After years' worth of procrastination and deliberation, I bring to you my long-promised, long-awaited and oft-requested fixfic to The Clone Wars: Season Five: Episodes 17 through 20. Well, almost.

After having long debates with various colleagues - both internet and actual - I have decided that it is not, in fact, the TCW finale that needs fixing, nor the Jedi Order, but, instead, the portrayal of both. I will elaborate further after this chapter, for now, enjoy the read!


Off Course


Prologue:

"The Jedi Order was never stupid. Inert – yes, complacent – to a degree, but never stupid."
Adi Gallia, Current Affairs interview circa 33 GrS.


Grim silence fell onto the meeting chamber of the High Council, coincidentally concurrent with the fading of the Coruscant sky into darkness. Well, near darkness, as a planet of a trillion inhabitants found almost as many ways to illuminate itself at night.

"This new intelligence is troubling." Master Windu voiced what was on everyone's mind in the room. "We knew that the victory on Geonosis came with strings attached, but their extent is truly staggering."

"Victory?" Yoda snorted incredulously, "'Victory' you say? No Master Windu, not victory. The shroud of the Dark Side has fallen. Begun the Clone War, has." Shifting in his seat, the old Grand Master softened his tone into reminiscence. "For thirty-five millennia has this Order fought in wars, defending the Republic against threats within and without. But always have we chosen our battlegrounds, always held our own council, relied on no-one but ourselves. Now forced we are into a world with which we have little experience. Leading armies, each Jedi alone, on battlegrounds we do not know, ordered hither and yond by the Senate. No support have we to offer, no healers on the field, no battle Meditation to strengthen our units. Planned this war has been." He thumped his gimer stick. "Planned, the demise of the Order has been. Masterfully orchestrated, has been the Sith Master's plan."

"While I agree," began Obi-Wan, recently returned from Kamino with the entire package of the GAR's training manuals and list of contingency orders, "Can we not turn the Sith plot against them? To enact Order 66, they would need to either be in the Chancellor's Office proper, or be part of his entourage. If we pre-emptively enacted Order 65, we could eliminate that threat."

"Sadly," Master Oppo Rancississ began, "That is no-longer possible. As of yesterday, Bail Organa and I are the only ones not loyal to Palpatine on the Security Council, and considering the Senate's election of Palpatine for an unconstitutional third term, we are not likely to get any help from them either."

"What is left to us, then?" Adi pondered. "We cannot sit this war out, as we have learned during the Pius Dea conflicts and the Mandalorian Wars, that will only lead to more harm than good; we cannot know for certain who the Sith Lord is, despite it being safe to assume that it is the Chancellor, and we cannot remove the Chancellor due to his machinations. What other options do we have, besides fighting it out and hoping the Sith Lord makes a mistake?"

"We plan." Obi-Wan stated decisively. "We plan, then we act." Before a curious mutter could rise, Obi-Wan produced a tactical holo of the Galaxy and put it through on the chamber's projector. "It has become evident that the Sith are controlling this war from both sides. Dooku has a certain charisma about him, and in the event that the Separatists win this war, it is he, not his master, who will have the will of the people behind him. Sidious will not stand for that, so he must be aiming to 'win' the war with the Republic, using his own popularity to cement his place of leadership. Further, the CIS is a small state, and it will be easier to control the Republic's annihilation of them as opposed to letting the CIS overtake the galaxy, from a purely strategic standpoint."

"How means…?" Ki Adi Mundi prompted. He could almost see where Obi-Wan was going, but in matters of such import, 'almost' did not cut it.

"It means that we have a guaranteed, solid warning before anything happens to the Order. Firstly, to justify the destruction of the Order, Sidious will need to lower our image with the masses, and perhaps engage in some political machinations on this front. Further, when he is ready to act, he will step up the Republic's advance, letting us take down most of the enemy assets. According to our intelligence, the Separatists have many fortress worlds in the Outer Rim, such planets will be difficult to assault, likely leading into long sieges. It would be an ideal time to strike, with the Jedi off-guard from the near-victory and perhaps left isolated to coordinate their forces. Through careful observation, we can establish when this last phase is reached, and with luck – and the Force – perhaps have a timetable."

The room was silent for a time, the councillors pondering the suggestion and probing the depths of the Force. At length Master Windu spoke, "That is an interesting proposal, and certainly deserving of more thought than we can muster at midnight. We still have time to plan, and make certain that the Order does not fall along with the Republic."

In concurrence, Master Yoda stood from his chair, "A recess, I declare, until morning tomorrow. The Force with you may be. Night good!"

Following him, the Masters stood from their chairs and departed the chamber, leaving the Jedi's future a fair shade brighter than it once was.


And that sets everything in motion.

As questions were raised with Mistype, let me briefly elaborate: In the proper EU, the GAR (Grand Army of the Republic, read: clones) had a manual of 150 contingency orders, issuable by various authorities to deal with emergency situations. Orders ranged from mundain "Take out the loundry, trooper!" to "bombarding key allied planets", to Order 66, "Kill the Jedi" and Order 65 "The Chancellor went bat-sith crazy, kill him!". The only authorities capable of issuing 65 were the Security Council and the Senate.

Next up: brief opinion piece. I'll post a detailed article on my blog after it stops looking like an explosion at an HTML plant, but the TL;DR is: I like what Karen Traviss did with Mando culture, I hate her guts when it comes to the way she - and many others - dealt with the Jedi Order. No, they were not a cabal of secretive, intergalactic wizards. No, they did not have a slave army. No, they are not totally useless and insane.

Sadly, when an author lacks in the intelligence department, and he wants to make a smart villain, the good guys turn out to be utter nincompoops. To facilitate the contrast of intelligence, the author dumbs down his "heros" instead of making them smart, and the villain even smarter. Timothy Zahn did a good job of making an "even smarter" villain in Thrawn, while still keeping Han/Leia/Luke/Mara/Karrde viable. BioWare did an incredible job of making the Jedi Order - make tha the Entire Galaxy with SWTOR - a hive of nincompoops.

Pet peeves aside, I hope you enjoyed the read thus far. This story is going to be way shorter than YJBL (Which I'll discontinue, probably) as I'm going with a quality quantity approach (YJBL, despite having 80k+ words, was a little shaky due to the demands on my time).

I freely admit that I have no posting schedule for this story, and think it'll be honest to say so, rather than going all political and offering promises I cannot deliver.

Good day folks, and may the fiction be with you!

Clean word count: 857 | Published: 2/11/14, 2235 GMT