-Chapter 14-

Anakin stood on the bridge of his newly acquired super dreadnought watching the white streaks of the hyperspace tunnel slow down and reform into stars. They had been deposited just outside Adriana's largest and outermost Ice Ring. from this position, you could shoot at all three mapped hyperspace entrance/exit points with a simple ship realignment. If you faced the most commonly used one (Galactic Northwest) and the second most commonly used one one (Galactic West) would be able to be targeted by your port ion cannon. The third and last one was somewhere in between, so you could choose to turn left or right to aim something at it. All other vectors were short range jumps into specific locations of black space that could have a sensor beacon placed at them to warn of incoming ships and you would have time to sortie a defense. Tatoo had a large quantity of black holes in the black space around it both charted and uncharted, so it cut the potential thousands of safe approach vectors other systems have down greatly making it one of the most defensible systems in the galaxy.

'I have to remember to get this ship refitted so its turbolasers have more range of movement when he got a shipyard up and running so that it can cover all three entrances simultaneously.' Anakin thought 'Better have them take out the kill-me-target as well while they are at it.'

Anakin walked down to the docking bay. He had gone through the possessions of the Count and the General and hadn't been impressed with their concept of traveling light, on the other hand he HAD been impressed that they had been able to carry so much stuff with them and be logistically effective. Between them they had many forms of currency, plenty of trophy lightsabers and even a few sith holocrons. Dooku had a closet with hundreds of the most luxurious articles of clothing that money can buy in materials ranging from the rarest of linens to the furs of long extinct animals. Anakin had no idea that being a Sith lord paid so well. Maybe he was in the wrong profession. In any case, they were mostly in the core fashions, so while expensive, they weren't Anakin's style even if they had been close to his massive size. Dooku was basically a small body compared to him He was still trying to figure out why General Grievous had a box of condoms tucked under his recharge stand. Nostalgia?

Both of their signature fighters were sitting in the bay with the rest of the usual separatist ground compliment and space forces of a ship this size. 'The executive ships could be sold after the war as historical pieces, not worth using though, I'll scrap the rest.' he thought. As Anakin reached his fighter his comlink went off.

"Go for Skywalker" He said with a slight sigh.

"Go for Skywalker," Said Anakin through Bel's communicator, the kid sounded really annoyed for some reason, better keep this quick.

"This is an update on the state of affairs in Tatoo. I have taken the liberty of putting your NCs to use and ordered a bunch of things needed for planetary redevelopment. Things should start arriving within the next few weeks. I started several shipyards and infrastructure operations. We have mining trawlers a month out to take advantage of your recently claimed asteroid belts. You need to decide what to do with the 'civilian' population at some point. I know you don't like people and that they are annoying to deal with, so why don't you let me handle that. I'll appoint some local governors and get them started on being productive. Maybe teach em how to farm fish or something."

Here Bel paused.

"Well, on with it?" Said Anakin over the comm.

"Your droids captured Mace Windu."

"Your droids captured Mace Windu."

Anakin grinned, Hopefully the Jedi would be amenable to a trade.

"I doubt that the Jedi would pay for him alone, so I propose a heist of their resources and artifacts. Maybe we can take some of their younglings too. Though if we took their archive and all backups…" Said Bel

Anakin cut him off "Then we could absolutely dictate terms. Aside from being the most complete compilation of knowledge in the galaxy, it is the only major compilation of force techniques and without it, they would be basically helpless."

"Yeah, pretty much" Agreed Bel, His image flickered in the blue light.

"Do you have a plan?" Asked Anakin? He doubted it, Bel always was a businessman not a warrior.

"Well…."

"So no then. Don't worry I know it's not your field. I'll take care of that." Said Anakin.

"I have a recording I want you to see, I'm transmitting it now." Bel said "I mocked it up when Windu was captured, gotta be prepared for the Boss's whims."

Anakin looked it over, surprised at Bel's speechwriting. "Brilliant, I will rob the temple quietlike, then a week later, send the Jedi a copy along with a virus to backdate its arrival date to just after we looted the temple, and then leak it to the public at the same time, to make it look as if they had been sitting on it for a while in fear of repercussions of their actions. It will be an uproar.

By this point Anakin had gotten on his personal transport and been taken to the light cruiser carrying his 'Citizen Conscripts.' As he approached, the hangar opened wide, a space clear for him to land at. Anakin jumped out and met up with his honor guard who escorted him to the room holding the majority of the engineers.

"Alright, we are in the Tatoo system, You will be loaded onto drop ships and taken to a facility in my compound that has been cleared out just for your use. Multiple shipyards are under construction in system, but until their completion you will be making plans for ships and other vehicles to my specifications." Anakin said. He held up a thick book, "This is a compilation of what I need designed. My specialty is podracers, so the measurements are in that industry's system. Pay is 10,000 NCs a year."

The droids led the engineers to dropships to ditch them on the planet. Anakin hoped that they didn't try anything. He had just had this ship scrubbed a few days ago. In an unusual display of prudence, he didn't move the team that was focused on the stealth cruiser, no need to tempt fate.

'Now for the heist,' thought Anakin. He pulled up a display and started making adjustments to an old project he had designed as a way to turn sand into water. Obviously he was, figuratively, smoking spice by thinking that was possible, but the design he had come up with was good for another thing. It could be reconfigured as, to put it simply, a 3d printer for stealth nanomachines. He ensured that the new design of the printer was sufficient for his needs and sent it off to the fabrication station in his house. It would take a few days to make one of them, but after that he could print out a pound of nanomachines an hour. If he put about 20 pounds of them into a hyper capable stealth pod, he could simply land it on the Jedi temple's lawn, have them retrieve everything of value and bring it all back with only an hour or so down time. Then the pod can be recalled. 'Damn this strategy can be used in so many other places as well,' though Anakin. 'I'm not going to bother with the damn younglings, just another over complicated bit of pointless shit that can blow the op, Vos will just have to rewrite his little ransom note. Hmm maybe I can change that little bit too."

Eventually, after designing the necessary nanobot for the op Anakin closed the program and went to the hangar, proceeding to fly his fighter down to his compound. 'I never thought I would say this, but from this point of view, Tatooine is beautiful,' thought Anakin as he crossed from space to upper atmosphere.