At almost two months after the discovery of the Sol system, Mon Mothma and Bail Organa got their answer on why it was taking so long for a decision to be made on the system. The original probe had only been a resource scanning probe. With the discovery of life, another probe was being deployed to scan the civilization.

Currently, Mothma was scanning a requisition order and almost sighed in relief. It would take the probe another month to reach the system since it would be dropped by a ship that was close enough to the system but not close enough to draw attention. The teams of Corellians, engineers, and medics would have time to disguise their ships or to get out.

The bad part was that only one of the new power plants would be online in that time at best, so the planet would not yet have shields or defense turrets, much less a sustainable space habitat that sensitive compounds could be synthesized on.

Bail glanced up at her from his own reports and sighed.

"Those Ylesian slavers are attempting to recruit on Alderaan again despite us banning them," he informed her and Mothma pinched the bridge of her nose.

A Corellian resistance cell had picked up a woman named Bria Tharen some time ago who was badly addicted to something called 'Exultation.' When she had explained what it was and the trap it concealed, the alert had been sent out to every planet that could be reached.

Even a basic scan on what was happening on that planet caused alarm, especially in that there were nowhere near as many beings present as there should be. What kept them from shutting the place down was the Empire itself, the official reason being religious freedom.

Mothma glowered at the stack of reports in front of her. Pirating was on the rise, slavery on the rise, and corruption rampant. Even Kuat Shipyards, normally an honorable company, had begun to use slave labor rather than pay workers.

"They haven't dared to return to Chandrila after the ion turrets were turned on them," she informed Bail who shook his head, though a small smile crossed his face.

Turning her attention back to the report, Mothma tried to make note of the name of the ship that the probe was being deployed from but noticed something odd. It wasn't there.

Starting from the top of the report again, the Senator read through the report again, looking for any sort of key phrase or location of the ship, anything to identify it before her brows furrowed and she realized why this report had been given to her by a member of her intelligence: none of those were present.

The report was deliberately blank in regards to names and locations! That meant someone high level had authorized this in secret.

Mothma handed the report to Organa who accepted it and studied it for a minute, a puzzled expression on his face.

"Do you see the name of the ship or who authorized it?" she asked quietly and Bail's eyes widened. "Someone wants this-"

"Secret," Bail finished as he set the report aside and stood. "We need to find out who. We must. Without that information, we cannot even hope to block them. So we must assume we have two weeks to call them into the Senate."

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Jedi Knight Ylenic It'kla and the Mon Calamari Teek Hij were more than a little overwhelmed at the moment.

Mon Cala was determined to help whatever resistance may form, wherever it may be, and as such, had sent an engineer with the most recent deployment from Alderaan to Earth. Teek Hij's specialty lay in the construction of underwater bases, thus they were deployed to a part of the Earth known as 'Phillipines'.

The pair had been stared at by the local people for several hours as the flash learning devices were employed of several people so that communication could be established. It was right as the first of the Earthlings had been finishing up the program to teach them Basic, a little girl had managed to tear herself from her mother and ran up to them in order to hug Ylenic's leg.

This first contact seemed to delight the Jedi who bent down to the child who cooed at him in her native tongue.

Proverbial floodgates opened in that moment as a thick wave of humanity determined that the two were in fact 'safe.'

Teek heard shouts and laughter all around as the people surrounded them, many wanting to touch. It bothered his sensitive skin horribly and thankfully, most got the message.

Ylenic on the other hand, didn't feel as though he'd seen so many younglings since he was a youngling at the temple or had observed some of the classes when he'd considered taking on a padawan near the end of the war. His Force sensing abilities were also going off since it seemed every other person, youngling or grown, had some sort of Force sensitivity.

"Best to watch yourselves," a new voice floated from behind the pair, and they turned to see that it was one of the first volunteers for the learning devices. "According to our neighbors, your team is meant to help us prepare."

"That's correct," Ylenic replied as he finally stood, extracting himself from the group of younglings. "We are trying to help set up shelters for the people of your planet. My associate here has quite the talent in his particular field."

Teek Hij was flattered that a Jedi would refer to him as an associate and stepped forward, nodding to the man who looked to honestly be attempting to repress an expression of interest.

"Pleased to meet you. I am Teek Hij and will be assisting you in the construction of an underwater habitat. It should protect you from almost anything short of a Base Delta Zero."

The man blinked for a moment in response before saying, "It talked…"

He was promptly elbowed by the man behind him.

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Bacta was exactly what the Star Wars franchise had described it to be. A gelatinous goo that could heal injuries at astounding rates.

What was not mentioned was what it was made from. Those who were participating in the research knew within the first five minutes that it was no chemical, just a basic scan under a microscope provided evidence of that. Rather, it looked like some form of bacteria.

Heat fixing and Gram staining a tiny sample told us whatever made up Bacta was gram negative. Drug resistance tests yielded no results; it was immune to all the antibiotics the lab had available to test against it.

Attempting to cultivate the Bacta also proved difficult.

Guides for growing Bacta had come with it and the instructions were clear: while growing, Bacta was aerobic and required a zero-gravity environment. When used, it turned anaerobic and could operate in both gravity and zero-gravity so when it was used, patients were usually submerged in water or had airtight bandages.

No further explanations were offered on what Bacta was or how it worked. Or whether they could produce more from the samples they had.

Dr. Gaines had been supplied with ten students to assist him with this project and made full use of them, ordering that everyone brainstorm ideas on how to get around the zero-gravity issue. Considering their limited resources, the fact that cultures were required, and the growing bacta would require oxygen as well as zero-gravity, it was a problem that quickly left them stumped. Even their professor was lost.

It occurred to Tara around day two that the reason there were no suggestions on how to grow the bacta in gravity was because their visitors hadn't had to deal with the problem of not being able to leave their planets or not having space stations where they could grow bacta for quite some time.

Waiting for a space station to open up was not an option.

Thus, the group attempted to set up various different 'environment' tanks. They lined the bottom of one tank with hoses that had holes drilled into them that were attached to a pump that would circulate air in hopes that it would be enough for the bacta to grow. Another tank was filled with peroxide. Four more were brought in and two of them had the hoses run through them before a mix of chemicals was added that should produce oxygen as a side product and the last two tanks were filled with the same mix.

Results were limited. The bacta didn't grow in the peroxide and offered little growth in the tanks that had air bubbles flowing through them, though more so in the chemical baths that produced oxygen.

Classes continued every day and some of the groups boasted about the progress they were making, but tensions were higher than ever.

Tara glanced back at her Organic chemistry class and felt the urge to groan. There had been over 800 students at the beginning of the semester divided between two professors before the alien panic had started. There were now 150. Total. In the school.

The students whose eyes had been on Nursing school had been removed just days before, assigned to hospitals for on-the-job training. Veterinary students were similarly removed, sent to God only knew where, hopefully for on-the-job training as well. This was all after the initial removal of students with GPAs of less than 3.0.

These days both professors would come in to teach, trying to create some feeling of normalcy while teaching students who could be drawn away for training and assignments any day.

Dr. Flowers and Dr. Baker were both late that day, trying to decide on whether to have everyone work on assignment sheets or listen to a lecture. They split the difference and Dr. Flowers had begun a lecture on Grignard Reagent and free radicals while Dr. Baker passed out the papers.

Tara stared at her sheets of paper she had been handed, running through them as the lecture continued, her notes being written along the side of the pages. It was as the termination mechanisms of free radical formation were being discussed that Tara felt the idea hit and her hand shot up.

"Can any two particles be used in free radicals?" she blurted out without waiting to be called on.

"Good question! Most not so well, for instance, bromide typically doesn't work as well as chloride in methane solutions. In that reaction, chlorine replaces hydrogen on the carbon. And let me tell you, that was terrible for the ozone layer when it got out! Converted the O3 into O2-"

There was still fifteen minutes left in class but Tara couldn't wait. Besides, the worksheet was already done!

Her mad dash only lasted a minute as she raced out of the auditorium-like classroom and to the Chemistry building, climbing the stairs to the third floor two at a time. It was then she heard the clambering of feet behind her and glanced back to see three of her labmates right behind her. They shared the same class so she knew they had seen her abrupt departure.

"We already tried forming O2 in mixture!" one of them called after her.

"Not in mixture, under the gel!"

"What?!"

Tara burst from the stairwell a second later and didn't even slow down to pull on her labcoat before entering. She headed straight for the guides they had been supplied on bacta and turned straight to the instructions on how to grow it.

"What's going on?" Dr. Baines demanded as she leafed through the few pages of information they had been provided with.

"Don't know," one of the other students replied before Tara slammed the small guide in front of them.

"We were thinking physics and that was wrong!" she started. "Just putting oxygen into the environment isn't enough, it need to be caught by the bacta!"

Dr. Baines groaned as he sat back. "That is what we've been trying to do-"

"Like physicists! It's chemistry! We can't make something weightless on Earth yet, so we have to make do with replicating it, but it still needs air!"

"What-"

"It only says to use a culture! Not what type! We might be able to make one that could react with the environment to produce oxygen! And it would be trapped under the bacta…"

"Preventing escape!" Dr. Baines finished before jumping to his feet. "Get your labcoats on, we have a long night ahead of us!"

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Gin Kain had been sent to the larger continental landmass on his second trip to the planet Earth. He'd landed near a large city named Paris.

He could honestly say the food was fantastic even if the city seemed deserted. His guides informed him that usually the streets would be bustling with activity but the sudden push of the government had caused most to take jobs farther from the city.

The engineers he had brought this time had zeroed in on a particular site for building a power station that had caused the people to sweat: Chernobyl.

It was argued that the place was perfect since it would not disturb any of the standing power grids and could easily be connected to those power grids as the older sites were decommissioned. That idea soon had to be abandoned when they realized that the resources they were used to such as containment fields and construction droids which could have broken down the old reactor and made the area perfectly safe, were not available.

Europe simply didn't have much in regards to open space and no one wanted to live next to a power plant. Then Russia had offered a stretch of land just inside their border.

Glancing down the street, Gin sighed as he watched two Earthlings almost run into each other, and didn't. Neither was paying attention yet they slipped by each other seamlessly. Things seemed peaceful once people had calmed down a bit, almost like any other planet he'd been on. But there was immense distrust.

He had thought the Russians were just trying to be helpful, but the Europeans were suspicious. History that he didn't know of existed here and his guides were slowly teaching it to him.

Wars apparently were rather common and Russia had done some things in recent years that had been more than a bit aggressive, such as forcefully annexing areas. If allowed to have the power plant built within their borders, many were certain that the Russians would hold it over them.

With that in mind, a new site was found rapidly.

'These people are going to have the Imperials tearing their hair out,' he thought as he followed his guide down the street and saw yet another couple people, this time it was five of them and though two collided, the other three either wove around them or stopped short and helped the unlucky pair to gather their wares.

'They go from calm and friendly to suspicious quickly, and with so many having innate Force abilities, it's going to be devilishly difficult to hit them in open combat.'

The thought made him grin.