest units were free to tear their army apart. The mammoths gunned their engines and leapt forward with a speed that seemed completely inappropriate for tanks their size. Their dual railguns spat massive pieces of metal at speeds that rendered any armour in their way useless. Many of the mammoths were hit by fire from the Republic's artillery and AT-TEs that were for the moment still alive, but most of the damage suffered by the massive tanks was only broken tracks and hulls dented by mass drivers and pock marked by blasters. With the more durable mammoths now in the fight the badly mauled companies of Whales and Marshalls that could still move began to reverse back over the rise, in some cases units had two thirds their vehicles completely destroyed, when the entire unit hadn't been completely wiped out, and none of the remaining tanks were unscarred. The Phalanxes waited until the Mammoths passed them then formed up behind the tanks, which shielded their vulnerable legs while the walkers could lend their firepower to the tanks' advance.

On the rise the artillery units had switched from automatic fire mode to coordinated bombardment, an EVA artificial intelligence took control of each shells guidance and each vehicle's targeting systems to direct each volley into the largest concentrations of clones and the largest vehicles that weren't burning piles of wreckage yet. Officers who were out with the troops were primary targets and the clones quickly began exchanging confusing orders as they were unable to keep up with who was in overall command of the army, which caused many clone officers to simply issue orders to the troops within a few hundred metres which forced battalions to more or less fend for themselves and prevented the clones from using their advantage in numbers against their enemy, and left them easy pickings for GDI.

The massive four legged Mastodon walkers took aim at the rapidly depleting numbers of clone infantry with their colossal railguns and fired submunitions, which weren't one large round but a bundle of hundreds of tiny rods designed to eliminate large numbers of soft targets, like a massive shotgun. The Mastodon's fired together and in an instant, thousands of clones were reduced to mixtures of shattered armour and bloody paste by the superheated, superfast rods and the massive pressure wave their passage created. After a few seconds to reload and recharge their guns, they fired again.

The clone army was in shambles now, its heavy vehicles were destroyed and burning, their air support had fled and the infantry that remained had become bogged down in the mud created by the sheer amount of blood flowing from almost a hundred thousand dead clones. In spite of all this they still tried to rally and attack, it seemed they wanted no quarter and so Cameron ordered that none be given, companies of GDI troopers and their Tigers were assigned to take out groups of clones that were resisting destruction by the artillery, which was now having difficulty finding targets as the railguns and lasers had heated the air over most of the battlefield to the point that thermal imagers couldn't pick out humans from the surrounding environment and the mix of smoke and steam made visual identification from above difficult.

The infantry advanced across the battlefield in a thin line, when they found clones who tried to resist they shot them, and they all tried to resist, even clones missing multiple limbs or holding their spilled guts in their arms threw themselves at the GDI troopers or died scrambling for the closest weapon. When they found one of their own who'd died during their stand in the middle of the clone army the troopers marked the position for later retrieval.

It was a grim task and few men spoke while they carried it out. Except for the occasional zap of blaster fire or rapid series of cracks from a railgun, which cast great, ghostly lights through the mist, the battlefield had fallen silent and Terra Nova's carrion population was descending on the remains, as if seeing the lack of noise as a signal that the humans had had their battle and now they could enjoy their great feast of cloned flesh. When the GDI troopers saw the animals start digging their maws into the bodies that were still intact, they shot them too.

In his Goliath Commander Cameron was trying to reorganise his forces in the wake of the battle. Losses had been heavy, a third of their vehicles were completely gone and half of what remained needed at least a day with the repair drones, but they still needed to push on to the landing site. Although whether they could accomplish that in the face of even more of those assault ships taking off to greet him and his men made his blood run cold, in any future battle where GDI was fighting without support from their own navy they needed a reliable counter. He filed that thought away for later.

There was also the matter of their wounded and the few clones they had recovered alive. He'd been informed that most of his men would be fine given a few days, and the remainder needed more serious treatment but were stable for now. Most of their wounded had died when the assault ship came down on top of them. Of the twelve clones they had captured, only two were in what could be called a medically stable condition, they had all been captured because they were unconscious when they were found by GDI troopers, battlefield medicine had made huge strides in the past few centuries but there was still a big difference between a combat doctor and a proper surgeon and most of those prisoners needed the latter if they were going to survive and having some prisoners to deliver to the Command Council might make up for his failure so far.

"You alright Lieutenant?" Cameron asked as his intelligence officer Mandy Kiernan, came up from the living quarters' bathroom on the deck below. The Goliath walker was currently downwind of the battlefield and in the hour since the battle's end the air had begun to fill with the stench of rotting meat and the unfortunate Lieutenant had been unaware of this fact when she'd taken advantage of the lull in the fighting to step outside for a moment.

"I'll be fine sir, I think I'm over it" the brunette woman replied as she wiped a small patch of bile from her lip "Although we should get a lot of HAZMAT teams down here when we're done, this place could become a breeding ground for disease if we're not careful."

As the Lieutenant sat down next to the map table, a private manning the communications console said "Sir, we have a priority message from General Casey incoming."

"Put it on the main screen" Cameron replied, Jack Casey was the commander of the ground forces that had recently been deployed on Terra Nova, Jack was his superior in rank but because his men had been deploy in Cameron's theatre the general had assumed the role of his second in command and the two of them had struck up the beginnings of a friendship after a tour of the Goliath walker turned into a debate over tanks vs. walkers. The last time they'd spoken was when Cameron ordered Jack to hold the Capital while he marched on the Republic's landing zone.

"Commander, can you hear me?" the Casey asked, as an image of him appeared on the command centre's main screen.

"I'm here General, how are things going over?" Cameron replied, three quarters of Terra Nova's military force, not including the militia, were currently operating under Casey's command. If things were going well for him then he might be able to launch the offensive in his place.

"I'm cautious of tempting Murphy but things couldn't really be going better." Casey replied, a massive grin on his face, "They flew in a few of those Acclamator class ships to support their ground troops but the city's defences gave them a real pounding and brought down two of them on top of their own guys."

"Your casualties?" Cameron asked.

Casey's grin disappeared then he replied in a more sombre tone "Heavy, the 1299th and 645th divisions are almost completely destroyed, they were bombarded by those assault ships before we brought them down and the 657th took lost a lot of good guys trying to plug the gap the ships made in our defences. There's a massive amount of collateral damage in the surrounding parts of the outer city."

"Civilians?"

"Only the dozen or so idiots who refused to evacuate, it can be rebuilt. What about you?"

"My force wiped out the clones heading for the Perch but our casualties were heavy as well, unless I get support from your forces I don't think I can assault the landing zone. What are you doing now?"

"Counter attacking, after the second ship fell they tried to move up the ground troops but we broke them on our defences and they pulled back. I've been pursuing them for the past twenty minutes but my scouts spotted something I think you'll want to see."

On the screen the picture of Casey's face was replaced by a video of the clones marching aboard their assault ship, the view shifted to show another ship lifting off.

"They're evacuating" Cameron said.

"Yep I had a UAV do a run over that landing site, before it was shot down I saw them packing things up pretty quickly, maybe they realised we're too tough a nut to crack. I plan on driving into that little evacuation of theirs and ramming a mammoth up their arses." Casey replied, his grin returned.

"No, pull your men back to the city."

"Why, we've got a perfectly good chance to do a huge amount of damage here?"

"Until the navy relieves us we're the only proper defence Terra Nova's got. For now those clones aren't a threat so take your men back to the capital and get them rested, we may have to fight again soon."

"Alright then Commander" the General replied before he shut down the link.

Cameron opened a link to his personal EVA AI "Alert all officers, get some more recovery vehicles out here. As soon as possible we're returning to the Perch "

The Jedi Council had assembled in their chambers in the central spire to view a transmission that had been picked up by a ship travelling close to GDI's border. Half an hour after the ship transmitted it to Coruscant a copy was sent directly to the Supreme Chancellor's office and several major news networks, it was already being mentioned on the Coruscant news stations and would be all of the galaxy by the end of the next rotation.

"Humans of Earth and her Colonies and beings of the greater galaxy. A week ago I met with representatives from both the Confederacy of Independent systems and the Republic and stated in no ambiguous terms that we would remain neutral in the war that has gripped the galaxy and would not allow our territory to be used by either side as a route to attack the other.

Four days ago, at approximately 1750 hours the Republic violated GDI's neutrality by launching an assault on our colony Terra Nova. Following this overt act of aggression I have declared a State of War and Emergency across Earth and her Colonies with the full support of the GDI Board of Directors in accordance with the Global Defence Act.

To my fellow Earthlings I say, take heart for we will weather this onslaught and overcome our enemies as we have always done and to the people of the Republic I say watch out, because we're coming for blood. There will be further announcements later today, so please stay tuned."

The message told the Jedi that one of their fears had come to pass, GDI had entered the war. At the top of the central spire of the Jedi Temple, Mace Windu turned to the other Council members as the transmission came to an end and said "This will have to be nipped in the bud."

"Agree I do, but how?" Yoda replied "Powerful GDI is and the resources for conquest or containment we do not have."

"What about the Core Armada?" Ki-Adi-Mundi, the Cerean Jedi Master, asked.

"Powerful in space it is, but it lacks ground troops" Yoda replied.

"And deploying the armada would leave the Core worlds vulnerable, we've already had to strip ships from it to reinforce other fleets" Windu said.

"What about this attack on Terra Nova she mentions" Obi-Wan interrupted "Our orders to the units in the Maikan sector were clear, they weren't to go anywhere near the border and Yamamoto was quite clear that her desire was to remain neutral."

"The analysts who forwarded this broadcast checked the fleet records, the only ships that have gone missing in the past few rotations disappeared far from GDI's space" Windu replied "I sense the hand of the Separatists in this."

"If we were to reveal the Separatists role, it could turn GDI to our side" Obi-Wan said, and several masters nodded in reply.

"How would we go about finding evidence though?" Windu said "GDI's security is tight at the best of times, if they are serious about this attack, it is likely that they will be especially alert."

"I have an idea" Master Tiin said "Obi-Wan, do you recall the Sith you killed on Naboo."

"Yes" Obi-Wan replied. It was not an experience he liked to remember, Darth Maul had killed his master, Qui-Gon Jinn, while he was trapped behind a force field and his rage over the Sith's act and the small amount of pleasure he'd found in ending the Sith's life had brought him much closer to the dark side then he liked to admit.

"I spent several years examining his ship, we haven't had a need of it and it reeks of the dark side but its stealth systems could get a team onto Terra Nova undetected."

"This ship, I recall. Its location, what is it?" Yoda asked.

"Currently it's on Naboo, a hanger in Theed" Tiin replied.

"And it's flyable?" Obi-Wan asked, Tiin's idea had merit but flying a ship that according to reports had booby traps that had killed the first engineers to examine it didn't really appeal to him.

"Yes, I flew three tests in the Naboo system" Tiin replied "Another pilot, a clone, tested the hyperdrive a year ago but since then it's been almost abandoned."

"Then I'll volunteer" Obi-Wan said "Anakin can pilot the ship and I'll take Ahsoka and some ARC troopers with me."

"Agree, I do" Yoda said and the other masters said similar words of approval.

"As do I" Windu said a moment later "How do you intend to get there?"

"Senator Amidala will probably be willing to make a sudden trip home at our request, GDI may strike systems close to Naboo so we can explain her trip as the Queen requesting her presence for discussions on how the Republic intends to handle such an eventuality. My team can stow away on her starship" Obi-Wan replied "Once we're on Naboo we'll board the ship and use the stealth system to depart undetected. As much as possible I'll try to keep things off any record."

"Very well" Yoda said, once he would have objected to the need for such secrecy but the Clone Wars had forced them to spin similar webs of lies before "Depart you must, as soon as possible."

After the heavily damaged Kuat had gone into a space dock for repairs, Anakin had taken a shuttle back to Coruscant. The bright centre of the universe was the capital of the Galactic Republic and had been since the government's founding millennia ago. The city that covered the entire world had endured untold numbers of wars, diseases and political schisms but while the latest crisis was fought far from the orbit of the great planet, it was a symptom of the corruption that had infested Coruscant to its very core.

As he'd looked down upon the city of a trillion beings from the shuttle's cockpit, Anakin Skywalker didn't see any corruption, he only saw light. He could feel the billions of sentients who were going about their lives. He couldn't pick the Jedi Temple out from the rest of the city with his eyes but to those attuned to the force it was one of Coruscant's most visible features, it stood out like a flare in the black of space. Anakin also saw another bright spot on Coruscant, one that stood out more then even the temple but even a Jedi Master would struggle to find unless he was looking very hard, that light was his wife.

Almost no one knew that he was married to Padme Amidala, such emotional attachments were strictly forbidden by the Jedi, but it was common knowledge that they were close, which gave them an excellent cover for spending time together and while having to hide his love in public still frustrated him to no end, it meant he always had something special to look forward to when he returned to Coruscant. As soon as he'd finished briefing the Council about his battle with the stealth ship he'd gone straight to her apartment and after Padme got back from her last appointment for the day they'd spent the night together.

Anakin was lying in bed, one arm around Padme, when his communicator started beeping. He pulled himself up with a yawn and, groggily, scrambled to find his shirt. He slipped it on and smoothed the worst of the wrinkles and made sure that the camera was pointed at him with a window looking out over Coruscant in the background before he activated his communicator.

"Anakin" Obi-Wan said as a blue hologram of him appeared above Anakin's palm "I stopped by your quarters but you weren't there."

"I was up all night working on my star fighter. I left the Temple a while ago to go get a bite to eat" Anakin replied with the excuse he'd formulated before he'd left the temple the day before. He'd suspected for a while now that Obi-Wan knew, or at least suspected, about his relationship with Padme but his friend had yet to confront him which led Anakin to believe that either he didn't want to publicly announce what he knew and see him excommunicated from the Jedi, or Obi-Wan felt his suspicions weren't enough to see his former apprentice thrown to the wolves of an investigation. Or perhaps he approved of his marriage but hadn't said anything because it would be unbecoming of a Jedi Council member to endorse such a blatant violation of the Jedi code.

"Very well" Obi-Wan replied "How soon can you get back to the Temple? We have a mission."

Anakin thought for a moment, he was anxious to find out about this mission but once he left he may not see Padme again for a while.

"Give me two hours, I've only just been served" Anakin replied, it would give him enough time to have a quick breakfast with Padme then get back to the Temple within a reasonable amount of time.

"Alright then, we're meeting in room eighty three. Ahsoka and an ARC trooper team will be joining us. Anakin, GDI has declared war on the Republic"

"What, when?"

"General Secretary Yamamoto made the announcement almost half an hour ago, if you turn on your holovid you'll probably see the first news reports. I'll explain more in the briefing."

"Okay, I'll be at the Temple in an hour then" Anakin replied before Obi-Wan shut off his communicator and the hologram disappeared.

On the bed Padme, her usually neatly tied brown hair a mess, sat up and asked "Will you be leaving soon?"

"Yeah it seems so. GDI declared war on the Republic" Anakin replied as he walked over and sat next to her.

"Why? I thought they were determined to be neutral." Padme replied, as her look of half asleep, contentment was quickly replaced by wide awake, concern. They shared a close bond through the force and Anakin could feel her mind running at a lightning pace. His angel was more caring and selfless then most Jedi he knew, it was one of the things that made her unique, but she was still a politician and she had immediately begun thinking of how to present the information to advance her platform, or how her opponents might spin it and how she could counter their moves.

"I don't know why, Obi-Wan said I'd be briefed at the Temple, you'll probably be told when the Senate convenes today."

They were both silent for a few moments then Anakin asked "What do you want for breakfast?"

"I'll just have whatever they're serving and a double strength caf" Padme replied as she got up and tied her hair back and Anakin set about retrieving and donning the rest of his clothes.

"Okay, I'll have them send up an order before I leave" Anakin said before he kissed her then started to walk towards the door as Padme got up opened her large wardrobe to get ready for the day.

"Anakin, be safe" she called out before he got to the apartment door.

"I'll try" he replied with a laugh, they both knew that he really did try to stay safe but one of the hazards of his career as a Jedi and a General in the Republic Army was that he often ended up in trouble without actively doing anything to attract it. Before he left he activated the service console on the wall next to the door and requested breakfast for Padme, today's special was duon'tornathin'eonton eggs, wherever that animal that was he hadn't encountered it before.

Anakin made for the elevator quickly, using the force to make sure no one was watching before he went around a corner, or that the elevator was empty. His ride to the hanger level was uneventful but when he reached the apartment tower's hanger he found two men, a human and what might have been a rodian, talking by a speeder whose engine was running. Anakin ducked down behind a speeder, hoping that they'd leave soon but the two men kept talking and talking. Anakin might have just walked past and gotten into his speeder, but through these men Obi-Wan or another Jedi might accidently discover where he actually was and his lie might be discovered. He considered trying to sneak past but the hanger was small and there was too little cover for him to hide himself as he moved across to his speeder.

Anakin was about to try and use some force trickery to try and get the men to leave, or at least allow him to sneak past when the human got into the car and the Rodian walked back to elevator. Anakin tensed up, hoping that the Rodian wouldn't look down on his hiding place but he walked past without even a sideways glance. Breathing a sigh of relief Anakin stood up and ran as fast as he could to his speeder, he was anxious to get back to the Temple and away from a greater chance of his secret life being revealed.

In his private chambers on his current flagship, the Duellist, Count Dooku was enjoying a fine wine from his family's sizable stock, an excellent bottle from 2309. He rarely drank alcohol outside official events, because every five minutes something about the war required his attention but GDI's declaration of war with the Republic and a message he'd received from Secretary Yamamoto requesting the possibility of their armies coordinating their strategy had put him in a mood for celebrations so he'd allowed himself to pop the cork on a bottle of the red liquid.

As the Count leaned back in his chair with a contented sigh his communicator began beeping. He checked the signal's origin point but the system was unable to tell him where it had come from, that meant only one of a very small group of individuals was on the line and all but two of them only contacted him when he contacted them first. That meant that it was either his master, Darth Sidious, or his new associate calling. When Dooku activated the hologram and a human with a hood over his face appeared on the small pedestal built into his desk he said "What is thy bidding my master."

"I understand you have been offered an alliance by General Secretary Yamamoto" Sidious, who would probably be greeted as Chancellor Palpatine by anyone who met him on the street, said.

"Yes, she has asked to meet with me on Raxus" Dooku replied.

"You must do everything you can to ensure that GDI's fleet is integrated completely into yours. It is a factor that cannot be allowed to act outside our control."

"Of course my master, but it will be difficult. When I met with her on Earth she seemed quite sure that the Confederacy was behind the attack on the Titan mutants and she will not trust us easily"

"Nonetheless it must be done, at the very least you must minimise GDI's role in the war. The attack on the mutants was one thing but the attack on this Terra Nova points to their being a new player in our game, one with a great deal of resources, and we must act quickly to limit the amount of damage he does."

"Have your agents found any information about the attack? None of mine have turned up anything. Although I plan to offer some medical ships to help anyone hurt on Terra Nova, which may allow some of my men to get close."

"An excellent plan my apprentice. My agents will continue to search where they can but I am not hopeful. Your operation may prove to be our best chance to gather information, our new opponent has covered his tracks incredibly well so far. May the force be with you."

"And with you" Dooku replied as Sidious shut down their link. He was just about to sit back and relax when his communicator started beeping again, when he checked the origin point this time it was the same as before, and his master was not the kind of person to suddenly call back after a conversation. When he activated the holoprojector he was presented with a rapidly shifting blob of static, his new associate.

"I was just toasting your success" Dooku said.

"Our success Count, we are in this endeavour together" the thing on the other end replied, like it did with its appearance it used some kind of scrambler to mask its voice, it could be male, female or lack a gender altogether, not even the force gave Dooku an indication of what he was dealing with.

"I do wonder though, how you benefitted from what's just happened? GDI is set to ally with me as you promised but most of the ships you salvaged have probably been destroyed" Dooku asked, just how the being on the other end benefitted when the wrecks it had paid him handsomely for permission to salvage had been presumably destroyed by GDI had nagging at him for most of the day.

"The Republic has another thorn in its side. That's enough for me" the thing said "I trust a certain individual has not been informed of our deal?"

"No he hasn't" Dooku replied, he had considered informing his master of this new player but he had decided against it. Over the past year Dooku's personal allies had had an alarming tendency to turn up dead and he put the blame with his master fearing just how much power the Count was gathering in the Confederacy while he remained on Coruscant. There was also the matter of this being actually knowing that he answered to someone else, which spoke volumes about its intelligence gathering capabilities.

"Excellent, for now then I shall bid you farewell. But we shall speak again." the thing replied before the hologram switched off on its own and Dooku leaned back in his chair and took a long sip of his wine. He was running an awful risk with his current course, but he was reasonably certain that if either his master or his new associate turned against him he would still come out ahead. The risk was great, but the reward could prove to be even greater.

In his dark chambers Kane sat back in his chair, a smile on his face. Up until this point things had proceeded just as planned, but now things would start to get very chaotic, very quickly, although that too was part of the carefully structured order of his plan, that thought caused him to chuckle slightly. The material cost of the operation had been staggering but he judged it well worth every credit. GDI always had required a great big push from time to time but he was sure that they would soon prove that they were still one of his most effective tools.