Noona, Shyle, and General Durn aboard the Golan Space Defense Platform Defender spent the entire morning and most of the afternoon rearranging the defense forces stationed in Duro's orbit. It took most of that time for the Defense Platforms to get into places evenly spaced from one another, a process that would have taken fifteen minutes with a normal space-going vessel, but what seemed like forever for a station over 1500 meters long to make use of its miniscule thrusters to do so.

Noona was aboard the Defender with General Durn, since it was easier to coordinate things from up here rather than Jyvus Space City. Though the station/city did have sub-light drives, there would have been little logic in doing so with the Defender available. Also, the Platform also had better defense sensors here than Jyvus, so tracking individual starfighter movement while also directing the much larger Acclamators was made easier.

Durn and Noona didn't get along very well at first.

She sensed he thought the Jedi were prolonging the war, setting their ideals before the well-being of the Republic. But once she made her battle strategies known, he began to respect here more as a tactician and less of a Jedi. Which Noona had no problem with, but the little jabs he kept making at Jedi irked her to no end.

Between the two of them and Shyle, they'd positioned their forces as evenly as they could around the planet, or at each of the "four corners" above the planet, with one Golan Platform at each corner. Jyvus City and the two smaller Space Cities were in the middle of the map. Four of the seven Assault Ships were divided evenly among the four points, with the remaining three stationed at opposite sides of the "map," and the prototype Victory Star Destroyer and the three Dreadnaughts remained in the middle of the map to provide quick support to any corner that saw trouble. The starfighters remained in the hangars of the Platforms and Star Destroyer, with routine patrol runs being run.

"Well, General, Minister, I think we've done all we can considering the circumstances," Noona said at last as she stood erect from bending over the map.

"And the odds of facing an attack bigger than a terrorist operation is miniscule," Shyle said, though he seemed to be convincing himself as much as the others.

"Let's hope so," Durn said.

Noona shook her head. "What kind of attitude is that?"

Durn looked at her and deadpanned, "A realistic one. Sorry we can't all be as high and mighty as you Jedi, who fear nothing."

Noona scowled as best she could, though to a human it would look only as though her skin tone changed color. "The Jedi fear plenty. They just don't take their fear and direct it into insulting jabs!"

Durn frowned at her. "I'm sorry, did I hurt your feelings?" Noona had half a mind to throw him across the room.

Shyle cleared his throat before Noona could respond. "All right, people, let's focus here. Noona, why don't you come on back to Jyvus? The politicians are getting a bit antsy without their Jedi protector here." He smiled warmly at her, and shot Durn a look.

Noona nodded, didn't look at Durn, and strode out the Ops Center and to the hangar bay.

Her Aethersprite-class Interceptor shot out of the bay minutes later.

Aylee and Agent Valiant headed the strike force that would take out the terrorist cell's base of operations.

Scanners had picked up the signals the Allegiance had been using to keep in contact with its base, and though it was heavily coded, the five hundred slicers they had working on it quickly broke through the barrier.

The Mountains of Mist was where the base was located. They had three squads of fully-trained scout troopers with them, including Valiant and Aylee.

They had just reached the foothills. Aylee and Valiant debarked from the AT-TE that had transported them. They didn't want to take a gunship in so close to the enemy base, for fear that they would either open fire with hidden turbolaser batteries, or flee the base all together.

The two other AT-TEs unloaded their troops, and the group of them headed back to a rendezvous point about a klick away, where they would get picked up by LAAT/c gunships.

"All right, men," Aylee said. "Let's get a move on."

They began to ascend the foothills, Aylee sprinting and Force-jumping ahead, reaching out with her senses in all directions.

But if the Trehalt Allegiance was monitoring the foothills, it was from afar, for she sensed no presences bigger than a rodent here.

She made her way back to her slower-moving strike force. "No one around. It appears we're unexpected."

Valiant grimaced. She noticed he rarely wore his helmet, except in combat situations. He even had a special clip on the back of his armor to hold it when he wasn't wearing it. It clacked against his camouflaged armor every time he walked. "In a normal situation, I'd think they were monitoring our progress from orbit."

"I doubt the Allegiance has the sort of resources for that, Valiant."

"Right."

"I still want constant scanning for life-signs, though," she told the tech-officer.

The clone nodded inside his helmet, touching a few buttons on his datapad, holding it out before him and moving it in sweeping motions, as if detecting metal.

"Fan out, let's keep moving," Aylee ordered.

It took them the better part of the afternoon to traverse the foothills, in all that time she could only get minimum contact with the rest of the world. From what she'd gathered, Noona and the Defense Minister were coordinating their space-forces, rearranging them into better defensive positions.

Beyond that, she did not get much else without risking a full comm signal, which she dared not do in case the Allegiance picked it up.

On the outreaches of her senses, she sensed a number of presences suddenly.

She motioned for the group to stop and take cover.

Once they had, she carefully stretched out further. Five anxious humanoids, about three hundred meters ahead.

The group careful moved on for another hundred meters before stopping again. "I'll take them out," she said to Valiant. "You and the men wait ten minutes after I leave, then follow me, got it?"

He nodded.

"And be careful with mines or other traps. Who knows how long they've had to sets up all sorts of nasty surprises."

She launched herself into the air then, landing on a rock. She pulled her lightsaber off her belt, but left it unlit. She hopped from rock-to-rock, hardly using the Force to keep her balance.

When the presences—now distinctly Duros—got within twenty meters, she dropped behind a boulder.

They were arguing furiously.

"How dare you let them use us like this, Reyal!" Said one voice loudly. "The Allegiance has never before had this much collateral damage! So we get some extra weapons and men from an 'anonymous' source, and suddenly you're taking orders from them?"

"They helped us out a lot, Neeja," growled who she assumed was Reyal. "We needed those weapons and food supplies they gave us."

"And now they rule us!" Neeja barked.

"They do not rule us, Neeja," said a new voice, a softer one.

"Oh no?" Neeja said to the new voice. "They tell us to hit the Rotunda, and we hit the Rotunda. At what cost? The negotiations are still going on, we lost a good percentage of our forces, and got a hundred civilians murdered! How do they not rule us? We're taking orders from some unknown sympathizers, and look at what's happened!"

Silence. "That was the bargain," Reyal said. "In order to get the supplies, we had to hit a target they wanted us to hit."

"Taking on the Rotunda though, Reyal! What the hell! And just who do you think this supplier is? For Duro's sake, they gave us the technology to hack into the freighter's computer systems and hyjack them wirelessly."

That was news to Aylee. It had been assumed the Allegiance members had been on the freighters physically. Though, they had no way of knowing, because even with pursuit, the freighters had crashed themselves into whatever the closest building was.

"It's the Confederacy, Reyal, Dion. The Confederacy has been supplying us and ordering us around! Accept it!"

"NO!" snarled Reyal. "I am not some pawn! I know what I'm doing!"

Aylee realized with a start that these people were the heads of the Trehalt Allegiance. She should take them here, now, make them pay for what they'd done.

Yes, they had been pawns, perhaps, but they'd also carried out their orders. A hundreds, possibly thousands, were dead to show for it.

Aylee stood, made sure she had a good grip on her lightsaber, and vaulted over the boulder, her blade snapping to life with the click of a button.

The five Duros cried out in surprise and raised the assortment of blaster rifles and pistol they had on them.

Aylee's emerald-green blade sliced off the muzzles on the two rifles as she landed, ducking a bolt from Reyal, and came up with blade flashing. Two pistols fell broken to the ground, and she kicked the remaining pistol out of Reyal's hand.

"Gentlemen," she said, "I believe we have some things to discuss."

Before anyone could respond, ten armed guards thundered out of a small cave opening, and Aylee was thrown on the defense once more.

Her lightsaber came up in a sweeping arc that batted aside two bolts. "You are being used!" Aylee shouted to Reyal as he retreated behind their reinforcements.

"I can prove it!" She couldn't, really, but she would try anything at this point to get his attention.

"Wait!" he barked to the guards. The blaster fire stopped, but they held their rifles level, and the lack of physical bolts was made up for the lasers they glared at her.

Aylee smiled. "Thanks, boys."

"How can you prove it, Jedi?" Reyal asked.

"Oh, she's just lying," Neeja growled.

Aylee's piercing green eyes were turned on the Duro. "Two minutes ago you were just arguing that your organization is being used by the Confederacy."

He sneered, his nose-less face wrinkling with the effort. "I wouldn't trust you, Jedi, as far as I could throw you."

"Why?" Aylee asked, her voice nonchalant.

"What?"

"Why would you not trust me? Because we are keepers of the peace? Because we try to stop needless death?" Aylee's blood was boiling now.

Neeja backed off, then. Her glare and the boiling presence she was imprinting in the Force was making all the Duros men uncomfortable.

"Put your weapons down," she said harshly, speaking with the full weight of the Force now. "Now."

The Duros slowly lowered their weapons.

"Where you going, Neeja?" she called as the Duro began sprinting down the cave's length. Using the Force, she yanked him back, up and over the guards' heads, and plopped him before her feet.

He hid his face from her, begging her not to kill him.

She sighed, crouched down, and helped him to his feet. She clipped her lightsaber to her belt. "I'm not going to kill you, any of you. I just want to talk. Specifically, to Neeja and Reyal." She looked to the other Duro. "Can that be arranged?"

Reyal nodded slowly, seeming to coming out of a daze. "Good," Aylee said. "How bout here? Let's just sit and talk?"

The guards looked amongst themselves, but Reyal came forward. "Fine, Jedi, I'll hear what you have to say."

Aylee smiled. Just then, Valiant and her men crested the hill, weapons trained on the Duros.

They gasped. "Trickery!" Neeja cried.

"No, not trickery," Aylee said. "We came here with full intention of destroying the Trehalt Allegiance, but now that I've heard there's a chance you have been duped by the Confederacy, I'm willing to postpone your death sentence."

They Duros looked amongst themselves as her troops made their way carefully to Aylee's position, weapons trained on the Duros.

"You do not have a whole lot of options here," Aylee said. She used the Force call the guard's weapons to her troop's feet.

Reyal sighed. "It appears not," he said.