After much searching were the fleet had attacked everything from asteroid mining stations to prisons to military outposts to labs to listening posts the Harrower's route was getting very clear but they were no closer to finding the source of the weapon. But from one of the more heavily defended prisons they had managed to recruit a collection of Jedi and Sith who long ago had settled their differences within the walls of the prison in order to survive, as well as a few Republic and Sith soldiers, the first had been left behind on a planet and the later had refused to execute the former by claiming that they could only be imprisoned, the Sith leading the mission had accepted the reasoning and had imprisoned both units in the same prison, out of honour the two units had soon begun to protect the weaker inside the prison and together with the Jedi and Sith they were ruling the prisoners.
With these two groups came some followers while the rest of the prisoners of wars were given a ride back to Republic space and enough credits to get them home. Other than the manpower there wasn't much to gain from any of the installations they hit.
Eventually they had tracked the source of the beam weapon to a planet less neutron star were a large Sith fleet was patrolling. Daniel's fleet dropped out on the other side of the star from the facility and circled around in two groups, it wasn't long before the Sith fleet did the same and came at them from both sides of the star, a few seconds after the fleets entered into battle the refitted Eclipse returned to normal space just above the facility which was lying extremely close to the star, after only a few plasm bolts the shields of the facility went down and boarding parties prepared to attack the facility, but before the jumpers, fighters and boarding crafts had even left the ship the facility begun to crumble together and explode, disappointed about the loss of the facility Daniel instead ordered the fleet to capture as many ships as possible and at the end of the battle they had captured several Harrowers dreadnoughts and Terminus destroyers, a dozen Cage transports and more fighters and bombers than the newly captured ships could have held in their bays.
From the system the ships were piloted back to the supergate to be refitted while Daniel took his fleet to face two more fleets which were coming at them through hyperspace, these fleets were much smaller and were eradicated in a matter of seconds, out of curiosity Daniel traced the fleets back to their origin only to find two more identical facilities to the one that had been destroyed, but these faced the same fate when Daniel's shield failed to encompass the facility before it took to much damage and the second one was pulled apart between the gravity of the star and the fleets tractor beams.
A few weeks later they had refitted all of the larger ships and some of the fighters, but due to a shortage of clones the ship had to be manned by droids, so it was with some doubt that Daniel brought them along when his sensors detected a large number of Sith ships over Coruscant which outnumbered the defending Republic ships five to one, so with great haste every refitted ship was scrambled and manned before they jumped away through hyperspace to their destination.
When the fleet arrived a few minutes later things were not looking good for the Republic forces which had lost a lot of ships, but when Daniel's fleet arrived things turned, the combined forces of the Republic and Daniel was still heavily outnumbered but the Republic stopped losing ships and fighters and together with Daniel's fleet which was spreading out around the planet they begun to hunt down the Sith, from his seat on the bridge of his flagship Daniel saw as his ship engaged six Harrowers and managed to take out all six without losing more than half of its shields then he activated the beam weapon hidden within the hangar and once it was locked in place he cut through them two and two at a rapid pace, thanks to a combination of the Asgard neutrino generator and the Citadel-class generators from the Eclipse they had managed to gain an impressive rate of fire.
Not far from Daniel's flagship one of his fighters were being chased around by a swarm of Sith fighters who relentlessly fired after it, after a minute or so of constant firing the fighter begun to smoke, but when the swarm came through the smoke they lost power only seconds later and for the fighters which weren't destroyed by the lone fighter the fate was even worse as the nanites contained inside the smoke begun eat their way through the plating and into the cabin were the pilots feel victim to them, after the nanites had finished their work the fighter returned and picked them all up before going after the next group.
All around the planet similar things were taking place as the clones begun to use the nanites as weapons or sometime putting them inside the weapons, like several capital ships did with their flak guns which spread out a nanite mist against both fighters and ships.
It wasn't long before the Sith fleet realised that they wouldn't win and retreated, leaving behind many fighters and capitals ships which had been incapacitated in on way or another, no more than a minute after the retreat Daniel's forces let out all of the nanites which had been created during the battle against these stranded ships and as Daniel's fleet begun to descend towards the planets surface to clear out any Sith forces which had made it there the first of these ships jumped away towards the supergate were droids would clear out the ships before the refitting begun.
On the way down to the surface Daniel could see several explosion rocketing the city, making several buildings tip over, it was towards these explosions that Daniel directed most of his forces while the rest begun to response to any requests that came in over Republic channels, he himself headed towards the senate, as he approached the senate the sensors in his fighter begun to detect the persons inside the senate building and a few seconds later they begun to tell clones, Sith and civilians apart by which frequency their communicators used.
As he came closer one place drew his attention simply because both the clones and the Sith were massing there, it didn't take him long to realise that they were in the executive building, close to the Chancellor's Office were Palpatine would be found at this time of the day. Despite all the trouble which had been caused by the merging of the Republics of several time periods Palpatine had managed to unite them and had been chosen as the Supreme Chancellor, so if he was lost there was a good chance that the senate would implode, taking the Republic with it.
So he immediately changed course from the senate building to the executive building and gave the ship full throttle, in less than a minute he had closed the distance, during that time he had called in extra support from his clones and droids. As he came in towards the office he opened the cockpit and jumped of as it came within a few meters of the large window, then the fighter quickly changed direction and missed the building with a meter to go. From the fighter Daniel flew through the air as he ignited his lightsabres and sliced through the window into the office were a stunned Palpatine was being pushed into the room by several clones. Over the sound of the gunfire the clones didn't even hear the window breaking, so it wasn't until Daniel ran past two firing clones which had taken up position on either side of the door that they realised that he was there, but before they could ask what he was doing he was in the middle of the Sith troopers.
As he ran out of the room he sliced left and right through the troopers until he came to a Sith who ignited his own double bladed sabre and begun to counter Daniel, while Daniel's two separate sabres gave him much more agility the Sith could use more power in each blow, something that Daniel's nanites countered by increasing his strength, so it wasn't long before Daniel had managed to get the Sith down on his knees, but when a second and a third Sith entered the fight things didn't go as good and it wasn't long before they begun to chip away at his shield which ever so slowly was beginning to decrease. From the office itself the clones were still firing into the Sith troopers who by now had circled around the place were Daniel and the Sith were duelling and had resumed the assault on the office, but that was when Daniel's backup arrived through the broken window, while the droids took up defensive positions in the room the clones rushed past their Republic brothers into the fray, drawing melee weapons as they approached.
A second after the clones crashed into the they saw one of their brothers rushing to their aid assisting them by bashing the Sith troopers with his rifle, simply because the clones were taking up all the space, so shooting wasn't an option and he didn't have anything else to hit or stab with, at least not until one of the clones let out some of his nanites which formed into a knife and handed it to the clone who immediately took the knife and begun to use it against the troopers.
It wasn't long before the clones had begun to drive back the troopers, but the troopers just continued to flood into the corridor so they didn't have the time to deal with the Sith who were still bashing on Daniel's shield which were now dangerously low, that was when the lone Republic clone stepped up and drove the nanite blade through one of the Sith, but before he could drive it through the second Sith he got hit by a blast in the chest and one of the Sith spun around and cut of his hands, but he had bought Daniel a break who managed to drive his lightsabre through one of the Sith before spinning around and cleaving the second Sith in three pices.
From the office three droids came and dragged the injured to safety before a droid medic begun to reattach the lost hand and healing the blast injury to the chest. While the medics were doing it's job Daniel returned to the battle and continued to push back the troopers who had stopped arriving in numbers, no more than a minute later the last of the troopers were laying on the ground and the clones were walking around putting them out of their missery.
"Well Chancellor, I suggest that you close the door and seal it until we have cleared out the rest of the planet, I will leave the droids here for your protection." Daniel said to Palpatine before he ran of with the clones to deal with a second group of troopers which were trying to force their way into a room were a few senators were holding up.
Over the following hours Daniel's army begun the hard work of clearing out every Sith and their troopers which were holding up on the planet, meanwhile the senate was holding an emergency season, so Daniel had been forced to send Padmé there since he still was a bit occupied, when she had entered the senate chamber a silence had fallen over the crowd of senators, but when the six clones had entered the repulsorpod with her they had resumed their chatter.
As soon as he was done with the cleaning Daniel arrived there too.
"What have I missed?" Daniel quickly asked as he sat down.
"They have just passed a motion to increase the number of clones in the army." Padmé answered. "Of course they will also increase the ships and fighter production."
"Well as long as the Republic stands my plan can still succeed, but it will take them ten years to get more clones." Daniel said as he hacked into the controls of the pods and forced back the current speaker and took the place himself.
"Dear senators. Todays attack was a disaster to say the least, the clone army failed to protect the seat of the Republic. The Chancellor himself would have been killed had it not been for my personal intervention along with many of the senators who sit next to you. I have not had this seat in the senate for long but I have been doing much more out in the galaxy than most of you have done here in the senate for several years, but I'm not blaming you for that, you do not have the resources to wage this war on your own so you let the Republic pay the cost. For me that is no problem and in exchange for your support I will protect your systems, I don't ask you to leave the Republic but rather the opposite.
For those of you who doubt me I ask that you check the state of knows slave worlds such as Kessel, by now there are no slaves there but only free people, the same goes for every planet which the slavers have claimed, of course some of you will know this since it was your slavers who I have taken out. Many of the former slaves have been returned to their homes while the rest have chosen to join me as traders, flying my cargo all over the galaxy. I have also taken out several Sith installations, including a production facility for superweapons, as well as protecting Republic planets which have been attacked. From several of these operations I have rescued both Jedi and Republic soldiers which have chosen to join me.
Now I need to return to my fleet but I will leave you with Padmé, I will return in a week to see which of you will accept my protection and which of you will not. But first I have to show you something as prof of what I have done."
With those words Daniel stepped back as hundreds of holograms begun to flow around the room, while the crowd was mesmerised by the holograms in the room Daniel stepped into a pair of rings which his nanites had been building into every pod in the room in case he needed to disappear or arrive fast. From the senate building he was sent to his apartment were he took the gate to Kamino's moon, if he was to protect more planets he would need more clones, even if the droids would protect the planets the clones were much more resourceful so there would need to be some stationed around the galaxy, so more would need to be cloned as soon as possible.
It wasn't to hard to convince the Kaminoan to clone another batch for him, especially since the Republic had just ordered more, so they wouldn't need to cover it up as much as before, when that was done Daniel rushed back to Dantea to prepare more things. There was currently almost a hundred younglings as well as thirty Jedi and Sith currently in the academy, but the younglings weren't really of any use to him now, first they needed to be properly trained and that would take much time, so he would install a time-dialation field in the academy, it would allow them to train and grow up in the normal way while Daniel quickly got a massive number of Jedi, the nanites inside each Jedi would keep them at the current age while those in the younglings would stop their ageing when their bodies were fully grown.
When they were ready to leave the academy they would move onto the Praxeum ships which was being controlled by Anakin and Revan, the later of which were teaching Ventress the darker side of the force, other than them there was a few Jedi knights, Jedi masters and Sith who weren't needed to teach at the academy.
After having installed the time-dialation field Daniel started up both it and the one on Kamino's moon, setting them so that ten years would pass by in just under a week, so the clones would be ready a week after the cloners begun their work, but most importantly it would be enough time to train the younglings into proper force users while he himself got a good some training in the force and had plenty of time to spent with Ryna who he had been spending way to little time with.
After a week, or ten years for the clones and the ones in the academy, the fields shut of and Daniel left the academy followed by the people who had inhabited the academy, outside they found the Praxeum ship waiting and the students who still hadn't managed to pass the trials to become knights boarded the vessel together with their masters who each would guide their padawans.
The newly knighted Jedi and the masters who no longer had any padawans waited on the ground and saw as the ship took of from the ground and left the planet behind as it jumped away just outside of the atmosphere, then the ground begun to rumble as two large doors slid apart and the ground opened up to reveal a pitch black hole, at the bottom a light turned on and then the light flowed up and out of the hole. At the bottom there stood large factories which had been moved from Raxus Prime, around the walls of the hole large slots were filled with dozen of capital ships, not only the ones originally used by Daniel but also an Eclipse, a few Harrowers and some other of the captured classes.
From bellow a turbolift came at a staggering pace and stopped once it reached ground level, then everyone stepped onto the lift and it feel down using only gravity until it stopped at the first level were Daniel instructed some of the knights to enter the ships, then the lift dropped down another level were another round of knights got of, then the next level and the one bellow until only Daniel was left, then the ship dropped past two levels and stopped at the bottom, there Daniel got of and entered the Eclipse, once on the bridge he sat down in the chair and waited as the knights with the largest ships made their way to the bridge. When all of the ships had gotten their captains Daniel powered up his ship and pulled it out of its dock, around him the other ships powered up and as he his ship moved up they came into the shaft and moved up two and two, even the ships which didn't have any knights on board followed them out, captained by nanites which Daniel controlled, as soon as the Jedi which hadn't managed to complete the Knight trials got knighted they would join the fleet and would be given control of their vessels.
Once out of the hole the ships rose through the atmosphere as the doors shut the entrance to the hole bellow them, when they left the atmosphere Daniel uploaded a set of coordinates to the tactical network which connected the ships in each fleet and they jumped away. When they returned to normal space they dropped out in such a manner that they came through the supergate and saw the ring of shipyards which Daniel had captured, refitted and placed in a ring along the outside of the supergate, sadly the gate on Raxus Prime wasn't operational so there was no real use for it, but it would soon be moved in orbit around Coruscant prime, hidden out of phase but returning to the normal phase as soon as a gate tried to dial in.
From the shipyards around the gate ships came and linked up to the fleet, all these ships had been captured in the battle of Coruscant and more were still standing in line to be worked in, once all ships reported in Daniel loaded up a new set of coordinates and the fleet jumped away to Kamino's moon, thanks to a cloaking device that was powered by a dozen ZPMs the Republic ships in the systems failed to detect them when they left hyperspace, as the ships lowered themselves through the atmosphere the field shrunk until it contained just the ships and the facility.
By this time the Kaminoans had left the facility so only the clones came to greet them when the ships lowered their ramps and the clones begun to board the ships, but the Kaminoans got their credits and they were happy as were Daniel simply because he got the clones, while the clones were being loaded up Daniel loaded up the coordinates to each individual ship and the instructions to set up a base there, then he begun to project himself into the senate chamber were the senate was in a session, after waiting for a few minutes he grew tired and overrode the current speaker so that his pod took its place.
"Dear senators, I hope that you have had enough time to discus the matter of joining me with your leaders because now that time is up, my army is as we speak setting up bases around the galaxy to provide you with a defensive force moments after a hostile force enters your system and moments after you give me your support my forces will arrive in your system to set up a base which should be able to hold of any attackers until a larger force can arrive." Daniel said as he felt the first of his ships jumping away from Kamino, still hidden by the cloaking field. "So I ask that you now tell me if you want my protection or not."
From around the room a quite chatter could be heard from Daniel sudden appearance but in a matter of minutes the senators in the room had given their systems standing in the mater by using the system for voting, yes if they wanted protection, no if they didn't. When all the votes were cast around a hundred systems had pledged their allegiance to Daniel and as promised the droid ships arrived in a matter of minutes, picked out a nice spot in the system and begun to build the base which consisted of the ship they had arrived in and a shield generator to protect the planet so that any attackers would have to go through the base before they could attack the planet.
"It is good to see that so many of you have chosen to join me." Daniel said as he begun to fade away. "With time I'm sure that more of you will join me once you see that it is the wise choice."
Back on his ship he felt the last of the clones steeping inside the ship and as he opened his eyes to see the captain of the ship standing in front of him waiting for orders.
"Captain. I have uploaded the coordinates to your post in the ships computers along with your orders, I will take a fighter and return to the main fleet, you have the bridge." He said as he got up and left the bridge, once outside he made his way to the closes pair of rings and used them to get down to the hangar were he took an Aethersprite and docked with a hyperdrive ring which he used to jump to the fleet which was still hanging around Coruscant as they awaited Republic reinforcements which would take over for now, but even after they left the system Daniel would still have a base of operations on Coruscants third moon were a thousand clones, ten thousand droids and enough ships and fighters for them all.
After that day things got quite for a long time as Daniel kept raiding the few Sith facilities he could find, but after the defeat at Coruscant they had withdrawn from many of the worlds he knew about, leaving everything behind after cleaning out their computers, which effectively made Daniel blind concerning their movements, the only real piece of information he still had on them was were many of their most heavily defended planets were located and so far he didn't have anything on them, the new Sith empire had also taken similar actions which meant that he was completely blind since Malak's empire had always been a large mystery which he had never been able to locate and the CIS refused to stay in one place.
But that all changed one day when Revan arrived on Daniel's flagship as Daniel had just returned from a raid on an abandoned Sith facility.
"What can I help you with Revan?" Daniel asked as he took the ship into hyperspace.
"I know you've been searching for any signs of the Sith since the battle of Coruscant." Revan answered. "I think that I might have a lead, every once in a while I get weird dream which all shows the same thing, some kind of device with three legs which each hold up a part of the device, there's also a crystal shaped like a triangle pyramid on each leg, in the middle there seems to be a hologram which displays the galaxy. The surroundings change from time to time, but that device is always there, sometime there's ruins around, sometimes there's water and sometimes there's a cave in the desert, but all of this can be found on hundreds or thousands of planets, trust me I've checked the archives. But this night I saw trees and there's not to many trees which grow thousands of meters tall and cover out the sun, I think there's a clue on how to reach Malak on Kashyyyk."
"Sounds reasonable enough, I've suspected that the trees there have been altered in some way in the past." Daniel said as the ship arrived in orbit above Coruscant. "I'll have Anakin join you on Kashyyyk with a Harrower for some extra support, now you'll have to excuse me but I have a meeting to attend to."
"I'll see to it that we find the device." Revan said as he turned around and left the bridge.
From the surface of Coruscant came a transmission which Daniel accepted and showed on bridge and there Padmé and another woman appeared.
"Hello Daniel." Padmé said. "Allow me to introduce you to my daughter, or at least my daughter to be, Leia Organa Solo."
"Ah, the leader of the Rebel Alliance who oppose Darth Sidious?" Daniel said as he recognised the woman. "I must think that it is very confusing to find parent and child to be the same age."
"That is her and it's not nearly as confusing as you would think." Padmé said. "But my daughter has something she wishes to speak to you about."
"As you know the Rebel Alliance is opposing Darth Sidious." Leia said. "Just a few days ago we received a report from one of our spies about the location of Secotr Plexus, a hub for all information Imperial Intelligence posses and process, sadly we lost his signal shortly after, but we have managed to locate him in one of the Empires prisons and we are going to raid it, but we want you to go after Sector Plexus it is bound to be heavily guarded and we will not be able to breach their defences, but you can do it."
"We should be able to do that and the hub would be a target truly worth capturing." Daniel said. "Give me the coordinates and I will send my fleet there as soon as we are done with this conversation."
"Uploading now." Leia answered. "The Alliance will attack the prison as soon as we receive word of your assault."
"I will personally see to it that we capture the hub." Daniel said as he sent out the coordinates to the fleet. "Padmé please give Leia on of the subspace communicators so that we can inform her when we launch our assault, then I want you here on the bridge as soon as possible."
"Yes Daniel." Padmé said as she cut the transmission.
Ten minutes later Daniel felt the rings activating just outside the bridge and a minute after that Padmé was entering the bridge.
"Why did you want me to accompany you on this mission?" She asked as she took a seat in one of the smaller control chairs.
"Simply because you've been on Coruscant to long so I thought you could use some action again and I wanted to tell you that I've given Anakin a new assignment, he is accompanying Revan in search of a device which might lead us to Malak." Daniel said as his fleet jumped away.
"I already know of Anakin's new assignment, he sent me a message while I was giving Leia the subspace transmitter." Padmé said. But you're right, I've been on Coruscant for a long time, some action might do me some good."
Only a few minutes later the ship dropped out of hyperspace along with the rest of the fleet just in time to see the space station leaving by jumping away, but left behind was fifty star destroyers mixed with ten super star destroyers, who despite their numbers were outnumbered, badly.
THE END
So I was actually rather surprised by how quick you guys and girls managed to fulfill the 5 review goal, so lets raise the goal slightly, this time we're going for 10 reviews, which is 5% of the readers of the previous chapter.
Now don't expect another chapter to come up as fast as this one did, cause I really hurried this one out there for you (which you've probably noticed from reading it), I've still got SG: MYW to complete and so that will get the next episode before this gets another chapter.
