Not named Lucas Or Rumiko.

I have to apologize to my fans for my stories being out so late. The reason for this is simple: lack of time. I knew I had a family thing coming up (wedding/get together) and while I thought I had planned accordingly, I really didn't. I didn't realize I would have almost no time at all to work on my stories - an hour a day basically at night in a room shared with two other people both of whom yelled at me for staying up late every time- and almost no access to the internet either! I could access it, but it was so slow I couldn't upload even a pm response! So if anyone out there has PM'd me and is waiting a response, I will try to get back to you today.

this has been betaed by Michael, so there should be a severe dearth of mistakes, at least in comparison to FIlfy...

Now on with the show!


Horse of the Force16: Charge of the Wild Brigade

Ranma and Shaak were just waking up in their respective chairs on the second day out from theVjun when there was a sharp shudder throughout the ship followed by blaring alarms and a final loud banging noise from the aft section. Ranma, who had just disengaged his harness to grab a bite to eat from the supplies they had brought into the cockpit, shouted in shock as the bulb of water he had been drinking from sprayed in his face. This, of course, activated his curse, and the now redhead cursed as she careened off the ceiling. At the same time Tune warbled a warning. "Warning, warning! Emergency hyperspace exit, warning emergency hyperspace exit! Our hyperspace drives are down!"

Below Ranma, Shaak had a tougher time of it, since she had also pushed out of her chair to change from the nightie she had been wearing into her day clothing. She tumbled through the air of the cockpit in a semi-naked heap as the ship around them began to tumble end over end through space.

Shaak quickly grabbed the edge of the controls, holding herself still above her seat as Ranma had pulled herself back into her chair. "Cut that shouting out, Tune! Are our normal space engines still working?" Ranma asked, swiftly buckling herself down, holding onto the controls as the ship continued to roll.

"Negative. Using repulsors to slow our spin now. Warning: main power is down. Activating emergency power now," Tune intoned.

"Let me take over the repulsors, Tune," Ranma ordered. The repulsors were supposed to allow the ship to hover before takeoff and landing, but under Ranma's direction they served to halt the ship's tumble eventually.

Next to Ranma, Shaak pulled herself into her chair, where she immediately began to bring up the diagnostic of the hyperdrives and was looking at the blueprint of the ship's energy runs. "We lost one of the generators, but the others are still there, just shut down. I assume it was a power surge that jolted the system somewhere, shutting down the engines, which in turn turned the pulse around and forced an overload. We'll have to do a cold start on the remaining generators," she reported, wincing as she shifted attention back to the hyperdrive diagnostic. "I think our hyperspace drives will have to be repaired externally, though. It looks like physical damage caused by the fight piled up during the jump. Whether or not we can even repair it at all will depend on if we have spare parts and our skill set."

"Don't restart the main power just yet," Tune warned. "I want to do a full diagnostic on the ship's systems first. The Wild Light took tremendous amounts of damage in this past fight, and damage from ion cannons can sometimes appear days after a battle."

The two lovers looked at one another and nodded. "Agreed. Tune, you get on that. I'll take HK out with me to look at the damage," Ranma said.

"I will try to see if we can raise the Order from here," Shaak said. While she would've been just as good an engineer as Ranma, which was to say, barely acceptable, Shaak wasn't nearly as home in outer space as she was. Ranma took to zero gravity like a duck to water.

"You think we'll be able to on emergency power?" Ranma asked as she stood up, letting herself drift up into the air of the cockpit for a moment before grabbing the back of the chair and holding herself still. She idly noted that Shaak's lekku had risen only very slightly in the zero gravity, the muscles within fighting the lack of gravity. On the other hand, the robe she was now wearing had risen somewhat more despite her being strapped down, giving Ranma a very nice view straight down the front of her chest. "We've no idea where the heck we are, after all."

Shaak felt Ranma's eyes on her and smirked, using one hand to close her robe again and the other to lightly poke the redhead's arm. "No, but after we get the power online we should be able to. As for our locations, Hypercom relays cover massive amounts of distance. All we have to do is be in a general area to use the uplink system. Tune, can you tell us anything about where we've ended up?"

"Negative, mistress. All sensors are off-line," Tune said an electronic whine, ending his sentence from the speakers on his dome top rather than the speaker set into the console. With the ship only running on emergency power, Tune's normal speakers were offline. "In terms of our position, we are about a third of the way along one of the two longest jumps back to Dorin. I would estimate we are in deep space between systems, but without sensors I cannot corroborate that."

"I'll give you a running update if I can tell anything once I'm out there," Ranma said, moving behind the pilots' chairs and opening the emergency locker there. Inside was a spacesuit, though, of course, the spacesuits in this galaxy were nothing like the ones that Ranma had seen pictures of back on Earth. These were made of a thin, flexible material that felt like a mix between silk and latex, with a slightly built up helmet to go over the face. Even the jet pack and air reserves were streamlined as part of the suit. The boots that accompanied it held powerful magnets which could be activated on command.

Shaak turned slightly in her chair to watch as Ranma pulled on the suit, which clung to her body like a second skin, leaving very little to the imagination. Looking down at herself, Ranma blushed then shook her head. "Yeah, so glad there're no guys around here, else I'd be giving them a free show." She looked up, catching Shaak's eyes on her, and actually posed a little, straightening and thrusting out her chest toward her lover, who let her eyes rake up and down Ranma's form, smiling before Ranma turned, pulling on the helmet and tossing Shaak her own suit. With large portions of the ship's interior open to vacuum, Shaak had to wear her suit for a bit even if she wasn't joining Ranma outside.

Shaak, of course decided to give Ranma a show in turn, slowly pulling on the suit over her legs, then pulling her robe off and letting it float way while she, now half naked, pulled on the suit's top, hiding her glorious red breasts with their white nipples from view. Then she pulled on the helmet, which had been made for Togrutans, thankfully, though it certainly wasn't comfortable for them. When her helmet's HUD beeped at her, Shaak nodded toward Ranma, who, with a pout visible through her faceplate, turned away, moving to the cockpit's hatch.

There was a rush of air as she opened the cockpit to the near-vacuum beyond, but, once one the other side, Ranma was able to close it once again. After she saw the light indicating that the cockpit was airtight turn green, Ranma moved into the sitting area where she found HK waiting. The droid had been on standby mode until Tune's shouting had registered on his system. With nothing to contribute, he had stayed silent until now, whereupon he moved to follow Ranma towards the warped landing ramp. "Irritated muttering: I am not a repair droid! I am an assassination droid, a combat robot beyond the dreams of present day meatbags. Why do I have to do this, master? Get the tin can out to help you!"

In response Tune's voice sounded out over both the droid's built in radio and the one in Ranma's spacesuit, the young child voice that Tune now used exclusively sounding irritated beyond belief. "Because I need to be here to run the diagnostics as much as I can, make certain that we haven't taken any other damage thanks to this aborted jump out of hyperspace, and my internal battery is powering the screen Mistress Ti is using to look at the Wild Light's blueprints. Unless you think you can do any of that, sending you out on EVA with Master Ranma is the best use for you, you giant pile of insane circuitry! I'd wonder which came first, your incredible ridiculous view of your personal self-worth or that mad scientist's concept of a monstrous body, but I already know the answer thanks to our sadly long association!"

HK exchanged a glance with Ranma, and both of them shook their heads, with Ranma taking it upon herself to reply. "Tune, you really need to work on your insults, kid. Your second attempt there was good, but too muddied. Choose one insult and run with it. Also, don't use such long insults until you have mastered the shorter ones. Still, for a one-liner it wasn't bad."

Before Tune could reply beyond a droid noise which sounded like an electronic raspberry, Ranma had launched herself out into space.

With HK following Ranma moved out away from the hull, then back towards the aft portion of the ship, using the thrusters of her suit to guide her path. At the same time Shaak began to work with Tune, diverting power section by section so the droid could check the energy runs for damage. Once that was done they should be able to cold start the power generators, giving the ship back its gravity, at least. Then the two of them would examine what they could of the interior of the ship for damages. Tune, in particular, would need the gravity to do anything in the engine room.

Ranma clanged boots first down onto the side of the ship, the magnets activating and holding her there. She and HK then began to look at the hyperdrives for any visible signs of damage. This took them a while, given the fact that both of them were using simple flashlights, though HK's was built into his chest. There was no light here: the ship had come out into a starless void between systems. Scientists might say that there was always light from distant stars passing through such areas, but it certainly wasn't enough for visual inspection, at least for humans, and even assassination droids needed some light to see by.

About forty minutes after they had exited they heard a deep thrum below them, and Shaak's voice whispered into Ranma's ear via the helmet's radio. "We have power back up. Thank goodness for Mon Calamari over-engineering. Tune is back in the engine room right now looking at all of the internal damage. How is it looking out there?"

"Not so good, really. Two of the external panels have been knocked loose, and one of the engine…nacelles? Is that the right word, or is it just the thruster? Anyway, the middle thruster looks to be out of alignment. I can also see a few places around the other thrusters which have blown out, though those bits look smallish," Ranma said, trying to describe what she was seeing.

"Condescending observation: Master, you do know those suits you weak meatbags need to move about in vacuum routinely come with video recorders?" HK asked from where he had pulled open one of the panels around where something seemed to have blown out of the hull.

Ranma glared at HK, her light flashing at the droid in a manner that made it look even more sinister than normal, not that Ranma noticed. "I'd say no one likes a smart ass, HK, but I don't like being a hypocrite. Just know I will get you back for that one. Shaak, can you reroute to Tune? What am I looking at here?"

After returning to the cockpit with a report of there being only a bit of internal damage, Tune began to direct Ranma through the repairs, while HK stolidly held open the panel and the repair kit for her. It turned out that several of the energy runs had exploded outwards during the surge that Shaak had reported earlier, causing some damage to the runs themselves and killing the engines, but not doing any actual damage to the hyperdrive. The one that was out of alignment was still a concern, as was the fact that it no doubt had damaged its neighbors. But the extent of that would not be able to be seen until they pushed some power back into the engines.

However, HK's attention was not on the ongoing work. Rather, he was staring around and up into the distance at the far edge of his optics' abilities. By the light of the ship's few external lights and the lights on his own magnificent body, HK could see something out there. He waited until Ranma was nearly done with the work, then spoke, having been unwilling to interrupt his master's work. "Cautious tone: Master, I think you need to look up. "

Ranma frowned, but, trusting the droid, did so only to gasp.

Inside, Shaak Ti had just finished powering up the Hypercom. As she had said, they were easily within range of an Uplink array, and their little piggyback system was able to link into the network quickly. She smiled faintly as Master Windu took the call personally. Bowing her head to the Master of the Order, she began. "Master Windu, I wish to inform you that Ranma and I were successful in our mission. The Wild Light, however, took a lot of damage, and we might need some assistance getting…well…anywhere. Our hyperspace drives cut out abruptly mid-trip, and our astromech droid is only vaguely aware of our position at the moment. "

"We will, of course, get a ship out to you as quickly as we can," Mace said, frowning and kneading at his nose. "The Order itself doesn't have any repair ships, so we will have to ask for Senate aid for that. Do you have any idea of the severity of the damages? If it's not too bad a problem, we could simply throw more astromech droids at it. We would be able to do that without the Senate becoming involved. But if it is a more dangerous problem we would need to send a ship large enough to take the Wild Light aboard and then fly with you to the nearest spaceport."

"I am uncertain what the extent of the damages are at the moment. Tune and Ranma are working together to see if it is repairable, but after the amount of damage we took I was not particularly surprised that something failed on our trip back from our previous port of call." Because of the need for security, neither she nor Ranma would be willing to actually discuss the mission they had been on in detail over the Hypercom. Both knew that the real Sith was still out there, even with Set Harth dead, and felt that keeping whoever it was from learning about how the fight went would help in the future.

Mace nodded, fully understanding that, though Shaak noticed what could be a bit of a twinkle in his eyes as he acknowledged her circumspect manner of speech. "In that case we will wait until Ranma is part of this discussion. "

"…I can redirect some of the communication to him if…" At that point, Shaak felt Ranma's shock, which overrode her interest at what Mace was planning. While she wasn't an empath like her friend Aayla, Shaak was so connected to Ranma at this point that even though she wasn't skimming her mind, the shock came through to Shaak clearly. "Wait one," she said abruptly, switching the frequency to Ranma. "Ranma, what's wrong?"

"Shaak, cut the feed," Ranma ordered, her voice tense and wary. "HK just spotted something, and I think we need to look into it before we talk to the Temple or anyone else anymore."

Shaak nodded and, without even asking what the redhead was talking about, did so, apologizing to Mace and telling him they would get back to him, but that Ranma had just requested her help out on the hull of the ship. Mace nodded, and they cut the connection quickly. "It's done. Now, what have you found out there?"

"There are ships out here," Ranma replied. "I can see three of them from here with the naked eye!" Which, given distances in space, was an appalling statement to any spacefaring sentient. That was dogfighting range, let alone anything else. "All of them are large and seem to be pretty much the same type of ship, from what I can see. They're ships around the same size as the one that that the Crimson Nova had turned into a space station."

Hearing all that, Shaak felt her brows furrow in confusion and worry. "Tune, we are in a starless void, are we not?"

"Affirmative, mistress. We are somewhere between Vjun and Dorin. Recall that we had wanted to stay somewhat off the beaten path, yet without taking any unnecessary risks with the damaged hyperdrive in this return journey," Tune affirmed.

"Are our sensors back online?"

"Negative, mistress. They were blown out during the battle. I apologize; I only just now noticed the damage."

"So we'll have to do a visual inspection," Shaak said, sighing and leaning back. "Are our floodlights online at least?"

"Two of the five are, mistress. The others were shattered during the battle on Vjun."

Shaak nodded. "Ranma, how about you and HK shut down what you're doing and come back inside. We can worry about the hyperdrive later. Ships out here, especially of that size, are a mystery I think we need to get to the bottom of."

About two hours later Shaak slowly shook her head, using her Jedi self-control to keep from showing the shock, worry, and awe she was currently feeling. She leaned back in her chair, continuing to stare out the viewport of the cockpit as she spoke to Ranma, sitting beside her. "The Force directs us in mysterious ways sometimes. But this is most definitely one of the better ones."

"I used to say things like, 'Lady Luck smiles as much as she shits,'" Ranma said with a laugh, deliberately trying to lighten the mood, leaning back in her own chair and ignoring the smack to the shoulder Shaak sent her for that. "But I agree. Us just stumbling on a find like this: it's a sign that the Light Side of the Force is favoring us in some fashion. I could wish for more real direction and explanation, but I suppose this kind of thing works too."

As the redhead spoke Shaak sent out her senses into the Force to try and determine if anything was alive out there. As she did they both felt it again, the feel of the Light side of the Force giggling in their heads as if Ranma had just changed forms. But Shaak didn't find anyone else out there, which she had honestly expected would be the case given what this had to be.

In front of them was a dreadnought. It was an older class of dreadnought then the few in service throughout the Republic these days, but they were still large, powerful ships which were made for durability rather than striking power, unlike the ones used these days. And there were others nearby, very nearby in terms of the normal distances discussed about in space. The ships had seemingly come out of hyperspace in formation and then simply stayed here.

"This is the Katana Fleet, it has to be," Shaak murmured, pulling in her Force senses once more.

Once fully back in her body and concentrating on the physical world around her, Shaak began to think of all the implications of their finding this fleet here. Not least of all why the Force would direct them to it in the first place. That was a bad sign, but one she couldn't do anything about. On top of that, the short-term implications were just as troublesome.

"What's the Katana Fleet?" Both Ranma and HK asked, though of course HK prefaced his question with the phrase, 'Inquisitive query.'

"The Katana Fleet was a Republic fleet created to try and revamp the waning power of the navy around twenty years or so ago, I want to say? I am uncertain. The ships were an attempt to see if the navy could cut down the number of personnel needed to run a capital ship. This was well before the Trade Federation was allowed to build up its robotic army, of course, and at the time there was a feeling that droids shouldn't be directly involved in combat. But these ships were designed with a high level of automation, and were all designed with full slave circuitry. This meant one ship could control the ships around it in a time of emergency. They could even fire weapons and power up shields. The push to automate as much as possible worked: it cut down the needed crewmembers from sixteen thousand to something like two thousand. But as is the case far too often, the fleet suffered the curse of unintended consequences," Shaak began.

"Sarcastic remark: While I am pleased to hear that the Republic went through a time where they recognized the superiority of the computer intellect, the idea that they did not realize the need to let such minds have their freedom makes me wonder if I should feel insulted," HK said from where he was standing by the hatch into the cockpit.

Rolling her eyes at that, Shaak otherwise ignored the interruption as she continued. "But the crewmembers fell ill to a plague which spread throughout the fleet while in its dormant state before gestating. It was of a malady that affected their minds right before it killed them, and it could have led the fleet to becoming a danger not only to itself but to everyone around it. But the Admiral of the fleet instead jumped them all away using the slave circuitry. They jumped out randomly on a heading that no one was able to get a read on at the time. Ever since then the Katana Fleet has been a mystery wrapped in an enigma, as well as a symbol of the Navy's ineptitude, which, alas, has led to further downsizing since."

"Contemplative tone: Now I am definitely insulted. Are you telling me the computers on these ships were not intelligent enough to realize what was going on with their crews and take appropriate action? Or that they were not allowed to do so? Yes, I am most definitely insulted by these foolish meatbags and their stupidity."

"Harsh, but true," Ranma said with a sigh. "But these ships, how good are they?"

Shaak took that term to mean how dangerous and powerful they were, though she did quip, "Well, while neither of us are in a position to make any comments about their moral fiber, they are powerful ships."

This attempt at levity earned Shaak a return slap to the shoulder, which brought a smile to her face as she continued. "They each would be worth the equivalent of four cruisers the size of the Consular class you are familiar with even if they were all purpose built for military purposes. They are a little larger in turn than the few dreadnoughts that are part of the Republic ordinance fleets, their shields will be slightly better, and their offensive punch worse, with less reliance on direct energy weapons and a few more launchers. Though I could be wrong on that. I'm judging their abilities from a history lesson I had as a padawan.

"But two hundred? Thanks to decades of demilitarization both before and after this fleet was launched, two hundred dreadnoughts represents a large portion of the Republic Fleet's current complement in its entirety if they were all brought together into one place. They represent a power I do not think we can understate," Shaak finished with a slow shake of her head.

"So, what do we do about it? I mean, we could probably figure out a way to activate the slave system, get all the ships to follow us, but where to?" Ranma asked.

"And we can't call in aid for our hyperdrive here either. The Order doesn't have a repair ship, they'd have to ask for Republic aid, and that would mean Republic sailors, Republic computers, and Republic astromechs. All of whom would have either memories or recordings of this event. We cannot afford any chances here," Shaak said, shaking her head. "With the amount of penetration the Sith have in the Republic, it's almost a certainty that he or she would learn of them quickly."

"Professional observation: That is to say nothing of the effort needed to make use of the fleet at all. After all this time I'm certain there will be a lot of repairs and other things that will have to be done to bring them up to combat readiness. And remember the crew complement you mentioned, mistress," HK interjected.

"Even without the Sith out there I wouldn't trust the Senate with these ships, Shaak," Ranma said with a shake of her head. "Power corrupts, after all, and isn't there already a call for the Republic to start rebuilding its fleet and other calls for a dissolution of the Republic as a whole? I seem to remember seeing that on the news back on Dorin."

Shaak nodded slowly. "I haven't kept up with the latest news from Coruscant, since politics at that level do not interest me. But you're correct. I can all too easily see the idea of these ships causing a power struggle. For instance, the groups that could actually get ships out here and crew them quickly would be the Tech Union, the Trade Federation, and others of that ilk, all of whom are among those pushing for further independence or even liberation from the Republic as a whole."

Ranma nodded. He frankly didn't really care about the Republic as an entity: he thought it was a little too big for its britches, way too toothless, and horribly corrupt, reminding him of the ancient Chinese empires or Russia under the Tsars. But neither did he want to see any kind of anarchy with every system or conglomeration for itself to come about. "So I say again, what do we do? And I don't think we can even tell the Order yet, not over the Hypercom."

"I am dismayed at the need to keep this a secret, but I agree. And even if we could speak to the Order, I don't think we should. Too many Jedi would simply say we should hand the ships over to the Senate. Right now it is up to the two of us to decide what to do here, in particular where to send these ships, if we do send them anywhere."

"My money would be on Dac if we get to that point," Ranma said with a shrug. "But this is too big a decision for me to make."

"You think I want to?" Shaak asked rhetorically then shook her head. She looked over at Tune and kept from allowing a frown to appear on her face only with her Jedi training. "Tune, I realize that this is going to sound cruel, but you and HK have computer memories that can be accessed against your will. I'm afraid I'm going to have to order you both to erase everything that has occurred from the moment we came out of hyperspace in this system. We'll wait until were back on our way, but I want you to be prepared for that."

Tune groaned a discordant electronic sound from his dome as he began to rattle in his cubicle. Yet he didn't say anything to argue against that statement. HK, however, shook his head. "Prideful retort: My programming is slave control proof, master, mistress. Further, I can even fight off any attempt to access my internal memory structure, unlike the tin can. The only things I can connect to or upload are weapons systems and targeting data respectively."

"Why does that not surprise me?" Ranma droned, frowning at the idea of Tune erasing part of his own memory like that, seeing how that could cause issues if they weren't careful. But she agreed, however, with the necessity. It's paranoid as all hell, but given the size of this secret, we need to take a page from the damn Sith's playbook.

A few moments later Shaak powered up the small Hypercom relay again, and Ranma and Shaak looked at the face of Master Windu through their com screens. "We've got good news," Ranma said without any preamble. "I was able to get the hyperspace engines working. We've talked about it, and I think it would be best for us to jump at least a little further on to the nearest star system rather than simply wait around here. It would take too long for you to get a ship out here that could really help us. It'll be slow, but at least we'll be moving rather than sitting and waiting for the cavalry."

"If you're sure?" Mace replied, looking uncertain. Seeming to take their words at face value, Mace changed the subject by abruptly speaking in Japanese, of all things. He spoke haltingly and with an absolutely atrocious accident, but for a language that he'd had to learn from the protocol droid Ranma had initially worked with, and thus having no Force powers to help his understanding along other than memorization exercises, it was pretty darn good. "You will…met back on Dorin… by… heal…, who will be… message. No new about the Dark….talked about over the Hypercom."

Ranma jolted, hearing his/her native Japanese for the first time from someone else's mouth since she had arrived in this galaxy. Indeed, Ranma had even stopped speaking it at all besides a few scattered curses on Dac. The redhead began to laugh, shaking her head and replying in kind as she watched Mace. "There was a story in my world about one of the participants of a war using the language of a small minority as a secret code. This seems like a damn good idea, though I'm surprised you were able to figure out how to speak Japanese."

Shaak laughed, having followed his portion of the conversation through use of the Force translating the words from Ranma's mind directly into her own. Japanese was an entirely unknown language, save for Master Dooku, Ranma, and the protocol droid that had worked with Ranma to teach him Republic Standard. And recordings could not be translated later through the Force: the Force would not be able to find anything in the computer to latch onto. Tone could carry through, of course, but tone alone wouldn't have been enough to help anyone trying to discover the import of the discussion.

"I understood about one word in three there," Mace replied dryly, shifting back to Republic Standard. "It is a work in progress."

"We'll wait for the courier on Dorin, then. Besides, we were both thinking of staying there for a few months, getting the ship repaired," Ranma replied, though she spoke in Japanese still. In fact, he and Shaak had agreed that they would remain on Dorin to learn from the locals how they utilized the Force to move their cloth weapons.

"We will speak to you when we arrive… Or if anything else breaks," Shaak said with a wry twist to her lips. "May the Force be with you, Master Windu."

"And with you," Mace replied, cutting the connection quickly.

After the signal cut out, Shaak and Tune worked on projecting their next few jumps. The damage to the hyperspace engines was such that jumping long distances would put too much strain on them. Even without the need to change direction, it would take several dozen small jumps to get to the nearest system where they could get repairs. "And even if or when we get there, they won't be very good ones," Tune said morosely. "Hopefully when we get to Dorin they'll be able to do a better job."

Ranma was not feeling very hopeful about that, however, since his/her ship had been built by the Mon Calamari. Mon Calamari ships were each unique creations, more works of engineering art than anything else. Even the hyperspace engines on the Wild Light were not standard for the ship's size. And that doesn't even mention the rest of the damages that needs to be repaired. But Tune had the schematics for the ship in his databank and would be able to help with the repairs. So maybe I'm overthinking things. Heh, and ain't that a sign of the apocalypse.

After a while, Tune expressed the view that they were done with their calculations: it would take them five days to cross the intervening space between their current position and the nearest world where they could repair their engines, thanks to the need for tiny jumps. Ranma and HK went out to perform a last-minute visual check of the drives. Once they returned, they reported that the hyperdrives looked good to go, or as good to go as they could be, anyway.

As they jumped into hyperspace, Ranma patted Tune on his dome-like head. "Are you going to be able to handle the jumps by yourself, Tune?"

"Are you trying to be insulting, master, or is it because of your own low intelligence that you doubt mine?" Tune asked.

Ranma held a thumbs up to the astromech droid as Shaak groaned, holding her head in her hands theatrically and muttering about how the snark was spreading. "You're getting better at that. We'll teach you the art of repartee yet".

Shaak suddenly let out a little gasp as Ranma leaned over and unceremoniously picked her up into his arms from her chair. She clung there, laying a kiss on his cheek and down and up into his neck, where she lightly began to bite him. "HK, it's time for you to shut off. And as for us, since we can't do anything else, we might as well head back to, heh, 'bed'…" Ranma said, to which Shaak offered unequivocal agreement.

OOOOOOO

On Coruscant Mace turned to Master Yoda, who had not been part of the communication, having been busy down in the library with chief Librarian Jocasta and Yaddle. "See the utility of this new language I do," Yoda said, tapping his stick on the ground. It was just the two of them in the Council chamber at the moment. All of the other High Council members were busy with their various duties, both within the Temple and throughout the Republic or over in the Senate, as was the case with Masters Gallia and Poof. "Yet difficult to learn it is. Too small a sample size do you have."

"Yes, but it is a start. While we have plugged the leak on our end of the Hypercom, the HRS in general is still unreliable," Mace said.

The discovery of a virus program in the temple's own Hypercom uplink system had been a shock to the Council's collective consciousness a few months back. They were still slowly going through the repair droids and other electronic devices within the Temple to look for further pirate software. They were going about it slowly because it was hoped that, in so doing, they could use those programs to try to retrace the signals to whoever had planted them in the first place. This hadn't happened yet, but the few Jedi who understood programming were hopeful that they would eventually be able to follow the signal to something important.

"So, it is either this, or figuring out some other kind of code," Mace went on. "And given the intelligence shown by our enemy, any kind of modern code we could come up with could eventually be broken. With only myself, Master Dooku, and the protocol droid who learned the language in the first place, no one is going to be able to break the use of Japanese."

"The droid, secure it is?" Yoda asked, letting loose a loud harrumph at the reminder of the counterintelligence work going on here in the heart of the Order. He had not been involved in any of this, busy as he had been on Kashyyyk, but Mace had filled him in on it immediately. Yoda felt that the attempts would eventually fail, but he was philosophical about that. The more layers or tools they removed, after all, the less their enemy had to continue to use against the Jedi.

"We have him here in the Temple, and he has forbidden from uploading anything into even the Temple's computer systems, and we have actually broken his upload and download systems. Beyond that, we'll be sending him back to Kashyyyk with you. I'll create a solid copy of the language for myself to look at in the future, but both the droid and the original books that Ranma gave to Master Dooku will remain with you.

Yoda nodded, and Mace asked, "How goes the rotation of the Guardian Sect Knights through the training on Kashyyyk?"

"Going well it is. More and more Jedi, learning the toughness training techniques they are. Speed techniques, still eluding most they are. Strength techniques, being learned at all have not. Learning to enhance all aspects via the Force, everyone is to a certain degree, but the level of Ranma, beyond our reach that is," Yoda said, his ears drooping in his people's equivalent of a shrug. The toughness training was really the most important aspect for them, given that it could stop blaster bolts. Strength and speed were okay, but not as important.

"But we are still no closer to finding the Sith," Mace said, his face showing a concern he would never have allowed even the rest of the High Council to see. "Every lead we find is a dead end, sometimes literally. Whoever this Sith is, he or she is not at all afraid of cutting his losses quickly. Even that should have led us to something: his local assassins. But even then it has not"

Yoda nodded glumly at that. This kind of far reaching, galaxy spanning espionage effort was beyond anything the Order had ever been forced to do in the past. Tholme and the others working with him were making headway and learning as they went, but slowly. In both Masters' minds was the idea that it was going too slowly, and eventually it would be the Sith who upped the ante in this shadow game, though how was beyond them.

"At least I can take solace that the Order will be stronger to match this threat." Mace said, shaking off his concern like an ill-fitting coat.

"And gaining allies we are," Yoda said, his ancient eyes twinkling as he looked at the chairs where Giiett and Ranicisis would normally sit.

"Yes," Mace said, shaking his head with a faint smile. "And some very unusual ones, too…"

OOOOOOO

Despite the setback his chosen tool had faced against the Chaotic Locus, Sidious was quietly pleased with the past few days' work. Sora Bulq was now fully ready to become his apprentice under the name Tyranus. To prove his worth Bulq had killed another Jedi who had been sent to Rattatak to try and find out what had happened to a master/padawan pair. That pair had been sent there several years back in order to bring the wars occurring there to an end. The padawan of said group, had now joined the Dark Side after falling into anger after her master's death, which Sidious had felt through the Veil.

Sidious wished he could devote more time to training Bulq, but alas, given all the other demands on his time, especially in his public persona, that wasn't going to happen. Yet, given the Weequay's starting skill set, it should be fine. Sidious turned to look at his prospective apprentice-cum-decoy and smiled unpleasantly under his hood. "And you are certain that your decision to retreat from the Order for a time will cause no issues?"

"Positive. Vos was not the first Jedi Knight I've had to rehab, and after each such assignment I go on a sabbatical before reclaiming my place as a lightsaber instructor at the Temple," Bulq replied calmly. "This will give me time to make the leap from Vaapad to Juyo, creating a true lightsaber form rather than the bastardized version Windu and I created together. And it will allow me to finish training my own apprentice in the way of the Sith."

"Yes… Ventress…" Sidious said, making her name a hiss of pleasure. "She is powerful in the Force, more powerful than even Maul. With your training she will become an even greater assassin then Darth Maul. But beware that her blade does not turn in your hand, Tyranus."

"Indeed, I might have her join Harth's attempts to deal with the Chaotic Locus, once you are satisfied with her training. It would be interesting to see if Juyo could aid a duelist against the Locus's chaotic style."

Bulq made a noncommittal noise at that, changing the subject. "What of Vos?"

"Leave him in place for now. I have no doubt Tholme will approach him to aid in his ongoing hunt. Having eyes on that from the inside will be a good thing in the long run. Remember, Tyranus: we need to keep the pot boiling, but also keep any suspicion away from the Senate until the clone armies come online. Until then we are playing a series of shadow games."

"Of course. I think that's a rather prosaic use of Quinlan, but it's one he won't have any issues with. Vos blames Tholme almost as much as the High Council for what happened to his former padawan, and that and his own guilt are at the center of his anger."

Thanks to Bulq's words and retraining, Quinlan Vos had been cleared by the Council of First Knowledge to reclaim his Knightly status. Vos had enough control not to show anything new, and there was enough concern about him still that any little minor slip up would be attributed to his brush with the Dark Side rather than a sign that he had fully turned in that direction. But Bulq had, instead of teaching Quinlan more self-control, taught him to rejoice in the power of his anger and hate, which was now pointed directly at the Order.

He had also taught him control, of course: enough to fool any but Yoda or a few others, all of whom Quinlan knew to stay away from. He was a dagger within the Order, ready to act on Bulq's commands.

Of course, Vos knew nothing about Sidious, but that was all right. After all, Bulq had no idea that Sidious had four other Jedi answering to him who had turned to the Dark Side. The idiots in charge had no idea about any of them, and each served Sidious's purposes, if in very different manners.

Glancing at a nearby clock, Tyranus stood up. "I need to go. The ship taking me to Skako is due to leave in fifteen minutes, and I, of course, cannot be seen anywhere near this level of Coruscant. Send me any orders you wish via the usual method, and I will get back to you presently. But without specific orders I will continue to train Ventress until it is time for me to start gaining public backing for the Secessionists."

"Take those two dataslates there, memorize what is on them, and destroy them immediately after," Sidious ordered, as a small, evil looking golden droid came forward, holding the two dataslates in its mandibles. "I will be contacting you at least once a month after this to give you more information on what you need to know about the Great Plan, but those dataslates will give you a starting point and help you in your training from here on."

Sidious smirked. "The second dataslate contains some information on what the Jedi have been up to. They think that by spreading out as they have they will prove harder to crush. But they are still vulnerable."

The Weequay nodded, took the dataslates, and left swiftly, a small, sinister smile on his face. Behind him Sidious sat still in the darkness for a time, meditating until it was time for him to rejoin the galaxy as a whole under his Palpatine persona.

That evening, after heading to bed, Sidious's mind, of course, went back to the Great Plan. Yes, the Order was swiftly cutting out the electronic eyes the Sith had implanted within the Temple. Yes, the Order was better trained and the High Council obviously knew the Sith were still around.

But for all of that, the Order as a whole was still vulnerable. The simmering resentment towards the Jedi in the Senate was a tool he could use to flagellate them when it became time. Too few Jedi were Guardians or Sentinels, and too few Consulars were worth anything in a fight, which had not changed regardless of the High Council's attempts to do something about it. And while Sidious would have preferred to get rid of or capture all the Jedi younglings in one place, the Order's decision to spread them out would just make them more vulnerable in the long run to kidnapping and then repurposing.

The Temple here on Coruscant had decent defenses, which Sidious knew the Jedi were making even stronger. But while Kashyyyk had the Wookies, those animals would prove little defense when it came time to bring the hammer down. And Dac had the Quarren, who Sidious was already planning to incite into war against the Mon Calamari. If that happened, that civil war would run right over the temple. When that happened, who knew what tools could fall into Sidious's hands?

And the Order themselves have even told me about their concerns for the future, the rise of violence and anti-Republic sentiment, as I work manfully to 'rid the Senate and bureaucracy of corruption.' If I was the type to cackle, that alone would have me doing so.

The only fly in the ointment of Sidious's current pleased feelings was the Chaotic Locus. Set Harth's trail of breadcrumbs and eventual ambush had been masterful, yet the Chaotic Locus had broken through it by sheer brute strength, and even his alien slut hadn't been killed, which was rather irritating when Sidious thought about it.

I have to wait until Set's ready once more to take command of that portion of the plan, Sidious told himself, not for the first time. Set was correct that planning, ambush, and, more importantly, planning in depth will be very important in taking the Chaotic Locus on. There was no chance of taking the Chaotic Locus on with any kind of half-cocked plan. And while my personal resources continue to grow, the resources I can set on him without being linked to the Sith as a whole are dwindling.

The bounty hunters were no longer going to take any bounty of any Jedi now, and they took Chaotic Locus's initial bounty off the books, which was unheard of. It was an acknowledgment that the Bounty Hunters' Guild felt that continuing to attempt to take his/her bounty would cost the Guild more than they would gain even if they were successful. His utter destruction of an entire chapter had something to do with that, of course. Even now, more than a year, later rumors still abounded throughout the Republic of that.

Further, criminal elements would no longer be willing to take on the Togrutan Jedi or the Chaotic Locus. Word had spread by this point that the two of them did not just kill or capture those who were sent after them: they instead wiped out whole organizations. Word was spreading slowly that the entire issue with the change of status among the Mandalorians had sprung from the fact that the Death Watch had attacked the two of them. No one wanted to see if that was an isolated sort of incident.

Leaning back in his bed (even Sith Lords needed their sleep, after all), Sidious thought deeply about his long-term plans and about the Locus in particular. Assassination would be impossible. There was no weapon that could be hidden short or long that was able to kill the Chaotic Locus with a single blow or shot, save perhaps a large enough proton or concussion explosion. No large groups could overcome the Locus, as this latest debacle showed. Indeed, going by what he had seen in Set's mind, the Locus's personal style seemed to thrive on the chaos of larger battles.

And the Togrutan is formidable too. Killing that many Tarentatek is no mean feat, and she survived wounds that should've killed her many times over.

Sidious scowled. This is taking too much of my personal time to think about. I will send a simple poisoner to dog their trail when they leave Dorin, chosen from one of the races who are Force blanks. But other than that and making certain Harth has enough resources and, of course, keeping that fool in line, I need to set the problem of the Locus aside.

This wasn't the first time that thought had occurred to Sidious, yet it was much easier to think than for Sidious to actually do. On top of being a sociopath, Sidious thought of himself as a creature of order and planning. The Chaotic Locus's mere presence, let alone his/her actual actions, infuriated Sidious no end, acting like an itch he couldn't scratch. This was why, buried under other reports, he had missed the one about where Dooku had been assigned. And why he had not asked the droid he used to keep track of military matters throughout the Republic for a report in a few months…

OOOOOOO

Ranma and Shaak did eventually return to Dorin after five days of travel through hyperspace and then two weeks spent repairing the hyperdrive engines and the rest of the ship as much as possible at the planet they had eventually reached. Despite the fact that it had been only a single relatively short jump from there to Dorin, it was with relief that they turned the ship over to Tune and the local dockworkers. Though their space stations were relatively small, the Kel Dor were pretty tech savvy even if they hadn't really come up with anything new and innovative by themselves.

However, even beyond that there was another reason to be happy for their arrival here. "Luminara," Shaak said, moving forward and clasping forearms with her friend, who stood calmly waiting them by the interior entrance of the hanger bay. "I had hoped that it would be you that would be sent as the healer after Master Windu passed word of that on."

"And as a courier, though I personally believe both jobs are equally important," Luminara said, smiling at her friend and then over at Ranma, taking in the feel of the two of them through the Force. Ranma's massive pillar of Living Force energy had grown since the last time they had met, but the true surprise was with Shaak Ti. She had heard that Shaak was elevated to Master and had no reservations about it, believing that her friend was worthy of that elevation. Now, feeling Shaak's presence in the Force, the depth and steady power of it as well as the size of her own Living Force reserves, Luminara knew she had been correct in that assumption.

"Come," she said simply, setting aside such observations for now, though she idly wondered if she should be concerned that in the same amount of time Shaak had grown so much, she hadn't. "The Ancient Sage is waiting for us down below, and I wish to get back to young Sha. I have prepared a dropship for us, knowing how badly damaged your ship was."

Ranma and Shaak nodded, looking over at HK who would remain with the ship as bodyguard for Tune and to make certain that no one tried to plant anything on the ship. Before this they had used just Tune for that, but they felt the added security was a good idea after this latest trap. "Remember what I said, HK. First tell whoever approaches the ship to halt, then demand an explanation, and if they don't give one to your satisfaction, only then can you break their legs. If they tried to resist, then you can break other things."

"Droll response: Yes, master, and would you like to teach your ancestor how to procreate? Sarcastic emphasis: I have done this before," HK replied, shifting this way and that and staring around him, his optic processors quickly memorizing the layout of the area.

"Yes, you have," Ranma said, rolling his eyes at the odd phrase that his constantly homicidal droid had used. "But we don't want dead examples of why whoever's out there shouldn't mess with us anymore; we want living prisoners to question."

HK looked back at his master, nodding once. "Serious response: Yes, master. I understand. If anyone tries to mess with the Wild Light or with Tune, they will not enjoy the experience."

"…And that droid still concerns me," Luminara said, shaking her head, her tone withering. "Getting a homicidal droid head a body, such a magnificent idea."

"Yes, well, HK is a bit of a…acquired taste," Shaak said, her lekku moving in a shrug. "Personally, I've gotten used to the thing. And though I would never say it to his face, having HK's firepower backing us has been a nice experience a time or two."

"Eesh, seriously, do not let him hear you ever say that," Ranma said, looking around quickly and making certain they were out of earshot from ancient assassination droid. "His ego is big enough as it is."

Luminara chuckled at the repartee, falling silent in order to observe the two lovers' interactions. The closeness and the connection between the two of them was more obvious now than it had been the last time she had been in their presence: it was more solid feeling, rather than something new and relatively undefined.

After passing through the space station, she talked to the two of them about some of her own missions as they took the dropship down to the planet. Upon putting on their masks they quickly moved through the city and picked up Sha Koon from the hospital where she had been staying. Together they went to the monastery, with Sha Koon in a small hover chair. Luminara had already started the younger Jedi's treatment, and she was well enough to sit up, at least. It would take time and numerous rehab sessions, but Luminara estimated that another three weeks would see the girl once more walking on her own two feet.

In the monastery they left Sha Koon meditating with some of the Baran Do. Luminara then led the two lovers into a room which she had said had been prepared especially for this discussion. "This room is a Faraday cage," she said, looking around at the walls and tapping one of them as she described it. "They are made to stop any incoming and outgoing system signals. It also has its own air system, so we will be able to remove our rebreathers momentarily."

A second later Ranma did so, setting his mask on a recessed shelf before speaking, a scowl on his lips. "I take it the Order is getting more serious about security? It's about damn time. I hate the fact that this guy is always one step ahead of us or always seems to know a lot more about our movements then we do about his. Then again, it isn't exactly hard to know more than zero, zilch, and fucking nada!"

"I still maintain that your idea that it is a male who is leading the Sith has no basis in fact," Shaak said, deliberately trying to lighten the mood. Ranma followed this by sticking out his tongue at her, and she giggled. "Not in front of Luminara, dear. Save that for later."

For a moment that went over Ranma's head, then he quickly closed his mouth while Shaak laughed.

"Focus, my friends," Luminara said, one eyebrow twitching a little. It was one thing to hear about the fact that these two were in a relationship, even to feel the reality of that through the Force. It was quite another to see the two of them flirting.

It made her feel rather uncomfortable despite her Jedi training. Perhaps because they seemingly project some of their feelings through the Force, she mused. I wonder if they've been around Aayla at any point since they initially became a couple.

"Right," Ranma said, shaking his head. "What can you tell us, and is there any specific reason beyond wanting to debrief us that you were sent to talk to us?"

"Let us debrief you first, and then I will tell you what I may, which is practically everything the Order has been up to of late to eventually prepare the Order to deal with a resurgent Sith." Luminara sighed, sitting down in a chair to one side of the room, folding her legs underneath herself as she took a meditative pose. "If not for the fact that it was Master Windu and Master Yoda who brought me in on this secret, I would never have believed it possible that the Sith could have returned without the Order seeing it coming. But they have, and I will not retreat from reality."

"I'm afraid far too many Jedi will want to try to retreat from reality rather than face it. We have become arrogant in our beliefs: too certain, so proud of our interpretation of the Force, the Oath, and the Order's place in the universe," Shaak said seriously, moving to take a similar position across from her friend as Ranma did the same, sitting close by her with their knees lightly touching. "As for our mission, were you told how we were initially sent on this mission?"

Luminara nodded, and from there Ranma and Shaak took turns describing the mission from the moment they arrived on Dorin to the confrontation with Set Harth. The fact that it happened on Vjun made Luminara sigh sadly. She remembered all too well how the Jedi and the Republic had been forced to abandon that planet. "I don't know if you know this," she said, looking at Shaak, "but we lost seventeen Jedi who went to help Vjun when it started to fall into that Dark Side created madness. But it spread too quickly, we couldn't overcome it. And there were simply too many sentients being affected by it right and left for us to fight."

"It would have been too much for even us as well, if not for Force Light and Ranma's ability to utterly break the laws of nature," Shaak replied, ending on a droll tone after starting out seriously.

"Are you going to keep badgering me about that, love?" Ranma asked rhetorically. "I did warn you once that I could do that, after all. And I like to think that I've done some other pretty amazing things since we met."

"You created a tornado, of course I'm going to keep harping on about it!" Shaak said, reaching over to lightly run her fingers through his hair. Ranma looked at her, his eyes brimming with good humor and love, and she smiled back at him before they were brought back to the reality of their discussion by Luminara's gentle cough.

Definitely going to have to warn Aayla about being around these two. As an empath, the emotions they put out might affect her in unusual ways. "What does this attack tell you about this Sith?"

"They've got a lot of resources," Ranma said promptly. "They have a lot of both money and influence, and I don't think Set Harth was the master in this equation either. He was just another assassin."

"Agreed," Shaak said with a firm nod. "We've talked about this, and there is a distinct resemblance between Set Harth and this Dark clown face…" Shaak paused, realizing she had used Ranma's name for the Sith that had died on Naboo just a little too late to stop it from slipping out.

"Dark clown face?" Luminara asked incredulously.

"Well, we never learned his name!" Ranma said with a laugh. "Making light of him is a sort of way to give his spirit the finger, y'know?"

"No, I don't know, and I'm happier in my ignorance about that specific matter," Luminara said dryly. "Any other insights?"

"Sith alchemy needs to be added to the list of things this hidden Sith knows about. Those four Tarentatek I dealt with, they could not have been controlled even by a Dark Side user without knowledge of how to create and bind them. The histories are clear about that at least. I would also say that we need to look very closely at the various arms dealers in the Republic, as Ranma said. That was a lot of capital grade weapons systems they had prepared for us there. "

"I would've said that we also have to look into the communications network, but I understand from Master Windu that that's already happening. So I'll say that I think that Koon was manipulated into seeing that vision," Ranma said bluntly shaking his head.

"You are not the first person to come to that conclusion. In fact, Master Yoda apparently realized that almost immediately after Master Koon had that vision in the first place."

Ranma's eyes narrowed, but then they widened suddenly as he understood. "Ah, okay," he said slowly. "So, what did the Order do while Shaak and I were being your stalking horses?" Luminara looked blank at that, and Ranma rolled his eyes. "When we were being your bait?"

At that Luminara nodded. "Not quite bait, but perhaps your actions were indeed used as a ruse to draw attention to you rather than to certain other things. I am not privy to all of them. We have decided to work via a cell system just in case this Sith is able to somehow capture one of the Jedi in the know about him. Highly doubtful, but it could still happen." She looked at the two of them seriously, but her eyes were twinkling lightly. "As for one event I do know about? A certain swordmaster of your acquaintance, Ranma, is now assigned to the Mandalore sector as its Sector Jedi."

Ranma leaned back slightly at that, whistling silently. "That's big. That is really big. I can't imagine he was very happy, having to deal with the Mandalorians again, but still I think he'll get on well with Bo and the Reborn if they can both look past their prejudices."

"I have it on good authority that, in spite of past experiences, they are getting on tremendously," Luminara said dryly. "And it makes the alliance between us and the Mandalorians far more solid than it would have been if we tried to send any other Jedi. Dooku is both respected and somewhat feared among the Mandalorians, and his status as a combat specialist is of particular interest. Even setting aside the fact that he had studied with you."

Shaak spoke up quietly, bringing the discussion back to Ranma's initial point. "What is being done to make certain that this Sith cannot further manipulate the Force Visions of other Jedi?"

"The High Council has issued an injunction that any visions of particular import or clarity need to be reported to Master Yaddle or Master Yoda. Their clarity will be questioned, and any follow-up to them will be made in overwhelming force, up to five or even ten Jedi per mission. However, Master Yoda believes that he won't try that technique again, not for a while, anyway. It was a gamble, betting on an ability we had no way of knowing the Sith had, and it failed. From now on we will be on the lookout for it," Luminara said.

Shaak nodded, and Ranma spoke up, taking her hand in his and looking at Luminara seriously. "We're done talking about our mission. What about you? What can you tell us about the Order's long-term plans?"

"We are slowly growing the temples on Kashyyyk and Dac. That planet has been labeled as home to a third temple now, and we have even assigned two clans of younglings there, though we went about doing so far more slowly than we worked on Kashyyyk. The younglings were sent out of the temple a few months back after each youngling had been labeled as being too weak in the Force to be Jedi. There are no computerized recordings about them still being on the Order's rosters."

Luminara sighed. "We won't be able to do the same here on Dorin, however. I understand that Master Koon has returned to the temple to discuss matters about that in person with Mace, but we can't take any more training clans away from the Temple without it being noticeable to anyone who has dealings with the Temple at all."

"And you're certain that the Temple is under observation," Shaak stated. "A good assumption to make, I'd say, if a little late."

"We have known for some time that the Order was under observation. The how of it had eluded us until a few months back, when Master Tholme began to revamp our security protocols. That is still an ongoing project, unfortunately."

"Removing the kids from the Temple like that makes me think you're worried about a decapitation strike. So what's being done to actually defend the Temple?" Ranma asked.

"Quite a bit. We are slowly bringing in parts for defensive batteries, a shield generator, and other such items," Luminara said, shaking her head sadly. "But Masters Windu and Yoda are envisioning a war, or a series of large wars, which will force the Jedi Order to pour out our numbers in an effort to stop the bloodshed. We have actually shared those fears with the Chancellor. He too is worried about the growing militarism of groups such as the Trade Federation and the Techno Union."

Luminara shrugged. "He is attempting to use the laws of the Republic to cut at the rights of such groups, but is making little headway thanks to their sycophants in the Senate. There is another side of the Senate that wishes to build up the Republic Navy in direct response to this threat, of course. They are building that onto Chancellor Palpatine's idea of more centralized government to cut down on the power of such groups as the Unions and the Federation, which of course has caused a backlash in the Senate. The Senate is becoming more and more a battleground of various groups."

"I presume that the Order is continuing to look at the Trade Federation and anyone associated with it closely?" Shaak asked tartly. She all too easily remembered that several Jedi had lost their lives on Naboo against the Sith there, who had fought as if he was allied with the Trade Federation.

"We are, indeed. In fact there's talk about assigning a few teams of Master Tholme's computer investigators to look at their books clandestinely, trying to see if we can discover anything from that avenue. Unfortunately, Jedi are not nearly as good at ferreting out secrets in that particular area as the Neimodians are in hiding such in the first place," Luminara replied sadly.

"We are also gathering allies here and there among the more militaristic societies like the Mandalorians, the Nova Guard, and others. The Mon Calamari, in particular, are being very helpful, working with us to start designing capital ships for any future endeavor. They don't quite see the concerns we do with the growing fractures within the Republic; they are somewhat safe out in their own sector from any such, and the fact is that their borders are not nearly as open to outside influence as others are. But such currents will eventually reach their shores too, as the Mon Calamari say.

"We also have a new starfighter design in the works at Kuat. That one we won't even have to fund ourselves, since the Chancellor has agreed that we require it and was able to get the Senate to sign off on the budget increase necessary to pay for it," Luminara finished.

Ranma chuckled at that, remembering the discussion he had overheard between the Chancellor and Anakin about the various starfighter designs he had wanted Anakin's opinion on for the Jedi in the near future. He and Shaak then became serious, asking a few questions about what the rest of the Order was up to. But eventually Ranma decided to address the other side of the equation. "All you've said is good in terms of defense, but what about actually finding this Sith? Has there been any progress with that?"

Luminara sighed, allowing her Jedi serenity to fade for a moment to show her worry. "Nothing. There has been no progress there. We have added three more Jedi Shadows to the Shadow sect. We have the started to retrain Jedi who show any aptitude with computers in slicing."

Slicing was this universes word for hacking, Ranma knew.

"We have found nothing. Dead ends, shadows, dummy programs, dummy corporations. Anything and everything that this Sith does is done at fifteen or twenty steps removed. If anyone knows anything about the Sith personally, they certainly aren't talking."

Ranma scowled at that, but Shaak shook her head. "You have to remember, Ranma, that there are only around ten thousand Jedi in the Order. There are more than twenty times more planets within the Republic than there are Jedi. And not all Jedi have been brought into the secret, of course, or could even be trusted to investigate anything clandestinely. Far too many Jedi are heavy handed about how they go about pursuing their missions, believing more in the rightness of their position than the need for subtlety."

"Exactly, and given the corruption still rampant within the Senate Bureau of Intelligence and the amount of penetration the Sith have into the various bureaucratic arms of the Republic, we can't trust Republic's resources to help us here. All the criminal underground specialists are looking for any sign of some overarching group or individual, but we haven't found anything. We are attempting to create a series of informants and spies of our own, but it is slow going even with the Dark Woman and Master Tholme heading the operation."

Luminara allowed a smile to appear on her face then. "The only good news about that side of things is that Knight Vos has been cleared by Master Bulq to reclaim his status as a Knight, and that Master Tholme has added him into the effort."

Ranma leaned back, putting his hands behind his head as he thought for a moment. This sure as hell was not an area he had any interest or experience in, but there was one worry he could spot here. "I… I understand everything you've said, but given how far ahead this Sith has obviously been planning how to hide, we need to think about his goals and how he could hurt the Order in turn. Not physically, that's obvious, but what about in other ways? If I were you I'd think about other avenues of attack, though I have no idea what those could be."

"Public perception," Shaak said softly, making both Luminara and Ranma turn to her. "If the Sith can turn the people of the Republic against us, the Order is doomed. We Jedi are seen as outsiders far too often, meddlers sometimes and worse on many planets. If the public of the Republic as a whole start seeing us not as necessary outsiders but as enemies, the Order cannot stand. The Order has concentrated too much for too long on making certain those in power, in the Senate in particular, at the very least, see the need for the Jedi. We need to make certain the public too understands that not only are we needed, but that we are fallible, that we are just like them.

Luminara looked shaken at that, having never even considered the idea that the Sith could attack the Jedi in the field of public perception. "I will relay your thoughts to the High Council after I am finished healing young Sha," she said quietly. "And again, Ranma," she said, smiling at the pigtailed martial artist, "you show that you are far more than even your techniques would suggest."

"I'm not just a pretty face," Ranma replied with a laugh, waving off Luminara's words. He might have thought up the idea of different ways to attack the Jedi, but it had been Shaak who had seen one.

Shaak couldn't help it. "You're not even a pretty face, Ranma!" So saying, she pulled out a small water bottle from her ki space and sprayed Ranma with it in the face. "Oh wait, now you are," she finished impishly.

Ranma growled, but Luminara and Shaak both laughed, and she sighed, nodding reluctant agreement seeing that the feeling of the Force giggling at his transformation had helped break the sober mood. Since at this point all they would be doing was talking in circles, that was fine by him. "All right, you got me there."

OOOOOOO

Master Plo Koon arrived a few days after Ranma and Shaak had. After arriving at the temple and saying hello to his niece, Plo met with the two lovers and Master Unduli. "I have been brought into the great secret," he said, his metal-tipped fingers tapping against one another. "I understand what the Order wishes to do here on Dorin, and I will do my part. I will meet with the First Elder later today and try to convince him to agree to put up a large number of Force sensitive children here."

"You say Force sensitive children, but not younglings?" Shaak asked, jumping on the odd wording.

"Master Luminara was correct when she said that we cannot remove more younglings from the Temple without it becoming obvious. The temple on Dac has caused a lot of issues with the Senate already: they fear that the Order is distancing themselves from the Senate, and a lot of them see that as the Jedi preparing to abandon the Senate. We have lost allies there, and even some of our staunchest supporters are worried now," Master Koon said sadly. "Kashyyyk was one thing, given the Wookies' respect for the Jedi, the planet's position, and Grandmaster Yoda's long dealings with the Wookies. But Dac is even further off the beaten path, and the Mon Calamari's sector is even more closed to outsiders than Kashyyyk or Dorin."

"Besides, even with Master Yoda and Master Windu working together to reclaim numerous Jedi younglings from the farming collectives, there are not that many of us. Will be lucky if we find forty or fifty Force sensitive children out there to bring to this newest temple," Koon finished

This statement and the fact that Shaak and Luminara were both nodding drove home to Ranma once more how rare Force sensitives were. It was not one in forty thousand, as he had initially thought when he met Dooku and still thought a few years after. No, it was one in every ten or twelve billion or so. It was terrifying how spread out the Order was even in a time of peace. I don't even wanta think what would happen if a true galactic war breaks out, which I'm rather afraid we're all seeing in the future.

"Who will join you here?" Luminara asked.

"I will not be teaching here, at least not full-time," Plo replied, smiling faintly. "That would be too sedentary a life for me. I understand that a Master Trebek and Master Tra Saa will be here, with Master Saa being in overall charge along with the Ancient Sage. Given what I remember of both worthies, they should get on famously. Master Saa will arrive here after turning over the Ryloth sector to Knight Secura in a few months."

"My young friend has earned her Knighthood the hard way, but I am glad to see that she is finally been given it", Shaak said, her voice showing pride in her friend and acknowledgment of the horrors Aayla had endured. Beside her, Luminara nodded firm agreement with her friend.

Master Koon simply nodded. While he knew Aayla and, in fact, liked the younger Knight well enough, he didn't count himself among her friends like these two were. Instead of commenting on that, however, he held up a small cage with which he had arrived. "Now that the serious discussions are over, can you tell me why I was told to bring this creature along?"

Within the cage was a small catlike creature, and Ranma glared at it, fully knowing what it represented.

Shaak smiled, taking the cage from Master Koon, and explained. "We're going to stay here for a while so Ranma and I can learn a few of the locals' tricks, and I want to help Ranma finish training to control the Cat Fist techniques."

Luminara and Master Koon blinked. "Cat Fist?"

Sighing, Ranma explained, and Luminara actually began to glare, her Jedi serenity leaving her at the mention of the child abuse Ranma was put through, while Master Koon touched his lightsaber for a moment. "And your own father did this to you?"

"Yep," Ranma replied, chuckling. He had long abandoned any hate or anger at his old man for what he'd done. He hadn't forgiven him, but clinging on to those emotions would have served no one even before he arrived in this weird universe. "Fantastic martial artist, damn good teacher, horrible human being: that was my old man. Still, Shaak's right: we've been making progress," he said, turning away from the catlike animal to smile warmly at Shaak, who smiled back. "And as long as Shaak's beside me, I know I won't go too badly wrong..."

"I am going to use one of your lines on you now, love," Shaak said, pulling her hand back from where she had covered Ranma's mouth. "Please don't jinx it."

OOOOOOO

Mace leaned back in his chair in the High Council chamber, looking at Master Unduli, who had just informed Mace and Mace alone of what Ranma and Master Ti had found. He wished Yoda was there to share in this secret, but he had long since returned to Kashyyyk, and there was no way he would share this secret over the Hypercom. "Thank the Force we had already begun to use couriers to share secrets like this. And they didn't tell you where it was?"

"No they did not, a decision I agree with. If the Sith start to act more openly, couriers like myself are going to be targets for both assassination and kidnapping. Knowing the secret of the Katana Fleet is bad enough; knowing exactly where it is would be worse."

"Indeed. But I will need to think very deeply on what to do here. Creating the structure to take advantage of the fleet will be hard, but…if we use our contacts with the Mon Calamari, it could be possible… But how to pay for it?" Mace scowled, rubbing at his forehead. "It is at times like this that I wish more Jedi were capable accountants rather than diplomats."

Luminara chuckled wryly at that, but could offer no solutions. The best bet would be to simply wait to make use of the Katana Fleet until they could openly move against the Sith, whoever it was. But that was so reactionary. Everything they were doing was reactionary. And Mace, indeed, everyone who knew the secret save Yoda, was getting thoroughly tired of it.

OOOOOOO

Ranma gently and ever so slowly pulled himself out of Shaak, igniting a wordless noise of protest from her despite the fact that she was still gasping in air from their previous exertions. He twisted his body slightly to land beside her on the mattress, and she nestled into his arms, her horn gently scraping against the side of his head. One hand gently traced the contours of his stomach muscles and the various bite marks she had left there as one of his hands gently cupped her rear and the other began to stroke down one of her lekku, which had draped itself over his chest.

Most of the time over the past few months the two of them had spent their evenings and nights down on Dorin with the Baran Do in their monastery. While Plo and his niece had still been here, there was always someone to talk to or practice with, either with one of the other Jedi or the monks. Luminara had long since returned to Coruscant, alas, though she and Shaak had had several weeks to catch up before she had decided that Sha had been healed enough and left.

This plus the fact that their ship was basically being taken apart to repair as much damage as could be had forced the lovers to spend even their nights in the monastery. Since the monastery had somewhat thick walls they had at first thought they could get away with being together at night. However, that had not proven to be the case. Having a furiously blushing Luminara banging on their door and ordering them to, "cut it out, for the Force's sake!" had been somewhat traumatizing. After that, if they wanted to engage in some lovemaking they had had to head into the city and find a hotel which catered to offworlders. But hotels were too impersonal for either of them to like that, and so they had cut back on that aspect of their relationship.

So it was no surprise to anyone that once the locals had finished repairing the Wild Light, they had immediately taken a shuttle up to their ship once more. The two of them had barely closed the landing ramp before Shaak was in Ranma's arms, his arms around her as they kissed.

And, Shaak thought as she shuddered a little as Ranma his fingers grazed one of her nipples, much to HK's chagrin, there was only one attempt to plant anything aboard the ship or in any way impede the progress of the repairs.

Someone had orchestrated a fight near the Wild Light in order to draw off HK's attention, but it hadn't worked. The Rodian who had attempted to get past the droid had been apprehended, with broken legs admittedly, but there had been no follow-up. On top of the Rodian, the local security forces had nabbed a few criminal types that had been involved in the planning and the feint, but none of them had known anything beyond the fact that they had been paid electronically to put a tracker on the Mon Calamari designed ship. They hadn't even known who the owners were. The look of horror on their faces when they heard the ship was registered to a Jedi was rather amusing.

It has been a good few months, Shaak thought placidly, only realizing that she had spoken aloud as Ranma's agreement rumbled in her montrals.

Kissing the top of her head, Ranma gave his own thought on this manner. "Yep, it has at that. I've mastered the Neko Ken, we've both learned the Baran Do ability to manipulate cloth, we've picked up a few new toys along the way, and, of course, our ship is repaired."

"It is as repaired as it can be," Shaak said warningly. "The ship still has some structural integrity issues, and the hyperspace drives are going to be finicky." The shield generators and the power generators, however, were all fully back online, however. Their magazines of proton torpedoes were full, and their weapons were also back online and ready for action.

"Well that brings us back to the discussion we were having on the shuttle coming up here," Ranma said, twisting slightly and then pulling Shaak on top of him so that they could look into one another's faces without twisting their necks. One of his hands still remained clasped on her rear while the other trailed up and down her back and back lek. Her own hands slid under his head, as she looked down at him, love in her eyes as much as in his. "Where do we go from here, Shaak?"

Under these circumstances, most women might well have taken that to be a question about where their relationship was going, but Shaak had no such concerns. Instead she took this question at face value and smiled somewhat wanly. "As a Jedi, I find it irritating that we can't take part in the hunt for the Sith. There are simply too few clues to go on for now, and neither of us have the talents necessary to help on that front. Not without any specific targets to spy on or to stalk."

Ranma leaned back, shuddering as the fingers under his head began to twist into his hair and knead his scalp. "The HRS, that is the weak link," he muttered. "It's one of the things that make the Republic as a whole work. The Sith has to either monitor what's going on there himself or have a trusted lieutenant do it."

"It is the weak link, and it is utterly controlled by the Senate. We can't investigative the HRS except in small lots, not without either the Senate becoming involved or warning the Sith that we're after him. And besides, there's nothing we could do about that job anyway that is not already being done."

"True. Ah well," Ranma said, setting that aside to give his opinion on where they should go from here. "I'd prefer to head to a world with some plants. Dorin has been nice, and it's got a certain…" Ranma paused, searching for the right words.

"Rugged beauty?" Shaak supplied.

"There you go," Ranma said with a smile, squeezing her back lek for a moment, causing her to gasp in delight. "But I prefer to see some green around me. We could head to your home planet?" he asked hesitantly, knowing what going there would mean for the two of them.

Shaak smiled and leaned in, kissing him very tenderly on the lips for a moment before pulling back. "That is a lovely idea, Ranma, but I decided I would rather like to have at least one friend standing beside me as my clan sister when we marry. Either Luminara or Aayla, one of the two."

"Not Bo Katan?" Ranma asked, waggling his eyebrows jokingly.

He winced as Shaak smacked his chest, pulling out one of her hands from behind his head to do it before pushing that hand between their bodies, laying it between their stomachs, which were pressed together. "Not funny, Ranma."

The hand she had squeezed between them once more gently began to knead Ranma's muscles, which quivered and twitched under her touch. There was a certain atavistic thrill in that for Shaak, knowing how monstrously strong Ranma was and yet also knowing how tender, how gentle he was with her.

"But trying to finagle their schedules so that one of them can get free is going to be a little tricky and will require some actual forward planning," Shaak continued as if the interruption hadn't occurred.

"Do you want Ahsoka involved?" Ranma asked seriously.

Shaak blinked, cocking her head. "How would a child be involved in a marriage ceremony?"

It was Ranma's turn to blink, and then he laughed. "Sorry, there is a version of the wedding ceremony back on my home world where they have these…flower girls, I think they're called? Anyway, they go down the aisle strewing flowers along the ground before the bride comes down. The bride's also supposed to be all dressed in white…I think?"

"While I could pull off white rather well," Shaak said judiciously, causing Ranma to laugh, "I don't understand why white would be involved in the ceremony of marriage. And as for a flower girl, no that sounds rather silly and far too ostentatious for me."

Shaak and Ahsoka had talked via the Hypercom several times since they had decided to stay on Dorin, and the young Togrutan's training was proceeding apace. She had even begun to train with her lightsaber recently and had shown a certain aptitude for it. She was in no way as advanced as Anakin was, who, according to the last missive, was actually already being approved to become a full-time padawan to someone. Who that someone would be was still up in the air, but it was a sign of how quickly Anakin had flown through the younglings' training thanks to his immensely strong connection to the Force. Ahsoka was strong in the Force, but in comparison to Anakin that was like comparing a torch to a bonfire.

"Or we could head back to Dac and get the ship fully repaired?" Ranma supplied another idea.

"True enough, and moving in that direction would probably be a very good idea for several reasons, since Shili lies in that direction from here," Shaak said, only to frown as she looked away in thought. "However, is that what we should truly be doing?"

Ranma paused, looking at her in silence, then nodded slowly. "You're thinking about asking the Force again where we should go, aren't you. We've had mixed reviews on that process, you know."

His tone was dust dry, but it wasn't condemning, and Shaak smiled. "We might have run into a few more adventures than we would've otherwise, but can you honestly say we haven't done any good by trusting in the Force?" Shaak waited, but she knew Ranma couldn't say that, and he declined to reply.

"So you want to try and meditate again to try and figure out where we should go? After what happened to Plo I don't know if I'd trust any vision we could get," Ranma warned.

"True, though I think that particular trick is one the Sith won't try again. But even if the Sith attempts to fool us with false images, I believe we can tell the difference by using the Force Light technique. While we, both of us, reach out to the Force, I can also use my Living Force reserves to power Force Light into our minds. That should keep any false images at bay, though it will be exhausting in the extreme. And it certainly won't help us to look at any long term visions, only that which directly affects us."

In fact, Shaak wasn't certain this method would work at all; she just hoped they could push the Veil back long enough to get an idea of where the Force wanted them to be in a few weeks' time. Anything beyond that, she knew, was beyond their power to see with this technique.

As a Togrutan, Shaak tended to think of the Veil of the Dark Side like a discordant noise hammering into her senses, blocking her from hearing anything with her montrals beyond what she could actually see. The more you tried to force your senses to hear something beyond it, the louder the Veil became at the same time, blocking them.

"Further," Shaak went on, still seriously, "we need to move on. Our being here will bring undue attention to Master Saa and the children who will be gathered here if we are still here when they arrive. In fact, we probably shouldn't have stayed here at all because of that, and certainly not with the Baran Do. I would never have agreed to that if they hadn't told us they were planning to move to another monastery anyway. One we don't know about. Indeed, one no one but the monks themselves do."

"A planet's a large place to hide a small community like that," Ranma agreed. "Besides, they have the locals on their side. It would take a full planetary invasion to find them with the locals helping them. And since the planet itself is the locals' best defense, I don't see that happening."

Ranma grinned evilly. "I'd bet some good money the Baran Do could 'predict' a few wind storms into being to deal with any invading army. Still, I agree that asking the Force where we should go is a good idea."

"Then, in that case, doing so can wait a few hours," Shaak said firmly. The hand that had been pressed between their bodies skated downwards to Ranma's still hard cock, which had been pressing up into her stomach for the last few minutes. "Right now, I think we have more important things on our mind…"

Later, the two of them sat in the sitting area, both of them in meditation poses, facing one another, their hands crossed in their laps. Shaak had insisted that Ranma join her for this, despite the fact that he still didn't quite like pushing out his sense of self into the Force like that. Still, he agreed with her that this was a good idea and harbored the hope that the Force would direct them to wherever this Sith was hiding.

But the instant that the two of them connected with the Force as a whole, Ranma realized that wasn't going to happen. Whatever else, the Veil of the Dark Side was still too strong. The Force Light Shaak generated pushed it back, but that only meant the Veil built up out just beyond their senses. But they could still ask the Force, 'where should we go from here?' for the short term and actually get a reply untainted by the Veil.

The vision wasn't clear, and it certainly wasn't very informative, but it definitely showed them enough to be concerned. The visions were scattered, but a few of them showed two of their old friends, something neither of them had anticipated. One was Master Fay, wounded or unconscious, it was impossible to tell, she was lying there so still. The other was Kit Fisto, fighting what looked like a small army of droids. Another was of two unknown Jedi, and a third, some kind of birdlike alien that Ranma had never seen the like of before. Then all three disappeared, subsumed into darkness. What that part of the vision meant Ranma couldn't tell other than the fact that it was pointing to some kind of extreme danger.

A moment later their senses were back in their physical bodies, shaking their heads and looking at one another. "Did we get a direction there?" he asked hesitantly.

Without hesitation Shaak nodded and pulled up a holographic image of the Republic for a moment, while the feeling of the vision was still fresh in her mind, a clarion call in her mind of singing bells, almost, and distant laughter full of joy. This vision definitely had come from the Light Side of the Force, something she knew, having heard that sound numerous times over her association with Ranma and his curse.

It wasn't from the Force as a whole, something that Shaak was going to have to think about more closely in the future. I can also tell we would have been unable to get an answer on anything more than that, especially questions about the Sith. And even this took it out of me, she thought, swaying as she sat there.

Ranma was no better off. He looked as if he had run his equivalent of a hundred kilometer race, sweat pouring off his body as he leaned back on his arms, shaking his head.

"This is where we need to go," Shaak said eventually, her finger hovering over the holograph.

"Which is where?" Ranma asked, staring blankly at the hologram.

The Gardaji Rift in the Gardaji Sector of the Tingel Arm," she said thoughtfully. "An unknown and unnamed system."

"And all that means exactly what to me?" Ranma asked.

"That would be the Corporate Sector, on the far side of it from the rest of the Republic. That and the fact it isn't named probably means it is not a very well developed area, if it has any industry at all," Shaak mused. "It could be a newly discovered system, but I can't tell you more."

Ranma frowned, thinking about what he knew about the corporate sector. "That's where groups like the Trade Federation and others have full control, right? Makes sense we saw droids battling Kit, then."

"Not the Trade Federation itself, but other groups, yes. They have holdings there, of course, but for the most part the Corporate Sector is made up of smaller groups of companies that have banded together and control the area entirely rather than one large corporation. The Republic treads lightly there so long as the sector pays its taxes. It's a decently strong industrial sector, almost equal to one of the Core sectors and with a lot more coordination and control than a Core World sector, since, of course, most such are focused inward on manufacturing goods for their own people rather than providing goods for trade with the rest of the Republic."

"And those Jedi we saw? I didn't recognize any of them, and what do you think was going on with that bird guy? The one that was alone for a moment there. It was certainly colorful." In fact, he looked rather like a gay bird to Ranma, but he wasn't about to say that aloud.

"I don't even recognize the species, Ranma, let alone the Jedi in question. You can't expect me to recognize every Jedi we see," Shaak said, sighing faintly. "As for the other two, one of them was a Miralukan; I've met a few of them, though not that one personally. The other was Master Thracia Co Leem. I have met her a few times. She is a Consular who specializes in missions that involve problems with planetary environments and damages to said, much like my own master did. The two of them often compared notes on local laws impacting that specialty."

Ranma nodded, remembering that Shaak had met the Barabels, the large, tough as nails reptiles that had sent aid to them against the Death Watch and others after their bounties on one such mission. Standing up on shaking legs, he forced a small grin on his face. "Well in that case, we're jumping into the unknown again. Nothing new there."

"I'll start calculating the jump coordinates with Tune," Shaak said, trying to stand only to fail. The meditation process had taken it out on her.

At this point HK, who had been standing by silently in his corner, spoke up. "Wry observation: Perhaps mistress, master, you should also look into eating something. You meatbags are most inefficient and require sustenance at regular intervals to be at peak efficiency regardless of your level of activity. And you have been sitting doing your Force meditation for half of the day."

Scowling, Ranma grabbed a nearby dataslate to look at the time and gasped. "Shaak, HK's right. We were meditating for nearly ten hours!"

"….That is something to think about later," Shaak said with a sigh, holding up one hand to to Ranma, who promptly pulled her to her feet. "At the moment I think we need to get moving."

OOOOOOO

Jedi Master Coleman Trebor stared as the video recordings came to an end, pulling at his long chin as his species often when in deep cogitation. There's no doubt about it; there is a deliberate campaign at work here to turn public opinion against the Jedi. Master Ti was right.

The video he had just watched was about a woman searching for her son, who the Jedi had taken away to be trained. It was a typical sob story in many ways, pulling on the heart strings of the locals, but it also painted the Order in as bad a light as possible: as child kidnappers, as heartless mystics who had no grasp of family or the reality of the universe beyond their connection to the Force. Coleman had seen the like before, but this one, this one did a far better job of making the Order look horrible to the common man then most.

Nor was that the only video Coleman had viewed today since arriving on Axum. Others were wild denunciatory diatribes against the Jedi: vile and vituperative and not very compelling, save perhaps to those who wished to hate that which was different. Others were subtle, like the grotesque work of art he had just seen. Still more seemed to attack the idea of nonhuman Jedi, as if they were a source of corruption within the Order.

And it is far too prevalent! Too many sources, too many examples of the Jedi being seen as the villain, the outsider, the meddling or unnatural ones. Yes, there must be a single driving mind behind this somewhere. I'm going to have to handle this very carefully. Luckily this campaign has only just started to turn against the Jedi rather than simply portraying us as fallible, so it might be able to reverse the trend, make us more personable and less like unfeeling mystics.

Yet that small piece of good news was overshadowed by the fact this was a Core World planet! There were something like seven trillion sentients on this planet. It was one of the Core World systems, where life was easy, hardship almost unknown, and the governments were deeply entrenched. The Order has been looking towards the Outer Rim and the Expansion regions for the threat. We have neglected to build think about the Core Worlds. That must change.

Turning away from the screen, Coleman Trebor made plans to move deeper into the Core Worlds even as his mind continued to work at the problem. If this is an example of what I will find on other worlds, then…then the problem will be even harder to get to the bottom of. And if I cannot find the source, will I be able to combat this assault? Only time would tell about that, but one thing was certain. I need to follow this, but I need to do so very, very carefully.

OOOOOOO

Shaak and Tune's prediction as to how long it would take to get to the system where the Force had told them they were needed was spot on. They flashed through a series of trade routes to the Gardaji Sector, then traveled slowly through the Gardaji Rift for a time. The Rift had no trade routes through it, few star systems, and numerous gravitational hazards, making the area both somewhat tough to get to and out of the way of the rest of the Sector, which itself was seen as something of a backwater. It even had limited Hypercom relays, and most of the Rift was well beyond the Hypercom's reach. How rumors of the 'fastest ships in the galaxy' had spread to the Temple from here was something Ranma wondered about. But Shaak had no reply to that.

They came out right outside the system, then Shaak took over. Using the Force, she jumped the ship deeper into the system than Tune's electronic mind could have managed. Here, that was tougher than in most other systems. Though this particular unnamed system had only one planet, it had three suns: two small blue stars well away from the primary yellow sun. That made for some interesting gravitic calculations which would have slowed Tune down for hours, but thanks to Shaak they didn't need to wait.

The next instant the Wild Light came out about fifteen minutes straight line flight from the planet. Ranma might have questioned why they came out so far away when they could have jumped right to the edge of the planet's gravity well, but beyond the strange anomaly of the stars, their sensors had picked up something else: an ongoing fight of some kind going on over the planet.

Staring at the goings on as their sensors started to tell them more, Shaak shook her head. "I think we might have arrived too late with too little here, Ranma. That is a pocket armada; I'm counting two hundred plus Vulture fighters already in space and fifteen capital ships of different types. Ten cruisers of some kind; their IFF is reading as belonging to the Republic Outland Regions Security Force? Good grief, such a long and pretentious name. Still, they look to be dedicated combat platforms, even if they are only slightly larger than a Consular."

Eyes narrowing, Shaak went on. "Further, we have two Trade Federation mid-size cargo haulers and a Captor class freighter, which is somewhat larger than the haulers. We also have three sky mine delivery ships. Thankfully, nothing here is the size of a dreadnought, let alone a Lucrehulk, but even so..."

As she spoke the display between them on the console changed, filling in details for Ranma so he knew what they were saying. Though inwardly he shared Shaak's worries, Ranma forced himself to shrug. "Meh, it's just a target rich environment. And luckily for us they seem to have begun fighting among themselves. Look at what's happening around the mine layers."

This was indeed the case. As they watched the mine layers attempted to break for the outer edge of the gravity well, only to be blocked off by several hundred Vulture fighters which fired on them. Then five of the cruisers opened up on the mine layers, destroying several ships and breaking formation with the others, who seemed shocked for a second, then began to open fire in turn.

Below in the atmosphere there were a series of uncounted explosions suddenly going off, and Shaak sighed in relief. "Ah… The sky mines exploded via remote control. With them out of the way, whoever is on the ground can join the battle in space without taking exorbitant losses getting through them."

Sky mines were an old technology, but one that could be used to devastating effect so long as you weren't choosy about who you were devastating. They were tiny, only the size of Yoda, say, and very hard to lock onto let alone shoot down. But beyond a single transmitter and a hardwired command to explode if a code was sent to them, they were proximity mines stacked with enough explosives to batter capital ships, let alone anything smaller. They were expensive for their size and only really worth it in large quantities, but two ships could have filled the skies of the planet so much nothing could have gotten through them.

At that point in their musings the two lovers' arrival was finally noticed by the local belligerents. "Masters, we are being hailed by two different sources."

"Three," Shaak corrected, a feeling of relief and welcome coming over her as she felt someone else reach out to her through the Force. "Master Fay knows we are here and has requested aid. The ships that just broke off are working for us, but the others are here to take command of the planet from its inhabitants." As she spoke, the ground of the planet below seemingly came alive as several hundred more blips appeared there. Racing upwards, the blue of friendly forces matched the red of the forces in space.

"Tune, get in contact with those ships that are trying to break off from the blockade. Tell them we're allies. But open up a com to the other group. Let's see if they have anything we want to hear. Besides, any chance to use the 'make 'em mad, make 'em stupid' technique is a good one," Ranma said, finishing on a jaunty tone, now somewhat more confident as a plan had begun to form in his brain as he saw only a few dozen Vulture fighters breaking off from the fight over the planet.

He was about to turn to HK and tell him the plan when Tune complied, and a voice emitted from the radio. "Incoming craft, this is Admiral Wilhuff Tarkin of the Republic Outlands Regions Security Force. You are ordered to leave the area immediately. This system is now under my control."

The voice was arrogant, haughty, and aloof, yet also somewhat shocked sounding. If Ranma had to guess, this voice was of a man who wasn't used to chaos like what he was facing now, with seven of his ships no longer obeying his orders. That fight was still ongoing, but the new starfighters from the planet had pulled off a lot of the Vultures even as more of them were launched from the three Trade Federation ships.

Eyes narrowing, Shaak spoke up before Ranma could. "This is Jedi Master Shaak Ti. Since when does an Eriadan security officer have any jurisdiction here deep in the Outer Rim and further more in the Corporate Sector? You are quite literally half a galaxy away from home…Admiral." Inside, Shaak made a note of this. An alliance between the Trade Federation and Eriadu, one of the most important and powerful systems in the Outer Rim, could be a very bad sign.

The hesitation with which she used the word admiral seemed to anger the man on the other side of the communications, and Ranma mimed clapping to Shaak even as they continued to roar towards the Vultures sent out towards them. "Since these are my ships and my forces! This planet represents too powerful a resource to allow anyone else to have control of. I will have it, or no one will. I demand you surrender, Jedi. You are outgunned and outnumbered here."

"Ranma, do you want to surrender?" Shaak asked, looking over at her copilot.

"Nahh…" Ranma said. "Don't think I want to do that." With that Ranma opened fire with the ship's quad lasers, smashing several of the Vultures out of the sky. The others took evasive action, but HK and Ranma killed them with ease as Shaak took the ship into a series of wild evasive maneuvers. The ship seemed to shudder occasionally thanks to the wild maneuvering and the damages it had taken in the Sith ambush, but the Wild Light was still willing and able to answer her commands, and their maneuverability seemed to take the droid minds of the Vultures aback.

"Tune, wide beam transmission: let's force the rest of this Tarkin fellow's people to realize what they are doing if they continue to obey him." A second later, even as more Vultures swarmed out of the Trade Federation ships to attack their three groups of enemies (although calling the Wild Light alone a group was a misnomer), she spoke, her voice filled with conviction as Master Fay told her via the Force what had occurred here before they arrived. Luckily it was a brief summation, or else Shaak might have been unable to concentrate on both that and her piloting.

"This is Jedi Master Shaak Ti to all ships in this system. You are perpetrating an illegal and unlawful act of aggression against a peaceful planet. The beings of Zonama Sekot did not instigate combat with you; they did nothing to cause this conflict. It you continue, you will all be criminals in the eye of the Order and the Republic."

One other of the ten cruisers seemed to try and break off the blockade to join its fellows. But the Vulture fighters were in space now in vast quantities, nearly a thousand from what Ranma was seeing. Several hundred of them took it under fire immediately, blowing through its shields with their concussion missiles. An instant later the cruiser's former fellows, now no longer shocked by the betrayal of their companions, opened fire, and the ship soon exploded.

"This is Tarkin to all Eridan and allied forces. Any more attempts to join the Jedi or these alien freaks in their untenable position will be met with execution, as all traitors in a time of war should be," Tarkin's voice boomed out over the clear channel.

By this point the Wild Light was in among the main battle. Its quartet of inhabitants worked like the well-oiled machine they were at this point, dodging as much incoming fire as they could with Tune working the shields' energy to keep all of their capacitors in the green. HK and Ranma were their offensive punch, using the quad lasers for now, wanting to save the ion cannon and proton torpedoes for the capital ships.

Shaak was their pilot, her hands moving at a speed even other Jedi could not have matched, her merely decent piloting skills augmented by Ranma's training and her Force senses. Though there were literally a hundred Vultures around them now, none could get a lock on the Wild Light. They took hits from their blaster cannons, but the shields were holding for now.

"Shaak, we've got landing craft coming from that ship over there!" Ranma shouted, seeing two large landing craft coming out of the ship that Shaak had called a Captor class freighter. It was a medium-sized Trade Federation vessel with two wings swept forward along a somewhat ovoid like shape. Between the swept wings was the ship's hanger bay, from which the landing craft, alongside dozens of Vulture fighters, were coming.

"Tune, get me a read on those landing craft," Shaak barked, wincing as she turned in that direction. Again the ship seemed to shudder, but this time it was because they had just taken several hard hits from Vulture blaster cannons. She had dodged a trio of turbolaser shots from the cruisers directly above and behind them at this point, but she couldn't have done that and dodged the Vulture fighter's fire.

As the Wild Light raced through the battle as best it could towards the Captor class, Ranma took a brief second to take in the total battle. The fight was now relatively even. The mine layers had done a micro jump out-system, removing themselves from the fight, but since they didn't have any offensive weaponry beyond their mines, that was fine.

The cruisers which had decided to join the Jedi were staying in a tight formation, joined by several hundred of the local starfighters. The looks of those, as one of them flew by close enough for him to actually see out the viewport, were astonishing. They had a long, thin body and only thin, small wings sticking out their back, with a main gun underslung from the cockpit. It didn't seem to have shields, but was blindingly fast and maneuverable. Its gun was also…weird. Ranma saw it shoot out something like a ball of plasma, only darker, and they hit like solid projectiles. They smashed through instead of blowing through the shields of the Vulture droids, which themselves weren't much to write home about.

While the starfighters dove and ducked around one another, the cruisers moved this way and that, taking fire from their fellows,

"Mistress, we have several hundred unarmed dropships, possible compliment of three hundred droid fighters, headed toward the planet. There are two larger landing craft, heavily armed and with possible shields, leading the way out. They could each carry around a thousand droids of the normal TF type or several armed speeders and even tanks."

"We need to take them out, then. I don't think the locals have any kind of defense force beyond those admittedly odd fighters," Shaak replied.

"Best to try and take that ship out while we do, if we can," Ranma replied.

Nodding, Shaak desperately maneuvered the ship as best she could toward the Captor. The name of it came through over their system, but it didn't register to either pilot. Ranma and HK killed several dozen more Vultures, the cheap but numerous droid fighters dying against the quad lasers. But there was always more, even with the local starfighters hammering the Vultures. One of the allied cruisers had disappeared from the scopes, but three of Tarkin's cruisers were reading as damaged, their shields almost in the red thanks to their former friends' return fire.

"We're not going to get through on our own!" Shaak realized as they were forced to pull back and away from the trio of Trade Federation ships. Or rather, former TF ships, since these three seemed to have been sold off in the recent past. Complete with the army of droids they had aboard them. Something the Order will have to look at in the future.

Before Shaak could open communications to the local starfighters, Master Fay, who was still lightly touching Shaak's mind from the planet below, had already discerned their plans. Over a dozen of the local starfighters moved in to flank or plow the road ahead of the Wild Light. In the next few minutes they broke through, zooming down below the Captor towards the landing craft which had broken the upper atmosphere and were nearly halfway down to the surface.

Their defending Vultures were embroiled in a dogfight below them, in turn, with the locals, but Tarkin, or whoever was directing the battle, couldn't push Vultures in between the Captor above them and the Wild Light before it was on the landing craft. Whatever shields the two larger landing craft had weren't up to stopping the Wild Light from smashing their shields flat with their proton torpedoes, one each. Then a flare of yellow light lanced out, again a single bolt to each of the massive landing craft, and suddenly the lights went out all along their length. Their descent then became that of a rock.

The Wild Light turned back, killing two of the unarmed dropships before the others cut all thrusters and just fell as fast as they could. They fell too quickly for the Wild Light to follow with the number of Vultures that belatedly had pounced on them, and Shaak was forced to turn their course back upwards at an angle. This forced half of the Vultures out of position and the remainder into a stern chase. Even so the shields dropped into the yellow for the first time and stayed there, despite Tune's best efforts.

As the Wild Light zoomed back up to open space, a squadron of new fighters zoomed in from the area of the battle ahead of them in a neat ambush. They were nothing more than triangles, basically, with several thrusters at the back and three weapons sticking out from the front facing points of the triangle. "Those are Sienar Systems A-6 starfighters. Decent maneuverability, but not well armed with three lasers and minimal shielding."

But the Zonama Sekot starfighters around the Wild Light must have expended their munitions, which was a marked downside to projectile weapons, Ranma noted absently. The A-6 starfighters cut through the few remaining around the Wild Light, then began to hammer at the Mon Cal ship itself. Four of them died in as many seconds, but the others fired at the Wild Light from too many angles for the ship, caught in the atmosphere of the planet and too badly hampered in terms of maneuverability to dodge them all.

"Cutting power to the hyperdrive systems. Cutting power from life support and interior lighting," Tune said grimly. Thanks to the Mon Cal redundancy and numerous power generators built into the ship, the shields took the pounding, but were nearer orange than green now.

A second later they were out of the atmosphere, and Shaak could move the ship freely again. Glancing around, the battle seemed to be going against the Jedi and Zonama Sekot forces. There were just too many of the Vultures. And she could see that the Captor had joined the cruisers in pounding their former allies. Two were now without shields but still fighting, even as they lost armor and weapons. One of Tarkin's ships was also gone, and three more had badly fluctuating shields. As she watched, more Zonama Sekot starfighters burst up out of the atmosphere to join their fellows, but nowhere near enough.

The two Trade Federation freighters had moved away from the battle, putting their Vultures and the rest of Tarkin's forces between them and the rest. "Tune, can you tell me if those ships are empty of Vultures and combat droids?" Shaak asked, an idea to help turn the tide coming to her then.

"Negative, master. They are still disgorging Vultures. And if they get in a position to once more launch landing craft they will each still contain the majority of their nine thousand strong droid force," Tune replied.

"Using droids like this is fucking cheating," Ranma grunted, blasting another Vulture into so many shattered bits. "No offense, HK, Tune, but you can stuff so many of the damn things into one ship it's not even funny."

"Affronted retort: Master, I feel no offense for anything you say about this mass produced junk. They are an insult, an assault on the dignity and quiet competence of my own line of droids," HK reported. Tune didn't reply with words, only sounding out with a long electronic raspberry.

"Yeah, speaking of which, you think you can do what you did over Naboo to this lot? Get the droids in those Vultures so mad they forget the rest of the fight?" Ranma asked.

"Hold off on that. I have an idea of my own. In fact, you all might want to just hang on physically too. Tune, reroute power back to the hyperspace engines," Shaak said, reaching forward with the Force.

The next second, after HK and Ranma had followed her suggestion, the ship disappeared into hyperspace despite being deep in Zonama Sekot's gravity well. Tune warbled in alarm, the engines shuddering and almost exploding, but it was a short jump, and they came out of it where she wanted them too. The next instant Tune rerouted power once more, and the engines, rather than exploding, simply melted in place.

Ranma immediately saw that they had come out directly behind and above the two TF freighters. And neither of them had any weapons beyond a few set near the front. Four proton torpedoes quickly lashed out, taking down the shields of one of the ships. Then further ion cannon blasts hit the now unprotected hull, shattering and exploding numerous electronics all over their surfaces, including the shield generators and engines. The ions then skittered throughout the ship's systems, turning what had been a freighter/capital ship into so much wrecked junk.

Several hundred Vultures were immediately diverted through Tarkin's forces back towards the remaining ship. But even as it launched its own fighters, Ranma took it under fire as HK guarded the Wild Light. They took more knocks, and their shields were now in the orange, but the second freighter was swiftly knocked out as its fellow had been.

Serendipitously, the redirected Vultures had opened up a hole for the Zonama Sekot starfighters to get in close to Tarkin's cruisers and the Captor class. One of the cruisers with flickering shields disappeared in an explosion, and Shaak and Ranma both wondered if they had really seen what they thought they had: that the Zonama Sekot starfighter had kamikazed into the ship as its shields failed.

"To the local starfighters and cruisers, as you can see, the Wild Light is uniquely gifted as a capital ship killer," Shaak said dryly as HK hooked himself into the communications device on a frequency that Fay had just fed into her mind with an ease that was astonishing. They were, after all, several planetary lengths away from Fay now. "Further, we are about to try a…psychological attack. If you could please divert several squadrons to help take advantage of that, we might be able to get in position to perform similar attacks."

Even while she noticed that HK's work was already bearing fruit, Tune replied, "Not with our hyperdrives, we won't! They are slag. You just made us an in-system ship for good, mistress."

Shaak winced, but Ranma laughed. "It's okay, Shaak. If this is going to be the final charge of the Wild Light, I sure as hell want the ship to go out in a blaze of glory."

At that, and despite the sight of hundreds of Vultures now coming in with the sole purpose of attacking them, Shaak laughed.

A second later Tarkin made a move that surprised both Ranma and Shaak. Instead of allowing his covering starfighter force to be drawn away from them, Tarkin ordered his capital ships to follow them. This meant he had to let up on the assault against the traitors who had joined the Jedi, but it also meant the Zonama Sekot starfighters couldn't break through to assault his remaining heavies. It was a shrewd move, and one that also, not coincidentally, put the Wild Light at the bottom of a hammer coming down towards them like a nut on an anvil.

Behind his fleet, slightly around the circle of the planet from them now, the ships which had decided to side with the Jedi remained where they were for a moment. Two of them were broken hulks, bleeding atmosphere and other chemicals, with most of their weapons knocked out. The other two were still battle-worthy, but had portions of their shields down as well.

Yet as the battle moved away from them, those two ships moved forward in pursuit, still desirous of taking part. Yet against the Captor and the four cruisers still remaining on Tarkin's side, they wouldn't be much. Three of those ships, however, were battered, their combat effectiveness below that of the two pursuing cruisers.

The Wild Light began to take more damage, the incensed Vulture fighters coming at them now with single-minded berserk intensity. "Yahoo!" Ranma grunted as he was flung sideways from a concussion grenade which had very nearly hit them despite Shaak's last millisecond evasion. "Let's hear it for taunting!"

The ship's shields slid into the red, and Tune intoned grimly, "Masters, we are going to be without shields in about four minutes under this level of bombardment."

"Get us close enough to fire our torpedoes," Ranma suggested. "Let's use 'em while we have them."

Shaak nodded, having been thinking much the same thing, and she juked upwards again, avoiding some more incoming fire, and then back down to try and close with the remaining enemy capital ships. As she did so, both Shaak and Ranma noticed the capital ships moving into a defensive square, with the Captor and its more numerous anti-fighter quad lasers facing the Wild Light. The others had turned back to face their former comrades in a triangle. But the oncoming rebellious ships now had momentum on their side, and instead of stopping to pound against one another in a traditional line of battle they slashed in at high speeds, while behind them came several squads of the Zonama Sekot fighters.

On the other 'side' of the battle, while the Wild Light was indeed taking a pounding, the attacking Vultures were being simply slaughtered now, not even attempting to evade the Zonama Sekot starfighters. Their numbers were being whittled down to near parity with the locals.

"Come on, come on," Ranma muttered, one eye on the range finder for the proton torpedoes while he and HK killed any Vulture they could aim at. "Come on… Now!"

With Tune redirecting power to the ship's normal space engines, the ship suddenly picked up speed, entering range of the Captor. Its shields were very good for its size, and Shaak couldn't line up the ship enough for Ranma to rapid fire all of their remaining torpedoes. But when two of the local starfighters slammed bodily into its shields, it flickered, and Ranma and Tune took their chance. With Tune rerouting power once more to the ion cannon, Ranma took his shot, slamming two bolts of ion energy through the hole in the enemy's shields. Electronics went out, guns fell silent, and two shield generators exploded, opening the ship to more fire.

Even while that occurred, the Wild Light took several dozen hard shots from the Vultures and two from the enemy capital ship's turbolasers. Their shields fell, their generators all exploding, their armor was slagged in numerous places, their communications cut out, and one of their quad lasers was destroyed, causing HK to growl electronically in dismay. "Wrathful diatribe: I so detest it when someone destroys my toys!"

"Suck it up!" Ranma growled as his ship died around him.

Not needing to be told, Shaak swerved the ship down into the atmosphere as more of the Zonama Sekot starfighters flew up. "How many of those ships do they have?"

"Not enough to win this fight if we weren't here," Ranma replied.

Above them the two cruisers who had joined with the Jedi had flown by their fellows in wide curving arcs, pounding one of them, the one that had been closest to them in the triangle, into so much debris. Their own shields were now made more of wishes than reality, but they had already pulled out and away, putting distance between them and their fellows.

And the Vultures had, in the preceding battle and due to their single-minded attention on the Wild Light, lost far too many of their numbers. Now the locals had parity with them. This meant the Vultures, and even the three battered capital ships, were in a bad way, even if they could once more concentrate on the battle at large, Ranma thought drolly. With no communications gear, HK's Taunt Assault™ had been cut off.

"Tune, can you get me a read on that Captor?" Ranma asked.

"Hyperspace and normal drives are down. Shields are down, but that could be temporary. It has lost numerous weapons systems, but it still retains weapons."

"Droll interjection: Your mastery of the obvious is astonishing, tin can, as the ship is still firing even as you speak," HK muttered.

"Yes, but the locals may soon have the numbers advantage. And we still have our proton torpedo launchers and two torpedoes," Shaak replied. She looked at Ranma and gestured down to the ground. "Even with the Wild Light in as bad a shape as it is, I think this battle is drawing to a close. But the battle down there has just begun."

"Oh for the days when killing their mother ships would knock out their droids," Ranma lamented, then grinned. Since they were now in atmosphere and heading down, the Vultures had turned away, having much more important things to worry about.

After the battle of Naboo, the TF had made changes to their droids so that that wouldn't happen again. Shaak had heard about this from several Jedi on Kashyyyk and had thought it the height of arrogance that work on the problem had begun even before the TF had been allowed to retain its army after the Nabooan conflict.

"So you're saying it's time for us to get down there?"

"I think you and HK should, yes. Tune and I will remain up here. If we can, I want to board that Captor and capture this so-called Admiral Tarkin," Shaak said, making the man's assumed title a sneer on her lovely purple lips, the sight of which set Ranma's pulse to racing for an entirely different reason than it had mere seconds ago. Ranma realized that his adrenaline, now they were out of immediate danger, was running in an odd direction, and tamped down on such feelings quickly. "The battle down there is slowly going against the defenders. If the droids win down there, nothing we do up here will matter."

"Right!" Ranma said, hopping to his feet. "She's right, HK; it's time for us to get stuck in up close and personal. Shaak, don't bother putting us down; just get us within, say, half a mile or so from the surface."

"Gleeful response: Happy day, master. I could wish we were facing meatbag sentients, but burning my excellence over the combat droids of this era into the minds of anyone able to see is a very nice way to spend the day."

Shaak chuckled at that, but she knew the battle could still go either way. There were no more Zonama Sekot starfighters coming up from the surface, and the battle was still even at best. Thankfully, the Captor hadn't had nearly as many Vultures as the two now destroyed freighters, and those it had contained it had already launched. Neither fleet was going to be getting any more reinforcements.

Soon the Wild Light was close enough to the ground for Ranma to reasonably think his durability and heat resistance would see him to the surface. "Heh. Thank goodness my clothes can be imbued with ki as well, or I might land naked."

Shaak's eyes narrowed at that, but then rolled her eyes at her initial reaction. "That isn't exactly the kind of first impression I'd aspire to, but whatever powers your ship," she replied dryly. As Ranma laughed and leaned in to kiss her, Shaak smiled, kissed him back, and then pushed him away. "Go wild, love."

With a laugh, Ranma opened the cockpit hatch and stepped out into the rest of the ship. Reaching the main sitting room with HK, the damage done to his lovely ship was even more apparent than up in the cockpit, which hadn't been hit directly. Air screamed in, fit to knock any normal man off his feet, but Ranma ignored it, pulling half of the mangled loading ramp out of the way enough for him and HK to get out.

"Follow me down, HK! Banzai!" Without further ado, Ranma leaped out, dropping to the ground from far higher in the air than he had on the Yinchorri planet years ago.

Using the thrusters in his legs, HK maneuvered directly behind Ranma. In this manner Ranma acted like a heat shield, something HK had to make note of. "Jaundiced observation: You make a most adequate meat shield, master."

Ranma simply laughed and continued to plummet towards the jungle canopy below.

OOOOOOO

Several days before Ranma and Shaak arrived, Knight Fisto and Master Fay had come to Zonama Sekot. Fay had been following the vagaries of the Force for nearly her entire life, a little over seven hundred years, and was a past expert on knowing where the Force wanted her to go in order to do the most good. Assigned to basically act as her bodyguard, Kit had gone with her. And this time it had brought them to Zonama Sekot.

They were here to look for a Jedi who had gone missing a few months previous. Fay had had a vision of a Jedi falling—though how was uncertain, to death or to the Dark Side—and of a cusp of some kind. Fay had been unable to truly give voice to it. "It is as if this tiny stone can join an avalanche with several more, causing…something, some kind of change in the future."

Fay had shaken her head, for once looking less than confident that she had discerned what the Force was telling her correctly. "I am uncertain what it is, but if we are not there the change will be for the bad, for evil, either in the long or short term. If we are there, we can at the least stop that, or possibly turn it to the advantage of the Light."

Zonama Sekot was unique among other worlds Kit had seen. It only had one polar area, the northern one from it's equator. This was surrounded by an entire hemisphere of tropical jungles. Its southern hemisphere was completely covered with silver clouds. Along the equator there were several massive rivers, lakes, and even small seas.

The locals had welcomed them, a Magister, a local official, speaking to them as they came out of hyperspace. Their arrival had been unlooked for, but certainly not unwanted. At first it also seemed to be a very low tech planet, with no signs of factories or urban sprawl. But once they got under the jungle canopy, this proved to be a false assumption: there was technology here, but it was of a very strange variety. The town they landed in was built into the jungle, with the technology working with the local biology almost like what Kit thought a cyborg would look like, if a cyborg was made out of the merging of a tree and technology rather than a sentient and technology. Of course, Kit then learned that one of the three species which had made this planet their home were real cyborgs, only one reason why this planet was different than any other. The other reason this planet was so unique and so precious became apparent soon after they landed.

Stepping out onto the surface, Fay had gasped, then smiled more widely than Kit had ever seen her, going to one knee on the stone of the jungle clearing which served as a small spaceport. She then looked up as pulsing veins of green light appeared between the stones, moving out from her as if a stone had been dropped into a lake. "By the Force, this planet is a living sentient! And it welcomes us!"

That had started perhaps the oddest day Kit Fisto had yet had, and as a Guardian Jedi, that said something. This planet was not only alive and sentient, but it was also a fascinating bio-system in which the locals were simply part of the system, and glad to be so. The Ferrorans and Langhesi were green and red skinned humanoids respectively that looked almost human but not quite, colonists from other planets who had merged into local society created by the Bora and Jentari willingly. The Langhesi served as chief engineers, the Ferrorans as administrators or farmers, and the Bora and Jentari as general workers.

Scattered here and there throughout the jungle were small communities of the four species. Many of them were built around farms like nothing Kit had ever seen, game preserves, and, astonishingly, ship construction areas buried underground, run by the Langhesi and Jentari for the most part.

Kit was told of all this as the Jedi were led through the tiny capital of the planet, and that all of them worked to the betterment of all. Every species also acknowledged that the planet itself was both sentient and the true ruler of its surface, though beyond the desire for peace and understanding, it certainly didn't bother giving orders. Only a few could speak to Sekot, as the intelligence was called. And those few were respected beyond all others.

Indeed, after Fay arrived, the planet, according to a few of the Magisters, was more interested in asking her questions about the Force than doing anything else. According to the chief Magister, from what they could tell from their connection to it, the planet had fallen into a near meditative state as Fay did the same. The planet was entranced by the Force, while Fay was just as entranced with the idea of a living planet.

It fell to Kit, therefore, to ask questions about whether another Jedi had been here. "There are actually two Jedi here currently, and there was one here a few years ago," came the surprising answer from the chief Magister, one Cran Tole of the Ferroran race. "They came here not a day ago and seek to find evidence of the passing of the first."

"But then, where are they now?" Kit asked intently. Even if he would not have sensed their presence, surely Master Fay would have.

"They are still here," Master Fay replied, coming out of her fugue for a moment, her eyes still far away even as she spoke to Kit. "Master Leem and Master Jerec. They have sensed us and are on their way back here."

Kit blinked, taking this in. While he didn't know either Master very well, he had heard of both. Jerec was a Jedi who specialized in finding old knowledge, looking for the remnants of old battlefields and researching the eras before the Reformation. He answered to the Chief Librarian Jocasta, his former master, and Master Yaddle.

As for Master Leem, she was a respected Consular of some repute within the Order, but that was about all Kit knew about her. That and she was acquaintances with Master Windu was the totality of what Kit knew about the human woman.

"Yet the question remains, why were they hiding their presence?" Kit asked, still bemused. Yes, he had expected that they would find a Jedi in trouble here, but instead they find two on the trail of a third?

Master Fay did not reply. Instead she looked at the Chief Magister. "Tell us about the Far Outsiders. Sekot tells me of them, but I would like to hear about them in your words." In fact, what Sekot, the name of the planet's sentience, could tell her of them was so fantastical that, if not for the fact the Force led her here and she could tell the truth of the planet's sendings, she would not have believed it.

Cran paled, his red skin noticeably turning a decided shade of pink. "The Far Outsiders… We were attacked by them three years ago, barely a few months after Jedi Knight Vergere arrived here. I was not a Magister then, but I remember it only too well. The Far Outsiders were like, like dark mirrors of ourselves. They too worked with bio-forms, but they did not wish to live in peace: they demanded, they twisted and created horrors. They saw Zonama Sekot and wished to own the planet, to control it rather than work with it."

"And you truly believe that they came from outside this galaxy? From across the intergalactic void?" Fay asked, though her tone indicated she knew the answer. Yet even for Jedi, sometimes the words had to be spoken aloud.

The intergalactic void was an area with no stars, no planets, not even black holes. There was simply nothing there but vast, empty space, so vast, so empty, that hyperspace wouldn't even work in it. No one had been able to even explore the Intergalactic void because of that. To cross it should have been impossible, yet…

"Yes," Cran replied simply. "It is the only explanation for the impressions we get from Sekot."

At that moment the two Jedi that had arrived here before Fay and Kit came into the large, well shaded clearing the locals had used to welcome the two of them. Thanks to Master Fay's mental conversation with Sekot, they hadn't moved on.

Master Leem was an elderly woman, looking slightly older than Master Windu did, with blond hair that was mostly gray now and a thin body and face under large, esoteric robes. Despite the grandiose robes, however, she had an easy smile on her face and looked more the type to enjoy long walks through jungles than sitting in a council room.

In contrast, Master Jerec was much more severe looking. Garbed in a dark grey robe which flowed behind him like a cloak and an equally grey shirt and leggings, he was a Miralukan, with a bald head to go with his lack of eyes. The Miralukans were a species who were all Force sensitives, able to use the Force to see. Jerec was no different, though like most of his people he used a cloth to cover the vestigial eyes sockets, since they knew those made other sentients nervous. He was taller than Leem, wider in the shoulders, and his face was formed into a frown until he came within 'sight' of Kit and Fay.

Fay held her hand up in greeting, and the two other Masters did the same, while Kit moved to stand to the side and slightly behind Fay, as was proper for a younger Knight when in the presence of three experienced Masters. "Masters. I and my companion Knight Fisto are here following a Force vision of a fellow Jedi in distress. We have learned some of what has occurred from Sekot, and that you were here for the same reason. Is this so?"

"Indeed," Master Leem said sadly, shaking her head. "Vergere was my padawan before his elevation. Around three years ago he disappeared, and it took us this long to follow his trail here."

Master Jerec spoke up before Fay could ask the obvious question. "I had approached Vergere for aid on an archaeological dig which would have taken me into Foch territory. He replied in the affirmative, but then disappeared. I was unable to join the search myself at first, since I was still involved in another mission at the time, but I have been able to help Master Leem find the trail of her wayward student."

"I see," Fay said, though the faint smile on her face had fallen into a frown for a second. "And have you been able to discover anything?"

Leem shot a look at Jerec, but then sighed. "If you have already learned of the Far Outsiders, then you know almost as much as we. We have been shown sites of orbital bombardments, and we were told that Vergere made some kind of agreement with the attackers: to go with them if they agreed to leave the planet. That tells us much, but we had hoped to learn more from Vergere's seed-partner."

"Oh? Vergere was able to bond with a seed-partner, then? Sekot has told me of them; the idea sounds fascinating. Tell me, were you able to get any impression of what Vergere had discovered via the Force about these Far Outsiders?"

"Ahem, no," Jerec said, looking embarrassed and regretful, an odd look on his severe face. "I attempted to bond with the seed in turn so I could see any memories it had of Vergere. But the seed rejected the attempt; they can only bond once with a partner. My attempt, however, was too forceful, and it wound up destroying the seed."

Fay remonstrated with Jerec in no uncertain terms for his accidental destruction of the seed-partner at that point, her tone far sharper than Kit had ever heard from her, and she seemed to look at Jerec with a jaundiced eye, something, again, that Kit had not seen in the gentle Fay before this. What another Jedi's impressions could've told them would've been a major help in understanding the nature of this new species, and whether they were a threat to the Republic as a whole rather than just Sekot.

With that avenue of investigation closed to them thanks to Jerec's clumsiness, the four Jedi had to turn to Sekot and the other locals for information. The locals only had their own impressions of the violent outsiders' attack to go on. Even their leaders at the time, who had been the only ones to speak to the Far Outsiders, had been killed before Vergere had convinced them to leave, taking him with them.

But the planet seemed to know slightly more about them and where they came from. Sekot said that he remembered them like it was from a deep dream, from a past that it could barely remember. Even Fay, with all her skill in using the Force to augment mind and memory, could not bring those distant memories to the fore of the sentient planet's mind. It was as if someone else had locked those memories behind a barrier that Sekot could not access for some reason.

Their research stopped abruptly when news came from the planetary space control that numerous ships had been spotted jumping into the system and moving towards the Zonama. This was not welcome news, since their arrival had not been planned for. Moments later, as the Jedi crowded into the control room that was part of the Magisters' palace, the fleet had moved into orbit. This was a heavily reinforced bunker, buried under the main town of the planet behind a series of doors, each of them more than meters thick.

Two of the ships immediately identified themselves as mine layers, disgorging thousands of mines in a matter of seconds. Three of the others did the same with Vulture fighters as the remaining ten ships moved into a defensive formation around them. An instant later the fleet's flagship hailed the planet.

"This is Admiral Tarkin of the Republic Outlands Regions Security Force. I am here to claim this planet for the good of the Republic. You will surrender yourself, make no attempts to destroy the technology that creates the living ships, and submit yourself to my authority without question or prevarication." The speaker was a just past middle aged man with a thin aristocratic face and a haughty expression on his face. It was the face of a man who was used to being obeyed, arrogance and avarice rolling off him in waves that Fay could feel from the surface of the planet.

At the same time that Fay was using the Force to analyze the sort of man this Tarkin fellow was, she was also reaching out through the Force, spreading what Kit had come to call her aura of calm. It was a simple term for something that few if any Jedi besides Fay had learned how to do. Simply put, Fay projected an aura of serenity around her. This aura made it almost impossible to fight in her presence unless you had a particularly strong will. It also made people more reasonable, more willing to understand one another. It also made Fay herself seem far more persuasive. This, added to centuries of negotiating experience, was why she was known as a legend in the Outer Rim for her ability to bring conflicts to a close. She had other, more offensive abilities, of course, but most of those required her to be in the physical presence of her opponents. The aura of calm could be projected through an entire star system.

Once she was certain that her technique was taking hold, Fay moved forward to just outside of the pickup. "May I?" she asked politely of the Magister. He, of course, bowed his head and stood up from his chair. Fay took his place, her expression serene. "This is Master Fay of the Jedi Order," she said calmly. "You are a very long way from Eriadu, Admiral Tarkin. May I ask what business you have here?"

Fay had been able to tell that Tarkin and the ten cruisers above him were from Eriadu by lightly scanning the minds of the individuals onboard. She could also tell that a lot of the crew aboard those ships were uneasy, willing to follow Admiral Tarkin because he had led them well in the past, but very leery of being so far outside their nominal jurisdiction. The crews of the mine laying ships in particular were worried, afraid that they were about to perform an act of war on a peaceful planet.

For his part Tarkin stiffened, staring at the Jedi Master. Through the Force she could sense his sudden unease, coupled with a distinct amount of contempt. That wasn't a good sign, but since she had been broadcasting in the clear to all of the ships in orbit, she could also feel the ships' crews' sudden chagrin, their worry spiking further. It was evident that Tarkin, like many lords of his rank, had not told his people everything he should have. The idea of being on the other side of a conflict from a Jedi so far away from home did not appeal to anyone up there but Tarkin and a few sycophants.

"I have already said what I am here for, Master Jedi," he replied haughtily. "This planet represents a resource, a resource that I wish for Eriadu and those…allied with us…to make the best use of. Of course, the rest of the Republic will benefit from our work," he added, sounding almost sententious. "Certainly far more than if this planet's unique construction methods were left to operate on its own. We will be able to spread its goods throughout the Republic, not let them languish in this backwater."

"And yet it is a free planet," Master Fay said with a massive amount of understatement and a droll twist of her lips as she felt the planet's wry response to that one. The more it spoke to her and other Force users, the more alive, or perhaps emotive, it became. "And perhaps its anonymity has served its people as they wish it to. After all, not every planet wishes to become famous or its inhabitants to become rich and powerful. If so, who are you to try to impose your will on others?" The irony of that statement was also not lost on Fay, but she felt it was a good point nonetheless.

"That might be, but the needs of the many must outweigh the needs of these backwater few," Tarkin said even more sententiously, and contemptuously, than before. Fay's words had solidified the image of her in his mind of a bleeding heart Jedi, a phrase that rose to the forefront of his mind with such impetus Fay was surprised the other Jedi couldn't feel it.

"Just think of what these living ships could mean for the Republic fleets! Faster than any other ship through hyperspace and more responsive, more maneuverable than any in real space? Living ships that can repair themselves! We could see a revolution of ship design if we could figure out how to spread such technology!" Tarkin continued, becoming more strident.

"If, in fact, it could be spread at all. I acknowledge your points, but I do not agree with the way you are thinking of going about this," Master Fay replied, her calm tone creating a marked contrast to Tarkin's over the top tone and words. "You say you are representative of the Republic, but you have not given me any writ of such. You, in fact, introduced yourself as part of the Republic Outlands Regions Security Force, which has never been acknowledged as to have freedom to act outside the sector of its birth. You have done tremendous work around your own sector and within it, but you are a long, long way from home, gentlemen. I have to ask you what authority you think you have here to make demands?

"My authority comes from my ships," Tarkin said, losing his temper as she had known he would. "I said I claim this planet, and that is what I will do! You can join me, join the power rising, or be ground under by the weight of history!"

While filing away that bit about 'the power rising,' Fay reflected that Tarkin was a man who hated being balked, especially by mere words by someone he felt was beneath him. She could feel the growing concern within several of his captains, however, as they were comparing his bombast to her calm nature and their own worries about being so far from Eriadu.

"So you are not, in fact, acting as a representative of your government? Or the Republic as a whole? I wish to be clear on this," Fay asked, still the epitome of calm, not even reacting to Tarkin's anger at all.

"If you wish to put if like that, you may," Tarkin replied. "I have a fleet, you do not, and I control the orbitals. Further, we are beyond the reach of the HRS, so you cannot even call for help. It is not a difficult equation. There is nothing you can do or say that will protect this planet from my takeover, Jedi." He spat the word, making his hate and disdain for her clear, not realizing how it played into Fay's hands in appealing to his people.

"Very well, Admiral Tarkin, you leave me no choice. This is Master Fay of the Jedi Order," she said slowly and calmly, even as mines continued to fill the sky above. "Your admiral is leading you into an unlawful course of action. This planet might not be a member of the Republic, but it is currently represented by one in my own person. Any attack on it is an attack on the Republic as a whole and the Order in particular. I want all of you to think carefully about what this might mean for you and your people in the main."

"It won't mean anything if you die here! There'll be no witnesses to…" Tarkin growled.

At that point Zonama Sekot launched its starfighters. They came out of their secret hangers in ones and twos, forming up into groups of six before moving up quickly through the atmosphere. Sekot whispered to Fay that it had never created ships designed for war before this, but that after the attack of the Far Outsiders, Sekot had decided to look into the idea. This would be the first time the planet had used them, but they shouldn't be underestimated for that.

"You see!" Tarkin bellowed into his pickup, now purposefully addressing his own troops rather than Fay. "The Jedi witch was simply trying to delay us while the planet tried to ready its defenses. Take them! With this planet and its unique manufacturing abilities, our planet's fortunes will be secure for centuries! And my name will be known throughout the galaxy."

However, whatever Tarkin had hoped to gain from this bombast, it didn't work. Master Fay's aura of calm had done its work on the wavering minds within his fleet.

The two mine layers stopped their work abruptly, twisting away and heading towards open space beyond the gravity well of the planet. Five of his ten cruisers also broke off to shield them, though the Trade Federation ships and the remaining cruisers made no moves. They moved so fast, the five cruisers had time to form up into a new formation before their fellows could respond.

"This is Captain Lazlo. We have no wish to become an enemy of the Jedi, and we acknowledge the fact that attacking this planet constitutes an unlawful order. But we will not fire on our fellows if we are not fired upon!" one of the captains said over the open coms to both the planet and his fellows.

"Traitors!" Tarkin bellowed. "Launch starfighters; take them under fire! Let none of these bastards live!"

At that point the mines in the atmosphere began to explode on command, and Sekot's starfighters zoomed up to begin a massive dogfight with the Vulture fighters continually launching from the Trade Federation ships. A second later Master Fay smiled, feeling two presences at the borders of her senses that she had not anticipated.

"We have friends incoming, two in particular that you and I know quite well, Kit," she said, having just deactivated the communications gear. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I think Sekot will need my help in organizing his defense."

"'His?'" Kit asked quizzically. "A planet has a gender?"

"I'm not about to argue with him, are you?" Master Fay replied drolly, her spirits buoyed immeasurably by the feel of Shaak Ti and Ranma's arrival.

Kit raised a finger, then slowly lowered it. "No, no I am not going to do so, I think."

Behind him, Master Leem smiled slightly. "Your legend is truly well earned, Master Fay. I had never thought to see your ability in person like this. I cannot even believe that you were able to make that many of them see reason."

"Reason calls to us all; it is just that some people tend to close their ears to it," Master Fay said, before leaning back in her chair and closing her eyes. "Isn't that right, Master Jerec?"

"Indeed, I had not anticipated this either," said Jerec thoughtfully, moving forward so that he stood between Master Leem and Kit and directly behind the seat holding Master Fay. "I had seen things go quite differently after Tarkin had arrived in this system."

"I have no doubt you did," Master Fay said, her senses reaching out to Kit for a moment, telling him to be ready for some reason.

But Kit had been working with her for enough years now not to question her, and slowly one of his hands dropped to his lightsaber. The only reason he hesitated at all was because there didn't seem to be any physical threat in the room. After all, the only people around were the locals who were all friendly and fellow Jedi.

Fay continued, "After all, was it not you who called him here?"

Jerec tensed as Leem and Kit frowned at that accusation. "I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about, Master Fay."

"No? Perhaps not. But there is no doubt that you wished for something similar to occur. I have felt a disturbance from you since we arrived. Our presence, mine and Kit's, was unwelcome. You wished to follow Vergere's trail alone. Further, you lied when you said you had wanted Vergere to join you on a dig in the Minos Cluster. Tell me, Master Jerec, when did you turn to the Dark Side?"

Instead of replying verbally, the Jerec whipped out his lightsaber, cutting forward towards Master Fay, only for Kit to interject his own lightsaber between Fay and the blow. Leem moved to pull out her lightsaber, but she was too slow. Master Jerec twisted around using the impetus of that block to fling himself backwards and over the other Jedi Master, cutting down towards Leem and slicing her head off her shoulders along with a goodly portion of her chest and arm before landing, facing Kit.

"Truly, your perception is fearsome, Fay, well worth your legend. But you made a severe miscalculation by confronting me like this," Jerec spat, circling around Kit, not even looking at the locals who all bolted for the door and away.

"You were planning to attack me anyway. This way, at least, you lost the element of surprise," Fay said sadly, having felt Leem's passing. She had hoped that Kit's stopping his first blow would have been enough to stop further violence, but with her consciousness helping Sekot organize the defense of the planet, Fay couldn't concentrate on perceiving the future of events around her physical body. Indeed, it was all she could do to keep her mind from flying apart given the number of starfighters she was helping to direct. Sekot too was having trouble, never having taken part in a battle before, the massive mind's confusion adding to what Fay was feeling, nearly overwhelming her. "And you did not answer my question."

"Bah! I never fell into the Dark Side; I chose to explore it! I served my own will in this and that of the one who opened my eyes to the truth: that knowledge is power, and power is all that matters, not your weak, pathetic ideals! And I will prove it by killing your Knight."

Kit shook his head, bringing up his lightsaber in a defensive stance. "You will not have Master Fay as long as I am alive!"

"A remarkably fatuous statement that indicates you think I would have it any other way," Jerec sneered, his blade flashing in light, well controlled movements as he attempted to see an opening in Kit Fisto's Shi Cho.

His Makashi should have proven to be better in a one on one contest like this rather than Kit's style, which was based on fighting multiple opponents at once. Yet Kit had developed the often chaotic style of Shi Cho to an amazing degree, making it into a dueling style worthy of note since he had met Ranma. It had served him well against the Dark Side using Zabrak, and it worked just as well to throw Jerec off. Still, Jerec's use of Makashi meant that Kit in turn couldn't break through the other Jedi's defense. Not as good on the defense as Soresu, Makashi was still superior to Shi Cho, since it had basically been designed to counter Form 1's flaws.

Makashi also lent itself to the use of Force powers, which Jerec showed an instant later as he tried to use a Force Push against Kit. It caught Kit in the side, pushing him to one side, momentarily opening a way to Fay, who was still and unmoving, communing with Zonama Sekot. With an evil smirk on his face, Jerec launched himself towards her.

But Kit used the momentum of that push to bounce up, off the wall, onto the ceiling, and down, once more attacking Jerec with an overhead strike. Jerec barely got his lightsaber up in time to block it, and the power of the blow knocked him off balance. Then it was Kit's turn to use the Force, which he did with more power than finesse, a brute, battering ram style Force Push which hurled Jerec backwards.

Jerec righted himself quickly through using his own Force powers to deaden his momentum, but the damage had been done: Kit once more stood between Jerec and Fay, his lightsaber held perpendicular to his body at chest height. On his face was not the smile he was known to wear in even the most dangerous situations, however. With Master Leen dead nearby due to the treachery of a fellow Jedi, Kit had no inclination to smile. "Then you are a fool and unworthy of being a Jedi at all. Surrender, Jerec, and the Council might be lenient. If you do not, I guarantee you won't leave this building alive."

Honestly, Kit had just offered that because he knew Fay would have in his stead, but he wasn't exactly unhappy when Jerec instead attacked again. Jerec nearly slid across the floor, his lightsaber stabbing out in a series of jabs accompanied by tiny slashes. With the Force directing him even more than it would another Jedi thanks to his Miralukan heritage, he could see several openings now in Kit's defense and aimed to exploit them.

But Kit defended against the attack by stepping back just as rapidly as his opponent advanced, giving ground to the jabs at first, then riposting violently at the short jabs randomly, succeeding in knocking Jerec off center and sending him stepping backwards in disarray, unable to deal with the wild maneuvers of the Nautolan. A subtle Force Grab of his legs forced Jerec into the air, his Precognition having seen it coming, but that left Jerec open for one of Shi Cho's habitual wild blows. He blocked it, interposing his Lightsaber between his body and Kit's green blade, his own darker green blade thrumming and nearly being pushed back into his body. But he redirected the impetus of Kit's blow enough to twist around in midair, pushing himself back and away.

Landing in the doorway to the control room, Jerec used the Force to rip the reinforced door off its hinges, sending it flashing towards Kit, edge first. As Kit cut it in two, Jerec lashed out with a concentrated Force pulse, an almost visible red ball of condensed kinetic energy. But Kit saw it coming and twisted, bringing half of the cut door down and around to use as a shield.

Kit leaped over this makeshift shield lightsaber flashing, only to find that Jerec was waiting for him. Again his lightsaber thrust forward, and it was all that Kit could do to get out of the way. Though he had gone through the toughness training on Kashyyyk, he was in no hurry to see if it could stand up to a thrust like that, or even any lightsaber strike if he could help it.

The thrust still seared along his side, doing no appreciable damage except to his shirt. This seemed to astonish Jerec, but not enough that he was unable to dodge Kit's return blow. He pushed himself forward and to the side to avoid it, bouncing off the wall as Kit had earlier, rolling back and away into the corridor.

There Jerec paused, trying to hold the doorway against Kit, using the shortened space against Kit's Shi Cho style. While a lightsaber could, of course, cut through the walls of the installation they were in, doing so did slow Kit's attacks by an appreciable margin, and it lent itself to Jerec's more controlled Makashi. A desperate Force Push from Kit pushed him back, but a thrust still got through, searing into Kit's upper arm as he desperately interposed it between the tip of Jerec's lightsaber and his chest.

Kit had not studied the toughness training nearly as much as Shaak Ti had, or even Dooku. Shaak Ti had taken the toughness training so far that her body acted almost like super-dense, hardened steel or even diamond. It was only at that high a level that she would have been able to stop a lightsaber blow with her body alone. While Kit's body had proven enough to stop sudden, sharp cracks of plasma energy like that from a blaster, he wasn't near that level yet. The thrust swiftly burned through his arm, severing it just above the elbow. But his arm had halted the thrust for just long enough, halting the thrust's forward momentum.

But Kit had known that the instant Jerec had taken control of the doorway he wouldn't be able to get out of this fight unscathed. So he was prepared for when Jerec's blow was stopped momentarily by his arm and had prepared himself for the pain. Jerec hadn't seen the probability of his blade being stopped in the Force and so was completely unprepared for when Kit's blade came around in a short arc, cutting through his body right below his armpits, in one side and out the other. Jerec was dead before his upper body hit the ground.

Kit stared down at the body of his opponent, shaking his head, his normal wry smile coming back to his face once more despite the pain he was still feeling from his arm. "I find it rather ironic that you, who prided himself on searching out knowledge, missed the new training being offered on Kashyyyk and its implications. That is poetic justice at its finest."

Flicking his lightsaber blade out of the former Jedi Master, Kit stepped over the body as it fell, shaking his head. He had hoped to take the man alive, but the man's tactics and use of the environment had made that impossible. My personal style is still weak against Makashi used appropriately. I need to learn from this experience.

Opening up his com, he called Fay, telling her that Jerec was dead and he was heading outside to join the defense. She directed him via the Force to where the land type droids were trying to land, implanting a map of the area in his mind with a large, glowing X marking the spot. "And don't worry, you won't be fighting for long. We have friends on their way," she said, her voice sounding in his head like a bell.

Kit arrived at the landing site as the Trade Federation droids were forming up, two companies of them blasting away at a few of the locals who had taken up defensive positions around the area, trying to contain the droids with their local slug throwers. Those weapons were more dangerous than most of that breed that Kit had seen before, but there weren't enough of the locals, and the fire of the droids pushed them back with losses as more droids came out from the troop ships. They meant to spread throughout the small town around the Magisters' palace, and Kit realized it was a little too late to stop them from doing so. He couldn't be everywhere, and there were far more ways they could break out than just coming straight at Kit. Still, I will do what I can.

He charged forward, leaping up onto a rooftop and then down into a group of the droids that had been about to attack a few of the locals who had been running for cover. His lightsaber flashed all around, cutting the droids in twain, then coming up and around to block several blaster bolts coming from further down the street.

The droids now moving towards Kit were bigger, tougher looking, and made of grey painted metal rather than tan, with heavier guns, no heads to speak of, and apparently better computational power. Kit supposed this because rather than simply marching towards him and firing in a line, these were moving by fire and maneuver. Two of them took him under fire while the others spread out into buildings all around them to use as cover. They also hit a distance of about a hundred yards away and kept there, knowing not to close with a Jedi.

More droids converged on his position, and Kit found himself with his back against a wall which looked like it had been extruded from a tree. His lightsaber flashed as he desperately blocked as many of the blaster bolts as he could. Some of them got through and stung like all blazes, but thanks to the toughness training he was able to stand it. None of the blasters firing at him contained enough initial punch to break his toughness training, and blasters didn't fire continuous beams like a Jedi lightsaber essentially was.

He was amused to overhear a few of the regular combat droids muttering very audibly that his surviving those hits did not compute. "How is he still standing? Are not sentients supposed to die from blaster fire!" shouted one of them to the others.

"Silence, just keep firing," said one of the other droids, this one marked by a slash of red paint across his chest from one shoulder down to his other side. "Whatever it is, we can eventually overcome it. Bring up the heavy weapons!"

"Roger, Roger!"

However, Kit had been able to halt their advance long enough for help to arrive. He looked up as something niggled at his Force senses for a second and saw two forms dropping down from on high.

Ranma, his skin feeling rather hot from plummeting so far through atmosphere, crashed down through the trees that were everywhere around the small community, using them to slow his descent with the skill of an Aerial Style Grandmaster. But he was still going at a noticeable speed when he slammed down on top of a droid feet first, shattering it like it had just been hit by an artillery round.

Behind him HK touched down much more lightly on a rooftop to Kit's right, and he began to use all of his blasters on a few troops of the droids.

Hopping out of the wreckage of his first victim, Ranma lashed out at two more before they could dodge, their large bodies hampering their quick movement. He first noticed that these droids were much better armed and armored than the others he had seen before this, though not up to HK's level.

After that Ranma took a brief second to look around at the local environment. It reminded him strongly of Kashyyyk, only not quite, because there were visible metal parts and concrete bits and pieces to the various buildings here rather than all of them being made of wood, and the jungle itself wasn't nearly as built up as on Kashyyyk. There was also definitely more variety in the type of trees here than on Kashyyyk.

These observations were simply a side-note, however, as Ranma quickly launched himself forward toward a pack of the same larger, tougher looking droids as they turned in his direction. Their blasters also hit with more impetus and actually stung slightly, despite Ranma's toughness training.

But they didn't stop Ranma from closing the distance, his light pike suddenly appearing in his hand, pulled from his ki space. With it he hacked and slashed his way through to within shouting distance of the familiar green and multi-tentacled face he'd seen moments ago as he had hit the treetops.

With the number of trees and buildings in the way, it was a few minutes before Ranma was able to see Kit again. At the same time, HK was having fun, slaughtering the Trade Federation droids left and right. "Exalted shout: Die, die! Die, you pathetic excuses for combat platforms! Feel the power of a true assassin droid!"

Soon, however, Ranma was once more able to see Kit, from about a block away, admittedly. He stared, seeing Kit's missing arm for a moment. But he didn't comment on it directly. That wasn't his way, and their friendship wasn't built on emotional shit like that. Instead he quipped, "Hey Kit, need a hand?"

Kit rolled his eyes, his lightsaber still flashing this way and that as he returned the droids' blaster bolts back to their point of origin. "I will smack you upside the head later for that one."

"Meh, hopes in one hand, shit in the other…" Ranma replied with a laugh.

"Guh. That joke was physically painful. How many of those do you ha…KRIF!" he shouted, interrupting himself.

But Ranma still took the opening. "Oh, I've got at least another handful!"

"Bemused tone: Master, while it is always pleasant to see you taunting your fellow meatbags even those who are supposedly your allies, I feel like I need to bring something to your attention," HK said, alighting on a nearby roof, his shoulder cannon blazing away as fast as he could fire, his head tracking like a gun turret. "The droids are falling back, attempting to break to the northeast. Our counterstrike has stalled them significantly, and the droid in charge is dead: I sniped it from range. Without that only slightly more capable droid to guide them, the droids are forced to rely on core tactical programming."

"And that is?" Ranma asked, grunting as he punted a droid so hard the droid's central body came apart, leaving the legs sticking straight up where it had been standing.

"Scornful response: They will attempt to find an open area to dig in and await reinforcements." HK paused, taking a thermal detonator from a pouch at his side and lobbing it through a window opposite his current position, blowing a strong point into pieces as he did. "Analytical tone: Something which is very doubtful they will actually find on this planet."

"Your homicidal droid, who, I will point out, is better at snark than you, is correct," Kit said. "There is no chance of the droids finding an open area on this planet like that. Unless they can last to the northern pole: it's all ice up there, but it'll be an open area. But they could get there only if we let them."

Ranma looked affronted at the idea of HK being better at comedy than him, while HK looked insufferably smug somehow for someone who couldn't change his facial expressions. He set that aside for now instead to concentrate on the fight. "Yeah, let's not let them do that."

OOOOOOO

With a few of Sekot's starfighters running interference, Shaak was able to maneuver the Wild Light back into the main battle, launching her few remaining proton torpedoes at one of the remaining cruisers. The proton torpedoes hammered into its shielding, which failed. Her ion cannon flashed out, and suddenly Tarkin's loyalists were down to three battered ships and the Captor, which was still drifting.

No longer in communication with Tarkin, communications like everything else on the Captor no long working, the other ships had to think for themselves. Two of them immediately struck their colors, their shields powering down and their weapons powered off as their captain shouted that they surrendered. The other tried to turn away, racing towards the outer edge of the planet's gravity well.

However, his former comrades were not willing to just let him run and cut the angle on him, raking him with fire. The fleeing cruiser's shields went down, and hits shattered its engines in quick order, sending it tumbling through space until the two cruisers used their tractor beams to bring it to a halt.

This dogfights were still occurring, but Zonama Sekot's starfighters were now proving themselves superior to the Vultures. Slowly the battle was drawing to a close. "Tune, get me a reading on that Captor. Does it have any weapons left?"

"Negative, mistress. Our sensors cannot detect any weapons online. Many of them are still intact, but the ship's power grid is offline and shows significant damage from the ion guns. And the Captor's engines have been smashed," Tune reported. "It is barely able to maintain orbit."

"Excellent," Shaak said, grimly satisfied. She wanted to capture Tarkin and ask him some very pointed questions about all of this. With that in mind, Shaak maneuvered the Wild Light towards the Captor, whose name she had yet to bother learning. The other ship was large enough to allow the Wild Light to dock inside it, so that was what she maneuvered to do.

She was nearly in position to enter when the Force screamed a warning at her, and she pushed the ship's control stick down, moving out of the thick, forward facing claws of the TF cruiser. A second later Tune whooped in warning as several dozen turbolaser batteries came online again, locking on the Wild Light. "So much for that ship being dead!"

Even as the two allied cruisers turned abruptly and began to move back towards the Captor, and numerous Sekotan starfighters dove once more for the ship, the turbolasers fired. But Shaak's wild move had thrown off the attack, and only two turbolasers hit the Wild Light. But as damaged as the ship already was, that was enough. Shaak heard a screeching of shattered metal ,and Tune whimpered, "We just lost the entire aft section!"

"Pour as much power into the repulsors as you can!" Shaak ordered. The repulsors were all each a separate system, so the ship might well be able to still power them despite losing the engines. The ship's numerous generators had been spread out through the hull, so she hoped one of them at least was still working.

With the repulsors, Shaak was just barely able to push the ship upwards in space towards the Captor's open hanger bay, which had been frozen open by their previous ion cannon assault. The shattered remains of the Wild Light scrapped along the entrance. An instant later the repulsors cut out, the final generator having just blown up, sending the ship tumbling deeper into the hanger bay.

Closing her eyes, Shaak reached out with the Force, grabbing the ship, and slowly stopping its uncoordinated tumble. With that done, Shaak unlatched, allowing her body to float in the center of the cockpit. "Tune, does the Captor have any atmosphere any longer?"

"Negative, mistress. None that I can detect. The ship's power has just cut out once more thanks to the attacks of our allies."

"The hard way, then," Shaak replied with a grimace. With that she pulled on her space suit and then exited the ship, pulling Tune out with her via the Force for a moment. When Tune had used magnets in his legs to clamp onto the surface of the bay, she moved on, ordering him to stay hidden until she told him it was safe.

After cutting through the inner door, she passed through the interior of the ship, passing through numerous interior bulkheads. It was obvious that this ship had been modified for combat over mercantile pursuits in the near past.

Shaak didn't run into any resistance at first, the droids that made up the majority of the crew having been deactivated when the ship had lost most of its generators. But about halfway to where she felt the majority of the living beings aboard the ship were, she came under fire from people in similar suits to her own. Her boots firmly on the ground via their magnets, Shaak couldn't move even if she had wanted to, but she had no problem using her lightsaber to redirect the blaster bolts back to their point of origin. She didn't use any Force powers other than Precognition just yet, wishing to conserve her energies, just in case.

The deaths of their fellows didn't stop the rest from pushing forward, but then suddenly, the remaining troopers raised hands to their helmets and then held up their hands, their weapons floating next to them. Seeing a chance, Shaak reached out with the Force, pulling the weapons she could see and several more hidden among the crewmen towards her, hurling them behind her. While she was doing that, Shaak had also been looking for the crew's local radio frequency. Eventually she found it. "I welcome your surrender, gentlemen. Enough people have died today, but I must ask, what caused you to give up?

In reply one of the people facing her stepped forward, his hands still up in the air. "We were told we were holding you back until the Admiral could call in more help, Jedi." There was no respect in his voice, only weary resignation. "Admiral Tarkin left the bridge in order to use the ship's Hypercom. But just now, the bridge crew heard the sound of a blaster. One of them checked on him, and, and the Admiral killed himself, ma'am. I guess the shame of, well, flouting Republic law like this and being caught at it was too much for his highborn pride to take."

Her face hidden within her own helmet, Shaak let a scowl cross her face as she slowly shook her head. Somehow, I doubt that. Our opponent both has a long arm and a penchant for doing away with his tools if they can no longer serve his purpose it seems.

OOOOOOO

Sidious was furious yet also thankful that Tarkin's father had contacted him about his son's venture. Leaning back in his throne, his head throbbing and blood pouring from his eyes and nose from his exertions, Sidious signaled a droid to bring him a pain killer. Reaching through the Force that far away was possible thanks to the Veil hiding his presence when he used it, but at that distance it took even more out of him than planting the vision which had led the Chaotic Locus into the trap into Plo Koon's head. Still, it had to be done.

Though none of his pawns knew who he personally was, Tarkin knew enough to have truly hindered Sidious's plans if he had been captured alive, forcing Sidious to liquidate several of his better and more well-connected pawns, most particularly in the Banking Clan. Even if they wouldn't resort to torture, the Jedi could have pulled out a lot of what he knew from the man just by questioning him. Especially with that cursed Fay on hand there. That woman's perception was beyond that of even Yoda, making Sidious thankful she had so little use for Coruscant.

Jerec's loss is nothing important, though I would have preferred he lived long enough to confirm Vergere's death. Sidious had felt the Dark Jedi's death while he had been reaching out to snuff out Tarkin's life. Still, he was an ambitious fool who thought knowledge was more important than anything else, certainly loyalty. He is a weapon that would have turned in my hand eventually. Still, it is a blow to my spying within the Order.

Tarkin, on the other hand had been an intriguing prospect, one that Sidious had made use of before during the time when he had been grooming Gunray to be his tool within the Trade Federation, one who had a lot of his own connections to both the military and defense contractors. But the man overreached himself acting on his own in such a manner. Yes, the live ships would be a magnificent find, but not to that extent. Wilhuff proved himself quite flawed in this, scrambling for a bigger piece of the pie rather than being content with what he had.

That would have forced Sidious to chastise him (thrice removed, but Tarkin would have been left in no doubt as to his displeasure) even if he had succeeded. But having lost? That had forced Sidious to reach through the Force to kill the fool. I am running low on mid-level people I can trust, but secrecy is still paramount.

Shaking his head, Sidious turned away from that problem. He had kill teams already on hand on Eriadu, of course, like many others. Tarkin's father would die, seemingly of a heart attack, after news of his son's death and betrayal of the Republic reached him. Sidious would wait for a time and then contact a few of the other family members and their rivals on the planet, who would serve just as well to control that important trade hub.

For now, however, he had to concentrate on other things. There were several votes going on in the Senate that he wished to manipulate as subtly as he could. And there were a few reports from the Core World of Axum that Pestage had flagged for him. Reading through them, he nodded slowly. It seems as if I have a new job for Komari Vosa...

OOOOOOO

"Welcome to Zonama Sekot," Master Fay said, holding out a hand to Master Shaak Ti.

Shaak couldn't help but notice that Fay looked tired and rather drawn; the strain of directing the battle with Sekot had taken it out of her. But she still looked lively enough. And thanks to Kit she was still alive, a fact Fay acknowledged as she led Shaak towards where Ranma and Kit were still helping the locals clean up the droid bodies.

"He saved my life. I could sense the moment when Jerec decided to act, but I had not before that realized he had truly fallen to the Dark Side as much as he had to truly strike down a fellow Jedi. It just goes to show that anyone can be fooled. The Order was right to send Kit with me."

"I wish we could have taken either of them alive," Shaak said sadly.

"Why?" Master Fay asked. She and Kit had been out of contact with the Order, so despite the fact that Fay would certainly have been one of the Masters who could've been brought into the secret without any fear of betraying it she had no idea that the Order knew the Sith were still out there.

After Shaak explained, Fay sighed, shaking her head as they came within sight of Kit and Ranma. "The Sith and the Jedi. Two sides of the same coin, it was once said, like Dark and Light. One side will always return to overturn the other, an endless cycle. I had hoped the New Sith Wars, which were four hundred years before my time, had seen the end of that cycle. It is a pity it did not."

In front of the two of them, Kit was using the Force to levitate several dozen droid corpses into the air, tossing them towards a recycler machine that the locals brought out, which would take them apart and melt them down. Waste not, want not was a way of life for the species that made Zonama their home. Ranma, on the other hand, was simply lifting them up and tossing them like rags, and HK was making condescending remarks as he did the same, his metal arm making a point of crushing the head of every droid he lifted up.

Ranma also, Shaak noticed, looked a little bemused as he looked around. What senses he had were telling Ranma the same thing Shaak's own Force senses were: that this planet was very, very different from anywhere else they had been. Ranma, in fact, was twisting this way and that, staring around him as if he was hearing a voice just on the edge of perception, which fit well enough with what Shaak had been told of Sekot.

Both men looked up as Fay and Shaak came near, moving toward them. Fay filled Kit in on what they had been discussing, while Shaak and Ranma hugged wordlessly. Ranma had heard of Shaak's close call and the destruction of their ship. As they hugged, however, Shaak told Ranma what Fay had told her of Sekot, causing his eyes to widen. Once Shaak finished speaking, however, Fay continued. "And yet, Jerec's involvement here tells us one thing."

"Which is?" Shaak asked, though she well knew.

"The enemy might well be within the Order itself," Fay replied.

For a moment the three Jedi were silent, wondering about that as they continued to watch the locals start to rebuild and clear away the debris of the battle. It came as no surprise to the others that it was Ranma who broke the introspective silence, shaking his head. "That's nice and all, and I'll agree that we should probably get in touch with the Order as quickly as possible about that possibility. But I think we need to talk about something more important right now: recompense for my ship! I don't blame you for pretty much giving it the coup de grâce, Shaak, but if we don't have a ship, we're stuck here."

Master Fay began to laugh, and Kit quickly joined her, shaking his head as Shaak and Ranma looked at them in puzzlement. "I think we can do something about that," Fay finally replied, still laughing.

End Chapter


And another one bites the dust, LOL. No Death Star for you, Tarkin, oh no.

Sidious is still slowly being overwhelmed, but now has more hands to help him juggle even though he lost both a ball and a hand here, LOL. The Jedi are gathering their own allies, and the Republic is continuing to teeter on, both through its own ineptitude and thanks to Sidious's machinations.

Zonama Sekot: I had been meaning all along to bring in the living planet in one of my two SW stories. Given the Lucrehulk Harry has, I felt it would be better to upgrade Ranma's ride. Especially given the fact that the Wild Light was never meant for more than its two occupants. This also gives the Jedi a major force multiplier.

As for Sekot himself: I wanted to try and paint his personality by showing the way others reacted to him. In the next chapter, he and Ranma will 'meet' in person, and then I'll give him a voice for the first time.