Chapter 37

If there was anything that could make his entire body freeze up, it was those words that Arenna had just spoke. He was just coming to terms with the fact that Bastila was having his children, but having children with Arenna was another thing entirely. While it was true that he and Arenna had been lovers since before the Mandalorian Wars had begun, there had been no words spoken of potentially having children. Even though he was sure, as the end of the War approached, that he would no longer go back the Jedi Order, their teachings in the matter of Children and love in general had stuck with him. It had taken him years to purge those thoughts from his mind and he had opened up the possibility of having children, "You need to tell me everything, and I mean everything."

"Why would you want to know? You're on the verge of conquering the Galaxy, you've got many things to worry about and besides, I haven't any clue as to where she is," Arenna responded.

"She, we have a daughter?" Revan's breath left him at the pronouncement that he had a daughter out there somewhere.

"Yes, I only saw her for a few moments, but she was a beautiful little girl," Her laugh this time was not at all wicked, "I did notice that she has your eyes. I've always been fond of them."

He couldn't help but grin at her words, but then reality set back in, "All of that aside, what makes you so sure that I would believe you? This could be some trick."

"Aloris Van arranged the adoption, I assume you remember him?" Arenna asked, she sounded cocky.

He scowled, "He's my ships physician."

"I'm sure that he can point you in the right direction, talk to him because I want some answers as well," Arenna sounded serious again, "She was my daughter too Revan, don't forget that."

Revan folded his arms over his chest and scowled, if there was one thing he hated, it was secrets. He couldn't stand them, and he especially couldn't stand them from his officers, the fact that it was Aloris who was keeping it was only worse, "If I were to believe you and I were to get a hold on where our child is, assuming that we have one together. What will you want from me Arenna?"

"My whole drive to kill you was based off of the assumption that you knew," She reasoned with him, "I know understand that you didn't, and it makes a difference. All I want to know is that she's safe and that her life did not completely fall apart like mine did. I know that you want that too, I know that you've always had a fondness for children and I can't imagine how you'd react to one of your own. After that, I don't know, I don't want to kill you anymore, and I should hope that you wouldn't want to kill me. I'd reckon I'd look for a place inside of your Empire, it's the only thing."

Smirking, he turned and summoned his shirt, "Perhaps we could work something out after we've unraveled this little mystery. I'd like to assume that you're on Courscant, am I correct?"

"Yes, your network of spies has not failed you, by the way, it's quite foolish to think that they could have stopped me," Arenna seemed to chortle at that, "You know that I'm far more powerful than some mid-card acolyte, though I feel you were trying to slowly weaken me in my quest to you. If I known you correctly, which I'm fairly sure that I do, that was the intended strategy?"

"It was," Revan nodded, "I'm sure that the Media on Courscant is going positively insane over the sight of my fleet converging on that sector."

"Oh yes, the Government has shut down all traffic on the planet and it's restricted to Military Vehicles and to that of the Government," Arenna told him.

Revan smiled at her words. That was perfect reaction that he wanted, it was what he wanted to provoke in the heart of the Government. He was sure that it would be accelerated once the entire fleet was on the border. It was what he wanted, "As long as you're trying to get on my good side, I suppose there's not a little favor that you can do for me?"

"And what is that?" Arenna asked.

"Courscanti Orbital Defense Control," Revan responded, "If I'm not mistaken, you'll find it in the Military Command Building in the Senatorial District, if you're all powerful, it shouldn't be any problem for you."

She laughed, it was a laugh that he had heard countless times, "I'll see what I can do."

Revan nodded, "I'll be speaking with you in a few days."

When he felt the Force Bond dissolve away, he sighed and looked out at the passing stars as his ship raced towards the Core Worlds at Hyperspace. He didn't know what to think now. For all intents and purposes, he didn't trust Arenna anymore, and if she was truly making up for her foolishness, he would have to wait and see. And if they truly shared a child together, then he would abandon his hate that he had garnered for her for the sake of that child.

Speaking of which, he had a doctor to see.

There had not been many endeavors into transplants this full scale. It would take so many factors to ensure a successful transition and there was always the possibility for it to fail. On a second note, he didn't think that Revan would fall prey to anything of that nature. He never did, even when Van had pretty much thought he was going to die, the man always seemed to pull himself out of it and make a full recovery.

He had found a match, at long last he had finally done it, he had combed through the entire ships database to find someone. The spinal structure of this solider and Lord Revan was almost the same, with a little fine tuning on the bone structure itself, it would be a perfect fit and he'd be able to assimilate it into Revan's Central Nervous System. As he had thought earlier, he wasn't at all nervous with the procedure, he was nervous that he might kill Revan. No one had ever done this before, he'd be the first.

Rubbing his chin, he looked up at the overlapped scan of both Revan's Spinal Cord and this Solider and nodded. He could do it and easily for that matter. When he was just about to turn and go back to his desk to com Revan, he was lifted up with an invisible force and turned to be pushed up against the wall. He was met with the blank look of Lord Revan himself.

"Sir, what is the meaning of this?" Van demanded.

"Tell me Doctor," Revan began, "You were with us before we invaded Malachor, did you treat a woman who turned out to be pregnant. I believe she would ask you to keep her name quiet, but you and I both know that this was General Arenna Kai. And before you start, you could not have possibly forgotten that name, she was second only to Malak in the Chain of Command. Now tell me, did you arrange an adoption for her child?"

He blinked, he did remember that, but he didn't understand what the big deal was, "Of course I do, I arranged the adoption, she said that the father wouldn't want the child and she couldn't possible take of a ch-…"

Van stopped immediately when he felt a force weighing down on his trachea, choking his breathing. Revan approached him slowly, baring his teeth in anger, "Did it ever occur to you Doctor that I was the father?"

He shook his head, "I-If I would have k-know that I would have told you."

Revan sighed and shook his head before turning and dropping both his grip on Doctor Van's throat and his position in the air. Rubbing his forehead, he walked to the viewport, "I'm sorry Doctor that was much uncalled for."

"Yes it was," He agreed rubbing his throat, "For your next injection, you get a need extra large needle and I'm not going to numb you."

Revan smiled and nodded, "Fair enough."

"And I remember that," He approached his desk and began to input the records that he had taken for that particular case, "General Kai had asked me not to put her name into the file, but an assumed name. I assumed that she would have told you that she was pregnant, but apparently she didn't and now I know why. How could you be the father? Were you-…?"

He turned back and leaned against the panel of the viewport with something of a coy smirk on his face, "A long time before that Doctor."

"Well… don't you know how to use contraception?" He glared at Revan.

Revan simply glared back, "Yes but I'm not really thinking of it then."

After a few more moments, Doctor Van found the records and looked up to the expectant Dark Lord of the Sith, "The records are in your personal database, the couple that adopted the girl are from Dantooine. There's a name on the record I'm sure that you can track it from there."

"Dantooine?" His eyes widened.

Doctor Van nodded and Revan turned and looked back out the viewport with a heavy sigh. He was getting bad feeling about this, and the name of that planet in particular sent a chill down is spine when he coupled it with the fact that this girl was his daughter, and that she was Force Sensitive.

He was very sure that the girl would be powerful, very powerful, considering who were parents were. He rubbed his forehead, "The files are in my personal database, all of them, every single record that you have?"

"Yes," Doctor Van nodded.

Revan nodded once himself and set towards the door, "Carry on Doctor."

"Oh and Lord Revan," He called out for him, "I found a subject for your Spinal Cord replacement, I thought you should know that."

Revan turned and raised an eyebrow, "When?"

"Right before you came in here and choked me," Doctor Van answered wryly.

"Well then," Revan began awkwardly, "Good, carry on."

SWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSW

Revan stepped off the turbolift and returned a salute to two soldiers as they saluted him before making his way back to the his quarters. As he stepped down the corridor of the ship, he began to think of what he would be doing in the next few days. Chief among these was the Invasion of Courscant. He would need all of his attention focused on that when it came and he was fairly sure that it wouldn't be a problem.

But what would happen afterwards? The fact that he had a child on the way and he had a child with a woman that, up until about an hour ago, he was going to have kill, was very distracting from the tasks at hand. Sure, he wouldn't love the child he had with Arenna any less then the child that he was going to have with Bastila, but why did this all come undone so suddenly? If he wasn't so sure that it was by coincidence then he would have blamed it on paranoia.

And he had the distinct feeling that with the close proximity between his child and the Jedi Enclave on Dantoonie, the two would eventually meet. If that were the case, this whole thing changed dramatically. He would consider it a cruel twist of fate if he discovered that his child was actually being trained to become a Jedi Knight. Of course he'd put an end to that, but it would very ironic, and of course there was one thing that would have to be paramount in discovering that his child was to become a Jedi.

They couldn't be allowed to know that the girl was his daughter.

That would be dangerous for both the child and himself if they found out.

A part of him knew that the Jedi wouldn't go so far as to hold his daughter hostage, but the other part knew that there would be some within the order who would love nothing more than to cause him pain. Of course there was the other faction to consider, the Republic. They were not the Jedi, they adhered to a false sense of righteousness when it came to morality, but he knew that they wouldn't hesitate to use his child against him. They would do anything to win a war that they were on the very cusp of losing, and he couldn't help but know that he would give into their demands. He had never met the girl, but he would give up everything to protect her, like with Bastila, or at one time, Arenna Kai.

A scowl came over his face with those thoughts. If they used his children against him, he would systematically whip both the Republic and the Jedi from the face of the Galaxy and from the light of History. There would be no mercy and he didn't give a damn about Freedon Nadd's advice, he would destroy every last vestige of them. He would crush the life out of the order until there was nothing at all remaining but a few legends.

In the history of the Jedi and the Sith, the dominate power shifted, some periods being longer than others. The Jedi, being delusional, thought and have continued to think that they were still the dominate force the in the Galaxy. They were wrong, he was, he was the Sith. He would not transform his Sith Empire into a body in which all of the people were active Sith Lords, no, that was foolish to say the least.

If there was one fault within the Sith as he saw it, it was the drive for power, there could not have been any better example than Malak. He thought that he could usurp him and take the Mantle of Dark Lord away from him. Imagine that on the scale of dozens, perhaps hundreds of Apprentices. They would all kill each other and betray each other in vying for power. His philosophy was simple and he knew that it would work.

Two, there would be only two full fledged Sith.

The underlings were merely servants. They used the force and they were on the Dark Side, but they were no Sith. In terms of actual Sith, there were only two and he was the senior of the two. As it stood right now, Bastila filled that position, though she would be a most unconventional apprentice. After all, there would always come a time when the apprentice challenged the Master. Revan had already had to kill his first apprentice.

And if there was anything that he wanted to avoid, it would be killing his second apprentice.

He would have to give this subject some more thought. Perhaps there was a way to continue the chain of Apprentice and Sith Lord without having to kill the soon-to-be mother of his child. He was the head of a vast interstellar Empire, he could think of a way to pull that off and to do it perfectly with a little bit more sleep and with Courscant in his hand.

His thoughts of Bastila attempting to kill him went blank as he finally made it into his quarters. The sight of her burying her face into his pillow made his heart warm. He chuckled softly and quickly discarded his outer robe and let it drop to the floor. Perhaps he was completely mistaken about this all.

When he crawled into the bed and wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, he smiled as she proceeded to bury her face into the crook of his neck. No, he wouldn't have to worry about betrayal from her, anytime soon.

SWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSWSW

"Admiral," Supreme Chancellor Galic Orenex observed the plans as she presented them to him on the large view screen in the briefing, "I have only one objection to the plan that you're proposing. Once the Government has moved off of the planet, you're only allowing for the evacuation of no less than 500,000 loyal citizens of the Republic. I must object to that."

Forn Dodonna sighed a placed her hands on her hips, "By that time, we estimate that most of Sith Fleet will have reached the planet. We don't have the time or the resources to launch this much of a full scale planetary evacuation. Not on this world at least Chancellor. There are 1 trillion beings on this planet, we wouldn't be able to get all of them if we had started evacuating a month ago with this shortage of ships."

He sighed and leaned forward, "What planet has been the designated new Capital?"

"Rescee, it's a more then appropriate world and their local Government has elected to stand down and have us as their Government, so long as the Sith occupy this world," Dodonna reported gravely, "Speaking of which, our Long Range Sensors have picked up five extremely large Sith Fleets moving our way. I do recommend that we have your shuttle standing by at all times."

He looked up at her, "How many ships?"

"When you combine all five fleets, 150,000," Dodonna grimaced.

The Chancellor looked down, "By the Force, we can't possibly stop them."

"I know," She nodded, "I don't wish to be a martyr, I want to live on to fight another day and I can't do that when I'm outnumbered 17 to 1, you understand?"

Galic nodded, "Do whatever you have to do Admiral."

He couldn't believe that this was happening. He was giving up the galactic seat of power that the Republic had occupied for thousands of years. His thoughts of remorse and guilt however were swept away when the image on the tactical view screen appeared in front of him. It showed the border of the Courscant Sector and on the other side of it were thousands of red circles that each represented a Sith Vessel. 150,000 ships against a little over 19,000 ships to defend Courscant, he was quite sure in the moment, in the face of those thousands of little red dots, that history would not judge him too harshly. After all, it would be foolish to stand up to them in the fact of that fleet. The Republic would be crushed like a bug, not that it wasn't going to happen anyway, but he could at least try to save it and to stop the Sith. However, he felt as if he was forestalling the inevitable fact that the Republic was in its death throes and this was going to be its final blow.

Admiral Yarr rubbed her eyes wearily as she stepped off of the turbolift and made her way slowly from the command deck to the bridge. She had been awoken from a blissful dream of pulverizing Courscant into a fine ash with the notice that they would be arriving at Corellia shortly. Her slow steps made her take her time when going to the bridge and when she got there, she was met by a very unpleasant sight. She knew how to count, and she knew that there were more Republic Ships orbiting Corellia then there were of her ships approaching it. Her senses seemed to kick on in that moment and she walked down the command platform to study the situation a little harder, "Tactical Analysis of that fleet?"

"2000 Cruisers, that's a complement of 14,000 Fighters and we're detecting an extremely powerful deflector shield around the planet," Her tactical officer reported.

"They outnumber us 2 to 1," Admiral Yarr realized and before she could form another thought, the ship was hit by a laser blast that rocked her to the side, "Our nearest reinforcements!"

"1400 ships," The Tactical Officer shouted out as conduits on the bridge exploded, "Two systems away, it'll take an hour for them to get here at maximum velocity."

She grasped the rail at the head of the viewport to steady herself, "Send a subspace message to the commander of that fleet, we're in need of assistance."

"All ships this is Admiral Yarr, fire and attack at will," She order into the com and then she turned back to her own tactical offensive team, "Full axis rotation to port, fire all ventral weapons!"

She hadn't got a chance to test her skills in very long time, but she knew that she had to contact Lord Revan, she looked down to her right at the Com Officer, "Get Lord Revan up here."